Eliot Pattison - Prayer of the Dragon

“Once,” Shan declared in a quiet voice, “the traveling beggar followed an honored profession in Tibet.”

“I have to go back to Beijing for the funeral,” Gao said. “But I will return before the cold weather. I have many empty rooms. Even a wandering beggar may pause under a roof, maybe even take up residence in a burrow for the winter. We could read the old poets as the snow falls.”

“I would like that,” was Shan’s reply.

As purple remnants of the day lingered on the western horizon, Lokesh and Hostene commenced. The Navajo healing ceremony usually took nine days, Lokesh’s rites at least three. With Gendun’s counsel they had settled on a ceremony of seven days, a marriage of Hostene’s Mountainway chant and Lokesh’s Invocation of the Medicine Buddha. Faces would be smeared with pollen, Hostene warned, and long nights would be spent chanting. Long-sleeping deities would be awakened, Lokesh had countered, and there would be frequent pauses to check the pulse of their subject at her neck, wrist, and ankle. On the first night, Hostene would begin a Navajo sandpainting with Lokesh’s help. When that was finished Lokesh would start a Tibetan sand mandala, with Hostene’s help. The old Tibetans spoke with Abigail in soft, murmuring tones, assuring her that they had often seen even the worst of illnesses cured by the old ways.

As Shan settled onto the ground in the place saved for him between Gendun and Lokesh, Abigail smiled at him serenely. Shan had asked her why she had stopped writing in her journal. She had admitted that scientific evidence of links between their peoples would always be incomplete. Abigail had explained that her weeks on the mountain had taught her the difference between truth and mere fact. She had at last learned the truth about herself, and as for the rest, this mountain, these people, this ceremony would be proof enough for her.