The Unforgiving Monkey

A king kept a troupe of pet monkeys for his son's amusement, alongside a herd of rams. One greedy ram kept raiding the palace kitchen, and the cooks regularly drove him off with whatever came to hand.

The eldest monkey saw the danger this posed: if the cooks ever struck the woolly ram with a burning stick, he might catch fire, stampede into the nearby stable, and burn the horses too — and monkey-fat, he knew, was the prescribed remedy for burned horses in that land's medical texts. He urged the troupe to leave for the forest at once, but the others, comfortable with their palace treats, laughed at his fear and refused.

Unwilling to watch his family come to harm, the old monkey left alone for the forest. Soon after, exactly as he had feared, the burning ram fled into the stable, the horses were burned, and the king's physicians prescribed monkey-fat for the cure — so every monkey left behind was killed.

When the old monkey learned what had happened, he did not let the injustice pass quietly. He found a lake guarded by a man-eating spirit and struck a bargain: in exchange for a pearl necklace, he lured the same king and his retinue to the lake with tales of treasure, letting the spirit take them as they entered the water, while sparing the king himself with a final warning about what his cruelty had cost.

The tale is remembered for two lessons at once: that timely warnings deserve to be heeded before disaster, not after, and that injustice ignored does not simply disappear — it tends to return, in its own form, to the one who caused it.