Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

Seven days, at least. Asha sighed. The boy might have died just recently, just hours ago, perhaps even during the night while she slept nearby. If so, he would be cool in a few hours, and he would finally fall over.

  “We need to move him,” she said softly. And then louder, “I’m sorry, but we need to move him. He’s not well.”

  No one seemed to have heard her. No one stood or spoke, or even looked at her.

  “You there, come help me, please.” She looked at two young men near the front who had glanced in her direction. One of them looked away but the other frowned and nodded and stood up. He came over to the boy and Asha directed him to stand across from her so that together they could lift him. The boy’s whole body was so firm, so stiff, that she hoped they could simply carry him away in his seated posture and avoid making a scene.

  Together she and the young man bent down and took hold of the boy’s legs, and lifted. Nothing happened. Asha strained to the point of grunting out loud, but the boy did not move. She pulled up so hard that her feet began to sink down into the soft wet earth. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her assistant was faring no better so she let go and waved him back. After a moment’s rest, she directed the young man again, this time to dig their hands as far under the boy as possible. The earth was cold and a bit slimy, but they both reached under to form a platform with their arms and again they tried to lift him.

  And again the boy did not move, did not even shudder or jostle. He remained perfectly still. Asha dismissed her confused assistant with a grateful look. A soft murmur ran through the gathered onlookers, but she ignored them.

  “What happened?” Priya asked. “What’s wrong now?”

  “We couldn’t lift him. It was like he’s nailed to the earth, or he weighs as much as an elephant. I can’t explain it.”

  The nun smiled. “I don’t suppose you’d like to entertain the thought that this wise child can bend space and matter to make himself too heavy to lift?”

  “Not just yet,” Asha said calmly. She chewed her ginger and studied the boy. Both she and the young man had reached far under the boy to lift him, shoving their hands through the muddy topsoil, but she hadn’t felt anything strange that might be holding the boy down. “What’s his name? Does anyone know?”

  A few people shook their heads.

  Asha stood and said to Priya, “I’m going to take a look around. I’ll be back soon.” She slipped around the edge of the pilgrims’ circle and paced slowly toward the center of the village, her arms folded across her belly, her brow creased in thought. For the rest of the morning, she wandered around each little house, each little market stall, and each little animal pen. She greeted the handful of people she found and asked each of them, “When did the boy first arrive?”

  And they would answer, “About seven days ago.”

  She would say, “Who is he? Where did he come from?”

  And they would shrug and go about their business.

  So on she went, studying the grasses and the ants and the flies, looking and listening for answers. Why is the boy too heavy to lift? How is he surviving without food or water? Where did he come from? And why did he come here, of all places?

  The ants and flies couldn’t tell her.

  Around noon Asha sat down at the eastern edge of the village to eat a dried date and watch three young girls playing in the muddy road. They chased each other, flinging little clumps of mud and laughing. Asha was about to get up to move farther from their range of fire when one of the girls ran straight over to her and squinted down at her. “Can you make him go away?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “The living Buddha,” the girl said. “I saw you try to pick him up. Are you his mother?”

  Asha grinned and shook her head. “No, I’m not. I’m an herbalist. I was just trying to help him. Why? Why do you want him to go away?”

  “Because that’s where we used to play, in the grass. But our parents all said to stay away from those people, so now we have to play over here, in the mud.”

  Asha looked over her shoulder across the village at the distant cluster of bodies in the road. “I guess it is a little nicer down that way. Plus you have the tree to climb.”

  The girl shook her head. “That tree’s way too tall to climb. No one can reach the first branch!”

  Asha smiled. “Not the almond tree. I meant the little teak tree. Surely you could climb that one.”

  “The little one? No, that wasn’t there before.”

  The girl started to turn back to her friends, but Asha caught her hand. “What do you mean, it wasn’t there before? Before when?”

  “I don’t know. Before that boy showed up.”

  “You mean seven days ago?”

  She nodded.

