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NOTE: These stories are
intended for a mature audience.

Black Dragon
A Guest Quarters story
By
Patty Jansen

Her skin pale in death, Nan's face resembled a statue's.

After three days of standing next to it, I knew all its wrinkles. The way the flickering candle light would make her look alive, the way she seemed to flinch when someone she hadn't liked entered her house.

Such as Aunt Mary.

The sound of her voice preceded her heavy footsteps in the hall. A rough, smoke-edged drawl, bellyaching about the weather. The door clanged open and brought a whiff of cigarette smoke.

I straightened my back, pretending not to be there. My cousin Tamati, standing on the opposite side of Nan's head, did the same.

Aunt Mary, all hundred and twenty-odd kilograms of her, wobbled to a stop at the foot of the coffin. She gave me the evil watchya-think-yer-doing eye.

I held my silence.

As kirimate, Nan's closest relatives, neither I nor my cousin would object to Aunt Mary's final dealings with her sister.

Aunt Mary fumbled in her handbag and drew out a piece of paper.

"Ngaio, since you were always so keen on reading and poetry and all them things, I've written you a poem." She cleared her throat self-importantly and gave me another glance.

"So it ends, sister dear,
With you lying there and me standing here
You always thought you were right
That we were stupid and you were bright
Always doing what we weren't allowed
And running with the weirdo crowd
Did you really think you made your mark
Kissing Pakeha boys in the park
What was the point of all them books
Except chase off your man for someone with better looks
If you had a chance to tell me thus,
Do you still think you're so much better than us?"

She scrunched up the paper in the silence that cloaked the room like a stifling blanket.

That was Aunt Mary: full of petty grievances. She had even objected to Tamati's presence here, because he was a man, even though the funeral arrangements were my business. Tamati had asked me if he could stand at the wake instead of his sisters, who thought Nan was weird. I didn't always understand Tamati, but I appreciated his gesture.

I squeezed my eyes shut, but a hot tear ran over my cheek.

Aunt Mary hesitated, as if disappointed that neither me nor Tamati moved to strangle her.

Then she harrumphed, dug once more in her bag and produced a box which required both her meaty hands to set on the table reserved for offerings. Made of wood, it gave no indication of its contents, but it definitely wasn't food - a customary contribution to the funeral gathering. Something about the strange polished surface and the pattern on the lid, a creature with its mouth wide open, made me shiver.

It was almost as if it hissed smoke?or was it a trick of the candle light?

The room faded, and there was darkness, and pain, and the feeling of my soul contracting into nothingness, being sucked up into...I don't know. I rubbed my temples, too tired from standing here for so long.

Aunt Mary pushed the box across the table. "And you can have this blasted thing back, too, seeing as it's brought us none but bad luck. I looked after it all right, but what do I get in return? Your dead body."

She spat on the floor, and as far as a woman of her size could whirl, she whirled around and stomped out of the room.

***

Tamati returned from the station after having dropped off the last of the aunts while I put the dishes away.

He drove the car into the carport?the plates rattled when he revved that ridiculous thing in the confined space between the houses. The car door creaked open, and thudded shut. He clomped up the veranda, let the screen door clang behind him and made straight for the fridge. "Beer," he muttered in a kind of primal way. He clicked the can open.

Tamati's drinking reminded me of Mother, of my father, of the hopelessness and apathy that held so many of my old school friends in its grip. Drinking and smoking and fucking.

Tamati sank down at the table. "That lawyer called again this morning."

I whirled to face him. "Why didn't you tell me?"

That lawyer dealt with Nan's money, her house, her meager possessions. He must have come while I was out shopping.

"I don't like him."

"What's there not to like? He does his job. That's all he's paid to do."

"Kiri, you flirt with him."

"Fuck you, I don't!" I'd seen the red-headed lawyer only once. He spoke with an accent, Irish or something.

Tamati snorted into his beer. "That's just like Nan: getting a Pakeha to look after her will."

