Dragon Bones (Red Princess 3)

What happened if someone unearthed an artifact?

“We are told to call for Dr. Ma, and he comes.” The man who spoke was so thin that his belt was wrapped twice around his waist. “Then the others arrive, and they all work together.”

Was anyone ever alone with objects that were found in the ground?

“This is a big place, but there are many people and eyes everywhere.”

What about at night?

“Everyone goes home.”

A man with a shorn head added, “Except for Dr. Ma.”

“And the vultures,” someone else called out from within the gathering. “They also sleep here, but they are good men.”

This was met with murmurs of agreement.

David backtracked. “You’re treated well?”

Someone else in the crowd spoke up. “We are peasants. We move dirt here, we move dirt on our farms, no difference.”

“Do any of you remember Brian McCarthy, the American?”

“He drowned.”

“We tell the foreigners to be careful of the river.”

“Did he steal things from Site 518?” David asked. He felt a subtle shift from curiosity to wariness. “What was he interested in, can anyone tell me?” The workers began drifting away. David called out after the retreating backs, “What about the other accidents? Your friends Wu, Yun, Sun, and the others?” But by now he stood alone in the mud and rain of Site 518.

The difference between the day workers and the Chinese graduate students was that the latter were smart enough not to answer any of his questions, so David marched back up to the museum representatives’ cave, where he was greeted with more shots of mao tai. The vultures’ tongues loosened, and they began to gossip about Michael Quon, the wealthy American. He’d traveled to many important sites—to the Xia palace at Erlitou, to the Neolithic settlement of Banpo, to Xi’an for the terra-cotta warriors, and to Zhoukoudian, where Peking Man was found. But the question on all of the vultures’ minds was, Were all Americans as rich as Michael Quon? Were they all able to travel freely like some modern-day Da Yu? They agreed they must be, because Miller and his daughter were also rich.

“But Miss Miller works here,” Li Guo pointed out to his companions.

“And we’re grateful for it!” Hu practically hooted.

“Hu misses his wife,” Li explained. “We tell him you can look, but we need to care for Miss Miller, because she’s the smartest of all of the foreigners.”

“Smartest?” David asked.

The vultures nodded enthusiastically but said they admired Dr. Strong more than anyone else on the site. “He once knew more about our ancient cultures than anyone alive. Even now you can hear him say important things if you have patience.”

They’d liked Brian too. At the beginning of last summer, he’d talked to the vultures a lot, then he’d gotten into hiking with Michael Quon. The two of them explored caves, and the vultures remembered Brian coming back one day and announcing that the caves were “like a mother,” although they had no idea what he was talking about.

“But he was different when he returned this year,” said Hu. “Don’t you agree?”

“Yes, he only wanted to talk to Dr. Strong or Professor Schmidt,” Li admitted.

“What about?” David asked.

“Dragon bones—ancient oracle bones used for divination,” Li answered, again revealing his hidden expertise. “For hundreds of years during the Qing Dynasty, the farmers along the Yellow River who dug them up believed them to be the bones of dragons and sold them to doctors who ground them up for traditional Chinese medicine. Then about a hundred years ago scholars realized that the markings on them were actually ancient writing, dating back thousands of years. Many people—including Dr. Strong—spent years trying to decipher the meaning.”

Since that time, five thousand characters had been identified on oracle bones, of which half had been deciphered, with half of those proving to be directly connected to contemporary language. This was the first step in demonstrating that China had the oldest continuously used language in the world while establishing that the lists of the Shang emperors found in ancient texts were accurate. Those emperors were not mythical. They were actual men.

So what had sparked Brian’s interest in dragon bones?

“The boy had become interested in symbols and language, which is why he wanted to talk to only Schmidt and Strong,” Li answered. “He was particularly curious about the Xia culture of the Yellow River.”

Why?