Kelsey took a step towards him. “I was in our cabin on the train and I thought I’d try to meditate and take myself here like I did long ago. If I’m still dreaming or meditating, it’s possible I’ve astral projected you here and we’re lucid dreaming together, much like the monks did. Or else you’re not here at all and I just conjured you up. But it feels real.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m definitely here and I’m most certainly not lucid dreaming. I studied it in college, even practiced it aggressively, and this isn’t it. I can’t make things happen here if I simply wish it to, like in true lucid dream states. This place is real, Kelsey, and each time I’m here it seems more and more familiar, as if I’m just coming out of a fog. I don’t think on my own I could ever conjure a place of this intricacy. The way the leaves of this plant curl up towards my fingers when I touch them or those flowers by that hut. I don’t have that kind of imagination. I don’t know how you did it, but you’ve taken us both to Xanadu. You can really travel here, Kelsey.” He took a few steps towards her and held out his hand. “Come with me. There’s something I have to show you.”
Curious, she grasped his hand and for a moment he stopped and just stared at it. He paused, swallowed hard, and then turned and led her back into the forest.
They moved together down another worn path, one she had traveled countless times, but when Desmond turned off the path a few feet later and moved aside a purple bush of lilac-like flowers, she gasped in surprise. The lights of the colored ribbons and the bright moon helped her see something that had not been there before. She would swear to it.
A high stone wall now stood before her, twenty-feet in height and covered with ivy. Its curling leaves stretched in tendrils all around it. Kelsey quickly moved forward, walking around the wall and noticing that an identical one stretched to the other side, creating a courtyard. In parts where the ivy hadn’t grown, depictions of the Buddha and other deities were etched in the rock face.
“I’ve never seen this place and I’ve traveled these woods countless times,” Kelsey said. “It must have been veiled. How do you know about it?”
“It’s where I woke up,” Desmond said. He moved towards the wall and pushed aside a strand of ivy, revealing a hidden door. He opened it and they walked inside.
Kelsey was dumbfounded.
He ducked under a low-hanging tree branch and turned to her. “Look.”
She sucked in her breath, her mouth dropping open in astonishment.
“It’s the Shitenno.” She stared at four impressive stone sculptures in the center of the garden, each bound to a square flat pillar and each looking out in a different direction.
“I recognized immediately what these were,” Desmond said. “They’re devas, used to protect the world from evil spirits. I awoke right in the center of them, right on that slate square over there.”
Kelsey kneeled in front of the one closest to her, placing her hands gently on its base and then stood, running her hands up it appreciatively. “Look at the armor he’s wearing. This one is Tamonten, I believe. He’s the most powerful of the four of them.”
Desmond nodded. “It is him. There’s a huge statue of him at the Longmen Grottoes, that ancient sculptural site in China. I studied him in school. He’s supposedly the richest of the devas, having been awarded with great wealth after practicing austerity for nearly one thousand years.”
Kelsey stared at Tamonten’s left hand, noting the deva held a pagoda-shaped treasure house in his palm and, in his right hand, he held a spear. “They actually call him The Black Warrior, because he’s the protector of holy places.”
Desmond stared at her appreciatively. “You’ve studied your Buddhist history well.”
“Desmond, was he protecting you?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, but they’re protecting something. Maybe this area is a portal to this world?”
“Or, maybe it’s just another concealed place, like Xanadu was concealed. A place hiding in a hidden world.”
A dungchen horn with its droning, deep bass aum sounded. A breeze picked up, bringing the whinny of Ishu. “Come on, Desmond, let’s leave this temple. There’s nothing we can do here right now. This world is protecting itself from something coming which could affect its very survival. I feel it in my very being. It pulls at me.” She glanced around, noticing a final deva in the corner of the garden. This one seemed out of place. A Trayastrimsa deva from the peaks of Sumeru, the tallest mountain in the world. Something about him tickled her brain…
Desmond pulled her from her thoughts. “The last time we were here, the blackness that invaded the sky…”
Kelsey nodded. “Yes, and now I think I know what it is.”
