Red Boy

T he road west turned into autumn mountains, and somewhere in them a voice was crying for help. They came on a child strung up in the top of a pine, stripped bare, hands and feet bound with hemp rope, sobbing the same two words over and over — save me, save me. Bandits killed my father, he wept, and dragged my mother off, and tied me here to die. Sanzang's heart went straight out to him, the way it always did. Wukong took one look, sniffed once, and said the thing he was always saying and never being believed about — master, that is no child, that is a demon, walk on. They saw a creature stripped bare with no clothes on its body, hands and feet bound with hemp rope, hung high in the top of a pine, calling out over and over, save me, save me. Sanzang asked, whose child are you, and for what cause are you hung here? Tell me, that I may save you. And he ordered Bajie to loose the ropes and bring him down. But Wukong said, you cursed monster, today is the day you die — how dare you play your tricks in front of old Monkey? I know you for the thing you are.

But compassion won, the way it always did. Untie him, Sanzang ordered, and a demon who has just been called out by name only had to keep crying to get his way, because the monk would not leave a weeping child in a tree. They cut him down, and Sanzang told Wukong to carry the boy on his back. Wukong knew exactly what he was carrying and carried it anyway, watching for the move — and there it came. As they walked the child worked a weight-spell and grew heavier and heavier on Wukong's spine, a thousand pounds, a mountain of a child, trying to crush the one creature who could see him. Wukong, fed up, swung the body off and dashed it against a rock to break it. Sanzang would not listen, and bade them free the boy and let Wukong carry him along the way. Wukong knew well it was a fiend, yet he took him on his back and went on. The monster, riding behind, used the magic of the Mountain-Moving art and pressed down with a weight like a thousand mountains, thinking to crush the Great Sage. Wukong, knowing the trick, seized the false body and flung it against a stone with such force that it burst to pieces.

It was only ever a shell. The real demon shot up out of the wreck as a spirit, called up a fierce whirlwind that flung stones and sand, snatched Sanzang clean off the road, and was gone into the sky before anyone could grab a robe. So now the master was taken, as he was always being taken, and the three disciples stood in the empty road with the horse and the luggage and nothing to hit. Wukong did what he did when he was out of leads — he beat the ground and hauled the local mountain-gods up out of it to talk. The body he smashed was only a transformation; the true spirit leaped up into the air, raised a fierce wind that kicked up stones and sand, and carried Sanzang off, vanishing without a trace. Wukong, Bajie, and Sandy stood dismayed, not knowing where their master had been taken. Then Wukong, in a fury, recited the binding words and called up the local spirits and the mountain gods, demanding to know what fiend ruled this mountain and where its cave lay.

“Heaven could not kill the monkey with sabre or fire or thunder. A seven-year-old very nearly does it with a stream of cold water.”

The gods knew him well. Roaring Mountain, they said, and the demon is no ordinary monster — he is Red Boy, child-name Hong Hai'er, who styles himself the Great King Sage-Boy, and he holds the Fiery-Cloud Cave. He trained three hundred years and refined a thing called the Samadhi True Fire, and there is nothing on this road more dangerous. And his father, they added — careful now — his father is the Bull Demon King. Wukong's whole face changed, and not with fear. The Bull Demon King, he said, why, that old ox and I swore brotherhood five hundred years back, seven of us sworn brothers, and I called him eldest. So this whelp is my own nephew. Easy. I will go in and he will have to let my master go for his uncle's sake. The spirits said, this is Roaring Mountain, and in it is the Fiery-Cloud Cave, where dwells a fiend whose child-name is Hong Hai'er and whose title is the Great King Sage-Boy. He cultivated three hundred years and refined the Samadhi True Fire, and is most fierce. His father is the Bull Demon King. Wukong, hearing this, was greatly pleased and said, that Bull Demon King and I once swore brotherhood, seven of us sworn brothers, and I called him eldest brother. This fiend is the Bull Demon King's son — reckoning by his father, I am his old uncle. We need not fear.

The nephew was not impressed. Wukong went to the cave and announced himself as the boy's uncle, and Red Boy laughed in his face — my father has no brother named Sun, he said, you have come to trick me out of the man I am going to eat. Then he fetched out his weapon, a fire-tipped spear, and the fight was on, Wukong and Bajie against a child who fought like a small furnace. Twenty-odd rounds and Red Boy was losing — so he stopped losing the honest way. He punched himself twice on the nose to draw blood, breathed out, and the True Fire came. But the fiend would not own the kinship. My father has no sworn brother of the surname Sun, he said; you have come with smooth words to cheat me of the monk I mean to eat. He took up his fire-pointed spear and fought Wukong and Bajie for some twenty rounds, and could not prevail. So the fiend turned, struck his own nose twice with his fist till the blood came, breathed out, and at once the Samadhi True Fire poured forth.

