Between Beast And Buddha: A Drunken Monkey's Journey to Immortality

B2 Chapter 45

It had been a week since that fateful day. Li Xun had not awakened.Orange-crest had not left his master's side.

Every morning, the Monkey King returned. First, he shooed out the curious onlookers that gathered at the bounds of orange-crest's tolerance. Silently, the king would wait for his Ring of Fire to begin to gutter out. When the flames burned low, and a putrid miasma began to fill the air of the cave, the king would take in a great breath.

The Monkey King's exhalation was like a gale, fit to shake the trees across the mountainside. Orange-crest hardly stirred as it whipped his fur this way and that, depositing a shroud of toxic ash upon him.

The Monkey King would then draw the ring anew, and deposit some food for orange-crest. Before he left, he would pat his grief-stricken subject twice on the back. Not gently. The Monkey King thumped him enough to bruise a lesser monkey. As if he was torn between offering reassurance and correction.

As if he wanted orange-crest to wince, or protest. To do anything at all to indicate he had not died with his master.

But orange-crest did nothing. He simply sat, half-engulfed by stone, a part of the cave. It was necessary. For as flesh, he could not bear to remain steadfastly at his poisoned master's side. As stone, he waited. His thoughts ran in circles, carefully avoiding those dark ideas he dared not look at directly, interrupted only by the blissful oblivion of inconstant sleep.

He had not been able to open Elder Lu's ring. See if it had pills that might save his master. He should have been out on the slopes. Looking for ingredients. Medicines. But he wasn't an alchemist. Just a monkey that had once pretended to be one.

Should was such a heavy word. Such an empty word, without master to poke him about it.

Instead, orange-crest just sat. A dark part of him toyed with his qi, not cultivating exactly, poking and prodding at the part of his lowest dantian where his Stone Monkey's Body was most responsive. The part of his gut he clenched, when he let the stone take his flesh. He toyed at it, like a patient that could not leave a wound alone.

It would be so easy to let the stone take him. To let it fill up the emptiness in his heart, sleep the ages away.

There was only one thing that stopped him. Nobody else cared. Not really. Not like he did. Daoist Enduring Oath would think his brother dead. The Monkey King cared for him only through orange-crest.

There were no others. If orange-crest dreamed of stone, nobody would dream of Li Xun.

He had not words for the wrongness of this. How hollow his chest felt. How raw, the flesh around where his heart had been scraped out. He had only seven years. He had thought he'd known danger. He'd been wrong. Ever there had been a watchful eye upon him. His king, then his master.

Everything had been fine, until it wasn't. There was always someone to save orange-crest.

There had not been anyone to save Li Xun.

Orange-crest studied his master's countenance. He could see Li Xun in there, now. The traces of his master that even the ruin he'd made of his body could not hide. The wry cast of his lips, even as they gasped for air like a carp ripped from its pond. The same familiar shapes of his hard muscles and kind hands. Just a little withered.

His master had been such a fool. He'd done this for him. Had he not known that for him, orange-crest could have borne anything?

Anything but this.

On the eighth day, the Monkey King stopped bringing food.

Orange-crest said nothing. The ache in his stomach could not compare to the one in his heart.

On the eleventh day, it was not the Monkey King that came to visit him.

"Orange-crest."

"No."

Orange-crest did not turn around. He knew that voice well. Before he'd become a cultivator, his ears had listened for it as closely as they did sign of the Monkey King, albeit for very different reasons.

"Orange-squish-fruit-face."

Orange-crest snarled.

He did not listen. He did not learn. He was actually being surprisingly patient—

Red-eyes' fist slammed into the back of orange-crest's head. Orange-crest felt muscles he'd almost forgotten how to use activate of their own accord, arresting his head's path toward the floor.

It was not a gentle strike. Red-eyes didn't do gentle. But it wasn't his full strength. His full strength would have easily killed the old orange-crest, so he'd pulled the blow just enough to make certain he'd not slaughter the new one.

Slowly, orange-crest rose to his feet, and turned around. Red-eyes was much as he remembered him. Tall and wiry, and absolutely covered with scars. All across his chest and limbs were mangy patches where his fur, the grey-blue of a winter morning, no longer grew. Today, his many scars were as much purple and yellow as they were white, stained by fresh bruises.

His flesh was one sign of his mood. He must have been fighting the Monkey King every day of late, to have accumulated so many bruises.

Orange-crest stared up into red-eyes' eyes. They were bloodshot and swollen again. One of his lower eyelids pulsed rapidly, twitching like a dying bug.

"That's your hairless father?" Red-eyes sneered. "Looks rotten."

His brother's breath stunk. He was looking for someone to hit. Or someone to hit him. He was never picky about which, when he got like this. Anything to distract him from the pain of what orange-crest now suspected was some sort of recurring infection.

