“Lokesh is not eating today,” Dolma said, and gently pulled Shan away. They rejoined the others.
Hostene’s near frantic concern for his niece impelled him to ask blunt questions of Dolma and Trinle. “My niece said that early pilgrims-people searching for something-came here, long before the other pilgrim circuits in Tibet were constructed. But she told me there was no clear route, no way back for those who set out. You must know the way up and the way out. Where is it?”
Trinle and Dolma listened, then glanced at each other. Hostene’s mistake was that he thought they had come to help him find his niece.
“Everything here is very old,” Dolma offered. “From the time before the first Buddhists arrived in Tibet.”
Hostene nodded. “That’s the reason she came here. But where does the path lead? Why is it hidden? We will find her on the path.” Pleading was in his tone now. “I must find her.”
“This place, this cave, was meant to be an ending,” Trinle said. “Here the lamas tried to convince the travelers to turn back. This was the place between the worlds. When we came here from the village we had to undergo purification rites before we could even enter. This is where the lamas prepared themselves to repair the trail each summer.”
Hostene searched Shan’s face, as if he might be able to explain the riddle of the old Tibetan’s words.
“I think,” Shan said, “we have to understand exactly what was destroyed at Drango village fifty years ago.”
Yangke leaned forward in intense anticipation as Dolma began to speak.
“The temple had been part of the oldest sect of the Bon,” she explained. “Its roots arose from a time before history. Its monks considered Drango to be more like a spiritual guardhouse than a temple.”
“Guardhouse?”
Trinle glanced around the shadows as if for eavesdroppers, then leaned forward. “It guards the entrance to the hidden home of the old gods,” he declared, “the ones from before time, led by the dragon god who protects the earth.”
The announcement seemed to release a torrent of emotion, and memory. The old man spoke quickly now, not always coherently. “Look at this! Look at this!” he said with a gesture at Hostene. Trinle touched the Navajo, pushed his sleeve up, pointing now to the tattooed figure made of lightning bolts. “The Old Ones said this is where all the lightning in the world begins. This one understands!” he said, looking at Hostene as if he had never seen him before. “This one was summoned!”
When Hostene and Shan stared uncertainly, Trinle exclaimed in a sober tone, “Your niece was called here by the first gods.”
The first gods, Trinle continued, had confided to the early Tibetans the location of a special door to their bayal, the underground paradise where gods and saints lived in lush gardens and assumed the shape of rainbows whenever they chose.
Hostene pulled out his map of the mountain. “If that is where the path goes, show it to us. It can’t be to the summit. The summit is surrounded by cliffs.”
Trinle did not seem to understand the question.
“It’s not like that,” came a dry, weary voice from behind them. Lokesh stepped into the ring of light. He poured himself a cup of Yangke’s tea, but did not touch the food. “The more you rely on such a map, the farther away you’ll be.”
“The path was never intended for the gentle Buddhist pilgrims,” Yangke said, “I know that much. It was more of a spiritual obstacle course.”
Trinle nodded. “The Bon pilgrims led a harder existence. Many had been warriors. Salvation was to be won, like victory in war. The path was an ordeal, meant to be terrifying. It wasn’t a reward, but a judgment. They hoped the pilgrims would turn away here. People died on the kora, or else they were transformed into rainbow bodies to become saints. Start as a worm, end as a god, that’s what the oldest lamas used to say. It was said there were certain reincarnates, special messengers of the deities, who would be born with the knowledge of how to find the path.” The old man said apologetically, “The only ones who knew more died in the bombing. Even they rarely used the old path. It’s been over seventy years since anyone tried.”
“Was the equipment I saw inside intended for the pilgrims?” Shan asked. He quickly explained to Hostene and Yangke what lay in the chamber deeper in the cave.
“It was to help them achieve humility,” Trinle confirmed. “To discourage them, to weaken them with doubt. Even the most devout were begged to turn back so they could see their families again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes the devout made it to the top, to the end of the trail. But none of them came back.”
