Skillful Death

by Ike Hamill

  ♣ ♢ ♡ ♠

  Dom scraped, and salted, and stretched the fur. He built another smoky fire from green wood and moved the hide into the thick smoke. When Dom closed his eyes, he saw the right way to position the hide in the exhaust of the fire. In his imagination, the fur he cured was brown and short. The skin darkened, and the fur turned a dingy gray from the smoke. The color of the fur matched the surrounding rocks.

  The skull, still wearing its fur and sporting big, curling horns was perched on one of the tall rocks. Diki made Dom take it down and throw it away where he had put the other guts and gristle.

  “People go on big hunting trips and hunt for days. They’re barely able to feed themselves. Here, the animals don’t even seem to be afraid of people. I wonder why the hunters don’t come here?”

  “They don’t want to walk all the way home,” Diki said.

  “But they could just live here,” Dom said. “It has everything: grass for the yaks and horses to graze on; nuts and seeds; fresh water.”

  “But it’s not home.”

  Diki disappeared around the other side of the big rock. When Dom found her, she was squatting down with her head in her hands. He pulled her hands away and found that she was crying.

  “It’s okay, little darling. We’ll go home soon.”

  Her opinions changed with the wind. Had it been just yesterday that she had professed that she never wanted to go home? It might have even been that same day. Dom gathered Diki into his arms and carried her over to the creek. They listened to its pleasant gurgle as they watched the sun burn into the horizon.

  ♣ ♢ ♡ ♠

  Dom woke in the night. He remembered the tower, and the flint knife in the hidden pocket, and sleeping next to a giant horse. He stayed up until dawn, not allowing himself to return to sleep, afraid he would forget again. The memories strengthened with the dawn. His dreams always withered in daylight. Their perceived importance diminished with each passing minute. These images became bolder. More details filled in, growing around the edges as he turned them over in his mind.

  When Diki awoke, Dom told her everything he remembered, except the love he felt for the young woman in the tower. That memory he kept for himself.

  Diki heard the whole thing as a fairy tale, and smiled and clapped as she asked to hear what happened next. When he said he didn’t know, she didn’t get upset, but demanded to hear everything again. Dom told the memories again, finding even more details around the edges.

  All day, Diki sang a new song about a little boy who grew up with horses and climbed a tall tower to see to the horizon. Dom’s stomach churned and ached. They stayed close to their camp that day.

  Diki heard the bells first, and pointed up the mountain. Dom jumped up and fumbled for his spear. He grabbed the knife instead. It was closer. The man, cloaked in red, rounded the rock and approached without hesitation, although he must have seen the knife. It was the young monk from the cave.

  The monk smiled and bowed. He held out two pieces of candy—a small one for Dom, and a larger one for Diki. When they had taken the candy, the monk bowed, and smiled, and turned to leave.

  “Wait,” Dom said. “Are we supposed to follow you?”

  The monk stopped and turned, but didn’t speak.

  “Should we follow you back to the cave? Does the other man wish to speak with us? Can we offer you some meat? We have plenty. We took one of the big white animals, and we won’t be able to finish it all before the meat goes bad.”

  The monk bowed, and turned, and resumed hiking back up the mountain.

  “Should we follow him?” Dom asked Diki.

  She didn’t reply. Diki’s attention belonged to chewing on the candy clutched in her fist.

  The candy settled Dom’s stomach. He went to sleep early, eager to have another dream and perhaps bind another memory.

  ♣ ♢ ♡ ♠

  Dom blinked his eyes against the dawn, disappointed that no more memories graced his sleep. He had dreamt only of Pemba and plumbing. He dreamt that he and Pemba were trying to install a faucet at Denpa’s house, but the water wouldn’t come. Somewhere upstream, the pipes were clogged with silt. He would have to dig them up and test the flow periodically to find the block.

