by Pepe O'Neill
‘Yuck! Celeste. Did you really need to do that?’
‘Better safe than sorry! Pick up the sword, Chamly. The she demon won’t be bothering us again. Look! Her body is already disintegrating into dust.’
‘Chamly?’
They both jumped as his name echoed around the cavern walls.
Chapter 50
THE REUNION
The purple gown of the Mother of the Western Skies glistened in the beams of light as she walked towards them.
‘Your bravery is commendable. Sakyamüni chose well, when he chose you. Your success in bringing the Sword of Victory and the Stone of Peace to this cave has allowed the process of freeing the world from suffering to begin. With guidance, good will prevail over evil and any regression towards the past will be unacceptable. You’ve done the world a favour by killing the she demon. One could never feel quite safe with her around, even if stripped of all her powers. You are the Chosen and now the Enlightened one, Chamly. Equality, compassion and peace must prevail if the world is to have a chance to survive. Use the knowledge you have gained wisely and you will become a great leader of men. Now pick up the sword and do me the honour of placing it and the Stone of Peace on this, the most sacred of earthly rocks. When laid side by side, they equal each other in strength and weakness as required by the Void of Dao.’
Humbled by the Mother of the Western Skies words, Chamly untied the baby horse from around his neck and placed both it and the sword on the smooth glassy surface of the rock. He felt saddened that he had to part from them and turned to ask the Mother of the Western Skies if this was the end of his quest, but she was no longer standing beside him. He peered through the beams of light searching the shadows of the cave for her. ‘Mother of the Western Skies?’ he called out. There was only silence.
He was startled by the sound of rock scraping heavily against rock and he crouched low on the ground waiting to see what would happen next.
Suddenly sunlight streamed into the cave and Monkey and Jade stood outlined before him.
‘How did you get up here?’ Chamly cried out in amazement and stumbled to his feet.
‘We could have saved you the trouble of being yanked up the mountainside, but it was ordained that you should come in by that particular entrance,’ Monkey replied. ‘We just used the front door!’
‘Well I certainly haven’t had an easy time of it I can tell you. The she demon followed us in you know.’
‘Where is she?’ Monkey said hurriedly.
‘Dead. I speared her right through the heart. She just dissolved into dust after Celeste gobbled up her heart. Look, that’s all that’s left of her.’
A gust of wind blew through the entrance of the cave blowing the dust into nothingness.
‘Is this the end of my quest, Monkey?’
‘Of course not! For you it is only the beginning. But I’m afraid Jade and I must report back to the Jade Emperor and that might take quite a while. Celeste is waiting to take you back to your mother.’
Confused, Chamly grabbed Monkey’s shoulder. ‘But she’s dead. Are you saying I’m dead too?’
Monkey sighed impatiently and replied, ‘Go and find out for yourself.’
Taken aback, Chamly glanced back at the sword and stone lying on the rock. Already the whole adventure was beginning to seem unreal. Was he really going to see his mother again? Shading his eyes from the glare of the sun, he stumbled out of the cave.
Celeste was perched on a boulder waiting for him.
‘What’s this about my mother, Celeste? Monkey says she’s alive.’
‘Look down there, Chamly,’ she lifted her claw and pointed to a lake far below them.
In the shallow waters, a woman had thrown her net and was now gathering it in. He couldn’t believe it. It was his mother, and he could see that she had caught a large, sparkling, flapping fish.
Behind him, the cave’s entrance closed quietly. Chamly spun around when he heard the now familiar click. Before him, invisible to all but the most searching of eyes was a hairline crack in the rock face.
‘Monkey! Jade!’ he shouted through the fissure.
‘It’s okay Chamly,’ Monkey called back. ‘We’re still here. We are just waiting for the cloud mobile to turn up.’
‘How long do you reckon you’ll be with the Jade Emperor?’
‘Depends on how long his wine lasts! If I remember correctly, he told Kuan Yin that he was going to make me Chief Wine Maker.’
‘What about you, Jade?’ Can’t you stay with me?’ Chamly asked in desperation, concerned he would never see his friends again.
‘I wish I could Chamly,’ Jade wailed on the other side of the rock, ‘but when the Jade Emperor wants to see you, you’ve got to go whether you like it or not. I just hope he doesn’t turn me into a dragon again!’
‘The cloud mobile’s here Chamly,’ Monkey shouted. ‘We’ve got to go.’
‘Wait! Don’t leave me,’ Chamly pleaded, beating his fists against the rock face.
There was no reply.
‘Open the cave, Celeste,’ he pleaded.
When there was no reply from her, he turned to see that she too had flown off.
Having been abandoned by his friends, it was not long before Chamly’s feet were crunching over the pebbles at the lake’s edge. His mother had yet to see him.
‘Mum,’ he shouted, to get her attention.
It was a voice she recognised but could not believe she was hearing. She dropped her net in surprise. It started floating away as she stood in the water, dumb struck at the sight of her son. ‘Chamly? Is that really you?’ she cried out.
Quickly gathering up the net, his mother waded out of the water. Flinging it to the ground she put her arms about him and burst into tears. ‘I knew you weren’t killed in that bus accident. I just knew it! No one would believe me.’
Chamly clung to his mother tightly. ‘I thought you were dead. I saw you going over the edge with the bus. How did you survive?’
His mother laughed and hugged him again. ‘Like you I was thrown from the window, but unlike you, I landed on a ledge far below in the crevasse. I was knocked unconscious in the fall and would have died of exposure if I hadn’t been found quickly. The army was putting a temporary bridge across the broken road and heard my cries. Several days later I came out of hospital and went back home to the flat. I thought you might be there, but no one had seen you. I managed to get another bus ticket on the black market and came straight back up here, thinking you had managed to get to your aunt’s instead. Everyone thought I was mad and didn’t believe me when I said I’d seen you lying on the ground just before the bus went over the edge. Everyone else was killed you see. I’ve been frantic with worry thinking that you must have wandered off into the desert, dazed from the accident. I’ve had search parties out looking for you for weeks. Where have you been, Chamly?’
Before he could answer, the shrill ring from a telephone broke the peace and his mother pulled a mobile phone from her pocket.
‘Hi Naiwin…Guess who’s here?………No, it’s Chamly!… …I’m serious, sis, he’s standing right here…….No, I don’t know where he’s been……We haven’t had time to talk about it. I’ll bring him home…Yes, he looks as if he could do with something to eat……..Bye.’
She replaced the phone in her pocket and gave Chamly another hug. ‘What do you think of this place?’ she asked as she bent down to roll up her net. ‘In these last weeks it has come to be my home again. I remember it being a great place to grow up in. Naiwen would like us to stay and help her guide tour parties around the lake.’
Chamly looked at the lake and the towering mountains reflected in its water and sighed at the beauty of it all.
Grinning he said, ‘I’d love to stay here and help my aunt, but, um, do you think it could wait until after breakfast?’
She laughed. ‘I’m glad to see you haven’t changed!’
As they headed back to the village, Chamly glanced up at the sky and saw Celest
e, magnificent and gleaming white, soaring above on the air currents. Then he remembered something and putting his hand into his pocket, he touched the shawl given to him by the Mother of the Western Skies. Gently, he rubbed the soft material between his fingertips and looked again at Celeste still circling overhead. He thought about what his mother had just said and knew in his heart that she was wrong. Whether his mother liked it or not, he had changed, changed forever, and the quest was not yet over.