Читать книгу Tatsu the Dragon - Helen Van Aken - Страница 9

To Shrine Island

Tatsu's life began with such a lot of activity that he was quite unprepared for the long dull days that followed the rescue of Gushi the gardener.

There were no more parades and no more moonlight ceremonies. Jiro and Zenji left him lying in the corner of the courtyard till his green and yellow cloth skin was muddier than ever and his brown yarn tail and his purple whiskers were decidedly matted.

He still had the tin horn for a voice, but what good is a voice with no one to talk to? All the air had long ago oozed out of the orange balloon, and he too lay limp and lazy under the monkey-puzzle tree in the courtyard. All Tatsu could do was to hibernate. But hibernation grows stupid after a while.

After a particularly dull and rainy night, Tatsu wakened to hear a clatter and a commotion in the courtyard. A lot of people were talking all at once.

As soon as he roused himself enough to hear what it was all about, he began to sort out voices. He heard Jiro and Zenji and the Daimyo and Kiku and Gushi the gardener and Hachi the executioner, and after a while he began to figure out what they were talking about.

"Kiku wants a dragon in our retinue," the Daimyo was saying. "We're going to Shrine Island for New Year's Eve to the fire-fighting ceremony."

"Surely, my lord, you could find a more fitting creature than this interfering dragon," said a fawning voice Tatsu recognized as belonging to Hachi the executioner.

"No other creature but a dragon will do—and I'll have no dragon but Tatsu," Kiku put in.

"I want Tatsu, too," said Gushi the gardener. "I'm only here by his honorable shadow."

That must be his way of remembering that Tatsu had once saved his life. Tatsu's brown yarn tail had drooped sadly when he listened to Hachi, but now he began to feel important again. When he heard the Daimyo's next speech, he wagged his tail like a proud puppy.

"Certainly we want this heroic dragon. If you boys will permit, he will go with us to Shrine Island."

"He's too faded and dirty to be part of a retinue," objected Jiro. "Look how muddy he is!"

But Kiku was determined.

"You clean him up," she ordered Gushi the gardener and Hachi the executioner.

Hachi shrugged his shoulders in defeat.

They all got busy and scrubbed poor Tatsu with long-handled brushes, and combed out his tail and his purple whiskers with a strong comb and brushed his bamboo teeth.

Tatsu felt that Hachi scrubbed much harder than it was at all necessary to scrub even a very dirty dragon. He yanked at the comb till Tatsu wanted to give a most un-dragon-like yelp—or grab the comb in his teeth and pull the executioner's hair and let him see how it felt—but he had the pride of his ancestors to live up to and took it all without a protest. At least, he consoled himself, he was beginning to look like his old self.

The boys even daubed fresh yellow paint on his clean green cloth body for scales. This time the spots really looked almost like real golden scales. Tatsu was encouraged. Maybe he wasn't a real dragon yet, but at least he was a clean one. If only the balloon man had been there to blow him up! Without the wizard's help Tatsu couldn't get around by himself. Somebody would have to stand up inside him to make his front legs, and somebody else would have to stand up inside him to make his hind legs. Never, never, could he choose for himself where he wanted to go.

"Where did you say we were going?" he ventured to ask.

Gushi the gardener explained it all to him.

"At the end of every year the Daimyo goes back to Shrine Island for the New Year celebration. It's his old ancestral home."

"How do they celebrate the New Year at Shrine Island?" he asked.

The gardener looked mysterious.

"You wait and see. New Year's Eve on Shrine Island is different from New Year's Eve anywhere else in the world."

Tatsu could hardly wait. Even the executioner's silence didn't keep him from feeling a fine glow of excitement. Luckily he didn't need to wait very long. Soon the journey to Shrine Island was arranged. Jiro and Zenji were to go along, too.

"We'll travel by boat," Kiku explained, "across the Inland Sea."

That was fine for Tatsu. All the way from the City of the Golden Marsh to Shrine Island, he sat in the bow of the boat trying to look as though he'd been sailing all his life.

The Daimyo and Kiku sat on red cushions laid on straw mats in the middle of the deck.

Gushi the gardener and Hachi the executioner took turns standing in the stern and steering with a long pole like an enormous oar. Jiro and Zenji manned the sails.

Tatsu loved the rolling motion of the boat as it sailed through the beautiful Inland Sea. Still, he felt a little uncomfortable when he saw Hachi the executioner watching him during one of Gushi's turns at poling the boat. There was a look in Hachi's eye that Tatsu didn't like.

They sailed past green islands and rocky shores until at last they landed on Shrine Island. It was afternoon of the day before the New Year.

"Here's where the fire-fighting ceremony will be held," said the Daimyo.

Tatsu stifled a bit of anxiety when he heard the word fire. He had almost forgotten the wizard's warning.

"Those old fire demons will all be scared off tonight," he heard Gushi the gardener say. "They'll run off so fast they won't be back all year long."

"Let's take our retinue to the temple. We have to get into the procession," said the Daimyo.

The retinue lined up, the Daimyo, Kiku, Gushi, Hachi, and last of all, Tatsu, with Jiro standing up inside him to made his front legs and Zenji standing up inside him to make his hind legs. The retinue wound its way to the temple.

"Now we must make our torches," said the Daimyo. "Kiku, you may sit here in front of the temple and watch how it is done. And Tatsu, see that no harm befalls her. We'll come back for you after the procession is over."

Tatsu accepted the responsibility, proudly waving his brown yarn tail.

Jiro and Zenji joined a crowd of workers who were lashing light pine boards together into cylinders to make torches. They dipped the ends into pitch so they would burn brilliantly.

As it grew dark, the procession lined up in front of the temple. Tatsu saw boys and men dressed in the ancient costume of the fire-fighters, white jackets and tight-fitting trousers, with coarse straw sandals bound tightly around bare ankles.

All of them carried torches. Jiro and Zenji and Gushi joined a group who lifted a long torch to their shoulders, and Hachi managed to find himself a place with a group of priests in the foremost ranks. The Daimyo and a number of other noblemen bore the largest torch of all.

Then Tatsu saw a white-robed priest hurrying from man to man lighting the pine torches with a wax candle that burned with a flame said to have been brought down from a fire in the shrine on the mountain top that had been burning for a thousand years.

The noblemen's torch spluttered and coughed, then blazed and shot fireworks like all the other torches carried by young men and old.

"Yoi! Yoi! Yoi-no-yoi! Yoi-no-yoi!" shouted the runners, sprinting along the hard-earth pavement in time to the weird rhythm.

Tatsu wondered what Yoi-no-yoi meant. Maybe it didn't mean anything—just showed how excited the runners were.

Soon the whole curving street that bordered the seashore was a mad lane of fire. The flames leapt and snapped as the torches trailed sparks. The sharp odor of pitch filled the air. The procession had started. Let the demons beware!