Bone Mountain is-3

by Eliot Pattison

  As they rested by the spring Winslow scanned the Plain of Flowers with his lenses.

  "Have you decided what they were doing, why oil geologists would be out on the Plain of Flowers?" Shan asked.

  Winslow didn't lower the binoculars, just shook his head slightly. "The oil concession ends at the Qinghai border, at least five miles north of here," he said and glanced back at Shan. Dremu had found empty cans of American food, on the far side of the plain, even farther from the concession.

  "Why would she leave a vest and sleeping bag?" Shan wondered out loud.

  "I don't know," the American said in a hollow voice. "Maybe the thing that attacked Padme found her, too. Maybe it's not sure who has the stone eye, and it's just attacking anyone on the northern trails." He packed his binoculars and knelt at the spring a moment, dipping in his cupped hand once more. He studied the water in his palm, lifted it and emptied it over his head. He closed his eyes and let the water drip down his head, and when he opened his eyes Shan saw a flash of deep emotion. Desperation, he thought, or profound sadness.

  "There was a letter from her, to her mother, in the company files," Winslow said abruptly, as if the water had freed the memory. "Her manager showed it to me, he hadn't mailed it because he wasn't sure if it would be too painful, their not knowing for sure about her. He said the company instructed him to open it, to see if she had been suicidal. Her mother is a professor in Minnesota. They talk about things in their letters, I guess." Winslow stared into the water, or past it, as if he were speaking to something below, at the underground source of the sacred water.

  "I mean big things. She said she wished all of her assignments could be in Tibet, that although the Chinese wouldn't say so, Qinghai Province was really Tibet, that people in the mountains were teaching her things. She said she loved Tibet but was hating what the company was doing to the land. That Tibetans told her that the most important thing for maintaining the human life force was connection to the land, and that the world had become divided between people whose lives were severed from that life force and people who lived close to the land. That those who lived close to the land had a sacred duty to protect the life force." Winslow looked up from the water. "And she worked for an oil company." Something like pain seemed to cross his face again, as though the paradox had been deeply troubling him.

  "At the end of the letter she said that some Tibetans had told her that a geologist was really like a special kind of monk who studied the behavior of land deities." Winslow looked back into the dark patch where the spring emerged from the earth, as if waiting for such a spirit to emerge and explain. "She said her Tibetan friends wanted to take her to hidden lands." He turned to look at Lokesh. "What did she mean?"

  Lokesh needed no time to consider his reply. "A bayal. They meant a bayal. It means hidden land. Some people believe there are hidden portals to special lands, like heavens, where deities roam freely." He glanced at Shan. Some people. Like the followers of Bon who lived at Yapchi. Lokesh sighed, then stood and stepped with a deliberate pace to a low pile of rocks ten feet from the spring. Although Shan expected him to add a rock to the pile, Lokesh began pulling the pile apart, until he had exposed a square of solid granite, two feet to the side. "There was a little chorten here," he said in an urgent, awed voice, as if the memory had just washed over him.

  "A shrine with a relic underneath, the foot bone of an old hermit who had walked all over Tibet collecting herbs, more than five hundred years ago." He stared at the square stone and the way it was encrusted with lichens that joined it to the ground. "The Tibetans who did this," he said excitedly, meaning those who had been forced to destroy the gompa, "didn't move this base, didn't move the relic." Lokesh looked up with a hopeful gleam. "We would sit here for lessons sometimes, and the lamas would explain how the spring was connected to the center of the earth. They would wash herbs in this water and send clay jars of it to healers all over Tibet. I remember listening for hours here while Chigu Rinpoche taught us how the power of plants came from the power of the earth and their power to heal came from the ways they connected humans back to the earth."