Searching for a more wholesome hurt. Orange-crest smiled cruelly. For once, he empathized.

"Eyes must hurt."

Red-eyes frowned. He'd clearly expected more. A wince. An insult.

"Monkey King said drag you out."

A transparent lie. If the king wanted that, he'd drag orange-crest out himself.

"Red-eyes."

"Yes."

"You are annoying."

"You are weak and lazy with sadness. You steal the king's time. Make us feed you."

That was fair. Orange-crest deserved that. He opened his mouth, then closed it. Swallowed.

Then orange-crest spat right in red-eyes' red eyes.

His cruelest brother cried out, already swinging, but orange-crest ducked his heavy hands. Red-eyes wiped at his face, and orange-crest popped upward, driving his head into his brother's jaw.

"Good." Red-eyes said, slurring the word a little, as blood dripped from his smashed lips. "Orange-crest is not dead."

Orange-crest answered him with a fist. But red-eyes was exactly as monstrously canny a fighter as orange-crest remembered. He rolled with the blow, taking it across his shoulder, then grabbed orange-crest's head and wrenched it down.

To orange-crest's surprise, red-eyes began to drag him out of the cave. Away from the flaming circle where his master rested. It was not merely uncharacteristically considerate, but orange-crest was more than half-stone by now. And red-eyes was dragging him along as they wrestled. Not easily, but with little more trouble than he had wrestling big-butt.

Was red-eyes an instinctive cultivator? Orange-crest couldn't feel his qi, but that was not common with bodily cultivators. His master would know. His master would—

Red-eyes punished orange-crest's distraction with a knee to the face, hardly wincing as he bruised himself striking stone.

Orange-crest swung his head to and fro like a wild boar, struggling to throw red-eyes off, yet his older brother's grip only grew tighter.

Orange-crest lost patience.

"Enough!" He roared, crushing red-eyes with his qi. His brother stilled for a moment, and orange-crest straightened, then broke the binding spell by sweeping red-eyes' legs out from under him. As red-eyes fought to his feet, spittle flying, orange-crest delivered a heavy kick to his abdomen, sending him rolling.

He stalked forward, furious. His master was—

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His master was—

There was no reason left in red-eyes. He snapped and clawed and kicked, seeking silence within violence. Orange-crest met him blow for blow, the worst of his brother's fury unable to pierce his stony hide. He felt flesh bruise anew beneath his fists. It felt good, hurting red-eyes. It felt like balancing a set of scales long overdue. It felt like nothing.

And then orange-crest was flying. Even in a fury, red-eyes was cunning. He'd been stumbling back. But his hands caught orange-crest's elbows, his feet looping themselves between his knees, and then the pair of them were rolling like a wheel.

Orange-crest tumbled out of the cave. Squinted his eyes beneath the hateful glare of the azure sky. The sky that had taken his master from him. He shut his eyes fast, refusing to look upon it.

He waited for red-eyes to fall upon him. Longed for it. Anything to break this silence that pounded in his head.

There was nothing. Only the rustling of fur. An aborted squawk of discontent. Orange-crest could feel the eyes upon him. He kept his own tightly shut, refusing to move. Daring one of them to disturb him.

Give him an excuse. A reason. Let him be furious. It would be better than being so empty.

Orange-crest lay that way for several minutes. Those who had gathered did not speak, though there was much muffled grunting. He could imagine them, staring down at him with curiosity and pity. He hated the thought, that he was one of them no longer.

Eventually, orange-crest found something to fill the hole in his chest, if only for a moment.

Shame.

Slowly, he raised himself upright, and opened his eyes.

The Monkey King was sitting upon red-eyes. His staff had changed. The Monkey King had bent it like a twig or reed, turning one end at an angle, then bending the metal back upon itself. It had to be a technique, one orange-crest had never seen before. The overall effect was that instead of a straight pole, he held one that terminated in a two-pronged fork with a curve like a crescent moon.

That moon was currently pressed against red-eyes' neck, driving his face firmly into the dirt.

Orange-crest turned around. The three of them were far from alone.

Dozens of monkeys had gathered in silence. Many were familiar faces.

Big-butt sat at orange-crest's feet, casting a shadow over them. Now, the two of them almost looked like the blood-kin they were not, similar shades of not-quite-red. Big-butt was more grey, his fur like cooling iron whose core remained cherry-hot, compared to orange-crest's more coppery-brown undertones. The youngling, who had been a yearling when orange-crest left, peeked out around the side of big-butt's mighty rear end.

