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The name Tripitaka has been on Monkey’s right arm his whole life. So pale at first, in wispy gossamer grey, that he could barely make it out unless he tilted it toward the light and squinted.
The Master said it meant his soulmate was very far off, probably not even born yet. It was the danger of being a god; some had to wait centuries for their soulmate to be born. It was rumoured that the Master had waited a thousand years, just to meet and lose his soulmate within the space of a single day.
Monkey didn’t put too much thought into it. Either his soulmate was a god, in which case they’d have all of eternity together. Or they’d be human, and he’d rather not dwell on the pain of their short life before he absolutely had to. Which was still better than option three, where they were a demon and he killed them, then let someone else write bad poetry about it.
It didn’t occur to him until he was standing before the gods, judged and sentenced for a crime he didn’t commit, that there was still a fourth option; that they lived and died while he was imprisoned in stone, never knowing.
Years later – or the blink of an eye, from Monkey’s perspective – he’s standing in the middle of an unfamiliar forest, fighting a demon that’s a lot tougher than it should be in order to defend a tiny little monk.
As wake-ups go, Monkey’s had worse. He’s also had better.
After the demon has run away, Monkey looks the monk over warily, wondering if the boy will go running to the gods and tell them that their prisoner has escaped. Not a whole lot Monkey can do about it, if so.
But the boy doesn’t look in any hurry to run anywhere. “Monkey,” he says. “I’m a friend.”
Monkey barely keeps back the derisive snort. He had few friends and none of them were monks. “Who are you?”
The boy hesitates, some deep emotion contained within those big brown eyes, before finally blurting out bravely: “I’m Tripitaka.”
Monkey freezes. His first thought is that a lot of time must have passed inside that rock; long enough for his soulmark to be born and grow up. Fourteen or fifteen years at least, he thinks, looking the kid over. Still in that awkward stage between child and man, girlish in his adolescence, voice not even broken.
It’s both too much time, and not enough. Monkey had hoped to have at least two decades of warning; time to adjust to the idea of being bound to another. Or if he couldn’t have that, a full-grown, accomplished soulmate would be a real help. But here they are, no warning at all, no adjustment period, just here.
He says the first thing that comes to his head: “You’re who?”
The boy’s face falls. “Tripitaka. Does that name not… mean anything to you?”
Yes. Everything. “Never heard of it.”
He pretends not to notice the boy’s disappointment; no doubt he’d harboured some romantic ideas about being swept off his feet by the god whose name was on his skin.
Tough luck, kid. You're a monk and you're barely more than a child. Monkey is still a bit creeped out he hadn’t realised how young the kid was until after he’d planted a kiss on him. He might have to firmly re-establish some boundaries to make it clear that won't be happening again.
Unfortunately the kid doesn’t take any of Monkey’s hints, innocently announcing his plans for a grand quest while Monkey stares in bemusement. His soulmate has nerve; he’ll give him that. In a few decades, that might even be kind of hot. Right now it’s mostly amusing.
Monkey’s about to tell him for the second time to scram, when the kid says how long he’s been in that rock.
Five hundred years.
Five. Hundred. Years.
Monkey blames his shock for why he accompanies the kid into town. Everything he hears is another blow; the gods gone, the demons in power, all their history erased. All he has left is a teenage soulmate who – reading between the lines – might have got himself kicked out of his monastery for doing something very stupid to release Monkey.
Not that Monkey’s ungrateful… except, yes he is. Couldn’t Tripitaka have waited another few years, so that he’d be less of a burden and more of a help to Monkey?
It makes him rather surly when the kid insists on telling him the plan again, like hearing it one more time will make Monkey any more interested in going along with it.
“I only take orders from gods,” he says, deciding to get things straight before they go any further. “And even then, only if I think it’s a good idea.” He’s willing to entertain suggestions – being his soulmate does come with a few privileges – but no way in hell is he letting some tiny human boss him around, now or ever. The sooner Tripitaka learns that, the better.
It’s not until Tripitika has scuttled off on his little errand that Monkey thinks to look at his soulmark to see how it’s changed.
It’s scarred over, the letters barely legible under a burn mark.
