Chapter 6 – Porky Groom
It was almost dark when the party arrived at the entrance of a village. Prince Simian insisted on passing this way, claiming to save almost a half day’s walk. The road into the village was narrow and traitorous, full of sharp rocks and slippery roads. Since the town was at the base of a large mountain that must be passed, they tried to make before the nightfall for their safety. The village was rather large and dense with houses, but was empty of any human inhabitant. Ghostlike feeling ran across all three travelers’ spines. More chill crept up on the scary S’Nim’s bony spine. Immediately, shaking in his seat, S’Nim began his prayer chant. It became a habit of S’Nims to pray, whenever he gets scared. But, Prince Simian was dying to find a place to rest, since, he may no longer fly in his cloud, his feet were burning with sharp pains from walking. Besides, Prince Simian never got scared, of anything, ever. “S’Nim, look over there, there is a light coming from that house!” said Prince Simian, pointing to a rather large establishment in the middle of a main street. Since, it was quickly getting dark, any source of light sounded better and safe to S’Nim. “Let’s go and ask if we can obtain lodging for the night.” Said S’Nim. Knowing full well, they never refuse a request from a traveling monk, the party started to pay attention to how hungry they were. Slowly, they walked toward the house.
The place was big, and two stories in height. From the sound of it, there were many people inside creating loud noises. Prince Simian stopped in front of main doorway, and turned to look at S’Nim for an approval. S’Nim nodded. Prince Simian opened the door and light and noise poured out into the street. It was a dining hall filled with people all talking and eating. When they realized that someone was at the front door, one young servant came forward and asked; “What are you looking for?” The servant’s head was bowed down, not noticing that he was talking to an ape. But, Prince Simian answered. “We are on our way to India to bring stone tablet back home, can we find some food and place to rest for tonight?” The servant nodded and said. “I will ask my master. He is busy with the wedding, but I’m sure he will save a spot for your party.” The servant went back and the hall was loud with noise again. After a few minutes, the servant returned. However, there was an expression of concern on his face. “Well, my master is concerned for your safety tonight. So, he is asking if you can stay at the next house tonight.” answered the young servant. “Safety?” shouted Prince Simian. This was all he needed. Prince Simian was dying from the boredom in the past few days. He was stuck walking this stupid monk and his scrawny donkey, he needed some excitement in his life! But, the scream made the servant look up and realize that it was a talking monkey! “The, the, there is an ape here!” cried the servant. While the servant was trying to make some sense out of the situation, Prince Simian said “Before I get mad and show you a trick or two, I need an answer.” The servant replied “Well, I know I shouldn’t say this, but tonight, master’s daughter is getting married.”
Puzzled and confused, Prince Simian demanded to meet the owner of the place. It just did not make any sense. The owner’s daughter was getting married and yet, he is worried for our safety? What is this? A wedding of bandits? S’Nim followed the Prince into the hall, missing all the juicy details, starts to recite a chant. “Don’t mind him.” said Prince Simian “But, he is the monk I’m traveling with.” Soon, a well dressed man of his seventies came forward with another servant behind him. “Oh, S’Nim, let the mercy of Buddha rein on all life.” Said the old man. “Let his JaBi bear fruit in your family.” Answered S’Nim. This was a standard greeting for monks. This simply means that Buddha’s mercy and grace will result in harmonious family. But, somehow, when the old man heard the blessing, he broke into tears. Uncontrollable and continuous, his crying became a wailing after a while. Since no one interrupts anyone wailing like that, ever, everyone waited, until his eyes went dry. “What is troubling you?” asked S’Nim. The old man took his sweet time thinking, and then the old man answered “Tonight, my daughter is getting married.” “Best wishes.” Said S’Nim. “But, it is not of our choice, the groom is a pig that flew in last week, and beat every single male in town with his pitch fork. He started to eat our food. But, later he demanded a bride and my daughter was chosen to be his bride.” explained the old man. “What do you mean he demanded a bride?” S’Nim asked. “He came out of nowhere, one day, and demanded food from us. We felt sorry for the creature since he had a pig head and a human body. He came back next day and demanded more food. After a month, we did not have any food to share. So, when we refused, he began beating up my servants. Villagers got together and tried to fight him off, but we ended up getting hurt. You see, he has this large pitch fork and he uses it to frighten us. He uses some kind of sorcery and we are no match for his kind. His power is far greater than ours. It was a few days ago that he saw my daughter in the dining hall, he’s been demanding a wedding ever since. He claims to love my daughter, but I cannot let this creature take away my daughter. The villagers all got together, and decided that giving my daughter away would be the only way to drive out this creature for good. I am an old man. She is my only daughter. Without her, I cannot live any longer.” said the old man, crying again. S’Nim dropped his head and exhaled loudly. It was as if S’Nim’s own daughter was being taken away by this monster. Quietly listening Prince Simian chimed in. “I think I can save your daughter.”
