Main Page: Indiana Jones and the Monkey King
Previous: Chapter Twelve
Previous: Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
The Nazi troops halted in their charge, stunned at the sight of their own tank coming at them. Then they moved again, but many of them too late to avoid being crushed beneath the heavy treads. The ecstatic gorillas howled and cheered with each thump.
One of the canvas trucks had completely sunk, and only a small section of the other truck’s frame jutted out of the moat. The pirates clung to its fleeting safety as the hungry sharks circled ever closer, waiting for the inevitable, too many for even Kezure to handle.
Suddenly, a rope dropped from overhead. Kezure looked up to see Scraggy and his crew members standing on the drawbridge and holding it. The pirates climbed upward to safety.
Scraggy assisted Kezure onto the drawbridge, smiled, and said, “You owe me, old man.”
Kezure laughed and embraced him. Tyki and several other pygmies joined them, laughing and dancing with joy at their victory. But only for so long. A sudden silence fell over the city as Tyki broke away from the group and walked back through the gate, looking out over scores of the dead bodies of his people sprawled on the streets. They had paid the ultimate price to save their home.
The silence was interrupted by Betsy’s loud sobs. Scraggy followed the sound, and the color drained from his face.
A group of pygmies had carried the limp body of Indiana Jones out of the coliseum and now gently lowered it to the ground. Clare and Betsy knelt beside it.
Scraggy ran over to them and stopped, transfixed, unable to say anything. Clare looked up at him, her eyes filled with tears, and nodded. “He’s...” She could barely get the words out either. “He’s gone.”
Scraggy fell to his knees and broke down crying next to her. Kezure joined them, looking more startled than anything.
Betsy sniffled and looked at Clare. “What’re you cryin’ for? You didn’t even like him.”
“That’s not true,” Clare snapped too quickly. She cleared her throat and softened her voice. “He was a disturbed man, but he was my – our friend. And he died for all these people he just met.”
Betsy nodded and bit her lip. “I’m the one who shouldn’t like him, after what he did to me,” she mused. “But I don’t know many white people back home who would do this for a bunch of – Africans. I guess he was a complicated guy.”
“We all are,” Clare said, rubbing her shoulder.
Then the entire city was solemn and silent.
***
Indiana Jones had seen evidence for the truthfulness of so many different theologies, he couldn’t have begun to guess what the afterlife would be like. Fittingly enough, the part of it he could see right now was pretty generic. Some kind of park, a grassy field with some trees here and there and more in the distance, and a dirt path that wove past a park bench where two women appeared to be waiting for someone. Waiting for me?
The one on the left, wearing a wide-brimmed hat two decades out of style and a long blue dress, stood as he approached. Even now he couldn’t believe his eyes – even when she cried out “Henry!” in a voice more familiar than his own and rushed to embrace him.
He wouldn’t have thought he still needed to struggle for breath, but it took quite an effort to get out the word, “Mom?”
Then her arms were around him, warm and soft and solid. He didn’t know how. This was his mother as he’d wanted to remember her, before her illness, in her happiest moments. If he was to spend eternity in her embrace, he could live with that, or not, as the case may be.
Presently, though, she pulled back and held him at arm’s length, sizing him up. “My little boy, all grown up.”
“Mom,” he said, his dead heart racing, “I’ve missed you so much... more than I can say...”
Now he noticed that the other woman, just a bit younger, had risen from the bench and seemed to be patiently awaiting her turn with him. He had no memory of seeing her in life, yet in a moment he realized she was just as familiar as his mother, and in another moment her name came into his mind, as if whispered by a passing angel.
“Susie?” he gasped.
His little sister who had died in infancy smirked. “Brilliant deduction, Dr. Jones.”
Indy shook his head. “I can’t – I need to sit down.”
The women each took an arm and led him to the bench. He looked around at the park – not another soul in sight, though he sensed somehow that they weren’t alone, that other relatives and friends long gone lurked nearby.
“I have so many questions,” Indy said. “About this place, about what you’ve been up to...”
Anna Jones laughed. God, how I’ve missed that laugh. “Patience, Henry,” she said. “You were always so hungry for knowledge, but you have all the time in the world to learn. Susie and I are still learning.”
