Scourged

by Kevin Hearne

  Like most big cities, Taipei offers the sublime alongside some truly worrisome signs for the planet’s future. The soaring tower of Taipei 101 is a marvel of modern architecture, and everyone I meet is unfailingly polite and gracious. And while it doesn’t have the apocalyptic pollution of China, where people often need to wear masks if they go outside, the air still punches the lungs with every breath, delivering a fistful of engine exhaust to the alveoli along with other assorted toxins. That’s due, no doubt, to the bewildering number of scooters on the road, which vastly outnumber cars and are not renowned for their efficient engines. People in the West think Rome has a lot of scooters—and it does—but it pales in comparison to the number in Taipei. They are everywhere, clogging the roads and parked on sidewalks.

  And foot massages appear to be popular here. Not that I can read Mandarin, but I certainly can see neon footprint signs all over the place and make an inference. These aren’t relaxing massages, I’m guessing, or the kind of foot massages that Jules and Vincent Vega thought would cause Marsellus Wallace to defenestrate Tony Rocky Horror in Pulp Fiction, but rather intense sessions where pressure points on the foot are plied to improve all manner of health issues, redirecting chi.

  I see so many places I want to visit and explore on the way: The Grand Hotel on my left, perched on a hilltop, looking like a beautiful red and gold palace. The Taipei Expo, an old football stadium that’s now a park and gardens. There are some boutique clothing shops and some open-air markets down certain streets hawking everything from fresh fruit to lightning chargers, but I also see large malls full of clothing stores displaying brands from America, Britain, and Australia. Huge posters of Hollywood movies drape over buildings with Mandarin characters on them, and I love it. I think I want to learn Mandarin next after I’m finished learning Polish. Perhaps a nice collection of poets from one of the dynasties would provide a decent headspace.

  We exit the train at Zhongshan Station, an underground stop, and I grin at the people teeming around me. There’s a big bookstore down there and I want to browse, even though I can’t read the language yet. “I see why you like it here,” I tell Flidais. “Where next?”

  “Time to see Sun Wukong.”

  “Is he far away, meditating at the top of a mountain or something?”

  “No, he runs a bubble tea shop in Twatutia.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s the oldest part of Taipei, in the Datong District.”

  “No, I mean, the bubble tea thing. What is a Buddha like the Monkey King doing there?”

  Flidais shrugs. “I assume he must truly enjoy it,” she says, climbing the stairs out of the station. “Immortals do things like this sometimes. Back in the late eighteenth century, I secretly ran a pub in Dublin with Goibhniu for nine months, until a mortal tasked with policing our treaty pointed out that the Tuatha Dé Danann were supposed to remain in Tír na nÓg. It was an amusing occupation while it lasted. I would guess the Monkey King seeks to keep himself busy by bringing a bit of enlightenment to the mortals. Eternity is a long time to spend doing nothing, after all.”

  We start to jog down Nanjing West Road, taking deep stinging breaths every few steps, but quickly discover that too many beef noodles are sloshing around in our stomachs, so we slow to a walk and enjoy the bustle of the city. I am nearly run over by a scooter at one point and am so glad I wasn’t. Easy to laugh about it now, but that would have been a stupid way to die.

  Twatutia, once we get there, is a marvelous meld of old and new, the architecture of different eras on display on every street, the juxtaposition of the ultramodern with nineteenth-century buildings, structures from the Japanese occupation, and post–World War II growth. The Monkey King’s bubble tea shop is in an older building, accessed via an alley off Dihua Street, and we find it because there’s a line snaking out to the main thoroughfare. We join the line and wait patiently as it inches forward.

  The temperature noticeably drops once we get into the shaded valley between buildings. They’re old stone, half blackened by carbon and soot, and the alley smells like alleys everywhere, redolent of rot and unpleasant emissions.

  “So is he actually making the bubble tea?”

  “No, his employees do that. He runs the register and welcomes people.”

  “Are his employees…human?”

