Momotaro: Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters

We continue cruising through the purplish water. I try turning the wheel, which does nothing. The ship just stays on its course. I guess I’ll have to trust it.

We hang out on the deck and eat some more of the never-ending supply of croissants. (Hey, we’re a couple of sixth-grade boys—eating’s our favorite hobby.) Inu lies on his back in the sun, his legs splayed out wide like an enormous goofy cat. I scratch under his left armpit, making his back left leg wiggle uncontrollably and drool drip out of his mouth. His “spot,” Dad called it. Calls it. I’m going to think about him in the present tense no matter what.

Peyton sits cross-legged, his wings spread out behind him. Occasionally he flaps them, sending my hair blowing back. Show-off.

I bite into my sixth croissant. “How do the wings feel now?” I ask with my mouth full. No grandmother telling me not to do that, either. I wipe my face with the back of my hand.

He unfurls them to their full length. “Like they’ve always been there. It’s weird. I can feel things with them.”

“Like they’ve got nerves?” I gently bend the end of a feather. “Does that hurt?” Uh-oh. I got chocolate on it. I try to wipe it off.

“Nope. They’re more like cat whiskers, I guess.” Peyton wrinkles his nose at the state of his wing. “Xander! Quit messing up my wings!”

“Sorry.” I use the end of my shirt to get most of the offending smears. “It’ll wash off.”

“Inu, you’re not supposed to have chocolate!” I scold him, and he leans back on his haunches and looks guilty. Then he lets out a loud belch.

“At least he cleaned you up.” I consider Peyton’s profile. Will he completely transform into a bird, like a man transforms into a werewolf? His hair sticks up like feathers—they always have. His long nose is what my father calls “Roman,” with a little hump in it. “You know, I never noticed this before, but your nose kind of looks like a beak.”

“But,” I continue, “now that I think about it, you are kind of like a bird.”

“Like that!” I point at him. “And your hair. And your extremely long arms and legs.”

“No.” I examine his face. No feathers there. Unless you count the beginnings of a blond beard on the lower half of his face. Was that there yesterday? I don’t think so. “Do you feel any different? Like, don’t birds’ hearts beat twice as fast as humans’? Is yours? Are you sprouting feathers anywhere else?”

“No feathers so far.” Peyton holds out his arms and turns them over. My eyes widen. His arms are as ropy and muscled as an action figure’s. He puts his hand on his chest. “Seems normal enough.”

I put one of my hands on his chest and the other on mine, feeling the thump-thump-thump of our respective hearts. “Yep. They’re both about the same.” I sit back. It’d be kind of cool if he turned into a real bird. But then again, if he did, he might not be able to talk.

“I do feel stronger, though.” Peyton snaps his wings with such force that I, squatting right next to him, fall backward. Oof. I’m splayed out on the deck. I sit up. He laughs. “Told you I was the bodyguard.”

“Fine. You’re the bodyguard,” I mutter. Can someone who’s stronger ever really be a sidekick? I guess not. “How about protector?”

But I’m still the one in charge. Still Momotaro. I don’t say that aloud, though. Peyton won’t like the idea of me bossing him around. I reach for another croissant, but my stomach clenches and I decide that I’ve finally had my fill.

“So, I’m the pheasant.” Peyton does take another croissant and shoves the entire thing into his mouth. It’s his tenth, I think.

“I told you.” Peyton slaps my back a little too hard, and I almost choke. “We’re the comic! We better finish reading it.” Peyton gets up and runs to the ladder.

“It’s not a school assignment, you know!” I call after him. Okay, he was right. It sure seems like we’re following the plot, with the ship and the dog and the oni and now Peyton. Could it tell me how to fight like Momotaro, too?

I try again to remember drawing the book, but I can’t. Was I asleep? In a trance? You would think that even if I blanked on it, I’d wonder where that block of time had gone, like if I started drawing it at noon one day and finished at four.

