Back inside the cave, Yellow-Robe neither killed nor beat nor swore at his prisoner. For the monster was puzzled. “That monk I captured was from a civilized country and ought to understand common decency. I can’t believe he would have sent his disciples back to capture me after I’d spared his life . . . I know! That wife of mine must have somehow sent a letter back home.” He charged off to have it out with her. “Treacherous bitch!” spat the monster. “Have I not looked after you well and loved you deeply? Have I not dressed you in gold and brocade and satisfied your every whim? And yet you think only of your parents!”
The terrified princess instantly kneeled. “What are you talking about, darling?”
“I was all ready to enjoy that nice savory monk, but you insisted on releasing him. You must have given him a secret message to deliver to your family. Why else would his disciples be back here demanding your return on the king’s orders? Let’s ask that miserable second disciple if I’m right.” Dragging the princess by her thick, lustrous hair, Yellow-Robe threw her to the ground in front of Sandy. “Was it because of this woman’s letter that the king sent you back here?”
It’s true that she wrote a letter, Sandy thought. But she also saved Tripitaka. If I tell him, he’ll kill her, and that’s no way to return a favor. I might as well make a living sacrifice of myself. “What letter, you churlish fiend?” he shouted back at the monster. “Tripitaka happened to see the princess while he was a captive here. When he got to Precious Image to have his travel papers stamped, the king showed him her portrait and asked if he’d come across her on his travels. When my master described your wife, the king knew it was his daughter and ordered us to bring her back to the palace. If you’re going to kill anyone, kill me—not your innocent wife.”
Impressed by Sandy’s vehemence, Yellow-Robe threw down his sword and lifted the princess off the ground. Tenderly straightening her hair and jewelry, he escorted her to a seat, whispering sweet nothings into her ear. “Please untie Sandy’s ropes,” the princess asked her husband, taking advantage of his good mood.
Yellow-Robe agreed, ordering his imps to lock him up instead. One good turn deserves another, Sandy thought with a smile.
Yellow-Robe now indulged the princess with wine and food. When they were both well on the way to being drunk, he changed into a brightly colored robe and strapped a sword to his waist. “You enjoy yourself here. Look after the children and don’t let our guest escape. I’m going to spend some time with my in-laws.”
The princess was not at all sure this was a good idea. “My father has lived a very sheltered life and has never met anyone even remotely as grotesque-looking as you. You’d scare the wits out of him.” Taking the point, her husband transformed into a handsome young man, dressed in a white silk robe and patterned black boots. “Bravo!” said the princess, applauding. “Remember, though, that you’ll get invited to a great many banquets. Maintain the disguise, however drunk you get. You’re quite a lot less fetching in reality.”
“Yes, yes,” said the monster. “I know what I’m doing.”
Hopping onto a cloud, he soon reached Precious Image and had himself announced to the court as the king’s third son-in-law. “Ah, the monster,” deduced the royal ministers.
“Shall we invite him in?” asked the king.
“This monster,” Tripitaka explained, “is a formidable character. He’ll come whether you invite him or not. I advise the path of least resistance.”
When Yellow-Robe approached and paid elaborate homage to the king, the court was mesmerized by his good looks—none saw through to the monster inside. The king was all over him. “Where are you from? Why didn’t you come to visit us sooner?”
“I’m a hunter by profession, from the Cave of the Tidal Moon on Casserole Mountain, three hundred miles east of here.”
“Three hundred miles! How on earth did my daughter end up there?”
“Thirteen years ago,” the crafty monster extemporized, “I was hunting with my servants in the mountains when we saw a large tiger with a young girl on its back. I shot the tiger with a single arrow and saved the girl’s life with nourishing hot drinks. Because she claimed she was an ordinary girl and seemed fond of me, we were married thirteen years ago. She never once mentioned that she was a princess. Had I known, I would never have dared to marry her without your consent. I’d originally planned to slaughter the tiger for our wedding feast, but the princess begged me to spare its life, as it had brought us together. So I let it go. But the tiger recovered from its wound and became an evil spirit. It ate the pilgrims from the Tang empire that everyone’s talking about, stole their travel papers, and impersonated one of them to deceive my revered father-in-law. There he is”—he pointed to Tripitaka—“sitting on your very own brocade cushion: the tiger that kidnapped your daughter.”