  Flidais favors me with a grin. “I suggest you inspect them in the magical spectrum. Just to make sure there aren’t any shenanigans. Careful looking at the Monkey King that way, though. It can be intense.”

  Forewarned and intensely curious, I take in everything I can once I enter the shop—which appears to be little more than a widened hallway or corridor. It’s a clean, well-lit place with absolutely no seating, and it’s a one-way operation. Customers enter one door and exit at another down the hall, because there’s no room to turn around. It’s a single-file line in front of the register and counter, with a menu of bubble tea flavors and a small selection of cookies and pastries. It must have been a storage or shipping area at one time for some other business in the building, now plumbed and operating as a tiny to-go shop—a very popular one.

  The man at the register is just slightly off somehow. Cheerful and smiling, he takes orders and exchanges money, his dark whiskers growing down his jaw to the sides of his mouth but his chin and upper lip shaved clean. According to Flidais, I’m looking at Sun Wukong, the Monkey King in disguise. He almost palpably exudes peace and contentment, and I wonder if people are coming here for that feeling as much as for the bubble tea.

  He wasn’t always so serene, if any of his early adventures in Journey to the West have a shred of truth about them, and I’m sure they do. He was contentious and grasping and a consummate narcissist in his early years, causing all manner of trouble on earth and in the heavens, but gradually came to serve the Buddha, until he became one himself.

  He greets us with a beatific smile when we get to the register and says something in Mandarin—a request for our order, I’m assuming. Flidais responds and holds up her right forearm in front of her, showing him the back of her hand, where the healing triskele is. I do the same, and his smile fades. He asks something else, Flidais answers, and he punches the register before extending his hand. Flidais drops some money into it along with the apple from Manannan’s Isle, Emhain Ablach, that she mentioned before, and he gives us a tight nod. We move along down the line, seeming to have accomplished nothing but a bubble tea purchase.

  “What happened?” I ask the huntress.

  “I ordered some Immortal Peach tea. That was the code, along with our tattoos, and the apple was a gift.”

  “Immortal—oh, because of that time he ate almost all of them.” That had been quite the episode in Journey to the West, one of the last straws that brought the full force of the heavens down on Sun Wukong.

  “Precisely. He’ll meet us after we get our tea here at the end.”

  “We’re getting Immortal Peach bubble tea?”

  “No, just regular milk tea. He’s going to get one of his employees to take over and then we’ll be able to speak in private.”

  A stream of words from the register causes all the employees to look up, and one of them moves in that direction. They are dressed in brown uniforms with golden monkey heads embroidered on the left breast. Carefully keeping my eyes pointed away from Sun Wukong, I switch my vision to the magical spectrum to check them out.

  They are, in fact, monkeys passing as humans. They’re sitting on the prep counter instead of actually standing, as it appears to human eyes. Peripherally, I sense a blinding light to my right, where the Monkey King stands.

  “Do they talk?” I whisper to Flidais, but one of the employees hears me and snorts.

  “Of course we talk,” he says in English. “More than one language too.”

  “Of course,” I reply. “Sorry.”

  “The time to be sorry
is not now,” the monkey tells me. “But that time will come for you soon enough.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Come on,” Flidais says, tugging me away from the smirking monkey. A flash of light warns me that Sun Wukong is entering my vision, and I dismiss the binding, returning the veil so that I see merely humans serving up bubble tea and pastries. I blink away the spots dancing in my eyes and collect my bubble tea at the end of the counter, where Sun Wukong awaits. He gestures to the exit and we take it into the alley. He follows us out and then points to a fire escape ladder ahead.

  “Let’s talk on the roof,” he says in perfect English, and then he scrambles up it so quickly that Flidais and I are left agape at his speed. Flidais shrugs and discards her tea into a nearby bin, but I hold on to mine as I awkwardly make the climb up to the roof, tea in one hand and Scáthmhaide in the other, grasping the rungs by mere fingertips. This bubble tea was made for me by a talking monkey, and I feel like I should at least try it.