Desmond reached for her arm, turning her to face him. “It’s Raul, isn’t it? You think he’s coming to this world?”
Kelsey grimaced. “I do, but I don’t know how he can get here.” The horn sounded again. “Come on, we have to leave.” She’d come back another time to examine the statue of the Trayastrimsa deva.
She went to grasp Desmond’s hand when suddenly the entire world tilted. She screamed for Desmond, who fell backwards between the devas, and suddenly she was pulled with him, falling backwards, too. Falling…falling… falling…
* * * * *
Kelsey felt someone shaking her. She opened her eyes and Desmond leaned over her, his face inches from hers. The bed coils shrieked violently, but he didn’t notice. His eyes were wild and excited. “We were there, Kelsey! We were there! You did it again!”
He jumped out of bed, breathing fast and nearly hit the wall. He turned to her. “Do you know what this means? You can go there whenever you want. You have the ability to travel to Xanadu – you must always have had the ability. And you can take people with you.”
Kelsey sat up, and then stared at her fingers. She fluttered them, closed her eyes, but nothing happened. “But how?”
“You did it by meditating somehow. You must always be recreating what the monks did at the gher. You’ve obviously been doing it since you were a child.”
Kelsey shook her head. “I never learned how to meditate like that. Moving my fingers was just a thing I did to calm myself down.”
“You just didn’t know,” he said. “You went to school at the monastery when you lived there, right?”
She nodded. “Of course, but I was only eight-years old when I started and went there for just two years. I’d only just begun to learn the rudiments of The Noble Eightfold Path. They taught me to breathe, to calm my mind. It was just the very basics of meditation.”
“They had to have taught you more. Try to remember.”
Kelsey squinted. “I learned Tibetan, the philosophy of Buddhism and the history, but I never learned Kalachakra, the highest level of the Buddhist tantra anuttarayoga. Supposedly, I was gifted, and they let me try some of the more complicated techniques as the years went on, but the ability to leave my celestial body and travel worlds and realities? Like to the mystical world of Shambala? Come on, I’m no Buddha!”
Desmond shook his head. “This place certainly seems like Shambala, doesn’t it? A mythical world where all the beings are enlightened? It’s so perfect there.”
“Well, if you’re going to play a mythical lands game, it also seems like Shangri-La, too,” Kelsey said. “A paradise with immortal beings and strange animals, immersed in a green valley. My world of Tedanalee and both these other mythical lands all take place in the Himalayas.”
“Just like Xanadu,” Desmond said, his voice awed. “What if they’re all the same place? What if they always have been?”
Kelsey stared at him and Desmond suddenly started laughing. “By the way, did you say tantra annuttarayoga? I wouldn’t imagine they’d teach you that. You were just a child.”
She sighed, exasperated. “What is it with people? Tantra is not always about having mind-blowing out of body sexual experiences and having great superpowers. It’s about continuity, the everlasting continuum through all our lifetimes
. It’s about connections and when even our most subtle mind seems to turn off, it really never will. It just continues on and becomes the basis for attaining enlightenment. I wonder…?”
“What?” Desmond asked.
Kelsey bit her lip. “The devas we saw in the dream, the advanced meditation, the mixing of all the theologies. Xanadu and Tedanalee. Why are they all connected to me?”
Desmond shrugged and stared out the window at the dark night, uninterrupted by any lights or moon. “I don’t know Kelsey, but I’ll bet the monks at the Bodhidharma Monastery do.”
Desmond crawled back into bed and lay down on the squeaky mattress. They talked some more about the second and third levels of tantra and the methods for becoming a Buddha. When they finally fell asleep, they both faced each other. At one point in the night, Kelsey rolled closer to Desmond until she was against his chest, her head in the crook of his neck. Unconsciously, he wrapped his arms around her and they both returned to dreamless sleeps.
