Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

"Victory to the gods," Nyma murmured.

Lepka and Lokesh smiled and nodded, as if they had always known Shan would return the eye in the end.

"Who was it?" Lhandro demanded. "Who attacked you?"

"The eye has come back," was all Shan would say. "It has been watching over the valley for many days."

"Yes," one of the villagers whispered. "We heard it."

The Tibetans gathered close to touch the chenyi stone with tentative fingers, and offer it prayers.

Then Nyma stepped away from the group and stared at Shan. "But here we are," she said with eyes suddenly round and wide. "It's been the biggest mystery all along."

The words hushed everyone. All eyes turned to Shan, who stared at Nyma. Oddly, he realized he was grinning. Something in her words seemed wonderful to him. Despite the murders, the lies, the destruction- the real mystery for Nyma still was where to seat her deity.

"But I know the place now," Shan declared. "The mountain has made the kind of place where deities like to live," he said, and asked Lhandro if he knew where poplar saplings might be cut.

Two hours later a small procession moved to the water's edge, where a coracle had materialized, hastily made of poplar boughs and skins. Two narrow paddles, carved from planks saved from the houses, were in the little boat. Shan unwrapped the eye's felt blanket for the last time and held the jagged stone over his head. Excited murmurs rippled through the assembled Tibetans.

"The virtuous Chinese," someone in the crowd said admiringly. The words caused Shan to pause a moment, reflecting on all that had happened in Yapchi Valley. Perhaps, in the end, the virtuous Chinese who had saved the valley had been Colonel Lin. Or perhaps the virtuous Chinese had been found in pieces of Lin and Gang, Ma and Shan.

As Shan bent to pick up a paddle the crowd fell silent. Confused, he studied the expectant faces, then realized that they did not expect him to go alone. He handed the first paddle to Tenzin, and lifted the second, surveying the faces, then stepped to the side of the small crowd and extended the paddle to a small gaunt man who hovered in the shadows with his wife and children. Shan had found them the night before, huddled with the drum and the stone, and convinced them the time had come to end their hiding.

Gang accepted the paddle without speaking and the three of them stepped into the coracle, the assembly solemn and silent.

"It's like a precious jewel," Tenzin said of the beautiful water.

Gang repeated the words.

They paddled to the center of the lake to a spot between the derrick and the burial mound, now under many feet of water, then Shan motioned to Gang. The sullen man's face seemed to change, and he took the eye from Shan with a joyful expression. He extended it toward the people on the shore, then lowered the chenyi stone into the water and released it. Shan watched the stone, tumbling downward in the sparkling crystal water, turning blue in the filtered light, then it was gone. Deep is the eye, the oracle had said, brilliant blue eye, the nagas will hold it true.

When they returned to shore Lepka and Lhandro waited with bowls of tea. They stepped past a small circle of men and women chanting a mantra to sit on a blanket in one of the barley fields as Tenzin asked Gang about his construction work at Rapjung. Shan lay back in the warm morning sun and gradually slipped into sleep.

It was more than two hours later when he became aware of movement along the lake, the laughter of children. He sat up and looked, rubbing his eyes, at a scene so surprising it took a moment for him to understand. Strands of prayer flags had materialized near the lake, suspended between poles and rock cairns. Logs were moving along the valley floor from the venture stockpile, each carried by three or four Tibetans, men and women alike. There were new faces, many new Tibetans. As he watched, a small group appeared on the saddle of land and began running down the slope toward the lake. A chain of people carrying logs moved along the shore of the lake. At the water's edge each team stopped as a woman, an unfamiliar nun, dipped a bowl in the lake and spilled water on the log, like a baptism.

He tentatively approached the nun, but halted thirty feet away. It was Nyma. She had found a robe, and cut her long braids, cropping her hair close to the scalp in the fashion of a convent. Her eyes sparkled as she saw Shan. She had decided she could be a real nun after all. He offered a small wave, and with a smile she pointed to the south end of the valley.

The logs were not going to the ruins of Yapchi village, as he had assumed, but beyond, to the trail up the mountain. A child laughed and Shan turned to see Gang's daughter, riding one of the logs like a horse, as three sturdy Tibetan men joyfully carried it. The trees taken by the venture were all going to Rapjung. They were being carried over the mountain to build the new gompa.

"We held the last circle," Nyma said excitedly when he reached her. "The prayer circle we started in the canyon. They never stopped, they said. They went to a cave high above the valley and continued, night and day. With the eye back they knew they could finally stop. I joined them at the edge of the water, and when they had finished I asked them to help me cut my hair," she declared serenely.

Below the lake, near the village, Shan found Lokesh sitting on a rock, speaking with Lhandro. Lokesh was pointing to the fields as Lhandro listened attentively.

"No more barley," Lhandro announced as he saw Shan. "Now it is going to be like the old days, just medicine herbs for Rapjung. And Lokesh gave us drawings," Lhandro exclaimed, "so they can rebuild the herb gardens at Rapjung the way they used to be. People will bring in new soil, in baskets, from the valleys. We will send some from here."

"Drawings will help," Shan said hesitantly, "but it would be even better for them to have someone there who knew the old gompa."

Lokesh fixed him with a level stare. "That is where you will find me, in a year's time. Maybe less."

"We have little money but we offered to give it all to him," Lhandro said, "for buses to Beijing, to bring him back quickly. But he refused. He said he must journey as a pilgrim to Beijing. When he gets hungry he says he will beg. He says monks used to beg and it is an honorable thing to do."

Shan turned toward the lake, trying to calm himself. In all the years he had known the gentle old man this was the only thing that had ever come between them. But there was no room for argument, for Lokesh had been spoken to by his inner god. "It's going to be difficult," Shan said quietly, "with that bad foot."

"I have Jokar's staff." Lokesh pointed to the length of weathered wood at his side.

"The road to Golmud is treacherous," Shan said in a tentative voice. "Let me at least go with you that far, old friend." He sensed an odd taste of fear on his tongue, fear that Lokesh would say no. "Then I will leave, I will go find Gendun. I need to get him some new boots."

The old Tibetan smiled. "Of course. You can help me improve my Chinese on the way. I will need to speak better Chinese when I reach the capital. I will be ready to leave in the morning."

"So soon? Surely there are many diagrams to make for Gang and Lhandro."

"Which is why I did not leave this morning," Lokesh said stubbornly.

Shan saw the challenge in the old man's eyes. "Tomorrow morning," he agreed.

More and more Tibetans arrived, herders and farmers who had come to see the miracle for themselves. Tents were erected, and Lokesh sat in front of one with Lhandro, making drawings from his memory, drawings of gardens, of buildings and the special joinings of wood used in the roof eaves, even the details he remembered from the carving on the door to the printing room. Nyma appeared, cradling a long bundle, which she unwrapped on a blanket. It was the peche from the secret room at Norbu.