  When I get to the roof, Sun Wukong has discarded his human disguise and stands resplendent, glowing, and serene, tricked out in red and gold finery.

  “Welcome to Taiwan, honored Druids,” he says. “I am Sun Wukong, and I am very grateful for your aid and your timely arrival. There is no easy task before us. This Norse god Loki has been busy stirring up much trouble. We have reason to believe most of the Yama Kings of Diyu will rise with the very worst souls of the damned to plague us.”

  “How many is most?” Flidais asks.

  “Eight of the ten. King Yanluo and King Zhuanlun have refused—it is because of them we know this is coming.”

  “They can’t convince the other eight to forgo this?”

  “Their arguments have proven ineffective so far.”

  “When are these eight Yama Kings going to rise, and where?” I ask.

  A thunderous boom shakes the sky as it darkens to the northeast of our position. We whirl around and see what looks, from a distance, like a black swarm of insects fountaining up into the firmament.

  “Now, and over there,” Sun Wukong replies. “They have chosen to erupt from Seven Star Mountain in Yangmingshan National Park.”

  That’s near where we shifted in to the island. “Guess I’m not going to be enjoying my bubble tea.”

  “Nonsense,” the Monkey King says, producing the apple Flidais gave him and taking a hearty bite. “Enjoy; take your time.” He plucks a tuft of hair from his chest and tosses it into the air, which somehow forms a full-sized copy of himself, and more copies keep appearing—hundreds in mere seconds. As they materialize, the clones surge to the north to meet the swarm building over Seven Star Mountain. “That’ll keep them busy for a while.”

  there is so much fashion happening at the Fae Court I begin to wonder if me own aversion to such frippery is a character flaw. If so, I suppose I can just add it to the infinite list o’ them.

  I should rather go ahead and admit that fashion intimidates me. It’s like people are speaking a language all around and I’m missing every word. I’m conscious that something is going on, at least, but I don’t know what it is. That faery has a flared collar and it probably means something. That other one has pointy tips on the end of her shoes and that probably means something too. Sparkly buttons, lace sleeves, codpieces, jewelry, and studded belts, all of them packed to bursting with meaning, like that one item of carry-on luggage ye take with ye to avoid baggage fees.

  Brighid is wearing something like fancy working leathers when I arrive, and I’m sure that’s fraught with meaning as well, especially when contrasted with all the finery on display by the courtiers. It’s definitely not something a common lad would wear, because the leathers are tooled and studded beyond belief, but for all its expense, it remains a practical outfit, unlike what most rulers tend to wear. She’s sitting on the Iron Throne and immediately dismisses whomever she’s talking to when she spies Coriander floating off to one side of me. We’re summoned forth and she demands a report. I’m not one for throwing around sugary words, so I get right to it:

  “Fand will accept your offer if ye first agree to destroy the Iron Throne.”

  Brighid takes this news mighty cool, raising a single red eyebrow. The assembled courtiers aren’t cool about it at all. They set to whispering and tittering and gabbling about what it might mean or what Brighid will do and I want to shout at them all to shut it, but I grit me teeth and try to ride out the wave of me blood pressure rising to high tide in silence.

  “Thank ye, Eoghan,” Brighid says. “Coriander.”

  “Yes, Brighid?” the Herald Extraordinary replies.

  “Report in summary the results of your meeting, including Fand’s words regarding the agreement, so that all may hear.”

  Coriander bows, turns halfway to the assembled Fae Court without turning his back on Brighid, and announces the terms of the offer and Fand’s conditional acceptance. When he’s done, the excitement among the Fae is quite nearly raucous, because it’s all news to them, and there’re some spirited wagers being laid over how Brighid will respond. Brighid hears some of that, gives a tiny smirk, and lets it proceed for a full minute. Then she stands from the Iron Throne and projects her voice in three registers at once, which she only does on rare occasions. She cannot lie in that voice, and whatever she says during such times becomes the law.