This was the one thing on the whole road that could undo him. Fire did not frighten Wukong — he had eaten heaven's fire-stars and stood at the execution post unsinged. Smoke was another matter. He had hidden from the flames in Laozi's furnace and come out with his eyes seared raw, and ever after fire he could take but smoke he could not. Red Boy's True Fire rolled out thick and black, and the smoke went straight into the Fiery Eyes that the furnace had made, and the strongest creature alive turned and ran from a seven-year-old, eyes streaming, blind in his own smoke. Now this Great Sage was not afraid of fire, but he was afraid of smoke. Ever since he hid in the Eight-Trigrams Furnace, where the smoke drove into his eyes and inflamed them, he could endure flame but not smoke. When the True Fire came, the smoke rolled thick, and Wukong could not open his eyes; he turned and fled, unable to stand against it.

Wukong tried to do it properly first. He flew to the Eastern Sea and called in the Dragon Kings to rain the fire out — four dragons, a whole storm summoned over Roaring Mountain. It made things worse. Dragon-rain is ordinary water, good for ordinary fire, and the Samadhi True Fire is not ordinary fire; the rain hit it like oil, and the flames climbed higher the harder it poured. Out of options and half-blind, Wukong charged the blaze head-down to reach the demon through it — and the smoke took him again, and choking, desperate to put himself out, he dove into a cold mountain stream. Wukong went to the Eastern Sea and brought the Dragon Kings to make rain, but the rain, however hard it fell, could not quench the fiend's fire. The dragons' private rain can only put out common fire — against the Samadhi True Fire it was like pouring oil on flame; the more it rained, the fiercer it burned. Wukong, choked by the smoke and unable to bear it, plunged into the stream of the ravine to put out the fire on himself.

That nearly finished what heaven never could. The cold water hit the fire still in his chest and drove it inward instead of out, the heat slamming back into his heart, and his breath stopped and his three souls started to leave him. He went under half-dead. Sandy pulled him out of the stream limp and cold and not breathing, and they thought he was gone. It was Bajie, of all of them, who saved him — the greedy fool of a pig knelt down and worked Wukong's body with his hands, kneading and pressing the breath back through him, opening him up until the air forced its way through and Wukong coughed and came back to the world. But the cold water, striking the fire, drove the fire-energy in upon his heart, and his three souls left their dwelling. His breath was stopped in his chest, his throat and tongue went cold, his spirits scattered, and his life all but ended. Sandy hauled him out of the water, but he lay senseless. Then Bajie rubbed and kneaded and pressed him, and in a little while the breath passed through the three gates, broke open his orifices, and with a cry Wukong came to himself again.

With Wukong out of action, they sent Bajie south to fetch Guanyin — and Red Boy was waiting for that move too. The boy could guess as well as anyone that a beaten pilgrim runs to the bodhisattva of mercy, so he flew ahead, took her shape, sweet face and willow and all, and met Bajie on the road as a false Guanyin. The pig, who could no more see through a disguise than Sanzang could, bowed down to it gratefully — and was bundled into a leather sack and hung up in the cave from the rafters, to be steamed at leisure when the monk was cooked. They sent Bajie southward to invite the Bodhisattva Guanyin. But the fiend, guessing that none but Guanyin would be sought in the south, flew ahead, changed himself into the form of the Bodhisattva, and met Bajie on the road. Bajie, deceived, bowed to him, and the fiend carried him back to the cave, stuffed him into a leather bag, and hung him from the beam, meaning to steam and eat him.

So Wukong, recovered, tried cleverness of his own — and got the same lesson the others got. He turned himself into the spitting image of the Bull Demon King, the boy's actual father, and walked into the Fiery-Cloud Cave bold as you like, expecting a son to welcome his dad. Red Boy welcomed him, then quietly tested him — when is your birthday, father, how old were you when I was born — and Wukong, who had never in his life known the Bull Demon King's birthday, fumbled and stalled and offered to go home and ask the boy's mother, which is not a thing a father says. The boy had him. The disguise that had fooled everyone was no good against a demon asking for a date. Then Wukong changed himself into the very form of the Bull Demon King and went straight into the cave, that the fiend might take him for his father. But Red Boy grew doubtful, and to test him asked when his father's birthday fell, and his age. Wukong could not answer, and put it off, saying, wait till tomorrow, go home and ask your mother and you will know. By this the fiend perceived he was false, and would not be deceived.

