Novel11 B3 Chapter 8
B3 Chapter 8
Eventually the night had to end.But orange-crest didn't want it to. There were hours before dawn. But the man who ran the wine shop had begun shooing out some of the patrons hours ago. He fiddled unsubtly with a key, casting glances at orange-crest's table, and the raucous bandits.
Hong Bo was the first to acknowledge the man, lamenting the need for them to depart.
"Is it really such an hour already?" Uncle Fu was unsteady in his chair, his face ruddy and lax. "You are not staying here? Then you must stay with me! I have as many spare chambers as I do horses!"
That sounded pleasant to orange-crest. He'd not slept in a building in over a year. The memories that followed that thought washed over the monkey like icy waters. His last nights upon the Azure Mountain, refining a set of Jade Bone Elixirs under his master's watchful eye.
By the time he recovered, Hong Bo had claimed Uncle Fu's generous offer would be wasted upon them. Uncle Fu had made no small fuss at the notion. Orange-crest had thought his master to be picky about sleeping arrangements. Uncle Fu considered the very notion of resting under the open sky unthinkable.
He'd treated the whole matter as a jape. His broad shoulders had shaken like mountains as he slapped Hong Bo across the back, accepting that they already had accommodations elsewhere.
Orange-crest felt the eyes of the bandits on his back. Their leader had shot him glances all evening. His eyes were not quite fearful, but there was a cautious respect in them that orange-crest found as pleasing as the many subtle jabs about losing his coin purse that his men made over the course of the evening.
He felt he'd done good. They'd stolen. He'd stolen better. It was fairly done, and ended there. Worm-scarred Fu knew the barest outlines of his strength, and so the matter was ended without bloodshed.
It was good to be strong.
"Ah! Look up Brother Chengse!" Hong Bo was animated still, though his face was almost as flushed as the now half-sensate Uncle Fu. "The moon watches us little people hurry about below. How hushed the night! How bracing the wind that steals the scent of flowers!"
"Steals the scent of piss more like." Orange-crest muttered. Hushed the night? More like the birds of the evening had the same sense as the men of the town, and were holed up in their nests.
"Piss!" Nephew Fu echoed, feigning shock. "No Brother Chengse, that is surely just the lingering scent of Master Wan's excellent yellow wine being carried upon the wind!"
The wind whipped up, tearing through the alley like one of formless-gleam's wintry gales. Orange-crest felt his clothing rustle and jerk. Nephew Fu shivered violently. Hong Bo's stance was as still as a stone.
They made their farewells. Uncle Fu's were slurred. Orange-crest's were simple, and sincere. Hong Bo and Nephew Fu seemed determined to outdo themselves in pomposity and gratitude.
The company parted.
Orange-crest and Hong Bo walked in silence. They left town by a side path.
Hong Bo began shivering.
Orange-crest had thought it was cold for mortals.
Hong Bo yawned.
"It was a good night."
"It can still keep being one."
Hong Bo's expression reminded him too much of one of Li Xun's. Exasperation overcoming good nature.
"Some of us need to sleep."
"Fine." Orange-crest muttered mulishly.
They found a spot half an hour's walk outside of town, upstream of the river, between the road and what orange-crest suspected was an orchard.
Hong Bo yawned, unrestrained as an animal. He turned away from orange-crest, and took a long leak of his own, sending his stream down the riverbank that it might reach the sea.
"If anyone asks, we are not cultivators." He said after, settling down in the grass.
"What?"
"I may have implied things." He murmured, eyes already closing, fluffing up one of his sacks, adjusting his body. "Uncle Fu would not have drunk with such bedraggled characters otherwise. And he seemed a good man to know. But we are not."
"But I am? Are you?"
"You are not. Not here. If someone asks, you say no. If they press, you become absent."
"You didn't answer my question."
Hong Bo just yawned again, curling up.
Orange-crest poked him with his slipper. There was no reaction. Orange-crest put a little more force into it. Hong Bo rolled with the pressure, turning over.
"I should do that. With stone maybe. Get out of bothersome conversations."
Another wave of heavy emotions passed over the monkey, as he remembered how few people he had who cared enough about him to press him into bothersome conversations.
When it passed, Hong Bo was asleep. And orange-crest was alone.
The first thing orange-crest did was go to sleep.