For a horrible lurching moment, Monkey thinks the monk must have died out of his sight. Then logic reasserts itself. If his soulmate had died, he’d have felt it. It’s not something you can just not notice. Maybe inside the rock, but not while he was alive and conscious.
He starts checking the rest of himself, and that’s when he finds new words on his left arm in beautifully crafted golden letters. Tripitaka. The same as the first but in a slightly different style as if penned by a different hand. Burnt and dead on his right, vibrant and alive on his left.
Bizarre. He’s never heard of soulmarks switching positions before. Occasionally people get new marks late in life or marks will suddenly change to show a new name, but moving positions? That’s a new one.
He doesn’t really get the chance to think over it until days later, once he’s made friends with two bizarre gods that wouldn’t even register as mid-tier in Jade Mountain’s hierarchy. Of course, Jade Mountain is apparently gone, so Monkey doesn’t have a whole lot of options.
It comes up when Pigsy takes his shirt off to wash it in the river. His broad body is covered in burned soulmarks. More than Monkey has ever seen on anyone. There must be about a dozen names, all scarred over.
Pigsy catches Monkey looking. “They were all a long time ago,” he says to Monkey’s unasked question.
“I don’t…” It occurs to Monkey that Pigsy must know a lot about soulmarks. In this day and age, he’s probably close to an expert. “Have you ever heard of a soulmark that changed positions?”
Pigsy thinks about it. “No,” he says. “And I’m pretty bloody old. There’s a first time for everything though. Has yours moved?”
“It was on my right arm,” Monkey says, and pushes back his cuffs to show the burned letters on his wrists. “It looks dead, but now it’s on my left arm. Same name but alive.”
To Pigsy’s credit, he shows no surprise at the name. Perhaps he’d already suspected. “I’ve seen something like this before,” he says, examining Monkey’s wrists, careful not to touch the marks.
“What is it? A side effect of being in stone?”
“No idea, but there was a girl I knew up north who had two soulmates, both with the same name. No reason, just one of odd coincidences that come up. They all got along pretty well until one of them fell out of a tree and died. Her marks looked the same as yours.”
Monkey’s breath catches. He can see it now. The same name on each arm, one alive and one dead.
“You’re saying I had two? But I only had one soulmark going into the stone.”
Pigsy looks sympathetic. “You were in there a while, though. Five hundred years? That’s plenty of time for a new mark to appear.” Also plenty of time for the old mark to die, it goes unsaid.
So Monkey had been right the first time. Tripitaka – the first Tripitaka, the name he’d dreaded and anticipated – had come and gone while he was asleep. He could have lived and died centuries ago and Monkey will never know.
“A bit odd though,” Pigsy muses. “The name Tripitaka’s not exactly common. I’ve only ever heard of the one in prophecy. Did our Tripitaka say if it was a legacy name?”
“He didn’t,” Monkey says, slipping his cuffs back on. “I’ll find out.”
Pinning Tripitaka down proves difficult. While he is terrible at lying, he’s very good at diverting the conversation or distracting Monkey so well that he forgets what they were talking about. (Monkey still isn’t certain if Tripitaka had meant to knock him into that river, or if it had been a timely accident)
Eventually Monkey settles on the one thing no soulmate can refuse the other. “Can I see your soulmark?”
Tripitaka nearly walks into a tree. “What?” He says, a note of panic in his voice.
“Your soulmark.” It occurs to Monkey suddenly that some monasteries discourage their members from talking about soulmates, and if it’s in a tricky position on the back of Tripitaka’s neck or shoulder, he might not even be aware he has one. “You know I’m your soulmate, right?”
Tripitaka looks away from him, blushing. “Yes,” he says, so softly that Monkey barely hears him.
“So can I see it?” Monkey realises what the problem might be and belatedly adds: “I’ll show you mine.” He pulls off his cuff and shoves his left wrist at Tripitaka, displaying the golden letters. Tripitaka reaches as if he’d touch it, and doesn’t quite dare.
“It’s beautiful,” he says, and there’s something in his voice that Monkey can’t read. Confusion? Awe? Trepidation?
“So can I see yours?” Monkey repeats.
