by R. A. Jones
“Our little one was clearly distracted,” the monk continued. “He would barely even glance at the texts I gave him to read. Finally, I asked him what was wrong.”
Huang paused. He shook his head slightly from side to side, a disapproving expression clouding his face.
“He looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘I beg your pardon a thousand times, Brother Huang … but there is nothing more you can teach me’!”
“No,” the Question replied in feigned disbelief, glad that the omnipresent hood covering his face hid the smile that flickered briefly at the corners of his mouth.
“Yes!” Huang exclaimed. “Can you imagine? A boy, not even eight years old yet, and he thinks he knows more than me, a man who has devoted thirty years of his life to learning and teaching others!”
“So what did you do?”
“What could I do?” Huang waved one hand dismissively. “I told him to go to his room and to stay there until tomorrow. And when his belly starts to rumble because he’s had no supper, he’s to meditate on the price of arrogance and insubordination.”
Huang frowned as he looked up at the Question.
“Did I do wrong?”
“Not at all, brother,” the Question assured him. “I merely wanted to see him, that’s all. I’ll just go to his quarters.”
Those quarters were not far away, and the Question quickly covered the distance in long, urgent strides. He didn’t bother to knock on the apartment’s door. He was, after all, the Great Question, and no place in this massive temple was not his to enter freely.
Aman’s “mother”, Prahmasung, was busily sweeping the stone floor of the apartment’s front room. She straightened at the sound of the Question’s entry, brushing away a wisp of hair that had fallen over her forehead and smiling.
“Where is Aman?”
At the question, the smile left her lips. The inherent fear she still felt in the presence of the temple’s master welled up in her, and she dropped to her knees, lowering her eyes to the floor.
“He’s not here, my lord,” she said humbly. “He’s taking his lessons with Brother Huang.”
“No. He’s not.”
The look of puzzlement and fear in Prahmasung’s eyes when her head snapped up told the monk that she truthfully did not know her son’s whereabouts.
“I don’t understand.”
A timid knock on the door facing of the apartment caught their attention. One of the temple’s many servant boys entered on tiny feet, carrying a small bundle of cloth in her arms.
“What is it, Ahnyu?” the Question asked.
He did not deign to look at him when he answered.
“I’ve come to bring these to the mother.” He extended her arms outward.
“What is it?”
“I believe it is the young master Aman’s clothes.”
“You intruded on us to deliver laundry?” The impatience and anger in the Question’s voice struck the boy as surely as might have the back of his hand, pushing her backward.
“Never, my lord,” he assured him. “This isn’t laundry. I believe it is the clothing the boy was wearing when I saw him earlier today.”
“Where did you get them?”
“I found them lying on the floor, master. Near the outer door of the temple.”
“And where is Aman?”
“I don’t know. There was no sign of him.”
Prahmasung was on her feet, tugging at the Great Question’s sleeve.
“Something’s happened to him,” she exclaimed. “We have to find him!”
The lama stared down at the hand clutching him, then up at the woman. The fire in his golden eyes was all the expression she needed to know that she had crossed a line far above her station. She released her grip and dropped back down on her hands and knees, face to the floor.
The Question said nothing to her; he knew there was no need. Instead, he strode to a pedestal that stood near the door. Upon it sat a burnished gong, and he proceeded to bang its surface repeatedly.
Within seconds, two servants came running in response. Their master ordered them to alert all the other servants within the temple walls and to conduct a thorough search of every chamber within it until they found the boy.
Nearly an hour later, a servant named Ramal returned to Aman’s quarters. Prahmasung was pacing nervously back and forth, wringing her hands. The Great Question sat silently in a sturdy chair, seemingly unperturbed. Ramal turned to him and bowed slightly at the waist.
“Did you find him?”
“No, master.”
Prahmasung began to wail softly. The Question chose to ignore her.
“Are you sure you looked everywhere?”
“As sure as we can be, my lord. From top to bottom. Every place a man or boy could go.”
Prahmasung threw herself on the floor at the Question’s feet, clutching at his booted leg as the tears began to flow like spring rain.
“Someone’s taken him!”
The Question brought a hand up to the bridge of his nose, squeezing it through the cloth of his hood as if by so doing he might block the sound of the woman’s lament.
“No stranger could enter within these walls unbidden or unseen,” he said.
“What about the servants?” he asked of Ramal. “Are they all accounted for?”
“Every one, master. And every member of the Council as well. All who should be here – are here.”
“Then he must have gone out alone.”
“Nooo!” Prahmasung screeched. “He’ll die!”
Looking down at her with as much disdain as pity, the Question pulled away from her.
“Stay by your hearth, woman,” he commanded, “and stoke the fire. I myself will lead a party outside to search for your son.”
“Bless you, my lord,” she said. “A thousand blessings on you.”
He said no more to her as he strode from her chambers. In her current state of fear and panic, there was no point in reminding her that the child had already been gone from the temple for at least two hours.
