Then another human was chosen, inspired to collect all these scraps of knowledge. Another inspired to transcribe them. Another to translate. Another to archive. Another to say the right words at the right time…

All humans, made into tools of the universe.

With that, I was given back control over my own body. My eyes sprang open, to find myself recumbent in Ryu’s arms, his voice saying my name and his eyes peering into mine. I turned my head to see Grizzie similarly propped up by Daoud, Tracy kneeling next to her while Caleb hovered over both protectively. To my relief, Grizzie sat up, looking as groggy as I did.

‘We’re looking for a human,’ I said then, my voice scratchy. ‘The universe gave us a human.’

I think I fainted then, for just a second. That happens when one has the powers of creation rattling around in one’s mind. When I came to, I heard more speech in my head. It sounded like it was coming through cotton wool, but I recognized it.

[I’ve been seeking through relevant minds,] the creature said, its thought colored somehow with its findings. It was excited. [There is a voice calling us. He seems to be expecting me. How curious … I can only take two of you, if you are ready now?]

The choice was obvious, and it flashed through my mind in a second.

And then, like that, Ryu and I found ourselves in another room. I was still lying in his arms, but when I tried to sit up, everything spun.

‘Easy, Jane,’ Ryu said.

‘What the hell just happened?’

‘I was going to ask you.’

I gave him a squinty look, trying to fix my vision, which was swimming alarmingly. ‘Either somebody slipped me some shrooms or I was talking to the universe.’

‘The universe?’

‘Yeah. The universe.’

‘The universe,’ Ryu repeated, looking as skeptical as I’d ever seen him. ‘You have been under a lot of stress…’

‘Don’t be so doubtful. The universe is closer than we know,’ came a chirping, friendly voice from somewhere behind us. I tried to crane my head around, but could see nothing. Ryu helped me clamber to my feet, and we got a good look at our surroundings.

Instead of a cave, this room appeared to be a very sumptuous, modern hotel. Chrome and glass were everywhere, and a modern cityscape lurked outside the huge wall of windows. I also located our speaker, sitting a distance away.

Amid all this modernity, he cut a figure not modern at all. Small and bald, with a round, friendly face sporting even rounder glasses, sat a Buddhist monk in full regalia. He sat in a very large chair.

He had tea prepared, waiting on a low table in front of him, and he was definitely expecting us. He certainly wasn’t surprised by the sight of two strangers appearing by magic in front of him.

‘Welcome,’ he said in perfect English. ‘I believe you have a problem with dragons?’

Chapter Six

‘In this instance, who I am is of no importance,’ the man said, never losing that wide, welcoming smile. I made a small sound, for although I was pretty sure I knew the identity of the bespectacled figure, I couldn’t help wanting clarification.

The man laughed, a lovely, bell-like sound. ‘So curious!’ he said, his eyes twinkling from his smile-creased features. ‘But while I, as an individual, can acknowledge that there is far more to our world than one answer will ever account for, as a spiritual leader I must toe certain lines. So I’d like to keep our conversation off the record, as it were.’

While the monk talked, Ryu wandered toward the wall of windows on one side of the hotel room.

‘Hong Kong?’ he said. I joined him at the window to see a riotous city, full of signage in all different languages, but mostly in Chinese and English.

‘Yes. I’m sorry it couldn’t be more convenient,’ the man said.

It was my turn to smile at him. ‘Oh, believe me, it was no trouble getting here.’

‘Now, let us get to the problem of your dragons.’ The man gestured toward the chairs opposite him.

Ryu and I took our places as the man poured tea. I took one of the shortbread cookies lying on a silver platter, because snacks keep a body going.

‘I have been expecting you,’ the man began, which was not at all what we expected to hear.

‘You have?’ I said, unable to stop myself from interrupting.

The man gave me another wide smile, but this one held a note of ruefulness.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘For what is happening in your part of the world affects everyone. I love Westerners and the West, but you do have a tendency to act as though things only happen to you and your own people.’

