Rabbit, the Dastardly Thief, and the Disappearing Dragon: Rabbit Stories, #4

By Leah Cutter

Rabbit joins with much of his village to witness the disaster thieves wrought on the master statue maker. However, the bumbling thieves missed the most important piece: an elegant golden statue of a dragon. 

When Rabbit returns to the scene of the crime, he learns that nothing is as it seems.

This mystery takes place during the Tang dynasty, in China. This story was previously published in the anthology Steam. And Dragons.

If you love light mysteries with a lot of character and voice, you'll love all the Rabbit stories! 

Be sure to read the other Rabbit stories:

The Curious Case of Rabbit and the Temple Goddess
Rabbit and the Mysteriously Missing Daughter
The Strange Mystery of Rabbit and the Stolen Song
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Knotted Road Press
• Release date: Jun 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386701927

Leah Cutter

Leah Cutter--a Crawford Award Finalist--writes page-turning fiction in exotic locations, such as New Orleans, ancient China, the Oregon coast, ancient Japan, rual Kentucky, Seattle, Minneapolis, Budapest, etc.  Find more fiction by Leah Cutter at www.KnottedRoadPress.com. Follow her blog at www.LeahCutter.com.

Book preview

Rabbit, the Dastardly Thief, and the Disappearing Dragon

Rabbit, the Dastardly Thief, and the Disappearing Dragon

The Rabbit Stories:

Volume

IV

Leah Cutter

Knotted Road Press

Contents

Rabbit, the Dastardly Thief, and the Disappearing Dragon

Other Rabbit Stories

About the Author

Also by Leah Cutter

About Knotted Road Press

Rabbit, the Dastardly Thief, and the Disappearing Dragon

What a horrible conclusion I’d

come

to

!

Not all thieves were created equal.

How did I, a simple man with simpler tastes, get myself involved with such people? It must have been my natural bad luck, from being born the unlucky fourth son, my father dying so soon after my birth.

Yet, here I stood with the other onlookers, at the edge of the small street, gaping at the horrible destruction that had been wrought on the poor statue seller’s place of business.

While at the same time judging the poor quality of the

thief’s

work

.

The thief—or more likely, thieves—hadn’t used any sort of finesse when robbing the statue seller’s store. They’d probably waited until the regular nightly guard had passed (or had bribed them), kicked in the door, then ransacked the place.

They hadn’t bothered to hide their work. No, they’d thrown all kinds of statuary out into the middle of the street. Probably the better to judge its quality, as it was dark inside the shop. These thieves certainly weren’t good enough to have as wonderful a lantern as the master thief Zhan had: a lamp compact enough to be easily carried in a pocket, yet brighter than most lights due to its clever arrangement of glass and mirrors.

Then the thieves had tried to set fire to the store! Fortunately, they’d been as incompetent at that as everything else. The fire hadn’t caught and had only singed one corner of the building.

We were lucky the shop hadn’t started burning. Most of our small town of Da Shan was built out of wood. This merchant neighborhood had store fronts all connected one to the next, with a shared inner courtyard.

If the statue seller’s store had caught fire, the whole complex would have burned.

And if our luck had remained bad, the fire would have spread. Taken out more blocks. The streets here were little better than alleys. Two men, walking arm-in-arm down the center of the road, could each reach out with their far hands and run their fingertips along the walls.

However, the goddess Bái Hua Bàn had kept us safe. I sent a quick prayer her direction, thanking her as always for being our guardian.

Though I was aware that the recent spring rains had probably helped dampen the wood

as

well

.

Mother was desperately afraid that Da Shan would burn down one day. She still swore that was what had killed my father. He’d inhaled too much smoke while rescuing papers and such from a fire at the nearby college, where Master Wei had once taught. Despite the cooling herbs and medicinal teas Mother had fixed Father, he’d never healed, the smoke mingling with his blood until the fire had consumed him from the inside.

She was the one who’d heard about the robbery and had sent me to assess the fire damage.

She had also been the one to stand up to Master Wei and tell him that I needed to attend her at least one morning

a

week

.

I knew better than to suspect that part