Eliot Pattison - Beautiful Ghosts

“You mean they destroyed the sacred things.”

“They moved a flat rock that covered a little stone altar. I used to go there with my father when he prayed to the deity inside the altar. A copper statue of Buddha. It was smashed like that little silver Tara when they left.”

“Have there been other statues broken like that?”

“Five that I’ve seen, all smashed in the head, all cut in the back. All emptied.” The man stared at the mud figure as he spoke.

“Did you see any of the strangers yesterday? Last night?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. After dark there were people moving toward the south, carrying things like logs. I didn’t go closer.”

“Why would the godkillers go out at night?”

“Because that is when the monks come out.” The man grimaced and gestured toward the little effigy. “You think you can scare me with a little mud? You have to speak the words. It doesn’t work without the words.”

“I’ve had teachers,” Shan said. He bent and drew in the dirt with his fingers. Om ghate jam-mo, he wrote.

The man grew very quiet, gazing forlornly at the words in the dirt, then at Shan. After a moment he pointed to the inside of Shan’s wrist, to the long tattoo of numbers, then sighed and erased the words with his boot. As Shan rolled up his sleeve the scar-faced man grimaced. “Where?” the herder asked.

“The 404th, in the valley.”

The man stared at the little mud figure again. “No one said anything about bringing in a convict.” He cursed under his breath, then rolled up his own sleeve, revealing a similar line of numbers. “Eight years, in the big prison by Lhasa. Go,” he said, but extended his palm.

Shan lowered the figure toward his hand, then paused. “What is the word that people will kill for?”

“You’re crazy. Don’t!”

“Then tell me about it without saying it.”

The herder gave a quiet groan, and looked again at the mud effigy Shan kept in his palm. “He was a protector god of Zhoka, a special form of Yama. There was a festival in his honor, with people from the hills, with costumes and mask dancers. At dusk a great wind came and grabbed the costume of the deity, took it into the sky never to be seen again. The next day the airplanes came.” Shan dropped the figure into the man’s open hand. The herder would have to hide it now, where no harm would come to it. He pushed Shan roughly down the trail, cursing as if Shan had cheated him. “What do I care?” he called to Shan’s back. “Keep going south and you’ll have a lot more to fear than the likes of me. Nothing but fleshcutters and bluemen in the south.”

* * *

By the time he found a goat path that led due south the sun was disappearing in a blaze of purple and gold. A sudden mechanical throbbing sent him behind a rock, and he watched with relief as a helicopter settled onto the ridge above Zhoka, taking off a minute later, no doubt taking Yao and the American back to Lhadrung. Then he remembered the small cigar he had found in the tunnels. Someone else had been at Zhoka, could still be lurking there as Gendun meditated.

He walked slowly, preoccupied with his fears and the confusing events of the past two days, unable to drive Surya’s hollow, empty face from his mind, trying to make sense of the big herder’s tale. The name the godkillers wanted was a form of Yama. A form of the Lord of Death. The FBI agent had said his interrogators had asked Surya to draw a picture of death. He paused at the screech of a nighthawk, watching its flight against the stars, and as it disappeared he became aware of a new sound, a soft wailing that rose and fell with the wind. Five minutes later he stood over a small hollow on the side of the ridge, staring down at a figure dancing beside a raging fire, watched by a woman and child who sat with their backs toward Shan.

The dancer wore a thatch of long grass tied around his forehead, obscuring most of his face. Only a vest covered his torso, and more grass had been fastened around his waist with a length of twine. Grass was stuffed into his pants legs. He was chanting as he danced, not a mantra but an old song, a gnarled branch in one hand. Suddenly the dancer raised the branch over the head of the child, who emitted a high-pitched sound. Shan had taken a step forward before he realized it was not fear, but laughter he heard.

It was Dawa, he saw with great relief, exclaiming with glee as Lokesh danced around the fire. Beside her sat Liya. Lokesh was telling the girl about Milarepa, the sainted hermit, acting out one of the saint’s songs, in which his sister discovers him in his cave, his skin turned green after eating only nettles for years.

With the energy of a much younger man Lokesh leapt off the ground and landed in a crouch in front of Dawa, he and the girl both laughing. He was pulling the grass from his clothes as Shan appeared. “Buddha be praised,” the old Tibetan said in greeting, a surprised smile on his face.

“Uncle Lokesh has been teaching me about old things,” Dawa announced in a sober tone after greeting Shan.

“There’s tsampa, ” Lokesh said, referring to the roasted barley flour that was a staple of the Tibetan diet. “We can reheat some.”

“I would like that,” Shan said, suddenly realizing he was famished. As Dawa retrieved a small pan from among the rocks he studied the rest of the campsite. A big wooden packframe leaned against a boulder, beside a blanket strewn with objects. He could not see all the blanket’s contents in the dim light but noticed a small bronze deity statue, a long narrow metal container that may have held pens or brushes, and a hinged wooden box, open, that held lengths of heavy twine and huge needles, the kind used for sewing tents. Liya followed his gaze. “Just some old things,” she said, and kicked the edge of the blanket with her foot, covering its contents.

But not all were old. Shan also had seen a small metal compass, a folding knife, a heavy nylon rope, and metal clips, the kind used by mountain climbers. She had not had them at Zhoka.

Shan accepted a battered metal plate heaped with steaming tsampa and began eating with his fingers. After a few mouthfuls he asked if they had seen any of the hill people.

Lokesh stroked the white stubble on his jaw, looking toward the southern horizon. “I found Dawa last night, at midnight, sitting on a rock gazing at the moon, talking to her mother a thousand miles away. At dawn we found a stream, in the morning searched the slopes for others. Many of the herders were going home this morning, taking other trails to stay far from Zhoka. But Dawa insisted on going further south. This afternoon we met Liya. Dawa says we should go even further south. She keeps asking if I heard the crying.”

“Crying?” Shan asked. “You heard it, too?”

Lokesh sighed and looked into the fire. “I don’t know if I did. I said maybe it was when Liya was coming up the trail toward us. She had the look of one who had been crying for days when we met her, but Dawa said no.”

Shan stood and stepped to the edge of the circle of light cast by the fire, trying to understand what it was about Lokesh’s words that confused him. Liya. They had been walking from the north and met Liya coming from the opposite direction. She had been farther south, had returned with a new pack on her back, new supplies that seemed of no use to them. Away from the glare of the flame Shan saw shapes on the horizon, black against the sky. The mountains looked like crouched beasts. Go further and there’s fleshcutters and bluemen, the herder had warned.

He quietly began speaking of what he had learned in Lhadrung, studying Liya’s face as he spoke, not mentioning the mantras she had secretly delivered to all the hill families. Her eyes were dark and swollen. She had indeed been grieving. “Are you scared to speak the name of a god?” he abruptly asked her.