  To pass the time until Diki woke up—he didn’t like to be away from camp while she was asleep—Dom worked the big hide. The salt dried the skin, but the smoke kept it fairly supple. He scraped the skin across the edge of a rock to soften it more. He wondered if a paste formed from the ashes of his fire would help. Something told him it wouldn’t. The ashes were from the wrong kind of wood.

  Each time he pushed the skin against the rock, the sleeve of his robe pushed back and Dom saw the blue marks there. He stopped and pulled back his sleeve as the memory came back. The old woman held him down, on a day near the end of spring, and burned a deep scar into his arm. When the wound was fresh and bleeding, she rubbed a blue powder into his skin. It stung like a spider bite, but she held him with her hand clamped over the brand. Every time he thrashed, she laughed.

  Dom touched the raised blue marks and remembered the pain and the smell of burnt flesh.

  Diki approached him from behind and touched his shoulder. Dom screamed.

  “What’s the matter?” Diki asked.

  Dom pulled his frightened daughter into an embrace.

  “Nothing,” Dom said. “I’m sorry. I was remembering the woman who called herself my mother.”

  “What happened to my mommy?” Diki asked.

  It wasn’t the first time she had asked, but this time Dom felt he owed her a more substantial answer.

  “Your mom’s soul moved on, little darling. She had other work to do in another life.”

  “But what about work here? How come she didn’t want to stay with me?”

  “Sometimes the things we want are not the things we get. I’m sure she wanted to stay with you, but she had to go where her soul told her to go.”

  “What if my soul wants to go with her?”

  “Then I would be sad, because you are my whole world,” Dom whispered into her ear. Tears leaked down his face and rolled into her hair.

  “Can we go home now, daddy?”

  “I think so,” Dom said.

  They made their plans and packed their supplies for the trip home. Dom wanted to visit the old monk one last time and then leave in the morning. Dom and Diki raced up the slope in the bright sun, and found the cave easily from the thin line of smoke leaving the mouth.

  “Hello?” Dom called at the entrance. He smiled at Diki and held her hand.

  “Hello?” he asked again.

  When they heard no answer, Dom and Diki walked slowly into the dark cave. They paused to let Dom’s eyes adjust to the darkness. The fire drew them in farther. It had burned down to ashes and two smoldering ends of the same log. Dom and Diki sat on either side of the fire and waited for the cave’s denizens to return.

  Dom held his eyes shut until Diki gasped.

  Details began to emerge from the dim light. Sitting cross-legged in hollows carved into the walls, monks stared out into eternity. Dom and Diki sat in a tomb of mummified corpses.

  “Are they dead?” Diki asked.

  “Yes,” Dom said. “It’s their tradition. They meditate until their soul ascends and their bodies remain here as their tribute to mortality. It’s the highest form of ascension.”

  “Can they see us?”

  “No, darling.”

  “Then what are they looking at?”

  “They see with their soul now. They don’t need to see.”

  “I don’t want to be here with them,” Diki said.

  “Okay.”

  Dom took Diki’s hand and they walked out to the sunlight. They were still blinking at the bright afternoon sun when the old man shuffled up.

  “You have been to visit our brothers?” the old man asked.

  “Yes,” Dom said. “Well, we saw the smoke and we thought you would be in there.”

  “We light a
fire to illuminate our brothers twice a year. My leader would like to speak with you. It is a great honor. He has not spoken in more than a decade, perhaps longer. That’s when I came to this place. Some say he is as old as the mountains themselves, and he has unimaginable wisdom.”

  Dom felt a nervous sweat spring out on his brow. The man before him, skin and bones with a fine dusting of gray stubble on his head, already seemed like the oldest person in the world. Denpa taught him to revere age, and Dom learned the lesson well. He took a deep breath and felt a warm weight in his chest. The old man led him into a cave.

  A bright, smokeless fire burned in the center of this cave, and the young monk sat on the other side of the fire. The old man gestured at the floor of the cave and Dom sat down, taking Diki into his lap. He looked around for the old monk he was supposed to meet, but didn’t see anything but the young monk and the retreating form of the old man.

