Eliot Pattison - Water Touching Stone

She cast an anxious glance at her husband. "We are teaching him our ways. He has a mala." With an effort that caused her obvious pain, she leaned forward and pushed the boy's sleeve up. She looked at his naked wrist in puzzlement. "It's gone. The demon took his rosary." She lowered her eyes from the lama, as if shamed. "He has wished to make the ways of Buddha his ways."

"But does he pray toward the sunset still?" Gendun asked.

The woman looked to the ground, as if frightened by the conversation. She shook her head slowly. "He said that that god let his clan die."

Shan stared at Gendun in confusion. The boy was Muslim. But how had Gendun seen it?

Instead of touching the boy's head, Gendun gently raised the back of the boy's hand to his own cheek. "Then I say a prayer that whatever god resides in this boy's heart gives him strength against the pain he knows from now and from the past and mindfulness for the path he must now follow."

In the silence a raven croaked nearby. They turned to see it sitting on top of the outcropping, studying them intently. The herder took a step forward as if to say something to the bird, then looked back at Gendun and remained silent, as if the lama would not approve.

"We have to leave," Jowa said hesitantly. "Go north. Into the Kunlun mountains." He cast an uncertain glance toward the herder.

"These people need help," Shan protested.

"Go north," the herder said, nodding his head vigorously. "We heard about the killings, it is why we fled across the mountains. They said you were going there, to save the children."

Jowa's eyes were full of impatience as he looked at the herder. Shan understood. Jowa knew that the dropka in this far corner of Tibet lived in a world of superstition, not far removed from the days before Buddhism when shamans ruled the land. Something terrible had happened to the boy, but to such people a falling rock could be an angry demon and a man shape with fur could easily be a wolf or a leopard. "We're going about the woman," Jowa said.

The dropka nodded again. "About Lau," he said. "Our Alta, he is one of her students."

Lokesh gasped and turned to Gendun. "Lau was this boy's teacher?" the lama asked.

"One of the zheli." The man nodded. "Lau introduced us when we said we wanted to help the children." The dropka kept his eyes on the boy as he spoke.

"The zheli?" Shan asked. It was not a Tibetan word, though the herder spoke in Tibetan. Nor was it Chinese.

But the man seemed not to have heard. Lokesh sighed and helped the boy drink the tea, then they carried the boy to the shelter of the rock, out of the wind, in a patch of sunlight. Lokesh listened again, at his heart, his shoulder, and his neck, then the old Tibetan shook his head and gazed at the boy, tears welling in his eyes.

They sat without speaking, helpless, as the light faded from the boy's eye. For an awful moment there was terror in his eye, as if suddenly, at last, he understood his fate. A sound came from the boy, one syllable and nothing more. It could have been the beginning of a question, or a prayer. It could have been simply an expression of pain. But there was no more, as if the effort had sapped the last of the boy's strength. The woman, crying, held the boy's hand to her cheek.

Shan knelt by Alta and leaned forward, struggling to find words of comfort. But after a moment he dropped back, unable to speak, numbed by his helplessness and the cruelty that had been inflicted on the boy.

A hard dark silence descended over the dropka man, who kept opening and shutting his mouth as if he too wanted to speak, but grief had seized his tongue. At last, as the boy shifted his gaze to meet the herder's eyes, the dropka found his voice and began softly speaking about going to spring pastures and of finding flowers and young birds on the southern slopes, about nothing in particular, only pleasant memories of the dropka life. The boy's face grew peaceful as he listened.

Jowa, his face drawn with sorrow, left to keep watch on the rocks. Gendun and Lokesh offered prayers. The herder kept speaking in a near whisper, leaning over the boy. And in an hour, with a long soft groan, the boy named Alta died.

No one spoke for a long time, then finally the woman wiped the boy's face and covered it with the blanket.

"The custom of his people," Shan said slowly, not certain how the two dropka might react, "would be to bury him before sunset."

The dropka nodded, and Shan retrieved a shovel from the truck. As he dug, the woman gathered small rocks for a cairn to mark the grave. While the boy was laid to rest in his blanket, Gendun spoke in soft tones, using a Buddhist prayer for the dead.

The dropka man stood for only five minutes, then sighed heavily and stepped away to retrieve their horses.

Shan helped the woman stack the rocks at the head of the small mound. "It's a Kazakh word," she said to him when they had finished, referring to one of the Muslim peoples who lived on the northern side of the Kunlun range. "A zheli is a line tied between two trees, or two pegs, to tether a line of young animals. It's how the young ones learn about each other, and the world. Lau used the word for her classes with the orphans, her special children. Her tether for the orphans."

"Your husband said we were coming to save the children. Did he mean the zheli?"

The dropka woman nodded. "When that other boy died, we knew to flee. But not," she sighed, with her eyes on the grave, "not soon enough."

A moan came from beside Shan, and Lokesh leaned forward. "Another boy?" he asked urgently. "Another of Lau's boys?"

"First Lau," she said. "Then a Kazakh boy near Yoktian town."

"Do you remember his name?" Lokesh asked in an urgent tone. Shan looked at his friend in puzzlement. It sounded as though Lokesh was interested in one particular boy.

The dropka shook her head. "There are twenty, maybe twenty-five children in the zheli. Kazakhs, Tibetans. And Uighurs," she added, referring to the largest of China's Muslim minorities. She turned and nodded at her husband, who led both horses forward. Their saddles had been removed. The man was looking to the north, toward the snowcaps of the Kunlun. "Alta," she said quietly, "Our Alta was a Kazakh."

"A lama," Shan said. "Do you know about a missing lama?"

The dropka shook his head. "Lamas have been missing here for many years," he said, obviously not understanding Shan's question. His gaze stayed on the mountains. "You must hurry," he added abruptly, in a hoarse, urgent tone. "Death keeps coming. This demon has found its way into the zheli and it won't stop killing."

Shan stared at the man in silence.

"Alta's soul is at risk," the dropka continued in his forlorn tone. "A boy like that, so unprepared." A gust of wind swept across them and seemed to snatch the man's words away. He stopped speaking and only looked toward Gendun. The dropka meant the boy's soul would be wandering, lost, without an anchor of faith or family, easy prey for the things that devoured souls.

Gendun returned the man's gaze for a moment, then spoke with Jowa, who brought him a piece of canvas and a broken pencil stub, the end of which Jowa charred in the fire. The lama retreated around the far corner of the rock and began chanting a mantra as he worked with the stub. Jowa listened and watched, then retrieved a tattered broom from the cargo bay and, wedging the head under a wheel, snapped off the handle.

When Gendun returned, he laid the cloth on the ground in front of the herders. The herdsman uttered a groan of surprise and pulled his wife's head up to see what the lama had brought them as Jowa began tying it to the broom handle. It was a charm, a very old charm, seldom used, a drawing of a scorpion with flame in its mouth. On the shoulders of the scorpion were heads of demons, with words along each side of the figures. A charm against demons, a charm that had been empowered by the words of a lama.