Divine Madness

by Harmon Cooper

  We ate, and I was about to mention fishing again, when I realized that we really didn’t have the materials necessary to catch a fish.

  If the water had been warmer, we could have potentially sent Roger in to try to nab one, but there was no telling if he actually had this capability, and fish could be finicky. Even if we had the right bait and string, there was a chance they wouldn’t bite.

  As we finished up, Tashi and Roger discussed how they planned to hunt if it became necessary.

  “It’ll be easy,” Roger assured us. “I’ll fly up and spot something big like a yak or a wolf. Would you eat a wolf?”

  “It would depend on how hungry I was,” I told him after translating the question for Lhandon.

  “Wolf meat can be excellent,” Lhandon said, “but before we eat any, we absolutely must thank the animal for providing it to us.”

  “What he said. Anyway, I’ll spot it, and then I’ll come down to you, Tashi, and you can go burn it to death. That sounds terrible, but you know what I mean.”

  The fire spirit nodded. “I will keep my fire concentrated around its head so you can cook the body in the way that you would like.”

  “Does someone know how to gut an animal?” I asked. “Because I definitely don’t. Altan handled that stuff before.”

  Lhandon looked to me and shook his head. “I only know how to prepare something small like a chicken.”

  “I know how,” Tashi said, “but since I won’t be able to do it myself, I will instruct one of you. We do have a fairly decent supply of jerky and other rations, which should get us to Sarpang.”

  “Then why are we having all these talks about finding food?” Roger asked.

  Tashi shrugged. “It’s best to be prepared, especially as the conditions of the Great Plateau can change rapidly.”

  “Fair enough.”

  We started off, hoping to make it as far as we possibly could before the end of the day.

  Lhandon and I took meditation breaks every hour or so, just for a few minutes to rest our legs, the sun growing hotter with each passing minute.

  “What’s that ahead?” Roger asked as he rose higher into the air.

  Before he could return to my shoulder, the sky darkened, grains of sand striking my face.

  “Nick!” Lhandon shouted, reaching out to me, Tashi flaring up beside him.

  The wind roared all around me, strong enough that it caused me to fall backward.

  “Nick!”

  I tried to reach out for Lhandon, but as I got back to my feet I was whipped up into the air, the weight of my backpack pushing my head forward, which sent me barreling to the ground. I smashed into a sand dune and was tossed back to my feet, running as I tried to stabilize myself.

  I was blinded by the dust.

  The wind screamed in my face; sand scratched against my eyes. More wind struck me in the chest, sending me back to the ground.

  I pressed myself up, just as a large rock flew over my head, a rock which may have killed me had I not been in my current position.

  I knew that I needed to stay here, that I needed to cover myself, to wait for the sandstorm to subside.

  I practically buried my head in the sand, my hands over my crown, the occasional piece of debris striking my backpack.

  The sandstorm ended as quickly as it had begun, the sky lighting back up, everything around me suddenly still.

  I stood once it was safe, looking around and seeing that…

  I was alone.

  The sudden sandstorm had separated us, and from where I currently stood, there were no signs of life in any direction.

  Panic rose in my chest as I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted Lhandon’s name. I shouted for Tashi, for Roger, until I was hoarse.

  I was breathing heavily now.

  We didn’t have a strategy for what we would do if something like this happened. If anything, I knew that Roger would be the one to find me, but what if he had been injured? What if he had been tossed even further than I had been?

  I decided to stay put.

  Walking in any direction would disorient me even more, and to make myself more visible, I unsheathed my Flaming Thunderbolt of Wisdom, holding it in the air.

  I knew this wouldn’t work so well during the daytime, but if the clouds came in front of the sun, or I was stuck here until night…

  I took a deep breath in.

  “I sure hope that isn’t the case,” I said under my breath.

  I stayed like this for a good hour, switching hands, holding my Flaming Thunderbolt above me, trying to stay focused on being as visible a target as possible.

  It was starting to get even hotter; I was starting to get scared.

  Chapter Twenty-One: Demons on the Plateau

  What felt like another hour passed.

  The sun was bearing down on me now, and even though I had the hood up on my robe, I was unable to keep the blistering orb off my face. The only thing I’d seen over the last hour was a pair of vultures.

  They circled once, realized I was very much still alive, and moved on.

  I had lost one of my gourds of water somewhere in the sandstorm, but the one still clipped to my bag was intact, the water almost completely melted, ice cold.

  As thirsty as I was, I knew not to finish it.

  “Come on, come on,” I said, as I scanned the horizon again, hoping to see Lhandon, Tashi, Roger, anyone.

  I moved to the top of one of the dunes, which didn’t give me much of a vantage point, especially as my ankles were now half sunk in the hot sand.

  I tried calling for my friends again and again, all to no avail.

  And even though it was scorching hot, what worried me most was what would happen when night came. While I was getting better at generating an inner warmth, I didn’t know if I was strong enough to make it through a night on the Great Plateau...

  Maybe a caravan would come along, or perhaps I would be able to follow an animal to a body of water, but there really was no telling at this point.

