by A. H. Shinn
“It’s stale. I want a fresh pot. And I want to speak to Choden.” Kellie looked at Lin with serious intent. “It’s very important.”
Lin narrowed her eyes and tightened her lips.
“I want to talk to her about who I am…about what I can do…”
Now Lin’s eyes widened. “She is at the dining hall,” she said eagerly, as if she was ready to receive credit for this change in event. “Let’s go.”
Lin walked briskly, and Kellie had to practically run to keep up with her. They were at the dining hall in no time, and only a few lingered under the simple structure. It was late. The rest of the nuns were probably back in their private quarters.
Choden was sitting alone, sipping from a cup.
“Rinzen has something she would like to tell you,” said Lin, a little out of breath.
“Oh?” said Choden.
“May we speak alone?” asked Kellie.
Lin flashed Kellie a look of wrath.
“What would you like to speak about?” asked Choden, taking another sip of her drink.
“I have questions, and if you have answers, I will answer some as well,” said Kellie.
Choden put down her cup. “Lin, give us some privacy.”
Lin spun on her heels and stormed out.
“So angry,” said Kellie. “Maybe she needs to go to anger management classes…or meditate.”
“Have a seat,” said Choden, ignoring her comment.
Kellie sat down on the mat across from her.
“What would you like to know?” Choden asked.
“What is said about the Teacher besides that she’s from the forest and has a special power?”
“You want to figure out if you are the One?”
“All of you think so…so I have the right to make that decision for myself.”
Choden picked up her drink and gulped the remainder. She put the cup aside and folded her arms on the table.
“I will tell you more about Sonam and her visions.”
Kellie nodded, and felt butterflies in her stomach.
“Sonam was not only a skilled martial artist, but she was an intellect,” said Choden. “With her powerful mind and body, she attracted many followers, both men and women. She had a close monk friend whom she trained with, but he tried to hold back her accelerating progress in kung fu. Because of her growing distrust in men, she let go of that friendship. She decided to guide only women, and formed Druk Monastery.
“She taught the nuns animal-style fighting. She attacked with the cobra bite, tiger paw, and evaded with the crane step and mongoose twist. No one could move like her, but her followers learned enough to fight effectively. At her command, they stopped miscreants like the ones in the forest who’d attacked her. Their offenses were brutal, but necessary and effective.
“When Sonam aged, she took a sudden vow of silence. The reason was uncertain. She found preference in her art, and drew pictures of what she saw in her dreams. The warrior nun had become a prophetess. Her sketches are revered to this day.”
“What did she draw?” asked Kellie.
“She drew the symbol that we wear on our backs, which depicts the energy coming from the Teacher’s hand. She also drew pictures of an infant, cradled in the nest of the forest. She sketched an aura around the baby and underneath it wrote Rinzen: Teacher.”
“Anything else?” asked Kellie. “Anything else you can tell me about the Teacher?”
“There are pictures of the baby alone suggesting she was abandoned or orphaned…” said Choden. “There are no pictures of the baby being held in the arms of a mother or father.”
Kellie looked away.
“But we all come from two people,” said Choden. “Have you any knowledge of who your parents are?”
“No,” said Kellie, her shoulders stiff.
“This is additional support that you are the One from the prophecy,” said Choden. “You were abandoned and you could be an orphan.”
Kellie felt her face warm. She felt anger toward Choden for her bluntness. But the nun was right. Kellie was abandoned in a forest…and there was a possibility that her biological parents were not alive. Her chest hollowed.
“Sonam also drew people around the baby as if receiving the power the child possessed,” Choden continued. She smiled and then straightened. “The Teacher is meant to change our lives forever.”
The fear of someone trying to take the Emotive Chi from Kellie—even though she no longer had it—loomed in her gut. But it didn’t appear that this was something the nuns wanted to do. They thought she could instruct them to have the power of the Emotive Chi.
“Was Bodhi accurate in what she observed?” asked Choden.
“The tracker? What she said she saw me do?”
“Yes,” said Choden, leaning in.
“I’m sorry,” said Kellie. “I don’t have anything special to share with you. There were hundreds of monkeys attacking Taiping Monastery. Whatever the tracker saw was during complete chaos, and it would have been difficult for her to see what was really going on. If I had a power, don’t you think I would have stopped the arrow from hitting me?”
Kellie wasn’t completely lying: she just didn’t divulge the whole truth about the Emotive Chi she once possessed. If she admitted to having this energy, it would have been enough for these people to keep her prisoner.
Choden stared hard and said nothing.
“You said before that if I am not the One, you will let me go. Are you still keeping that promise?”
“Of course…” Choden answered. “Now, I have a question for you.”
“Yes?”
“Are you not curious to learn if you could be our Teacher? Do you not have a peculiar past that you have been seeking answers about? You desire to leave because you want to go back to what you are accustomed to. But what if you discovered you were meant to be here and that this place was your true destiny?”
Kellie bit her lip and glared at Choden. “Even if I was the person you think I am, shouldn’t it be my decision to be here?”
