Back in the center of the village, Asha found the ox-drawn mill crackling and grinding as the turning wheel crushed wheat into flour. Two men stood watching the ox shuffle in its little circle. Asha guessed the man in the shabby sandals to be the farmer, and the man with the shabby hat to be the miller.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Can either of you tell me about that little teak tree where the boy is sitting?”
The men gave her a tired glance, and then exchanged a tired glance of their own. The miller said, “That tree wasn’t there before. The boy must have brought it with him.”
Asha chose not to challenge the man’s conclusion. “And what about the oily pond behind it? Has that corner of the field always been flooded like that?”
The farmer shrugged. “More or less. It’s a little worse this year. Deeper, I mean.”
“Any reason for it? Was there a well there? Or maybe there used to be a tree down there, but it was uprooted in a storm? Anything?”
The men shrugged and returned their attention to the ox and the grindstone. The miller said, “Not that I remember.”
“No, the only thing down there are Kavi’s ashes,” the farmer said.
Asha blinked. “Ashes? You scattered someone’s ashes in the corner of a field, right there at the edge of town?”
“She didn’t mean to, of course,” the miller said. “His mother Sati, I mean. The boy was sick, so sick he could barely walk when she brought him into town to find help. But none of us could do anything for him. He sliced his hand on his father’s old axe, and the cut festered. He was feverish. The wound was ugly. Muscles all tightened up. Shaking.”
“Tetanus,” Asha said, nodding. “Then what happened to him?”
“It only lasted a few days.” The miller waved absently at the flies near his head. “Some fellow came along, right at the end, and tried to help. He gave the boy something to eat, but Kavi died anyway a few hours later. Sati couldn’t carry him back home, so we cremated the body right here. Well, over there a ways.” He pointed toward the little teak tree. “She meant to carry the ashes home, but a bit of a storm came through that evening and blew the boy’s ashes all over the corner of the field. So she gathered up what she could and left the next morning. Poor thing. Her husband died a while back, you know. She’s all alone now.”
“The man who tried to help, was he a healer? An herbalist like me?” Asha patted the bag on her shoulder. “Or just a passing friend? Did you know him?”
“Never seen him before,” the farmer said. “Seemed nice enough. Funny accent though. And short. He had a bag too, but a big leather one. Black.”
Asha gripped the strap of her old woven bag and pressed her lips tightly for a moment before saying, “Did he say he was a doctor?”
The miller nodded. “May have. This was half a year ago, you understand.”
“What did he give the boy to eat? Was it a seed or a nut?”
The miller nodded again. “Something like that. Why?”
Asha pointed at the boy sitting beneath the teak tree. “Do you recognize that boy? Does he look at all like Kavi, like the boy who died last year?”
The miller and farmer exchanged amused looks. “Maybe. A little. Other people’s children all look the same to me. I really can’t say.”
“Well, his mother can say. Where is she? Where is Sati?”
The farmer thumbed over his shoulder. “She lives near me. But she hasn’t been to town since Kavi died.”
“Can you ask her to come please?” Asha asked. “It’s very important. She needs to come and see this boy. I need to know if he looks like her son.”
The farmer shrugged and said he would ask Sati when he went home that evening.
Asha thanked them both and crossed the street back toward the crowd, but she didn’t come very close. Standing at the edge of the gathering, she watched Priya sitting beneath the tree, petting Jagdish, and talking quietly with the people sitting closest to her. The entire congregation sat quietly, some with heads bowed and eyes closed, some chanting or singing softly, but most just sitting and squinting at the sky as they dragged their fingers through the muddy road, waiting.
Asha and Priya left the pilgrims at sundown, retiring to their abandoned market stall to eat and sleep. Asha told her friend about her conversation with the miller, about Sati and her son, and the doctor. Priya nodded along until she finished.
“A doctor.” Priya spread her blanket on the ground and lay down. “You don’t use that word often.”
“Only when I need to.”
“Then I take it that you think this boy is not a boy, but some creature or spirit, or maybe a ghost made flesh through this doctor’s evil craft.”
“I think those people out there are fools for lying in the road, starving themselves, and waiting for a strange child to give some meaning to their sad little lives.”
“He’s already given some meaning to their lives,” Priya said. “He’s given them hope. Belief. Everyone hears stories about sages and monks and nuns, about gods and demons, miracles, and paradise. But they’re only stories. This boy is real. And whether or not he ever speaks, whether or not he ever reveals any wisdom to us, he is real. He’s sitting out there right now, surviving without consuming a single living thing, at perfect peace with the universe, and mystically bound to the earth. He’s a living miracle. He inspires these people. You should have heard them today. They were all vowing to go home and spread the boy’s teachings.”
“What teachings? He hasn’t said anything.”
“He’s said volumes.” The nun smiled. “He isn’t afraid of droughts or floods. He’s not arguing with his family or friends. He’s not laboring to level a forest or dam a river. He isn’t fighting with the world for his own survival. He’s just quietly, calmly, serenely coexisting with the universe. Effortlessly. Can you imagine an entire world of such people?”
