by F. C. Yee
I winced. The last threat level more frightening than Quentin had been Red Boy, the demon with enough firepower to raze an entire city. Red Boy had nearly smelted Quentin and me into stone and iron. Only a lot of luck and an alley-oop from the Goddess of Mercy had seen us through.
By now Guanyin’s numerical entry on the phone had reached robotic speeds. Her fingers were a blur. The hardware itself glowed incandescently, the plastic staying solid through temperatures that could have fried an egg. I could tell that powerful magics were being wrought through this mundane device.
Suddenly, she stopped.
Guanyin withdrew her hand carefully, like she’d put the final touch on a house of cards. Our connection was tenuous, almost explosive.
“Wai?” she said.
An airburst of static knocked the wax out of my ears. “KSHHHHHHHHai? Wai? Miaoshan?”
It was a woman’s voice on the other end. She sounded older than Guanyin. Rounder and less melodic.
“Mama,” Guanyin said. “Shi wo. Ta ren zai nali?”
Noticing my confusion, she pressed the mute button. “The Queen Mother of the West,” Guanyin explained. “Not my actual mother.”
I had done some basic god research since becoming the Shouhushen. Not a lot, but some. The person we were speaking to was the highest-ranking female member of the celestial pantheon. The Hera to us all.
“Miaoshan!” the queen said, using what must have been a pet name for Guanyin. “I don’t hear your voice for so long and you don’t ask how I’m doing? Just ‘where are the others?’ What happened to you on Earth? Did you lose your manners down a pit? One of those recycling cans I’ve heard about? Did you recycle your manners?”
Guanyin’s eyes rolled up like drapes. “Mama, I’m sorry but I can’t talk right now. You have to put me on with the others. It’s important.”
“So this is how it is,” the voice on the other end wailed. “She doesn’t even want to speak to me anymore. She pretends I don’t exist to my face. Aiyaaa . . .”
The lamentations went on and on, but it sounded like the queen was functioning through them. In fact, it sounded like she was walking to a different room and taking along whatever communication terminal she was using. I didn’t know what the metaphysical layout of the Heavenly Palace looked like, but right now I was imagining a small ranch house. We’d called the outdated cordless phone in the den.
“My other girls aren’t so busy with their work that they can’t spare a moment to talk to me,” the queen bemoaned to no one in particular, but intentionally loud enough that we could still hear. “Where did I go wrong with this one?”
“She sure sounds like your actual mother,” I whispered to Guanyin.
The Goddess of Mercy gave me a look so dirty that Quentin had to roll his chair back from the table. But I resisted it without flinching. There were only so many times she could do that to me without me getting used to it.
Suddenly the background noise coming from the conference phone changed in pitch from the echoes of a small domicile to the roar of a cavernous stadium. This new location was large enough to house hundreds or even thousands of voices, all of which were jabbering away simultaneously. The Queen Mother had stepped into the palace auditorium.
The ringing of a gong shoved its way through the background chatter. I’d heard such an unearthly bronze din once before, and it had announced the Jade Emperor’s presence. I expected to hear his over-salivated voice. Instead there was another familiar speaker in his place.
“I call this emergency meeting to order,” the Great White Planet said. “Order! Come to order!”
It took several more insistent gong strikes to tamp down the side conversations. Substitute teachers had it hard.
“If I could be allowed to finish my statement,” the Great White Planet said. “Yes, it is true that the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea has been defeated.”
“Ao Guang should have his spleen roasted for dereliction of duty!” roared a god that I’d never heard before. “There is no room for cowardice among Guardians!”
“Respectfully, Thunderer Lei Gong,” the Great White Planet said. “Ao Guang made the difficult decision to perform a tactical retreat with his few remaining survivors. He can’t be faulted for his actions in the face of an overpowering force.”
That bit of sympathy made me not hate the Great White Planet as much as I did in person. Maybe he was a fairer judge than I’d given him credit for.
“Furthermore, we have confirmed that the source of demon qi is shifting between the Blissful Planes and moving closer to Heaven as we speak,” he said. “Earth lies directly in its path.”