  Winslow stepped to the slab, knelt reverently by Lokesh, his eyes wide with wonder. "I read somewhere that doctors say they could heal anything if they just knew how the human animal evolved, how to trace the human body back to where it rose up out of the mud. Because everything we're made of came from the earth." When he looked up at Shan his eyes held a strange fervor. "It's a different way of saying the same thing, isn't it?" He placed his fingertips near the lichen of the rock, but not on it, as though it were too holy for him to touch. Then he looked up sheepishly and began helping Lokesh to replace the stones, not in a pile, but in a square, like the base of a chorten.

  After they had laid the first layer of stones Lokesh paused and picked a sprig of the plant that grew around the stone slab, looking at it quizzically. "Chigu Rinpoche said that the whole function of the healers was to translate the power of the earth into the life force of the human."

  Winslow studied Lokesh a long time, then slowly picked up a rock and continued building the little stack of rocks as Shan began carrying more stones from the slope above them.

  Lokesh paused again. "We learned how to dig roots in the reverent fashion here, at this spring, learned how to push aside the soil a little at a time, taking time to coax the earth, always leaving some so the plant could grow back. Chigu Rinpoche said we learned about ourselves by digging into the soil. He said we should dig inside the earth to find the earth inside us." Lokesh raised some soil in his hand and let it trickle into his other palm. "It was a teaching mantra he used. Inside the earth, for the earth inside."

  When they had finished Lokesh nudged Shan and pointed toward the top of the ridge above the ruins. "People are up there," the old Tibetan announced.

  Shan studied the slope and saw nothing except a large black bird circling high overhead, riding the updraft. Winslow glanced up the hill with a skeptical expression, then scanned the top of the ridge with his lenses.

  "You see them?" Shan asked in a slow, careful tone. His old friend's senses, like his emotions, were usually in a delicate balance. What he might have sensed was a memory of people on the slope, decades earlier, or perhaps he had seen the back of a fleeing antelope. Not infrequently Shan had followed his old friend when Lokesh had sensed the presence of a spirit creature, only to sit and contemplate a rock where Lokesh insisted the creature had taken refuge.

  Lokesh rubbed his grizzled jaw then turned with a sheepish grin toward Shan and continued down the trail. Shan silently followed, knowing that once they completed the circuit they would be climbing back up the slope.

  An hour later, after having returned to the camp and consumed a meal of cold tsampa rolled into balls, they were nearly at the top of the slope when they paused at a flat rock that overlooked the long plain. Winslow, who had refused Shan's suggestion that he remain at the camp and rest, pointed to two small clouds of dust at the southern and western ends. "Those scouts from Yapchi," the American said.

  "The Tara Temple, the Maitreya Chapel, the Samvara Temple," Lokesh said suddenly, and Shan saw that he was pointing at empty places among the ruins, speaking of what he had seen, or maybe still saw, at the gompa. "The chora," he said, referring to the debating courtyard, "the inner herb garden, the north garden, the north kangtsang and the bark-hang," he added in a contemplative tone, referring to a hall of residence and the printing press.

  Lokesh's finger hovered in midair as if he had forgotten something. "All those prayer flags in the trees," he said in a distant voice. "It's like a festival."

  Shan looked back down on the ruins. There were no prayer flags except for a single modest strand by Gang's shrines, and no trees except the small juniper grove outside the gompa grounds. Lokesh was in another time, another place. Shan was never embarrassed for his friend, or fearful of his sanity. But today Shan felt a certain envy for the old Tibetan.

  He put his hands inside his coat pockets. Som
ething brushed his left hand and he pulled out the sprig of brush he had taken from the burnt patch of earth, and extended it to Lokesh. The old Tibetan took it and placed the sprig under his nose. He looked at Shan with surprise in his eyes. "Thank you," he said with a grateful smile.

  Shan studied his friend as Lokesh clasped the sprig inside his cupped hands and pushed his hands against his nose, his eyes closed. "It's medicine?" he asked.

  Lokesh nodded, his eyes still closed. "Not ready for picking, but from a healthy plant. Chigu and I would gather this sometimes out on the plain. It's called birds foot, for the way the stem branches out."

