The River Dragon Demanded a Husband, So the Scholar Stepped Forward novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Husband, Not Bride
The river spoke to the whole village and asked for a husband; the headman drew lots among the girls, Liyan read the word aloud, stepped forward and was left on the shoal in red, where the dragon took his chin, said go home, and dropped a warm silver scale into his hand.
The river spoke on the night of the full moon, and every person in Lower Ferry Village heard it.
Xie Liyan was marking his pupils' brush practice by lamplight when the floor began to hum.
The whole village was already on the east bank in their nightclothes, staring at the water.
The Wan River had climbed up the bank to the third post of the ferry dock.
In the six years Liyan had kept his ledger of its water marks, it had never come that high.
The moon lay on the surface, and the coin spoke.
"By the new moon," said a deep, slow voice, "send me a husband."
Nobody breathed.
The water sank back a hand's breadth, as if the river had said what it came to say.
"A husband," whispered his sister Ayu, pressing against his arm.
She was fifteen, she was shaking, and she was holding his sleeve so hard the string tie came loose.
At dawn the headman called everyone to the dock.
Ma Dechang was a heavy man in a brown silk jacket far too fine for a village of rice farmers.
He held a wooden bowl full of folded paper slips, and he did not look anyone in the face.
"Sixty years ago the river asked for a bride, and we gave one, and the floods stopped," he said.
"So the river asks again, and the river takes a girl again."
A low, ugly sound went through the crowd.
Mothers pulled their daughters in close.
"Every unmarried girl in Lower Ferry has her name in this bowl," Ma Dechang went on.
"I will draw it in front of all of you, so nobody can say it was unfair."
Liyan counted nine girls.
Ayu's slip was in the bowl.
He had watched her write her own name that morning with her chin up, pretending not to cry.
"Headman," Liyan said.
He had never in his life interrupted a headman, and his voice came out thin, so he said it again, louder.
"Headman Ma. What did the river say?"
Ma Dechang frowned.
"You heard it, Teacher Xie."
"I did. It said, 'Send me a husband.'"
Liyan walked through the crowd until he stood in front of the bowl.
"A husband is a man," he said. "It did not say bride. It did not say daughter."
"The old book says the river takes a girl," Ma Dechang snapped.
"The old book is about last time. This time the river used a different word."
"The rite is the rite."
"I teach eleven children to read exactly what is written," Liyan said. "So I'll do it myself."
"I'm a man. I'm unmarried. I'm twenty-three."
Behind him Ayu made a sound.
"I volunteer."
Nobody cheered, and nobody argued.
Ma Dechang looked from the bowl to Liyan, and his shoulders dropped with plain, shameful relief.
On the night of the new moon, two boatmen rowed Liyan out to the Dragon Gate Shoal.
He wore a red wedding robe from the temple chest that smelled of camphor and had been made for someone bigger.
They set him on the flat gravel island in the middle of the river and rowed for shore.
Liyan stood alone on the stones.
The moon was a thin white scratch, and the river was black and cold and huge.
He was frightened, and he found it was easier to be frightened standing up.
"I'm here," he told the water. "I'm the husband. Please be quick about it."
The river answered by lifting.
A column of water rose from the middle of the stream, taller than the ferry post, and then fell away from the shape inside it.
It was a man.
He stood on the surface of the river as though it were a floor, a head taller than Liyan and half again as broad.
Silver-white hair hung to his waist.
Two short silver horns curved back from his temples, and his eyes were the pale green-grey of ice on a pond.
His robe was sea-green and white, stitched with silver waves, and not one drop of water clung to it.
He looked down at the small figure in the borrowed red robe.
"You are the husband," he said, in the voice from the full moon.
"Yes."
"They sent a man."
"The river asked for a man," Liyan said. "I read what it said."
The dragon stepped onto the gravel and came close, so close that Liyan had to tip his head all the way back.
A long cold hand lifted Liyan's chin.
The fingers were cool as river stones, and the thumb rested at the corner of Liyan's mouth, right on his small mole, and stayed there.
Heat ran through Liyan from his face to his knees.
Nobody had ever touched his face like that.
"You are shaking," the dragon said.
"I'm scared. I'm still here."
"I see that." The pale eyes moved over his face, slowly, as if reading a page. "Go home, scholar."
"What?"
"Go home. I will tell your village there is no wedding."
"If I go home, Headman Ma draws the bowl again at dawn," Liyan said.
His chin was still caught in that cold hand, and it did not stop him talking.
"My sister's slip is in it."
The thumb went still.
Something crossed the dragon's face that Liyan could not read.
Then a silver scale the size of a coin slid off the inside of his wrist and dropped into Liyan's open palm.
It was warm.
It was the only warm thing about him.
The dragon stared at it.
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