I blushed, although the chastising was very gentle.

‘The truth is that what you call the Red and the White are a global problem. Yes, their physical appearances have, by accident of geography, been bound to your Great Island, but their reach is far wider.’

‘Really?’ said Ryu, leaning forward.

‘Of course. They are a manifestation of great power, and as such they inevitably act on the balance of things.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ I said.

The man took a sip of his own tea, taking the cup and saucer with him as he leaned back to place them on his robed knee.

‘As elements, as avatars of the forces that created not only our physical world, but our emotional and spiritual world as well, the Red and the White have far more power than we can really understand. Their thoughts infect the thoughts of those creatures around them that share their nature.’

‘Beings of fire and air?’ I asked, referring to the supernaturals that could wield those forces.

For the first time since we’d met him, the man frowned, but in concentration.

‘That is an obvious response, yes, but not necessarily true. There will be creatures of your world that can wield air and fire, yes, but whose natures are not of air and fire.’

It was my turn to frown. ‘Huh?’ I said intelligently.

‘What I mean is that what we are isn’t always what we should be. You know creatures, I’m sure, who are big and powerful, yet their souls are gentle. In the same example, I’m sure you’ve met delicate beings who have the souls of tyrants.’

I thought of Gog, who could flatten a door by poking at it with a finger, but who was as gentle as they came. Then I thought of Phaedra, the tiny doer-of-evil, and Morrigan, whose delicate beauty contained a monster.

‘Don’t judge a book by its cover,’ I said, turning to clichés to help me understand what the man was saying.

‘Essentially, yes,’ the man said. ‘The Red and the White were created by forces that permeate all of us, in different measures. We all have many conflicting characteristics. In a single person, goodness sits next to rage, which dines with generosity and pettiness, before going to meet greed that lives next door to empathy. We are all conflicted creatures, but not all in equal measures or in equal ways.’

‘Are you saying that the Red and the White represent characteristics that we somehow pick up from them?’ Ryu said. He didn’t appear too invested in the idea.

The man took another sip of his tea, radiating calm as he spoke again. ‘Yes and no. The fact is that people are a combination of many things, environment being just as important as genetics. But I do think that the Red and the White spring from something essential. What you think of as your elements are, I believe, similar to our understanding of DNA. They’re the building blocks of our world; your people are just able to interact with and wield them in ways that my people can’t. But we all come from the same source, do we not?’

I nodded vigorously. Back when I’d fought Phaedra in the creature’s lair, the night I became the champion, the creature had beamed a vision out to me and any of the surrounding minds close enough. Well, it wasn’t a vision really. It was the creature’s memories, and in those memories was revealed the fact that supernaturals were not a separate species. They were humans who’d evolved to manipulate the elements that were all around them. Supernaturals such as Ryu, born and raised to think of themselves as very much separate from and superior to humans, had been unhappy to discover we were all originally humans. Indeed, since then many had dismissed the vision as impossible. But I knew it was the truth and was thrilled, for it meant I hadn’t really changed. I was still essentially the human I had always believed myself to be.

‘Yes, we have seen a vision in which that scenario was true,’ Ryu said, all shifty-eyed.

The monk’s Cheshire cat smile managed to look even more mysterious at Ryu’s obvious discomfort. ‘Well, if we all come from the same sources – these building blocks of genetics that you supernaturals understand as elements – it means we have all of the same things inside us, but mixed up in different proportions. Hence the fact none of us are the exact same person, except biological twins, of course. And even they can be so very different from each other.’

‘So what you’re saying is that we all have a bit of the Red and the White in us, but some have more and some have less.’ I was starting to get it. He was really talking about genetics. The Red and the White were formed of the elements that made our earth, quite literally. They’d been spawned of fire and air, and those things existed in all of us, because we were created of the same forces that made them. Humans and supernaturals were just a later version of the life that sprang out of the elemental forces colliding. Life 2.0, so to speak.