Driving snow and sub-freezing temperatures would have awaited him outside. And mad as it seemed, it appeared he had chosen to brave the elements without benefit of even the lightest amount of clothing.
Several of the younger monks and all of the male servants volunteered to join the Question in the search. They had known the boy for all his young life, and he was much loved by them.
Splitting into several separate parties, they spent an hour searching in all directions. The frigid wind cut to the bone like a razor, and drowned out the sound of their voices as they called out to Aman. The cold and exhaustion was pushing them to their limits, and they would soon have to retreat back into the safety of the temple. Even the Great Question could be seen to shiver slightly.
“Look!” the lama known as Brother Chun called out, in a voice barely audible from even a few feet away.
He pointed to a ridge rising up before him. At its apex, a figure that might be the boy could be faintly made out through the streams of swirling snow.
Before anyone else could react, the Question launched himself forward, racing up the face of the ridge. His feet threatened to slip out from under him more than once, but he kept them churning and driving him ever onward. He stumbled and slid to a halt when he drew near to the figure Brother Chun had spotted.
It was indeed young Aman. He was completely naked, seated cross-legged in the lotus position, with his hands held palms up in his lap. His eyes were closed and he was unmoving, and for an instant the Question feared they had found him too late.
But as he dropped to his knees, he could see just the slightest movement up and down of Aman’s chest. So shallow was his breathing, though, that barely a hint of expelled air could be seen coming from his nostrils.
Aman’s eyes snapped open when the Question flung a heavy fur robe around him and lifted him up in his arms. As he did so, the lama’s left hand inadvertently slipped under the robe and came to rest on the bo
y’s chest. To his amazement, he found the skin to be only mildly chilled, and the boy seemed unharmed, his eyes bright and alert.
The other searchers closed in around them, talking excitedly and reaching out to touch the precious bundle as if to assure themselves it was real.
“What’s wrong, master?” Aman asked, genuinely befuddled. “Why is everyone making such a fuss?”
As he spoke, the boy insinuated his right hand from beneath the fur and rubbed lightly as the corner of one eye, as if to do no more than wipe the sleep from it.
The Great Question’s breath sucked in almost imperceptibly. On Aman’s ring finger could be seen the steel ring he had been wearing on the chain around his neck the day he had first been brought to the Temple of Enlightened Anguish.
It didn’t seem possible for him to now be wearing it on his finger; it had been too large to fit the fingers of most grown men (though they didn’t admit to it, the Question knew many of his fellow monks had tried it on over the years).
Yet now it appeared to fit the finger of this small boy perfectly, as if it had impossibly shrunk to do so.
“Do you feel all right, Aman?” the Question asked. “Are you hurt?”
“I feel fine,” the boy replied, looking puzzled. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
The Question chose not to answer him, but to continue with his own questions.
“What were you doing out here all alone?”
“I was listening.”
“To what?”
“To the world. It had been calling to me all day, so I came out here to hear it better.”
That would explain his distraction in the classroom, the lama thought.
“And what did the world say to you?” the Question probed, not sounding in the least like he was being condescending.
“It said it wants to be my friend,” Aman declared. He frowned slightly. “But it also said I still have a lot to learn.”
“It was right,” the Question said softly, pulling the boy tighter to his chest with surprising gentleness.
“But for now, let’s just get you back home. You’ve worried your mother terribly.”
The truth of this statement was driven home forcefully the moment the Question carried the boy over the threshold of his living quarters.
Prahmasung practically ripped Aman from the lama’s arms. She began to cry and laugh at the same time. She covered his face with kisses and nearly smothered him by clutching him so tightly to her bosom that he at length had to push away from her slightly to regain his breath.
Despite his protestations, she insisted on dressing him in his warmest clothes, then re-wrapped him in the fur robe and sat him down so close to the roaring fire that he had to occasionally duck away from stray embers popping forth from the flames. Neither boy nor woman noticed that the Great Question had left them alone.
Aman didn’t object at all when Prahmasung pressed a large bowl into his hands; it contained warm barley soup in which bits of mutton swam. Nor did he protest when the first bowl, once emptied, was immediately replaced by a second. Between sips of the delicious stew, he munched on thick slices of coarse barley bread liberally slathered with butter churned from goat’s milk.
As he chewed and savored a particularly succulent piece of mutton, he studied his “mother”. With her fear for his safety at least momentarily dispelled, she had settled into her favorite chair and taken up sewing a small hole in one of his shirts. As she did so, she lightly hummed a tune whose lyrics had been forgotten long before she was born.
It pleased him to see her like this. He found her slightly rounded face to be beautiful, made even more so by the glow coming from the fireplace.
“Mother?”
“Yes, dear?” She didn’t bother to look up from her sewing.
“What was your life like before I came into it?”
At this, she set down her work and gazed at him, smiling warmly.
“I don’t think I had a life before you, Aman.”
He rose slightly on his haunches and waddled closer to her, dragging his stool with him until he was directly in front of her.
