“If anything, you’re the outsider,” he said. “Getting involved in the business of the gods. You think you have us figured out. You understand us as well as the roach does the humans who’re dropping crumbs on its head.”
An errant step of his sent pebbles and dust cascading into my face and down my shirt. I scowled and moved over to the side where the path was less obvious but still manageable. The next kick upward I took brought me parallel with him.
Guanyin had said something similar once, about me not knowing what happened upstairs. I decided to tug on this string, partly out of interest and mostly because it seemed like a chance to get under Erlang Shen’s skin for once.
“Yeah, well, sometimes you gods act as petty as the rest of us roaches,” I said. “You created the mess with Red Boy because of a spat with your uncle.”
He stopped where he was. I’d struck the nerve I was ostensibly looking for, but perhaps had dug too deep.
“A spat. With my uncle the Jade Emperor. Yes. That was why I did what I did. A spat.”
Glancing at his face, I was taken aback. I knew that look, when your rage was so cold and ossified that it was part of the foundation the rest of you was built on. Poured into the concrete, invisible to everyone except those who understood the signs.
“I used to have a third eye,” he said.
“What?”
“I used to have a third eye. For real. Right here, in the middle of my forehead.” He pointed to his skull and made a little circling bullseye over his skin. “I was an honest-to-goodness tri-clops when I was younger.”
I shouldn’t have wanted to laugh at the image. A little snort came out. Erlang Shen almost smiled. Almost.
“My third eye granted me true sight,” he said. “You think yours is special, but I can tell you right now that what you have is like being gifted a flashlight inside a coffin compared to what I had. I could see more than lies and faraway objects. I could see possibilities. I could see reasons. Futures. Threads of fate that might weave themselves into the most beautiful outcomes if only the right strands were tugged.”
Erlang Shen closed his eyes, his two remaining regular ones. “There was a world I glimpsed, a timeline that was perfect. Heaven and Earth in alignment. Every human born would have been cared for, and every god would have done their part to make it happen. It would have been something out of Guanyin’s most hopeful dreams.”
I wanted to say something but hesitated. I had delighted, once, in the prospect of a better tomorrow under the Goddess of Mercy while lying on the cheap, scratchy carpet of an office building. It was a little frightening how much his words sounded like my own thoughts.
“I went running to the Jade Emperor once I was sure my gift had been developed enough,” Erlang Shen said. “I wanted to help him, down to the sinews of my being. I thought we were going to do so much good together, my uncle and me bringing a grand new destiny to the cosmos. My uncle and me! Ha!”
The rocks he was holding on to began to sprout cracks under his fingers.
“The Jade Emperor looked at me like I’d drawn a knife and rammed it between his ribs,” Erlang Shen choked out. “How dare I. How dare I try to stick my nose where it didn’t belong. To suggest that his mandate-appointed rule could ever be improved. The very act of thinking that I could play a part in guiding Heaven and Earth was both treason and a stunning lack of filial piety. It had to be punished.”
He clenched his teeth. “The Jade Emperor took my third eye from me. He ripped my flesh apart in a great big ceremony in front of the Court of Heaven. You would have thought I was getting a medal. Instead he lectured me in front of the other gods while I screamed on the floor of the Peach Banquet Hall, clutching a bloody crater in my skull!”
I winced and looked away.
“My special sight, gone forever,” Erlang Shen said, his voice raw like scraped leather. “Don’t you get it? The enormity of what he did? It wasn’t just me he punished back then! By taking that vision of beauty, of what could have been, and destroying it, he hurt you, he hurt humanity, the gods, even the demons! He cheated us! He swindled us! He robbed us all of a perfect future!”
I heard the noise of rocks exploding under pressure. Without thinking, I reached behind me as quick as I could with one hand and grabbed Erlang Shen’s arm before he fell down the mountain.
In retrospect the gesture was actually kind of pointless. We were still on a slope, not dangling dramatically off a cliff edge. Neither of us would have been greatly injured by a slight tumble. At best I’d saved us the time it would take waiting for him to catch up with me again.
But still. He and I clung to each other’s wrists like our lives depended on it. We both managed to save our footing, so we ended up frozen in the apex of the world’s most awkward ballroom twirl.
Erlang Shen tried to still his features back to his normal self, but the best he could manage was shame at spilling his guts. He relaxed there, letting me keep him upright, knowing I could hold him easily.
“And I used to have a trident,” he muttered.
“What?”
“A magic trident,” he said, deciding that petulance was a better emotion to show me than sincerity. “A unique weapon of my own, similar to Guan Yu’s Green Dragon Crescent Blade. The Jade Emperor took that away from me as well. So if you were wondering why I had such a fixation on you as the reincarnated Ruyi Jingu Bang, it was because you were the closest thing to what I’d lost, in one package. A weapon and true sight.”
I sighed deeply. In an unnecessary move that I’d only seen in action movies, I swung him like a pendulum. The momentum took him to the same elevation as me and he caught his grip on the rock face once more.
“So,” he said, pretending like the last few minutes didn’t happen. “Do you have any embarrassing family stories you feel like sharing?”
He was only covering for his lapse by being a smartass, but I found I suddenly did want to talk about my family. Overwhelmingly so. I needed the reminder of why I’d taken the ride that had eventually landed me here, far from them and Earth.