Journey West
Chicago was dark and pretty damn cold as I ran down an alley in the warehouse district, away from the obviously burning building that frankly wasn't my fault, the bundle of baby in my arms weighing me down, even for a wiry fellow like me. My legs carried me quickly, although I knew, just knew, that my pursuer would catch up.
Speak of the devil and it shall appear. A human figure, hunched and halfway between squat and bow, a golden cudgel that seemingly glowed in hand, lighting up his features, appeared about five feet before me. He looked a lot like a monkey, in my opinion. Maybe because he was a monkey, in the slightly freakish sense. I wonder what the Chinese people feed their monkeys with; I certainly don't remember bananas being native to China. Or India. India maybe, not too sure about China. The monkey-like man's expression was curiously blank, save for those inhuman eyes that glowed red with fire. Literal fire, if Bob's word was anything to go by.
"I mean you no harm," I spoke in a low voice, aware that here was a being who had challenged the heavens themselves and almost got away with it.
The monkey took a single step closer, still staring, unblinking, with those wide, red eyes.
It could only get worse.
Like most cases, this began ordinarily. I was hired by a Tibetan monk whom I once helped rescue a litter of dogs (and got Mouse in the process) to help rescue a baby boy that had been kidnapped by evil guys from their monastery.
It sounds simple, doesn't it?
The worst things never are. Of the gang of baby-snatchers that had stolen the baby, three had turned up in the morgue. All of them had been killed with a single, powerful blow by a staff, apparently wielded by what the cameras saw as a monkey. The rest had escaped, leaving me with some blood and a lot of wreckage which wasn't my fault.
Of course, that marked of supernatural activity. It also opened a whole new possibility that I didn't dare entertain. Mostly because featherweight boxers don't dream of the heavyweight division for the same reason.
"Murphy, I can only think of one thing that carries a staff, that can kill them like this, and look like a monkey," I told her. "However, it's supposed to be in the Far East."
"So, we're dealing with a Chinese monkey wielding a staff and with no qualms about using it to kill," Murphy said, anger with disbelief slowly seeping into her voice.
"We're dealing with that, yeah."
"Harry, how does Vegas sound to you?" Bob began chatting animatedly away from the subject I've prodded him on. "We could go on holiday, find a few broads..."
"Bob," I impatiently began, "I need information on anything you can dredge up on Sun Wukong. Now. Three men are dead because of it."
"What's it to you?" Bob asked.
"He's in town, and if I remember, he was supposed to be in the Far East, under the restriction of several monasteries who have a vested interest in keeping him like it."
If a skull could pale, Bob would have done it. "Empty night."
"Thank you for the understatement, get on with it," I said, picking up pencil and paper."
"Okay, Sun Wukong, heavy hitter, born from a stone, somehow became immortal, got into heaven, broke its rules, summarily declared war on heaven, wrecked havoc throughout the heavens until Buddha dropped him under a magic mountain for five hundred years, then he and his master and three other disciples came together and travelled from China to the Tianzhu kingdom to get the Scripture, achieved canonization pretty soon after. I think you can call him the Chinese version of Lucifer, except that he realised the error of his ways and turned good...or morally ambiguous as far as good would allow." Bob recited quickly. "He had a bronze diadem placed on him that wouldn't come off and would tighten every time his master, Tripitaka, recited a sutra, so that was how they controlled him. Other than that, there's no way to defeat or drive away the one regarded as Taoism's greatest deity."
"So what does the great deity want with a baby, that's the issue." I said.
It took no Holmesian deduction that the baby was connected to this, and so, by dint of a useful tracking spell involving hair, I tracked the baby to the warehouse, and demanded the kid. They were about to pull a gun on me when a golden cudgel appeared and whacked the guy across the entire warehouse's length, with change of three more, back to back. While the remaining baby-snatchers were trying to detain the monkey who was slinging them around like nothing, I took the kid and ran like hell away as he let out from his mouth a stream of golden flames that engulfed the whole building.
I told you it wasn't my fault.
Anyway, before the baby got stewed, I took it, and the bundle of robes wrapping it up, away from what looked suspiciously like a huge cooking pot big enough to cook the whole baby, and ran like hell.
And those were the circumstances leading up to this moment.
Strangely, the baby wasn't even squalling as babies should as I back away from the nasty monkey god. Those dark brown eyes looked up at me, the features curiously arranged, as if the baby was bemused at the situation he was in at the moment. I felt almost envious at the kid's lack of understanding; it must be nice to be completely ignorant of the scarier things in life.
Then, as the sound of police sirens rang, the monkey god, once proclaimed Great Sage, Equal to Heaven, looked back, then to us, nodded, and flew off. Poof. Just like that.
What the hell.
"Thank you, Mr Dresden," the monk gushed in the chapel of O'Hare International Airport, cradling the baby with a sort of ginger reverence carefully. It seems like the monk had improved his English.
"No problem, but I'd need an explanation as to why Sun Wukong made his appearance here." I replied, the sixty-four thousand dollar question in my mind.
"Sun Wukong? Ah, the Great Sage," the monk said. "Do you remember the Journey to the West and the story of the monkey king?"
"Yeah," I replied offhand. "Tripitaka set out on a journey to receive the scriptures, supposed to suffer eighty-one catastrophes on his way. To protect him from the various dangers on the journey, the Buddha allowed him a dragon-horse to ride on, and three disciples to protect him..." I trailed off as the penny dropped.
"Sun Wukong seemed to have taken it upon himself to protect his master unto the end," the monk murmured gently, as he walked out of the prayer room to catch the flight back to Tibet, carrying the bundle of robes protecting the baby which I now knew to be Tripitaka's reincarnation.
As I walked out of O'Hare, the cold winds knifed through me in the direction of the east, if my geography was correct, and I felt a brush of strong power flying towards the east, back to Tibet, back to where it all began.
Back from the Journey to the West.
Now, to deal with how to explain this all to Murphy...
I decided to write this short drabble after reading Journey to the West. It's short, and kind of sweet, I think. Although Sun Wukong is Buddhist (as much as a monkey could be) we should remember that he also killed a lot of demons and evil people who tried to capture and kill his master under the belief that eating Tripitaka's flesh would give them eternal youth (or, in some variations, eternal life). I think, against potential cannibals, Sun Wukong would have been given license to kill and no qualms about using it.