by Dan H Kind
Chapter 31
The Adventures of a Patchrobed Pair
Team Real went their separate ways, and the Zen Master said, “Come, novice.”
“Where are we going, Master?”
“You no hear them?” Master Mirbodi placed a hand behind his right ear and cocked his head to the side.
Sitting Lotus couldn't hear a thing but the rain beating on the cobblestone, the wind howling like a billion brain-starved banshees, the occasional nerve-shattering crash of thunder. But then, over the storm, he discerned a terrible shrieking noise like a mutated bird-man that was never meant to be crying out upon being born into the unforgiving world. Then a lot of those noises. The hideous sounds echoed off the walls of his mind and chilled him down to his essence.
“Wh-what in the sixteen lesser hells is that?”
“That call of harpy. It sound like there a lot of them just up road. We follow ears until we smell them, then we follow noses. You can smell harpy from ten mile away in crazy blizzard.”
Master Mirbodi took off at a brisk walk down a dirt alley that connected Duke of Gobstopper Street to Colonial Towne Road. Sitting Lotus stumbled along at his heels.
The pair of patchrobed monks turned onto Eden's main drag, and the stench hit Sitting Lotus in the face like a shovel caked in shit. It was suddenly impossible to concentrate on anything but the perfume of foulness that infused the air.
The steeple and bell-tower of Eden Parish Church poked into view ahead, and Master Mirbodi ducked down, motioning the novice to do the same. Slinking along with noses to the ground like tigers stalking prey, they took cover behind a squat brick wall that paralleled the brick sidewalk.
“I think they in graveyard,” said Master Mirbodi. “If you peek over wall, maybe you catch glimpse of something.”
Sitting Lotus's heart reverberated in his chest like there was a teensy-weensy monk in there banging on it like a gong. He raised himself up, inch by inch, to where he could see into the ancient graveyard that surrounded Eden Parrish Church. He quickly ducked back down, a wide-eyed expression of terror plastered across his face.
“Th-there's gotta be a h-hundred of them over there in the g-graveyard, maybe m-more.”
Sitting Lotus had the screaming urge to run the other way down the road; it didn't matter where, just as long as it wasn't anywhere near those harpies. “In the name of the World Honored One, they stink of death, and of . . . evil.”
“You right, novice. And if there such thing as duality, and because of this such thing as evil, harpies be it, no doubt. They act part because human beings believe they evil, no more. No good, no evil, no birth, no death, no duality.” Master Mirbodi grinned. “Everybody have choice, even harpies.”
Sitting Lotus pursed his lips. “But what are we going to do? What about our vows to not kill living things?”
Master Mirbodi's grin widened. “Novice, you think harpies future buddhas?”
“Huh? I dunno. Supposedly all sentient beings have the capacity to become buddhas. But those ugly things . . .” Sitting Lotus shuddered. “I don't know, Master. Yes? No? Maybe? Say, why don't you tell me? After all, you're the Master here.”
Master Mirbodi chuckled. “You ever hear saying 'If you see Buddha in road, kill him'?”
“Of course. But that's a metaphor! It means you shouldn't hang onto the idea that there even is such a thing as a buddha, or that it's even possible to become a buddha, because it interferes with what's truly important: your practice.”
The Zen master's gaze bored into the novice. “The true dharma not dependent on words and scriptures, much less metaphors and similes.” He shrugged. “Interpret saying how you like. But tonight, if we see ugly, stinking harpy-buddhas in road, we gonna kill 'em.”
Sitting Lotus shuddered, and Master Mirbodi peered at him with concern.
“Novice, we no really gonna kill harpies dead! We just gonna send 'em home! Maybe one day, sometime within next one million lifetimes, they thank us for it. And they be much happier back in pit of ancient Greek hell anyway.” He paused, and added, “So you ready, or what?”
Sitting Lotus's brow furrowed. “Am I ready for wha—”
Before he could finish, Master Mirbodi stood up to his full height. The Zen master brought two fingers to his mouth and whistled like a human teakettle.