“Oh!” There’s no doubt about it, Tripitaka is blushing now. “I’m not supposed to show my body to people not of my order.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine.” Monkey always seems to be doing the wrong thing around his too-young soulmate. And Tripitaka is so skittish around him, like he’s expecting Monkey to push for something. Maybe it’s time they had that conversation. “You don’t have to…I don’t want you to ever do anything you’re not comfortable with. With me or anyone else.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean it. You know that not all soulmates are the same? Some of the strongest soul-bonds I know were married to other people and shared only friendship. Some were even cousins or siblings. Romantic bonds are only one kind. They’re not even the most common.”
It’s difficult to read Triptiaka’s expression. “You don’t want a romantic bond?”
“You’re a little young for that.” Monkey temporised. “Lets say you can be my kid brother for now and we’ll revisit it in a few decades.”
Tripitaka blinks. “Wait. How old do you think I am?”
“I dunno. Fourteen or fifteen?”
“I’m eighteen!” Unfortunately for Tripitaka, his voice rises in a very shrill note of adolescent indignance.
“Sure you are.”
“I am!”
“Pull the other one.”
He’s faintly amused when Tripitaka sulks for the rest of the afternoon. If he was going to tell a lie, he should at least tell one that was believable.
So Monkey doesn’t ask Tripitaka again about his soulmark, but it nags at him nonetheless. He finally gets his chance in the Forest of the Kin. He catches Gwen as she’s leaving the passed-out monk.
“You saw under his clothes, right?” Gwen nods, giving him a sharp look. “Did you see… was my mark on there?”
Gwen’s expression softens. “Yes,” she says. “I saw your name in golden letters on Tripitaka’s chest.”
Monkey breathes out. He doesn’t know why he’s so relieved. It wasn’t like he’d thought Tripitaka had lied or anything. It just… bothered him not to see the proof.
“I had another soulmate,” he admits. “He died while I was buried in rock.”
“I’m sorry,” Gwen says quietly, and just like that, Monkey is angry at her again.
“I don’t forgive you for that. Other things. Never that.”
“I don’t expect you to.” Gwen glances back at where the monk lies terrifyingly still. “I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you don’t lose this one too.”
To be clear, Monkey hadn’t been aware of what Gwen was planning to do. That had taken him completely off-guard.
However, if he had known, he can’t say he would have tried to talk her out of it.
Tripitaka leaving also takes him off-guard.
Tripitaka isn’t meant to leave. Tripitaka isn’t meant to just walk away, without even saying good-bye. Like it was nothing. Like they never –
Doesn’t matter, though. If he doesn’t care, Monkey doesn’t care. It’s fine. Great, even. Because now Monkey can get on and do his job without some teenager holding him back. Who needs a soulmate anyway? Pigsy’s lost heaps and he’s fine. Sandy probably doesn’t even have one.
He manages to keep from thinking about Tripitaka until Raxion asks slyly: “So where’s that monk of yours? Soulmate troubles?”
Monkey seizes him by the throat. “How do you know that?”
“Cool it, Monkey King,” he chokes out. “I saw your arm when you were tied up, remember?”
Oh. That’s right. Monkey releases him, still angry but not sure why.
Raxion brushes himself off. “Bit of friendly advice – the monk’s not who you think.”
Nevermind; Monkey remembers why he’s angry now. “Don’t talk about him.”
“Just trying to give you a heads’ up, friend to friend.”
“We’re not friends.”
“Allies then. That monk, though, isn’t Tripitaka. At least not your Tripitaka.” Raxion grins widely, like he’s expecting a reward.
Monkey is more puzzled than anything. “Yes, he is. He’s got my name on him.”
“You sure about that? Have you actually seen it?” Monkey doesn’t answer, and Raxion seizes on it. “You haven’t, have you. You’ve taken his word for it, just like you’ve taken his word that he is Tripitaka.”
“Who else would he be?”
Raxion opens his mouth and Pigsy stands up. “Shut it. Monkey, he’s stirring you up.”
“I know,” Monkey says quickly. He should know better by now than to listen to a demon.