  I felt entirely alone, lost in an inhospitable environment, panic rising in my chest again.

  Another twenty or thirty minutes passed, the sun hotter than it had ever been.

  I knew I needed to save my water, but my lips were starting to chap, my throat dry from calling out for my friends.

  A breeze picked up and I turned left to see…

  An image of a man started to take shape. It was only when he grew closer to me that I realized who he was.

  I was looking at myself.

  The man wore similar robes to me, had the exact same face, the same height, everything.

  He was me, and it made absolutely no sense, how could I have a double?

  I started to take a step back and ended up falling, my heavy pack pulling me backward and down the dune that I had been standing on.

  “You’re hallucinating.” I jammed my fingers into my temples and rubbed them. “Get it together, Nick.”

  I focused on my breath for a moment, trying to wash the image away from my mind.

  “You’re hallucinating,” I whispered.

  I sat up and wiped the sand off my face, wincing at the sun as I hobbled back to my feet. I cursed when I saw that some of the water had spilled out of my gourd, realizing that I was almost out.

  I instinctively dropped my hand to my waist to see that…

  My sword…

  I let out a sigh of utter relief once I found my sheathed Flaming Thunderbolt of Wisdom sticking out of the sand. I went for my blade, and as I did, my double stepped in front of me, which caused me to fall back to the ground.

  I looked up, my doppelgänger’s form wavering.

  “You can’t be real,” I told him, the man semi-translucent. “I’m not dead.”

  Or was I?

  How would I even know if I had died or not? How did anyone truly know?

  Once I was up again, I drew my blade from its sheath, pointing it at my double.

  “Not another step,” I told the
spitting image of myself.

  My double merely looked down at the fiery blade and back to me.

  He then took a few steps forward, the blade passing through his chest and out his back.

  “Okay, I get it,” I said as I stepped away, sheathing my Flaming Thunderbolt.

  My double moved past me. Once he was about ten feet away, he turned to me, motioning for me to follow him.

  “You’re going to take me to my friends?” I asked him.

  He merely motioned for me to follow him again.

  “Okay,” I finally told him, “I’ll follow you.”

  Even though I knew it couldn’t do anything to him, I kept my hand on the hilt of my blade, trying to walk in a way as to shield my face from the sun.

  I saw that my knuckles were now red, and I knew that blisters would soon follow.

  I could heal up from those, and I wondered at that moment if healing would somehow help with my dehydration, and if this went on for too long, starvation.

  I really didn’t want to find out.

  The two of us walked in silence, no signs of life whatsoever, my double occasionally stopping to allow me to catch up.

  My armpits and brow were drenched in sweat, yet my feet were cold, even though I was wearing boots. The sun was terrifyingly bright now, preventing me from even looking up in the sky to see if Roger had spotted me.

  All I could do was continue forward, hoping that my double wasn’t a trick of the mind leading me to my inevitable death.

  At some point during our journey, I had to smirk, realizing that I had gone from rooming with an amazing snow lioness to trekking across an endless desert following what very well may have been a death hallucination.

  Perhaps that would be the end of my story, perhaps I would die realizing I should have stayed in Dornod.

  My smirk slowly morphed to a frown.

  I really hoped that wasn’t the case.

  I saw a sparkle in the distance, and once I realized it was a pond, I started to walk faster, licking my lips, wanting nothing more than to quench my extreme thirst.

  I ripped my pack off as we neared the pond. I kneeled down by the edge of the water, scooping the cool liquid into my mouth.

  Eventually, I used my gourd, filling it up and chugging it back. I kept drinking until I could drink no more, then I waited for a moment, and drank some more.

  After I’d had enough, I filled the gourd and poured the water over my head, letting out a sigh of relief as the cold water trickled down my neck. I did this again, smiling, more of the water trickling down my back.

  “I’m going in,” I told my double, who just stood there with his arms at his side, staring at me.

  Shielding my eyes, I glanced up at the sun, deciding against actually going in the water.

  Maybe that wasn’t the best idea.

  I was just about to drain my gourd again when I heard something overhead.

  The voice grew louder, “Nick!”

  My heart leaped into my throat. “Roger?”

  Rather than say anything I simply raised a single fist into the air, as if I were the victor, as if I’d pulled this off on my own.

  Roger landed, an excited look on his face. “We’ve been searching for you!”

  “I was lost…”

  “You found water too!” Roger dipped his beak in. “Okay, okay, this is good. This is fucking great! I will lead Tashi and Lhandon here, just stay put.”

  “You didn’t see someone else with me, did you?” I asked, turning back to where my double had just been standing, the man now gone.

  “Someone else? Was there someone following you?”

  “Not someone…” I shook my head. “Never mind. Just bring Lhandon here. I will explain everything.”

  Lhandon shook his head, seemingly unable to process what I’d just told him. He too had his hood over his dome, a bit of shadow cast on his eyes, the portly monk even sweatier than I was. “So you are saying that your double led you here?”

  I nodded. “I mean, unless it was a hallucination, but…”

  I recalled the man approaching my sword, the flaming blade coming out the other end.

