The world calls me the Bull Demon King. The old brothers called me Big Brother.
Seven demon kings swore brotherhood on Flower-Fruit Mountain in those days, and I was eldest. The Great Sage Pacifying Heaven — myself. The Great Sage Overturning the Sea, the Flood-Dragon King. The Great Sage Confounding Heaven, the Roc King. The Great Sage Moving Mountains, the Lion-Camel King. The Great Sage Piercing Wind, the Macaque King. The Great Sage Driving Gods, the Snub-Nosed Ape King. And the seventh — the youngest —
the Great Sage Equal of Heaven. Sun Wukong.
Seven wine bowls knocked together, and we swore to the open sky: brothers of one heart, sharp enough to sever gold.
What followed, the world watches as opera: the seventh brother wrecked the celestial court and was pressed beneath Five-Elements Mountain; five hundred years later he guarded the Tang monk west, and along that road offended every old brother and friend he had — me included. In the affair of the banana-leaf fan, he and I fought sky-dark and earth-black in deadly earnest, until the hosts of heaven closed in from four sides, Nezha's fire-wheels yoked my neck, and I bowed to the Buddha's gate.
There the opera ends. The opera never sings what came after.
After: the seventh brother completed the merit and was made Victorious Fighting Buddha. And the first private thing he did as a buddha was ride a cloud to the Flaming Mountains, land at my cave mouth, shrink back into his old monkey shape — with two jars of wine in hand.
We drank that night until the moon went down. He apologized to me; I apologized to him; and the apologies wore through until we both laughed — between brothers, the fights fought and the wine drunk were always one ledger. Leaving, he said: Big Brother — once the merit is homed and the world is settled, I host. We gather the seven bowls again.
I said: good. The bowls stay with me.
They have stayed with me three hundred years.
The merit never homed. The seventh brother never returned. From the direction of Vulture Peak, not one sentence has ever come out.
And the old brothers? The Flood-Dragon King sank into the sea in those early days — now the East Sea is sealed, and there is no word. The Roc King flew beyond the western sky to scout a road, and never came back. The Lion-Camel King's ridge scattered long ago; only a patrol-drillwind bloodline of his survives, strayed to Flower-Fruit Mountain. The Macaque King and the Ape King vanished around the black moon's rising — not dead: gone. By now you understand the weight of that word.
Seven bowls. I wipe them once a year. On the three-hundredth wiping, the mountain caught fire.
Eight hundred li reignited, and the world asked why. Only Iron Fan and I know the strangest layer of it: the fire-root of this mountain was severed — cleanly, completely — by forty-nine strokes of her banana-leaf fan. A severed fire-root cannot revive itself. Someone relit it. And the relighting was worked around the fan's old seal.
The living beings who know the business of that fire-root can be counted on one hand.
So to my eye this fire is no disaster. It is a letter. A letter addressed by name to the two of us: I know your history. I can raise the very fire you severed. Can you stop me?
Shixuan's envoy did come, and the offer was not small: assist the cause, and be restored as Great Sage Pacifying Heaven — a demon court reopened, the House of Bull in the first seat.
I threw the envoy out of Banana-Leaf Cave upside down.
Not temper. Ignorance — his, of me. He imagined that three hundred years on this mountain had banked a fire of resentment in me. Rubbish. What I have kept on this mountain is seven bowls.
Great Sage Pacifying Heaven? Held the title. First seat of a demon court? Sat in it. Neither is worth one night at the cave mouth after the seventh brother's triumph — two brothers, one jar each, watching the moon.
I have one wish left in this world: to gather the seven bowls. With the brothers living, best; failing that — ashes, relics, one thread of soul. Their whereabouts, one by one, I will have accounted for.
The day the medicine-basket boy came to Banana-Leaf Cave to parley, I had no intention of showing him a kind face. But entering, his first glance went not to me — it went to the row of bowls on the wall. He studied them a long moment and asked:
"Elder — why does the seventh bowl sit mouth-upward?"
Six bowls sit inverted, against the dust. The seventh, upturned.
I said: the upturned one — its owner said he would come back. Mouth upward is how a bowl receives wine.
The boy was silent a long time. Then he bowed to the row of bowls, correctly and deeply. And he said: Elder, west is where we're going — and what we're tracing is exactly this. Where the merit went. Where the people went.
Good lad. For that sentence, this old bull will walk a stretch of your road.
Iron Fan keeps the mountain. I march. And stepping out of the cave, I tucked the seventh bowl inside my breast-armor.
Little Seven — your big brother is out the door.
This time it is my turn to walk west, and find you.