"Grandson!" cried Mrs Pa. "Where are we?" She was hanging on for dear life to one of the streaming whiskers at the back of Precious Dragon's remarkably transformed head. It seemed somewhat inappropriate to address this huge beast as Grandson, but what else could she call him? One minute, he had been that strange, placid small boy, and the next, he was something else entirely.
But a rumbling voice came back all the same. "I don't know."
It was a very uncertain place. Dark, but shot with roils and curls of color, which billowed like clouds in a chemical experiment. Yet unlike smoke, they passed straight through solid objects like a kind of light, without taste or sensation or smell. And it was echoing with odd sounds that were like the booming of distant machinery. There was no sign of the transformed kuei, and that was a substantial relief to Mrs Pa.
"I am flying," Precious Dragon's rumbling voice said. "Hold on!"
The dragon's four legs shot out, claws extended. He was the color of metal, Mrs Pa saw: gold and copper and bronze, with a gleaming ruff of scales that was almost a dark green. He turned his head and revealed a vast fiery eye.
"Where are you going?" Mrs Pa asked. She did as he had instructed, and clung on. Seizing one of the thinnest whiskers, she wrapped it around her waist and tied it tightly.
"Down. The air is pulling me down."
But Mrs Pa could feel no breeze against her face and when she held out a tentative, shaky hand, the air was hot and still. Far in the distance, there was a line of light, almost like the coast seen from far out to sea.
"I did not know . . ." Precious Dragon said.
"Did not know what, Grandson?"
"That this is what I am."
"I should think not!" said Mrs Pa. "A dragon, indeed! What an idea. It's a pity you didn't realize sooner—you could have made mincemeat of those kuei."
Precious Dragon gave a huge booming laugh. "I did not know how to change into this form."
"I can't work out why you were a child in the first place. And my own grandson!"
"I have a memory now," Precious Dragon said. "Things are beginning to come back. I had to hide, from Heaven—I could not stay in Cloud Kingdom. I don't know why. But I decided that the best place to hide would be in Hell, because no one would follow me there—I forgot about the kuei. I suppose one of them smelled me out and then my mother sent me to you."
"But whatever can you have done," Mrs Pa said, "to make Heaven come after you?"
"I made someone angry," her grandson replied. "Dragons often do."