The dim-witted king found this story entirely plausible. “But how can you tell this is the same tiger?”
“Tigers are my specialty. How would I not know one when I see one?”
“Make him appear in his true form,” ordered the king. The monster approached Tripitaka, muttered the eye-dimming spell, and spat a mouthful of water over the monk. Everyone in the court now saw Tripitaka only as a ferocious tiger with lightning eyes, hooked claws, sawlike teeth, and appalling, meaty breath. While the king melted into a puddle of fear and most of his courtiers fled for safety, a handful of brave army officers began hacking at the “tiger” with their weapons. If it hadn’t been for all his Heavenly guardians creating a protective force field around him, Tripitaka would have been cut to pieces. Eventually, by evening, the panic had subsided, and the “tiger” was clapped in irons and locked in an iron cage.
The king then ordered the royal catering department to drum up a lavish banquet to thank his son-in-law for saving him from the specious Buddhist. That evening, eighteen palace ladies sang, danced, and plied the monster with drink in the Hall of Silver Peace. Yellow-Robe enjoyed himself thoroughly until, at the end of the second watch, he started to enjoy himself too much, and the mischief began. Drunk as an owl, he began to laugh hysterically and changed back into his true form. Seizing a nearby girl strumming the lute, he bit her head clean off. The surviving seventeen palace ladies fled for their lives, their lutes and zithers crashing to the ground as they ran. Because they were well trained, though, none of them screamed, for fear of disturbing the king so late at night. The unruffled monster of Casserole Mountain stayed on in the banquet hall having a fine time of it, alternating gulps of wine with bites from the bleeding corpse next to him.
A little earlier that night, rumors about Tripitaka being a tiger-spirit had spread through the city, eventually reaching the posthouse where the pilgrims’ dragon-horse was munching hay. “That monster must have played a trick on him,” the horse mused. “But what’s to be done? Monkey’s long gone, and we’ve no news of either Pigsy or Sandy.” By ten o’clock that evening, the white horse resolved to mount his own rescue mission. Shaking off his harness, he turned back into a dragon and flew toward the palace, where he soon spotted the monster sitting alone at a banquet table gorging on wine and human flesh. “So he’s shown his true colors,” muttered the little dragon. “As I’m the only pilgrim in sight, I might as well have some fun with him.”
The dragon now turned into a beautiful palace lady and entered the hall. “Please don’t hurt me, Your Magnificence,” she said, bowing to the horror. “I’ve come to pour wine for you.” Using the magic of Liquid Restriction, the dragon poured a cup of wine that rose up in the shape of a thirteen-story pagoda with a pointed roof. The entranced monster glugged the whole lot down, took another bite of the corpse, demanded a song, then accepted a second oversize goblet of drink.
“Can you dance?” he now asked the disguised dragon.
“A little, but it would be better if I had something to dance with.”
The monster promptly unbuckled his sword and handed the blade over. The dragon-lady began a dance of extraordinary intricacy, moving the sword now to the left, now to the right, now up, now down. When the monster was utterly mesmerized, she suddenly broke off and thrust the sword hard at him. Only narrowly dodging the blow, the monster grabbed a wrought-iron candelabrum weighing eighty or ninety pounds, and the two of them battled their way out of the hall and into the air, where the palace lady changed back into a dragon. Eventually, though, the dragon—who was a somewhat petite creature, recall—grew tired. In desperation, he hurled the sword at the monster, who promptly caught it and, with his other hand, threw the candelabrum at the dragon. Caught off balance, the dragon took a blow to one of his hind legs. Falling out of the sky, he was saved only by the palace moat into which he plunged, immediately becoming invisible to the monster. Shrugging his shoulders, the monster returned to the Hall of Silver Peace with sword and candelabrum to drink himself into oblivion. The little dragon waited an hour, then dragged himself back to the posthouse, where he changed back into a horse and lay down feeling very sorry for himself. Things looked bad for the band of pilgrims: Monkey was who knew where; the horse was wounded and bedraggled; Pigsy and Sandy were lost on maneuvers.
