Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

Lokesh paused again. "We learned how to dig roots in the reverent fashion here, at this spring, learned how to push aside the soil a little at a time, taking time to coax the earth, always leaving some so the plant could grow back. Chigu Rinpoche said we learned about ourselves by digging into the soil. He said we should dig inside the earth to find the earth inside us." Lokesh raised some soil in his hand and let it trickle into his other palm. "It was a teaching mantra he used. Inside the earth, for the earth inside."

When they had finished Lokesh nudged Shan and pointed toward the top of the ridge above the ruins. "People are up there," the old Tibetan announced.

Shan studied the slope and saw nothing except a large black bird circling high overhead, riding the updraft. Winslow glanced up the hill with a skeptical expression, then scanned the top of the ridge with his lenses.

"You see them?" Shan asked in a slow, careful tone. His old friend's senses, like his emotions, were usually in a delicate balance. What he might have sensed was a memory of people on the slope, decades earlier, or perhaps he had seen the back of a fleeing antelope. Not infrequently Shan had followed his old friend when Lokesh had sensed the presence of a spirit creature, only to sit and contemplate a rock where Lokesh insisted the creature had taken refuge.

Lokesh rubbed his grizzled jaw then turned with a sheepish grin toward Shan and continued down the trail. Shan silently followed, knowing that once they completed the circuit they would be climbing back up the slope.

An hour later, after having returned to the camp and consumed a meal of cold tsampa rolled into balls, they were nearly at the top of the slope when they paused at a flat rock that overlooked the long plain. Winslow, who had refused Shan's suggestion that he remain at the camp and rest, pointed to two small clouds of dust at the southern and western ends. "Those scouts from Yapchi," the American said.

"The Tara Temple, the Maitreya Chapel, the Samvara Temple," Lokesh said suddenly, and Shan saw that he was pointing at empty places among the ruins, speaking of what he had seen, or maybe still saw, at the gompa. "The chora," he said, referring to the debating courtyard, "the inner herb garden, the north garden, the north kangtsang and the bark-hang," he added in a contemplative tone, referring to a hall of residence and the printing press.

Lokesh's finger hovered in midair as if he had forgotten something. "All those prayer flags in the trees," he said in a distant voice. "It's like a festival."

Shan looked back down on the ruins. There were no prayer flags except for a single modest strand by Gang's shrines, and no trees except the small juniper grove outside the gompa grounds. Lokesh was in another time, another place. Shan was never embarrassed for his friend, or fearful of his sanity. But today Shan felt a certain envy for the old Tibetan.

He put his hands inside his coat pockets. Something brushed his left hand and he pulled out the sprig of brush he had taken from the burnt patch of earth, and extended it to Lokesh. The old Tibetan took it and placed the sprig under his nose. He looked at Shan with surprise in his eyes. "Thank you," he said with a grateful smile.

Shan studied his friend as Lokesh clasped the sprig inside his cupped hands and pushed his hands against his nose, his eyes closed. "It's medicine?" he asked.

Lokesh nodded, his eyes still closed. "Not ready for picking, but from a healthy plant. Chigu and I would gather this sometimes out on the plain. It's called birds foot, for the way the stem branches out."

Shan pictured the scene as he and the American had found it, where he had plucked the stem. The plant had been growing only in the protection of the shallow bowl. Maybe the dobdob had not tried to burn the plain. Maybe he had only tried to burn the medicine plants. But why? He remembered the salt camp, where the herders were hiding the injured woman from healers. And the woman on the trail, who had rejected Lokesh's offer of healing.

They reached the top of the slope to find a long rolling meadow that extended nearly a half-mile across the crest and at least two miles to the east and west. Above them, only a few miles away now, loomed the huge shape of Yapchi Mountain, standing guard over the Plain of Flowers to the south and Yapchi Valley to the north.

Shan and Winslow stepped aside for Lokesh to lead them into the maze of game trails that crisscrossed the meadow. But his friend shrugged and stepped backwards, gesturing for Shan to continue in the front. It was an odd dance they had done often in their travels. It didn't matter who led, Lokesh was saying, for they would always find what they were meant to find, and eventually arrive where they were meant to be.

Shan felt an unexpected exhilaration as they moved along the rolling meadow. The wind blew steady and cool, but not uncomfortably so. Small pink flowers grew close to the earth. From across the meadow came the trill of a lark.

They walked slowly along the rolling meadow, Shan randomly selecting new paths where the game trails intersected, until they came to a long low ledge of rock that bordered a large meadow, protected on the north by a towering wall of rock. The bowl, nearly three hundred yards across, was filled with a low heather-like plant, and larks- more larks than he had ever seen in one place, fluttering among the growth. As Shan led his friends through a gap in the ledge he heard the hushed, urgent sound of voices and a hand came out of the shadow of the rock to hold his arm.

He pulled back with a shudder, imagining the dobdob had found them again.

"You have to get down," a woman whispered.

Shan bent to see five Tibetans- three middle-aged herders, a slightly younger woman, and a boy- sitting in the shadow made by an overhanging ledge. "If they see you they will run," the woman said. She did not seem surprised to see three strangers, only concerned they might frighten away the objects of their attention. Wild drong, Shan suspected, or maybe some of the rare blue sheep that roamed the mountains.

The Tibetans wore the thick chubas of dropka, heavily patched with swatches of leather and red cloth. Two of the men wore dirty fleece caps, the other the quilted, flapped green cap issued to soldiers for winter wear. The woman clutched a large silver and turquoise gau in one hand, with the other on the arm of the boy, who watched the meadow with round, expectant eyes.

Not even the appearance of the lanky American distracted the dropka for long. They stared quizzically at Winslow for a few seconds, and the boy pulled on the woman's shoulder to make sure she saw the goserpa. But when Lokesh and Winslow settled in beside the herders, as if they, too, had come to see the creature the dropka awaited, the boy's attention shifted back to the meadow.

Shan sat beside Winslow, his back to the rock, covered in shadow, then leaned forward to speak. But no one returned his gaze, nor seemed to even notice him. It was more than expectation in their eyes, Shan saw, it was a deep, even spiritual excitement. They sat, the wind fluting around the rocks, larks calling, brilliant clouds scudding across an azure sky. Two of the men began low mantras, fingering their beads. Suddenly the boy pointed toward the far side of the meadow, near the wall.

Shan saw nothing, though the dropka uttered tiny gleeful cries. The two men increased the pace of their mantras, joined now by Lokesh. He became aware of movement at the edge of the wall's shadow, a great hulking shape standing on four legs near the shadow. From so far away he could not tell whether it was a yak, a large sheep, or even a bear. Then a second shape, a human figure in a red robe, emerged from the shadows, and the first shape rose up on its hind legs. The man's features could not be seen from such a distance, but the stranger walked in short steps, leaning on a tall staff. Shan sensed the man was not merely old, but ancient.