Not in truth. But it seemed prudent to dispatch an illusion to join Hong Bo. Thus cloaked, the monkey considered his options.
He didn't know what he could do in a town at this hour. He did not wish to be alone right now. But he wished least of all to hold silent vigil beside one who slept like the dead.
His first stop was the orchard. The monkey bent down near the tightest bend in the stream. Flexed the knees he could not see, suppressed the urge to wiggle the tail wrapped around his waist. Strength surged through him, and he cleared the river with a single great bound.
Quiet footsteps carried him through the orchard. The trees were nearly bare.
Orange-crest could see where their fruit had gone. There was a house abutting the orchard. A hundred strings of persimmons decorated it, skinless, desiccating in the winter wind. To the monkey's eyes, the countless garlands gave the house a festive look, despite its black and silent interior.
So there is where his master's endless stock of dried persimmons came from.
Orange-crest wanted some. He'd just eaten a lot of nuts, but being a cultivator had not blunted his appetite, it had simply expanded his stomach. He could go longer without eating now, and eat far more when he did choose to indulge.
He stepped beneath the shadow of the eaves, reaching out for a half-dried persimmon.
Then he paused.
They would know. By the gap in the line, they would clearly see one had been taken. They had enough. Even a large family could subsist over the winter on such a bountiful harvest.
The old orange-crest would not have hesitated. The new one wished he'd thought to reserve a few coins, before giving Hong Bo that purse.
He still struggled with money. Not the concept, or the calculus. But how he felt about it. Something about the way men's eyes gleamed at the sight of lifeless coins felt wrong to him.
Orange-crest wandered away from the house. There were still persimmons on the trees. They were small, yet unripe, late bloomers. His master would insist this was still theft. But the old orange-crest would insist that no man could truly own a tree.
The new orange-crest took half a dozen. He picked them like shadow-tail picked fruit, looking for softness, but for the wrong reasons. Not worm-ridden, but well on their way. It felt better, taking fruits he suspected men would turn up their noses at by the time they came ready for harvest.
Orange-crest bit into the first persimmon, and his mouth puckered from the bitterness. His tongue tingled, as he used it to pulp the dense flesh. Oh, that was not ripe at all.
He still ate it. It felt like Master Wan's yellow wine. An enjoyment that had to be earned.
Aimlessly, orange-crest wandered back toward Huangsongyu. The human world was eerily empty at night. Not eerily silent. Night was usually silent, and the bracing winds blew fierce and hardy.
The eeriness was the absence itself. The way almost every single human had disappeared indoors, the great clamor and bustle of the day utterly vanished. Humans had done the same on the Azure Mountain. But the contrast was not so stark, for the Azure Mountain was not half so lively, nor a hundred times so densely packed.
Orange-crest easily ghosted his way past the guards at the main gate.
He walked the same road he had earlier that day. The horses were gone. The gossips and travelers and the bright energetic people of the town likewise. The stalls were silent. Some had vanished, others were pressed up, folded against the walls of buildings, covered with thick tarps.
Orange-crest saw a pair of bare feet sticking out from behind one such stall.
Curious, he crept round.
The man who lay there was a beggar. Orange-crest knew it for certain. He had nothing save the clothes on his back, and an empty bowl he clutched tightly. His sun-scarred skin clung tightly to his bones.
Orange-crest shivered. He felt sad, then angry. For a moment he felt glad, that he was not this man, then angry at that thought, for a reason he struggled to put to words. Rarely did he think at all about the idea of being someone else. It was not one that came to him often. Never at all, before his time on the Azure Mountain.
No normal monkey imagined being another monkey. One was oneself. Better to imagine oneself like the king, than to imagine oneself to be the king.
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Orange-crest looked down at the five persimmons he carried.
Li Xun had told the monkey that on the Azure Mountain, nobody ever worried about starving. Orange-crest had never had cause to doubt this. Even the lowest initiate, fearful of their position, had a blithe certainty that so long as they remained, they would have enough to eat. It had been one of the things that endeared the mountain to orange-crest. Surely a place that had such abundant food had to be good.
Orange-crest clearly was not on the Azure Mountain anymore.
Gently, he placed the three ripest of his persimmons next to the man.
He bit down on another bitter fruit. It did not taste good. But it tasted right.