  Shan pictured the scene as he and the American had found it, where he had plucked the stem. The plant had been growing only in the protection of the shallow bowl. Maybe the dobdob had not tried to burn the plain. Maybe he had only tried to burn the medicine plants. But why? He remembered the salt camp, where the herders were hiding the injured woman from healers. And the woman on the trail, who had rejected Lokesh's offer of healing.

  They reached the top of the slope to find a long rolling meadow that extended nearly a half-mile across the crest and at least two miles to the east and west. Above them, only a few miles away now, loomed the huge shape of Yapchi Mountain, standing guard over the Plain of Flowers to the south and Yapchi Valley to the north.

  Shan and Winslow stepped aside for Lokesh to lead them into the maze of game trails that crisscrossed the meadow. But his friend shrugged and stepped backwards, gesturing for Shan to continue in the front. It was an odd dance they had done often in their travels. It didn't matter who led, Lokesh was saying, for they would always find what they were meant to find, and eventually arrive where they were meant to be.

  Shan felt an unexpected exhilaration as they moved along the rolling meadow. The wind blew steady and cool, but not uncomfortably so. Small pink flowers grew close to the earth. From across the meadow came the trill of a lark.

  They walked slowly along the rolling meadow, Shan randomly selecting new paths where the game trails intersected, until they came to a long low ledge of rock that bordered a large meadow, protected on the north by a towering wall of rock. The bowl, nearly three hundred yards across, was filled with a low heather-like plant, and larks- more larks than he had ever seen in one place, fluttering among the growth. As Shan led his friends through a gap in the ledge he heard the hushed, urgent sound of voices and a hand came out of the shadow of the rock to hold his arm.

  He pulled back with a shudder, imagining the dobdob had found them again.

  "You have to get down," a woman whispered.

  Shan bent to see five Tibetans- three middle-aged herders, a slightly younger woman, and a boy- sitting in the shadow made by an overhanging ledge. "If they see you they will run," the woman said. She did not seem surprised to see three strangers, only concerned they might frighten away the objects of their attention. Wild drong, Shan suspected, or maybe some of the rare blue sheep that roamed the mountains.

  The Tibetans wore the thick chubas of dropka, heavily patched with swatches of leather and red cloth. Two of the men wore dirty fleece caps, the other the quilted, flapped green cap issued to soldiers for winter wear. The woman clutched a large silver and turquoise gau in one hand, with the other on the arm of the boy, who watched the meadow with round, expectant eyes.

  Not even the appearance of the lanky American distracted the dropka for long. They stared quizzically at Winslow for a few seconds, and the boy pulled on the woman's shoulder to make sure she saw the goserpa. But when Lokesh and Winslow settled in beside the herders, as if they, too, had come to see the creature the dropka awaited, the boy's attention shifted back to the meadow.

  Shan sat beside Winslow, his back to the rock, covered in shadow, then leaned forward to speak. But no one returned his gaze, nor seemed to even notice him. It was more than expectation in their eyes, Shan saw, it was a deep, even spiritual excitement. They sat, the wind fluting around the rocks, larks calling, brilliant clouds scudding across an azure sky. Two of the men began low mantras, fingering their beads. Suddenly the boy pointed toward the far side of the meadow, near the wall.

  Shan saw nothing, though the dropka uttered tiny gleeful cries. The two men increased the pace of their mantras, joined now by Lokesh. He became aware of movement at the edge of the wall's shadow, a great hulking shape standing on four legs near the shadow. From so far away he could not tell whether it was a yak, a large sheep, or even a bear. Then a second shape, a human figure in a red robe, emerged from the shadows, and the first shape rose up on its hind legs. The man's features could not be seen from such a distance, but the stranger walked in short steps, leaning on a tall staff. Shan sensed the man was not merely old, but ancient.