“How long until it arrives at Heaven’s doorstep?” a sibilant, aristocratic voice inquired. “Perhaps we can buy time by sacrificing the lesser realms of existence. If the foe is demonic in nature, it might sate its hunger on a kingdom’s worth of humans. Or two.”
Man, eff this guy, I thought. I had long been accustomed to Heaven looking down on Earth, but it had never thrown us mortals under the bus so blatantly before.
“Respectfully, Immortal Zhenyuan,” the Great White Planet sighed. “I suggest we take action before humanity is needlessly wiped out.”
“We can’t do that without the Jade Emperor’s blessing?” Lei Gong yelled. “Why are we holding these proceedings without him?”
“Because!” the Great White Planet yelled back, losing his patience with the interruptions. “When I went to request his presence, I found a barrier spell the likes of which I’ve never seen before placed over the gates to his personal keep! He’s locked himself inside and won’t come out!”
The gathering of gods exploded into chaos. They’d been abandoned by their leader. As far as I could tell, the ranting and screaming from the other end of the line encompassed all five stages of grief, delivered at maximum volume. Quentin gave a sharp bark of laughter, the kind of noise you might make if you saw your nemesis trample over an elderly person to get into the last lifeboat on a sinking ship. Guanyin merely closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, trying to meditate the painful inanity of the world away.
“Wow,” I said. I could say little else. “These are the folks upstairs, huh?” I had often wondered how the spiritual sausage got made, and now that I was witnessing it firsthand, I was finding it as unappealing as I’d imagined.
“Try dealing with this on the regular,” Guanyin said. “For centuries.”
Right when the racket took on an extra flavor of panic, the Great White Planet decided he’d had enough. Instead of more gonging, sharp wooden cracks ricocheted through the air. I knew that sound from close-up experience. He was smacking his staff on the ground as hard as he could, using it as a gavel.
“That settles it!” the old man roared with surprising force. “I’ve held back on this for far too long! By the power vested in me by the celestial foundations of Heaven and the fundamental laws that drive the workings of the Universe, I declare a Mandate Challenge!”
At the words “Mandate Challenge,” there was a pulse of invisible energy in the hall of the gods. I could tell, because it happened in the room I was sitting in, too. It felt like a sudden elevation change, a shortness of breath. The lightbulbs flickered. I wondered if seismographs could detect qi.
The other end of the line went dead quiet. I looked at Guanyin and Quentin. Guanyin let out a focused, interminable breath through her pursed lips. Quentin, on the other hand, was manically excited and had to cover his grin with his fist.
“What’s a Mandate Challenge?” I whispered. “What does it mean?”
Quentin hit the mute button. “It means the biggest friggin’ opportunity in existence,” he said. “The Great White Planet just called out the Jade Emperor for not handling his duties in a time of crisis. He’s declaring that the Throne of Heaven is officially up for grabs.”
When the Great White Planet visited, I thought the old god had only been talking about the Jade Emperor’s mandate to rule Heaven as a cautionary tale. To warn me extra
hard against messing up on Earth. The conversation wasn’t supposed to play out for real. For a moment I felt the lightness in my spine that happened any time I watched raffle winners being drawn, even when I hadn’t entered. Technically anything could happen from here on out. Timelines were branching off in droves.
“So what happens next?” I said. “Does every god in that room, like, battle-royale it out? Last deity standing wins?”
Guanyin gave me a look of distaste for my violent suggestion. “No,” she said. “It’s less of a tournament and more of a quest. Candidates are elected by the assembled pantheon and head out to defeat whatever evil is threatening the cosmic order. The Great White Planet goes along and judges their performance. Whichever god acquits themselves the best in his eyes becomes the next ruler of Heaven.”
Guanyin explained in a tone that let me know exactly what she thought of this method of determining regime change. Boys and their games. “It’s that simple?” I asked.
“It’s how the Jade Emperor got the job in the first place,” Quentin said. “A long time ago, an ultra-powerful demon threatened Heaven, so he meditated for a billion years until he was strong enough to defeat it. Or so the story goes.”