Chapter 25
IT’S YOU
It was early morning as the train rolled to a stop in the small, remote village of Bugkambra. Kelsey and Desmond grabbed their things and stepped onto the platform, taking in the sounds and scenery.
The village was set in a deep valley, surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Children herded goats and sheep and a bleating cacophony heralded their passage. It was cold and their breath smoked in the air in front of them. The villagers were already setting up their market stalls, filled with the staples of the area: turnips, potatoes and Chinese cabbage. There were other stalls filled with barley and wheat, mutton, yak and other dried meats, along with buckets of live fish, caught that very morning from the large lakes and rivers that ran throughout the town and residing mountains. It would have been scenic and tranquil, except for the sound of a Chinese Army convoy driving by, the inordinate amount of soldiers patrolling the streets, and the Tibetans staring at them in abject fear. As they moved through the town, the villagers gave them a wide berth.
While some of the residents wore western clothing, most donned their native attire. The women were dressed in their shubas--long robes with wide sleeves that cinched up at the waist so their skirts only hung to their knees, even in the winter cold. They kept their hair long or wound in complicated braids and many wore large, felted conical-shaped hats. The colors of their clothing were exotic with deep oranges, blues and reds.
The men wore their hair the same as the women, though some shaved their heads. Many of the men wore sheepskin drawers under their herdskin coats and high leather boots to ward off the cold.
As Kelsey and Desmond stopped at a stall, they were approached by a Chinese soldier who asked for their papers.
They handed over their passports and their itinerary. “We’re trying to get to the Kungri Mako Monastery to meet our tour.” Kelsey’s Mandarin was flawless. “We were detained in Europe because of bad weather.”
He pursed his lips, eyeing them. Kelsey knew how the Chinese felt about followers of Tibetan Buddhism. It was a constant battle between religious beliefs and China trying to maintain their sovereignty over the area.
He handed them back their papers. “Go to the constable and there you’ll find a guide.”
Thanking him, they moved on, passing an elderly lady with pleated braids who carried a metal and wood prayer wheel in her hands. Her eyes widened when she saw them and she quickly scurried away.
Desmond hefted his backpack, his breath coming fast as he dealt with the lack of oxygen in this place called The Roof of the World. “The influence of the Chinese is appallingly apparent here. I didn’t think they’d be enforcing this far into the mountains. With the unrest happening in the country, it’s no wonder the people are scared.”
“And they won’t help us, either,” Kelsey said. “They probably fear the Chinese might think they’re aligning themselves with us.”
A little boy ran by chasing a mongrel dog and a man pulled a yak across the street. A group of women, carrying bags of goods for the market stopped in mid-stride to stare at them. No one smiled.
Kelsey paused by a small stall that was filled with wild plants, but the elderly merchant had a myriad of Zongzi for purchase as well. She pointed at one of the pyramid-shaped bamboo wrapped leaves and asked the proprietor what was inside them.
He stared at her, then at the Chinese policeman glancing at him from the end of the stall. For a moment it seemed as if he were going to ignore her, but after seeing her bag full of yuan and jiao, he seemed not to want to lose the sale.
“Those are sticky rice filled with sweet bean paste and these have pork with mushrooms and egg.” He spoke in Tibetan and didn’t offer any more information.
“I’ll have one of each, good sir,” she said, handing him too much money.
Without giving her change, he pocketed the coins, handed her the food in a piece of paper and turned away.
Kelsey didn’t say anything, just bowed slightly and left the stall. She leaned towards Desmond. “He didn’t want to take my money.”
Desmond leaned close to her, whispering in her ear. “Probably because now he’ll have to pay half of it to that policeman. I’d be surprised he doesn’t take the entire sale from him. Come on.”
They continued to pass stalls with intricate rugs and others filled with jewelry made of Naga Shell and Lapis beads, along with a multitude of turquoise bracelets and necklaces. She expected the merchants to come to her to haggle, but they avoided her. From what she could see, they were the only foreigners in the immediate area.