On which subject: Pigsy, you will remember, had abandoned Sandy for a clump of bushes and fallen asleep snout-down. Waking up around midnight, surrounded by near-total silence, he felt thoroughly disoriented. I’d like to rescue Sandy, of course, he thought, rubbing his eyes, but it’s hard to clap with one hand, as it were. I’ll report back to Tripitaka first. If I can wangle a few reinforcements, I’ll come back for Sandy tomorrow.
Pigsy cloud-traveled back to the posthouse. There he found only the white horse, soaked to the skin and with a massive bruise on one of his legs. “This is not good,” he worried. “How did that lazy horse of ours get roughed up?”
“Pigsy!” the horse suddenly cried out.
“A talking horse!” Pigsy stammered. “Never a good sign.” He was so terrified at the animal’s sudden acquisition of human speech that he would have fled from the posthouse if the horse had not bitten hold of his robe.
“Do you know that Tripitaka’s in terrible trouble?”
“Er, no.”
“Of course you don’t!” snapped the horse. “You and Sandy were so busy showing off in front of the king that it never crossed your mind that the monster would get the better of you both. While the two of you were doing Heaven knows what, the monster came to court disguised as a handsome young hunter, convinced the king that he was his dream son-in-law, turned our master into a fierce tiger, and had him locked up in a cage. When I had no word from you in two days, I took matters into my own hooves. I changed into a palace lady, tried to kill the monster in a sword dance, took a nasty blow to my hind leg with a candle-holder, and hid in the moat for an hour.”
All this was a lot for Pigsy to take in. “Can you move at all?” he eventually asked.
“What if I can?” asked the dragon-horse.
“Then you can go back to the ocean and I’ll take the luggage and go back to my wife in Gao Village.”
The horse fastened his teeth even harder into Pigsy’s robe. “Pull yourself together! We can’t give up. You must go to Flower-Fruit Mountain and get Monkey back.”
“I’m not the best person for this mission,” Pigsy equivocated. “Monkey and I didn’t part on the best of terms. For some reason, he blames me for his falling-out with Tripitaka. That staff of his is dangerous, you know.”
“He’ll have gotten over all that,” the horse reasoned. “Don’t tell him that Tripitaka’s in danger—just that Master’s missing him. When we’ve lured him back with flattery and he sees what’s going on, he’ll want to save the day. Go! Go now!”
Still nursing a sinking feeling, Pigsy cloud-traveled east. Luck was on his side: the winds were favorable, and Pigsy simply stuck out his enormous ears and sped across the ocean. Landing on Flower-Fruit at sunrise, he heard a voice in a nearby valley. Approaching, he saw that it was Monkey addressing a host of twelve hundred monkeys, all of whom were busy kowtowing. Impressed but also nervous about encountering Monkey again, Pigsy tried to go undercover by creeping into the kowtowing throng. Monkey spotted the intruder instantly and ordered his swarm of monkeys to drag him up to the front. “Who are you? Where’s your name card?”
The embarrassed Pigsy now looked Monkey full in the face. “This snout ring a bell?”
“Pigsy.” Monkey laughed. “We meet again.”
Pigsy was heartened by this; it was a conversational entrée, at least. “Tripitaka is missing you!” he blurted out.
“Last time we met,” countered Monkey, “he swore to Heaven that he never wanted to see me again.”
“Just now he said Sandy and I were useless and told me to fetch you back,” lied Pigsy.
Monkey changed the subject. “Let me show you around, Pigsy.” Ignoring Pigsy’s protestations that time was getting on and they really needed to go back, Monkey led him by the hand around the beautiful mountains, forests, and caves of Flower-Fruit.
“What a place!” Pigsy sighed, reflecting that it would be difficult to lure Monkey back to the hardships of the pilgrimage. After a breakfast of grapes, pears, loquats, and strawberries, Pigsy repeated that it was time to leave.