"I don't care, Tamati. He's doing his job."

"I'm proud to be Maori." He thunked the beer can onto the table.

I met his piercing stare. "So am I."

I threw down the dish towel and went to the veranda, escaping the familiar scents of Nan's house. I shouldn't be angry with Tamati. His mother had raised him to protect the women of his whanau, the extended family.

I didn't need protecting and Nan had taught me to treat all people equally, unless they proved they deserved otherwise. Then again, Nan had always been treated differently. You'll understand, she used to say. Well, now she was dead and I still didn't understand.

That wasn't even what angered me so much. It was the car, that hideous black thing parked in the driveway. Tamati owed too much money on it. He would inherit half of Nan's house.

Through the sale of Nan's house, I would lose my home.

I had no money to buy the house where I'd lived as a child. The driveway where I'd learned to ride a bike, the chair where I had cried after I'd found Mum slumped on the couch, hearing doctors say she would be all right, but knowing she wouldn't. She might live, but all right, she wasn't.

The screen door clanged behind me. "Kiri?"

Tamati came onto the veranda. "I'm sorry."

I shrugged and stared out over the street. He was on Aunt Mary's side of the family, and I on Nan's.

He held out the box Aunt Mary had left. "Do you know what this is?"

I shook my head. She had mentioned bad luck. Most of my life I had spent ducking conflict?between my parents, between Nan and my father, between my father and his brothers?and I had no interest in this supposed thing of bad luck. If there was any bad luck to be had, it would find me regardless.

Tamati set the box on the table and pried open the lid.

Amongst yellowed and scrunched newspapers lay a statue. Made from dark stone, it was a square, rather ugly animal, rearing on its hind legs, opening its mouth to spew fire. A dragon. I lifted it, spilling newspapers on the table. The Dominion, 27 April 1952.  "Boy, it's heavy."

A piece of paper fluttered onto the table. There was a name on it, in Nan's handwriting, Dr. Rob Mason, and a phone number in town. The Museum probably. Nan loved that kind of stuff.

I turned the statue over in my hands, running the tips of my fingers along the delicately carved scales on the creature's back. "It looks...Chinese."

Chinese restaurants had things like these in their windows. I'd even seen them cut from carrots. "Why would Nan have this thing?"

"Maybe someone gave it to her?" Tamati sat in the creaky chair, bringing the beer can to his lips.

Nan worked in the council library and probably had more Pakeha friends than the rest of my family put together, but Chinese?

As I stared into the statue's beady eyes, the world wavered. I was under a stark blue sky. Waves crashed against the bow of a ship. An ungainly red sail flapped above my head, square and thick. The wooden deck pitched and rolled.

A man stood at the railing, looking out over the sea. He was dressed in a shimmering gown of black silk He turned his head, his face in a wide grin. His eyes burned with green fire.

Two other men came up onto the deck. One carried a long stick, the other a knife, both glowing with green fire. The magician didn't seem to hear them. I wanted to yell behind you, but I had no voice.

The men sprang onto the magician's back, bathed him in green glow, which spread over him like water seeping into a sponge. He fought it with green fire of his own, but the two others soon had him flat on the deck. Black smoke billowed across my vision. A man sprinted past with a bucket, followed by a number of his mates. In the commotion, one of the attackers pushed the unconscious man into the sea.

The ship lurched.

I took a step sideways to balance myself and crashed into Nan's card table, my heart hammering in my chest. I flung the statue into the box. Bad luck indeed. Someone had been murdered over this thing.

"Kiri? Anything wrong?"

I licked my lips, meeting Tamati's eyes. "No. Nothing."

***

I got off the bus downtown, hitching my bag with the heavy box onto my shoulder. As I crossed the street, I checked the address. When Mr. Wong, the owner of the local Chinese restaurant, had said his brother owned an antiques shop in town, I had envisaged a cosy little place with quaint Victorian furniture, not a shabby shopfront with a dark maw for a window. But there it was, and yes, there was indeed some furniture in the window, and a porcelain set of Chinese bowls. All very dusty.

