Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

Shan found Lokesh with his back to the fire, deep pain in his eyes, watching the sparks as they flew into the night. As Shan stepped to the old Tibetan's side, he was unable to find words. It could not have been an accident. There had been no campfire near the cluster of restored buildings, and Gang would never have burned his little samkang, consuming scraps of his precious wood, at night, unattended.

"Someone came from outside," Shan said in a low voice. "That dobdob tried to burn the plain. It must have been-" something cracked into the side of his head and Shan found himself on his knees, blinking, unable to focus his eyes. Something sharp hit his shoulder, then Lokesh cried out and threw himself over Shan.

"Oppressor!" a voice shouted angrily, and a stone bounced off Lokesh's leg. "Tyrant! A Chinese comes and ruin follows!"

There was a struggle behind them. Shan twisted about on his knees to see Lhandro and Nyma pulling Gang backwards, dragging him away from Shan. His injured hand reached out toward Shan like a claw, as the other was pushed downward by his wife, a stone dropping from it. As the others pulled her husband away Gang's wife hesitantly stepped toward Shan, her cheeks stained with tears and soot.

"You must understand," she said in a rush of breath, like a sob. "All these years. Since our first child was born, all that time." Tears streamed down her cheeks. "In the winter waiting for snow so he could drag the wood down from the mountains. In the summer covered with sawdust. Working in the moonlight even, working on festival days. Never even taking time to play with his children." A wall crashed down, sending splinters of smoldering timbers flying in an explosion of sparks. A piece of charred, smoking wood landed at her feet, and she knelt by it, studying it as if she needed to understand where it had belonged in the lhakang.

"Sometimes he had to make his own tools," she said, in a remote tone now, as she lifted the wood and struck it on the ground to shake off the embers. After a moment she stood and carried the fragment to a row of stones, then carefully laid it on the ground. She found another, nearly two feet long, struck away the embers, and silently laid it alongside the first. Tenzin appeared, carrying another fragment to lay beside those collected by the woman. A pile of salvaged wood. The first step in building again.

They spent the rest of the night and much of the next morning combing through the ruins of Gang's buildings, collecting the remnants of wood, gathering up nails and straps of metal from the ashes, many twisted with heat.

As they worked Gang lay on a pallet that had been brought for him, sometimes gazing morosely at the smoldering ruins, muttering something that might have been a prayer, other times glaring toward Shan, throwing pebbles and curses at him whenever he approached. Again, the only person able to restrain him seemed to be his son, who sat holding his father's good hand, gripping it tight when emotion flared inside Gang.

"It's so remote," Winslow said as he gathered nails in one of the cooking pots. "So empty here." A moment later he looked up with a puzzled expression. "It could only have been that man who attacked Padme. He burnt that little meadow."

"Lightning," Lhandro reminded them. "Lightning could have struck the rooftop. It is a way the deities have of speaking," he added, looking back to Gang, as if suggesting that the deities may have perceived that the shrines had been reconstructed perhaps as much out of hate as faith.

They left for Norbu gompa, Padme's home, late in the morning as Gang and his daughter were led to the stream to bathe their scorched hands. The caretaker stared with glazed eyes as the sheep began filing away from the bank of the stream. He hadn't invited the caravaners, hadn't even welcomed them, and now they left with ten years of his life's work destroyed.

"We will pray for you," Nyma said to Gang's wife as she watched Gang. Then she followed Shan onto the trail.

After four miles they reached the junction with the trail to the north, the trail the caravan would take over Yapchi Mountain to Yapchi Valley. It was another ten miles southeast to Norbu, and they had agreed that the sheep would continue with the other Yapchi villagers on the north trail as Lhandro, Shan, Lokesh, Tenzin, and Nyma carried the monk to Norbu on the blanket litter. They should expect to stay at Norbu, Padme insisted, at least long enough to receive the thanks and blessings of his gompa.

"I'm going up," Winslow had said as the two groups began moving along their separate paths. Shan studied the American, puzzled. Winslow was leading one of Lhandro's horses. Then he saw Dremu waiting on the slope above. The American meant he and Dremu were going higher in the mountains to look for the missing woman. The Golok wheeled his horse back and forth, staring at Shan with worry in his eyes. Dremu seemed troubled by the splitting of the party. As the last of the sheep turned onto the northern trail he trotted to Shan's side. "He can walk," the Golok said loudly, within earshot of Padme. "Don't go. Let that one walk home."

Nyma shot Dremu an irritated glare. "We know how to take care of injured holy men," she declared curtly. The monk moaned and held his head, giving no sign of having heard.

Dremu returned her stare. "Ask him to tell you how monks mingle with the sky deities," the Golok barked, then cantered away.

Shan studied the caravan as the dogs pushed the sheep up the trail. Dremu's strange connection with the chenyi stone seemed to have made him resentful of anything, anyone, that caused a delay or detour in its return. But the Golok would soon see that the red bag was staying with the caravan. Shan and the others would be gone just a few hours. After that it would be only another two days to Yapchi.

Shan's worry soon faded, replaced by an unexpected sense of anticipation as they crossed the ridge that walled the plain on the south side, then descended through the low hills that led to the broad rolling plain below. He had been to very few gompas, at least gompas that practiced in the open, legally, with a full complement of teachers and student monks, and he missed the serene voices of lamas. Looking at the faces of his Tibetan companions, he realized that Padme's promise of blessings from the Norbu holy men somehow felt important to the Tibetans as well.

It was midafternoon when they crested the last of the long, low ridges and looked down on a complex of buildings surrounded by a ring of poplar trees in spring bud. Most of the structures appeared to be of stone and pressed earth construction, with neat grey tile roofs, the walls painted a pale cream color, all within a square outer wall of stone painted white, perhaps two hundred yards on each side. Three large buildings lay in the center of the neatly groomed complex, their walls sloping slightly inward at the top, all painted in the same cream color to a point just past the center of the second floor windows, then maroon above, the color of a monk's robe. Lhandro and Nyma, at the front of the litter, gave simultaneous exclamations of joy, and encouraged the weakened Padme to gaze upon his gompa.

"I never thought to see so many buildings!" Lhandro exclaimed. He offered a look of encouragement to Nyma. "The world is changing, you see."

But just as they were about to lift the litter again Nyma pulled a length of yak hair rope from the sack on her shoulder and tied it around her waist, giving her robe the appearance of a dress. Shan stared in puzzlement a moment, until Lhandro looked from Nyma to the gompa and nodded soberly. He took off his vest and handed it to her as she unpinned her long braids. Even though the world was changing, even though it was a gompa, it still meant Nyma was going down into the world, or at least its nearest outpost, where even a casual observer might quickly surmise she was a nun and inquire about her registration.