“Well, it’s been fun,” Monkey said. “So long, now.”
“You’re not coming back with me?”
“Why would I? Life is good here. Tell Tripitaka to forget all about me.”
Pigsy made as if to leave amicably. But he began muttering as soon as he set off down the mountain: “Suit yourself, monstrous monkey!”
Little did he know that Monkey had secretly dispatched two of his most agile little followers to spy on Pigsy; they promptly reported back their visitor’s sour fulminations. Monkey angrily ordered them to drag the bad-tempered hog back. They then deposited their captive in front of Monkey, who had resumed his place on the boulder. “All right, you pointless pig: what bother has Tripitaka gotten himself into that he needs me to rescue him from? Don’t make me beat it out of you.”
Pigsy told Monkey everything: his mission to find food, his nap, Tripitaka’s misstep into Yellow-Robe’s pagoda, their escape to Precious Image, Pigsy and Sandy’s return to rescue the princess, his nap, Sandy’s capture, the horse’s sword dance . . . “And then the talking horse told me to bring you back, and that’s where we are.”
“Idiot!” snapped Monkey. “Didn’t I tell you to frighten any incidental demons by telling them that I’m Tripitaka’s senior disciple?”
Here Pigsy had his stroke of genius. “Funny you should say that. As soon as I mentioned you, the monster became even more bumptious. ‘Monster,’ I said to him, ‘don’t you lay a finger on my master, for I have a senior disciple with a doctorate in demon-defeating. When Monkey shows up, you’ll be dead before you’ve picked a burial ground.’ He was not bothered in the slightest. ‘I’ll skin him alive, pull out his tendons, gnaw his bones, and eat his heart! I’ll mince the rest of him, then quick-fry the lot!’ is what he said. I just thought you ought to know,” Pigsy finished serenely.
As anticipated, Monkey began tugging his ears and scratching his cheeks in fury. “Who is this outrageous fiend?”
“His name’s Yellow-Robe.”
“We’re leaving now,” Monkey declared. “That monster is begging for a beating. I’ll smash him to smithereens, then pick up where I left off here in Flower-Fruit.”
“Good idea,” approved Pigsy. “Revenge first, long-term life plans second.”
Monkey rushed into the cave and put his pilgrim’s clothes—the silk shirt and the tiger-skin kilt—back on. “Where are you going?” his little monkeys clamored. “Stay with us and enjoy yourself!”
“Heaven and earth have fated me to be this monk’s disciple,” Monkey admonished them. “He didn’t really banish me—he just wanted me to have a little holiday. Look after this mountain of ours, and be sure to plant the willows and pines in the right season. When I’ve been to India and delivered the scriptures back to the Land of the East, I’ll return to our monkey paradise.”
Monkey and Pigsy cloud-traveled across the Great Eastern Ocean, pausing only briefly for Monkey to wash off what he called his “demonic odor,” so as not to disgust Tripitaka when they met again. Soon, Yellow-Robe’s golden pagoda came into view. “That’s where Sandy’s being held, though the monster’s not there right now,” Pigsy explained. Spotting two boys—one a little older than nine, the other about seven—playing a variation of hockey outside, Monkey swooped down, grabbed them by their hair, and carried them off screaming.
The princess ran out to see Monkey standing on a cliff, making as if to smash her sons to the ground. “Who are you and why have you snatched my children?” she screeched. “Their father has a nasty temper on him—if you hurt a hair on their heads, he’ll make you pay.”
“I—and you should know this already—am Monkey, Tripitaka’s chief and most charismatic disciple. Release Sandy and you’ll get your boys back.”
The princess rushed back inside to untie Sandy, explaining that a monkey had shown up to demand his release. An ecstatic Sandy ran outside to acclaim his rescuer. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Monkey!”
“Ha!” Monkey greeted him back. “Why didn’t you put in a good word for me when Tripitaka was chanting that spell?”
“Forgive and forget?” Sandy suggested hopefully.