  Lokesh had stopped his mantra. His face was as excited as the boy's, tears streaming down his cheeks. "I recognize this place now," he whispered in a very still voice. "We would come here in summers. Pitched a white tent and stayed many days, a week sometimes. Chigu Rinpoche said the larks sang the herbs here."

  Sing the herbs. An image of larks offering lullabies to young plants flashed through Shan's mind.

  "It's true," a child's voice said. But Shan turned to see that it was the woman speaking, with the tone of a young girl. "It's all true, isn't it?" she said to Lokesh, and a tear rolled down her cheek. "Remember this," she added solemnly to the boy and hugged him. "Remember that it was spoken that this was one of the places where they came in the old days, that today you saw one of them come."

  Sometimes, Shan's father had told him, people can live eighty or ninety years and only briefly, once or twice at most, glimpse the true things of life, the things that are the essence of the planet and of mankind. Sometimes people died without ever seeing a single true thing. But, he had assured Shan, you can always find true things if you just know where to look.

  It was one of those rare true things they were glimpsing now. An ageless medicine lama gathering his herbs, a medicine lama who shouldn't exist, in a field that had been forgotten for half a century, rising up like a ghost to confirm that once there had been wise, joyful old men who gathered plants so they could translate the magic of the earth to its people.

  They watched, the sound of the whispered mantras becoming almost indistinguishable from the low sound of the wind on the rocks. The low, bent shape in the shadows did not move, and Shan realized it might be a helper, a protector for the old one, crouching, on guard against the world outside. The medicine lama wandered among the flowering plants, stooping sometimes, sometimes rising with a sprig and looking skyward, as if consulting with the air deities about his find.

  Then suddenly, with a low moan, as if struggling mightily to contain himself, the boy burst up with his hands in the air. "Lha gyal lo! Lha gyal lo!" he shouted with joy, just twice before his mother pulled him backwards and clamped a hand over his mouth.

  But the sound had carried over the meadow, echoing off the rock face, and the lama and the hulking shape darted toward the deeper shadows. The old man halted for an instant, peering toward the rocks where they sat. Then, like a deer at the edge of a wood, he merged into the shadows and was gone.

  They waited a quarter hour for the ghost lama to return, exchanging uncertain glances, as if none were sure now of exactly what they had seen. Then the herders rose and silently filed away from the rock, following one of the game trails that led southward down the wide ridge.

  It was impossible, Shan kept telling himself as they slowly walked back to Rapjung. The medicine lamas had all died. The soldiers had cleared out the surrounding hills years earlier. With all the patrols, all the pacification campaigns, it did not seem possible even one could have survived. Lokesh offered no suggestion, no theory of how now, after decades, one of the old lamas could appear in the hills. He just followed Shan, lost in a strange reverie, or perhaps in his memories of Rapjung as it had existed fifty years earlier. Several paces behind Lokesh, came the American, also silent, seemingly numbed by what he had seen.

 
Again and again Shan replayed the scene in his mind. It wasn't that a lama had survived all these years in the mountains, he realized; the dropka had come because of something new, because they had heard of a miracle. Someone else had seen a ghost lama, he suddenly remembered. The herders by the hermitage the night Drakte had died. One of the old lamas had arrived, had returned. From where? Why? And why now, when the eye was on its journey, when Drakte had died and the army was scouring the land, when a dobdob, protector of the faith, was attacking devout Buddhists, when an American had gone missing?

  Shan had no answers. He had only foreboding. Although he knew little, he knew enough to be frightened.

  No one asked where they had been when they arrived at the camp. Several of those who had completed the kora had just returned themselves, having meditated at the hermit's cave or the drup-chu shrine. As the Yapchi men went to check on the sheep, Nyma sought Shan out.

  "It happened again," the nun said. "The poor girl." Shan looked up from the sheep whose pack he was tightening. "She just fell over on the trail and began shaking, and beating the earth with her hands and feet."