The Quest of the Empty Tomb

by Elyse Salpeter

  Kelsey’s jaw dropped. “Mayadevi? The Buddha’s mother? Are you telling me, Siddhartha Gautama’s mother asked you to watch over me? I find that very hard to believe.”

  The deva flexed his muscles and stretched. “It was at the bequest of Lord Buddha, of course. After your accomplishment defeating your father, Mara, or Namuci as we call him, he wished you to live the life you were finally meant to live, without interruption. And he’s instructed me to guide you now.”

  “But I am living my life the way I wish now. I’m finally free.”

  The deva looked down upon her as if he addressed a child. “No one is ever free, Kelsey, unless they have reached Nirvana, a path you denied yourself so you could remain living on the human plane of existence. But with that path comes human truths, along with human foils and pains. Unfortunately, your karma is constantly in flux and many influences still intrude upon your life, forcing you to stray from your path toward enlightenment. Especially now.”

  “That’s not true. No one is influencing me any longer.”

  “Of course they are.”

  Her brows creased. “Who is it?”

  The deva hedged. “It is not for me to tell you and set you on a different path than what this incarnation dictates.”

  Still so many secrets. I am so done with them. She let her temper flare. “I’ve never liked secrets, Pancaggala. Tell me why you’re assigned to me. What are you protecting me from? I didn’t think great devas, especially those from the heavens, spent their time dealing with mere humans.”

  At this, her protector blew out an angry breath, sending out a torrent of hot air that whipped her hair about her face.

  Kelsey held her ground.

  The deva squinted. “You are brave, but a fool. Don’t think you can take me on. You no longer have any powers to do so. Had you deigned to remain with your spiritual father you could have kept your godly abilities. But you left. And now? I can defeat you with a mere flick of my wrist.” At that, a crack of lightening streaked across the sky and hit a tree near her. The explosive sound pealed across the land, so loud and sharp she wondered if they’d heard it at the monastery. But again, she held her ground and refused to let him intimidate her.

  She snickered. “Nice trick, but we both know the truth, don’t we? Your world is the second of the heavens of Kāmadhātu and you and your gods spend all your time fighting the Asuras in the heaven below you. Those beings your own people expelled, and who now simply wish to return to their world. So don’t play the fool with me and say you had no choice in this. Your own destiny reveals that Trāyastriṃśa gods are unable to avoid getting entangled in human affairs. You act like dealing with me is some great sacrifice, but I know the truth.”

  The deva arched his eyebrows in astonishment.

  “Oh, yes, great one, I know who and what you are. And while I may be a mere mortal and not a god, I know much about you and how you’ve intruded on the affairs of humans. Much to our detriment, I might add.”

  At this the deva laughed, but it was a bitter sound.

  “Why are you at war with the Asuras? Why can’t you simply allow them to co-exist in your land?”

  He loomed forwards and towered over her and his shadow blocked out the sun. “Don’t think you are all-knowing because you defeated Mara once. That is but a small insignificant part of this one, single existence. There are so many things in this continuation that are beyond your capabilities to understand, little girl.” The deva shrank back and reduced his size. “The Asuras deserve to be where they are. They are the lowest ranks of the demi-gods who we expelled from Trāyastriṃśa, and for good reason. They are wicked, prone to greed, envy, and insincerity. They were egotistical and violent as humans, and thus sent to the closest heaven above the human realm to live out their pathetic lives at the foot of our mountain, where they will remain for the duration of their existence. They can spend as many centuries as they wish trying to fight their way back in, but they never will. Their greed, and their jealousy of the devas in my heaven taints their existence. No matter how much they try to recover what they claim is their lost kingdom, they will fail. For it was never theirs to claim in the first place. If I could, I would destroy them all.”

  “That’s not very forgiving of a Trāyastriṃśa god, is it?” Kelsey sniffed. “I thought you’d be more evolved. You'd best get rid of that negative energy or you’ll never move on. In fact, you may relive the next millennia as an Asura with that line of thought.”

