Girl Giant and the Jade War Page 2

  The monkey brothers were all unconscious by the time they made it to the rainbow stream. Concao and Thom both worked to help them from Kha’s back. They filled several gourds with rainbow water and helped each of the brothers gulp it down. But then the monkeys fell unconscious again.

  “There’s nothing more we can do,” Concao said. “They need to rest.” She sank back carefully on her hind legs.

  “You need some healing water, too,” Thom said, filling an empty gourd. “What happened to your leg?”

  “Ah this.” Concao glanced back at her injured paw. “This, the Monkey King did do.”

  “But I thought he was your friend.” Thom handed her the gourd.

  The fox demon took it and gave Thom a funny look. “And I thought he was yours.”

  Thom looked away, keeping her face blank so Concao wouldn’t see how much her words hurt. Kha had changed into his human form and was walking around the cave, studying everything in wonder. Thom remembered seeing the sanctuary for the first time, the light filtering through small holes in the cave ceiling, the sound of babbling water echoing across the walls. She wished they could stay here forever, but the longer they stayed, the farther the Monkey King got.

  “I tried to stop him,” the fox demon said in her soft, husky voice. “He wanted me to lead the army. But I said no. I tried to convince him that his plans would not work, that he was being ridiculous. Then, when he wouldn’t listen to me, I thought Shing-Rhe might be able to talk some sense into him. I was wrong.” Concao looked at the monkeys sleeping across the grass. “This was my fault. If I hadn’t told Shing-Rhe about Sun Wukong’s plans,” she said, referring to the Monkey King by his name, “the monkey brothers would never have tried to stop him. I should never have involved them. They’re not fighters. They didn’t stand a chance against those monsters.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Thom said. “Shing-Rhe would never have agreed to the Monkey King’s plans. He would have wanted you to tell him.”

  Concao fixed Thom with her frighteningly intense gaze. Her eyes were a blue so pale, they were nearly white, rimmed in a shadowlike shade of gray. They were almost frightening to look at, but Thom didn’t turn away.

  “What will you do?” Concao asked.

  Kha came back and sat next to Thom. They both waited for her answer, but Thom had no idea. Stopping the Monkey King had seemed so easy when she first set out with Kha, as simple as tackling the Monkey King before he was able to break himself free and stealing back the cudgel. Then she and Kha would have raced back up to the heavens and returned the cudgel to the Forbidden Armory, and all would have been well.

  But now that plan seemed naive. Of course it couldn’t have been that easy. The Monkey King was so much stronger and smarter than her. And even if she had been able to return the cudgel to the heavens, she would have had to face the consequences of stealing it from them in the first place.

  “It’s too late to warn the heavens now,” Concao said when Thom didn’t respond. “Wukong planned to break in through the Bridge of Souls. He could be infiltrating the temples as we speak.”

  Thom’s stomach twisted. “So we’ll have to stop him and hope that we can save as many people in the heavens as possible before he does too much damage.”

  “No one has been able to stop the Monkey King before,” Concao said.

  “Yeah they have,” Thom said. “Who put him under the Mountain in the first place?”

  Concao looked down. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. Buddha was the one who did it, but only after hundreds of gods and dragon soldiers, and even other demons, appealed to him for help. Wukong was uncontrollable back then, and he did whatever he wanted to whomever he wanted. He stole from gods and goddesses, harassed dragon kings, disturbed the order, made enemies of demons, and released other evil beings just for the fun of it. They had no choice but to ask Buddha to step in, and the only way Buddha could defeat him was by tricking him.”

  “How?” Thom asked.

  “He made a deal with Wukong,” Concao said. “He held Wukong in his palm and claimed that Wukong could not escape it. Wukong took the challenge and flew to what he thought was the end of the heavens, where he saw only five pillars. He marked those five pillars as evidence that he had won, and then flew back to Buddha, who then revealed that the five pillars had actually been his fingers and that Wukong had never left his hand.”

  “Buddha must have a giant hand,” Thom said.

