“You must have been frightened.”
“The most frightened I had ever been. We ran and hid, ran and hid, all night long. Whenever we looked back, we saw the fire in the monastery and the smoke blotting out the stars. And then, sometime late in the night, I turned and discovered that I had lost my sisters, or they had lost me. It amounted to the same thing. I was alone.”
“What did you do?” Asha asked.
“I walked on. It was quieter then and I didn’t see the men again. I was very tired, but still so afraid. I kept walking all night, right out of the city into the hills. And the next day, I kept walking,” Priya said. “I survived on what charity was given to me. I had nowhere to go. I knew no one in the world except at the monastery, but I didn’t dare go back. I don’t know why I kept walking, but I did. Eventually I came to a small town where an elderly monk tended a shrine alone and he allowed me to stay with him for a while. He was a very kind man.”
“You were lucky. You could have died on the road.”
“Yes, I could have.” Priya’s fingers shuddered and her hands moved to her knees. She inhaled and exhaled slowly. “About a year later, a new family arrived in the town and they came to visit the shrine. They said they had been forced to flee their village because a demon had swallowed their river.”
“So you went to cleanse the demon?”
“No. There’s no such thing as demons,” the nun said softly. “But I did come to see the truth of the matter. It was the least I could do for those people. The monk at the shrine was too old for the journey, but I was still young and strong, and to be honest, I was feeling less than useful to him. So I set out for the village. I saw the graves of the man who returned from the mountain, and then I climbed the mountain and found this cave.”
“Did you see the creature that killed the men from the village?”
“No. When I entered this chamber, I found a small girl standing here on this stone altar.”
Asha glanced down at the pillar they were sitting on. “Altar?”
“Yes. This is where the village elders offered their goats to the mountain each spring.”
Asha winced. “What was she? The girl you saw?”
“She was a ghost. A real ghost. I had heard of such things, of course, but I had never seen one before. Here in the dark, in the cold still air, the aether was thick enough for her to be seen and heard. She told me that she was the daughter of one of the elders.”
“He killed her? A human sacrifice?” Asha asked, her hand curling into a fist.
“No, he did not kill her. During the winter, the girl fell ill and died quietly in her sleep. But her father didn’t cremate her. He preserved her body until the spring and then brought her here instead of the usual offering. Perhaps he didn’t think the mountain spirit would care what he left, as long as he left something. After all, the goat would feed his family for days. I’m sure it seemed very reasonable to him.”
Asha shook her head. “Some people don’t think at all.”
“Don’t judge them too harshly. Here in the wilderness, these sorts of traditions and rituals can give people great peace of mind, even if they seem fruitless or even senseless to others,” Priya said.
“I don’t mean that!” Asha rubbed her eyes. “Even out here in the middle of nowhere, people should know better than to abuse a body. He should have known what would happen to his daughter’s ghost if he didn’t burn or bury her properly.”
“You come from the north, don’t you?”
Asha nodded.
“Well, here in the south ghosts are rare. They aren’t seen. They aren’t spoken of. At the monastery, I don’t believe I ever heard a single story about ghosts, but tales of the local spirits and gods were common enough.”
“The difference being that ghosts are real. So what happened when you met the girl?”
Priya sighed and her whole body shifted, tugging at the vines wrapped around her and shaking the leaves and blossoms. “She told me how she awoke here in this cave, in the dark, all alone. She didn’t understand that she was dead because she was lying on this altar, with the sunlight streaming down from the roof of the cavern. But when she sat up, she saw her own body lying cold and still on the stone. It terrified her, and she ran away, ran all the way down the tunnel. But when she came to the exit, the heat and the light of the sun began tugging apart the aether of her ghostly form. There was a brief moment when she stood on the threshold, staring down at the pale outline of her fingers as the midday breeze teased them apart like spider silk or smoke. And then she ran back inside, into the darkness.”
“Poor girl,” Asha said. “If she’d risen from a proper grave, she would have understood. And if she’d been placed where it was warm, she never would have risen at all.”
Priya nodded, the white blossoms in her hair glowing softly in the dark. “She was filled with rage at her father, and terror at what she had become. She didn’t understand what had happened at all. I’m not even sure if she truly understood that she was dead. Perhaps she thought she’d been cursed or transformed into a demon. But her soul sank down into the earth here, into the roots, and her madness spread to all the living things on this mountain. She made the trees drink up the river to punish her father. That’s why they grew so tall.”
Asha nodded. “And what about the creature that killed the men from the village?”
“There is no creature. Not really,” Priya said. “When the men came, the girl lashed out with the only thing at hand. These lotus blossoms. The roots are extensive, filling this chamber and the tunnel, and covering half the mountainside. She twisted the lotus roots as she twisted the trees, and the flowers choked the life from the men. The one who escaped was stabbed with a seed that grew inside his body, killing him slowly from within.”
Asha tugged her right earlobe. “I see. And the ghost told you all this?”