In this dark mood, the monkey continued his wanderings. He passed houses that were yet filled with light and warmth, laughter flowing from them. Yet, without Hong Bo and his money, orange-crest had little idea if he would be welcomed within them. Few had signs that made clear their meaning as 'Wine' had.
That was fine. Orange-crest would be poor company right now anyway.
A sound cut through the silence. A guttural howl, a sound like a yearling being cruelly tormented.
Orange-crest froze.
The soul-rending noise repeated, just above him, before fading into a throaty moan of agony. What brutal treatment could provoke such an agonized moan?
Orange-crest looked up.
It was one of those tiny tigers. A grey one, with white splotches across its chest and paws. It was in no visible distress.
His master had said they were called 'mao' in the elegant tongue, after the noise they made. That wild throaty scream did not sound like a 'mao' to the monkey.
Orange-crest narrowed his eyes. The cat was staring at him. He looked down. Weathered the spike of discomfort as his technique shuddered, when he confirmed he was still invisible. He was. Even the persimmons in his paws could not be seen.
Yet the cat was still staring at him.
It opened its mouth.
"No!" Orange-crest hissed in the true tongue. "Do not—"
It did. The stupid thing screamed like its nails were being ripped out, one by one.
Someone banged on their wall, which silenced the animal for a moment.
Orange-crest scowled at the cat. It stared innocently back at him. He was beginning to again consider how far the tiny tiger could be punted.
"Speaker?" The monkey asked instead.
The cat yowled incomprehensibly.
"Persimmon?"
Seeing the offering, the cat descended from its perch. It slinked around the invisible monkey, sidling up to him, testing his technique. Orange-crest refused to pay attention, to lose focus. His invisibility held.
The cat sniffed the persimmon. It sniffed again. Satisfied, or perhaps offended, it wandered away in silence.
"What a stupid creature." Orange-crest muttered, taking the fruit back.
Feeling profoundly justified in his previous prejudice against the underdeveloped tigers, orange-crest resumed his meandering quest.
Then he remembered. The other animals!
Orange-crest had restrained himself on the road, cognizant enough of human ways to know that trying to talk to their horses would be 'strange' and 'suspicious'. But there had to be hundreds, if not thousands, of non-human creatures in Huangsongyu. Surely one of them had to know the true tongue!
Mission in mind, orange-crest moved with new purpose.
The animals sheltered beneath wooden houses as the men did, but many of their dwellings were not half so secure against a curious monkey's good-natured intrusions.
"Are you a hearing creature?" He asked, hauling his torso over the back wall of a stable. "Are carts heavy? They seem heavy."
None of the horses had opinions to share with him.
He tried a dog next. A dignified old fellow who lay in front of one of the nicer homes.
"Don't you wish you had more fur?" The monkey asked. "Or maybe it is good you look like the humans? Do they like you more with less fur?"
The hound was on its feet in an instant. Teeth snarling, it growled like a wolf as its eyes passed back and forth without settling upon the monkey.
"Got it." Orange-crest muttered, retreating. "You're still brave and angry like a wolf."
Sharp barks were his only answer.
The birds of the trees were silent. The chickens and pigs he'd glimpsed during the day had houses of their own, more secure than the dwellings of horses. Orange-crest considered breaking in, but despaired at the thought of yet another failure to find intelligent conversation.
He pressed his ears to walls instead, listening in.
Nothing. Often silence, sometimes grunts as telling.
The true tongue was curious like that. If one was a Speaker, even the least of their utterances could be telling. A single grunt could carry a weight of meaning that shamed human poetry. But without that spark of intention and connection, a grunt was just a grunt, meaning no more than a grunt did.
Down to his last persimmon, orange-crest pressed his ear to yet another pig-house. Perhaps he should try cats again. They were clever, if nothing else, to see the monkey where the eyes of all other things seemed to pass over him.
But he didn't want a cat for a friend.
"Brother."
The voice was not speaking to him. Orange-crest stilled all the same. He'd almost given up his search, as the hours of the night dwindled. The monkey grinned beneath his mask, his spirits rising like smoke from a fire rekindled.
"Brother." The voice repeated. It was deep and sturdy, the voice of a creature that was firm in its convictions. The voice of a Speaker.
"Do not ignore me, brother. It displeases me when you ignore me, brother."