  “He can become larger, the same way Wukong can,” Concao said. “But Wukong had never imagined that anyone would be bigger or more powerful than him. It was his arrogance that defeated him.”

  “Okay,” Thom said. “So we do that again. We can appeal to Buddha for help.”

  “Buddha may not want to step in again.”

  “Why not?” Thom asked. “This is the Monkey King. Last time, he destroyed half the heavens, right?”

  “And ate the peaches of immortality,” Kha said. “My mom told me about it. She and her fairies were so upset because they take such good care of the orchards, and he just stomped through their garden like it was a pile of trash.”

  “He stole the pills of immortality, too,” Concao said.

  “And drank the heavenly wine,” Kha added. “Which also makes him immortal.”

  “So … how immortal does that make him?” Thom asked.

  “Um,” Kha said. “Very?”

  Thom let out a breath. The more she learned about the Monkey King, the more she was starting to realize how impossible it would be to defeat him. But she had to try, not just to save the heavens—it was her fault for putting them in danger in the first place—but also for her mother’s sake. Ma couldn’t stay a cricket.

  “Last time he was free, he nearly destroyed the world,” Thom said. “What if he does that again? We have to get Buddha involved if he was the only one able to defeat the Monkey King.”

  “There is no saying what Buddha will or will not do,” Concao said, “but it took many immortals and important beings to convince Buddha to step in. Unless you can get other gods on your side, that would be nearly impossible. Buddha doesn’t like to concern himself in matters like this.”

  If Thom could get other immortals on her side, she might not even need Buddha’s help. “Fine, but if Buddha defeated the Monkey King before, that means the Monkey King isn’t as invincible as he says he is. That means we have a chance at stopping him.”

  The fox demon considered her logic. “If anyone knows how to stop Wukong, it would be Shing-Rhe. No one knows him better. We’ll wait until he wakes up before we decide what to do next.”

  “We?” Thom asked, surprised.

  “Wukong betrayed me.” Concao stood, stretching her now-healed back leg. “You didn’t think I’d let you have him all to yourself, did you?”

  3

  NIGHT FELL BEFORE ANY OF the monkey brothers stirred, the least injured among them waking up first. They tended to one another, bringing fruits and water, and making Shing-Rhe as comfortable as possible on a bed of plush leaves. Some came up to Thom and hugged her, nuzzling their faces against her hoodie. They surrounded Kha, practically burying him with treats, combing his hair, and patting his back in gratitude.

  Thom sat by the stream and took the mason jar holding the cricket out of her backpack. She stared at the water. It was supposed to have healing properties. What if it healed Ma and made her human again?

  She filled a gourd with water and uncapped the mason jar. Carefully, she tipped a few drops of the water inside, dotting the bottom of the glass. The cricket turned, her antennae twitching as if studying the water. Thom tipped the jar so that the cricket slid closer to a drop, but when the cricket’s leg touched it, nothing happened. Maybe she had to drink the water in order to be healed. But how do you get a cricket to drink something?

  Thom placed the jar by her side, waiting for the cricket to take a sip of the healing water. She didn’t know how long she sat there, watching her mother and wishing she was her human self. Ma
would probably know what to do.

  When Shing-Rhe finally woke, Thom was getting ready to nod off herself. Kha was huddled in the corner while a monkey groomed his hair and another massaged his shoulders. He came back to Thom’s side as she leaned over Shing-Rhe. The elder monkey looked like he hadn’t slept in days, the fur droopy and rugged on his face.

  “How do you feel?” Thom asked as he sat up. “Do you want more water?” She reached for a gourd.

  “No,” he said, waving a hand. “No, I’m all better.”

  “Shing-Rhe,” Thom said, a knot forming in her throat. She pushed out all the words before she wouldn’t be able to, afraid she would start crying if she stopped talking. “The Monkey King is gone—he took the whole demon army with him. I thought I could stop him, but there were too many of them. Now it’s too late. He’s probably in the heavens already, but I still need to find him. I need him to turn my mom back. He made her into a cricket and—”

  “Hush, hush,” Shing-Rhe said softly. “It’s all right.”

