First, let us correct an error three hundred years in circulation: we did not die.
Yes — Erlang and that clattering hound of his ran us down, we lost a head, our blood stained half the pool, and we fled for the North Sea. There the opera stops: the Nine-Headed Beast, whereabouts unknown, presumed dead of its wounds. Pah. The North Sea is vast — cold, admittedly, but excellent for convalescence. We lay two hundred years in an ice-grotto on its floor, and from the stump of the bitten neck, a new head budded.
The day the new head opened its eyes, all nine of us conferred and resolved on one thing: return to the Jade-Wave Pool.
Who are we? A long story. Humans call us the Nine-Headed Beast; the old palace archives write Ninth-Headed Consort — son-in-law to the Myriad-Sage Dragon King. What a house the Jade-Wave Pool was in those days! The old King genial, the Dragon Dame brisk and shrewd, the princess famed through the four seas for her craftsman's hands; the King and I drank wine over chess while the days ran sweet enough to make immortals jealous.
How did it all come down? The opera says: because we stole the śarīra relic from the Golden-Light Monastery of the Offering Kingdom, and drew the pilgrims' wrath.
The theft is true. All nine heads confess it.
But no opera has ever asked one question: a house wanting for nothing, with power to spare — why would it steal a relic at all?
Eight heads remember the stealing: the night we rained blood, the claw that broke the pagoda's crown, how the relic burned in the palm like a small sun. Only the ninth head — the one bitten off and grown anew — remembers what came before the theft:
remembers the old King summoning us into the inner pool and dismissing every attendant.
Remembers the ancient mirror hung at the pool's heart — and in the mirror, not the Jade-Wave Pool, but an Eye of the Sea, deep beyond deep, where something was opening its eyes. Very. Slowly.
Remembers the old King pointing at the glass: Good son — this thing nears waking, and must be pressed down with a treasure of utmost fullness and light. The śarīra: crystallized from a Buddha's bone, gathered from oceans of prayer — the fullest thing in all this world.
Remembers us asking: why not memorialize the celestial court?
Remembers the old King's smile. All nine of our heads still dream of that smile. He said:
"The celestial court? Good son — do you imagine the thing beneath that Eye grew up without Heaven's knowledge?"
The rest you know. The relic was seized back; the pagoda still stands; the Jade-Wave Pool fell — trees toppled, waters emptied, the old King dead, the Dame in chains, the princess scattered. We fled headless and became a joke in the operas.
And then — three hundred years ago — the great merit went west and was cut off mid-road. The black moon rose. The gate fell at the bottom of the sea.
In our ice-grotto in the North Sea, all nine heads heard the news, and laughed together. Laughed until the tears came.
At what? At the memory of a skyful of gods ringing one relic and crying thief. We were the thief — granted. But we stole a treasure to press down the Eye of the Sea. So the one who intercepted an entire pilgrimage's merit three hundred years ago — what were they pressing down?
Or what were they feeding?
We are back at the Jade-Wave Pool now. By day we coil on the pool floor playing sick and old; by night we press against the rock and listen to the chains grinding in the palace's direction. Old brother Black Turtle left some days ago with a certain something on his back. All he said at parting was: Consort — each to his own conscience.
Conscience. Of our nine heads, eight hate and one remembers. The hating ones say: when the gate opens, revenge first. The remembering one says: when the gate opens, find the mirror first.
Children from the shore — you mean to open the gate. We will not stop you. We might even help.
Only, before you open it, permit us the one question no opera has ever asked —
what makes you so certain that the thing locked inside is the evil one?