Harpies perched on the ancient gravestones dotting the churchyard and roosted upon the steeple and bell-tower of the church. Their upper bodies resembled adult human females, scraggly black wings jutting from their backs, their thin limbs those of birds of prey. The monsters had been chirruping, clicking, and screeching as if plotting out a plan of attack on Eden, but at the piercing whistle they stopped dead and turned as one to see who had come a-calling.
A horrifying moment of silence fell across Colonial Towne Road. The calm before the deadly storm of sagging breasts and razor-sharp talons, Sitting Lotus thought. The rain slowed, the wind stopped howling, and the thunder ceased rumbling, as if the storm gods themselves were waiting to see what this insane patchrobed monk with the death wish had to say for himself.
Master Mirbodi cupped his hands to his mouth and called out, “Hey, you!”
The harpies looked at him, and then around at each other.
“That right, I talking to you, harpies! You so stupid and ugly and stinky and slow! I bet you never catch me because you way too out of shape and ugly and unenlightened!”
Master Mirbodi turned and ran the other way down Colonial Towne Road, grabbing an astonished Sitting Lotus as he blew past. From behind them came the furious shrieks of a thousand fiends of hell. Sitting Lotus did not turn to look, but he was sure the harpies were taking to the air, intent on hunting them down and rending them limb from bloody limb.
Sitting Lotus ran for his life and did nothing but run for his life. He could hear the harpies above, their bone-jarring shrieks getting closer, ever closer. A flash of lightning blasted the world, and he saw winged shadows circling in the sky like monstrous half-human vultures. But these hell-birds would not wait until they were deceased to rip their eyes from their sockets and begin slurping away at their brains, sucking the Buddha-nature out of their skulls like consciousness-flavored smoothies.
Master Mirbodi made a quick right, cutting into the grassy field surrounding the Colonial Eden Magazine. Through the driving rain Sitting Lotus could barely see the roof of the conical building that in colonial times held the town's stash of weapons and emergency supplies.
“Head for Magazine, novice!” yelled Master Mirbodi.
“O . . . kay . . . Mas . . . ter,” wheezed Sitting Lotus through burning lungs.
The old monk grinned over at him as lightning flashed and lit the night to momentary daylight. Again, Sitting Lotus caught a glimpse of shadowy wings above, as well as leering bird-demon faces. He screamed soprano and refused to look anywhere but ahead, squinting against the downpour, which felt like pins and needles driving into his eyes.
There was the fence, not ten yards ahead! But how would they get over it? It was after hours, and the gate was closed, locked up for the night!
“Use Mind, novice, and jump,” called out a smiling Master Mirbodi, as if he had been listening in on the novice's thoughts. The Zen master's demeanor was that of a man out for a delightful evening jog rather than running for his life.
The fence was twelve feet high and made of crossed, sharpened stakes! If you missed by an inch, you'd disembowel yourself! And Sitting Lotus was no Olympian!
But there was no time to think about it.
So he leaped off his back foot and attained heights never before attained, debunking the age-old myth that white men can't jump. As he sailed over the stakes of disembowelment, he flung out his right hand and busted a pose like an NFL running back leaping over a hapless defender.
But then the hem of his robe caught on a stake. He heard a ripping sound, and felt himself falling . . .
Then he was lifted up, as if by an angel.
Master Mirbodi caught
Sitting Lotus like an oversized football and tucked the novice under his arm. A few seconds later, they were inside the Magazine.
Master Mirbodi slammed the door closed. He placed Sitting Lotus on the ground, then turned and threw the bolt across the heavy wooden door, the one entrance to the Magazine.
Sitting Lotus stood up on shaky legs. Over the drilling rain, he could hear harpies screeching and claws scratching at the outside of the building. Then came a pounding on the door like an army of redcloaks outside bashing its way in with a tree trunk. It was debatable how long this reproduction building could hold up under the barrage of a hundred angry harpies, but it wouldn't be long.