I stopped and gazed at the darkness inside. I couldn't believe I was doing this.

Then I recalled Mr. Wong's wide-eyed look when I showed him the statue.

My father ran off with another woman when I was eight. My mother took to the bottle, until one day, she decided she couldn't go on. Like the gutless person she was, didn't take enough pills. Maybe she hoped we would save her. I don't know what she thought. No one can ask her. She sits in her bed at the hospice. She can't speak, she can barely move her head, and every time I visit, she cries.

I wanted to have a home where I can look after her, but the maximum amount of money I could borrow was twenty thousand short.

When I entered the shop, an elderly Chinese man shuffled from the doorway.

I plonked the box on the counter. "Your brother said you might be interested in this."

Slowly, I took the lid off and reached into the crumpled newspaper.

As I lifted the dragon out, the statue warmed in my hands. The shop vanished, and I stood on the stone steps of a palace, looking up at a man in a red and gold robe. Another man knelt at his feet, head bowed: the man who had been attacked on the boat. The man in the red robe?the emperor??spoke. A servant held up a frame on which was mounted a fine cloth. A map?

Soldiers lined up behind the emperor's chair, their eyes on the kneeling man and hands on their swords. In that row I recognised two others: the magicians who had pushed the kneeling man into the sea.

The scene faded and I was in the shop again, staring into the owner's eyes. I don't know if he had seen the vision, but if money had an expression, I saw it in his face.

***

I didn't sell the statue, never mind that he offered me a thousand dollars for it. I guess I looked like the kind who could use a thousand dollars, but it was nowhere near enough. It didn't feel right. I thought the statue to be some sort of trinket, but it seemed to be important, and if I sold it, what part of Nan's history would I be selling?

You will understand. I kept hearing Nan's voice.

In our culture, possessions of important persons were tapu; you weren't allowed to touch them. I was beginning to feel I was dealing with just such a thing.

I did something Tamati would find silly: I walked across town to the building on the waterfront everyone knew as Te Papa, the National Museum.

I remembered Nan having taken me there, way back when it was still housed in the old building, I must have been nine or ten. Tamati was there, too. We'd looked at huge stuffed Moas in glass cages, beautiful ceremonial cloaks my forefathers made from kiwi feathers and pictures of tribe elders, every inch of their skin covered in tattoos. I remembered Nan's voice. Those are proud Maori men, Tamati, not those who drown their trouble in beer.

After I asked if a Dr. Rob Mason worked in the museum, a receptionist made me wait in the foyer, awkwardly clutching my box.

Unsurprisingly, Rob Mason was the museum's chief anthropologist. He looked like he had a trace of Maori ancestry, but to my disappointment, he didn't wear a lab coat. He led me through a maze of corridors into a cluttered office with bookshelves along the wall.

We sat down at the desk in the middle of the room.

"Your grandmother would be Ngaio?"

I nodded. I gave him the box. He set it aside on his desk.

When I raised my eyebrows, he said, "It is not for me to look at."

My heart jumped. Tapu indeed. And I'd been trying to sell this thing?

"What do you know about it?" he asked.

"Nothing," I said, and when the silence lingered, I added. "It's Chinese."

"That's all?"

"Well..." Should I mention the visions? He'd think I was crazy.

"You are Ngaio's biological granddaughter, aren't you?"

What was he hinting at? "Of course."

"Then are you sure that is all you know?" His eyes were penetrating.

Sheesh! I shrugged, but couldn't hide my frustration. "Everyone seems to know more about this thing than I do."

He sighed, pushed himself out of his chair and collected a big book from a shelf behind him. He opened it, flicked through the pages and turned the book to face me. On the page was a photograph of crude map drawn in black ink on cloth. I recognized the image.

"Ngaio said she'd seen something like this before. Am I right in guessing that you have seen it, as well?"