Huh. That was a far cry from the image I had of the Jade Emperor as a do-nothing windbag. A deep, rhythmic drumming broke the silence coming from the other end of the line. It started low and steady, a primal chant, and grew louder and louder.
“As I have witnessed the mandate pass before, so shall I witness the mandate pass now!” The Great White Planet was really picking up momentum, casting off the mantle of Hobbit Gandalf and going full-blown Lord of the Rings Gandalf. The windows of our conference room vibrated with force. “Gods of Tian! Name thy warriors!”
“Prince Nezha!” someone cried out, timing themselves with the drumbeats. The name was picked up enthusiastically by the assembly. “Nezha! Nezha! Nezha!”
The gods shouted with hypnotic unity, a sharp contrast to how disorganized they were before. This was serious business, like European soccer.
“Wow, they like this Nezha guy a lot,” I said. “Who is he?”
“Front-runner,” Quentin said. “He’s young, popular, enough of a traditionalist that he won’t rock the boat. Kind of bland, if you ask me.” Quentin seemed impatient, as if he were waiting for the good part of a movie.
The calling for Nezha made way for a single voice, high and clear. I assumed it was the nominee.
“Thank you, my friends,” Nezha said, the drums backing his speech. “I swear upon my own bones that I will never let harm come to Heaven!”
We had to wait a while for another round of cheers to die down. “Who else is worthy of the mandate?” the Great White Planet said.
“Guan Yu!” a group in the back roared simultaneously, as if they’d rehearsed it. “Guan Yu! Guan Yu!”
Quentin whooped so loud it hurt my ear. He did a full flip out of his chair, bumped a dusty ceiling panel loose, and landed back down in his seat butt-first. The impact burst the compressed air out of the height-adjustment column.
“Take it down a notch,” I hissed at Quentin. “What’s the big deal?” To me the name Guan Yu was associated with the red-faced, bearded man whose image was kept in the shrines of shopkeepers and restaurants. My parents had a small shrine of Guan Yu they’d placed behind the counter of their furniture store. I never understood what he was supposed to do, because he certainly never brought them luck.
“Guan Yu is the warrior god of integrity, brotherhood, and righteousness,” Quentin said. “He works hard and parties harder. He’d make a great King of Heaven.”
Judging by the crowd, Guan Yu had a smaller but equally fanatical cheering section. If this were a stadium, then Guan Yu was the favorite of the ultras and hooligans. Quentin pounded loudly on the table in support, as if they could hear him.
I waited for the god to step up and acknowledge his selection, but instead the applause petered out to an awkward silence.
“Where is Guan Yu?” whispered the Great White Planet to someone standing nearby, using the drums as cover.
“He skipped out because he ‘hates meetings,’” Nezha muttered. “The last I saw, he was in the training pavilion drinking wine and seeing how many boulders he could smash with his forehead.”
Oh dear. I was beginning to see why Quentin liked this guy.
Instead of naming more names, the split crowd shouted for their respective champions, forming two unyielding blocs. The Great White Planet hammered away with his staff until a semblance of order returned.
“All right then!” the Great White Planet shouted over the low-level buzz of background excitement. “It seems like our two candidates are obvious. Now, in accordance with my sworn duty, I declare that—”
I jammed my finger against the unmute button and leaned as close as I could to the mouthpiece of the bridge.
“I nominate Guanyin,” I said.
13
I could only guess at what the crowd reaction was in the glorious hall of Heaven. Because the two divine beings sitting in this office conference room with me right now were so mortified that their lifespans could have been shortened to a fruit fly’s.
Quentin stared at me, his jaw slack and his eyes swimming with disbelief. His chair had been rolling to the side at the moment of my interruption, and he was too shocked to stop its motion. He gently traveled across the room until his armrest hit the wall next to him.
Guanyin, surprisingly, was even worse off. She looked like I’d taken a battering ram to her stomach. Her skin became pale and wan before my very eyes. At this rate she would fade to nothingness soon, chalk washed away by the rain.
The Great White Planet interrupted the toxic cloud of silence with a cough.
