by Jacob Whaler
“Follow me,” the monk says.
They enter a large room to the right. Dry robes are neatly folded and stacked along one wall. Next to them are piles of street clothes, mostly T-shirts and jeans. Separate dressing rooms are provided along the opposite wall.
The monk motions in the direction of the piles. “Please change into dry clothes in this room.” He picks up a basket from off the floor. “Put your wet clothes in this. I will come for you shortly.” Without another word, he leaves the room.
Matt and Leo drop their backpacks to the floor and walk to the pile of clothes, quickly selecting shirts and jeans.
Yarah goes instead to the neatly folded orange robes and picks one up, bringing it close to her face for a smell and holding it up like a shopper in a department store. She finds one that appears to be child size and takes it into a dressing room, shutting the door behind her.
Leo looks at her dumbfounded. “Is it OK for her to dress in a monk’s robe?”
“I think we better find normal clothes for her,” Matt says. “I don’t want them shaving her head and turning her into a permanent resident.” He rummages through the piles of clothing and finds some that will fit a six-year-old. “Give these to her.”
Leo slides the street clothes under the door of Yarah’s dressing room and mumbles something to her, but gets no reply.
Matt and Leo quickly change and emerge from their dressing rooms looking like American tourists. Yarah hasn’t come out yet.
The monk appears at the entrance to the room dressed in a dry robe. “Where is the girl?” he says.
Before Matt or Leo can answer, Yarah opens the dressing room door and steps out in saffron robes.
Matt’s face flushes bright red. “I’m sorry, she—”
“No need to be sorry.” The monk motions for Yarah to come and kneels down to inspect her robes. “The inner garment, upper robe and outer robe are perfectly arranged. She has mastered the clothing of a priest.”
He nods to himself, betraying no sense of surprise.
As they follow the monk out of the room, Matt lowers his voice to a whisper. “Stay calm, but be ready to engage your Stone. Can you do the time stop?”
“Time stop?” Leo says.
With his question answered, Matt immediately regrets not taking more time to train Leo.
“Just stay alert,” Matt says. “Monks and priests can be tricky.”
“You know any?”
Before Matt can answer, they enter a large hall with bright lights in the ceiling and several rows of low tables floating in a sea of orange robes. The room is full of chattering monks and the strong smell of cumin. Matt guesses that they have just finished a meal of yellow curry.
Their escort leads them to an empty table on the far left. “We eat,” he says.
They sit on the bare wood floor. Young children bring bowls of food and spoons and place them on the tables.
“Why are they eating in the middle of the night?” Leo asks.
“Must be the early-morning meal.” Matt does his best to eat the curry, but finds its pungent cumin taste too strong for his liking.
Leo doesn’t look hungry. He explores the curry with a spoon, looking for large chunks of meat that aren’t there. After a couple of minutes, he still hasn’t put anything into his mouth. He turns to Matt and whispers. “I’m still full of bean soup.”
“Eat it,” Matt says. “Every last bit. Thai monks don’t waste anything, and they eat whatever they are given.”
“But—”
“Eat it. We need to make a good impression.” He puts a spoonful of curry and rice in his mouth and chews slowly. Turning to the monk, he puts on a big smile and brings the palms of his hands together in front of his chest. “Thank you.”
Leo swallows hard and starts eating.
Yarah is the first to finish. Licking her lips, she looks silently at Leo, who still has the most left in his bowl.
He empties his bowl into hers, then faces the monk with a broad smile on his face and mimics Matt by bringing his palms together in front of him.
The monk smiles back. “It is kind of you to share your meal. Compassion is a trait of the Buddha.”
They sit in silence until Yarah is finished. She puts her bowl down and looks up to see all eyes in the room upon her. Then she breaks out into a fit of giggling. The entire room bursts into laughter.
Their monk escort stands up, and Matt, Leo and Yarah follow him back out of the room into the hallway.
Matt glances out a window and sees that the sky is still black.