  “How dare you speak to me this way?” The deva roared in anger and his body rippled and pulsed. The air around Kelsey swelled and grew hot in the deva’s escalating fury.

  I’m constantly surrounded by beings who can’t control their emotions. I walk a fine line with this one. She changed the topic. “So why did Mayadevi ask you to watch over me? What are you possibly protecting me from that I can’t handle myself?”

  The deva relaxed somewhat and looked down his nose at her. “Does the number thirty-three mean anything to you?”

  She tried not to flinch. Do I pretend I know nothing? “I know it has a lot of different significances throughout different factions of thought, in religion and science, but no more than any other number.”

  “As I thought,” he huffed. “You know nothing. Your lack of knowledge will be your undoing and there will be nothing I can do for you.”

  They stared at each other in stony silence until the deva spoke again. He apparently didn’t enjoy lulls in conversation and preferred to hear himself speak. “The number thirty-three is an important number. Are you aware that it is the number of the Trāyastriṃśa gods that exist with me in the heavens?”

  Another connection to thirty-three. “No, I didn’t know that. But what does that have to do with me?”

  The deva shrugged. “Possibly nothing… or possibly everything. I would venture that it depends upon your perspective.” He was silent for a moment and played with the wind. He’d wave his hand around and create little air streams, spinning the loose leaves and flower petals into small funnels. The creature in Kelsey’s arms squealed in fear and fled from her to scurry into the woods.

  Kelsey watched the deva play, knowing he’d start to speak again soon enough, and he did.

  “You know that my land is Mayadevi's birthplace, don’t you? Because of that, and your connection to her son, until I am done with my own path in this world, I’ve been ordered to protect my world, and to protect you.”

  Protect me…. from what? But no matter how many times she asked him that question, he refused to answer, doing what he did every night before. Always just watching her from afar. She could be flying on her fedelia in Xanadu, or be at the feet of the Emperor and Empress in their chambers. Other times she visited the friends she had made as a child, the other children who had frequented the rooms of the castle. But her deva just stood to the side, watching, and she never found out what he supposedly protected her from.

  Kelsey flinched and woke up in Armand’s apartment. She could hear the snores of the others in the darkness. Her thoughts wandered. If Kenmut’s family died, there would be thirty-three Decans remaining in the nighttime sky. There are thirty-three Trāyastriṃśa gods. What did that mean? Coincidence?

  She didn’t believe in them. Not even for a second. She fell back to sleep.

  Chapter 18

  DESMOND’S STORY

  Desmond woke up with a start and reached across the bed. When his hand hit the cool sheets and not Kelsey’s warm body, he opened his eyes and remembered she’d gone to Egypt. Without him. That bit of information was not lost on him.

  He sat up and struggled to recall his dream before it faded away. Ever since he returned from Tibet he’d been plagued with recurring nightmares. He knew Kelsey had been going through her own issues, and he’d held back the extent to which this had been happening to him. Their relationship was still so new and he didn’t want to mess things up like he’d done with her numerous times before. He just wanted their relationship to grow like a n
ormal relationship should, but he felt certain he hadn’t done a good job of that either. For some reason he constantly screwed up with this girl—enough so that she left him in the States to go to Egypt without him. Obviously, he’d not been hiding his feelings well enough.

  She thinks I’m too possessive. But he had his reasons, and not just the obvious one that every man in a mile radius of her wanted to have sex with her. He believed someone truly was after his girlfriend. He couldn’t prove it, and it sounded irrational, but he truly believed she was in danger. The feeling sat deep in his gut. He dreamed about Kelsey in one horrible situation after another and if there was one thing he learned while he was in Xanadu, and his experiences with the monks in Tibet, it was that his dreams meant something.

  As a child, he never remembered dreaming. But then again, he didn’t recall much of anything from his early years. His memory was a complete void. Like the thousands of times before, he tried to remember anything that had happened to him prior to the age of ten, and couldn’t. It was as if he had not even existed before that.

