Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

"Gyalo!" he called out. The monk was on the column, sitting lotus fashion, staring forlornly at the sky. Shan called repeatedly as he jogged back toward the clearing, but the monk gave no sign of hearing. Jampa himself seemed unconcerned about Gyalo. Yet the yak did seem concerned about something. The great beast was at the south end of the clearing now, and Shan thought he recognized sadness on its face. He walked to it, stroking its neck again, trying to understand.

Gyalo and Jampa had come here, but no farther. They had been bound for the high, hidden meadow, for those who waited for Jokar to sit on the rock called the chair of Siddhi. Jokar, perhaps Winslow, had been with them but now were gone. The monk and yak did not seem upset or alarmed, just sad and puzzled. The yak's huge, liquid eyes gazed at Shan expectantly then, facing the high spine of the mountain it made a loud sound. Not a bellow, or a snort, but a loud wailing cut short by an intake of breath, like a sob.

Shan gazed at the yak, at the forlorn monk on the column of rock, then began running up the treacherous goat trail.

The sun was low in the western sky, washing the vast rock wall with a thin rose color by the time Shan found the narrow cleft in the rock where they had taken refuge from the helicopter the day they had first crossed Yapchi Mountain. Inside the cleft the stillness was like that of an ancient temple. No wind blew. No bird called. The dim light was the only evidence of the outside world.

He followed the wall on the left into deepening shadows, past the little stone pillar with dust encrusted prayer flags, until suddenly he heard a wet, hissing sound. He froze, studying the shadows, until he made out two legs stretched across the path in front of him. It was Winslow.

The American was so weak he seemed to have trouble raising his head to greet Shan. "Dammit, Shan, you have… to learn…" The American's words were punctuated with ragged gasps. He sounded as though he were suffocating, "… to stop investigating."

Shan reached along Winslow's legs to the side pocket where he carried his electric light. As Shan switched it on his heart sank. A pink froth oozed out of Winslow's mouth, and was dripping onto his shirt. He stared at the American. There was no time for talk. He frantically searched the other pockets of the American's pants until he found his pill bottle. It was empty.

"Took… the last one four hours ago," Winslow gasped. "He had to come. I wasn't going to let him try it alone. I carried him the first mile. Almost didn't make it. Old Jokar…" Winslow seemed to be forcing himself to smile, but the effort ended in a grimace. A wet, rasping rattle came from his chest. "He had to help me sometimes, let me hold on to his staff. I helped him, he helped me. We couldn't have made it without each other," the American said in a tone of wonder. He moaned, and tried to raise his hand to his head, but failed. "My head… I never knew it could hurt like this…" His eyes fluttered open and shut several times.

Shan wiped the froth from Winslow's face. It meant pulmonary edema. His lungs were filling with fluid. The head pain meant cerebral edema.

"We have to get you down," Shan said. His words came out in choking breaths. There was nothing to be done for Winslow, except descend the mountain, on the tiny, treacherous goat trail, in the dark.

Winslow seemed to struggle to keep his eyes open. "Go… check on Jokar."

Shan glanced up at the darkest part of the shadows ahead, which marked the entrance to the cave. "Jokar would want you to go down."

Something touched Shan's hand. Winslow's fingers, grasping Shan's. He had the strength of a baby. The only thing that broke the silence was the American's wet, labored breathing.

Winslow's fingers trembled. "What's that sound?" he gasped. "Like wind."

There was no sound, no movement except the American's labored breathing. More of the pink froth dribbled down his chin. "I'm beginning to understand it," Winslow whispered. "This whole impermanence thing. It's a gift, like the old lamas said."

The words hung in the air like a prayer.

"I will get you down," Shan insisted, choking down his helplessness.

"Not a chance," Winslow said in a strangely serene voice. "Not on that path. I would just kill us both. Hell I can't even stand, let alone walk. You try to carry me, we both fall."

Shan followed Winslow's eyes to the top of the mountain, visible at the top of the huge fissure. It was illuminated in a brilliant golden light cast by the setting sun, as if they were in a tunnel that led upward to the heavens.

"Jokar knew before," Winslow gasped. "I mean he knew before coming up here. He knew that day he touched me."

Shan remembered the haunted look the lama had when he laid his hands on the American that day at the hermitage.

"I understand now," Winslow said in his weak, croaking voice. "Everything has been about leaving it all behind, hasn't it?"

Shan stood and pulled on Winslow's arm to lift him. The American, much heavier than Shan, barely moved. He stared at Winslow. The American had given up on his job, given up his passport, given up his possessions, given up his grief for his wife, given up everything that came before, the clutter of his life below. It was true. Since the day Shan had met him, when he had been defying death by riding the yak, the American had been leaving everything behind.

"I think you… should go check on Jokar. Take the light. Then we can go down, no problem."

Shan reluctantly stepped over the American's legs "We are going down that path. We can just crawl a little at a time. You'll be better when we descend."

"I'll be better. You win," the American whispered, and his fingers made a tiny motion that seemed to be a gesture toward the cave.

Inside there was a musty odor of incense that had not been there before, but the chamber was empty and no incense burned. Shan stepped to the healing thangkas and looked briefly at each one, trying to calm himself. At the long thangka where the collection of dorjes lay, a new one sat beside the sandalwood dorje, one of bronze, burnished with decades of rubbing. Nearby, leaning against the wall, was something else. A long wooden staff, as worn and weathered as the dorje. On the ledge beside the dorje he saw two small dust-encrusted shapes he had not noticed before. He reached out for one, shaking away the dust. It was a small bone, perfectly shaped. Shan cleaned the second. It seemed to be a rock, until he realized how light it was. He studied the objects again and discovered he had been wrong. The rock was a carefully crafted piece of bone. And the bone was an exquisitely carved stone.

Shan pulled aside the thankga, releasing a stronger smell of incense. As he expected, there was a tunnel behind the old painting. He followed it at a sharp downward angle for nearly a minute before it leveled into a low, broad chamber. A second large thankga hung at one of the sides: a representation, not of the Medicine Buddha, but of a fierce protector demon, Rahula, a wrathful deity with several heads and a serpent body instead of legs.

Shan grasped the gau around his neck then stepped behind the thangka. To the right a long wide ledge, three feet high, ran the length of the narrow, forty-foot-long room, as straight and square as a bench. To the left, at the center of the wall, was a small altar of polished, deftly fitted wood, with a sixteen-inch golden Buddha, behind the traditional seven offering bowls. He slowly approached the altar. The four bowls that were meant to hold water were dry and crusted with dust. A single stick of incense and the stub of a candle burned beside the bowls on a polished stone tray. On either side of the altar were several large clay jars, some nearly two feet high, filled with dried herbs.

He stood in front of the Buddha, still clutching his gau tightly, and stared at it a moment before turning to face the lamas. He counted fifteen of them sitting on the long ledge then moved to the far end where the row started with a figure in a robe of coarse sackcloth, a stone bowl for mixing herbs at his side, his hands folded neatly on his legs around a string of coral beads. Not his hands exactly, but the bones of his fingers and the shriveled parchment-like skin that covered them. The man's head, little more than a skull covered with the same parchment, tilted back in a slight grin. One of the first of the lama healers, who had probably come to sit inside the mountain three or four hundred years before. Shan walked slowly along the wise old men. Some wore brocade robes and had gold urns at their sides, although most wore the robes of simple monks. At the foot of one lay a stack of wood blocks for printing a teaching.