They arrive at the bottom of a flight of wooden stairs leading up into darkness. The monk faces the three of them.
“Prepare your Stones,” he says. “The Monkey will want to see them.” He reaches out his hand to Yarah and begins walking with her up the steps.
Matt and Leo both climb the stairs behind the monk.
He stops on the third step and looks back. “I take the girl alone.” He motions with his hand to a small side room. “Wait there until I return.” With Yarah in tow, he ascends to the top of the stairs and turns to the left, disappearing in the darkness.
Leo looks at Matt, confusion on his face.
“We have to trust him,” Matt says.
“But what about Yarah?”
“Come with me.” Matt moves away from the stairs to the small room.
They sit on the wood floor, shoulder to shoulder, facing the open door. The only sounds in the room are the soft buzzing of mosquitoes in the air above them.
Matt senses fear in Leo’s face. “Don’t worry. It will be all right.”
“What if they hurt her?” Leo stares out the open door at the base of the stairs. “We can’t just leave her like this.” He wipes his nose on his shirt sleeve and puts his head in his hands. A tremble ripples through his body.
“Do you trust me?” Matt says.
Leo looks up with wet, red eyes. “Yes, but—”
“Then listen. I won’t allow anyone to harm her.”
“But how can you know what they’ll do.” Leo drops his head into his hands. “Her father was a drunk. She’s had a hard life. He used to—”
“Do you know how to meditate?” Matt says.
“What?”
“I need to teach you something about the Stones. Do you know how to meditate?”
Leo wipes his eyes and looks up. “I know how to pray.”
“OK. Close enough,” Matt says. “Just do what I do. Sit up straight. Fold your hands in front of you. Breathe in and out through your nose. Feel the breath go down into your belly. Watch your breath like you’re watching a movie. Feel the belly go in and out. Try to relax.”
“But I’m not a Buddhist monk.”
“You don’t have to be. Just do it.”
Leo looks at Matt, copying his body posture.
Two minutes of silence pass, pierced by Leo’s voice.
“Is something supposed to happen?”
“It will,” Matt says. “Be patient. Focus on your breathing.”
After three more minutes, the air subtly changes. “Now, move your focus to me. Like when we joined together to do the healing. I’m going to take you somewhere, and I want you to follow.”
Matt feels Leo’s focus like the gentle landing of a butterfly on his shoulder. He holds that focus and joins it to his own. With a final surrender of tension, he relaxes into the present moment, feeling it stick and hold.
Then he looks up.
Two mosquitoes hang motionless in the air a foot from his face, their wings outstretched like miniature dragons swooping down for the kill.
“Open your eyes,” he says.
Leo’s long lashes slide up. “What happened? Something feels different.” Then he sees the mosquitoes and his eyes grow large.
Matt stands up. “Follow me. Let’s go check on Yarah.”
CHAPTER 71
A voice echoes in the darkness of the jet transport’s master suite.
“Dr. Ryzaard?”
No answer.
“Dr. Ryzaard, this is urgent.”
As the door cracks open, a sharp line of light knifes through the darkness and falls squarely on Ryzaard’s eyes.
“What is it, Alexa? I was sleeping so soundly, the first time in a long time. This better be important.”
Dim lights come on in the ceiling of the room.
“It is.” Alexa slips in and shuts the door behind her. “Diego Lopez just called on the emergency channel. It’s about the location algorithm.”
Ryzaard’s lifts himself out of the bed, his eyes still shut. “What about it? Have they lost the Stone they were tracking in Thailand?”
“No. Quite the opposite.” Alexa says.
“What do you mean?”
“Diego has tracked the Stone for the last four or five hours, focusing all the computing power he can find on pinpointing its exact location. It’s still here.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Diego found two more Stones.” Alexa steps into the room.
“Two more Stones?” Ryzaard jumps to his feet and reaches for his tweed jacket. “Where?”