"Yes." My voice was almost a whisper. "Touching the statue gives me...visions. I know it sounds stupid, but..."

"Your grandmother said the same thing."

He flicked another page to a similar map. "These are maps as were made by Chinese cartographers in the fifteenth century. There is evidence that Chinese vessels travelled the oceans and mounted expeditions. The Yongle emperor, Zhu Di, is said to have sent his fleet admiral, Zheng He, to discover the world."

I remembered the emperor pointing at the map, and the man kneeling on the floor, the magician who'd been pushed into the sea after I'd seen him talking to his leader.

"We know that this statue is a genuine artifact from the fifteenth century, which has passed through many generations of your family. How did it come in their possession? There are ship wrecks along the coast where your grandmother's iwi still lives. We can only guess that her ancestors found the statue."

No. I saw a man crawling, wet and bedraggled, onto a sandy beach.

"Why didn't Nan tell me any of this?"

He shook his head, but a chill went through me. I'd found Nan dead on the floor in the kitchen after I came home from work. Paramedics said she'd suffered a heart attack, but what if someone had wanted her dead?

***

By the time I came home, it was dark.

As I walked up to the house, key in hand, I noticed that the flyscreen had been ripped off the bedroom window.

Legs trembling, I clomped up the stairs to the veranda. Make lots of noise, Nan would say. Give them room to escape. I stopped at the front door, unlocked it, flicked the switch in the hall.

"Hello? Anyone there?"

I went inside. There was no one in the hall, or in the living room or in any of the bedrooms.

In that intense silence, my phone rang. I gasped and fished it out of my pocket. I recognized the number on the screen.

"Tamati?"

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah, of course." I cleared my throat, still scanning the darkness of the living room. "Why shouldn't I be?"

"You don't sound all right."

"I am?honestly." My mind scrambled for something to say. I didn't understand this sudden attention. He'd never called me when Nan was alive. Maybe he wanted me to hurry with the sale of the house. "Tamati. I'm just completing some legal stuff. Do you remember what the doctor put on Nan's death certificate as the cause of death?"

A short silence. "No... Why? Does it matter?"

"It's just a question on the form I have to answer."

"Oh. OK. The death certificate should be in the folder on the shelf in the kitchen."

"Yeah. I'll check."

I said goodbye and hung up.

You should have told him about the break-in, stupid. No, not now. He'd find out the statue was worth money, or he'd tell Aunt Mary, and she'd have my head for trying to sell it.

Still feeling shivery, I walked through into the kitchen. Piles of documents from the real estate agent which lay on the table reminded me why I had gone to sell that blasted statue in the first place.

I slid the bag off my shoulder, dumped it on the table, filled up the kettle and set it to boil.

As I reached for the shelf to get a cup, a small noise that sounded like a man's whisper made me look over my shoulder. Tendrils of smoke curled into the kitchen.

In a few steps, I was at the door. A spout of smoke hit me in the face, so forceful it made me recoil. It burned my lungs, clouded my eyes, made me cough and cough until I was dizzy. I groped for a chair, gasping for breath.

The world went black.

***

When I woke up, it was to total darkness. My hands had been tied behind my back, but when I wriggled, the knot slipped. I pushed myself up, knocking something over. A large object fell with a clatter, bringing down a whole lot of other things.

Oh shit. I sat frozen. A dog barked outside. A car drove past.

I rummaged in my pocket for Nan's cigarette lighter and snipped it into life. The flickering flame showed a large room with boxes and bags piled against the walls. Jars with labels in Chinese and pictures of tigers. Plastic bags with dried things.

I sat in one corner, next to a jumble of African giraffe statues carved from black wood?the objects that had fallen over.

I tried the door. It was locked. The room only had a small window near the ceiling. Through it, I saw a piece of brick wall. I stacked a few boxes, but when I climbed up, I found that the window didn't open, and the glass was reinforced with metal wire.

A door clanged and footsteps came down the hall.

I jumped down and grabbed one of the African statues. I pressed myself against the wall.