“I’m sorry, who is this?” he said.
Normally I wasn’t good at improvisation, or old-timey declarative speak, but right now my voice had never been steadier in my life. The words came pouring out of my mouth like I’d been born to say them.
“I am the Shouhushen Eugenia Lo Pei-Yi, Divine Guardian of the Protectorate of California on Earth, Former and Current Ruyi Jingu Bang, Slayer of Demons, and Conqueror of Red Boy and the traitor Erlang Shen,” I said. “And you damn well heard me the first time. I nominate Guanyin, Goddess of Mercy, to be considered for the mandate.”
Nezha didn’t realize he was on a hot mic. “Can she do that?” he whispered to the Great White Planet.
“The Jade Emperor hasn’t officially been kicked off his chair yet,” I answered before anyone else could. “I still hold his mandate to possess dominion over the spirits on Earth. That’s an entire plane I’m the boss of. My word counts as much as any god. Or goddess.”
I wasn’t sure any of what I said was true. It likely wasn’t. But if there was ever a time for me to go all-in on a bluff, it was now. The slight twinge of hypocrisy I felt for using the power of the Jade Emperor’s name, when I openly thought he sucked, vanished so quickly as to never have existed. I had to use the tools at hand.
The shock on the other end of the line was so great there wasn’t any outcry from the collected gods. The Great White Planet took the opportunity to try and downplay the situation.
“My dear, ah, with all due respect to the Lady of Mercy, she is not exactly suited to the risks of this endeavor,” he said. “You heard me before when I said we face a great force of destruction. Mandate Challenges involve much conflict. Violence!”
I rolled my eyes. Guanyin was twice as useful in combat as me or Quentin. She’d carried us in that brawl with Red Boy and Erlang Shen harder than Superman propping up the Wonder Twins. I took the Great White Planet’s feeble protest as a sign that I was winning. He was resorting to concern-trolling.
“If it’s necessary, Sun Wukong, Great Sage Equaling Heaven, and I can provide physical support toward her cause,” I said. “He and I aren’t gods, so we shouldn’t count against the party limit.” Or so I imagined.
The Great White Planet took a bit of time ge
tting down from the petard I’d hoisted him by. “We need to deliberate this,” he said. “Such a matter can’t be taken lightly.”
Double standard much? I thought, given that the other nominees were made official by screaming really loudly. I was going to say so too, but we got disconnected. From our end. By a long, delicate finger, attached to the person I’d just declared fit to rule over all of creation.
“Quentin, give us ten minutes outside,” Guanyin said while staring at me.
Quentin didn’t take his eyes off me either. He got up from his seat without protest at being ordered around, frowning at me the whole while in case I made any sudden moves. It was like I’d turned into a live rattlesnake in front of him.
The click of the door shutting was the only sound. Guanyin waited for a few moments to pass before letting the blood rush back into her face.
I smiled at her. “You can thank me lat—”
The Goddess of Mercy screamed, leaped over the table, and tackled me straight into the conference room door.
The hinges popped off and we landed in the open layout of the office cubicles. I tried to crawl away from Guanyin, but she grabbed my ankle and pulled my lower half off the floor. We flailed away, wheelbarrowing, until she flipped me over and jumped on my chest. She was still screaming at the top of her lungs. We both were.
I knew what someone trying to kill me felt like, and this wasn’t that. This was off somehow. Unfamiliar. Guanyin’s hands needed to be higher on my throat if she really wanted to choke me to death.
“YOU IDIOT!” she screeched. She mashed my face to the side with the heel of her hand, hoping to friction-burn my cheek against the cheap carpeting. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done!?”
I could speak with only the tips of my lips. “Ge of ee!”
I groped around for a weapon and found a dry erase marker. I flicked the cap off with my thumb and scribbled furiously over her face, but the marker was so old and dehydrated that nothing came out.
As Guanyin bit my fingers, I felt that strange sensation again. Separate from the pain of her teeth sinking into my skin. I kicked up and flipped her over my head, sending her tumbling into a cubicle, but she anchored herself with a fistful of my hair.