“Tell me,” he urged. “What was it like?”
“I grew up in the village,” she replied. “You’ve been there with me, you know what it’s like. My father made shoes there. Mother helped him, and sold vegetables from our garden. I remember how dirty my fingernails would be after I would help her pull weeds.”
“I’ve never met them,” Aman stated flatly. “Why is that?”
“Oh, they both died one winter, when I was barely twelve. I know they’d have liked you, though.”
“Do you think so?”
“I’m sure of it. My father especially. He always wanted a boy. But all he ever got was me.”
“Didn’t he like you?”
“Not much, no. But he did love me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will, when you have children of your own.”
Aman pondered this for a moment, his brain chewing on it as his mouth did on the mutton. Digesting this was less easily swallowed, he decided to put it away until another day.
“So you were all alone?”
“Not for long. As I’ve told you before, one of the men who lived near the village looked kindly on me and decided I would make a good wife.”
“Mantrapoor.”
“Mantrapoor, that’s right. And I tried to never make him think he had been wrong. I tried my very hardest to be the best wife possible for him and his brothers.”
“And what about my father?”
With this question, Aman dropped his eyes, making a show of sopping a piece of bread in his soup. He didn’t want to look at Prahmasung’s face, for fear he might have offended or embarrassed her. He needn’t have worried.
“I didn’t really know him,” she answered truthfully. “But he was tall. And handsome, I suppose, if you like that type. He seemed strong and energetic. Brave, too. Like you.”
“But he didn’t want me.” The boy pretended to study the contents of his bowl most fiercely.
“Don’t say that,” Prahmasung snapped, more harshly than she had intended. “He had duty elsewhere, that’s all. He wanted you to be safe, and loved. That’s why he picked me to take care of you.”
The boy continued to stare down into his bowl.
“And not that you ever ask, but I’m afraid I don’t know anything about your real mother,” Prahmasung said, assuming that would be his next question, even if unspoken. Aman’s head jerked up, and she was a bit surprised to see he was smiling.
“I’m sitting with my real mother,” he declared, then tipped his bowl up to let the remnants of its contents slide into his mouth.
Prahmasung also smiled, and returned to her sewing.
“Are you awake?”
Aman rolled over in his bed, startled to see the Great Question looming over him. The boy had exceedingly sensitive hearing, yet the lama had managed to enter his quarters, his room, without making the slightest noise.
“Did I wake you, boy?”
“No.”
“Good. Come, take a walk with me.”
Moving almost as quietly as the monk, Aman slid from his bed and followed the man out into one of the temple’s many corridors. They strolled some distance without a word being spoken, so Aman decided he would break the silence.
“May I ask you a question, master?”
“Certainly.”
“The Great War, the one the white men fought in Europe. It’s over, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It ended some time ago.”
“Then why hasn’t my father come back here?”
“That I don’t know.”
“Is he dead?”
“I don’t know that either, Aman. Maybe.”
“I hope not.”
“As do I.”
Silence shrouded them again as they continued their walk. At length the Question stopped in front of a narrow window cut in one wall. He looked intently up into the ni
ght sky, as if counting the multitude of stars flecking the darkness.
“Now I have a question for you,” he said at last. “Earlier, you told me the world was calling to you. Is that why you didn’t wish to attend to your studies today?”
“That’s part of it,” the boy admitted, “but not all.” He dropped his head and stared down at his feet.
“Go on,” the monk prompted at last.
“I don’t know if I should, master.”
“Why not?”
“Because arrogance is a sin, and I don’t want to sound arrogant.”
“Just tell me the truth, boy, and I’ll judge how sinful you are.”
“Yes, lord.” Still he hesitated, struggling to choose just the right words.
“I don’t want to hurt Brother Huang’s feelings. Or the other monks, either. But I already possess all the knowledge they’ve been trying to impart to me.”
“Oh?” The Question lowered his gaze, skewering the boy with a baleful glare. “Now you do sound arrogant. You’re saying you know as much as all the members of the Council have managed to absorb – and you did it in seven years rather than seven lifetimes?”
“That’s not really what I mean, no. They know more about life than I do. So does my mother. And the servants. And I’m continuing to learn from all of them.” He drew in a deep breath.
“But the written knowledge that the brothers want to teach me. That I already know.”
“So. How is that possible?”
“Because I’ve already read everything here in the temple. Every book, every scroll, every treatise, every letter, even every map.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
“But that must be tens of thousands of pages, little one. And you’re saying you’ve read every one of them, in less than eight years?”
“In less than that, master. I finished them when I was six.”
“Don’t mock me, boy.”
“I never would,” Aman replied earnestly.
“Then when did you start reading?”
“When I was two.”
“Even so,” the Question said, shaking his head, “reading is not the same as knowing.”
“Yes. But everything I read, I remember. And every new thing helps me understand more of what I’ve already read. As do my lessons with the brothers. Or they did, for a time. Now I can gain understanding on my own.”