  Desmond turned his thoughts to the dream he’d just experienced. He had been in Xanadu, but he was a child. While he didn’t recall his youth, he did remember being in Xanadu and that startled him. Bits and pieces of memory started coming back to him, and the more he dreamed about that land, the more certain he felt that he had actually been there. He hadn’t yet shared this bit of information with Kelsey. Was that a mistake? He couldn’t be sure, but the way things stood between them now, it probably had been.

  In this particular dream he had been terrified. Not because anything in the dream scared him, but because it felt real. A Tibetan nursemaid he’d never met before watched over him. He lay on a cot in a hut and a soft blue blanket covered him. While the room seemed warm and a fire blazed in the hearth, he shook with cold. The nursemaid sat by his side and tried to help him drink some tea to comfort him. He would take a sip then start crying, and the nursemaid would look behind her at the monk standing there silently, just watching.

  In the dream, Desmond remembered he tried to speak to the woman, to explain that he didn’t know who he was. He saw only pity in her eyes. She had turned to the monk. “His memory is gone.” The monk nodded and left, returning with a multitude of other monks to hear his story. But no one could tell Desmond who he was or even his own name, for he had forgotten that, too.

  Since he’d returned from Tibet, all his dreams resembled this one. Him in a strange land with no recollection of his past or how he’d come to be there. He’d had an inkling the monks knew more than they would say. The expression in their eyes betrayed them, but no one ever told him anything.

  Desmond felt frustrated. The monks six month ago had told him when they took him to Xanadu his brain would learn new pathways. He’d laughed it off, but he realized now they knew something he didn’t. That thought unsettled him greatly. He finally understood how Kelsey felt--like she had been a pawn her entire life for beings who knew more about her soul than she knew.

  Desmond reached over and grabbed Kelsey’s pillow. He hugged it to his chest and bent his face to the pillowcase and sniffed. The scents of jasmine and lavender tickled his nose. Other smells came to him. Hints of her strawberry shampoo and her citrus body cream. All of it smelled just like her, and he recalled the enormous array of lotions she’d brought over and kept in his bathroom cabinet. His own toiletries barely fit anymore.

  Desmond thought back to his dreams again. It didn’t take a genius to know that the dreams he was having now essentially mimicked his own early life experiences. His own non-existent memories of his childhood before the age of ten were something private that he had not yet shared with Kelsey. How do you tell your girlfriend that you know nothing about your early life, because your entire memory had been wiped out? It wasn’t dinner conversation, that’s for sure, and he’d not figured out how to bring it up to her without sounding crazy. Hell, that’s the reason he hadn’t even introduced her to his mom, yet. He just hadn’t wanted to get into it all. She’d been curious about that, playfully asking him if she embarrassed him, so he’d concocted one brilliant excuse after another. He said he’d last visited his mother when Kelsey had taken her trip to Tibet. Another time his mother fell ill the weekend they had planned to go see her. His new case made another excuse. He’d put off their meeting as long as possible, promising her they’d all get together for Thanksgiving.

  But addressing his early life wasn’t the only reason he’d kept them apart. Kelsey had her own things going on as well, and he hadn’t wanted to complicate her life further. She obviously had her own inner demons to battle. It might not be the Buddhist devil any longer, but she was still dealing with something. She’d cry out in her sleep and talk in Tedanaleese. The fact that he’d started to understand much of what she uttered shocked him. How did he possibly understand? Some of the things she yelled out most were, “Why are you here? You need to leave me alone.”

