The Spider's Cave

T hey came down a green slope into good farming country, and Sanzang reined in his horse and did something he almost never did — he announced he would go beg the meal himself. There was a tidy little manor close enough to call across to, he said; the walk was short, the day was fine, and for once he would not send a disciple to do it. Wukong squinted at the place and did not like it. Master, he said, that is not a farm. But the monk had his pious heart set on earning a bowl of rice with his own two feet, and off he went down the path with his begging bowl, leaving three uneasy disciples behind him on the road. The elder said, today the house is close by and within calling distance, so let me go and beg a meal myself. Wukong said, Master, that will not do — as the saying goes, where there are three of us along, why should the master trouble himself? But Sanzang would not hear it; he took the begging bowl and went toward the farmstead alone, while the disciples waited by the road.

Inside the manor he found seven young women, every one of them lovely, sewing and laughing and kicking a feather-ball around a courtyard in the spring sun. They were all courtesy. They sat him down, they brought tea, they laid out a meal — and the meal was wrong. The buns were stuffed with what looked like human brains, the dumplings ran with what looked like human fat. Sanzang, who would not eat so much as an egg, went grey and tried to back out the door. That was the signal. The seven dropped the smiles, called for rope, and trussed the holy man up. Within the manor were seven women, all of them young and fair, some sewing, some kicking the ball in the court. They received the elder courteously, sat him down, and set out food for him; but the steamed cakes were stuffed with the brains of men, and the dumplings filled with human flesh fried in fat. Sanzang saw it and his heart went cold, and he rose to take his leave — whereupon the women shouted, seize him, and called for cords to bind him fast.

They strung him up under a method with a name — the Immortal Pointing the Way. One rope on a wrist, hauled forward; one round his middle; one on both feet, hauled back — three cords slung over a beam so the monk hung face-down with his spine to the sky and his belly to the floor, swaying like a side of pork in a smokehouse. Pleased with their morning's work, the seven women left him dangling, stripped off their outer robes, and trooped off through the garden gate, chattering and arm in arm, toward a hot spring behind the manor where they liked to bathe. They bound him and hung him high from the beam. This hanging had a name — it was called the Immortal Pointing the Way. One hand was stretched forward and drawn up by a cord; one cord went round his waist and lifted him; both feet were drawn back and hung by another cord — three cords held the elder to the beam, his spine turned upward and his belly turned down. Then the women, well pleased, went off arm in arm to bathe at the spring behind the manor.

“A man does not fight with a woman, the monkey decided — and turned into an eagle to steal their clothes instead. The pig had no such rule.”

When their master did not come back, the disciples went looking, and Wukong, who can read a place at a glance, picked up the trail to the manor and slipped over the wall. He found the monk swinging from the beam, mewling. Master, he said, hold on — and got the story out of him fast. The women were off bathing; the cave behind the manor was their den. Wukong told Bajie and Sandy to mind the horse and the luggage, and went to scout the spring himself, because the surest way to free a hostage is to deal with the people holding the rope. When the master did not return, Wukong went to seek him and came to the manor, leaped the wall, and found Sanzang hung from the beam, groaning. He asked what had happened, and the elder told him the women had bound him and gone off to bathe. Wukong bade Bajie and Sandy guard the horse and the baggage, and went alone to find the spring, meaning to deal first with the demons themselves.

The spring was a natural hot bath, steaming in a stone basin, and the seven spider-women were already in it up to their shoulders, their seven sets of clothes hung neat on a rack at the water's edge. Wukong came up over the rocks with his rod out and his blood up — and then stopped. He stood there and held a small argument with himself. One swing, he thought, one stir of the rod through that pool and it is scalding water poured on a nest of rats — a whole nestful, dead at once. Pity. Pity. He lowered the rod. The trouble was the killing would be too easy, and there is an old saying — a man does not fight with a woman. The spring was a natural hot pool, and the seven women were bathing in it, their seven suits of clothing hung on a rack at the side. The Great Sage raised his rod, then thought, if I strike them — one stir of this rod through the pool and it is like scalding water poured over a nest of rats, the whole brood dead at one stroke. A pity, a pity. To kill them would be to kill them — but it would lower old Sun's good name. As the old saying goes, a man does not fight with a woman.