I decide I probably did it when I was supposed to be asleep. That’s when I do my best work after all.

Peyton returns with the comic in a flash. He’s not even out of breath, and his muscles are all ripply, like he’s a comic book character himself. It’s disgusting, actually. I fold my puny arms, which actually seem like they’ve shrunk since yesterday. “Let’s read it.”

A few dark gray clouds begin covering the sky like ice spreading across a giant windshield, and a frigid wind cuts across the deck, numbing my ears. I frown. “Hey, uh, how do you know if a big storm’s coming?”

“The wind would be stronger than this.” Peyton sticks his finger in his mouth and then holds it up in the air. “And it’s coming from the south. That’s usually not bad. I think it’s just cooling off.”

“But do we even know that south is south here?” I examine the clouds. They’re feathery, not super dense like thunderheads, so I guess they’re okay.

Inu cranes his neck at the sky, too, and then curls up into a warm ball beside me.

“If it starts raining, we’ll go inside. What else can we do? Turn this thing into a submarine?” Peyton sits next to me on the deck and arranges his wings so that Inu and I are protected from the wind. Now that is kind of convenient. He opens Momotaro and I read it aloud.

The ship took them to an island with a castle sitting on top of a craggy cliff.

The group walked around the perimeter of the castle, searching for an entrance. They could not find a way in.

They stumbled upon a group of young women washing bloody garments in a pond.

Momotaro called out, “Who are you?”

A maiden stood up. The dress she wore was soaked in blood, too. “This was once our island, but the oni have enslaved us,” she said pitifully. “They have eaten all our people and will eat us very soon. Go, now, before they eat you, too!”

Momotaro crossed his arms. “No. I am here to help.”

“Nobody has helped us for years and years,” the girl said warily.

Momotaro planted his feet. “I am here now. Show us a way inside.”

The women pointed out a hidden passageway. “But you will die, you know!”

“Thank you for your advice.” Momotaro thought for a moment. He recalled the painting he had made for his mother, in which he had painted craggy cliffs very much like these. Perhaps he already knew what to do.

Momotaro sent the pheasant flying up over the ramparts, to distract the oni, and the rest of them went inside.

There they battled the oni with great valor and threw them off the steep cliff. They fought as fiercely as a thousand men.

My blood turns cold. They think I can fight like a thousand men? Try a thousandth of a man.

At last, they vanquished the chief oni, and he bowed before Momotaro. “You are the greatest warrior who ever lived. If you spare my life, I shall be forever indebted to you.”

“Your life is not mine to spare,” Momotaro answered. He put the oni in chains and took him to the emperor of Japan. The emperor was so happy that he invited Momotaro to marry one of his daughters. Momotaro agreed and, in this way, became a prince.

“Is that it?” I grab the comic from him and look at the back. “That’s the whole thing? There’s nothing in there about how to fight the oni. He just vanquishes them. What does that even mean?”

“It means he beat them,” Peyton explains patiently. “Also, he threw at least one off a cliff.”

“I know that.” I feel like throwing the comic book into the ocean. “But how? Does he cut off its head? I can’t believe I drew such a useless thing. Some imagination I have.” I blow out a frustrated breath.

I remember how Obāchan said that nobody knew how being half-Irish affected a Momotaro’s power. Maybe all I can do is draw comics. Maybe in this new, half-Irish Momotaro story, Momotaro is really the sidekick. Maybe the pheasant gets to be the hero this time and I’m just along for the ride.

My stomach clenches. And now the water’s getting choppier, thumping the ship up and down. Suddenly all those croissants I porked down don’t seem like they were the best idea. I bend in half, trying to quell what I know is coming. “Unnngh,” I croak. Also not very herolike.

Peyton’s hand grips my arm. “Dude. You’re the color of Mountain Dew. You better get to the railing.”

I try to get up, but the deck’s too wobbly. Or maybe my legs are too wobbly. “I don’t think I can.”

