Wukong shakes his head and waggles his hand at me. “Four more Yama Kings to go. And now that you’ve humiliated one of them, they’ll be coming for you. Not Taipei. Not the mainland. You.”
“Oh, well, that’s just great. You could have warned me ahead of time that in addition to my own life or death, I’d have to worry about fragile egos too.”
“I didn’t think it would be necessary. Fragile egos are at the root of almost every conflict. My ego is certainly what motivated me in my younger years. Did you know that I once demanded to be called the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven?”
I throw up a hand to stifle a laugh and try to turn it into a cough. “I may have read some stories that mentioned that.”
He’s not fooled. “You may laugh. I deserve it. But I am no longer of that mind, and I have a different name now.”
“Yes, I’ve heard. The Buddha Victorious in Strife. May I ask…”
“Of course.”
“Why is a Buddha spending his time serving bubble tea?”
He shrugs. “It is a simple pleasure that tends to make people happy. And when they see that they can be made happy by something so simple, then all their other grand desires seem silly by comparison—for indeed they are. A Buddhist wishes to point out that desires are what prevent people from achieving happiness, that materialism is the cause of discord. The simple pleasure of bubble tea gets them to a receptive place to hear that message. Or to reinforce that message, if they’ve already heard it.”
I suddenly cannot keep myself from smiling as I mentally take note of what I’m doing: I am talking to the Monkey King in Taiwan about Buddhism. My life has become far more dangerous since becoming a Druid, but at the same time, I get to talk to living legends.
It’s at that point that Seven Star Mountain explodes again.
slomo tells me of the birds she likes and the birds she doesn’t. The insects who bite and who leave her alone. The monkeys, screeching and leaping around her, eating yellow tube fuel. The colorful moths and butterflies snapped up by croaking frogs. The thrilling quiet that settles in the forest when the jaguars pass through. Her occasional, half-hearted yearnings to find a mate, but even yearning was more energy than she wanted to expend.
<Mostly you have to have perspective. Is anything—short of teeth coming at my face—worth burning more than the basic calories I need to eat and not fall out of the tree? The answer is no. Except for swinging around like a monkey. That was totally worth the calories. Because I didn’t have to burn them. They were free. Like sunshine.>
<What about things that make ye happy? Aren’t those things worth burning some calories for?>
<Well, sure, but what makes me happy is not moving very much.>
<How can ye say that? Ye just said you’ve never been happier than when ye moved like a monkey.>
<I’m complicated. There’s a lot of nuance you’re missing here.>
<I can handle nuance. Bring me the nuance.>
<Okay, you asked for it.> And then me mind is bombarded by images and emotions, all relating to a sliding scale of satisfaction with staying still through a wide range of environmental factors. Bearing witness to frenetic activity while remaining almost motionless gives Slomo great pleasure, but she can visualize and imagine things so well. When I ask her why that is, she replies, <Well, you have to imagine quite a bit when you’re incapable of moving very fast or doing all the things other creatures do.>
<Would ye like to see more of the world, move fast like ye did, more often?> I ask her.
<Sure. But wishing won’t make it so.>
<Ye don’t have to wish for it. Ye can come with me. I’ll show you a few places.>
<Places where those buffalo things roam?>
<If ye like. Deserts. Oceans. Mountains.>
<But aren’t those far away?>
<Yes, but I can move very fast.>
<Won’t they have a disturbing lack of leaves?>
<We can bring some with us. Or just come back quickly before ye get hungry again.>
Slomonomobrodolie chews on the idea along with a leaf, slowly enough that I can hear the exquisite crunch and grind of her teeth and perhaps the churning of metaphorical gears in her head. When she finishes, her eyes refocus on me and she nods, upside down.
<Okay, Oaken. I’d like to see some of those things.>
<Great! I have some questions first. How old are you?>
She answers and I continue to ask, absorbing as many basic facts as I can and combining them with a fluid understanding of her personality so that I’ll be able to shift with her safely. And in truth there is no hurry until I’m asked to be somewhere again. A couple of hours pass with her sharing her life with me in pictures and feelings, and I can sense I’m getting attached to the lass. She doesn’t like toucans, for example, because they have wee beady eyes of death and huge beaks.
<The large, colorful beaks,> she explains, <are there to distract you from the eyes. If you look into a toucan’s eyes you will know the heart of evil, and what’s more, you will know they’d like to eat you.>
<What, they’re meat eaters?>
<I don’t really think so. I’m not sure! But the eyes, Owen, you have to listen to what the eyes are telling you! They always say that even though they don’t normally enjoy meat, they would make an exception just for you and snap your flesh away from your bones with terrible little toucan beak-clacking sounds.>
<Well, I kind of hope I don’t meet any now. That sounds worse than garnishing your cocktail glass with a log of shite instead of a nice lime wedge.>
<What are cocktails?>
<I’ll have to get you one,> I promise her, and then the elemental summons me. I’m needed somewhere in Europe because some daft donkey cock has gone and messed with powers he shouldn’t have. <Time to go,> I says to Slomo. <Ready to see the world?>
<Sure, Oaken! I’ll start moving now and we can probably leave before the sun comes up.>
The sun wasn’t down yet, so that’s an alarming estimate. I shoot her some more juice and her eyes pop wide.
<Bollocks to that. We have to scurry now. Climb down and drape yourself on me back. I’m going to shift to human.>
<I’ve never scurried before! This is exciting!>
I float down to the forest floor and shift to human, and Slomo is ready to hop on after a few seconds. Careful with those claws, now. Wrap your arms around me neck and I’ll catch ye.
She leaps and lands with a grunt, and I grunt as well. She’s a bit prickly, not as soft as she might look, because that fur is matted and filthy. My skin begins to tickle; she wasn’t lying about the bugs living on her, which I guess are now having a look around at this new thing she’s hanging on that isn’t a tree. I take time to reach their tiny brains—nothing more than a few nerves—and tell them to stay on Slomo. Not sure they’re going to make the shift, honestly, but they might, as Slomo considers them to be a part of her.
I have to jog through the brush and get used to the weight, and it’s bouncy for both of us.
<Is this a scurry?>
A bit. It’s also called riding piggyback, though I don’t know why. Never seen a single feckin’ pig do this. Language is strange.
<I hope I get to learn your language. I can teach you Slothian words if you want.>
I’d like that. Okay. Here we are. This tree is special. We can use it to shift to Tír na nÓg and from there to practically any other place on the planet. But I need ye to put one of your hands on that tree.
<Whoa, what’s Tír na nÓg? There were a lot of images with that.>
It’s many things. Mostly magic and bollocks, but not magical bollocks, if ye take my meaning.
<I don’t think I do.>
Just hold on.
We shift through, pulling along the tether, and I hold the wonder of Slomonomobrodolie in me second headspace, hoping I don’t cock it up, for it would be a tragedy if I brought her to any harm. I pause on the other side to check on her.
How was that?
<Whoa! I mean, wow, Oaken, that was—I don’t know. My stomachs are doing flippy-floppy monkey business. It’s possible I might—>