Then Asha saw the two little boys sitting on the stones, their feet dangling over the water, their backs to the shifting pile of crates.
“Hey!” Asha jogged toward them, leaving Priya behind. “Hey, you! Boys! Hey! Get up! Get up! You! Yes, you! Get up, get away from there! Look out!”
One of the boys glanced in her direction, then slowly swiveled his head to see the rocking mountain of crates behind him. He cried out and scrambled to his feet and darted away, leaving his friend staring after him with a confused look on his face. Asha yelled at the straggler as she reached the loading area and had to slow down to get through the other men moving barrels and boxes near the stacked crates. None of them gave her or the boy a look.
The remaining boy twisted around to scowl at the crates, but he did pull his legs up and stand, pausing to wipe his hands on his dirty trousers. Just then one of the bottom crates snapped apart and collapsed, and everything teetering above it collapsed with it. Half a dozen huge wooden containers, a dozen small casks, and two angry men crashed down to the stone dock.
Asha shouted, her hand outstretched as though she might grab the boy from a dozen paces away to pull him to safety. But as the crates smashed down into the stones, the boy took two light running steps and dove gracefully into the harbor. Asha jogged to a halt at the edge of the wreckage where the broken containers still stood in a high pile, many cracked open to reveal bolts of cloth or earthenware jugs wrapped in straw. A moment later the boy’s head broke the surface of the water and he squinted up through the water streaming down over his face. Asha waved to him. He waved back with a grin.
The two angry dock workers staggered up on top of the mess, surveyed the destruction, and began shouting at each other anew. One of them took a swing at the other’s head, and the crates shifted again. A wave of splintered wood and broken pottery cascaded over the edge of the dock and plummeted into the harbor straight down onto the boy.
2
“No!” Asha dashed forward, scrambling over the ruined cargo to look down into the water, but all she could see were wooden panels and planks piled high on the surface of the water. She couldn’t see the boy anywhere.
Asha dropped her shoulder bag on the dock and jumped feet-first into the water. As she jumped, she curled her hands into fists and summoned up a burning rage in her breast. In a corner of her mind there was a gallery of evils, each one just a little worse than the one before, and each one known to bring forth a certain degree of her fury. Now she called up the faces of the doctors who had trained her, who had betrayed her, who had killed her first love. She kindled that rage in her heart, fanning the flames of it until her entire body was flush with adrenaline, with the urge to scream, with the urge to lash out at the entire world and crush it in her bare hands.
The dragon awoke.
From deep inside her belly, the soul of the golden dragon blazed to life, filling her veins with liquid fire and Asha felt the change come over her, sweeping across her body. Her skin rippled with golden scales, harder than steel and shining in the bright morning light. Her feet crashed down into the floating ruins of the crates, and the wood shattered beneath her, splintering into tiny shards that flew high in the air and far out over the water. The water was freezing cold, but Asha knew this only distantly. She could barely feel the water at all through her dragon skin.
As she reached out to lift and smash the planks aside, Asha listened carefully above the surface and below it. There were souls everywhere, people-souls thronging the dock above and crab-souls thronging the harbor floor beneath her feet, and all of them humming and ringing and clanging in her ears, but through the noise Asha focused on the water right in front of her and found the faint and fading murmur of one lone little boy.
She dove beneath the surface, driving her fists and feet through the flotsam surging up and down through the filthy harbor water. A red veil passed over her eyes, casting the world in warm crimson tones, but in that red world a dim white shape appeared. Asha kicked and clawed her way past the remains of two more crates, tearing through layers of cloth and smashing through jars and bottles that hung suspended in the water, neither rising nor falling. She found the boy just a few feet beneath the surface, spread-eagled and face-down with a small dark cloud near his head. He wasn’t moving.
For a brief moment, the sight of the boy refueled the anger in her heart and Asha felt the dragon stirring again, felt the throbbing in her temples where the spirit wanted its horns and the throbbing in her back where the spirit wanted its tail. In her mind, she repeated a few words of one of the chants that Priya had taught her and the dragon settled, a little.
Asha reached out and snaked her arm around the boy’s chest and surged toward the surface, dragging him upward. When she broke into the cool morning air and lifted the boy up beside her, a shout went up on the dock. She swam to the dock and glanced up at the sheer stone wall rising above the water. Then she reached up with one golden hand to grab at a crack in the wall, and hurled herself and the boy up onto the dock in a single motion.
She landed on her feet, but only just barely. Her ankles throbbed and she shivered as the water streamed down out of her thick black hair over her skin. The scales were gone, along with the anger and any thought of the doctors far away in the Ming Empire. Her only thought now was for the boy in her arms. A small crowd pressed in around her, arms reaching and hands pointing, voices muttering and clamoring. Asha wondered if anyone was going to go and fetch help. She doubted it.
The boy’s skin was cold and she couldn’t find his pulse or hear him breathing. Asha rolled him onto his stomach and roughly massaged his back to pump the water out of his lungs, and then rolled him back over. She struck his chest once, and then again. The boy stiffened and gasped, choking and coughing. She rolled him over again to let him spit out the foul harbor water on the stones. He looked up at her, eyes lidded and lips trembling. Asha nudged the dragon soul within her, just a bit, and then she exhaled gently over the boy’s face and neck and chest, and he stopped shivering as his lips regained a bit of color.
His eyes opened again and he said, “Your breath…”
“Hush. I know. It’s very hot.”
He shook his head. “Your breath stinks.”
Asha smiled.
3
A moment later three middle-aged women shouldered their way through the crowd of dock workers, shouting and slapping and swatting at the men to get out of their way. They encircled Asha and the boy with blankets and gentle caresses and wrinkled looks of concern, and Asha politely extracted herself and let them bundle up the boy and carry him off, away from the harbor.
After wringing out her hair, Asha picked up her shoulder bag and turned to walk back through the slowly dispersing crowd to find Priya when a harsh, rapid shouting drew her gaze back to the pile of broken crates. The two dock workers stood side by side, heads lowered, hats in their hands. The man doing the shouting was shorter than either of them, and heavier than both. He wore a dark green robe and belted at his considerable waist was a familiar short sword. The robed man stopped shouting for a moment, and one of the workers turned to point at Asha.
The man in green strode straight for Asha and began barking at her when he was still only half way to her. “You there! What did you think you were doing, smashing my wares, tearing my cloth? These are costly goods! They were worth a fortune!”