Chapter 38: Trial by Performance

His fingers were careful.

He worked from the outside of the knot inward, testing each loop before pulling it, releasing tension in one place before addressing another. He didn’t rush. The young monkey, after one initial flinch, went completely still, either out of wisdom or out of sheer bewilderment, Bai Yue couldn’t tell which.

She sat back down quietly, hugging her knees, and watched.

It took a few minutes. The vine was stubborn. At one point, Cāng Jì made a small, thoughtful sound under his breath, and changed his approach entirely, working through a loop she hadn’t even seen. His brow was furrowed in concentration. All the performance of him, the golden radiance and the celestial authority, had gone somewhere else for the moment. What was left was just someone paying close attention to a small, specific thing.

Click.

The knot released.

The vine fell away, and the young monkey’s tail and arm came free with a little bounce. He shook them out, flexing his fingers experimentally, looking down at his own unbound hand like he wanted to confirm it was real.

Then he looked up at Cāng Jì.

Cāng Jì, already beginning to straighten up, looked back down.

The young monkey’s face split into the widest, most gap-toothed, entirely uninhibited grin Bai Yue had seen in a territory that specialized in wide, gap-toothed grins. He chattered something at high speed, too fast for Bai Yue to follow, and then, before Cāng Jì could react, the little creature reached up and patted him firmly on the cheek three times.

Pat. Pat. Pat.

Cāng Jì went very still.

The young monkey chittered again, apparently pleased with himself, and then scampered off toward the workers at full speed, his newly freed tail waving behind him like a flag.

Cāng Jì stood there for a moment, one hand raised slightly, as if he had meant to stop something and missed. He touched the cheek where he’d been patted with two fingers.

Then he turned around.

Bai Yue was absolutely, completely, one hundred percent not smiling. She was looking at a very interesting section of tree bark. It was a fascinating piece of bark. She was deeply invested in it.

“Not a word,” Cāng Jì said.

“I wasn’t going to—”

“Not. A. Word.”

“He liked you,” she said, unable to help herself.

The Dragon Prince sat back down beside her with enormous dignity, straightened the front of his robes, and said nothing at all. But the tips of his ears had gone the faintest shade of pink, and he did not, notably, disagree.

~

The sun had begun its long slide toward the treetops when Hóu Wáng appeared in front of them.

Bai Yue hadn’t heard him approach, which, for an elderly monkey with a walking stick, was honestly impressive. He stood before them with his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes moving slowly between the Dragon Prince and Bai Yue with an expression she had learned to be mildly worried about.

“Dragon,” Hóu Wáng said.

Cāng Jì looked up with magnificent composure. “Monkey King.”

“Today you laughed.” The old monkey’s voice was level, matter-of-fact. “You did not choose to laugh. It came out of you without permission. That is the only kind of laughing that counts.”

Cāng Jì said nothing.

“Today,” Hóu Wáng continued, “you also helped one of mine without being told to. Without reward. Without an audience.” He paused. “You thought there was no audience.”

A beat of silence.

Bai Yue kept her eyes firmly on the bark.

“Trial One,” the Monkey King announced, “is complete.”

[DING! ☆]

[Trial One: COMPLETE! 100%!]

[Cāng Jì’s Dignity: Still -12000% but somehow he seems fine about it?]

[Unexpected Completion Method: Quiet Kindness. The monkeys are impressed. Don’t tell Cāng Jì that, he’ll get a big head.]

Cāng Jì stared at the Monkey King for a long moment, as though fighting the urge to say seventeen different things and winning, narrowly, against all of them.

“And Trial Two?” he asked, his voice sounding rough.

Hóu Wáng smiled. It was a slow, wide, deeply diabolical smile that Bai Yue had come to understand meant that he was up to no good.

“Rest tonight, Dragon Prince,” the old monkey said pleasantly. “You will need it.”

He turned and walked away, tapping his walking stick against the platform in a cheerful little rhythm.

“That is not an answer,” Cāng Jì called after him.

“Rest!” Hóu Wáng called back, without turning around. “Sleep well! Dream of better times!”

“Would I still have to dance?!”

“Goooood niiiight!”

He disappeared into the canopy.

Cāng Jì turned to Bai Yue, his true feelings slipping out.

“Star-thief,” he said.

“Mm?”

“I would like you to know,” he said, very calmly, “that I have a very bad feeling about tomorrow.”

Bai Yue looked at the spot where the Monkey King had vanished. She thought about the phrase Sacred Dance of Apology and what, exactly, a tribe of golden monkeys might consider sacred or a dance or both simultaneously.

“Hmm,” she said.

She paused.

“…Me too.”

~

Morning arrived, loudly, suddenly, and with absolutely no warning. One second it was dark. The next second it was not, and approximately forty monkeys were already awake, already arguing, and already far too enthusiastic about everything.

Hóu Xián descended from directly above, landed three inches from Bai Yue’s face, and grinned at her with every single tooth he owned.

“GOOD MORNING!” he announced. “IT IS TRIAL TWO DAY!”

Bai Yue stared at him.

“You’re very loud,” she said.

“Thank you!” He grabbed her wrist and hauled her upright. “Come come come! The whole tribe is waiting! We cleared the big platform! Grandfather made a stage!”

“A stage,” Bai Yue repeated. Her voice had gone very flat. “He made a stage.”

“With flowers! And a drum section!”

She looked over at Cāng Jì, who had been awake, she suspected, since before dawn. He was sitting perfectly upright on his sleeping mat, robes immaculate, hair restored to its celestial-grade condition, hands folded in his lap.

He looked exactly like a man preparing for his own execution.

“Flowers,” he said, when she met his eyes.

“And a drum section,” she confirmed.

A long silence passed between them.

“I want to go home,” he said.

“I know.”

“COME ON!” Hóu Xián shrieked, already swinging away. “THE DRUMS ARE STARTING!”

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