“You’ll love it here,” Susie said. “You’ll wish you’d died sooner.”
“Now, Susie, he did a lot of important things down there.” Anna looked into his eyes and ran her fingers through her hair – he’d just now realized he wasn’t wearing his hat, and that was disappointing, but it’d had a good run. “Oh, my sweet son,” she said, “I’m so proud of you...”
Indy’s heart swelled. But then he thought of how he’d hurt Betsy, and others, and the things Clare had said about him. Had his mother witnessed all of that? He looked away. “I’ve led an interesting life, Mom,” he said. “I wish I’d led a better one.”
She shook her head. “We all do, Henry. But if you’re here, your heart was in the right place.”
Indy took in his surroundings again. “Where is here, anyway?”
“Think of it as a waiting room,” she said. “Susie and I came here to greet you, to ease your transition. There’s so much more to see – but again, you have time. No rush.”
Indy nodded. He didn’t feel ready to move on. True, he’d had a fuller life than most, and thirty-eight years was more time than either his mother or his sister had gotten, but something indefinable tugged at him. Maybe he’d end up chained to the mortal realm, haunting Marshall College like a more scholarly Baron Seagrove – the recollection of that man brought a shudder along with a few more theological questions.
Anna sensed his unease and nodded. “I feel it too, Henry. It’s okay. We all have our own timetable.”
“Speaking of timetables,” Susie said, “it’s almost time for your funeral. Don’t want to miss that, do you?”
And just like that, though Indy could still see the park and his family members right in front of him, he could also see the land and the people he’d left behind. It was as if his mind, unconstrained by his physical brain, had expanded – not to omniscience, not by a long shot, but far enough to give equal and undivided attention to multiple settings in a way he couldn’t even have grasped in theory while alive.
It was surreal, but he watched it with calm detachment, like a filmstrip of people he’d never met in places he’d never been.
***
Darkness had fallen over the golden city. Indiana Jones’ body lay in state on a bamboo stretcher, covered with exotic, colorful flowers, carried by several pygmies in elaborate robes. Betsy, Clare, Scraggy, and Kezure marched beside it, also wearing ceremonial flowers, wanting to participate but not interfere with the local customs. Ahead of them Tyki led another stretcher with Bohbala’s body; behind them came all the pygmies killed in the battle, carried by the surviving humans and gorillas. All the mourners carried flickering candles. At the rear of the procession, a lone pygmy strummed a haunting melody on an unusual string instrument.
From a distance, the hundreds of flickering candles against the dark night sky were like reflections of the stars.
The procession halted at a large stone wall. Tyki walked up to it, fell to his knees, and began to chant. Clare, Betsy, Scraggy, and Kezure watched, confused but not daring to say anything.
A small rumble surrounded them, then a hairline crack formed in the mountain. As if drawn by an invisible hand, it formed a large door in the wall. Tyki stopped chanting and got to his feet. The door slowly opened without so much as a squeak, and an almost blinding white light emanated from inside.
Tyki walked into the light. Clare and the others hesitated for a moment, but when the procession followed him, they did too.
They ascended a twisting stone staircase that spiraled upward, out of sight, while the light grew brighter and brighter with no visible source. At the top, they found another doorway, this one already open. Tyki paused, said a few more words, and entered.
Clare, Betsy, Scraggy, and Kezure stared in total wonderment at the beautiful forest of seemingly never-ending luscious green trees filled with succulent, ripe peaches. Sunlight shone from a vivid blue sky, and somehow refracted into a rainbow that suffused into the air, everywhere and nowhere all at once. This could only be one place.
Betsy was the first to break the silence. “But... it’s... it’s the middle of the night...”
Clare was about to scold her, but Tyki whispered a response first, and Scraggy translated. “Sun always shine in the Garden of Immortal Peaches.”
Clare nodded as if this was to be expected. Kezure had already lost interest in the strange meteorological phenomena, mesmerized by the peach trees themselves. His mouth hung open. He turned to Scraggy. “These are the peaches that make one... forever young?”