“Th-thank you, Master,” mumbled Sitting Lotus. “Y-you saved my life.”
Master Mirbodi waved off the comment. “No student of mine gonna be eaten by harpies. And we got no time for sobbing and 'boo-hoo-hoo'-ing about how you be better student from now on, so skip it.” He grabbed a candle and lit it with a puff of flame that ignited on the tip of his extended index finger. He handed the candle to Sitting Lotus, who alternated between ogling it and the Zen master's smoking digit.
Then there issued the eardrum-melting roar of some angry evil god directly behind them.
The Magazine shook with the ripping sound, and boxes of imitation swords and pikes and muskets clattered from the rickety shelves lining the walls to the floor. The moist air was suddenly injected with the noxious odor of rotting fish and brimstone, like some sort of watery hell.
Slowly, with raised candle, the novice turned around.
They shared the Magazine with a dragon.
A dragon with lots and lots of heads.
The beast took up a full three-quarters of the building, its bloated body stuffed into the place like a pickled egg in a tiny jar. It stared at Sitting Lotus with a dozen sets of beady, malevolent eyes set within reptilian visages. Acrid black smoke poured from its many sets of nostrils, which explained the dead fish and sulfur smell. A pair of horns gnarled up from each of its serpent heads. It boasted the spiked tail of a stegosaurus, swishing back and forth behind its bulk, as if about to lash out at those unfortunates who had interrupted it from doing whatever in the sixteen lesser hells it had been doing here in the Magazine.
“Keep mind free of fear, novice,” said Master Mirbodi.
Sitting Lotus gulped and tried to ignore the urge to open the door and bolt out into the harpy-filled night, which would pretty much blow the whole “keep-mind-free-of-fear” thing. Candlelight flickered across the redbrick walls of the Magazine as Sitting Lotus's hands shook.
Master Mirbodi stepped forward and bowed to the dragon, which looked taken aback. The Zen master smiled as he so often did and said, “Mistress Hydra, I honored by presence in humble town of Eden. I request assistance tonight, if you willing to help an old monk out.”
A couple of Hydra-heads roared and gnashed their fangs, but the rest looked back and forth at one another, as if unsure what to make of this monk standing before them so passively. Sitting Lotus's jaw dropped in astonishment at the words. Master Mirbodi floated towards the Hydra, some heads of which were beginning to look rather nervous.
“Master, I'm not sure that's such a good—”
“Shush, novice!”
Master Mirbodi hovered closer to the monster. A few writhing Hydra heads lowered to sniff at his patchwork robes. Master Mirbodi didn't even flinch and moved to beneath the creature's swollen green belly. He reached out a hand.
When he touched the Hydra's scales, the dragon seemed to relax. Its twenty-four pupils contracted, and its hardened heart could almost be heard to melt inside its swollen chest.
The dragon's many craniums proceeded to take turns preening and fawning over Master Mirbodi as if the old monk was the beast's long-lost dragon-son returned to Wyrmville after a thousand years of exile. The Hydra clucked and clicked like a mother hen, smoke puffing from its many sets of nostrils.
“What did you do to it, Master?” asked a mystified Sitting Lotus.
Hydra-heads swarming around him, the Zen master shrugged. “I just tell her I know who she is. I tell her I know how she suffer, and I tell her of end of suffering. She help us now.”
A moment of silence, then Sitting Lotus said, “Are you telling me you just converted the Hydra, a diabolical monster of ancient Greek mythology, to Buddhism?!”
Master Mirbodi smiled and rubbed a Hydra-head—which could have easily bitten the monk in half if so inclined—behind the ears. “Call it what you will, novice, call it what you will.”
“But how—” began Sitting Lotus.
His words were swallowed in sound as the wall of the Colonial Eden Magazine exploded inward.