“A world in which no one laughed or sang or played or loved? You can have it.” Asha lay down on her own blanket.
“Asha?”
“Hm?”
“Will you tell me about the doctors who trained you? Not now, but some day, when you’re ready?”
“Good night, Priya.”
5
It was several hours after sunrise when Asha saw the lone woman coming down the eastern road from the distant farms. Priya had gone back to the pilgrims long before and the scene around the teak tree looked just as it had the day before, and the day before that. Some faces in the crowd changed as new wanderers arrived and old ones left, but they sat and waited just the same.
The woman coming down the road was middle aged, with a few streaks of gray in her black hair, and quite a few lines around her eyes and mouth. Her faded green sari swayed sharply around her legs as she moved, but she walked calmly with her head held high and came straight up to Asha in the middle of the street. “Good morning. Are you the herbalist?”
“Yes. I’m Asha. You must be Sati.”
“Yes, and I know what you want me to do, or to see.” The woman paused, her face lined a bit more deeply with thought and worry. “Come along then.” Sati led Asha back toward the western end of the village, and did not display any particular reaction to the crowd sitting in the road. She only said, “I don’t remember that little tree being there.”
Asha nodded and waited for the woman to continue, and they walked together around the pilgrims to the tree where Priya sat next to the silent boy. Asha gestured to the seated figure and said, “Please, look closely. Take your time. I need you to be certain.”
Sati knelt down beside the boy and studied his face for a moment. Asha tried to imagine whether the boy Kavi would have looked very different with hair and eyebrows and eyelashes. Will she even be able to recognize him? After a moment, Sati reached out with a steady hand to touch the boy’s arm, and then to caress his cheek. And then she stood and backed away from him.
“I can’t be certain. Kavi had such thick hair,” she said quietly. “And he was thinner. His chee
ks, I mean. But the nose is the same. Maybe. No, no, they’re not the same really. His hands, his chin. I’m trying to imagine this boy dirty and hairy and laughing. No, they’re not quite the same. But they are very similar.” Sati stared at the boy a bit longer and then turned away. “And no one knows his name or where he came from?”
Asha shook her head.
“I see. Then I wish you all well. I hope I was helpful.” Sati turned to leave.
“Wait.” Asha followed her. “Don’t you want to stay and see if he speaks?”
“No.” The woman shuddered. “I don’t.”
“One last question then,” Asha said. “Do you remember the doctor who came to help Kavi just before he died? Can you describe him to me?”
Sati nodded. “He was short. Maybe my age, maybe a little older. Thinning hair. Round face. He smiled a lot, even when he acted sad. I remember that. The smiling. I didn’t like it.”
Asha thanked her again and watched the woman walk away across the village and up the long road to the eastern farms. And then Asha spent the rest of the day wandering through the fields around the village, peering down at little weedy sprouts and black bugs wriggling through the rich earth, and trying not to think about the boy.
That night, after they ate the last of the dried fruit in Asha’s bag, she said to Priya, “It’s not a teak tree.”
“What is it then?” the nun asked.
Asha didn’t answer.
“Asha?”
“Can we leave tomorrow? Are you ready to move on?”
“All right. I doubt our young Buddha will be revealing his wisdom any time soon. We can leave in the morning.”
When morning came, Asha slipped out of their shelter as quietly as she could and climbed down the muddy slope behind the gnarled tree. The sun had yet to rise and the whole world felt gray and cool, still clinging to the quiet of the night. She stopped just above the level of the oily water covering the corner of the field, and studied the dirt and grass at her feet. It took a moment in the feeble predawn light to find what she was looking for, but she did find it.
She reached down into the soft wet earth and pulled up a heavy tangle of pale roots. Asha took the steel scalpel from her bag, but hesitated as she saw the bright blade in her fingers, remembering that same blade in another’s fingers, painted red. But the moment passed and she quickly severed each of the roots, cutting some in two places just to be certain. When she was done, she tossed the lower half of the roots into the dark water and pushed the upper half of the roots back into the soil.
At the top of the slope she found a handful of pilgrims already awake, already staring at the boy under the tree. None of them looked at her. Back at the old market stall she found Priya sitting up and petting Jagdish. The nun asked, “Are you ready now?”
Asha nodded, more to herself than to her friend. “If you are.”
And they left the village.
6
Six months later.
Priya called out from behind, “Asha! I need to slow down. My knee hasn’t quite recovered yet from that night on the beach. It’s still aching a bit. Silly singing turtles. Are we in a hurry?”
“No, no hurry. Sorry. I forgot about your knee.” Asha stopped and let the nun catch up to her, and then they continued on down the road side by side. Jagdish lay long and fat on the blind woman’s shoulders, all the way around the back of her neck with his tail trailing down over her chest.
“Is there bad weather brewing? Or are we on a dangerous road?”
“No,” Asha said. “But we are on a familiar road.”
“Oh. Where are we?”
“About an hour west of Kasar. Do you remember it?”
Priya nodded and smiled. “We’re going to visit the little sage under the teak tree.”
“It wasn’t a teak tree.”
“I remember now, you said that before. What sort of tree was it?”
