by Pepe O'Neill
Across the street, Chamly saw a number of men sitting hunched over tables laughing and chatting as they played cards and gambled. He ran over and looked through a haze of cigarette smoke, but Monkey was not amongst them. Running back to Jade he said, ‘Can you remember what the men looked like?’
‘I remember one being bald, fat and very short. The other one was tall and thin with a black straggly beard.’ Jade replied crunching on another apple.
Using a fruit crate to climb on to Jade’s back, Chamly looked over the heads of the people in the market. On the far side, he saw two men fitting Jade’s description going down an alleyway. They were carrying a wicker basket between them.
‘I’ve seen them. Hurry!’ Chamly yelled, and sat down on Jade’s back.
‘Can’t it wait? I haven’t finished these apples.’
‘No! Monkey needs our help now!’
‘I thought Monkey was supposed to be helping us, not us helping him? Fat use he is,’ retorted Jade sarcastically.
Under Chamly’s guidance, Jade trotted around the edge of the market and into the narrow alleyway. There was no sign of the two men.
‘They’re around here somewhere. Look, there’s another alleyway at the end of this one, hurry,’ Chamly shouted.
Jade galloped into the alleyway and reared to a standstill, hooves cutting the air. Two pairs of startled eyes stared up at him. The men dropped the wicker basket and ran.
Chamly slid down and undid the basket straps. Opening the lid, he found Monkey lying fast asleep, curled round an empty wine bottle.
‘Oi! Monkey! Wake up!’ Chamly yelled, kicking the basket.
Monkey moaned. His voice slurred, he cried out angrily, ‘Shut the lid! Can’t a monkey get some sleep around here?’
‘Out of the way Chamly!’ Jade ordered.
Chamly stepped aside. Jade turned and hit the wicker basket hard with one of his back hooves. It careered down the alleyway and crashed against a wall. Monkey fell out on impact. The bottle followed, hitting his head in passing.
He moaned loudly and rubbed his head. Giving Jade a filthy look, he muttered, ‘That was completely unnecessary.’
Jade rolled his eyes. ‘You deserved it, Monkey. Chamly has been frantic with worry.’
‘Ever heard of a power nap you sorry excuse for a quadruped.’
‘Ooooh! Listen to him. Reached Q in the dictionary, have you?’ Jade asked cynically. ‘Never thought you’d get past P for plonk myself!’
‘Stop it you two. How am I ever to survive and reach the Cave of the Ancient Dragon if we don’t all work together? We need each other. Those men were kidnapping you, Monkey,’ Chamly explained impatiently. ‘They obviously saw that you had the potential to earn them a lot of cash and were taking you away in that basket!’
‘Well they wouldn’t have got very far once I’d come to my senses!’
‘Monkey you were out cold. You could have slept for hours! Come on, get up and let’s get out of here. Celeste will be waiting for us at the East Gate.’
Little did they know as they trotted back towards the market, that the two men had turned round and were now tailing them. Overhearing Chamly mention of the East Gate, the small fat man turned to his friend. ‘We can ambush them outside the city gates. What do you think?’
The tall thin man scratched the lice in his hair and agreed. They managed to climb on to a bus just as it was leaving the curb and got to the outskirts of the city before Chamly.
Chamly was relieved when they passed under the archway to see Celeste flying towards them. As he did so, two men ran out of the shadows interrupting Celeste’s glide towards her companions. Clumsily, she rose back into the air and circled above them. She was horrified to see Chamly desperately using his legs to ward off both men as they tried to pull Monkey from Jade.
Flying straight at the taller man, Celeste flung herself at his head, pecking and clawing at his face. With blood pouring from his wounds, he fell to the ground.
Jade reared back on his hind legs, knocking the fat man to the ground. The crack of the man’s arm could be clearly heard as Jade’s front legs came crashing down.
Jade galloped away from the city walls with the screams of both men ringing in his ears and Celeste berating them for being late.
Chapter 36
THE TOMB OF
EMPEROR QIN SHIHUANG
Leaving the city behind them, Jade fly-galloped east over a flat and featureless land until they came to another pyramid shaped hill. Here Chamly and Monkey climbed down and stretched their legs.