Scraggy nodded. Before Kezure could say anything else, Tyki got the procession moving again. They walked to a clearing that may have been in the middle of the garden or still on the edge of its vastness. The pygmies dispersed and carried the bodies of Bohbala, Indiana Jones, and the others to their freshly dug graves.
A few feet ahead of the graves rested a peach tree that dwarfed all the others in height and girth. A small glass coffin was built into its trunk, holding a skeleton no more than four feet tall, adorned with a lion skin robe and golden crown. In its hand it clutched the famous golden hooped rod. An ancient inscription was etched in a tone slab above its head.
Since Tyki had already shown his willingness to answer questions even at this time, Clare pointed to the inscription and asked Scraggy, “What does it say?”
He squinted and translated, “Our Lord... Our Master... Sun... Wu... Kung.”
Clare exchanged an awe-filled glance with Betsy, then looked at one of the still bodies. “Damn you, Jones,” she said. “Why couldn’t you be here to share this with me?”
The pygmies started to lower the bodies into the ground. Tyki took a scroll from another pygmy and read something that had the cadence of scripture. As Indy disappeared into the earth, Scraggy broke down again and sobbed onto the shoulder of Kezure, who continued to stare at the peach trees.
Suddenly they all heard a low rumbling sound followed by a slight tremor. The trees swayed as a howling wind rushed through them. The coffin glowed with a light that rivaled the sunshine, then the glass shattered. The skeleton’s head turned. Its body rattled as it took one faltering step, then another, out into the garden.
The pygmies and gorillas looked reverent. Everyone else looked terrified.
The skeleton stopped a few steps away from the coffin, raised its arms high in the air, and opened its mouth. An unearthly high-pitched screech issued forth from where its lungs would have been. An ectoplasmic green smoke seeped from its outstretched fingers, traveled over the heads of the humans, and separated into several individual lines that touched down upon each of the gorillas and encircled their bodies. The gorillas rose from the ground and drifted through the air toward Sun Wu-Kung. As they traveled their bodies shrank.
By the time they reached the skeleton, they had shrunk to tiny, hair-like substances that attached themselves to it. As they converged, the skeleton took on a half-human, half-monkey form, something that could have been monstrous but instead conveyed a feeling of serenity. His wrinkled face held wide eyes, coal black and probing yet warm. His smile was devilish yet charming, his movements perky and quick. A powerful presence belied his small stature.
As Sun Wu-Kung looked over the congregation, the pygmies fell to their knees. Clare, Betsy, Scraggy, and a reluctant Kezure did the same.
Sun Wu-Kung paced through the clearing, looking into each of the many graves one by one. His smile vanished and his wrinkled face twisted into a furious expression. He stopped in front of one grave, raised his golden hooped rod to the sky, and screamed in an aged voice that creaked and groaned, yet carried great authority. “We cannot bury these men! This is a garden of life – not of death!”
Betsy whispered to Clare, “Why’s he speakin’ in English?”
“He is a heavenly being,” Clare whispered back. “According to legend, when a heavenly being speaks, people of all countries can understand him. We hear him in English, the pygmies hear him in their language.”
Sun Wu-Kung screamed again to the heavens, “Return their souls! I demand it! Return their souls!”
***
With those words, a wind rustled the leaves of the trees that dotted the park, and Indy felt a gentle yet insistent tugging. He gave his mother and sister a questioning look. “This is it? I’m going back?”
His mother gave him a smile of mixed emotions. “So it would seem, Henry.”
“But – what about you? Will I remember you, or any of this?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never returned to life before. But whether you do or not, we’ll be here cheering you on and waiting until we’re together again. Life is short, Henry. Don’t worry about it.”
“A few days, ninety years, it’s all the same in the end,” Suzie said thoughtfully. Already her voice, even her face seemed distant.
***
A few moments passed. Then a thick white cloud eclipsed the sun and cast a shadow over the entire garden, dimming the colors in the air. A small hole opened in the cloud and allowed one ray of sunlight to shine through onto the large peach tree with the shattered coffin. Sun Wu-Kung turned to the tree and raised his golden hooped rod toward it, then began to sing an unusual song that didn’t translate. Though the meter was nothing one would hear in a Protestant chapel, it had the cadence of a hymn.