Shan remembered Rapaki’s letter to his uncle, who had set out to find the gods over thirty years before.
“So,” Yangke summarized, “the ones who failed came back as corpses and the ones who succeeded were never seen on earth again. And that was before there was a murderer on the mountain.”
The words seemed to take everyone’s breath away. They ate in silence, watching the stars, stirring the embers.
“It is not the way of things,” Lokesh said. And though Lokesh was staring at the fire, Shan knew the words were meant for him.
“It is not worth it. You are simply rearranging stones in a stream.”
It was a lesson often repeated to Shan by Lokesh and Gendun and the other monks they lived with. What point was there in trying to manipulate events in the outer world, they would ask. The stream of destiny would not change. No matter how many rocks you rearranged in the stream, the water would always replace them and continue its fated course.
“We cannot simply wait below,” Shan said, also to the embers.
“You must stay below,” his friend said. “This kora is very old, almost totally unconnected to humans.” His words, even his voice, had an otherworldly quality. “It could be the last one on earth. This druk god, this dragon god, could be the only hope for our people. You can’t go up the path to chase a criminal, you can’t ascend like animals following a trail of blood or this last god will give up and abandon humans altogether.”
Despair settled over Shan. “I don’t know how to stop searching,” he said.
Without another word, Lokesh stood and hobbled away.
“There are bags here, in the chamber below,” Trinle said later. “Those who refused to turn back here were given a pilgrim’s sack, a blanket, and a staff, and told these were the things needed on the trail. Sometimes, if a lama was going on, he would ask to have a wooden collar or manacles put on as well.”
“Tell me, Trinle,” Shan said. “Is any equipment missing?”
“Some bags, though I can’t say how many. And some things kept in one of the baskets.”
“What things?”
Trinle stroked his grizzled jaw. “Ornaments for the Green Tara. A golden headdress, a green vestment, golden bracelets. Sometimes they evoked her by having a nun wear those things at the altar.”
“I don’t understand,” Yangke said. “Is Abigail accompanying a pilgrim or a killer? It must be a killer, for he always flees, always hides, always expresses himself in blood. It must be a pilgrim, for who else would be interested in the old path? But either way, why should he care if Abigail lives?”
“Because she can read the old symbols,” Hostene ventured.
“There’s another reason,” Shan said, and extracted the photo Gao had printed for him in Tashtul.
Yangke took it from him, holding a lamp over it, studying it. Then his eyes widened in surprise. “Buddha’s Breath!” he gasped. He handed the picture to Lokesh, who gazed at it a few moments, then began to nod.
Shan took the photo and explained it to the others. He pointed to Abigail’s extended leg first. “It’s called the position of royal repose, one of the customary symbols in the old paintings.” He pointed to her upswept hair, her golden earrings, the flowers in her hair, her hand resting on one knee, her green sweater.
“I don’t understand,” Hostene said. “This was taken on our afternoon off.
I insisted she have some rest. We picnicked.”
Shan pointed to a tiny detail in the upper corner of the photo. “That is the back of a wild goat on the ledge above the rock she sat on. Look at the way it juts out. The goat could not have seen her. He was spooked by something on the opposite slope, someone who was watching you from above. Rapaki was up there. There is a prophesy that the Green Tara will come back to help Tibetans.”
“Abigail,” Hostene uttered in a hoarse voice. “He thinks Abigail is the Green Tara.”
“The one thing of Tara’s she doesn’t have,” Shan observed, “was the long beaded necklace Hubei was to buy in town.”
“So she is safe,” Hostene said.
“Safe from the pilgrim,” Shan said, “but not from the killer.”
Later, he found Hostene on a high rock, gazing toward the dark silhouette of the summit.
