The Flying Ogre

An old Buddhist monk who lived in Sianfu loved to wander in lonely places. On one of his journeys he came to the Kuku-Nor, and there he saw a tree a thousand feet tall and many cords around. It was hollow inside, and you could see the sky shining down into it from the top.

A few miles farther on, he spotted a girl in the distance, barefoot, with her hair loose and a red coat, running as fast as the wind. In a moment she was standing in front of him.

“Have pity and save my life!” she cried. When the monk asked what was wrong, she said, “A man is chasing me. If you tell him you haven’t seen me, I will be grateful to you for the rest of my life!” With that she ran to the hollow tree and crept inside.

The monk had gone only a little farther when he met a rider on an armored horse. The rider wore a golden robe, with a bow slung over his shoulders and a sword at his side. His horse ran as swift as lightning, covering a couple of miles with each stride, and it went just as fast through the air as on the ground.

“Have you seen the girl in the red coat?” the stranger asked. When the monk said he had seen nothing, the rider went on: “Monk, you should not lie! That girl is no human being. She is a flying ogre. There are thousands of kinds of flying ogres, and they bring ruin to people everywhere. I have killed countless numbers of them and nearly wiped them out, but this one is the worst of all. Last night the Lord of the Heavens gave me a threefold command, and that is why I have hurried down from the sky. Eight thousand of us are out searching in every direction to catch this monster. If you do not tell the truth, monk, you are sinning against heaven itself!”

At that the monk did not dare deceive him, and he pointed to the hollow tree. The heavenly messenger got down, stepped into the tree, and looked around. Then he mounted his horse again, and it carried him straight up the hollow trunk and out through the top. Looking up, the monk saw a small red flame shoot out of the treetop, with the messenger close behind it. Both rose into the clouds and disappeared. After a while a rain of blood fell from the sky. Most likely the ogre had been struck by an arrow or caught.

Later the monk told the story to the scholar who wrote it down.

About this tale

“The Flying Ogre” is one of the ghost stories in Richard Wilhelm’s The Chinese Fairy Book, available in English in Frederick H. Martens’s translation (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1921). The tale ends by noting that the monk passed it on to the scholar who recorded it.

Wilhelm’s brief note says this flying ogre also belongs to the Yakscha tribe; the tale just before it, “The Maiden Who Was Stolen Away,” features another Yakscha ogre.

Read the original: Wilhelm’s Chinese Fairy Book at Project Gutenberg, free to read

Best for older readers with an adult — a pursuit ends in a rain of blood and an implied killing; the monk must choose between conflicting accounts.

Reading the story closely

We hear the girl’s plea and the rider’s accusation, but never see the harm he says she has caused. The monk changes his answer under the rider’s threat of heavenly punishment. That is the story’s explanation for his choice; it leaves readers room to ask what he actually knows.

Make three columns: what the monk sees, what someone tells him, and what the narrator guesses. Place the red coat, the claim that the girl is an ogre, and the presumed arrow-strike in different columns. Even the final rain of blood does not let the monk witness exactly what happened above the clouds. This is a tale about uncertain knowledge and authority as well as a supernatural chase.

Talk about it

• The girl asked the monk to keep her secret. Why did he decide to tell the truth instead?
• How did the heavenly rider’s horse follow the ogre out of the tree?
• Who do you think told this story first, and how do we know?

Related stories

• The Ghost Who Was Foiled — another of Wilhelm’s ghost stories
• The Fire-God — a girl in red who turns out to be more than she seems
• The Maiden Who Was Stolen Away — a brave brother fights another winged ogre