Several peaches detached themselves from the tree and flew through the air to congregate and spin above the golden hooped rod. With a few swishing motions of the rod, Sun Wu-Kung sent all but two of them flying in many different directions, each into a grave. When the peaches hit the bodies, they exploded in small, colorful fireworks displays and sent bright golden glows over them.
A few more moments passed. One of the bodies twitched. Then it sat up. Then it got to its feet. Another body did the same, and another and another. The pygmies climbed out of their graves, wounds disappeared, life restored. Neither they nor their companions appeared to find anything unusual about this.
Sun Wu-Kung flung the remaining two peaches into the graves of Bohbala and Indiana Jones. The process repeated. The wound in Indy’s chest closed. His eyes popped open. He stood and blinked in confusion at the surrounding grave, even as Clare, Betsy, and Scraggy descended on him and showered him with embraces and kisses. “What the hell’s goin’ on?” he demanded.
Clare took his hand and smiled as she helped him out of the grave. “I think there’s someone you should meet,” she said, and pointed.
Indy followed her finger to see the monkey king, who looked very pleased with himself. Shock gave way to childlike delight as a smile sprouted across his face. He managed to utter, “You... you’re... Sun Wu-Kung?”
Sun Wu-Kung stepped forward, nodded, and responded, “You are... Indiana Jones?”
I don’t know what I expected, but that wasn’t it. “Huh? You know me?”
Sun Wu-Kung nodded again. “I have watched you from the heavens for many, many years. I was fascinated by your bravery, your passion, in searching for me.”
“Well, I... Thanks. I’m very honored.”
“The honor is mine, Dr. Jones,” the monkey king said. “You and your friends have helped save my city from ruin.” He paused, furrowing his brow. “I would like to return the favor.” He raised an eyebrow and held out his magical tool. “The Golden Hooped Rod will be a faithful friend. It is capable of one hundred transformations, and will always remain by your side.”
As Indy stared at the rod, his first thought was how it would look in a museum display case with the proper lighting. He shook that thought out of his head. “Thank you, er, your highness, but I can’t take something so sacred to you.”
Sun Wu-Kung threw back his head and laughed, the rasping sound of an old man with the energy of a youth. “I will explore the heavens for another. Surely, my search will be shorter and less hazardous than yours!”
Indy managed a nod as he took the rod. It felt light as a feather and cool to the touch. He smiled. “Thank you. I will see that it receives the veneration it deserves.”
Sun Wu-Kung looked over the healthy, restored community of pygmies and sighed. “With my city alive again, I will be able to return to the heavens.” He gave a warm smile to Indy, Clare, Betsy, and Scraggy. “Goodbye, my dear friends. Perhaps we shall meet again someday.”
He again raised his arms, and green ectoplasm again emanated from his fingers. The individual strands of hair flew from his body in a reversal of the process seen minutes ago. He again raised his arms, and green ectoplasm again emanated from his fingers. The individual strands of hair flew from his body in a reversal of the process seen minutes ago. They grew larger and larger until they resumed the shapes of the gorillas, looking none the worse for wear. His skeleton turned and walked back into the coffin, and the pieces of broken glass reassembled, sealing him in.
Kezure hurriedly rejoined the others from wherever he’d snuck off to. Tyki embraced Bohbala with tears of joy. Clare admired Indy’s prize, then admired Indy. “Well, Dr. Jones,” she said, “what fantastic tales have you brought back from the grave?”
Was that what happened? Was I really dead? It sure seemed that way, yet try as he might, Indy couldn’t remember anything between the bright light and waking up in this garden. Wait, that wasn’t entirely true – he remembered peace, joy even. Death had been something happy, nothing to be afraid of. That was all he could say for certain.
He smiled back at Clare. “Well, I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise, Dr. Clarke. Let’s just say the afterlife is to die for.”
She grimaced and punched him in the arm.
He chuckled. “Yeah, sorry, I deserved that.”
Bohbala, resuming his position as ruler, led his people out of the garden. Indy took one last look around at the Garden of Immortal Peaches. He was damn lucky that it had turned out to be real after all. He knew that for the sake of these people, he could never reveal its location to anyone, not even Marcus. But at least he was leaving with a souvenir.