“When I was young, just a teenager,” the Navajo said as Shan settled beside him, “my mother’s uncle, a famous chanter, took me on a quest to meet the gods. He was planning to teach me what he knew, so my generation could keep the sacred knowledge alive. He brought me to one of our sacred mountains, gave me a rope, a flint, a feather, and a twisted piece of fragrant wood he had found on his own quest when he was a boy, and told me to climb to the top and stay up there for five days, fasting, and the gods would come to me. I climbed along a path with sacred symbols painted on rocks, guides, painted a long, long time ago. There were pieces of bone and feathers and red cloth jammed in rock cracks or on thornbushes, left by those who had gone before me. I reached the top and sang for a while, some simple words he had taught me. I sat and threw stones and watched birds. I started to sing rock-and-roll songs. After three days I climbed down the other side and hitchhiked to a town to see a girl I knew.
“My uncle came for me. He waited for two days at the bottom, saying prayers for me. He said a coyote had finally told him what I had done. He wasn’t angry. Just sad the gods had not shown themselves to me. Later I got a motorcycle and rode all over the American West, taking odd jobs, hanging out in bars, and worse. I had my arm tattooed to mock my old relatives. My uncle kept trying to contact me because he was dying. He told my mother I had the makings of a great chanter, that I was one of those who were needed to keep the important things alive. I never answered his letters or returned his phone calls. He died before I returned.”
Hostene stared into the heavens. “This is how the world ends, my wife said once, how great civilizations fall to pieces. The old things meant to be passed down, they are the best things distilled out of thousands of years of experience. But somehow in the last century we decided our own lives were too important, that fast cars covered with chrome, and television, and computers made us better than our ancestors. That’s the lie that kills the great things.”
“When I finally settled down and learned my two chants, I was going to have the tattoo removed but then I decided to keep it, to remind me of my shame.” Hostene stared at the summit again. “Now that she needs me, what do I know about being a pilgrim? What do I know about gods?”
“People here aren’t dying because of gods,” Shan said. “They’re dying because of gold.”
Shan was alone before the little fire when a hand reached out of the shadows for him. Yangke gestured him into the cave. Then, lifting a butter lamp from the floor, he silently led him down the corridor Shan had taken before, to the chamber with the pilgrim’s equipment. But they continued until they reached what appeared to be the end of the tunnel, a chamber smelling of old incense, whose ceiling was blackened with the soot of butter lamps.
Old Trinle sat near the center of the room, gazing up at another painting, his eyes filled with tears.
“He won’t speak to Dolma about this,” Yangke explained. “He said he never came here before, that it was only for the senior lamas.”
Another fierce protector was depicted, Shan thought at first, though the image was unlike any he had seen before. The god in the center was dragon-headed. Two dozen small demons surrounded it along the sides and bottom.
“It is the druk deity, god of the mountain, the earth god,” Trinle declared in a raspy voice. “This is where the lamas started and finished each pilgrim season. He is the one the fortunate ones meet at the top.”
Yangke said, “All these years, Rapaki didn’t know why, despite his years of meditation, he wasn’t shown the Kora. I think he decided he didn’t have something the god wanted. He kept looking, trying to understand what that thing might be. He had no teachers,” he reminded Shan.
“You must not tell Dolma,” Trinle told Shan.
Shan stepped closer to the painting, not yet comprehending. Yangke handed him the butter lamp. Then he saw.
He had seen paintings of old gods with necklaces and bracelets of human skulls. He had seen images of gods adorned with human skins. Until now he had never seen a god wearing a necklace made of human hands.
“After so many years alone,” Yangke said in an anguished voice, “the mind might go to places. .” He didn’t finish the sentence. “I don’t think he is exactly a murderer, not the way most people think of murderers.”
Shan said, “Perhaps. But if one has an appetite for hands,” he said, “someone else who is a murderer might find it convenient to feed that craving.”
They lingered in silence, unable to break the spell of the deity before them. Yangke lowered himself beside Trinle. Shan found himself staring at the unsettling dragon-headed image.