  Before he could ask after the elder monk he was supposed to meet, the young monk opened his eyes and locked Dom in his gaze. Dom straightened and returned the stare. The world outside those eyes disappeared, and Dom lost track of his own limbs. He couldn’t tell if he was sitting, standing, lying, or floating. All he knew was the eyes of the young monk. The reflection of the fire danced in the young monk’s pupils, and Dom’s eyes lost focus. The monk’s eyes merged into one eye in the center of the monk’s forehead, and Dom felt nothing but relaxation. He took a deep breath, so deep it seemed he could consume all the air in the cave. It seemed he could inhale the heat from the fire. When he exhaled, the world and all the stars left his mouth.

  He blinked and looked down. The logs were burned down to ashes.

  “Where’s Diki? Where’s my daughter?” Dom asked.

  The young monk opened his mouth. The monk’s voice seemed to come from deep within his throat. His lips seemed to have no knowledge of the words slipping between them.

  “She’s with my brother. She’s teaching him a game with stones at the mouth of the cave.”

  Dom reached behind himself with his senses and felt his daughter there.

  “You’re as old as the mountains?” Dom asked.

  The young monk smiled. “No. But I walked here when these caves were still young. You don’t remember, Osman?”

  “Me?”

  “When you came here, I thought you had returned because you remembered. Then I realized that you came seeking those Osman memories.”

  “I’m confused. I came to remember my childhood, and I have remembered quite a bit. I remember the Midwife, and the lion, the snake, and the elephant. I remember that my name was Constantine, and I was thrown into the river. What is Osman?”

  “Osman is what you called yourself when you first arrived. Do you remember what happened when you clawed your way to shore after washing down the river past the bamboo grove? Do you remember the stink of sulfur from the river and how it stuck to your skin as you walked?”

  “No,” Dom said. “How did you know about the bamboo and the sulfur?”

  “I know because you told me long ago, when you first arrived,” the monk said. “These are the memories you have yet to bind to yourself.”

  “I was here?” Dom asked. “When I was a boy I came here?”

  “No,” the monk said. “You came here as a withered old traveler, much older than you are now. When you left here, you were a boy.”

  “I don’t understand,” Dom said. “That’s impossible. I have to go check on my daughter.”

  “Wait, Providential,” the monk said, “take this.” He held out a piece of hard candy. Instead of the rich amber color of the other candy, this piece seemed to glow like a green emerald in the low light of the dying fire.

  “Why?” Dom asked, not reaching for the gift.

  “When you’re ready to remember the rest, this will help you.”

  Dom didn’t want the candy or the memories. His hand didn’t agree, and reached to take the candy from the monk. When his hand touched the hand of the young monk, he saw a flash. The youthful, vibrant face of the monk was gone, replaced by a vision of a mummified monk.

  Dom turned and nearly ran from the cave. Diki sat at the cave entrance in the long light of early evening, smiling and laughing with the old monk. They were playing Diki’s rock game, where you tried to stack rocks higher than your opponent. Diki was winning by a large margin.

  “Are you done dreaming, daddy?” Diki asked.

  “Yes, darling,” Dom said. “Did you have fun playing rocks?”

  “Yes,” Diki said. She smiled at the old monk. He grinned so big that his eyes squinted shut. Diki laughed and jumped up to take Dom’s hand. They walked down the slope, away from the caves.

  “You shouldn’t have left without waking me, Diki,” Dom said when they were away from the caves.

  “I didn’t like looking at the dead monk,” Diki said. “I liked him when he was young, but when he turned into the dead monk, I didn’t like him anymore. I liked playing with my friend.”

  Dom turned her statement over in his head, but didn’t want to probe her for more information about what she had seen. He thought it might be better if he let that mystery fade away.

  “I hope you let him win the rock game at least once,” Dom said.