  “Hear me,” she says, and the Court quiets immediately. “I hereby accept and ratify the terms of the agreement on two conditions: First, that once the Iron Throne is destroyed, the Fae will undertake to build me a new throne, reflective of their finest skill, which they will have no trouble honoring henceforward; and second, that once we have prevailed in Ragnarok, Fand and all Fae will immediately pledge their fealty to me anew as First among the Fae, here, regardless of whether the new throne is completed or not, and together we will enjoy a new age of harmony. Fand shall accept my conditions by showing up on the field of battle against the forces of Loki and Hel. However!” she says, holding up a hand to forestall applause. “I need not wait on Fand’s acceptance to behave with honor and goodwill. To demonstrate both, I shall destroy the Iron Throne now. Let us celebrate that together.”

  The fecking Fae damn near destroy me ears after that. It’s one hell of a roar of approval, and I clap me hands to the sides of me head for protection. Brighid smiles and summons a huge two-handed hammer from somewhere.

  “Behold!” she cries out, and she swings it down right on the seat with a mighty clang, visibly denting the throne, and the roar swells anew. She swings again and again, and I turn to behold the Fae Court in all its joy, because the noise has turned odd somehow.

  I quickly see why. It’s such a momentous occasion for the Fae that they’ve decided there’s nothing they’d rather do than have sex to remember it by. They’re flinging off their fancy clothes and banging away at each other as Brighid bangs away at the Iron Throne. An entire generation of Fae babies are going to be told that they were conceived during the destruction of the Iron Throne. And, yes, they’ll be thanking Fand for it. But they’ll be loyal to Brighid too.

  Those working leathers make sense now, and I realize Brighid had been ready for this. Yes, she’s made a concession she’d never made before, but her obvious preparation signals that she was waiting for it, that she wanted it, and so it’s really no concession at all.

  It’s about three seconds until I start to feel intensely uncomfortable. What am I supposed to be doing, then? Stand there and watch the Fae feck themselves sideways or watch Brighid work while I do nothing? I elect to silently get the hell out, because the last thing I want to do is interrupt anyone at that point. I assume that Coriander will communicate Brighid’s words and deeds, and my part in all this is done. I shift back to the tree Brighid bound in Tasmania, hoping to catch Greta and the apprentices, but the elemental informs me that they all elected to fly back to the United States in me absence.

 
They’ll be in the air for most of a day, and I feel a bit lost without them. I suppose I could simply catch up on me sleep, but instead I ask the elemental to contact Siodhachan and let him know I’d like to talk. Soon enough I’m answered: Me old apprentice wants me to shift out to his place in Oregon, and he’ll meet me there. When I point out I haven’t actually visited it yet, he says he’ll meet me at the Fae Court and then lead me to the proper bound tree, which makes me chuckle. I can’t wait to see his face when he sees what’s going on there right now.

  It’s priceless. Just a gaping maw of horror as he takes in the whole field of writhing bodies, some of them flying and fornicating in midair.

  “What do ye think they’ll call this, later on?” I asks him. “The Great Iron Orgy? The Demolition Sex Festival? The Carnal Cornucopia?”

  “Let’s just go,” he says, and he shows me which tether is his. I follow him and arrive in a blessedly quiet place, save for the soft gurgle of a river, under a canopy of evergreens. It’s nighttime, wherever we are.

  “Welcome,” he tells me, and in the dim illumination from his back porch light I see his eyebrows shoot up. “Oh!”

  “What is it?”

  “Apparently Orlaith has had puppies. And we missed seeing Granuaile.”

  “How do ye—” And before I get me question out, that hound of Siodhachan’s bursts from the house along with a smaller dog, and I realize they must have told him as much. I know we’re not going to get much talking done until they settle down, so I remind myself to be patient and follow along into the house, where we must go to admire the new litter of hounds. They’re cute and healthy looking, that’s for certain, and after Siodhachan speaks with them and distributes scratches all around, he turns to me.

  “Orlaith has a question she’d like to ask you,” he says. “Go ahead and bind with her.”

  I reach out in the magical spectrum and tie my consciousness to hers.