  Desmond tossed the pillow aside, reached over, and opened the bottom drawer of his night table. He rummaged in the back and removed an old photo album. The very first pictures in the book had not been taken until he was about eleven years old. One with his parents at a restaurant, another one of them at a park, others of him and his brother Connor playing ball. Others at Disney World. Another one of him fishing with his dad. Typical childhood family milestones that would be normal in any slice of Americana, but when Desmond peered deeper into the photos, he saw things others might not see. He saw a little boy who looked lost. Who didn’t know how to play ball with his brother, who didn’t know who Mickey Mouse was, how to fish, or even how to act with a family. He’d had to relearn all of that, because at the age of ten he’d been found by a lifeguard, naked and crying inconsolably on a beach on the New Jersey Shore with no understanding for anything in this world. He couldn’t speak English or any other language anyone knew, and he seemed terrified of the world around him. The authorities brought him to the local psychiatric hospital where he stayed for three months while they conducted a worldwide search for anyone who knew anything about this lost boy. While he appeared to have been well fed, and was healthy, he acted anxious and timid. Large birds seemed to especially terrify him. He cried in his sleep, he flinched at loud noises, and then, just days after arriving at the hospital, he stopped speaking entirely. He began to withdraw into himself, spending his days just staring out the windows or peering into a mirror.

  One of the nurses in the ward had a sister, named Colette, who volunteered on the pediatric floor. She could play the guitar and would come in on the weekends and sing to the children. The nurse introduced Collette to Desmond and they seemed to connect. Soon, he became a fixture at her side whenever she showed up. Eventually, she came even on her days off from her job as a teacher. Not long afterward, Collette brought her husband and young son to meet him. Something about Conner seemed to draw Desmond out of his shell. The two boys would sit side-by-side while eight-year old Conner would read stories to him, though Desmond didn’t understand them. Within a year, after the state had finally given up on finding Desmond’s family, Collette and her husband applied to formally adopt him. That was how Desmond came to live with the Gisbornes. It was with them he got his name, learned English, and with them he healed. But he never recovered his memory of his youth, and he forgot all of the language he had spoken when they found him.

  Until recently. Something had changed. He recollected things and had feelings and premonitions he’d never had before, and it had all kicked off when he’d returned from Xanadu. That world instantly seemed familiar to him. So familiar, he’d been able to dream about it in minute detail. So familiar, he’d started to remember words and phrases in Kelsey’s made-up language. This intrigued them both, but it also confused them, and he stopped trying to talk to her in Tedanaleese. Instead he said the words silently to himself so that he didn’t alarm her with his continuing abilities. She thought he’d just been studying her glossary of words, but it went beyond that.
He understood the language as if he’d once lived there and learned it. He understood more and more every day, and in his dreams, he spoke it and wondered if that was the language he’d possibly been using when they found him all those years ago on the beach?

  But even more than Xanadu having a familiarity to him, he actually recognized Kelsey as that little girl with the pigtails he believed he once met. When he’d been astral projected there by the monks and allowed to see a past memory of her, he’d been stunned. And now he’d begun to dream about her, as if reliving real live meetings between the two of them.

  In his dreams, he didn’t live in the monastery with the Emperor and Empress like Kelsey did. Instead, he lived with a group of bhikkhus and bhikkhuni’s on the outskirts of the town. These monks chose to live a simple and meditative life away from the castle, and they had taken him in and cared for him when he first arrived in Xanadu. The bhikkus had named him Dawa, simply because he’d first come to them on a Monday. Out of the blue he’d appeared one morning, lying on a stone slab surrounded by deva statues, famished and without any memory of who he was. His cries brought riders on their fedelias and they’d taken him to the monastery.

  Desmond remembered little of it. His hysteria had been so great. He recalled being brought to the courtyard of the great temple, and the Emperor himself had looked upon him. Instead of leaving him there, they’d brought him to a small village on the outskirts of the realm, and that’s where he resided his entire time in Xanadu. He’d pray with the bhikkus, garden with them, and he accepted his place with them. In Desmond’s memories, it seemed as if he spent years in Xanadu, though he never seemed to grow older than the age of ten. Occasionally, he and other monks would travel into town and he would meet the other children who also sought sanctuary at the monastery. It was there, he felt certain, that he’d met Kelsey.

  In one dream in particular, she even spoke to him.