Monkey’s first thought when he sees Tripitaka walking behind the Font Demon is betrayal. This is what Raxion had been hinting at. Tripitaka had been working with the demons the whole time.
Then as common sense reasserts itself, he starts to make sense of what he’s seeing. Tripitaka standing stiffly, composed in that chilly way he gets when he’s frightened. Davari reaching out and squeezing the monk’s jaw with a proprietary air, as if evaluating livestock.
He dares lay hands on Monkey’s –
Pigsy seizes Monkey’s shoulder before he can do anything rash. “You can’t do anything now,” he says. “Stick to the plan.”
“That’s my soulmate,” Monkey hisses at him.
“I know,” Pigsy says gently. “Trust me, I know.” And Monkey recalls all those burned marks on Pigsy’s skin.
He swallows his rage and listens.
Later, he almost wishes he hadn’t, because Raxion’s plan is a miserable failure and they’d both be dead if it weren’t for the Resistance members hiding in the city.
“Too bad about Raxion,” Pigsy remarks as they’re setting up for bed. “Could have used more intel about the palace.”
Monkey grunts and pretends not to be studying the invisibility potion. “What do you think he meant about Tripitaka not being my soulmate?”
Pigsy sighs. “Monkey, I’m very old, and I’ve done a hell of a lot. Do you really think every meaningful relationship in my life was with a soulmate?”
Put that way it does sound rather silly. “…no?”
“Exactly. If the only meaning he has is as your soulmate, then what you’re really saying is that he has no meaning as himself.”
Monkey thinks about that. “You’re saying it doesn’t matter?”
“I’m saying it matters a lot less than a lot of people think.” Pigsy settles down, making himself comfortable. “I’ll tell you a secret. My fifth soulmate, I’d known her for years before our marks appeared. Just woke up oneday after fifteen years of being together, and there her name was on my skin. Like the universe finally caught up to what we already knew.” He smiles up at the ceiling. “I think of her every time I put on a warm pair of socks.”
It’s a small, silly detail. Kind of like how Monkey thinks of Tripitaka when he sees an orange, because Tripitaka is one of those bizarre people who likes to eat the rind. He’d even eat other people’s rinds, stealing them off Monkey as they were walking…
Monkey realises with a strange sense of relief that he’s already made his decision. He picks up the invisibility potion.
Apparently over the past few centuries, the demons have added a few renovations to the Jade Mountain. It takes Monkey longer than expected to reach the tower, and he’s aware he’s pushing his time limit as he forces the door open.
“Monk…?”
Almost immediately he realises he’s made a mistake. The sleeping figure on the bed is a girl. Even if he can’t see her face, turned away against the pillow, he knows a woman’s nightgown when he sees it.
“Hey, who are you?” He blurts out without thinking and she jolts awake.
“Who’s there?”
He’s already backing out, not wanting to scare her more.
“Sorry, I was looking for another prisoner. I thought there was only one room in this tower…”
“Monkey, is that you?”
He stops, looking back. The girl is sitting up in bed, eyes searching the room. And her face…
“I’m here,” Monkey says as the spell fails. He tries to figure out why Tripitaka is wearing a dress. Had human fashions changed in five hundred years?
Except that dress, while fairly modest as nightgowns go, doesn’t hide the body the way monk’s vestments do. It’s impossible to miss what’s happened.
“Monk…” Monkey comes over to the bed. “He turned you into a girl.”
Tripitaka looks uncomfortable, which is understandable. The first time Monkey had turned into a girl, he had been pretty freaked out too, though it was more the fact he didn’t know what was happening than the fact it happened (once he figured out how to switch back and forth he’d been quite comfortable).
Still, it must suck when it’s something done to you, not something you choose, and Monkey is about to assure him they’ll work it out when Tripitaka says quietly:
“I was always a girl.”
“No, no,” Monkey tells him, thinking this spell must affect memories too. “You were a boy monk.”
“Always a girl,” she repeats, pausing a beat before adding: “I lied to you.”
And abruptly everything about Tripitaka comes clear. The narrow build and skinny arms, the soft features… all things that Monkey had taken as evidence of a still-developing boy were actually the signs of a young woman. She hadn’t been lying about her age after all.