  “Yes,” Diki said. “He was pretty good at playing rocks. He starts his journey tomorrow.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes. He doesn’t get to eat anything but seeds for a year, and then he drinks a special tea for the next year. Then, his last year, he only drinks a little water and rubs a special sap on his gums. Like this.” She pulled back her lips and rubbed her gums with her finger.

  “Why does he do that?”

  “So he can go in his own little cave. I didn’t like the other dead monks, but I would like to come back and see my friend when he’s a dead monk. I’ll be all grown up then. I’m going to come back here with my husband.”

  “Don’t be in such a rush to grow up,” Dom said. “You’ve got a lot to enjoy before then. Let’s talk about the trip home tomorrow. Do you want to leave right when the sun comes up and then we’ll stop and eat along the way?”

  “Yes,” Diki said.

  ♣ ♢ ♡ ♠

  When Dom woke, the sky was only starting to grow pink around the edges of the mountains in the east. Diki was not at his side. Panic crept in around the edges of his mind. Then he saw her, spinning in a circle near the big rock.

  He rubbed his eyes and watched her. She spun with her arms outstretched until she started to stumble a little. She bowed to herself, laid down, and placed her hands flat on the ground, next to her hips. She raised her limber legs straight up, held them for a second and then started to lower them back towards the ground. On her third repetition, Dom pushed himself up to a seated position.

  “What are you doing?” Dom asked.

  “Shhh!” Diki said. “I’m doing my exercises. My friend showed me. I’m trying to make sure I remember.”

  “What friend? What exercises?”

  “When you were asleep. My friend, the old monk, showed me five exercises.”

  Diki rolled over and pushed herself into a kneeling position. She stretched her arms along the ground until her face was pressed into her knees.

  Her voice was muffled by her position. “There’s a sixth one, but I’m not supposed to start it until later. He said you used to do the exercises, until you forgot. Why don’t you do them with me?”

  “No!” Dom shouted. He jumped up and scrambled over to his daughter and jerked her to her feet by her armpits. “No! You’re never to do those exercises. Never!”

  “Daddy, that hurts,” she said, moaning.

  “Do you hear me? Never. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, please, you’re hurting me.”

  His anger faded and he saw the pathetic face of his darling daughter. Huge tears squirted from her eyes and trailed down her dusty face. He released his grip and set her down on the ground. She hugged herself and dropped to her knees.

&nb
sp; Dom returned to the bed and stuffed their blanket into the bag they had already packed.

  “Come,” Dom said. He walked away from the rising sun.

  Diki didn’t respond. She fell in behind her father.

  ♣ ♢ ♡ ♠

  For breakfast, Diki faced away from her father and sniffled as she ate. She hardly spoke a word, giving only one-word answers to his questions.

  ♣ ♢ ♡ ♠

  At lunch, Dom apologized.

  “I can’t explain why, but those monks frighten me. I’m scared to think what would happen to you if you kept doing those exercises the old man showed you.”

  “Can we go now?” was Diki’s only response.

  ♣ ♢ ♡ ♠

  The next morning, Dom woke with a gasp. Diki wasn’t by his side. He exhaled slowly when he finally saw her little shape, a few arm-lengths away from him. They camped in the foothills, down from the cool mountain air, and the night was warm to his thick blood. Dom didn’t know if his daughter still held a grudge, or if she had just grown too hot next to him.

  He had his answer when she stirred.

  “Good morning, Daddy,” she said. “Will we get home today?”

  A relieved smile spread across Dom’s face.

  “Yes,” Dom said. “If we walk fast, I believe we’ll be home by afternoon. Perhaps it will be warm enough to go for a swim.”

  “I want to go to sleep in my own bed,” Diki said. “I’m tired of sleeping on rocks and grass.”

  “As am I.”

  Dom was right. They reached their little village in the heart of the warm afternoon and walked by a lake full of summer swimmers. A couple of Diki’s friends waved to her from the water, but she kept walking. She wanted nothing more than to curl up in her own bed.

  As his daughter slept, Dom cleaned the dust from Denpa’s little house.