  “But it’s not all right. There must be some way to defeat him. Can you think of anything? Or anyone? Concao says last time it was Buddha who stopped the Monkey King, but she thinks Buddha probably won’t want to step in again. Maybe if we had more people on our side, maybe if we had an army of our own. Or if I had a weapon, like the cudgel.” She thought of all the weapons in the Forbidden Armory in the heavens. If only she’d grabbed one of them along with the Monkey King’s staff when she’d had the chance.

  “Any god or goddess or being powerful enough to stop him would be in the heavens,” Shing-Rhe said. “He will have barricaded the entrances by now. He planned to lay siege to the Jade Palace until the emperor named him the heavens’ ruler.”

  Shing-Rhe paused to cough, his whole body shaking. Thom handed him the gourd, and this time he took a long swig from it.

  “He wanted to take us with him, said that he would create a better world for us up there,” Shing-Rhe continued. “But we are happy here in our sanctuary. What more could we want? That was when the others came, the demons. I suspect…” Shing-Rhe looked incredibly sad as he continued talking. “I suspect Wukong wanted to show us that our sanctuary would not remain our own for very long. He wanted to give us a reason to come with him to the heavens, and maybe we would agree if our home was destroyed. But the monkeys, our brothers, took the fight outside. We defended our home. And we almost died doing so.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Thom said, not just for the physical injuries, but also for the Monkey King’s betrayal. How could he just let the demons attack his peaceful brothers like that? “I’m going to find him and make him pay. For everything.” She picked up the mason jar and brought it up to her face. The water droplets were gone, but the cricket was still a cricket.

  Shing-Rhe touched Thom’s hand. “Be careful, child. You are stronger than others, but you are still no match for Wukong. You are good and pure. He … he has lost his way. He will not be afraid to hurt you, the way he was not afraid to hurt his brothers.”

  The words stung, but she knew they were true. The Monkey King was still much stronger than her, even more now that he had his cudgel again. “Then I’ll need help. Aren’t there other gods and goddesses?” She turned to Kha. “Like the ones in charge of small areas of the earth. Wouldn’t they be in this world?”

  Kha nodded. “But they won’t be a match for the Monkey King. Most of them will be too scared to challenge him, especially after what happened last time he was free.”

  There had to be a way. She and Kha and Concao couldn’t be the only people willing to go up against the demon-god.

  “What about the Four Immortals?” Thom asked. “I know the Boy Giant is … in the heavens.” She gulped, still ashamed at what she’d done to her own father. “But what about the other three: the Mountain God, the Sage, and the Mother Goddess?”

  No one said anything. Thom sat back, defeated.

  “It might be possible,” Shing-Rhe said. “Together, they could combine their powers and be strong enough.”

  “Then let’s find them,” Thom said, starting to get to her feet.

  “But they may not want to,” Shing-Rhe said. “They rid themselves of mortal affairs long ago.”

  “This isn’t a mortal affair—this is war in the heavens!” Thom pointed out. How could beings so powerful, with gifts strong enough to save the world, just sit back and do nothing? “And once the Monkey King is done up there, who knows what he’ll do? He’ll want to start in on the mortal world next. Or the hells. What if he unleashes every being from there?”

  “Even so,” Shing-Rhe said, “Wukong doesn’t need to be defeated. What he needs is someone to show him that he can be good. That he can still be good, despite all he’s done.”

  “I don’t care what the Monkey King needs,” Thom said, her fists clenching. “He turned my mom into a cricket! And he’s planning to hurt everyone in the heavens.” Her father was up there. And so many others.

  But Shing-Rhe shook his head, not listening. “The best thing you could do for him is find Guanyin. The Goddess of Mercy will show him compassion. She’ll help him find his way back to who he really is.”

  Thom stared at Shing-Rhe in disbelief. After the way the Monkey King had allowed his demon friends to hurt his monkey brothers, after how he had injured his supposedly close friend Concao, after the way he had betrayed her—Thom—Shing-Rhe still believed the Monkey King was good.