  “It was real,” I said with finality, “it definitely wasn’t a hallucination. I’ve had hallucinations before, the most recent one being while I was trying to escape Nagchu. It was nothing like this.”

  “Did he say anything to you?” Tashi asked.

  “Nothing. He just waited for me to follow him, so I did.”

  “I really wish Jigme were here. We could ask him if he’d ever heard of anything like this before,” Lhandon said. “Regardless, we can’t discount what you witnessed, and while I don’t have an answer for you now, Nick, I do believe what you saw was real. It just makes no sense as to why your double would be here. From all I know, it’s impossible to have a double if you are still alive.”

  “For a moment I thought I was dead,” I admitted.

  “I would have too,” said Roger, who was blocking the sun with his feathers.

  “Well, you are very much alive, and it is a good thing,” Lhandon said. He drank another gourd of water, and filled the one on his pack. Tashi made another gourd for me. After it was cooled off, I filled this one up too, making sure we had plenty of water.

  “Now, we need to figure out which direction we’re going,” Lhandon said. “The sandstorm turned us around, and then there was the fact that you were gone…”

  “We’re heading this way,” Roger said, angling his beak to the northwest quadrant of the pond.

  “I concur,” Tashi added. “We were heading in that direction yesterday, the sun setting over there,” he said, gesturing toward the dunes in the distance.

  “You two would know better than I,” Lhandon said humbly. “Lead the way.”

  We walked, and as we did, we discussed how we would address the next sandstorm, if one came around.

  “What I ended up doing in the end was dropping to the ground, my hands over my head,” I told them. “Perhaps we should do that, you and me together.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Lhandon said. “I wish someone would have mentioned the sandstorms; we could have gotten a rope back in Dornod to connect our waists together, just to be safe.”

  “Maybe it’s a new phenomenon,” Tashi said. “When I crossed the Great Plateau a thousand years ago, we didn’t encounter any such storms, nor did we hear about anyone encountering them.”

  “I cannot tell you guys how ready I am to be closer to the ocean again,” Roger grumbled. “I’m a sea bird at heart.”

  “You mean a seagull?” I asked him.

  Roger cackled. “Hell no. I’m not as needy as a seagull.”

  Roger, now out of his fur vest, lifted off my shoulder and rose higher in the air, circling above us a few times before coming back down. “We have company,” he said, a tenseness behind his voice now.

  “What kind of company?” Tashi asked.

  “There’s a caravan heading our way. How should we do this?”

  “A caravan,” I translated for Lhandon.

  “Can we go around them?” Lhandon asked.

  Roger shook his head. “They will surely see us; the sand ends just ahead, and it’s flat for a little while.”

  “We can’t go around them; we should just be ready to engage,” I said, nodding at Tashi, who flared up, and reduced his size until he was just a few inches tall, easily able to float behind me or beside me, our secret weapon.

  We continued walking, my eyes on the horizon, my hand near the hilt of my blade.

  The caravan eventually came into view, heat waves making their forms hard to pick out at first. They had yaks carrying large loads covered by canvas sacks and as we approached them, I counted six animals and twelve merchants, at least I assumed they were merchants.

  The men were covered from head to toe in fabric, their eyes barely visible. Their heads were wrapped too, and the only identifying mark on them was a red band that cycled through their turbans.

  They stoppe
d, their leader exchanging glances with another man to the left of the group. He lowered his hand on the hilt of his weapon, and took a step toward us.

  “No need for that, gentlemen,” Lhandon said as he came forward as well, showing both his palms. “We’re simply making our way to Sarpang.”

  “What for?” the man in the turban asked, something foreign about his accent.

  I hadn’t really paid too much attention to the accents here in the Kingdom of Lhasa, and most of them weren’t much different than mine aside from the way they pronounced “Massachusetts,” but this man definitely had an accident.

  “We are traveling to the Island Kingdom of Jonang,” Lhandon said.

  “Why doesn’t the monk tell him our birthdays too?” Roger asked, the tropical bird now perched on my shoulder again. “Look, I get the diplomatic approach, but you have a fire sword, and we have Tashi here...”

  “There’s no sense in escalating things,” Tashi said.

  Lhandon bowed to the man, and the man bowed back, lowering his hand from his weapon. He returned to his caravan and they moved on, letting us pass.

  “That’s it?” I asked Lhandon. “What did you say to him?”

  “Nothing. I believe he saw in my eyes that I wasn’t planning to rob him, and perhaps he realized that…” Lhandon smiled. “I’m not really even capable of doing that.”

  Roger cackled. “Your weakness comes in handy!”

  I stopped and looked back at the caravan, watching them pass, one of their yaks groaning under the weight of its cargo. The man at the back of the caravan whipped the yak with a long switch, the creature letting out a grunt before they continued on.

  I went for my gourd of water and took a long drag from it, happy to be able to drink water freely again. I realized at that moment that I was hungry, that I hadn’t eaten since getting lost. After mentioning this, Lhandon suggested that we eat as we walked, rather than take a rest.

  “The faster we get to somewhere that perhaps has shade, or offers us water, the easier it will be for us,” he said, using his hand to shield his face from the sun.