"...they had a peaceful journey for two months, for all they met were barbarians, Muslims, tigers, wolves, and leopards." —Xī yóu jì, Chapter Fifteen (trans. Anthony C. Yu)

Sun Wukong settled back down beside the fire with a sigh, hitching up his tiger-skin robe and wearily scratching his buttocks. Across the fire from him the monk, Tripitaka, snored lightly, flanked by the bulky forms of his junior disciples. Behind them the white horse stood, one leg slack, head drooping. Pilgrim Sun shrank his weapon back to the size of a needle and stored it in his ear. He unstrapped the water gourd from around his neck and set it on the ground near the luggage, where it would be handy for the morning. Then he lay back and stared up at Heaven.

The stars were as clear here as from the peaks of the loftiest mountain in China, though the land where they had camped was not very high. The air was dry, so dry that the wood of the luggage-carrying pole had begun to crack and split, and they'd had to bind it with hemp cords to keep it in one piece. Had it not been for his cloud-somersault, which had allowed him to travel many miles to find the nearest drinkable water each night, they'd have died of thirst weeks ago.

Pilgrim Sun grunted and sat up. "Hey, horse," he called softly. "Want a drink?"

The white horse blinked and flicked its ears, then nodded. Monkey scrambled to his feet and rummaged in the luggage for a bowl. He filled it from the gourd, waited patiently while the horse drank, then refilled it and offered it again. The horse's thirst seemed almost endless, and when he finished at last there was only a cupful of water left. Wukong snorted.

"Typical," he said. "Old Monkey has only just now gotten back from fetching water, and now he must fetch water again!" The horse snorted, and Wukong ruffled his mane. Although he resented no insult as much as "pi-ma-wen", the truth was that he liked horses, even this one which he knew full well was not actually a horse at all. On the other hand, this little dragon was probably suffering more than any of them, a creature of the ocean in this dry place, deprived of home and friends as they all were, but also of speech and flight. He, Pilgrim, at least had the relief of sparring with monsters and quarreling with his brothers. The horse only carried the monk up hill and down, over sand and rock, with nothing better for food than a bit of dry grass. And he did pity him.

"This Bodhisattva is a terrible pest," Sun Wukong groused. "Her compassion is getting all over me like fleas." He slung the gourd around his neck again, made the magic sign with his fingers, and somersaulted into the air.

On his way back, he saw a faint disturbance in the air above the hill where he had left the pilgrims sleeping. He slowed his cloud in midair and opened his fiery eyes wide, watching and listening closely.

Below, all seemed peaceful: the sleeping monk, Zhu Wuneng and Sha Wujing sleeping on either side of him, the fire now burned down to red coals. The white horse, however, looked wide awake, and was standing between the others and a rather handsome wild she-ass, with long ears, small neat hooves, a white belly and a sand-colored back, and a sidelong, humorous dark eye.

"Mercy and compassion are certainly attributes of the One, blessed be He," the ass was saying, "But this goddess of yours—"

"Bodhisattva," the white horse corrected, and Pilgrim Sun nearly fell out of the air in surprise to hear him speak.

"—yes, very well, Bodhisattva," the ass continued, with a flick of her tail, "I fail to see the difference."

Pilgrim Sun noted that, although apart from having speech the ass appeared quite ordinary, she had left no hoofprints in the sand. Moreover, the air above her shimmered, as air will when rising from a hot stone or a fire.

"There are eight millions of kinds of living things," the white horse said earnestly, "but we are taught that only some are capable of enlightenment, those being gods, humans, animals, spirits, and dwellers in Hell. This monk here," (he nodded at the slumbering Tripitaka) "our master, is human; my brothers and I are spirits, and the Bodhisattva, though she is divine, was not originally one of the gods but rather a human. Any of us might at some time become a Bodhisattva, as that merely means one who, on the threshold of perfect enlightenment, turns back to help others escape the Wheel—"

"All this is very well," said the she-ass, with a dismissive shiver of her skin, as if shaking off a fly. "But if this master of yours has three such disciples, it seems to me he is indeed a gifted seeker of truth. He need only come to accept the True Faith, and he would be great among the great." She turned her head and regarded the night, the emptiness around them, the sleeping three, the rather shaggy and travel-worn horse. "I think perhaps I should aid him in his quest."

It happened so quickly that even Pilgrim Sun's fiery eyes and diamond pupils could scarce follow it. The ass vanished, and in her place hovered a woman all of fire, so hot as to be almost invisible. She swooped down toward the sleeping monk, but before Pilgrim could finish snatching his rod from his ear, the white horse too vanished, and suddenly the coiled, glistening form of a dragon was looped protectively around the three sleepers, and a fringed, white-fanged mouth was opening wide in front of the fiery spirit. She flinched back.

"My master is very well, and has all the assistance he requires," said Ao Guang. "We were speaking of mercy and compassion. It would be a pity to end such a learned conversation with an ill-mannered battle, don't you think?"

The woman of fire hesitated, then bowed. "Truly the All-Knowing has created a multitude of wonders," she said, "Life is long. There will be another time to speak of the Prophet and his teachings, peace be upon him."

The dragon prince returned her bow. "Even so," he said. "Perhaps on our return with the sacred scriptures we will pass this way again."

"Go in peace," said the spirit, and she flew into the starry sky, brushing so close to the invisible Monkey King that his tiger-skin robe fluttered in the wind of her flight.

The Monkey King lowered the direction of his cloud and touched lightly down on the sand. The white horse resumed his humble form, shook his mane, and whickered a low greeting.

"Little brother," whispered Wukong, hardly able to keep from bursting into laughter, "you have been concealing your true worth."

"Isn't it true that 'the superior man is modest in his speech'?" asked the horse. "Come a little further away, let's not wake them up."

"Why haven't you spoken before?" asked Wukong.

"Haven't you noticed what a timid and fearful man Master is?" asked Ao Guang. "When I ate his horse, he nearly died of fear. Now we are traveling on a long and difficult road, full of monsters and spirits of all kinds. As long as Master thinks of me as his good horse, he will run to me if anything attacks us. If he remembers that I am a dragon, he might hesitate, and then something might carry him off, just as that fire-spirit sought to do. It's better if he forgets what I am. Please don't give me away!"

"I won't," Pilgrim said, laughing. "It can be our secret. But sometimes, when he is resting, you can talk to the rest of us. This is a lonely enough life without a brother's support."

"Thank you," said the horse. "And thank you for the water."

"It's nothing," said Wukong. "Does not the proverb say we are to chop wood and carry water, both before and after enlightenment?"

"Even so," chuckled the white horse. "And when I go home to my family, I can tell them the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven, was my water-carrier."

"You do, and I'll give you such a thump with my rod that you will fly over the Celestial Palace," said Pilgrim.

The white horse laughed, and quickly turned it into a whinny as Tripitaka stirred and sat up, blinking.