“How could you not want to take your rightful place?”
Kellie turned her head and gazed out the open door into the darkness. This time she bit her lip to prevent tears from falling. She didn’t want to be a Druk nun, and it didn’t seem as if these people were going to let her go.
“Understand this,” said Choden. “You would not only guide us, but you will learn about who you are…Here, you may get answers to the mysteries of your life.”
Kellie had questions about her past her entire life. But she doubted staying at Druk Monastery would give her any answers.
But what if it could?
CHAPTER TEN
Friend or Foe?
Kellie barely slept a wink that night. Her conversation with Choden replayed in her head over and over.
She sat up and dipped her toes into the slippers by her bed. Remembering her injury on the left side, she carefully unraveled the bandage. A white crust had dried over her skin. When her dressings were changed, they’d put a paste over the slash, which was supposed to aid with the pain and healing. Brushing off the topical remedy, Kellie saw the wound was significantly better.
Kellie needed a plan for the day. The escape door at the temple flashed in her mind. But before she made that attempt, she needed to be prepared. She had no inkling of the dangers that were behind the door and how long the trek would take. All she knew was that it led down the mountain. Would there be a town nearby? How would she get food and water for the journey?
A moment after her knuckles tapped on the wood, the door opened. Kellie was happy to see Simi’s face and not Lin’s.
Simi seemed cheerful and more talkative than ever as she led Kellie to the shower area.
After the same cold-water routine, Kellie changed into a fresh pair of cloth
es. The shirt and pants were identical to the previous ones.
While she towel-dried her hair, Simi waited for her and held two items in her hands: a brush and a small bottle.
She held out the container. “Put this on your hair. It’ll smooth out the tangles and leave it feeling soft.”
“Where did you get this?” Kellie asked, touched by the gesture. She poured the milky substance onto her palm and rubbed it down the strands of her hair. It had a pleasant coconut scent.
“I asked one of my sisters to make it for you,” said Simi. “She is very talented with creating products from our natural resources. Her education was in cosmetic chemistry.”
“Cosmetic chemistry?” The moisturizer indeed helped the bristles of the brush glide easily through Kellie’s mane. “What is she doing here?”
Simi chuckled. “It was her calling, like for all of us. Most of the women here are well studied. Each of us chose to commit to this life of simplicity for one reason or another.” She let out a small sigh and her smile faded. “Ready for the day?”
“What’s the plan?” asked Kellie.
“I am to show you around some more, so you can experience every facet of the monastery. Ready to see the farm?”
“You have a farm on a mountain?”
“Yes, we produce all our own food and most of everything else we use. We are very self-sufficient. All of our dwellings were built with our own hands. And we rarely have to leave to purchase supplies we don’t have. We either barter with the textiles we make or sell them for money to buy what we need.”
The nuns lived like the Taiping monks, who traveled to Du Zhen about once a month for anything they could not make themselves.
“Is there a town nearby…that you, um, shop at?” Knowing if there was a safe haven where Kellie could flee was exactly what she needed to find out.
“We prefer to go to Trongsa, and it is about four hours away by transportation.”
Four hours?! “Is there any place closer? Because, uh, that seems really far.”
“Any town below the mountain would take a couple of hours.” Simi spoke slower, as if she was becoming suspicious.
“But you don’t have to worry about that since you have almost everything here.” Kellie laughed, hoping to change the mood. “Now let’s get to the farm! I’m looking forward to seeing it!”
Kellie didn’t let the news bring her down. Any attempt to get back home would be worth the risk—and now she knew she needed to be well prepared with supplies.
Kellie followed Simi along a trail. The mental map was proving difficult to memorize. The monastery was very spread out, and the shroud of trees prevented her from seeing beyond wherever she stood.
It was a short hike to an expansive area of flat land where there were many fruit trees and colorful vegetables growing in rows. Women wearing large hats were bent down, working diligently.
Simi handed Kellie a similar hat and a woven basket and took her out to the middle of the field.
“This is the taro plant,” said Simi. “Both the leaves and root are edible.” She rubbed a flat, heart-shaped green leaf. “We cut the leaves, and they do keep growing back, but if we want to harvest the corm, we pull up the whole root.”
She took out a gardening tool from the basket and demonstrated how to hack off the stems. She tossed the leaves in the basket and handed Kellie the metal hand shovel.
“I’ll be over there planting seeds,” Simi said, and picked up a container and walked to the other side of the field.
Kellie looked at the long rows of taro. She guessed they were going to be eating lots of it for the next few days, though she wasn’t planning on being around.
Following the example of the other women, Kellie squatted down and moved from plant to plant, filling up her basket. Her shirt became damp and her mouth parched, but she continued collecting the leaves. Working in the field reminded her of gardening with Master Chen, and she wondered what he was doing.
There was no doubt in her mind he was agonizing over her disappearance, and his anxiety was probably even worse than it had been the year before. When she had run off to China, she left him a note, so he’d known where she was. Now he couldn’t possibly know where she was or if she was okay.