All the members of his pack were there. Pie-bald and missing-toe sat side by side against the trunk of a tree. Above them, balanced on a limb, looking down on her blood-brothers, was quick-fingers; her eyes already alighting upon Elder Lu's storage ring and his master's jade band. Old fish-fingers, with his majestic eyebrows, looking half asleep. The impish light-foot, the generous broad-back, and the patient and beautiful snow-fur, who alone could quiet the raging red-eyes without matching his violence. Even bitter-tongue, who was almost as surly as red-eyes in his advanced age, had come to await orange-crest.

And they were not alone. There were new faces among the great gathering as well. An infant clung to quick-fingers, certainly the younger sibling of the child lurking half-behind big-butt.

Three stern monkeys with the green-tinged black fur of the northern pack, who often sought strife with red-eyes, had walked the half-day from their stomping grounds to be here. There were even a pair of strangers, black as night, that orange-crest did not recognize at all.

"Sorry." Orange-crest said lamely, uncertain what exactly he was apologizing for.

The dam broke, and every-monkey present immediately attempted to insert their mouth into the ears of the gathering.

"He's back!"

"Is orange-crest?"

"So tall!"

"Who is that hairless one?"

"What are hairless ones?"

"Shiny things! Wearables. New wonders."

"New fur color!"

"Why no leave cave?"

"Why hairless one smell like death?"

"I still stronger."

"Find new monkeys off mountain?"

"Why Monkey King give you cave?"

"Good food off mountain?"

"Find new fruits?"

"Why smell like rock?"

"Too much talk." Bitter-tongue lamented. "I go now."

Big-butt and the Monkey King alone said nothing. Well, if red-eyes said anything, it was swallowed up by the dirt that filled his mouth.

Orange-crest let it all wash over him. His kin and kind swarmed him, patting and prodding and stroking and pulling. Making certain he was real, that he was orange-crest. Some of them knew. Understood, what had happened to him. He could see it in their eyes. Fish-fingers and bitter-tongue, big-butt and snow-fur. They knew why he was quiet. Why the Monkey King had brought back another.

But the knowing in their eyes did not cut him like he'd thought it would. It was... They were... Guileless, in a way. Not that they could not be sneaky or liars. But they could wear on their face when they were sincere, in a way that men couldn't.

These were his kin. And no matter what would pass between them, they always would be. And buried beneath them, as they all but crawled over each other to get at him, to tug at his jade band or feel his stony fur, he felt nothing. But not the emptiness of violence or the oblivion of sleep.

Here, there was nothing he needed to be. No right or wrong, should or shouldn't. Just acceptance, uncaring of how strange he'd become.

And then there was only big-butt. He shouldered his way through the disorder of the gathering, standing close enough to block out the hateful sky.

He placed both his forepaws on orange-crest's shoulders, leaning heavily enough that even orange-crest's refined knees quivered beneath the weight.

"Orange-crest."

"Big-butt."

"You look more me now. More big. More red."

"Yes."

"You live. I am happy."

Orange-crest collapsed beneath the weight of his not-father. Big-butt caught himself as the monkey that was not his son fell upon his haunches.

"I wanted him to live." Orange-crest said, rocking back and forth.

His paws crept up to his shoulders, his fingers clenching around his fur. He pulled hard, absently, struggling to rip a patch free. Big-butt caught his wrists, his own paws just as absentminded, just as powerful.

"You should have known him. He wished to know you. My master."

Shifu, in the elegant tongue.

"Sifuu?" Broad-back echoed. "Stone axe?" A man might have heard, with too much emphasis on the last tone.

"Shirfu?" One of the northern monkeys repeated. To the ears of man, it was a butchery. "To eat carrion."

"Siifu." Big-butt attempted. Closer. Closest to 'dead father'. Orange-crest wailed a little, quieting his kin.

"Shifu." The Monkey King declared solemnly. "Father of spirit. King of one. Who goes before, and clears the way." He explained in the true tongue.

"Li Xun." Orange-crest repeated. "My master."

"Tell."

"What?"

"Tell." Big-butt insisted. "Tell us of him."

Orange-crest did not know what to feel, but his mouth moved on its own.

"He was stupid. But the smartest. Calm. But angrier than red-eyes. He lives. But sleeps like the dead."

Dozens of monkeys hung off his every word. There would be no gathering like this for Li Xun among men. Daoist Enduring Oath would mourn alone, joined perhaps by Yang Wei, who hardly knew his master, and that filthy murderous traitorous cowardly—

No. He did not deserve orange-crest's thoughts, he who had betrayed his brother.

"We call them hairless ones. But they are not hairless. Just only have crests. Best hair."

"Not best." Light-foot dared offer. "Fur best."

A quick cuff from broad-back silenced him.

"Once, Li Xun became the only true hairless one. He did something stupid. Something kingly. Soared through the air like a wildfire-bird. Lost all his hair."