Orange-crest took in the pig-house that stood before him. It was stone halfway up, with windows and a roof of wood. He was on the outskirts of town, where most of the homes were small and modest. This pig-house was near the size of many of the human dwellings, attached to a greater home that boasted half a dozen buildings, all surrounded by a low stone wall. A wealthy family.
"You cannot pretend at silence, brother. You do not sleep. You see, where the others avert their eyes. The time is coming, brother."
Orange-crest's clever fingers found the seam of one of the windows. The heavy wooden panels were designed to open upward, to expose the inside of the pig-house to the open air. They were lashed shut from within. Orange-crest fiddled with his clothing, working one hand through the gap at his collar, reaching toward his waist. He still had his master's knife, even if he'd left the jade band he once wore it in behind.
"Winter is coming, brother. And you know what comes with winter."
Orange-crest fed the thin steel of the finely made blade through the gaps in the window. He traced the edges of it, feeling around for resistance. He found the leather cord that held the panel shut where he expected it, at the base of the window.
"Enough!" A second pig growled. "What would you have me do, Guts?"
"Flee with me, brother! Let us all flee this place. With your strength we can break the wooden wall that holds us! I have been to the gathering place. I have seen the paths of stone. I know the ways that lead to freedom."
"Into the killing cold? The barren lands beyond the dominion of the tall ones, where no food grows?"
A single pass of the knife severed the ties that held the shutter down.
"Yes! Surely anywhere is better than here, Brawn! We know not what awaits us beyond these walls. But we know what awaits us here!"
"Do not speak to me of what awaits us!" Brawn rumbled. "You were so certain when the weather turned last! And yet we live on, both of us!"
"Brother!" Guts cried, raising his voice. "You are a fool!"
"You do not call me a fool! Bend your neck, young Guts! You are not my equal!"
There was a crash from within the walls of the pig-house. Bleating grunts from half a dozen tongues followed, plaintive noises that one did not need the true tongue to understand.
"Shut up!" Orange-crest hissed, pulling the shutter open. "You'll wake the hairless ones!"
"What?"
Orange-crest shimmied through the gap in the window.
"Moonlight, brother! But from whence does it come?"
"From me." Orange-crest said, dispelling his distant illusion. He hoped nobody was watching him sleep right now.
"A tall one!" Guts cried as the shutter bounced shut.
"They have breached our confidence! We must make a stand here, brother! They know!"
"Nay brother! You have doomed us all!"
"Do not fear him, brother! We have him surrounded!"
"I'm not a tall one."
"Forgive my brother!" Brawn cried out. "He knows not what he plots!"
"See?" Orange-crest pulled off his wraps. "Not a hairless one."
"What is he doing?"
"He tests us, brother."
Belatedly, the monkey realized the pigs could not see in the semi-darkness of the sty. He could see them clearly. Guts was smaller than Brawn, his coat a grey that might have been tinged with blue in the light of day. He was dotted with spots of darker pigment. Brawn, on the other paw, was a hulking beast, whose thin white fur stretched evenly over his great muscles. Half a dozen smaller pigs clustered behind them, cowering away from the fury of the dispute, and the unexpected light.
Orange-crest lifted open the shutter again.
"That snout." Brawn noted. "It is almost like yours."
"I am not so hairy." Guts complained.
"I am a monkey."
"You are an intruder." Brawn denied, moving to place himself between his fellows and orange-crest. He was large. Heavy. Orange-crest didn't think the pig had any chance of harming him, but were he caught beneath the pig, he was honestly uncertain if he could move that beast. Brawn had to weigh as much as four or five humans. He might even be larger than big-butt.
"I am a visitor."
"Let us hear him out, brother."
"Nay!"
Brawn charged at orange-crest, but within the confines of the shed he could build up no speed. The monkey hopped, vaulting over the irate pig with one hand.
"You wish to be free, Guts?"
"Do not listen to his lies, brother! You will find only suffering in that cold and bleak world!"
Orange-crest did not know how he felt about animal husbandry. His master had explained the basics of it to him. But the monkey had struggled to imagine it, living in such closeness with a creature you would one day kill and consume. There was something abhorrent about it, something that outweighed the convoluted yet very human kindness of building homes against winter for your pigs.