So instead of fighting them he robbed them. He shook himself into a starving old eagle, dropped out of the steam on wide brown wings, hooked his talons into the clothes-rack, and made off with all seven suits at once — robes, sashes, the lot — leaving seven spider-women up to their necks in a hot spring with not a stitch to come out in. They shrieked and ducked and could not so much as climb out without an audience, which was exactly the point. Wukong flapped back over the wall, changed to himself, and reported to the others, very pleased, that he had not killed anyone — he had only stranded them. So he shook himself and changed into a hungry old eagle, swooped down, and with his talons carried off all seven suits of clothing that hung upon the rack, and flew back. The women, naked in the water, dared not come out, and could only crouch in the pool and curse. Wukong returned, changed back to his own form, and told Bajie and Sandy, laughing, that he had not harmed the demons — he had only taken their clothes.

That next pilgrim was Bajie. The moment he heard there were seven naked women in a hot spring, the pig's eyes lit up and his ears went pink and no power on earth was going to keep him on the road. He lumbered off to the spring on his own, took one look at the steaming pool full of bathers, threw down his rake, peeled off his black robe, and cannonballed in — announcing, with the dignity of a falling boulder, that he had only come for a quiet wash. When Bajie heard there were women bathing in the spring, his heart itched and his mind grew restless, and he could not hold himself. He hurried alone to the spring, and seeing the women in the water, the idiot would hear no word of reason — he flung down his rake, stripped off his black brocade robe, and with a great splash jumped into the water.

In the water he had an idea, which for Bajie meant a bad idea. He changed himself into a catfish — a fat, slick, slippery catfish — and went sliding and darting between the women's legs, impossible to grab, squirting out of every hand that closed on him, knocking them off their feet in the churning pool. It was not a fight. It was the least dignified ambush in the history of the pilgrimage, seven shrieking spider-women trying to corner one greasy fish, and the fish very much enjoying his work. Then, having exhausted the joke, he popped back into pig-shape stark in the middle of them, grabbed his rake, and roared that now he would settle accounts. In the water he changed himself into a catfish-spirit, slippery and smooth, and darted about among the women's legs, now east, now west; they reached to seize him but could not hold him, and he slid through their hands and tripped them in the water. When he had played enough, he leaped up, changed back into his own shape, took up his rake, and cried, do you know who I am.

Cornered, naked, and out of patience, the spiders stopped running. They had a weapon nobody expected. Each of the seven planted her feet, and out of the navel of each — out of the bellybutton — came pouring a thick rope of silk, gushing up the way a spring gushes water, faster than the eye could follow. Seven streams of it crossed and braided and thickened in the air until the whole spring, the whole hilltop, was roofed over with a dense white dome of webbing that blotted out the sky. Bajie blundered straight into it and went down, and tangled himself worse with every kick, trussed like a fly in a larder. Then from the navel of each woman there came gushing out cords of silk, thick and fast, rolling forth in a torrent, until they had covered over the sky and spread a vast web like a tent over the whole place. Bajie, caught beneath it, stumbled and fell, and the more he struggled the more he was bound, sprawling and unable to rise.

Bajie clawed free of the web at last, dripping and furious and considerably less amorous than he had gone in, and limped back to the others. The spiders, meanwhile, scurried home to their cave to dress and regroup — and Wukong came up the hill to finish it properly. With the master still hanging from the beam, there was no more time for delicacy. He found where the silk anchored and broke the great web apart, hauled the dome of gossamer down off the sky, and cut his way through to the manor, and got Sanzang down off the rafters and the cords off his wrists. Bajie at last struggled out from under the web and went back, wet and angry. The women fled to their cave to dress themselves. The Great Sage came and broke open the web, tore down the great silken tent, made his way into the manor, took the elder down from the beam, and loosed the cords that bound him.

They did the thorough thing and burned the cave to the ground so nothing could grow back in it. Sanzang, freed and shaken, climbed onto the horse, and the four of them took the road west again, the morning's lesson learned — or half-learned, in the pig's case. But the seven spiders had not simply scattered. They had run, the way demons on this road always seem to, to a relative — a sworn elder brother of theirs, a many-eyed thing keeping a quiet temple of yellow flowers further up the way. The web was broken. The road went on. The next strand was already spun. They set fire to the cave and burned it all clean, and master and disciples went on westward with easier hearts. And what fate met them on the road ahead — listen, and the next chapter will tell.

盤絲 The original Chinese · honored as an artifact

蹴踘當場三月天，仙風吹下素嬋娟。汗沾粉面花含露，塵染蛾眉柳帶煙。

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