Next: Chapter Fourteen
One of the canvas trucks had completely sunk, and only a small section of the other truck’s frame jutted out of the moat. The pirates clung to its fleeting safety as the hungry sharks circled ever closer, waiting for the inevitable, too many for even Kezure to handle.
Suddenly, a rope dropped from overhead. Kezure looked up to see Scraggy and his crew members standing on the drawbridge and holding it. The pirates climbed upward to safety.
Scraggy assisted Kezure onto the drawbridge, smiled, and said, “You owe me, old man.”
Kezure laughed and embraced him. Tyki and several other pygmies joined them, laughing and dancing with joy at their victory. But only for so long. A sudden silence fell over the city as Tyki broke away from the group and walked back through the gate, looking out over scores of the dead bodies of his people sprawled on the streets. They had paid the ultimate price to save their home.
The silence was interrupted by Betsy’s loud sobs. Scraggy followed the sound, and the color drained from his face.
A group of pygmies had carried the limp body of Indiana Jones out of the coliseum and now gently lowered it to the ground. Clare and Betsy knelt beside it.
Scraggy ran over to them and stopped, transfixed, unable to say anything. Clare looked up at him, her eyes filled with tears, and nodded. “He’s...” She could barely get the words out either. “He’s gone.”
Scraggy fell to his knees and broke down crying next to her. Kezure joined them, looking more startled than anything.
Betsy sniffled and looked at Clare. “What’re you cryin’ for? You didn’t even like him.”
“That’s not true,” Clare snapped too quickly. She cleared her throat and softened her voice. “He was a disturbed man, but he was my – our friend. And he died for all these people he just met.”
Betsy nodded and bit her lip. “I’m the one who shouldn’t like him, after what he did to me,” she mused. “But I don’t know many white people back home who would do this for a bunch of – Africans. I guess he was a complicated guy.”
“We all are,” Clare said, rubbing her shoulder.
Then the entire city was solemn and silent.
***
Indiana Jones had seen evidence for the truthfulness of so many different theologies, he couldn’t have begun to guess what the afterlife would be like. Fittingly enough, the part of it he could see right now was pretty generic. Some kind of park, a grassy field with some trees here and there and more in the distance, and a dirt path that wove past a park bench where two women appeared to be waiting for someone. Waiting for me?
The one on the left, wearing a wide-brimmed hat two decades out of style and a long blue dress, stood as he approached. Even now he couldn’t believe his eyes – even when she cried out “Henry!” in a voice more familiar than his own and rushed to embrace him.
He wouldn’t have thought he still needed to struggle for breath, but it took quite an effort to get out the word, “Mom?”
Then her arms were around him, warm and soft and solid. He didn’t know how. This was his mother as he’d wanted to remember her, before her illness, in her happiest moments. If he was to spend eternity in her embrace, he could live with that, or not, as the case may be.
Presently, though, she pulled back and held him at arm’s length, sizing him up. “My little boy, all grown up.”
“Mom,” he said, his dead heart racing, “I’ve missed you so much... more than I can say...”
Now he noticed that the other woman, just a bit younger, had risen from the bench and seemed to be patiently awaiting her turn with him. He had no memory of seeing her in life, yet in a moment he realized she was just as familiar as his mother, and in another moment her name came into his mind, as if whispered by a passing angel.
“Susie?” he gasped.
His little sister who had died in infancy smirked. “Brilliant deduction, Dr. Jones.”
Indy shook his head. “I can’t – I need to sit down.”
The women each took an arm and led him to the bench. He looked around at the park – not another soul in sight, though he sensed somehow that they weren’t alone, that other relatives and friends long gone lurked nearby.
“I have so many questions,” Indy said. “About this place, about what you’ve been up to...”
Anna Jones laughed. God, how I’ve missed that laugh. “Patience, Henry,” she said. “You were always so hungry for knowledge, but you have all the time in the world to learn. Susie and I are still learning.”
“You’ll love it here,” Susie said. “You’ll wish you’d died sooner.”