“No. I learned this later. When I first arrived, all I knew was that there was a soul in this cave, tormented and terrified. So I came inside and sat on this stone, and began to meditate.” Priya reached up to gently caress the vines embracing her body. “When I awoke the next morning, these were wrapped around me, holding me up and keeping me warm. They even feed me, somehow. In the days and weeks that followed, I came to know the girl and her pain, and the missing pieces of her story. In return, I taught her peace and contentment. Together, we returned balance to the mountain and let the river flow once more.”
Asha reached out to touch a leaf near her hand. “Amazing.”
“Actually, I don’t really understand how it all happened,” the nun said. “I’d never heard of a ghost controlling plants like this. I thought they couldn’t affect the living world after they had passed on.”
“Well, all living things have a soul, including plants and animals. This ghost of yours must have been so angry and frightened that she was able to control the souls of the trees and the lotuses,” Asha said. “Especially here, where the aether is thick.”
Priya leaned forward. “How can you be so certain that plants have souls?”
“Because I can hear them,” Asha said.
“You hear them?” The nun tilted her head slightly. “How?”
* * *
“I was born in the city of Yen, though you may know it better as Kathmandu,” Asha said. “It’s an ancient city far to the north in the shadows of four great mountains where snow covers the ground for most of the year and eight rivers flow between the districts. In some ways, it’s like any other city. Huge, crowded, and dirty. But Kathmandu is the crossroads of the gods. Every street corner in the city has a shrine, monument, statue, monastery, pagoda, stupa, or temple to someone’s god. Brahma, Lakshmi, Buddha, Shiva, Ganesh, Ahura Mazda, and on and on.
“My father was a goldsmith who served the house of the king, as well as the wealthy temples, by making jewelry and golden inlays for statues and furniture. We were not wealthy ourselves, but my father was well-known and respected and we lived better than our neighbors. I had
three brothers, and my mother’s sister also lived with us. I remember that we ate very well.”
The nun nodded. The sounds of dripping water echoed all around them.
“One day, a strange little man came to visit my father. He said he was a doctor from the Ming Empire who had come to pay his respects to the king of Yen and to see our kingdom. He claimed to speak a hundred languages, to know the secrets of the dead and the living, and to possess a cure for leprosy. My father, of course, was not interested in the man’s stories. My father was an artist who cared only for his tools and his work and his reputation. Eventually, the doctor came to the point. He commissioned my father to create a ring made of gold, silver, and iron, three bands intertwined with a strange design carved into its face, almost like a signet. My father was not happy about having to work with silver and iron, but the doctor offered to pay any price and that overcame my father’s objections. By the end of the month, the ring was ready.”
“Did you see it? Was it beautiful?”
“No, it was hideous,” Asha said. “But it was exactly what the doctor wanted. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want such a thing, so I followed my father when he delivered it to the doctor, and after my father left, I stayed to watch through a window. And that’s when I first saw it.”
“What?”
“A dragon. A real dragon.” Asha gazed out over the black waters. “The doctor had a chest, and in the chest was a cage, and in the cage was a golden dragon no larger than a songbird. At first I thought it was a snake, but then I saw the tiny claws, the tall scales on its spine, and the long curling white whiskers around its mouth. The doctor slipped my father’s ring around the dragon’s neck and twisted the rings to tighten it about its throat. It was a collar to keep the dragon from eating too much and growing too large.”
“How terrible.” Priya lowered her head.
“I suppose it was,” Asha said. “At the time, though, I just stared at the dragon through the window and wondered what else was out there in the world. I went to the doctor’s door and asked to the see the dragon. He refused at first. But when I described it to him, he knew that I already knew his secret and he let me in. He placed the cage on the table and let me stand there and stare at it. After a while, I began asking him questions. Where did he get it? Why did he have it? How old was it? Were there more? Could I have one?” She smiled in the dark. “How arrogant was I then? To own a dragon?”
“You were a child.”
“I suppose.” Asha sighed. “I stayed at the doctor’s house all evening looking at the relics and creatures in his jars and boxes, but they were all common enough animals and plants. I came back to the dragon again and again to watch it pace around its cage. When it looked at me, I could swear it was about to speak, but it never did. The doctor practically had to throw me out that night, and I came back every day after that to stare at the dragon and hear the doctor’s stories about his travels all over the world.
“For a month, I spent my evenings in the doctor’s house, pestering him with questions and learning what you can do with a tiger’s whiskers and the bones of an eagle, the bark of the birch tree, or the skin of an eel. And all the while I stared at the dragon, pacing and pacing in its little cage on the table.”
Asha paused to stare down into the face of a white lotus blossom by her knee. “And then, one night, when the doctor stepped out of the room to get the tea, I opened the dragon’s cage. I wanted to touch it. I had always wanted to touch it. At first, the dragon did nothing. It only stared at me through the open door as I held out my hand to it. I thought it might sniff me like a cat or lick me like a lizard. It huddled down in the center of the cage, twitching its long white whiskers and wrapping its golden tail around its legs. And then it sprang at me. It happened so fast, I couldn’t even move. The dragon dashed up my arm, racing over and under, its tiny claws slicing long tears in my skin until it reached my shoulder, and then it struck. It sank its fangs into my earlobe, and it suddenly felt like my head was on fire. Its teeth were like needles, dozens of them, and all envenomed.”
“How did you survive?”
