Gradually, the silent, barren sea of sand took on the same deep indigo color as the sky. Occasionally, a stiff wind would pass across the dunes, lifting up a dust cloud that raced along as though some invisible creature were galloping across the landscape, kicking up a long trail in its wake.
The gravity bubble carrying the prince moved slowly across the sand toward the burning crimson aurora on the horizon.
Siddhārtha was uncertain whether the passage of time continued or whether it had stopped. Surely, if it continues, it is not proceeding in the normal fashion, he thought, resigned to wait. The nature of time in these heavenly realms seemed bizarrely different from that in the world of men. Much to his own surprise, the prince was stricken by a sudden feeling of longing for his own distant kingdom.
The fragments of once-great buildings dotted the dry desert around him. Mighty edifices lay stricken and crumbled into ruins on the ground. Sections of walls, huge pillars, and leaning towers loomed like phantasms in the indigo light. Some were made of metal, others of beautiful translucent crystal, and still others of some rare and precious wood.
A large dome stood cracked and partly fallen. Through the rifts in its beautifully patterned surface he saw the light of the aurora shining.
Occasionally on the sand he saw what appeared to be parts of living things. Shriveled bits of living tissue, they seemed wracked with raw emotion—choked with sand, panicked at their own rapid loss of moisture. Their voiceless screams stabbed at the prince’s heart. Far beyond the horizon, he saw an incredible number of lighted spheres flying wildly across the sky. The spheres seemed to form a line, moving from right to left as though joined by a single thread. He watched them waver upward and then plunge abruptly below the curve of the land. Where they landed, violent gouts of light and flame burst up and whirled heavenward.
This, Siddhārtha was sure, was nothing other than a horrific battle being waged far, far away. And yet he could sense none of the fear or disturbance that comes with such bloodshed. It was like viewing a strategist’s painting of a war upon a scroll—he saw in it the cold calculation and heartless direction of killers who seek to take the maximum amount of life with a minimum of effort.
“Prince Siddhārtha?”
A young girl stood, her back to the flickering light of the aurora.
“Asura?”
The girl’s skin was the color of barley, and her brown hair, tinged with purple, was bound into a knot atop her head, fixed with a tiny hairpin.
“Yes.”
The prince quickly found his imagination captured by her boyish, muscular frame and clear, piercing black eyes. Siddhārtha leaned forward. “Asura, I would ask you a question.”
The girl frowned, and in her innocent expression, Siddhārtha saw a single-mindedness of purpose and a passion burning hot enough to kill.
“The Brahmins tell me that, driven by former karma, you have invaded Tuṣita and fought with Śakra’s armies for some four hundred million long years.”
“This is true,” the girl said in a voice like a song.
“Asura—”
The girl frowned again slightly. It seemed to be a habit of hers whenever she looked at something intently—and the effect was not unattractive. Quietly, she began to toy with the necklace she wore. It seemed to be made of fragments of bone strung on a silver thread. Their dry clacking sounded like the ringing of tiny bells to the prince’s ears.
“Can you tell me why you have invaded Brahmā’s heavens?” he asked her. “What is it that you desire? And where have you come from? Where is the world in which you dwell?”
The prince sat down on the sand, straightening his back and staring at the girl. A smile played around one corner of her mouth; her lips parted to reveal a startlingly white canine tooth.
“Asura?”
“Siddhārtha!”
Suddenly, the girl’s voice was the voice of all creation. The wind began to blow with fury, and her long hair fluttered like flames. Her anger and sorrow were transformed into a blinding shower of fiery sparks.
“Siddhārtha! Go to see Maitreya! Go to see this Maitreya who is destined to save you 5,670,000,000 years from now!”
Not thinking, the prince threw himself bodily upon the sand. His hands shook with embarrassment as he clasped them together.
Asura vanished in the wind. But her voice seemed to continue on, from somewhere far off toward the distant horizon.
See Maitreya—those words pierced the prince’s chest through to his back and burned the bottom of his heart to a cinder.
“Siddhārtha! I have heard the Brahmin talk of a śramaña called Maitreya in the Pure Land of Tuṣita who will come at the end of this world and save us all. But tell me, my prince—”
Asura was there again before him. She put her hands behind her and gracefully knelt down, her large eyes glimmering with sardonic mirth.
“Tell me, what will be here 5,670,000,000 years from now? What sort of destruction will visit us then? Can you even imagine such a thing?”
Prince Siddhārtha shook his head sadly, remaining silent as a stone.
“Did you ever think, my prince,” Asura continued, “that perhaps it is because Maitreya knows what form this destruction will take that he chooses to wait such a very, very long time? Perhaps he would claim that he is only able to save humanity because he can predict the nature of the destruction so precisely. I wonder then why he does not describe it to us. Should he not describe it? And should he not explain how he intends to save us? If he truly were a savior, shouldn’t we expect him to prevent the destruction from coming in the first place?”
Asura leaned forward, as though to peer directly inside the prince’s heart.
“Well, it seems to me—” Siddhārtha began, seeking some counterargument, but no more words came to him.
“Do you have the answer, my prince?” Asura asked, fixing him with an icy stare.
“It seems to me that he does not save us because the destruction has yet to come.”