  Asha let her go and she ran back to her friends to resume the serious work of shouting, chasing, kicking, and tossing small globs of mud at each other. She stood and walked back toward the pilgrims, but stopped well outside their circle where she could see the gnarled tree clearly. It was no more than twice her own height, maybe less. By its size alone, she guessed it to be at least three years old, though from its miserable appearance it could have been much older. But not less. And not a mere seven days.

  * * *

  At the edge of the grass, Asha looked down the shallow slope at the wet field below and behind the stunted teak tree. Farther out she could see the rows of oilseed stalks waving gently in the breeze, but in the corner of the field closest to her, Asha saw where the oilseed plantings ended in a ragged line and a swamped, marshy patch of earth began. A few planted stalks poked up through the stagnant black water, but not many. Flies buzzed over slimy, wet mounds that glistened in the midday sun. Nothing so large as a frog seemed to be moving in the water. A thick oily film lay on the surface painting dark rainbows in perfect stillness.

  Behind the little teak tree she saw a few pale roots twisting down through the mud into the oily water below. She drew back the hair from her right ear and cupped her hand there, listening. After a moment she heard the low humming of the oilseeds and the grasses and the almond tree, all softly resounding like bells rung long ago but not quite done echoing their final notes. Flies and hornets and butterflies danced across the fields alone and in swarms, all tinkling like broken glass in her cursed ear. But down in the dark muck, she heard nothing but a few sickly tufts of grass and the occasional bug skating over the oily pond.

  Back in the center of the village, Asha found the ox-drawn mill crackling and grinding as the turning wheel crushed wheat into flour. Two men stood watching the ox shuffle in its little circle. Asha guessed the man in the shabby sandals to be the farmer, and the man with the shabby hat to be the miller.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “Can either of you tell me about that little teak tree where the boy is sitting?”

  The men gave her a tired glance, and then exchanged a tired glance of their own. The miller said, “That tree wasn’t there before. The boy must have brought it with him.”

  Asha chose not to challenge the man’s conclusion. “And what about the oily pond behind it? Has that corner of the field always been flooded like that?”

  The farmer shrugged. “More or less. It’s a little worse this year. Deeper, I mean.”

  “Any reason for it? Was there a well there? Or maybe there used to be a tree down there, but it was uprooted in a storm? Anything?”

  The men shrugged and returned their attention to the ox and the grindstone. The miller said, “Not that I remember.”

  “No, the only thing down there are Kavi’s ashes,” the farmer said.

  Asha blinked. “Ashes? You scattered someone’s ashes in the corner of a field, right there at the edge of town?”

  “She didn’t mean to, of course,” the miller said. “His mother Sati, I mean. The boy was sick, so sick he could barely walk when she brought him into town to find help. But none of us could do anything for him. He sliced his hand on his father’s old axe, and the cut festered. He was feverish. The wou
nd was ugly. Muscles all tightened up. Shaking.”

  “Tetanus,” Asha said, nodding. “Then what happened to him?”

  “It only lasted a few days.” The miller waved absently at the flies near his head. “Some fellow came along, right at the end, and tried to help. He gave the boy something to eat, but Kavi died anyway a few hours later. Sati couldn’t carry him back home, so we cremated the body right here. Well, over there a ways.” He pointed toward the little teak tree. “She meant to carry the ashes home, but a bit of a storm came through that evening and blew the boy’s ashes all over the corner of the field. So she gathered up what she could and left the next morning. Poor thing. Her husband died a while back, you know. She’s all alone now.”

  “The man who tried to help, was he a healer? An herbalist like me?” Asha patted the bag on her shoulder. “Or just a passing friend? Did you know him?”

  “Never seen him before,” the farmer said. “Seemed nice enough. Funny accent though. And short. He had a bag too, but a big leather one. Black.”

  Asha gripped the strap of her old woven bag and pressed her lips tightly for a moment before saying, “Did he say he was a doctor?”