“I nearly didn’t. I collapsed. When I awoke, the doctor was sitting beside me, but everything else had changed. Instead of a house in Yen, we were in a temple in the Ming Empire and eight years had passed.”
“Eight years!”
“Yes. To save my life, the doctor was forced to carry me with his luggage all the way back to his homeland to a temple where the monks and other doctors could care for me. They said it was a miracle that I awoke at all. But I wasn’t the same. Not quite. The dragon’s poison had left behind a shred of its soul in my ear. Even tiny dragons hunt very large prey, and by leaving a drop of its soul in its victim, the dragon can track it anywhere it goes and then devour it, bit by bit, when the animal eventually dies from the venom.
“I spent the next few years in the temple with the doctors and the monks learning their craft, studying herbs, and making medicines. Eventually I returned home to Yen, but when I arrived I found that my father had died and my mother and brothers had all left the city. No one could tell me where they’d gone.”
“Did you search for them?”
“No. I didn’t feel any great need to see them again, and I wouldn’t have known where to look anyway. Instead, I carried on looking for new creatures and plants to make my own medicines and trying to help the people I met along the way.”
“I see.” Priya reached out one hand to touch Asha’s knee. “You said that you awoke changed. That you had a piece of the dragon’s soul inside you?”
Asha pulled back her hair, knowing what the nun would see. Her entire right ear was flecked with shining gold scales, her skin there smooth and hard, and very warm to the touch. But the nun did not open her eyes to look. Asha dropped her hair and said, “The dragon’s soul is still in my ear. Through it, I can hear the souls of other living creatures. People, mostly. Their souls are the most active and noisy, even after death. But I can also hear the souls of animals and plants if I listen carefully enough. Their souls are sleepy and childish, only thinking or feeling one thing at a time.”
“Animals and plants have souls, and you know it beyond faith?” The nun squeezed Asha’s hand. ”Can you hear the turning of the wheel of reincarnation?”
Asha smiled. “I wouldn’t go that far. I’m not even sure they’re the same as human souls, but they sound very similar.”
“What do they sound like?”
“Like humming, or singing, or rain falling, or the wind in the leaves. A hundred different things. Only I don’t hear it out there in the world. I hear it inside.” Asha tapped her right ear. “And I can tell them apart. It helps me to find the herbs I need for my medicines, and to avoid certain dangers.”
“So if this lotus has a soul, then the ghost of girl must be twisting that soul with her own anger and fear.”
“And love.” Asha gestured to the vines and blossoms embracing the nun.
Priya nodded. “And love, too. It’s astonishing. So many great scholars have spent their lives searching for a revelation like this. To hear the souls of animals and plants.”
Asha shrugged. “Does that change how you feel about being here, like this?”
“No. But what you’ve told me about the souls of all living things…” The nun trailed off as a faint wrinkle of thought creased her forehead. “This knowledge carries us beyond faith into a new age of possibilities and revelations. You must tell the world about this. Everyone must know what you’ve told me.”
Asha laughed. “Sorry, but I’m not much of a teacher. I’m just trying to find a better cure for dry elbows and snoring, not to set people on the path to enlightenment.”
“Ah. No, you’re right. It was wrong of me to ask. That task should be mine.”
Asha raised an eyebrow. “Really? You mean you want to leave the cave? Can you even do that?”
“I think I can, if you will help me.”
* * *
Asha kne
lt over the nun and inspected the lotus roots and vines again. The green shoots slipped under the woman’s skin in dozens of places on her arms, shoulders, and head. “Does this hurt?”
“It did at first, but now it feels like a part of my body.”
Ashe frowned as she tugged at the tendrils in the nun’s arm. “I can probably remove these, but it will take some time and I’ll need more light. I’ll have to cut away the vines right here, and then when we’re outside in the sunlight, I can try removing the rest.” She glanced around the dark expanse of the cave on every side of them. “I can’t hear anyone else in here with us. Is the ghost still with you, or did she move on?”
Priya frowned. “I don’t know. I haven’t felt her presence in a very long time. And I haven’t seen her since that first day when I arrived.”
“All right. Then maybe we’re alone here after all.” Asha produced a steel scalpel from her shoulder bag. “Hopefully, this won’t hurt you. I’ll try to be quick.” She lifted one of the green stalks away from the nun’s arm and sliced through the tender lotus flesh.
The nun shivered. “It doesn’t hurt, but it does feel strange. I feel colder.”
Asha nodded and continued peeling back the vines and cutting them away from Priya’s body. She left at least half a foot of each stalk where they were embedded so she would be able to see them and grasp them easily later when she removed them fully. Within a few minutes, she had trimmed all of the vines from the nun’s bare arms, which now wore a thin coat of slender green shoots. Priya slumped forward, placing her hands on the stone to hold herself up. “It’s so much colder now. I feel weak. Tired.”
“Here, chew this.” Asha pressed a piece of dried fruit to the nun’s lips. “You’ll feel better as soon as we get outside in the sunlight.”
She then began paring away the lotus roots and stalks around the woman’s head, working faster than before. She left several feet of the lotus including leaves and white blossoms still attached to Priya, not daring to cut any closer in the dark.
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