Monkey now invited him to hop onto the cliff, where Pigsy—who had been hovering overhead—also joined them, making sympathetic noises about Sandy’s ordeal and filling Sandy in on recent events in Precious Image. “Enough talking,” interrupted Monkey. “Time for action. You two, take these boys into the city and throw them from a great height onto the ground in front of the throne. Tell anyone who asks that they’re Yellow-Robe’s sons. As soon as the monster hears of this, he’ll rush back here. I don’t want to fight him in the city because it’ll make a terrible mess of the place.”
“Are you trying to get us killed?” Pigsy snorted. “If we drop these boys to the ground, they’ll become people-patties, and the monster will kill us in revenge, while you’re sitting pretty at a safe distance.”
“Just draw him out here,” Monkey advised, “and I’ll deal with him.” Buoyed by Monkey’s confidence, the two of them sped off with the boys.
Meanwhile, Monkey came down from the cliff to have a word with the princess. “Faithless monkey!” she rebuked him. “You promised to return my boys if I released Sandy. Where have those associates of yours taken them now?”
“Don’t worry,” Monkey said with a smile. “The boys have gone to pay a long-overdue visit to their grandfather. And while we’re on the subject of faithlessness, for the last thirteen years you’ve committed the greatest crime there is: neglecting your parents. How could you have abandoned them to take up with a monster?”
The princess flushed scarlet at the reproach. “But what could I do? Yellow-Robe kidnapped me here and kept me under close guard. And because we were so far from the palace, there was no one to take a letter from me. I contemplated suicide but then feared that my parents might think I’d eloped. You’re right, though. I betrayed their love and care for me. I’m a terrible person.” Tears streamed down her face.
“Cheer up,” said Monkey. “Pigsy also told me that you saved Tripitaka and sent him off with a letter to your parents. How about I defeat the monster and take you back to Precious Image? You can marry someone more appropriate and look after your parents in their old age.”
“But you’re just a stringy little shrimp,” objected the princess. “What chance do you stand against the likes of Yellow-Robe?”
Monkey laughed at her doubts. “‘A urine bubble is large but weightless; a steelyard is small but weighs a thousand pounds.’ I may be small, but I punch above my weight. Hide away while I finish him off, then I’ll take you back to the palace.” With the princess out of sight, Monkey transformed himself into her exact likeness and went into the cave to await the monster.
Back in Precious Image, Pigsy and Sandy had, according to the plan, smashed the two boys to the ground in front of the throne, leaving a hideous hash of blood and bones. “Behold the sons of the monster Yellow-Robe!” Pigsy shouted down to the horrified courtiers.
Still sleeping off the wine in the Hall of Silver Peace, the monster blearily heard someone calling his name. He rolled over and saw Pigsy and Sandy hovering above the clouds and hollering about his sons. Isn’t Sandy meant to be tied up at home? How have those two got hold of my boys? Are they spoiling for a fight? I’ve a beast of a hangover, though, and my battling mightn’t be up to scratch. I’ll head home first, find out whether those really were my boys, then settle with them. Back he went without even a word of farewell to the king. By this point the court knew full well that he was a monster. After Yellow-Robe had eaten one of the palace ladies during the night, at daybreak the seventeen survivors had reported the whole incident to the king. And when their visitor flew off without a courteous leave-taking—well, that finally confirmed them in their supposition that he was no gentleman.
In the guise of Yellow-Robe’s wife, Monkey prepared a proper performance for the monster’s return to the cave: bawling, foot-stamping, chest-pounding—the works. Entirely taken in, the monster rushed to embrace his “wife” and to find out what was distressing her so. After she sobbed out the story of Pigsy kidnapping their sons, the monster was maddened by rage. “So those were my sons he killed in front of the palace! He will pay with his life! But can I do anything for you first, my dearest love?”
“Actually, yes. You can”—here, Monkey became his real self again and pulled out his magic iron—“eat my staff!”
The sight of his beautiful wife transforming into a wizened monkey warrior shook even the fearsome Yellow-Robe. “Goodness, darling—you certainly look . . . different.”
