It chose a good point in the sky, high enough that it would have enough cloud matter to work with, but not so high that the humans couldn’t see it. Then it got to work.
It laboured at night, using its head to push together masses of cloud and its tail to work the fine detail. Byam didn’t just want the design to look like a dragon. Byam wanted it to be beautiful – as beautiful as the dragon it was going to be.
Making the sculpture was harder than Byam had expected. Cloud was an intransigent medium. Wisps kept drifting off when Byam wasn’t looking. It couldn’t get the horns straight and the whiskers were wonky.
Sometimes Byam felt like giving up. How could it make a dragon when it didn’t even know how to be one?
To conquer self-doubt, it chanted the aphorisms of the wise:
Nobody becomes a dragon overnight.
Real dragons keep going.
A dragon is only an imugi that didn’t give up.
It took one hundred years more than Byam had planned for before the cloud was finished.
It looked just like a dragon, caught as it was speeding across the sky to its rightful place in the heavens. In moonlight it shone like mother of pearl. Under the sun it would glitter with all the colours of the rainbow.
As it put its final touches on the cloud, Byam felt both pride and a sense of anti-climax. Even loss. Soon Byam would ascend – and then what would happen to its creation? It would dissipate, or dissolve into rain, like any other cloud.
Byam managed to find a monk who knew about shipping routes and was willing to dish in exchange for not being eaten. And then it was ready.
As dawn unfolded across the sky on an auspicious day, Byam took its position behind its dragon-cloud.
All it needed was a single human to look up and say what they saw. A fleet of merchant vessels was due to come this way. Among all those humans, there had to be one sailor with his eyes on the sky – a witness open to wonder, prepared to see a dragon rising to glory.
*
‘Hey, captain,’ said the lookout. ‘You see that?’
‘What is it? A sail?’
‘No.’ The lookout squinted at the sky. ‘That cloud up there, look. The one with all the colours.’
‘Oh wow!’ said the captain. ‘Good spot! That’s something special, for sure. It’s a good omen!’
He slapped the lookout on the back, turning to the rest of the crew. ‘Great news, men! Heaven smiles upon us. Today is our day!’
Everyone was busy with preparations, but a dutiful cheer rose from the ship.
The lookout was still staring upwards.
‘It’s an interesting shape,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Don’t you think it looks like a…’
‘Like what?’ said the captain.
‘Like, um…’ The lookout frowned, snapping his fingers. ‘What do you call them? Forget my own head next! It looks like a – it’s on the tip of my tongue. I’ve been at sea for too long. Like a, you know—’
*
Byam couldn’t take it anymore.
‘Dragon!’ it wailed in agony.
An imugi has enormous lungs. Byam’s voice rolled across the sky like thunder, its breath scattering the clouds – and blowing its creation to shreds.
‘Horse!’ said the lookout triumphantly. ‘It looks like a horse!’
‘No no no,’ said Byam. It scrambled to reassemble its sculpture, but the cloud matter was already melting away upon the winds.
‘Thunder from a clear sky!’ said the captain. ‘Is that a good sign or a bad sign?’
The lookout frowned. ‘You’re too superstitious, captain – hey!’ He perked up, snatching up a telescope. ‘Captain, there they are!’
Byam had been so focused on the first ship that it hadn’t seen the merchant fleet coming. Then it was too busy trying to salvage its dragon-cloud to pay attention to what was going on below.
It was distantly aware of the fighting between the ships, the arrows flying, the screams of sailors as they were struck down. But it was preoccupied by the enormity of what had happened to it – the loss of hundreds of years of steady, hopeful work.
It wasn’t too late. Byam could fix the cloud and then tomorrow it would try again—
‘Ah,’ said the pirate captain, looking up from the business of slaughter. ‘An imugi! It’s good luck after all. One last push, men! They can’t hold out for long!’
It would have been easier if Byam could tell itself the humans had sabotaged it out of spite. But it knew they hadn’t. As Byam tumbled out of the sky, it was the impartiality of their judgement that stung the most.
THE THIRD THOUSAND YEARS
Dragons enjoyed sharing advice about how they had got to where they were. They said it helped to visualize the success you desired.
‘Envision yourself with those horns, those whiskers, three claws and a thumb, basking in the glow of your own cintamani,’ urged the Dragon King of the East Sea in his popular memoir Sixty Thousand Records of a Floating Life. ‘Close your eyes. You are the master of the elements! A twitch of your whisker and the skies open. At your command, blessings – or vengeance – pour forth upon all creatures under heaven! Just imagine!’
When Byam was low at heart, it imagined it.
It got fed up of the sea: turtles kept chasing it around and whale song disrupted its sleep. So it moved inland and found a quiet cave where it could study the Way undisturbed. The cave didn’t smell great, but it meant Byam never had to go far for food, so long as it didn’t mind bat.
Byam came to mind bat. But it focused on the future.
This time there would be no messing around with dragon-clouds. Byam had learnt from its mistakes. There was no tricking heaven. This time it would present itself at the gates with its record of honest toil, and hope to be deemed worthy of admission.
It should have been nervous, but in fact it was calm as it prepared for what