“Now, Susie, he did a lot of important things down there.” Anna looked into his eyes and ran her fingers through her hair – he’d just now realized he wasn’t wearing his hat, and that was disappointing, but it’d had a good run. “Oh, my sweet son,” she said, “I’m so proud of you...”
Indy’s heart swelled. But then he thought of how he’d hurt Betsy, and others, and the things Clare had said about him. Had his mother witnessed all of that? He looked away. “I’ve led an interesting life, Mom,” he said. “I wish I’d led a better one.”
She shook her head. “We all do, Henry. But if you’re here, your heart was in the right place.”
Indy took in his surroundings again. “Where is here, anyway?”
“Think of it as a waiting room,” she said. “Susie and I came here to greet you, to ease your transition. There’s so much more to see – but again, you have time. No rush.”
Indy nodded. He didn’t feel ready to move on. True, he’d had a fuller life than most, and thirty-eight years was more time than either his mother or his sister had gotten, but something indefinable tugged at him. Maybe he’d end up chained to the mortal realm, haunting Marshall College like a more scholarly Baron Seagrove – the recollection of that man brought a shudder along with a few more theological questions.
Anna sensed his unease and nodded. “I feel it too, Henry. It’s okay. We all have our own timetable.”
“Speaking of timetables,” Susie said, “it’s almost time for your funeral. Don’t want to miss that, do you?”
And just like that, though Indy could still see the park and his family members right in front of him, he could also see the land and the people he’d left behind. It was as if his mind, unconstrained by his physical brain, had expanded – not to omniscience, not by a long shot, but far enough to give equal and undivided attention to multiple settings in a way he couldn’t even have grasped in theory while alive.
It was surreal, but he watched it with calm detachment, like a filmstrip of people he’d never met in places he’d never been.
***
Darkness had fallen over the golden city. Indiana Jones’ body lay in state on a bamboo stretcher, covered with exotic, colorful flowers, carried by several pygmies in elaborate robes. Betsy, Clare, Scraggy, and Kezure marched beside it, also wearing ceremonial flowers, wanting to participate but not interfere with the local customs. Ahead of them Tyki led another stretcher with Bohbala’s body; behind them came all the pygmies killed in the battle, carried by the surviving humans and gorillas. All the mourners carried flickering candles. At the rear of the procession, a lone pygmy strummed a haunting melody on an unusual string instrument.
From a distance, the hundreds of flickering candles against the dark night sky were like reflections of the stars.
The procession halted at a large stone wall. Tyki walked up to it, fell to his knees, and began to chant. Clare, Betsy, Scraggy, and Kezure watched, confused but not daring to say anything.
A small rumble surrounded them, then a hairline crack formed in the mountain. As if drawn by an invisible hand, it formed a large door in the wall. Tyki stopped chanting and got to his feet. The door slowly opened without so much as a squeak, and an almost blinding white light emanated from inside.
Tyki walked into the light. Clare and the others hesitated for a moment, but when the procession followed him, they did too.
They ascended a twisting stone staircase that spiraled upward, out of sight, while the light grew brighter and brighter with no visible source. At the top, they found another doorway, this one already open. Tyki paused, said a few more words, and entered.
Clare, Betsy, Scraggy, and Kezure stared in total wonderment at the beautiful forest of seemingly never-ending luscious green trees filled with succulent, ripe peaches. Sunlight shone from a vivid blue sky, and somehow refracted into a rainbow that suffused into the air, everywhere and nowhere all at once. This could only be one place.
Betsy was the first to break the silence. “But... it’s... it’s the middle of the night...”
Clare was about to scold her, but Tyki whispered a response first, and Scraggy translated. “Sun always shine in the Garden of Immortal Peaches.”
Clare nodded as if this was to be expected. Kezure had already lost interest in the strange meteorological phenomena, mesmerized by the peach trees themselves. His mouth hung open. He turned to Scraggy. “These are the peaches that make one... forever young?”
Scraggy nodded. Before Kezure could say anything else, Tyki got the procession moving again. They walked to a clearing that may have been in the middle of the garden or still on the edge of its vastness. The pygmies dispersed and carried the bodies of Bohbala, Indiana Jones, and the others to their freshly dug graves.