“I could have learned its secrets,” came a cracking voice, full of remorse. “I could have saved Rapaki,” Trinle said.
In the quiet that followed only the occasional crackling of the lamp could be heard and a sound that Shan had begun to detect in all of Tibet’s deep caves, a strange low resonance that was sound and not sound, something that made him feel small and meaningless, an intruder into a place not meant for mere humans. Lokesh had a name for it-mountain speaking.
“My uncle was the abbot,” Trinle continued. “I was sent to the monks when I was ten, as had been the tradition of our family for centuries. But when I was seventeen I fell in love with a girl who tended the sheep. I would say I was meditating out on the mountain but it was not meditation I sought. We became like man and wife. When my uncle found out he banished me from the temple and took my robe away, saying the only way I could stay near the temple would be if I was digging its holes and tending its gardens. A year later, when the Chinese were advancing, my woman went down to Tashtul, to look for her mother. I never saw her again, never heard from her.
“I think it is true, that this is where the first gods started,” Trinle declared after a long time. “A thousand thousand seasons ago. Once there were more gods than people. People were just made, like artwork, the way later people made paintings of gods.” The old groundskeeper seemed about to weep. “Then there came to be too many people for the gods to tend, too many people who forgot the nature of prayer. The world could no longer be relied upon. And now,” he pronounced in a thin, anguished voice, “I think there may be only one earth god left, a frail old dragon at the top of this kora. When he finds the strength, he prays.”
“What does he pray for?” Shan asked.
The answer came not from Trinle or Yangke, but from a lean, weary figure standing at the entrance to the chamber. Shan had no idea how long Lokesh had been there.
“That,” his old friend said, “is the most important question in all the world.”
Yangke began a whispered mantra. Trinle rose and brushed the dust from the deity’s painted eyes. When Shan turned again Lokesh was gone.
He found Lokesh in the equipment chamber, at the wicker chests, gazing at the old masks. He lifted the headdress of a horned bull god and set it on an adjoining chest. “Trinle and Yangke tried to learn, but they had no proper guidance.”
Shan noted the heavy-bladed instruments beside the yak-tail whips-ritual axes with curving steel at the top, a four-inch blade in the center. An outline in the dust showe
d one was missing.
“You must return with me,” Lokesh said. “Now that we know what is here, the entire village will surely understand. Gendun says he needs to speak with Chodron, that if he can just sit and meditate with him, Chodron will see the error of his ways.”
Shan could find no answer that Lokesh would comprehend.
“Then you are going up that kora tomorrow. Tell me that by doing so you will not beget more violence and more suffering.” Death did not upset Lokesh for to him it was but a stage before rebirth. It was violence, which fed the imbalance he sought to heal, that he feared.
“I wish I could find such a way,” was all Shan could say.
Lokesh stroked the golden nose of the horned bull headdress. “Return with me. Gendun and I will find a way. When he is healed, the three of us can climb to the summit together.”
“If I return without discovering an answer to the killings, Gendun will be tortured again. To Chodron he is only a weapon to use against me.”
“You know that is unimportant to Gendun.”
“It is important to me.” Shan’s heart felt as if it were in a vise.
Lokesh tilted the bull up so that it seemed to be looking him in the eyes, and spoke to its golden face. “It is a season for killing, Dolma says. She says it is like a storm, that it needs to blow itself out so we can get on with life.”
IN THE MORNING, outside the cave, Lokesh would not speak to Shan, would not look him in the eye.
Dolma transferred some apples and apricots from her own bag to Shan’s pack, handed him one of the pilgrim bags Trinle had brought from the cave. “He says this is not what the track to the gods is for,” she said in a strained voice, “that you must stop this, that you cannot turn it into some sort of contest between predator and prey.”
“We have no choice.” Shan lifted one of the pilgrim staffs and looked at his old friend, who stood on a rock, facing the sunrise.
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