It was the wrong story. His kin would not understand the nuances. The necessity and lack of it, the glory and the tragedy of it all.

"Tell." Big-butt repeated. And orange-crest told them of Daoist Scouring Medicine. His master. Even if the earth should split, and the heavens tremble, he would always be his master. Him, and no other.

On the twelfth day, orange-crest attempted to live.

In fits and starts he moved through the rhythms that had once defined his existence. He grinned oddly, when big-butt hugged him and heaved him off the ground, remarking he could be called stone-butt or heavy-butt now.

There were many small strangenesses during that first day. The blank stares he received when he proposed meeting up in a certain place at a certain time. The many times he repeated himself when his speech was unclear or overcomplicated. The many grins of mirth he gave that unnerved, read as stress or aggression. The way his kin parted from him without words, or found him in the same manner. The way the yearling stalked him silently, following orange-crest until he grew bored, or orange-crest moved fast enough to leave him behind.

Orange-crest found his rhythm by the thirteenth day. But... He felt wrong. Like he was pretending. He felt the same distance he felt on the Azure Mountain, like this too was just a different sort of performance. Man or monkey, both felt like masks, like faces he could wear at will without the truth of himself changing. Without the truth of himself mattering.

The ease of late autumn had passed, and most monkeys now prepared in earnest for winter. Orange-crest moved through the motions, but struggled to see the point in it. There were no lakes he could not fish in, no trees he could not climb, no rocks too heavy to lift, no mortal beasts too mighty for him to hunt. Food was easy, he could just reach out his hand and take it.

On the fifteenth day, orange-crest remembered the night he'd spent drinking with Yang Wei. His musings about fish, and how many he might capture using the Immobilizing Spell.

And so, like a monkey, he acted. He spent the morning in deliberate cultivation, recovering as much of his still depleted qi as he could.

They gathered on the shore of the great lake, nameless in its solitude. It had been a pain, getting everyone to agree to show up. In the end orange-crest had explained the matter to those who cared to listen, and trusted the rest would make their way there in time. Orange-crest sat in the sand, his eyes narrowed in concentration, weaving his nets of qi. A steadily growing pile of carp and paddlefish at his side.

"Unearthly wonders." Broad-back whispered. A phrase usually reserved for the doings of the Monkey King.

"Fish." Bitter-tongue said. "More important. Can't eat wonders."

"Fish are good." Red-eyes agreed, already tearing apart a paddlefish. "Not unearthly wonders. Just wonders. I can still take him. So his wonders can't be unearthly."

"Stupid." Broad-back retorted. "Unearthly gleam, flying fish."

"You stupid." Red-eyes waved his paddlefish threateningly, ending the argument there.

The others arrived slowly. That evening, all of Mount Yuelu spent feasting on fish. A party without wine, yet boisterous without end. Orange-crest wanted to start a fire, but he had not the arts or tools with which to do so. He could have asked the Monkey King, but he wanted to do this alone. To give something back to his fellows with his own strength.

"So many fish." Snow-fur said breathlessly, claiming one. Orange-crest's heart was an empty thing, but his stomach leapt a little at her approval.

"Good fishing." Big-butt added from where he lay.

"Not fishing." Fish-fingers insisted. "Dangerous wonders."

He still ate the fish.

Orange-crest found himself popular beyond his wildest dreams. Monkeys he'd never known well would seek him out at every hour of the day, begging fish from him. Yet, the Monkey King merely smiled sadly, and said nothing, contenting himself to watch from a distance, as he sometimes did.

On the seventeenth day he gathered up many fruits and set them to fermenting. Orange-crest found less pleasure than he'd expected in the act. He feared the way he longed for strong drink, and worried that the sweet fruit wines he'd once loved would do worse than nothing to sate that hunger.

On the twenty-first day, orange-crest noticed the population of the great lake diminishing. Not by much. But by enough to notice. Reduced perhaps by one part in five by the boundless hunger of Mount Yuelu's simian inhabitants, by the way they gorged themselves to the point of sloth and grew lax in seeking out roots and shoots for the cold months.

Orange-crest realized why the Monkey King did not use one of his arts to draw fish as his subjects pleased. He could see the shape things were taking, would take, if Mount Yuelu's many monkeys ate only fish through the winter, let alone beyond it.

There was much protest, when orange-crest stopped using the Immobilizing Spell to feed the mountain. Accusations of greed, as if orange-crest had decided he alone should have fish whenever he pleased in winter. Orange-crest supposed in a way, he had.

Fish-fingers was happy though. He waggled his bushy white eyebrows knowingly when orange-crest announced his decision.

Like so many things that autumn, orange-crest did not know how to feel about that.