  The miller nodded. “May have. This was half a year ago, you understand.”

  “What did he give the boy to eat? Was it a seed or a nut?”

  The miller nodded again. “Something like that. Why?”

  Asha pointed at the boy sitting beneath the teak tree. “Do you recognize that boy? Does he look at all like Kavi, like the boy who died last year?”

  The miller and farmer exchanged amused looks. “Maybe. A little. Other people’s children all look the same to me. I really can’t say.”

  “Well, his mother can say. Where is she? Where is Sati?”

  The farmer thumbed over his shoulder. “She lives near me. But she hasn’t been to town since Kavi died.”

  “Can you ask her to come please?” Asha asked. “It’s very important. She needs to come and see this boy. I need to know if he looks like her son.”

  The farmer shrugged and said he would ask Sati when he went home that evening.

  Asha thanked them both and crossed the street back toward the crowd, but she didn’t come very close. Standing at the edge of the gathering, she watched Priya sitting beneath the tree, petting Jagdish, and talking quietly with the people sitting closest to her. The entire congregation sat quietly, some with heads bowed and eyes closed, some chanting or singing softly, but most just sitting and squinting at the sky as they dragged their fingers through the muddy road, waiting.

  Asha and Priya left the pilgrims at sundown, retiring to their abandoned market stall to eat and sleep. Asha told her friend about her conversation with the miller, about Sati and her son, and the doctor. Priya nodded along until she finished.

  “A doctor.” Priya spread her blanket on the ground and lay down. “You don’t use that word often.”

  “Only when I need to.”

  “Then I take it that you think this boy is not a boy, but some creature or spirit, or maybe a ghost made flesh through this doctor’s evil craft.”

  “I think those people out there are fools for lying in the road, starving themselves, and waiting for a strange child to give some meaning to their sad little lives.”

  “He’s already given some meaning to their lives,” Priya said. “He’s given them hope. Belief. Everyone hears stories about sages and monks and nuns, about gods and demons, miracles, and paradise. But they’re only stories. This boy is real. And whether or not he ever speaks, whether or not he ever reveals any wisdom to us, he is real. He’s sitting out there right now, surviving without consuming a single living thing, at perfect peace with the universe, and mystically bound to the earth. He’s a living miracle. He inspires these people. You should have heard them today. They were all vowing to go home and spread the boy’s teachings.”

  “What teachings? He hasn’t said anything.”

  “He’s said volumes.” The nun smiled. “He isn’t afraid of droughts or floods. He’s not arguing with his family or friends. He’s not laboring to level a forest or dam a river. He isn’t fighting with the world for his own survival. He’s just quietly, calmly, serenely coexisting with the universe. Effortlessly. Can you imagine an entire world of such people?”

  “A world in which no one laughed or sang or played or loved? You can have it.” Asha lay down on her own blanket.

  “Asha?”

  “Hm?”

  “Will you tell me about the doctors who trained you? Not now, but some day, when you’re ready?”

  “Good night, Priya.”

  * * *

  It was several hours after sunrise when Asha saw the lone woman coming down the eastern road from the distant farms. Priya had gone back to the pilgrims long before and the scene around the teak tree looked just as it had the day before, and the day before that. Some faces in the crowd changed as new wanderers arrived and old ones left, but they sat and waited just the same.

  The woman coming down the road was middle aged, with a few streaks of gray in her black hair, and quite a few lines around her eyes and mouth. Her faded green sari swayed sharply around her legs as she moved, but she walked calmly with her head held high and came straight up to Asha in the middle of the street. “Good morning. Are you the herbalist?”

  “Yes. I’m Asha. You must be Sati.”

  “Yes, and I know what you want me to do, or to see.” The woman paused, her face lined a bit more deeply with thought and worry. “Come along then.” Sati led Asha back toward the western end of the village, and did not display any particular reaction to the crowd sitting in the road. She only said, “I don’t remember that little tree being there.”

