I am the lowest-ranked chime-boy of Maitreya's inner court in the Tushita Heaven.
Elder brother is the one you now call the Yellow Brow King. He was the master's own chime-warden — first of the inner court, the finest chime-hand in the Three Realms. When the master preached, brother kept the chime; and as the chime rose and fell, every heart in the court settled with it. I was new then, clumsy — it was brother who taught me, hand over hand: a chime is not struck into sounding. It is invited.
You all know the old scandal of three hundred years ago: brother stole the master's golden cymbals and the Human Seed Bag, descended, built a counterfeit Thunderclap Monastery, styled himself the Yellow-Brow Old Buddha, and stuffed the pilgrims into the bag. At the end of the uproar, the master came down in person. He did not rage. He simply stood on the cloud, smiling, and called brother by his milk-name.
The cymbals dropped from brother's hands with a clang.
On the road home, brother rode in the master's cloth sack. I watched from far off as the sack bobbed on the master's shoulder — and what came from inside was not pleading. It was weeping. And the master was not angry; he walked and laughed the whole way, like a man carrying home a child who had finally finished his tantrum.
Back in the court, brother was sentenced to three hundred years tending incense. Forbidden the chime, he polished it daily instead. I asked him once: brother, with power like yours, why descend and play at being a buddha?
He polished a long while. Then he said the sentence I was too young to understand:
"I wanted to know whether, if I went that far, the master would come for me himself."
He said: the master's court holds a thousand acolytes; at the teachings, not one of us ever receives a single direct glance. But steal the treasures, shake the Three Realms — and the master came. In person. Carried him. Laughed all the way home.
"That whole road — inside the sack — there was only me."
I understood, years later. That was never rebellion. That was a child trading a world-sized catastrophe for one private homecoming with his master.
Then the black moon rose, and the master — and all the buddhas of heaven — went silent in a single night.
The inner court emptied. The acolytes scattered. I searched for brother for years — until word came up from the human world: the Lesser Thunderclap Monastery is standing again.
When I arrived, everything was as it had been three hundred years before: false gate, false hall, false lotus throne. Brother sat the false seat in a false kasaya, the cymbals polished bright, the Seed Bag hung at his side. In the internment hall he had arranged his captured yao-tamers as congregants, teaching them the liturgy, teaching them to bow.
The whole world says: Yellow Brow has rebelled again. The demon nature never changes.
Only I know what he is doing.
He is committing the old crime again — exactly. Same site. Same stolen goods. Same blasphemy. And then sitting on the false throne, waiting.
Waiting for the master to stand up on the cloud, smiling as before, and call his milk-name.
He does not sleep at night. I have watched from the rafters: at the third watch he steps down from the throne, sets the cymbals true, faces the direction of the Tushita Heaven, and strikes three times — not daring the "inviting" hand; using the court's emergency signal-strike — then stands with his ears straining. Listening.
Three hundred years. Three strikes a night. And on the cloud-tops: no one.
The day the medicine-basket boy stormed the gate and fought brother's demon-and-sacred double phase, you were there. I add only the one detail you could not have seen: when brother fell, and the false throne collapsed, he sat in the rubble and suddenly laughed — laughed with tears streaming. Only I understood the sentence he said:
"Even you have come. And still he doesn't."
The boy did not kill him. Did not bind him. He picked the golden cymbals out of the wreckage and handed them back, saying: an instrument belongs with the one who knows how to play it.
Brother clutched the cymbals and wept as he had wept in the sack, three hundred years ago.
Now brother remains at the ruined monastery, dismantling the false gate, releasing the congregants — brick by brick, taking apart his own old longing with his own hands. I travel west with the company, on the one errand he cannot face doing himself:
to ask, at Vulture Peak and at whatever lies further west:
where is our master now?
And — should you find him, say nothing of the false monastery. Say only: your chime-warden has polished the chime for three hundred years. It is bright.
Whenever you return, the inner court can hold its assembly within the hour.