Asha said, “I have an idea, but it’s only a theory. I’ve heard about this sort of thing, but never seen it myself. I’ll know for sure when we get there. I’ll tell you then.”
“As you wish.”
An hour later they crossed the last stretch of road through the fields of freshly sown oilseeds. Ahead, Asha saw the familiar huddle of houses and market stalls, and even the flour mill drawn round and round by the same tired old ox. The almond tree stood straight and tall on the south side of the road. And on the grassy shoulder across from it, there was nothing at all.
Asha stopped on the grass where the little tree had been and Priya stopped beside her.
“Very quiet,” Priya observed.
“There’s no one here,” Asha said. “No pilgrims, I mean.”
“But there are voices. Listen.”
Asha heard a distant babble of high voices. Talking. Laughing. The sound drew closer and soon a knot of five young girls emerged from around a corner. They saw the two women by the side of the road and the girls stopped and fell quiet.
Asha smiled. “I think we’re in someone’s way. Come on.” She led Priya up the road into town and the girls continued on to the grassy strip where they sat in a convenient circle of shade cast by the almond tree across the way. Asha smiled a bit wider as the girls flopped down and began whispering to each other.
“So the young sage is gone?” Priya asked.
“Along with his tree, yes.” Asha kept walking. “Let’s find out what happened here.”
They found the miller sitting on a wobbly stool and watching his ox walking its circle as the grindstone crushed wheat into flour.
“Hello again,” Asha said. “I see business is…still going strong.”
The miller shrugged.
“Sorry, but we were here a few months ago and there was a strange boy sitting under a little tree just over there. We were wondering what happened to him. Can you tell us?”
The miller shook his head. “Strangest thing I’ve ever seen. One morning there’s all this shouting so I went over to see what was happening. The boy, he fell over.”
“He died?”
“Sort of. I mean yes. But he didn’t just fall down. He fell in. Inward. Collapsed. Like he was all skin with no insides.” The miller shuddered. “Smelled like the back end of this ox.”
“And the tree?”
“Died. Rotted. Some sort of disease. It turned all black and soggy. It stank too. So we burned it right there, not that it burned too well. Some of the boys hacked it up and dragged it off into the woods somewhere up east.” He waved to his right, which was vaguely east. “They said they were going to try burning it again, and then bury and salt it. I assume they did.”
Asha nodded. “Thanks.” She led the way back onto the main road where she turned north. The sun blazed high in the pale spring sky.
“So what was it?” Priya asked when they were well away from the village.
“A mandrake. Not the common mandrake. That’s just a little root. This was the swamp mandrake, which is related, but very different. It comes from the east.” Asha reached over to pet Jagdish on the nun’s shoulder. “The roots can drink up almost anything. If you feed one tea, they say it will grow blossoms and the crushed flowers can be used to treat all sorts of ailments. Feed it milk and it will grow little fruits good for curing even more diseases. But if you feed it blood…”
“What happens then?”
Asha sighed. “The mandrake will grow a polyp shaped like the creature whose blood it drank. The polyp isn’t good for anything. It’s full of rotted filth. The plant can’t digest blood, I suppose. The filth inside might even be poisonous.”
“Then all those people were praying to a giant pustule? They were waiting for wisdom from a boy-shaped cancer?” Priya frowned. “And so was I.”
“That’s why I couldn’t lift him. Somewhere underneath was the root connecting the boy to the rest of the tree. But it’s all right now. No one was hurt. It didn’t live long after I cut the roots. And from what the miller said, it sounds like they disposed of it thoroughly
. No harm done.”
“You cut the roots? You killed it?”
“Yes. You said it yourself, it was just a big cyst full of toxic pus.”
The nun sighed. “You’re missing the point. Whatever it was, it fostered peace and hope and enlightenment among real people. Those people came for a miracle, and they saw a miracle, and they went home with that miracle in their hearts. Given time, such things can transform the world in powerful and wonderful ways.”
“Transform the world?” Asha glared at her. “It lured dozens of people away from their families and their obligations, and led them all to sit in the dirt, sweating under the sun, shivering in the rain, doing nothing, waiting for someone to tell them what to think, what to believe.”
“You take a very dim view of the search for wisdom.”
“It was a fake miracle. It was just a plant. It filled up a country road with tired bodies. But now those people are at home, living their lives, actually doing something with themselves. And where there was a pile of vagrants, now there’s a group of children playing in the shade. The world I helped to make is better, Priya. It’s better because it’s real.”
They walked along for an hour before either one spoke again.
“Why did he do it?” Priya asked softly. “Why did that doctor feed the mandrake seed to the sick boy? Did he think the seed would heal him?”
“No,” Asha said just as softly. “He knew the boy was going to die. He wasn’t feeding him the seed. He was planting the seed.”
“But why?”
“Why else?” Asha shoved a sliver of ginger into the corner of her mouth. “To see what would happen. You see, Priya? They care about the big picture. The long term. Knowledge for its own sake. They have so many high-minded ideals and goals, but they tend to overlook the people that get trampled along the way.”
Chimera The Complete Duet Page 12