Orange-crest wanted to condemn the practice. Call it human nonsense and wash his hands of it.
But orange-crest liked pork. It was one of the finest meats he'd ever eaten. Far better than centipede, worm, fox, or rat. Better even than deer or wolf. Knowing that some pigs were Speakers was not enough to move him to swear off such delicious meat.
Guts stared at the monkey. There was fear in his eyes. That was good. Orange-crest did not think the world he would find would be as kind as the one orange-crest had found with his master. And he could not travel with them, not unless he abandoned Hong Bo. He could already imagine how that conversation might go, and he didn't like the shape of it.
This was definitely theft, as humans judged it. This house was wealthy, but its pigs were no mean portion of that wealth. They would be furious, if they discovered he had released them.
"Yes!" Guts cried. "I want to be free!"
"Then run fast, little pig." What was orange-crest saying. Even the smaller Guts was far larger than him. Probably heavier too, even with his stone bones. "You and your brother have not been quiet, and the door will be louder still in the breaking."
Orange-crest positioned himself between Brawn and the door, the sows and piglets flowing around him like water.
Brawn gave a wordless shout, voicing more fear than anger, and charged the monkey again. Yet, when orange-crest spun to the side, he pulled up out of his charge, instead snapping ineffectually at the monkey.
"I shall not be led to ruin by a trickster!"
Orange-crest replaced his facial wrappings as best he could, dancing around the enraged boar. The monkey let Brawn herd him away from the exit. Fine, if the big pig didn't want to break the door, he would do it himself.
Theft, or kindness. Freedom, or ruin.
He didn't know. He couldn't know. There was no stirring in his chest, no dire strumming of fated threads.
And part of him was glad of that. For good or ill, this was his choice.
"I am orange-crest." He told Brawn. "Stay behind if you wish. But you are not strong enough to stop me from freeing your brother."
"A foolish name for a foolish monkey! You are small!"
Brawn's hoof gouged a furrow in the hard-packed earth of the floor.
"Quail before my might!" Brawn cried, charging heedlessly toward the far wall, and the monkey in front of it.
Orange-crest bent down. He could have dodged. The pig wasn't agile, and he was a powerful cultivator.
But he didn't want to dodge.
The monkey caught the pig upon his shoulder, and turned to stone.
Orange-crest had not felt such a crash since he strove with Yang Wei. Big-butt had not felt any need to spar with him, and neither broad-back nor red-eyes had raw physical might to equal the great pig.
But orange-crest's left foot was braced against the stone of the pig-house's wall. Strength alone could not move him, not unless it could move an entire building.
"Uh." Brawn moaned, as orange-crest returned to his flesh.
The monkey grabbed the stunned pig's forelimb and jerked it across his body, throwing the pig upon his side.
"Quail before mine." Orange-crest retorted, turning toward the door.
"How could you best—"
Orange-crest took his own running charge, then leapt into the air, his feet outstretched, aiming for the spot where the thick wooden deadbolt rested on the exterior of the pig-house.
He was back in stone form before his flying kick impacted the door. He felt two bumps, then a short slide. And then he was outside, surrounded by splintered timbers, panicked pigs rushing past him in every direction.
Oops. Maybe this was getting a little out of hand.
"This way, brothers and sisters!" Guts cried, charging forth. "Thank you, brother orange-crest! I shall never forget your kindness!"
The other pigs largely did not follow Guts. Some heeded his words. But most of them simply ran, put to mad flight by the chaos, scattering in every direction.
"Brother!" Brawn cried, wobbling out of the building, his forehead bloodied. "Return at once!"
The humans were rousing themselves now. Orange-crest could hear their shouts, even if they'd ignored the noises of the pigs; none could sleep through such an almighty crash as would have resounded when he'd broken the door.
He needed to run too. Even Brawn was moving, charging off toward his smaller brother. Only a couple of pigs remained behind, too confused to panic.
The monkey cast a trio of illusions out before him. His clones scattered in three directions, and the real monkey took the fourth. It took but ten minutes for orange-crest to reach Hong Bo, running headlong. His clones had already vanished, no doubt bewildering any pursuers.
The old beggar looked to be sleeping off his many drinks without a care in the world.
Orange-crest settled down beside him. That was enough excitement for one night. He could figure out whether it had been the right thing to do in the morning.