Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters (6 page)

Once upon a time, long ago, Japan was in turmoil. The
oni
demons had taken over the northern island. Along with them came earthquakes and drought and tsunamis. Much of the land was destroyed. Desperate, the people sent army after army to fight the demons, but no one ever returned from the Lost Island of Monsters.

An old man and woman lived poor and hungry on a farm. Their sons had all perished fighting the oni, and there was no one else to help them maintain the animals and the crops. “If only I could have another son,” the old woman said. “A big, strong son to assist us. But it is impossible.”

One afternoon, the old woman was trying to wash clothes in a stream that was more like a trickle. Dead trees lined the banks. A huge earthquake struck, the ground rolled, and the old woman fell down. Water flooded into the stream, turning it into a river, which swelled until it became as big as an ocean. Then she saw a peach—a huge peach, a peach as big as a house—bobbing down the current toward her. Her mouth watered. She had not tasted a peach in five years, for all the fruit trees were gone. “Look at that,
”
she said to herself. “How delicious! It must have washed down from the mountains.
”

The peach caught on a branch and stopped moving. The old woman called to her husband, “Hurry! We have a feast here!” Both hobbled over to the peach.

The old woman sliced off a piece. It was the most delicious peach she had ever tasted, like liquid honey. She closed her eyes.

The fruit was so big that they could eat and eat and keep eating long past when they were full. They couldn't help themselves. Finally, their sticky hands reached into the last bit of peach, and they felt the pit.

It didn't feel like the usual prickly peach pit. No, this was smooth under their fingertips.

The old man scraped away the last of the peach flesh.

The pit gleamed gold.

The old man tapped on it. “This is worth a fortune,” he said.

“But there are no wealthy people left to buy it,” the old woman said.

Suddenly, the pit trembled. The old couple gasped and stepped back, sure that it was going to explode and they were going to be punished for their greed.

The pit split open with a sound like cracking thunder.

A little boy, naked as a newborn, leaped out and landed on the earth in front of them.

“I am Momotaro,” the boy said. “I am your son.”

The old woman wept and hugged him. Her prayers had been answered!

Inside the peach pit, a samurai sword glittered. The old man pulled it out. Inscribed on the blade was

The Sword of Yumenushi

It was too big for the boy, so the old man carried it home to keep for him.

Momotaro helped the old people on the farm, and they loved him like a son. They forgot how they had found him, there in the peach with the sword, and they thought of him as any ordinary boy.

Through the years, the land continued to suffer. Earthquakes happened daily. The rains were still sparse. Yet the old couple was happier now than they had ever been, because they had Momotaro to keep them company.

Though the crops barely grew, Momotaro did. He became known throughout the land as the fiercest and strongest boy anyone had ever seen. He could uproot full-grown trees before he was five. When he was eight, he could hold his breath underwater for ten minutes. At age ten, he could shoot an arrow through a knot of wood from half a mile away. The old man burst with pride whenever he spoke of his son.

Momotaro wasn't just the best warrior in the land. When he wasn't preparing his body for battle, he liked to dream. For every tactic he practiced, Momotaro made a painting, until the home of the old people was filled with dozens and dozens of pictures. He had the secret dreaming mind of a poet.

“What good is art in a time of war?” his adopted father complained one day, after Momotaro neglected his chores to make a painting for his adopted mother. “Do not let him waste his talent on such frivolous matters!”

Momotaro bowed his head. He snapped his paintbrushes in half. “I am sorry, honorable Father,” Momotaro replied. “I do not know why I dream as much as I do. I will try to be a better son.”

Momotaro went outside to do all the chores that the old man found tiresome. The old woman tsked at her husband. “Don't you know,” she asked, “that wisdom hides in his heart?” She jabbed at the painting with a bent finger.

The old man looked closely at it for the first time.

It was a picture of Momotaro fighting the oni. He threw the monsters off a craggy cliff. He slashed at their evil with his trusted sword.

Then the old man examined all of Momotaro's art. Picture after picture of the boy fighting. It was as if he was planning his whole battle strategy.

That was when the old man remembered. Momotaro was not his. Their answered prayer had come at a price they had yet to pay.

The old man made his son new paintbrushes and presented them to him with a bow. “Forgive me.”

The old man now knew that Momotaro had been sent to Japan for one purpose: to grow up and rid the land of the terrible demons that plagued the North.

One morning, Momotaro awoke early from a dream. In the dream he had traveled through a dark and barren land, alone and lonely and cold. His body shook with dread as his eyes opened. Yet he found himself staring out the window to the northern mountains, where the oni lorded over his countrymen, and he felt nothing but a determination to go.

It would be easier to stay. To keep living this easy, pleasant life with his elderly parents. But he knew deep inside that this wasn't the right answer. “It is time,” he told his parents with a heavy heart.

“You are not ready!” his father shouted. “You are too young.”

It was true that Momotaro had not yet grown a whisker on his face. But he bowed his head. “Please forgive me, honorable Father, but I am called.”

“Are you not afraid?” his mother cried, for she was.

“I have never been more afraid,” Momotaro said, “but I must begin. Or I will never finish.”

The old man told the boy how to get to the coast and where he could find a ship to hire. The old woman made him a basket of food to take, and her tears salted the rice balls.