I'm sure that the people in Africa who carve one-and-a-half metre tall giraffes from ebony wood don't intend them for combat purposes, but when you grab one by the head and swing, it becomes a weapon nevertheless.

The lock rattled. The door opened.

I swung the giraffe, hit someone. On the shoulder, I think. It was too dark to see.

A man screamed.

Someone else grabbed me from behind. There were harsh voices. Shadows moved in the room. Three men.

One shone a torch in my face. "You. Stay still." He spoke with a heavy accent.

Someone flicked on the light, a naked bulb hanging from a piece of wire.

My captor was dressed in black. Asian eyes glittered over the cloth that covered his nose and mouth. While his comrade set me down on a chair, he placed something on the table?the dragon statue.

"Call the dragon."

I couldn't suppress a chuckle. Me. Call a dragon. Fancy that.

The man grabbed the front of my shirt and slapped me in the face.

"Huan Li's heir can call the dragon, because Huan Li stole it from the emperor and imprisoned it in this statue."

I saw it in his eyes; I had seen it in my visions. The emperor had thought to rid himself of the magician who plotted to overthrow him by sending him with Zheng He's expedition. Even while at sea, the emperor's minions had followed him. In the end, the magician, Huan Li, had been the only survivor from the ship fire. He had come ashore where Nan's ancestors lived. A woman from the village would have borne his children. After a couple of generations, the only evidence of his existence had been the statue, passed from generation to generation.

I stammered, "The magician's heir? Me?"  But I knew it was true. "And you are the emperor's heir."

He had brought me here to settle the vendetta.

"Call the dragon," he said again.

"I don't know how." I had to stall him and wait for?for what? No one knew I was here, not even Tamati. Stupid, stupid. I should have let him know what was up.

He snorted. "What color is your dragon? Just name color."

"Black."

The man shook his head. "Black is bad. Choose different colour. Choose red."

"I am Maori. I choose black." There were no dragons, anyway.

The look in his eyes hard, he handed me the statue.

As soon as I touched it, the stone dragon warmed under my hands. Tendrils of smoke curled from its mouth. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't.

Something huge and black burst out of the statue in a cloud of smoke. Light reflected in shiny scales. Fire-red eyes blinked, the pupil slitted. The head bent towards me. I pushed back in the chair as far as I could. The dragon hissed softly and sat on its haunches, like a massive dog waiting for me to throw a ball...or an ebony giraffe? I glanced aside, but the giraffes were out of reach.

The emperor's heir extended both hands. Shafts of green burst from his fingers, coiling around the dragon. The creature reared and gave a panicked hiss, but the bonds were too strong. He pulled at the green net of fire, dragging it to a second statue, a newer one, which he had put on the table. Once he had the creature trapped inside, it would answer to him.

"Leave it!" I yelled. "Forget this stupid argument. What's it about anyway? Something that happened five centuries ago?"

He flicked a strand of magic at me. Green fire burned through me, making my chest constrict. I gasped for breath. Magic exploded all around the room. A dark strand hit the giraffe statue which I'd used as weapon and which now lay on the floor. It stirred and raised itself on spindly legs. There were other shadows, about a hundred live ebony giraffes in the room, prancing, galloping in loops around the magician's feet.

Holy shit. That looked like my magic.

I pointed at the net. Dark strands of magic flowed from my fingers, ricocheted off the walls, bounced off the ceiling and the floor. The carpet caught fire, and so did one of the giraffes.

The magician laughed and spoke in Chinese. I needed no translation. I was a total fool, a worthless ignoramus. My magic had no aim or power.

I met the dragon's red eye. Give me some help. I'm trying to free you.

A red glow went up my arm, mingled with my dark fire. The skin of the dragon turned a deep maroon. The beast snarled. The magician stumbled back but tripped over the giraffes.