The room was dark. It was a large room with a full sized dining table in the middle of a floor. There were plenty of food on the table. A small candle flickering in the wind, was all the light this room had. There was a bride sitting with her head turned towards the wall, crying and sobbing. The room was quite except the sobbing noise, and it felt eerie waiting for something horrible to appear. The bride was in her wedding cloths, and her head was dropped so her face was not visible. It was about midnight, when, out of nowhere, a figure with a pig ear and nose appeared outside the window. On the window casted a shadow from the moonlight, a large creature of a human stature, and a piggy head. Standing there, one can make out the pitch fork that he was carrying everywhere. It was a large weapon. A long and large wooden handle stick was about ten feet in length, and the sharp fork portion was about two feet, and looked menacing. The wind was blowing on the creature and his cloth flapped like fleeing chicken wings. Forcefully, the creature opened the window, and walked right in. Two of his lower teeth were sticking out in the front of his snout. He was huffing and making loud breathing noises. “Oh, my sweet, I am sorry for making you wait. I had to take care of my cave for tonight.” Explained the creature. Slowly, the pig walked toward the bride. The bride was still sobbing and did not look back at the groom. But, being a pig, the smell of food was just too tempting to ignore. So, he sat and started to eat, like a pig. Within minutes, all the plates were empty. Satisfied with his belly, the creature turned his attention to the bride. “Oh, my darling, why won’t you pour me a drink?” said the creature. He stuck out his empty cup, and was waiting for her to fill it. But, instead of a drink, a loud laughter came from the bride. “What is so funny?” asked the creature. “It is you, that makes me laugh!” came a reply. It was split of a second, when Prince Simian emerged out of the bridal cloth, and lunged forward at the pig. “Well, your face will be funnier when I’m done with you.” Said the Prince Simian as he took out the beam out of his ear. The beam grew to a size of a large wooden beam big enough to hurt someone seriously. But, the pork avoided getting hit by jumping back out of his seat. Immediately, there was a pitch fork on his hands. “Ha, ha, ha, you greedy pig, today is your funeral day.” Claimed Prince Simian. “A monkey?” questioned the creature. “I am fighting a monkey?” asked himself this time. “Well, I heard good things about monkey brain being tasty, I’ll finally get to try out tonight.” Said the creature referring to well known brain dish of live monkey. The creature swung his pitch fork at the Prince, and Prince Simian blocked it with his wooden beam. Soon, Prince Simian’s stick went for creature’s heart, and was blocked by the pitch fork. This went on for a while. Attack and block, attack and block. After a while, both stopped attacking. Prince Simian opened his mouth first. “Not, bad, for a pig, that is.” The creature replied “Ha, so you learned a few tricks, did you? But, that won’t be enough to save your brain from being eaten.” Prince Simian was getting tired of bantering; “Stop wasting my time and take this.” screamed Prince Simian as he flew toward the creature with the spinning beam over his head like a chopper blades. The creature jumped back and narrowly avoided terrible blows. Realizing that this could be a lot harder than he thought, the creature called his dark cloud from the sky. When the cloud flew passing the creature, the creature jumped in. Within the eye blink, the creature was in air, flying away from the house. Prince Simian called for his clouds, and his two small clouds came carrying the Prince chasing after the creature.