  “Guanyin’s temple is in the heavens,” Kha said when no one else spoke, “so we still need to figure out how to get back up there. Even if we do, though, her temple is higher than the Jade Palace. We wouldn’t get to her in time.”

  “We have to find the other three immortals,” Thom said, thankful that Kha had come up with the excuse she couldn’t think of. “Do you know where they are?” she asked Shing-Rhe.

  He hesitated, scrutinizing her face with his wise, old eyes. She tried to look innocent, to not think about how she planned to beat the Monkey King with his own cudgel when she caught up to him again.

  “I do,” the elder monkey said.

  Thom held her breath.

  “But you must promise that when you get into the heavens, you will find Guanyin first. You will ask her to have mercy on Wukong. Promise.”

  Thom breathed once. Twice. “I promise,” she lied.

  * * *

  The monkeys packed their bags with food, mostly bananas and nectarines and other snacks they had around the sanctuary. They followed Thom, Kha, and Concao to the exit, patting them on their backs and legs affectionately, some clutching handfuls of their clothes as if trying to keep them in the cave where it was safe.

  “Be careful, Thom,” Shing-Rhe said, pulling her into a hug. “Find Wukong and bring him back to us.”

  Thom swallowed the lump in her throat. “I’ll try.”

  She turned to leave, but one of the monkey brothers pulled on her sleeve.

  “What is it? Oh.”

  The monkey handed her a few gourds and nodded, patting her hand when she wrapped it around the bottles. They were filled with the healing water from the brook.

  “Thank you.”

  When she stuffed the gourds into her backpack, wedging them safely against her mom’s jar, something sharp scratched the back of her hand. It must have been a bur or something that had gotten inside, but when she searched for it, she couldn’t find anything.

  Her heart was heavy as they walked through the tunnel. When there was enough space, Kha transformed into a dragon so that she and the fox demon could climb onto his back.

  As they flew away, Thom looked back at the waterfall blocking the entrance to the cave. She had no idea when she would see the monkey brothers again, no idea if she would ever be back. She wanted to believe that she could defeat the Monkey King, that she could find a way to stop him, but she also knew that he was much stronger than her. She pictured the way he wielded his cudgel, as if it weighed no more than a chopstick, when she had barely managed to lift
the thing without shaking under its weight.

  Not to mention all his other powers. He had mastered the Seventy-Two Transformations: He could become invisible, fly, transform into other shapes, clone himself, and do so much more, she couldn’t remember it all. And he had the demon army. Sure, she might be able to get the Four Immortals on her side, and they were powerful beings. But would they be a match for an entire army of feral, angry demons? What about the Monkey King’s endless supply of clones? Even if he ran out of hair—she shuddered at the image of a completely bald Monkey King—his clones could clone their hairs.

  As Kha flew, following directions Shing-Rhe had given him to find the Mountain God, Sơn Tinh—the first of the Four Immortals they would seek—she slumped against his back. The wind wasn’t that strong today, and Kha didn’t fly as high as the Monkey King, so when the fox demon spoke behind her, Thom had no trouble hearing.

  “What made you finally realize the truth,” Concao asked, “about Wukong?”

  Thom was grateful Concao couldn’t see her face. “When he admitted that he’d always lied about taking my power away. I didn’t want him to, not anymore. I don’t hate my strength now.” She’d learned that she needed her power, especially now that she would have to fix all the mistakes she’d made. But it was also a part of her she could never change. “And when he turned my mom into a cricket,” she added.

  “I’m sorry about that. When we catch him, we will make him turn her back. Or you might even ask one of the immortals to do it for you.”

  “Really? Do you think they could?”

  “Perhaps. You are one of them—one of their daughters anyway. They will at least try.”

  “Did you always know?” Thom asked, remembering how Concao had whispered in the Monkey King’s ear the first time she’d met the fox demon.

  “I could smell it on you. Your blood is … sweet.”

  Thom shivered, tried not to find it horrifying that Concao could smell her blood. “Can all demons do that?”