The constable’s building was ahead. But before they even made it near the front door, a local policeman came out and stopped them from going further. Dressed in gray camouflage, his hand on the butt of his gun, he blocked them so they couldn’t enter the building. He spoke English. “You should return home. There’s no climbing here today.” His gaze skittered across the road, settling on a group of Chinese military policeman entering a local store.
Desmond glanced at Kelsey and she moved forward, speaking Tibetan. She craned her head to look up to the man, who was much taller than she. He was tall for a Tibetan, even towering over Desmond. “Sir, we’re going to the Kungri Mako Monastery and hired a guide to take us. We missed our tour and our travel planner told us to meet him here.” Julia had secured a mountaineer escort to take them to the monastery, where they would sneak away to travel onward to the Bodhidharma Temple.
The policeman glared at Kelsey. “So, you speak the native language?” he said, replying in English. “You’re the second group of people to come here who missed this tour. That’s your own fault. Foreigners aren’t allowed to roam freely around Tibet and no guide has come here to take you.” His gaze again settled on a soldier walking down the street. He turned to stare at them. “Not to mention all foreign tourists have recently been instructed to leave the area, or don’t you even heed the advice of your own embassy?” He crossed his arms.
Kelsey moved closer to him, staring into his eyes. He’s angry, but also scared. “Who was the first person to miss the tour?” Realization dawned on her. “Did a man come here recently? Yesterday? Did he threaten you?”
The policeman averted his eyes and wouldn’t look at her.
Desmond slowly put his backpack on the ground. Then he lowered himself to the dirt, his palms, elbows, toes, knees and forehead placed on the ground. Oh my god, that’s brilliant, Desmond. Kelsey quickly threw down her own backpack and did the same.
The policeman started, surprised at the exalted show of respect they gave him.
Desmond looked up. “The man that came, was he dark? Latino with two large scars running down both his cheeks?” He ran his own fingers down the front of his face, like tears falling from his eyes. “Did he say he was going to the Kungri Monastery, too?”
The policeman swallowed hard and gripped the butt of his gun. “No, he said he wanted to go to the Bodhidharma Monastery. I told him no one visits that most sacred of temples. He said he made a mistake
. That it was the Kungri Mako monastery he meant to say, but I didn’t believe him and told him to go back to where he came from. You know this man?” He glared at them and clenched his jaw.
Desmond nodded. “His name is Raul Salazar and he lied to you. He means to go to the Bodhidharma Temple and harm those at the monastery. My partner,” he turned to Kelsey. “Grew up with them as a child.”
The policeman turned his stare to Kelsey. “You were never planning to travel to Kungri Mako, were you?” His eyes were angry slits. “You’re after this man?”
She nodded. Initially, she had thought the policeman was young, a new addition to the force, but quickly realized he was actually in his mid-thirties. Does he know about me? “Sir, did you work here twelve years ago?”
The policeman squinted. “I was hired by the original constable when I was twenty-two. That would be thirteen years ago.”
Kelsey took a chance. “There was an attack on an American family around that time. They were living near the monastery. Do you remember anything about it? I read that it had gotten quite a lot of attention.”
For a moment the policeman’s eyes widened in surprise and then clouded. He pursed his lips and nodded. “I do. It was one of the most violent incidents with Americans in this area in a long while. What do you know of it?”
“I know quite a bit, sir. The man I’m seeking committed the crimes against that family.”
The policeman shook his head, remembering. “It was awful what had been done to the American couple and their little girl. I was the guide who took her parent’s friends to their camp.”
“So you were there,” Kelsey said, quietly.
He nodded. “I helped the family pry that poor child from her dead mother’s arms. Oh, what had been done to them. The last time I saw the little one was when they put her broken body in the ambulance to take her to the hospital. They say she was never the same.” He closed his eyes a moment, creasing his brow and put his hand to his forehead. “The vision of her when we found her still haunts me.” His eyes teared and he brushed them away fiercely, obviously embarrassed.
The Hunt for Xanadu Page 18