Chamly walked a little way round the base of the hill and then stopped suddenly. ‘Monkey! I’ve found some steps. They seem to go all the way to the top.’
‘I thought I’d seen this place before,’ Monkey sighed and sat down on the bottom step. ‘It’s the tomb of the Emperor Qin Shihuang. If you remember your history, he founded the dynasty that unified China in 221 BC. I haven’t got fond memories of him or of the tomb. It took seven hundred thousand slaves to build this tomb and many perished during its construction. On his death, he refused to accompany the Spirit of Venus into the heavens without all his treasures and army. He gave the Spirit quite a hefty thump on the head and sent him on his way. The Jade Emperor was furious when he saw the Spirit’s injuries and sent me down to deal with the upstart. I’m sorry to say that I failed completely and almost got killed. I returned to the Jade Emperor and told him that the man had refused to budge from his tomb and was protecting himself with lethal weapons. I recommended that he should be incarcerated in the tomb and the Jade Emperor agreed. As far as I know, he’s still in there.’
Chamly sat down beside him and said, with a slight shiver, ‘In there, as in dead and rotten or in there, as in roaming about inside?’
‘Oh, he’s still roaming about inside. You stay with Jade a minute while I go and investigate.’
Monkey scampered halfway up the steps. Crouching down, he lifted one of the rock-facings from the front of a step and placed it to one side. He disappeared through the gap.
Chamly’s curiosity got the better of him and he ran up after Monkey. Looking through the gap, he saw another set of stairs descending steeply into the belly of the tomb. In the shadows beneath, soldiers stood to attention each holding a vicious looking weapon. Chamly drew back quickly.
When there was no sound of pounding feet ascending the stairs he took a chance and looked again. He gave a sigh of relief as he realised that all the statues were made of clay.
He called out loudly. ‘Monkey?’ and waited. When there was no answer, he began to climb down.
‘Don’t move!’ a girl shouted. Chamly stopped, his heart pounding. He looked up to see the same pale girl who had appeared from nowhere at the orchard. Standing at the top of the steps, she was highlighted by a single moonbeam. Chamly was so surprised to see her that he found he could say nothing. His knees gave way and he sat down with a thud.
At that moment, Monkey’s head appeared beside him, forcing him to look away from the girl.
‘You could have got yourself killed just then!’ Monkey said angrily.
‘I was getting worried,’ said Chamly finding his voice, ‘but that girl up there stopped me. What are you both making a fuss about?’
Monkey looked up. ‘I don’t see anyone? Either you were hallucinating or it was your guardian angel.’
Chamly was about to argue the point, but Monkey stopped him. ‘Well, whatever it was, it saved you from a barrage of arrows! There are hundreds of special crossbows designed to trigger automatically when an intruder enters the tomb. If you’d gone down the stairs, you would have triggered the mechanical weaponry and you’d now be looking like a particularly prickly porcupine. I swung along the ceiling using what handholds I could find until I found the emperor. He was so happy to see me! He begs to be allowed out of the tomb. The cries of his miserable concubines and all the people involved in building his tomb are giving him terrible headaches. They were all buried alive with him so that no one
would know of the tombs’ secrets. I’ll inform the Spirit of Venus of the emperor’s dramatic change of heart and confirm that he’s ready to give up all his worldly goods. Not that the emperor will make it to the higher heavens. That would be too much for those of his victims who are already up there.’
‘What victims?’ Chamly asked.
Monkey sighed. ‘He was a great man with great vision but his armies killed thousands when they seized the land and unified China. The innocent got caught in the middle and many were tortured and killed quite horribly. To keep his power and wealth, he had the Great Wall of China built. Thousands were whipped and starved whilst building it. Basically, his history as an earthling is not ver …...’
‘HHHHHHHSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.’
Chapter 37
THE BARBARIANS
The she demon was poised at the bottom of the outer steps ready to strike. Jade was nowhere to be seen.