The pig creature jumped out of his cloud, landing on the small opening in front of a cave. Immediately, the creature went inside the cave. Soon after, Prince Simian landed and went after the creature. The cave was dark and moist. Full of dripping water and ponds, the inside was rather large and warm. There was a large fire burning in the middle, and there were items belonging to the creature scattered through-out the cave. Cautiously, Prince Simian looked around. There was no creature nearby. ‘He must be hiding’ thought Prince Simian. Cautiously, Prince Simian waited for any sign of movement; there were none. Instead, what he felt was air moving around him. “Behind” thought Prince Simian. Prince Simian swung his wooden beam, wide and fast. “Puck” – “Owwwwwch!” the sound of his beam smashing against Porky’s head was loud. Sqealing like a pig, Porky landed on his back. With no time to waste, Prince Simian landed another blow to Porky’s fat belly. “Ouuuf!” screamed Porky. Losing his grap on the pitch fork, Porkey curbed into a ball, covering his face with his arms. Crouching and shaking, Porky screamed. “Stop, stop, No more. I Give up.” Not to fall into his trap, Prince Simian dragged the pig out of the cave. It was dark without any light, but the moon was bright enough to see the outlines. Smiling, Prince Simian was full of satisfaction. Matter of fact, he was trying to figure out how to finish him off. With Porky crying and begging for mercy, the scene had become quite noisy. Many people, including S’Nim came up to see what was going on. They all surrounded the pig on the ground, and were screaming about how they would kill the creature. S’Nim stepped forward and began dictating. “You all have witnessed the result of bad behavior tonight. The pig behaved badly and this is his end result; on the ground, begging for his life. We all wish to believe that our lucky streaks will last forever, but, like they say in Africatown, what goes around, comes around.” People were confused as to what it is that S’Nim was trying to say. But none dared to interrupt. “For the mercy of Buddha, I will give you ,Porky, a choice. Will you help us in bringing back the tablets, or you must vanish from this area, forever.” Porky began crying even louder. When his eyes ran out of tears, his mouth began moving: “I don’t have any place to go to. I was turned into this creature for being so greedy. Please, take me with you. I will do anything to be with you.” Prince Simian chimed in “Well, if we must let you live, remember, I own your life. So, from this moment on, I am your elder brother. You must address me as Brother Simian. And you must follow my directions, however ridiculous they may be. ” “Dekki! You smarty ape, You are not to abuse your position.” Said S’Nim. S’Nim was well aware that Prince Simian was going to use Porky as his personal slave. Now, the villagers were angry at S’Nim. “Why are you letting this creature live?” “We want revenge.” “I’ll chop his head, if you don’t want to.”However, S’Nim wasn’t about to hand this pig over to the angry mob, yet. “You will do no such act!” screamed S’Nim. “Don’t you know it is forbidden to kill any life?” said S’Nim. S’Nim was furious at this point. But, he regained his composure and began explaining to the crowd. “If all his actions amount to wanting to eat and marry a girl, I have to say, it is not enough to punish him. But, I may be able to rehabilitate him by teaching him all the mercy of Buddha I can teach. However, if you insist, I can let him go. And once we leave this town, what will stop him?” Still not satisfied that this pig is alive, villagers began discussing amongst themselves. After a while, they agreed to have S’Nim crack at it.
The restaurant was filled with people, all happy and drunk. They were celebrating the end of nightmare. To cement the bond, Prince Simian and Porky both performed the ceremony of brotherhood. And with that, they became brothers.