“Right here in Thailand. Not far from the other Stone he was tracking.”
Alexa feels the burst of air as Ryzaard rushes past her and out the door.
CHAPTER 72
Matt steps out of the side room, followed by Leo. The air is dry and heavy around them. Moving through it is a little like walking through water, a constant drag pulling on your body.
Leo scans the hallway and sees insects everywhere hanging motionless in mid-air. Two orange-robed monks stand still in midstride at the far end. “So this is how you stop time.” His mouth hangs open.
Matt nods and looks ahead. “It’s one of the first things I learned about the Stone. It’s easy once you see how to do it.” He stops at the base of the stairs where the monk took Yarah up into darkness. “Stay close to me. If someone else has a Stone, they won’t be affected by our time-stop.”
Matt bounds up the steps two at a time. Leo runs after him. At the top, the stairs split in two directions. One to the right and one to the left. Matt goes left.
Directly ahead, Matt sees an unlit room and slips his Stone out of a pocket. It melts into a comfortable position in his closed palm. For the first time, Matt notices the Stone’s glow penetrates his hand so the Stone is fully visible through the back of his hand.
Leo pulls out his Stone, and it has the same sky blue color.
They walk through a narrow room lined with piles of straw mats on both sides, proof that it’s a place of meditation during the day. The wood floorboards flex like soft skis under their feet. A golden glow at the far end of the room pulls them forward.
Halfway through the room, Matt turns to Leo and speaks in a low whisper. “If anything happens, jump back to Brazil. Wait for me there.”
“But I don’t know how to jump.”
“Yes you do.” Matt places his hands on Leo’s shoulders and pulls him close, staring into Leo’s pupils. “The Stone is a part of you, an extension of your mind. See yourself standing in the room back in the flavela. Create what you want in your mind first, and the Stone will make it reality. That is the secret of how to use it. Trust it.”
“But—”
“Stay close.” Matt turns away and walks toward the light.
He stops at the far end of the room and moves cautiously over the threshold into the next room where the glowing originates. Turning to the right, the source of the light suddenly jumps into view a few meters away.
A single candle burns on the tip of a wooden pole above Matt’s head. An unmoving line of black smoke rises like a coiled thread above an unmoving flame and hangs in the air like a sculpture.
As he walks toward the light, Matt notices there are no shadows behind him.
Below the candle, an ancient monk with a weather-worn face and deep lines on his forehead sits on a raised platform, eyes staring straight ahead through Matt.
The young monk and Yarah stand in front of the old monk, all three of them as still as an old-fashioned photograph.
Matt moves between them and looks down. “Yarah is fine. No sign of fear on her face.”
“I don’t understand,” Leo says. “How can they communicate with her? She doesn’t speak English or Thai.”
Matt looks to the right and left at the two monks and the little girl. All three are smiling. The old monk’s mouth is partially open in the act of talking.
“Maybe she doesn’t need to speak,” Matt says. “None of them look surprised by us or the Stones. It’s almost as if they were expecting us.”
“But why are they so focused on her?” Leo says.
“Maybe they—”
A loud shriek pierces the air, followed by the sound of heavy bare feet against the wooden floor. It comes from the long room Matt and Leo just passed through.
They both freeze.
Matt moves silently to the wall, making himself as flat as possible against the dark wood paneling, clutching the Stone like a dagger. Leo follows and finds a spot on Matt’s right, away from the opening to the long hall.
The sound of feet draws closer, slowing down as it approaches. Whatever it is, it has a distinct labored breathing like the sucking of air through a moist cloth down a narrow hole.
Leo turns to Matt, his eyes large and his lips moving silently. “What is it?”
Matt shakes his head and keeps his own breathing as silent as he can. The beating of his heart pounds in his ears.
From out of nowhere, an image of Ryzaard standing over Jessica with clenched fists passes through his mind. A wave of fear rises up. Eyelids drop down, and he pushes the image away.
The footfalls in the hall go silent.