‘Quick!’ Monkey shouted pulling Chamly into the tomb. ‘There’s another entrance. Follow me. We’re going to have to escape via the ceiling. Hang on to the sculpted stars and hope they’ll support your weight.’
The she demon’s head appeared through the gap in the stairs. Her fork-tipped tongue whipped around inside the tomb, but failed to locate Chamly hanging inches above. Without thinking she slid further down the inner steps. Click. A hundred arrows pierced her scales. Screaming in agony, she painfully retreated.
His arms and shoulders searing with pain, Chamly swung slowly from one star to the next across the galaxy hanging from the ceiling of the tomb. The pain became so intense that he had almost decided he’d rather let go and rush plummeting to his death when his feet found a ledge. As he collapsed with relief, Monkey swung down beside him, ‘Well done! I forgot you weren’t a monkey. Fair dues to you! Not many people could have done that. Luckily the emperor did you a favour when he decided he wanted to have a few mountains in his tomb.’
Chamly looked over the ledge and peered down into the tomb. Thin glimmers of light showed the interior of a palace surrounded by courtyards and gardens where clay statues of soldiers, courtiers, musicians, acrobats, cranes, ducks, horses and pets stood as if caught mid movement, while around them glittered a myriad of priceless objects. Chamly gasped in wonder when he saw streams of silver flowing through the beautiful sculpted gardens, ‘Is that really silver Monkey?’
‘ ’Fraid not, Chamly, it’s mercury and highly toxic. All the men that built these rivers and pools in this tomb died an agonising death coughing up blood and rotting from the inside out. Which reminds me, lets get out of here. Here’s the other opening.’
The other opening was a hole in the sculpted mountain, wide enough for Chamly to crawl through and he followed Monkey out of the tomb.
Scrambling down the hill they startled Jade who was quietly eating away at the weeds without a care in the world.
‘Get us out of here Jade! The she demon’s on the other side of the hill,’ Monkey yelled, jumping on to Jade’s back.
‘Jade do this, Jade do that, Jade go here! Jade go there! Does it ever occur to you Monkey that I might just occasionally, appreciate being asked politely to tender my services,’ said Jade as he knelt to allow Chamly to get on board.
On the other side of the hill, the she demon sat on the steps outside the tomb whimpering as she pulled the arrows from her scales. Her body had never faced such an attack before. It hurt! For some reason her wounds were not healing despite the transformations. It was time to bring in reinforcements. It had only been pure chance that had led her to the last Chosen One three thousand years ago. Since then, it had been her evil that had reigned supreme over the world and she was not going to relinquish control that easily. Those three thousand years had passed far too quickly for her liking. She recalled the map on the wall of the monastery. She knew from past experience that once the Chosen One had been to the Cave of the Ancient Dragon he would be asked to go west again.
Then she remembered the tomb and began to feel just a little bit better. The discovery of Emperor Qin’s tomb, albeit painful, now meant she had a bargaining chip with the lost spirits’ of the barbarians. Whilst alive, these barbarians had swarmed down from the north raiding and slaughtering thousands of helpless villagers. The Emperor Qin put a stop to this by ordering his armies to hunt them down and kill all they found. The ghosts of the barbarians remained eager for revenge. Cackling, she resealed the tomb and slid down the stairs. Still in pain, she hurried northwest where it was known the barbarians roamed.
Finding them easily enough, she informed their leader that she had found the tomb of the Emperor Qin and that, if he and his men helped her, she would tell them where it was.
At first they laughed at her, asking her what use such information was to them when the emperor’s spirit was in the heavens.
‘But he’s not you idiots!’ she screeched. ‘The Jade Emperor incarcerated the emperor in his tomb when he refused to leave his treasures behind!’
The barbarians muttered amongst themselves. ‘If you are lying,’ their leader threatened, fixing the she demon with a look as steady as her own, ‘we will hunt you down. Now, tell us how we can help you.’
‘Spread your men out across this desert. They are to remain at their post until one of them spots a boy with a donkey and monkey. When they see them, they must light a fire to warn me of their whereabouts before pursuing him. I want to set up an ambush. You do not have enough men to do that as well,’ said the she demon, thinking of all the monkey soldiers that attacked her, ‘but I know where to find some more. You spread out your men. I’ll do the rest.’