  Asha nodded and waited for the woman to continue, and they walked together around the pilgrims to the tree where Priya sat next to the silent boy. Asha gestured to the seated figure and said, “Please, look closely. Take your time. I need you to be certain.”

  Sati knelt down beside the boy and studied his face for a moment. Asha tried to imagine whether the boy Kavi would have looked very different with hair and eyebrows and eyelashes. Will she even be able to recognize him? After a moment, Sati reached out with a steady hand to touch the boy’s arm, and then to caress his cheek. And then she stood and backed away from him.

  “I can’t be certain. Kavi had such thick hair,” she said quietly. “And he was thinner. His cheeks, I mean. But the nose is the same. Maybe. No, no, they’re not the same really. His hands, his chin. I’m trying to imagine this boy dirty and hairy and laughing. No, they’re not quite the same. But they are very similar.” Sati stared at the boy a bit longer and then turned away. “And no one knows his name or where he came from?”

  Asha shook her head.

  “I see. Then I wish you all well. I hope I was helpful.” Sati turned to leave.

  “Wait.” Asha followed her. “Don’t you want to stay and see if he speaks?”

  “No.” The woman shuddered. “I don’t.”

  “One last question then,” Asha said. “Do you remember the doctor who came to help Kavi just before he died? Can you describe him to me?”

  Sati nodded. “He was short. Maybe my age, maybe a little older. Thinning hair. Round face. He smiled a lot, even when he acted sad. I remember that. The smiling. I didn’t like it.”

  Asha thanked her again and watched the woman walk away across the village and up the long road to the eastern farms. And then Asha spent the rest of the day wandering through the fields around the village, peering down at little weedy sprouts and black bugs wriggling through the rich earth, and trying not to think about the boy.

  That night, after they ate the last of the dried fruit in Asha’s bag, she said to Priya, “It’s not a teak tree.”

  “What is it then?” the nun asked.

  Asha didn’t answer.

  “Asha?”

  “Can we leave tomorrow? Are you ready to move on?”

  “All right. I doubt our young Buddha will be
revealing his wisdom any time soon. We can leave in the morning.”

  When morning came, Asha slipped out of their shelter as quietly as she could and climbed down the muddy slope behind the gnarled tree. The sun had yet to rise and the whole world felt gray and cool, still clinging to the quiet of the night. She stopped just above the level of the oily water covering the corner of the field, and studied the dirt and grass at her feet. It took a moment in the feeble predawn light to find what she was looking for, but she did find it.

  She reached down into the soft wet earth and pulled up a heavy tangle of pale roots. Asha took the steel scalpel from her bag, but hesitated as she saw the bright blade in her fingers, remembering that same blade in another’s fingers, painted red. But the moment passed and she quickly severed each of the roots, cutting some in two places just to be certain. When she was done, she tossed the lower half of the roots into the dark water and pushed the upper half of the roots back into the soil.

  At the top of the slope she found a handful of pilgrims already awake, already staring at the boy under the tree. None of them looked at her. Back at the old market stall she found Priya sitting up and petting Jagdish. The nun asked, “Are you ready now?”

  Asha nodded, more to herself than to her friend. “If you are.”

  And they left the village.

  * * *

  Six months later.

  Priya called out from behind, “Asha! I need to slow down. My knee hasn’t quite recovered yet from that night on the beach. It’s still aching a bit. Silly singing turtles. Are we in a hurry?”

  “No, no hurry. Sorry. I forgot about your knee.” Asha stopped and let the nun catch up to her, and then they continued on down the road side by side. Jagdish lay long and fat on the blind woman’s shoulders, all the way around the back of her neck with his tail trailing down over her chest.

  “Is there bad weather brewing? Or are we on a dangerous road?”

  “No,” Asha said. “But we are on a familiar road.”

  “Oh. Where are we?”

  “About an hour west of Kasar. Do you remember it?”

  Priya nodded and smiled. “We’re going to visit the little sage under the teak tree.”