“Disgusting fiend!” Monkey scolded him. “Don’t you recognize me?”
“You look a little familiar,” stalled the monster. “No, it’s gone. You’ll have to remind me.”
“Know then that I am Monkey, chief disciple of Tripitaka.”
“Not possible!” protested Yellow-Robe. “There’s only Pigsy and Sandy. No one ever mentioned a—what was the name again?—Monkey.”
“Don’t play the innocent with me. I know full well that you bad-mouthed me behind my back.”
“What?” asked Yellow-Robe.
“Pigsy told me.”
“You’d believe a pig over a demon?”
“Enough! At any rate, you’ve been positively inhospitable today, and in my book that’s grounds for a beating.”
Yellow-Robe now properly lost his temper, chasing Monkey out of the cave. “How dare you harass me in my own home!” The two waged battle on a nearby mountaintop until the monster misread a Monkey feint and Monkey smashed his staff down on Yellow-Robe’s head. The monster instantly vanished without a trace.
Concluding that his foe had to be a deity of some sort—only immortals could pull off this kind of top-notch disappearing trick—Monkey somersaulted up to Heaven and demanded a full roll call of all the spirits. Eventually, it was discovered that the Wood-Wolf Star had been absent without leave for thirteen days—thirteen years in earthly time. On the orders of the Jade Emperor, Wood-Wolf’s astral colleagues recited a spell to draw him out of his present hiding place, in a mountain stream. As the errant constellation approached the gate of Heaven, Monkey was all for bashing him some more; it was only thanks to the intervention of Wood-Wolf’s celestial colleagues that he made it as far as a hearing in front of the Jade Emperor.
“Why,” asked the emperor, “did you abandon Heaven for the mortal world?”
“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” Wood-Wolf beseeched, kowtowing. “The princess of Precious Image is no ordinary woman—she is the Jade Lady in charge of heavenly incense. When she asked me to have an affair with her, I refused her on the grounds that it might anger you. Then she said we should elope to the mortal world and immediately took over the body of the princess of Precious Image. After she’d gone to all this trouble, it seemed rude not to play along, so I turned into a monster, occupied a mountain, kidnapped her in a scented cyclone, and made her my wife for thirteen years.”
Taking a dim view of these shenanigans, the Jade Emperor promptly demoted Wood-Wolf Star to fire-tending duties in the Tushita Palace.
“Thanks and so long!” whooped Monkey.
“Still haven’t learned any manners, Monkey?” snarked one of the Heavenly courtiers.
The Jade Emperor was phlegmatic. “We count ourselves lucky if he leaves Heaven without wrecking the show.”
Monkey returned to earth on a beam of auspicious light and gave a full report to the princess (whose body the goddess had now vacated), Pigsy, and Sandy (the last two had returned to Casserole Mountain, in search of some more fiends to harass). Then with the judicious application of some ground-shortening magic, the four of them returned to the palace in Precious Image, where the princess bowed reverently to her parents, and Monkey explained that she had been possessed by a jade incense attendant in love with the Wood-Wolf Star.
“All’s well that ends well,” said the king. “Now let’s go and see Tripitaka.” They proceeded to another part of the palace, where officials produced the cage and loosened the “tiger’s” chains.
Monkey giggled. “Aren’t you the stripy one.”
“Don’t tease him,” Pigsy urged. “Undo the spell.”
“You’re the favorite,” Monkey replied. “You undo it. Anyway, didn’t I say I’d go back to Flower-Fruit after defeating the monster?”
Sandy now kneeled before him. “If we had the power to rescue Tripitaka, why would we have needed to fetch you back?”
“All right, all right.” Monkey chanted a spell, spat a mouthful of water over the tiger, and Tripitaka reappeared before them. Master and Monkey were joyfully reunited.
“I owe you my life!” Tripitaka exclaimed. “When we return to China, I’ll tell the Tang emperor that you are my best and favorite disciple.”
“Don’t mention it!” Monkey shrugged, laughing. “Just don’t give me any more headaches, all right?” And after a lavish feast at the court of Precious Image, the four pilgrims set off again for the west.