Fire erupted from the dragon's mouth, searing my skin, but I kept the strands of dark magic in my hands, straining with effort not to let it go. The magician was pushing himself up from the floor. Green fire crackled over his back. His eyes flashing with green, he pointed a trembling hand at me...

Behind him, a burning giraffe collapsed into a cardboard box. There was a crack, a hiss and then a huge ball of fire.

The dragon let out a shriek. It tore apart the green web. I was somehow still holding onto it with the magic and was jerked hard upward while the creature jumped and hit the ceiling. Plaster and wood splintered around me. Chunks hit my arms and my legs. Next thing I knew I clung onto a scaly neck and cool night air rushed past me, interrupted only by powerful wing-beats. In the suburb below, a house burned bright in the dark. A few blocks down, a fire engine sped through the street.

***

The dragon landed in the ink-dark shadow of the tree in front of my house. I slid off its back, shivering. The creature bent its head towards me, blinking a red slitted eye.

"Go back where you belong," I whispered.

The dragon jumped into the air. Two heavy wing-beats and it was gone.

I walked up the path to the front door. Lights burned behind all windows. I remembered having left the light on in the kitchen, but not in the living room or the bedroom.

"Anyone answering yet?" A male voice drifted from the open door. Tamati.

I ran up the veranda.

My cousin was in the kitchen, pouring water from the kettle into the teapot.

"Tamati!" My voice spilled over. I couldn't believe how glad I was to see him.

He rushed across the room in a few steps and closed his arms around me.

My head on his beefy shoulder, I noticed another person in the kitchen: Aunt Mary.

I untangled myself from Tamati's arms. "What are you doing here?"

"You were behaving so strangely," Tamati said. "I rang up Aunt Mary and she asked if you looked at that dragon thing. She told me it gave her the creeps so I went to check, and..." He gestured at the floor where shards of porcelain mingled with black stains of soot. "What happened?"

In a few halting sentences, I told him how I'd gone to sell the statue and how the men had broken into the house. I said nothing about the magic, or the dragon.

"Why didn't you tell us you were in trouble?"

I shrugged. Why hadn't I? Because I was stubborn? Because Nan had raised me and I felt like I had to prove something to her memory? "I'm sorry, I..." My voice would no longer cooperate. I'd made a mess. I didn't even have the dragon statue anymore and I still had no money.

"Please, Kiri, don't you dare become as stubborn as Nan."

"Hmph," Aunt Mary said. "You know that me and Ngaio never got along, but...I guess...that has nothing to do with you. I should have thrown that thing in the sea. I'm sorry it's happened and if I can do something to help you..."

Help me, she could indeed.  I'd pay her back, oh hell I would; I would work my fingers to the bone.

"Yes, you could help me. I was wondering if you would lend me some money..."

***

I was in the kitchen when I heard a male voice on the veranda. I dried my hands and went to the front door, noting how much better the hallway looked since I'd pulled up the old carpet and polished the floorboards. Mum sat on the veranda in her wheelchair, pale, but less so than when I had taken her out of the hospice. Next to her on the bench sat a thin man with black hair.

"Mr. Wong?"

He turned around and rose.

"I came to bring you..." He gestured at a box he had put on Nan's card table. The statue.

"My brother said someone came into the shop and tried to sell this to him, but he knew it was yours. He said he knew it was stolen and was going to call the police, and they just ran."

While he spoke, I'd slid the lid off the box and unveiled the black dragon in its bed of newspapers.

"Thank you," I whispered, my voice thick. "I was afraid I'd lost it." I ran my finger along its carved scales. Nothing. The dragon and its magic were gone, leaving only stone, and the legacy of my family's history, a treasure for generations to come.

Patty Jansen is a writer and reader of Science Fiction and Fantasy. She has a professional background in science (agriculture and ecology). She attended university of Sydney, CSIRO (North Queensland). Her other interests include marine biology and astronomy. She is a Coop member, and an editor and slush reader at Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.

Story by Patty Jensen, Copyright 2010
Image by Amber Clark, Stopped Motion Photography, Copyright 2010