(She’s rambling something about betrayal, which is stupid and he’ll tell her in a second, once he’s got this whole thing straight in his head.)
Seven hells, no wonder Gwen had been acting weird in the Forest of the Kin. She must have been trying to work out how the Tripitaka of prophecy was a girl in borrowed vestments. Monkey had just thought her mind was going after so long alone…
“Wait, so is your name not Tripitaka?” He says, interrupting something she was saying about Davari.
Triptiaka stops. “The real Tripitaka died,” she says. “A few days before I freed you. I was dressed as a monk to hide from the demons and when you asked me who I was…”
“You took the name,” Monkey says, understanding now what happened. Why he’d woken up with two Tripitakas on his skin, one alive and one dead. For a moment, he’s distracted by the idea of the first Tripitaka, so very very close, and missed by a matter of days.
Then he sees the miserable face of his other soulmate. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “When the letters appeared I thought that had to be proof I was meant to do it. That it was my destiny.”
“I think destiny is what you want it to be," Monkey says slowly, remembering what Pigsy had said about soulmarks that yielded to choice.
He realises abruptly that he’s sitting very closer to her and that he can see a faint glimmer of gold on her chest, gleaming letters disappearing down the front of her dress, unreadable in the dark. What a hell of a place for a soulmark. That must have been embarrassing when he asked to see it, particularly if she was trying to hide her gender at the time.
She follows his gaze, growing flustered. “Oh. Would you like to – ”
“No, I’m okay.”
And he is. If she is his soulmate, it doesn’t change anything. And if she isn’t… well, Pigsy waited fifteen years for the universe to catch up. Monkey’s got time.
He reaches out and very carefully pats Tripitaka’s shoulder. “I’m going to fix this."
So things go badly, and then worse, and Davari throws Tripitaka out a tower and Monkey has to jump after her.
It all turns out okay in the end though, and a few days later Monkey is climbing up onto a rooftop to where Tripitaka is sitting, looking out into the horizon.
“You shouldn’t be climbing up this high if you can’t fly,” he says, making his careful way across the eaves.
“I used to climb cliffs for fun,” she retorts. “This is much safer.”
Monkey chuckles and sits down beside her. “I have something for you.”
“What?”
Her interest turns to delight as he hands her the orange. “They were selling them in the city,” Monkey tells her. “I thought about peeling it, but I know you’re a weirdo who likes the peel.”
She gives his shoulder a playful knock. “Thank you, Monkey,” she says sincerely.
“You’re welcome.”
She starts pulling off the peel, dropping it in her lap for later.
“Can I ask you something?” He asks after a minute.
“Of course.”
“Can you tell me about…” Abruptly he wonders if you were supposed to ask one soulmate about another, if that was something that was allowed. But Tripitaka was the only person who’d met her predecessor who was still living.
Apart from the Font Demon who’d murdered him, but Monkey was trying not to think about that.
Luckily Tripitaka is quick on the uptake. “You want to know about the other Tripitaka?”
“Yes.” Monkey rubs his right wrist, on the scarred words.
“Well.” Tripitaka thinks about it. “I didn’t know him well. I only met him once. He thought I was a servant, though he apologised for it later, which the others didn’t.”
“So he was polite,” Monkey says, trying to piece together a picture of his dead soulmate.
“And very smart. He’d studied all the texts the Scholar had sent him, he knew the chant by heart. And he was brave. He – he defended the Scholar and I, gave us time to escape. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for him.”
She says it like an apology. Sorry for living when he died. Sorry for surviving.
Monkey decides they can’t have that. “So you’re saying he was a lot like you.” He looks off into the horizon. “Can you imagine if he’d lived? The two of you would always be going on about some boring scholarly thing. I feel left out just thinking about it. Are you sure he was my soulmate, not yours?”
Tripitaka gives him a teary-eyed look and he wonders for a panicked moment what he said wrong until she smiles. “It would have been rather nice,” she says. “The three of us. You are rather much for one person.”
“I am entirely too much for one person,” he affirms proudly. “But I suppose you’ll have to manage.”
She offers him a segment of orange. It’s sweet and perfect.