Kellie saw a pair of feet come into view when she was wiping the sweat off her forehead. Kellie squinted into the sun as someone handed her some water.
“Thank you.”
The nun nodded and waited for the empty cup.
The water really hit the spot, but Kellie was beginning to get hungry. She was almost done with the last row when her belly growled audibly. She had declined breakfast earlier because she couldn’t stomach another bowl of gritty porridge.
Kellie sniffed a leaf. The taro began to look appetizing. In times of hunger, anything tasted good. How bad could it be? Tearing off a corner, she opened her mouth.
Her hand was slapped away from her mouth, and the leaf fell to the ground.
A nun who had been working nearby, now stood over her. “No!” She shook her head and pointed to the vegetables. “Toxic.”
Kellie jumped up away from the basket of poison.
Simi rushed over. “It’s toxic if eaten raw. I’m sorry…you must be starving.” She picked up Kellie’s basket. “Most days I wake up ready to start my day and often don’t eat. Come on,” she said as she motioned with her head. “There’s some food for you.”
Gathered under the shade, a group of women was taking a break and having lunch. They were mostly in their forties and fifties, and their weathered faces suggested they regularly did the monastery’s farming. They conversed with each other as they ate. This bunch seemed livelier than the ones she had encountered so far.
They had a heaping plate of food ready for Kellie, and the smell was actually delightful. Kellie expected more of the bland porridge and raw vegetables, but was pleasantly surprised.
With her fingers, she tested a small piece of sweet potato. It melted in her mouth. Finally some real food! As Kellie stuck her utensil into the rice, a crash was heard, followed by a groan. The nun who had brought Kellie the cup of water accidently dropped her plate and meal on the ground. The food was perfectly proportioned for one serving per person, and the nun was the last to take a plate.
Kellie sighed. She was so hungry that a bowl of porridge didn’t sound so awful anymore. Holding out her plate to the woman, Kellie said, “Please, have mine.”
The nun was speechless. She shook her head and waved her hands.
“Then at least share with me,” said Kellie. “There is too much on my plate.” She scraped half of her meal onto a new dish and gave it to the nun. The woman accepted and thanked her with a bow of the head.
The other ladies smiled at Kellie as they continued to eat.
These women were different; there was softness in their eyes. They were nothing like Choden or Lin, or especially Tsering. These farming nuns didn’t seem like heartless kidnappers.
Kellie savored every morsel of her lunch. The rice tasted like it was cooked with vegetable stock. Even the boiled, green, leafy vegetable tasted as if it was seasoned.
“Mmm,” Kellie said as she took her last bite.
“It can be a treat being on the farm,” Simi said as she collected Kellie’s empty dish. “Some of the others don’t like when we cook up here. They prefer that we eat together in the dining hall, but when there’s much to be done in the fields, they allow it. There’s a monsoon coming and the rain can go on for days, so we need to gather and stockpile the food…We have over a hundred mouths to feed.”
Kellie looked up and now noticed the clouds.
“What you did was very kind,” said Simi.
“I wasn’t that hungry…” Kellie replied. “So…what’s next?”
She and Simi carried baskets back and forth from the field to the food storage shed, plowed
dirt, and plucked fruit from the trees. Kellie’s final task was to fill a basket of apples. She was standing on a ladder, yanking off the hanging fruit and handing them to a nun below. When she thought she was done with her section, she spotted the biggest apple she had ever seen, hidden in a cluster of leaves. With her left hand gripping the top of the ladder, she outstretched both arms, reaching for it.
As her right hand captured the prize, her other fingers slipped off the ladder. She gasped and frantically flailed her arms to find a grip, but her body was already free falling, facedown. The woman below her yelled, and another jumped toward them. The two nuns formed a barrier between Kellie and the ground. She toppled onto them with a thud, then tried to catch her breath. You’re okay, she told herself as she gingerly climbed over the women and stood to check herself for injuries. Not a scratch.
Others rushed over to help. The two human cushions rubbed their backs as they got up. They had some scrapes on their elbows and palms, but shrugged them off.
“I’m sorry,” said Kellie. “Are you both okay?”
They nodded and continued their duties. One picked up the basket of apples, and the other moved the ladder to another tree.
“Thank you,” said Kellie. It had become even harder to hate them.
“Are you hurt?” Simi asked, running toward her.
“I’m fine, but the two women who saved me from what could have been a pretty bad fall…Will they be all right?”
Simi chuckled. “We, the Druk sisters, are tough. They’ll be fine.”
Spending the day with these farming ladies had opened Kellie’s eyes to another side of the Druk nuns. Some of them weren’t so terrible after all.
“I hope you didn’t mind that we stayed here for most of the day,” said Simi. “Seemed like you were enjoying yourself.”
“Farming is a larger scale of gardening,” said Kellie. “I often helped Master Chen garden back home. We have a huge backyard and front yard. Our kung fu studio is just steps away…” Kellie choked out the last words. She caught Simi’s expression of empathy before the youthful nun looked away.
