Ebony Scales

Joy laughed. “Honestly? Scared. We’re really going to be poking the hornet’s nest with this one.”

“I know. But with you involved, we have our best chance of success.”

“Can I ask you something, Longwei?”

“Sure.”

Joy watched as they passed a rice paddy, an old man out in the field tending his crop. “What made you get on board with this? You were the village leader for a few years before I showed up. What made you decide to take the fight outside of the village all of a sudden?”

“Some of it was forced on us,” Longwei said. “I still don’t understand why the Triad was so hot on your trail, but it seemed your coming was too much for them to consider the situation tolerable any more. I’m not blaming you for that, you were doing the right thing. But after that first attack, I guess it woke something up in me. I spent years living in a fantasy land, hoping that things would change without every trying to do something to help that change occur. But seeing them coming after you? That was different.”

“Is it because we’re a couple?” Joy asked. “I mean, I love you, but you don’t need to go white knighting me and charging out to take on the world on my behalf. And you shouldn’t risk the village just for me.”

Longwei looked over at her, shaking his head. “You don’t realize just how much of a change you made in the village, have you? Everyone sees you as part of us, regardless of where you were born or the fact that your Chinese is terrible.”

“Hey, it’s not that bad!” Joy said, a bit hurt.

Longwei shook his head. “Sorry, not what I meant. I mean that your village Chinese is still pretty bad. Your Mandarin has been improving, actually. Thankfully, a lot of the younger villagers can understand Mandarin pretty well. They can’t speak it, the accent is all wrong, but they can understand what you say.”

“In any case,” Longwei continued, “the whole thing just made me realize that if I really want to see the world free from the Triads, and the people free from their yoke, I have to do something.”

“Why do you hate the Triads so much?” Joy asked curiously. “They are gangsters after all, but you’re really motivated against them now. What’s got you so personally involved?”

“When they attacked you, it wasn’t the first time the Triads have attacked someone I love,” Longwei sighed. “They killed my father, and I suspect they killed my mother too.”

Joy sat back, stunned. “You never said how your parents died before.”

“It happened while I was in college in the States. My mom supposedly died of a snake bite. The problem is, poisonous snakes don’t live around the village, and no snake was ever found. After I came back, my father started my training with a new intensity that I hadn’t felt before. I knew then that he suspected the same thing I did.”

“So how did your father die?”

Longwei sighed, the late afternoon sun casting a reddish yellow tint to his face. “He was taking me to Wuhan, because he wanted to bargain with an agricultural dealer for a few things that the village couldn’t provide for itself. Also, Wuhan has a lot of lakes and rivers nearby, much more than the area around the village, and he wanted me to practice some of my dragon skills in the water.”

“We arrived pretty late at night, both of us in dragon form because it allowed us to carry the goods on our backs very easily. Back then, my father had rigged a sort of harness that allowed us to carry almost four hundred kilograms of rice or other items on our backs. We unloaded our load at a safe location, put on our clothes and headed into the city. My dad always enjoyed these trips because they were a chance for him to indulge in some things we couldn’t get in the village. Oh, he didn’t go overboard, and he always brought some back for the children, but he insisted on always buying a chocolate bar as soon as he could on these trips.”

Joy smiled at the warmth in Longwei’s voice as he recalled the details of the story. He spoke so little about his father, she always learned something new. “Go on.”

“We went into what I guess could be called a convenience store, it was about one in the morning, and Dad pulled out the little bit of cash money we had with us. He buys maybe a chocolate bar for himself, and a few bags of these little wrapped chocolates that he can hand out to the school children. We were headed out of the store, when Dad was approached by a group of four men. They were Triad representatives. Until then, I didn’t know that the village had a more or less formal agreement with the Triads. They stayed out of the village, and we stayed out of the city except for the agricultural visits. Even then though, we were supposed to stay to a very limited area, and deal only with those people the Triads said we could deal with. By going into the store, Dad had violated the terms of the agreement.”

“So what happened?”

Longwei sighed, pain flashing in his eyes. “That night? Nothing. The four men merely warned Dad that he was not welcome where we were. Dad backed down, not wanting to create a scene in public like we were, regardless of the time of night. We went back to where we had stashed the harnesses, and caught some sleep.”

“The next day, Dad and the agricultural rep met. Everything seemed fine, the negotiations were pretty straightforward, and the trucks came in to haul away our stuff. One of the trucks had the packages that Dad normally requested, and there was a little bit of money left over. Not much, maybe the equivalent of fifty dollars, but enough that we felt like we were doing something good for the village. Dad and I loaded it into my harness, since the whole thing weighed less than a hundred kilograms, and waited for the men to leave before I changed. As I did, a shot rang out from an industrial park maybe 500 meters away. The bullet took my father in the head, just as he was unwrapping his chocolate bar.”

“My God,” Joy gasped, her face losing color as she imagined the scene.