As she sped away, the leader gathered his men around him and told them what the she demon wanted in return for the body of Emperor Qin. What he did not know, and that the she demon had deliberately failed to tell him, was that the she demon was intending to get her extra men from Chiyou, whom the barbarians had reason to hate more than they hated the emperor.
Chapter 38
SANDY HELPS OUT
After several hours of fly-galloping, Jade stopped for a rest beside a waterfall. While he munched away on the juicy grasses, Chamly and Monkey settled down to have a picnic by the waters edge with the supplies Chamly had bought from the market.
Suddenly Sandy’s golden head appeared beside them. ‘Surprise!’ he called out.
Monkey laughed. ‘Why are you here, Sandy? I thought you would be down in Turtle House for life.’
‘I’m here because several Celestial Dragons came to see me yesterday and asked me to assist you down the river to the Cave of the Ancient Dragon. Of course, I didn’t hesitate. This is the same river where we met before, in case you hadn’t realised, so it was quite easy to find you again. I found my love by the way. She’s so happy that she wants you to forget about her wish to become human. Come on. Hop on so that I can give you a lift down river.’
‘Hey! Not so fast. You’re narrower than Turtle. How is Jade going to stand on you?’ Chamly asked.
‘He’s not,’ Sandy said, looking apologetically at Jade. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to lie across my back and have your legs dangling in the water either side Jade. As for you two, you can sit piggy back.’
‘How long am I going to have stay like that? Jade wailed. ‘It will be like lying on needles.’
‘Ooh, stop complaining Jade,’ said Sandy impatiently as he manoeuvred his great body along the side of the riverbank. ‘If it’s that awful, why don’t you fly-gallop? I know you’d get there before us but you could have a sleep, a bit of grub and we’d meet you at the cave. You might find it a bit more, um, dignified.’
‘Oh yes very dignified,’ said Jade huffily putting his front legs over Sandy’s back and gently easing his soft stomach down on to the bony ridge. ‘Nothing more dignified than standing around, alone, at night, by the cave of a dragon, waiting to be fried to a crisp is there? Or if I’m really lucky and avoid attention of the dragon I can always look forward to being devoured by a she demon! No thank you. I�
�d rather live a laughing stock than die admired by all.’
Chamly and Monkey wedged themselves between Sandy’s fins and Sandy set off. Every time they passed a boat, Sandy would duck his head and tail in the water so that none of the boatmen realised that they were passing a dragon. It would only be later that the boatmen would wonder how a large donkey, a monkey and a boy had managed to stay afloat on such a shallow craft.
All day, Sandy navigated the Yellow River, passing smogladen cities spilling into fields of cabbages and rice.
Celeste flew down as the day was waning and perched between Sandy’s ears. Sighing with relief she said, ‘I’m glad I’ve found you. I was beginning to fear the she demon had got to you and gobbled you up. I lost her hours ago.’
‘We’ve seen her, Celeste. We had the pleasure of her company yesterday at Emperor Qin’s tomb.’
‘Oh really! I’ll go back and check out her whereabouts. Toodle doo,’ she called as she flew off again.
She did not return until Sandy had swum to a point where the river was enclosed on either side by steep white cliffs. Celeste perched between Sandy’s ears and made her report. She had scouted all the way back to the tomb and had seen no sign of the she demon. Fortunately they were nearing their destination. She stayed perched on Sandy until he had reached a wooded area. ‘We’re here!’ she called out in relief, and flew to the nearest branch.
Sandy manoeuvred himself to the edge of the bank.
‘Thank Heavens for that!’ Jade snapped and levered himself off. ‘I hope I never have to do that again!’
Sandy started to weep profusely as Chamly and Monkey got off and said their good-byes. ‘I’m going to have to cheer myself up,’ he wailed. ‘I know! I’ll go and make White Turtle a necklace. Further down the river is a place deep below the water that has the most beautiful pearls in the world. It will cheer me up making a necklace for her. Farewell my friends, I do hope we meet again, I really do.’