Seconds later, a dark blur bursts out of the opening to Matt’s left. It lands on short powerful legs and brings long arms down with hands resting on the floor, abruptly stopping in the middle of the room and casting its eyes around, nose high in the air, as if taking a careful inventory of the smells in the room. Its eyes sweep past the old monk and the young monk, coming to rest on Yarah. In spite of Matt’s effort to remain motionless, he blinks repeatedly, not sure what to make of the creature.
Glancing sideways, Matt can tell Leo is ready to spring off the wall at the creature to protect Yarah. As quietly as possible, he slides his hand over and touches the boy’s leg. When Leo looks back at him, Matt shakes his head, giving Leo a clear signal that he is to stay put. Matt’s attention goes back to the creature.
It’s a huge monkey.
In general appearance, it looks to be the same species as the other monkeys at the ancient temple grounds, but on a massive scale. Three or four times the size of a grown man, its body is covered with dark hair and peppered with streaks of gray. A long tail protrudes from its rear, coiling and uncoiling as it stares at the still form of Yarah.
A white line of exposed flesh and missing hair runs diagonally down the monkey’s forehead, terminating at its missing ear, which has been torn away, leaving an exposed hole the size of an old nickel.
It moves on all fours to the three frozen figures, still laboring to breathe, but lifting its nose high in the air. Ignoring the two monks, it focuses its attention entirely on Yarah, approaching her from behind and bending close to smell the saffron robes around her body, reaching out to touch the dark hair that hangs down past her thin shoulders. Moving to her front side, the creature lifts the delicate fingers of her hands in one of its own rough and calloused appendages. The tip of its tongue ventures out from behind bared fangs and brushes the skin of her pinky.
Matt feels his chest muscles harden. His grip on the Stone tightens. He isn’t sure if he has breathed since the monkey entered the room. A suffocating emptiness in his lungs tells him he hasn’t.
The creature lets go of Yarah’s fingers and bends down to sniff her feet. For a moment it looks as if it is bowing in humble reverence before a tiny princess monk.
Then it turns its neck an
d focuses its gaze squarely at Matt, locking eyes with him.
Matt tries to suppress the compulsion to breathe. But he can’t hold out any longer. He takes in a silent sip of air through barely parted lips. For just an instant, his eyes move from the creature’s eyes to its mouth.
Without warning, it rears up on its back legs and lunges at him, lips peeled back to reveal long canine fangs. The fingers of one hand reach for Matt’s neck. The other hand is high above its head holding an object.
As it flies through the air, Matt catches a glimpse of what it grips in its hand.
A Stone.
CHAPTER 73
“I’m working on it, Dr. Ryzaard.”
In the holo image, Diego Lopez is jumping between several blue screens in a bustle of activity.
“Are you sure the other two Stones you’ve detected aren’t mine?”
“One hundred percent.” Diego shakes his head. “I’ve already ruled that out.”
“Three Stones in Thailand. Incredible.” Ryzaard paces back and forth in the communications cabin of the jet transport. “I need to know the exact location of each one, and I need to know it now.”
“I’ve got twelve satellites and six cluster systems working on it,” Diego says. “Each Stone has to be tracked separately. The only way I can speed up the algorithm is to get three more clusters. I think—”
Ryzaard storms closer to the holo image. “I don’t care what you think! I don’t want your excuses. I want you to do it. Tell Jing-wei to get you the clusters and whatever else you need. Get back to me in fifteen minutes with the exact GPS coordinates.”
“Fifteen minutes?” Diego stares at Ryzaard. Even on the low-res holo image, large grey splotches stand out under his eyes. “That’s imposs—”
Ryzaard’s teeth grind together. His fist flashes out at the communications console and smashes the holo transmitter in an explosion of sparks.
The image of Diego vanishes.
Alexa lingers a few meters away in the open door to the communications cabin, arms crossed, head cocked to one side. “A bit harsh, don’t you think?”