Shattered bricks and debris rained down upon Sitting Lotus, and he dropped when something mushy and heavy smacked him in the back of the head. Stars blasted across his blackening vision as his face met the floor of the Magazine. He lay there, underneath the shattered wall, as harpy cries pierced the air of the Magazine like poisoned darts of death. The stench of the Hydra's breath was soon overpowered by the cadaverous reek that clung to the flying hellions.
Then the Hydra roared, the harpies shrieked, and chaos ensued.
His head hurting something fierce, Sitting Lotus crawled forth from underneath loose bricks, stood up on shaky feet, and looked around. The Hydra was attacking the harpies—and Master Mirbodi was hanging onto one of her necks like a dragon-rider at a rodeo in surrealist hell!
The Zen master was “yee-haw!”ing and “yip-yip-yip!”ing as he was flung this way and that, an ecstatic grin plastered on his face. Harpies crashed to the floor of the Magazine in droves and feathers flew in a whirlwind, like a flock of smelly, dirty geese had gone through a wood chipper. Harpies flailed to the ground, choking and gagging, hit by the Hydra's poison breath. Throbbing blacks veins appeared in bird-woman flesh and spread until their feathered gray bodies turned into charred ash.
When the harpies “died,” they dissipated into purplish mist like monsters in a video game, no trace of them left behind. Even when a harpy managed to get through the Hydra's defenses, there was no hope for total victory. Sitting Lotus saw one of the beasts sever a Hydra head with a well-aimed slash of the claw. When he looked up from the lifeless dragon-eyes, two more appendages sprouted from the Hydra's body, growing up from the wound like festering boils. In no time, the Hydra had thirteen heads instead of eleven and a gushing stump.
After a couple of minutes, it was over. Unfortunately, the stench remained behind after the harpies had dissipated into mist, but the beasts themselves were gone, hopefully screeching through the aether on their way back to Hades.
Clinging to a Hydra neck, Master Mirbodi said, “Hey, novice! Climb up here!”
“Do I have to? I have a serious aversion to fiends of hell.”
“Yes!”
Sitting Lotus sighed, walked around to the wide backside of the Hydra, and climbed up via the spikes lining the beast's thick, scaly tail. Master Mirbodi met him on the Hydra's expansive back, being lowered down like a serpent king by a Hydra head. The old monk grinned widely and gap-toothily.
“That some good fun there. You shoulda been up here with me, novice. Much better view of action. Too bad wall cave in on you and harpy tit hit you in head.”
“Ha, ha, ha. Yeah, too bad about that. And no thanks. I was just fine out of the way down there, quaking in my sandals and pissing myself with terror. Time to wash the ol' robes again, I guess. Thank Buddha it's raining. But the smell stays on 'em for a while. I have recent experience in these matters.”
Master Mirbodi regarded Sitting Lotus as though sizing him up for auction. “Fear binding chains, a mental formation that fetter you to so-called reality, keep you from realizing true nature of self and universe.”
“Well, be that as it may, it's hard not to be afraid when you're confronted by slavering flocks of mythical bird-fiends from ancient Greek hell.”
“Of course you gonna be afraid, novice. But it about recognizing that fe
ar, and not letting it control what you think or how you act, if you choose to act at all.”
Sitting Lotus remained silent, contemplative.
“Now we leaving,” said Master Mirbodi. “Better grab hold of Hydra neck and hang on tight if you wanna stay along for whole ride.”
“And where are we going now?”
Master Mirbodi grinned in particularly crazy fashion, even for him. “We gonna comb town of Eden for hellspawn, and when we find them I introduce them to new friend Hydra.”
“But of course,” said Sitting Lotus weakly. “I just hope she's not moving into the novice dormitories any time soon.” Grimacing, he grabbed ahold of a Hydra-neck and held on for his Buddha-blessed life as the monster rumbled into action.
The Hydra burst through the fence surrounding the Magazine and made its way into the storm and the heart of Eden, the monks riding it like a duo of dishrag-draped dragonknights.