Out of tricks, Wukong finally did the thing the whole arc was driving him toward — he went to the Southern Sea and asked for help. He bowed to Guanyin, told her everything, and she set about it without a wasted move. She took her clean willow-vase and flung it into the sea, and it drank in the whole ocean — three rivers, five lakes, eight seas, the works — and came back so heavy with water that Wukong, who could shoulder a mountain, could not lift it off the ground. That much sea was what it would take to drown a fire that laughed at rain. Wukong went to the Southern Sea, bowed before the Bodhisattva, and told her all. Guanyin took her pure vase and cast it into the sea, and in a moment it had gathered up the waters of three rivers, five lakes, eight seas, and four streams. When she bade Wukong lift it, he could not stir it, for who has the strength to weigh up a sea? She said, it is not as before, when it held only a little — now it holds the great ocean, and you cannot carry it.

Then she handed Wukong the trick. She wrote a single character on his palm — bewilderment — and told him to go and lose to the boy on purpose and run, leading him here. He did it; Red Boy chased the fleeing monkey straight to where Guanyin stood waiting on her lotus platform, and she stepped off it and vanished, leaving the flower seat empty. The boy, cocky, plopped himself down on the bodhisattva's own throne to mock her — and the lotus he sat on turned to swords. The whole platform was a thicket of blades, the Heaven-Ranged sabres, barbed and hooked like wolves' teeth, and they ran him through where he sat. He could not get off them. The Bodhisattva plucked a willow sprig, dipped it in sweet dew, and wrote on Wukong's palm the character 迷, bewilderment, telling him to give battle and feign defeat and draw the fiend to her. So Red Boy pursued Wukong to where the Bodhisattva had been, but she had left her lotus seat and gone up on a cloud. The fiend, seeing the seat empty, sat himself upon it in mockery. At once the Bodhisattva pointed, and the lotus platform turned to Heaven-Ranged sabres, their points become barbed hooks like wolves' fangs, and the fiend was pierced upon them and could not rise.

Even bleeding on the blades the boy would not yield, so Guanyin finished it the way the monkey himself was once finished. She freed him from the swords, and his wild nature snapped right back — he grabbed his spear and lunged at her the moment he was loose. She tossed up five gold fillets, the same kind of band that rings Wukong's own skull, and they came down and clamped onto the boy at five points at once, one on his head, one on each hand, one on each foot. Then she spoke the spell, and the rings drew tight, and Red Boy went down writhing exactly as Wukong always did, the unbreakable child broken at last by a ring he could not pull off and a few words he could not stop. The Bodhisattva loosed him from the blades, but the fiend, the moment he was free, snatched up his spear and thrust at her, his wild nature unchanged. Then she threw up five golden fillets, and they fell upon him — one fixed on his head, two on his hands, two on his feet. She recited the Fillet-Tightening spell, and the rings bit in, and the fiend rolled upon the ground in agony, unable to bear it, and at last he gave way.

And that was how heaven's mercy made an acolyte out of a monster. Tamed at last, the boy bowed his head and took the vows, and Guanyin shaved his wild hair into a child's tufts and gave him a new name and a new life — Sudhana, the Boy of Goodly Wealth, who would stand at her side from then on. The fire-spitting demon-child of Roaring Mountain, who had so nearly killed the unkillable monkey, was now the gentlest figure in the bodhisattva's train. And on the mountain the master was waiting in the cave to be brought out, the road west open again, the way it always was — until the next thing in it wanted to eat him. Then the fiend, subdued, bowed his head and took the vows. The Bodhisattva shaved his hair, and named him the Boy of Goodly Wealth, Sudhana, to stand always at her side. So the Great King Sage-Boy of the Fiery-Cloud Cave became an attendant of Guanyin, and the danger on Roaring Mountain was ended, and Sanzang was to be delivered from the cave, and the pilgrims to go on toward the west.

紅孩 The original Chinese · honored as an artifact

道德高隆魔障高，禪機本靜靜生妖。心君正直行中道，木母痴屣頑外趫。意馬不言懷愛慾，黃婆無語自憂焦。客邪得志空歡喜，畢竟還從正處消。

Opening lines, classical Chinese · Journey to the West 西遊記 · Wu Cheng'en (attrib.)