A few feet ahead of the graves rested a peach tree that dwarfed all the others in height and girth. A small glass coffin was built into its trunk, holding a skeleton no more than four feet tall, adorned with a lion skin robe and golden crown. In its hand it clutched the famous golden hooped rod. An ancient inscription was etched in a tone slab above its head.
Since Tyki had already shown his willingness to answer questions even at this time, Clare pointed to the inscription and asked Scraggy, “What does it say?”
He squinted and translated, “Our Lord... Our Master... Sun... Wu... Kung.”
Clare exchanged an awe-filled glance with Betsy, then looked at one of the still bodies. “Damn you, Jones,” she said. “Why couldn’t you be here to share this with me?”
The pygmies started to lower the bodies into the ground. Tyki took a scroll from another pygmy and read something that had the cadence of scripture. As Indy disappeared into the earth, Scraggy broke down again and sobbed onto the shoulder of Kezure, who continued to stare at the peach trees.
Suddenly they all heard a low rumbling sound followed by a slight tremor. The trees swayed as a howling wind rushed through them. The coffin glowed with a light that rivaled the sunshine, then the glass shattered. The skeleton’s head turned. Its body rattled as it took one faltering step, then another, out into the garden.
The pygmies and gorillas looked reverent. Everyone else looked terrified.
The skeleton stopped a few steps away from the coffin, raised its arms high in the air, and opened its mouth. An unearthly high-pitched screech issued forth from where its lungs would have been. An ectoplasmic green smoke seeped from its outstretched fingers, traveled over the heads of the humans, and separated into several individual lines that touched down upon each of the gorillas and encircled their bodies. The gorillas rose from the ground and drifted through the air toward Sun Wu-Kung. As they traveled their bodies shrank.
By the time they reached the skeleton, they had shrunk to tiny, hair-like substances that attached themselves to it. As they converged, the skeleton took on a half-human, half-monkey form, something that could have been monstrous but instead conveyed a feeling of serenity. His wrinkled face held wide eyes, coal black and probing yet warm. His smile was devilish yet charming, his movements perky and quick. A powerful presence belied his small stature.
As Sun Wu-Kung looked over the congregation, the pygmies fell to their knees. Clare, Betsy, Scraggy, and a reluctant Kezure did the same.
Sun Wu-Kung paced through the clearing, looking into each of the many graves one by one. His smile vanished and his wrinkled face twisted into a furious expression. He stopped in front of one grave, raised his golden hooped rod to the sky, and screamed in an aged voice that creaked and groaned, yet carried great authority. “We cannot bury these men! This is a garden of life – not of death!”
Betsy whispered to Clare, “Why’s he speakin’ in English?”
“He is a heavenly being,” Clare whispered back. “According to legend, when a heavenly being speaks, people of all countries can understand him. We hear him in English, the pygmies hear him in their language.”
Sun Wu-Kung screamed again to the heavens, “Return their souls! I demand it! Return their souls!”
***
With those words, a wind rustled the leaves of the trees that dotted the park, and Indy felt a gentle yet insistent tugging. He gave his mother and sister a questioning look. “This is it? I’m going back?”
His mother gave him a smile of mixed emotions. “So it would seem, Henry.”
“But – what about you? Will I remember you, or any of this?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never returned to life before. But whether you do or not, we’ll be here cheering you on and waiting until we’re together again. Life is short, Henry. Don’t worry about it.”
“A few days, ninety years, it’s all the same in the end,” Suzie said thoughtfully. Already her voice, even her face seemed distant.
***
A few moments passed. Then a thick white cloud eclipsed the sun and cast a shadow over the entire garden, dimming the colors in the air. A small hole opened in the cloud and allowed one ray of sunlight to shine through onto the large peach tree with the shattered coffin. Sun Wu-Kung turned to the tree and raised his golden hooped rod toward it, then began to sing an unusual song that didn’t translate. Though the meter was nothing one would hear in a Protestant chapel, it had the cadence of a hymn.
