Heaven to Wudang. Kylie Chan
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ability.’
‘You could always stay dragon and bottle-feed them,’ Gold said.
Amy shook her head. ‘I want to give them as much of a boost as I can. My human milk is the best for them. And if I cuddle them as dragon I won’t be nearly as soft.’
‘Can you give me an estimate on when I can release the meridians?’ I said.
Edwin raised his hand and the forceps holding the suture appeared over the edge of the screen. ‘I’m on the final layer, ma’am, less than three minutes.’
‘You okay, Emma?’ Meredith said.
‘I can manage.’
‘Do you want me to administer an analgesic so you can release the meridians?’ Edwin said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘If I pin down these meridians before I withdraw, the pain relief will last a good six hours, and I can come back then and top it up.’
‘Don’t hurt yourself, ma’am,’ Amy said.
‘Don’t you “ma’am” me,’ I said. ‘Do you have any idea at all how good it feels to be able to contribute like this? With clean, pure, healing energy?’
‘I can only imagine,’ Amy said, then gasped and grimaced.
‘Sorry,’ I said, and returned my concentration to the meridians. I’d let one of them slip and she’d felt it.
‘It wasn’t anything, just a twinge,’ she said. She turned her head to see Gold again. ‘Did you manage to contact my father?’
‘I told both your parents, and your father is bringing your mother up here to see them,’ Gold said.
‘My father and mother together? That’s unbelievable,’ Amy said.
‘I think your mother’s making a special effort because she wants to see her grandchildren,’ Gold said. ‘I spoke to her before him … You should have warned me she was so … so …’
‘Did she go ballistic at you?’
‘I think she’ll rip my throat out if we don’t get married within the next two weeks,’ he said.
‘But she doesn’t know what we are, and that dragons and stones don’t do that sort of thing.’
‘Actually she does. She knew all along your father was a dragon. He told her I’m a stone, and that stones don’t marry, and apparently it’s made her even more determined to see it happen.’
‘I’m done,’ Edwin said.
Meredith took my hand and our consciousnesses touched; she still had Amy held down hard into human form. She studied the meridians alongside me and indicated the top point on the core meridian. ‘Start here.’
‘Don’t let her intimidate you. We don’t have to do it if it doesn’t feel right,’ Amy said.
I concentrated, and with Meredith’s assistance pinned the energy into the meridians so that they stayed lit. I released them one at a time, moving slowly down the core to the area where they’d opened Amy up. Her body was shrieking with distress at what had been done to it, and I spread the energy from the meridians to soothe its panic and ease the nervous reactions. The energy flowed through the area, giving it a healing boost, and I carefully withdrew completely.
‘It’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while anyway,’ Gold said. ‘Will you marry me, Amy?’
Amy shivered and her teeth rattled; a normal feeling of extreme cold that came when an energy worker withdrew after a major energy healing.
‘Are you in any pain?’ Meredith said.
Amy shook her head, her teeth stopping her from speaking.
‘Is that a no?’ Gold said.
Amy shook her head again, still unable to talk.
‘I’m going to release you now, you can change back,’ Meredith said.
Amy transformed into dragon, raised her head, then dropped it again with a huge sigh and closed her eyes.
‘Natural sleep, no pain, leave her to recover,’ Meredith said. ‘In a couple of hours wake her up and see if she can change back to human.’ She turned to me. ‘Magnificent job, madam. You can take it easy now.’
I stood up and toppled sideways.
Meredith caught me. ‘Oh, and congratulations, Master Gold. I think you just got engaged.’
‘My father will kill me,’ Gold said, his hand on Amy’s back.
‘Who is scarier: your father or her mother?’ Meredith said.
‘Oh, definitely her mother.’
‘Then you made the right decision.’ She hefted me in her arms. ‘Come on, missy, you’ve been overdoing it lately and need some serious rest.’
I woke, and had a moment of confusion as I saw the ceiling above the bed. Where was I? I looked left and nearly panicked: I was on the Celestial Plane, in the Imperial Residence of Wudang Mountain. Then I remembered that I didn’t need to be a snake, and I settled further under the silk. I was here. I had made it. But something was wrong; something bad had happened. Something terrible had happened and I couldn’t remember what it was; only the dark feelings of misery and despair that it brought me.
I sighed deeply and remembered.
Nothing bad had happened. I was feeling the grief for something that was yet to come. I often woke like this, feeling the loss. Something awful was going to happen to us in the near future and I had no idea what it was, only that it hung over all of Wudang.
I centred my chi and put the feeling aside. I was living in the present, enjoying the peace of now, and ready for the future when it crashed over us.
The four-poster was made of ebony, black with the deep sheen of many years of care. The dark grey curtains were embroidered with silver depictions of turtles and bats — symbols of longevity and good luck. The bed was flush against the wall, with a raised twenty-centimetre barrier around three sides to hold the covers in place, the fourth side left open. The room around me was five metres to a side, the walls hung with elegant ink paintings of sea creatures. A black sofa and coffee table in front of the open fireplace gave it a warm, comfortable atmosphere. I slapped the mattress next to me. They’d put me in the Emperor’s suite again, against my express orders. I’d commandeered a room in the servants’ quarters attached to the Imperial Residence and they should have put me in there.
I rotated to put my feet on the silk rug, pushed them into the slippers sitting next to the bed, and wandered into the en suite bathroom. Fortunately Michelle had demanded modern Western fittings when John had built the bathroom for her, so there wasn’t a squat toilet. However, there’d been a compromise about the decor and the entire bathroom was tiled with black marble, giving it a dated eighties look. I didn’t care, I just used it and wandered back out again.
‘You awake?’ I said.
‘You’ve only been out an hour or so,’ the stone said. ‘Ronnie Wong is in the gatehouse waiting for you. They’ve served lunch there so you can talk to him while you eat.’
‘Any complaints about Tom being allowed in untamed?’
‘Actually, no. General consensus is that he’s so interesting they’re willing to risk it.’
‘If anybody puts me to sleep in this bed again before John returns, I will personally take their head myself,’ I said as I pulled my clothes back on.
‘Even if it’s Simone?’
‘Bah.’
The gatehouse sat on the hillside outside the wall that protected the Mountain, in a grove of small cypress trees and surrounded by a tumble of granite boulders as tall as a man. It was a basic village