Leaning on Peyton’s solid mass, which seems a lot more solid than it did yesterday, I manage to make my way to the side of the ship. I grip the wood until my knuckles turn white.

“You want me to get one of those salted plums?” Peyton pats my back. I manage to nod. He heads below deck. “Just let it hurl if you have to, dude,” he calls back. “You’ll feel better.”

“’Kay,” I murmur. My forehead’s clammy. Ohhhh. Why am I such a pig? I lean over the railing. Inu whines and paws at my leg, looking up at me with his big brown eyes. I pat his head. “I know, Inu. Don’t worry.” I stare at the water, listening to the steady chop chop chop of the waves striking the ship and taking deep breaths in and out.

I crane my neck, looking for the source of the sound. Are we going through a bed of seaweed?

A glow, as if someone left on an aquarium bulb way beneath the now calm surface.

I stare. I can see a forest of red-and-white coral spread over the ocean floor, the light coming from somewhere within. Arms of coral stick up, making it look like a fortress, almost, or a palace. Someplace the Little Mermaid would live.

The ship scrapes over a finger of coral and slows. Somewhere very close I can also still hear the creature moving—a whale? It sounds like it could be that huge. I tense, wondering what I should do. Run below deck? Fight—and with what? Is this the first monster?

It’s a long sea snake, with green and gold scales on its back, long whiskers on its doglike snout, long golden claws—

Claws? Wait. That’s not a snake. That’s a dragon. I may never have seen a dragon in real life, but Dad has shown me enough pictures of Japanese dragons that I know one when I see one.

My nausea is completely forgotten as I watch the undulating, powerful form of the sea dragon weave through the coral stacks.

He rolls on his back and shows me his shiny red-and-gold belly, his claws spread out to the sides, sort of like Inu when he was lying on the deck. But this thing is huge, bigger than an orca, bigger even than the fifty-foot-long humpbacks I saw on a whale watch once. I can’t even see the end of its curling tail.

I expect to be afraid, like I was in my dream with the beast-man, but I’m not. I feel like I’m waiting for something. Not something bad. Like after I’ve taken a spelling test when I know I’ve gotten all of the answers right, and I’m waiting for it to be handed back with 100% written on top.

I hear something that reminds me of bubbles in a swimming pool. Kids, talking underwater. Are they words? If they are, I can’t understand them.

Without thinking, I bow back, my eyes closed, too. A sense of calm enfolds me. The sun reappears, hot on my skin, and the cold wind dissipates.

The ship changes direction slightly. Inu runs to the prow and barks. I run up there and look at what he’s barking at.

Land. To the right (Is that starboard? I can’t remember), a mountain peak looms. A big, dark triangle emerging from the ocean. “Land ho, Peyton!” I yell. “Or whatever you’re supposed to say.”

No. An undulating cloud of silvery white hovers in the water, in front of the ship.

Peyton comes up beside me. “Here’s that salted plum. I ate the rice that was around it.”

I take the plum but don’t eat it. “Hey, Peyton. Look in the water. What is that?”

“Feeling better, I see.” Peyton leans over next to me. “Can’t tell from here.” Peyton hops up onto the railing, his toes clutching it like a perch. He spreads his wings and jumps off.

“I’m cool,” Peyton shouts back. He glides down next to the water, his wings flapping as if they’ve always been on his back. It didn’t take long for him to get used to those. He jerks his head up at me and climbs the air back up to the deck. “Jellyfish. There are thousands of jellyfish pulling us.”

I look again. Now that I know what they are, I can make sense of their forms. All the jellyfish in the ocean must be assembled here, towing this ship toward the island. “Wow. I wonder if they have anything to do with the dragon.”

“Xander.” Peyton lands next to me, his hands on his hips. He stares hard at my head, above my right ear, then my left. He reaches out and touches the hair. “Man. This trip has been hard on you. You’re going gray!”