Several peaches detached themselves from the tree and flew through the air to congregate and spin above the golden hooped rod. With a few swishing motions of the rod, Sun Wu-Kung sent all but two of them flying in many different directions, each into a grave. When the peaches hit the bodies, they exploded in small, colorful fireworks displays and sent bright golden glows over them.
A few more moments passed. One of the bodies twitched. Then it sat up. Then it got to its feet. Another body did the same, and another and another. The pygmies climbed out of their graves, wounds disappeared, life restored. Neither they nor their companions appeared to find anything unusual about this.
Sun Wu-Kung flung the remaining two peaches into the graves of Bohbala and Indiana Jones. The process repeated. The wound in Indy’s chest closed. His eyes popped open. He stood and blinked in confusion at the surrounding grave, even as Clare, Betsy, and Scraggy descended on him and showered him with embraces and kisses. “What the hell’s goin’ on?” he demanded.
Clare took his hand and smiled as she helped him out of the grave. “I think there’s someone you should meet,” she said, and pointed.
Indy followed her finger to see the monkey king, who looked very pleased with himself. Shock gave way to childlike delight as a smile sprouted across his face. He managed to utter, “You... you’re... Sun Wu-Kung?”
Sun Wu-Kung stepped forward, nodded, and responded, “You are... Indiana Jones?”
I don’t know what I expected, but that wasn’t it. “Huh? You know me?”
Sun Wu-Kung nodded again. “I have watched you from the heavens for many, many years. I was fascinated by your bravery, your passion, in searching for me.”
“Well, I... Thanks. I’m very honored.”
“The honor is mine, Dr. Jones,” the monkey king said. “You and your friends have helped save my city from ruin.” He paused, furrowing his brow. “I would like to return the favor.” He raised an eyebrow and held out his magical tool. “The Golden Hooped Rod will be a faithful friend. It is capable of one hundred transformations, and will always remain by your side.”
As Indy stared at the rod, his first thought was how it would look in a museum display case with the proper lighting. He shook that thought out of his head. “Thank you, er, your highness, but I can’t take something so sacred to you.”
Sun Wu-Kung threw back his head and laughed, the rasping sound of an old man with the energy of a youth. “I will explore the heavens for another. Surely, my search will be shorter and less hazardous than yours!”
Indy managed a nod as he took the rod. It felt light as a feather and cool to the touch. He smiled. “Thank you. I will see that it receives the veneration it deserves.”
Sun Wu-Kung looked over the healthy, restored community of pygmies and sighed. “With my city alive again, I will be able to return to the heavens.” He gave a warm smile to Indy, Clare, Betsy, and Scraggy. “Goodbye, my dear friends. Perhaps we shall meet again someday.”
He again raised his arms, and green ectoplasm again emanated from his fingers. The individual strands of hair flew from his body in a reversal of the process seen minutes ago. He again raised his arms, and green ectoplasm again emanated from his fingers. The individual strands of hair flew from his body in a reversal of the process seen minutes ago. They grew larger and larger until they resumed the shapes of the gorillas, looking none the worse for wear. His skeleton turned and walked back into the coffin, and the pieces of broken glass reassembled, sealing him in.
Kezure hurriedly rejoined the others from wherever he’d snuck off to. Tyki embraced Bohbala with tears of joy. Clare admired Indy’s prize, then admired Indy. “Well, Dr. Jones,” she said, “what fantastic tales have you brought back from the grave?”
Was that what happened? Was I really dead? It sure seemed that way, yet try as he might, Indy couldn’t remember anything between the bright light and waking up in this garden. Wait, that wasn’t entirely true – he remembered peace, joy even. Death had been something happy, nothing to be afraid of. That was all he could say for certain.
He smiled back at Clare. “Well, I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise, Dr. Clarke. Let’s just say the afterlife is to die for.”
She grimaced and punched him in the arm.
He chuckled. “Yeah, sorry, I deserved that.”
Bohbala, resuming his position as ruler, led his people out of the garden. Indy took one last look around at the Garden of Immortal Peaches. He was damn lucky that it had turned out to be real after all. He knew that for the sake of these people, he could never reveal its location to anyone, not even Marcus. But at least he was leaving with a souvenir.
Next: Chapter Fourteen