Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

After half a mile, only a few hundred yards from the gompa, Lhandro looked back with frustration at Lokesh and Shan realized his friend, at the rear of the litter, had slowed, impeding their progress.

"The gompa," the Yapchi headman reminded Lokesh energetically. Lokesh offered a weak smile in reply, then quickened his pace. The old Tibetan's companions had become familiar with his habit of gazing off at some distraction in the landscape. But Shan studied his friend. There was something else about Lokesh his new companions didn't understand, something Shan himself had taken years to recognize. Just as Lokesh occasionally had outbreaks of deep emotion, he also had outbreaks of what, for lack of a better word, Shan could only call intuition. He could be like a horse, innately sensing something approaching on the far side of a hill, or the rock pika jumping out of its hole and screeching for two minutes before an avalanche tumbled down from the mountain above.

Once, three months before, Lokesh had stopped Shan as they began to cross an ice-covered river after they had crossed three such rivers that very day. The old Tibetan had not been able to answer Shan's confused questions, had only stood and made a hoarse croaking noise, even when he looked into Shan's eyes. They had stood there for ten minutes before Shan's spine began to tingle because he realized that the river was croaking, too, echoing Lokesh with a deeper but somehow similar sound. Then abruptly the river ice had split apart and a long wide gap appeared in the center, revealing black, fast-moving frigid water underneath.

Was that what Lokesh was feeling now? Was that what Dremu, the feral Golok, had sensed at the trail turnoff when he had seemed to be asking Shan and the others to leave Padme behind? Shan kept studying his friend as Padme began to stir in the litter. Lokesh was not staring at the gompa now, but beyond it to a thin grey ribbon that led toward the horizon. Toward the northern highway, perhaps thirty miles away. A road meant patrols.

They were only four hundred yards from the gompa when Padme weakly raised his arm for them to stop. "I will not go in like this," he said in a strained, brave voice, and rose from the litter. He zipped up the yellow vest and began to walk, feebly at first, with visible effort, then with longer, more confident strides. A monk on a ladder, adding whitewash to the outer wall, stopped brushing and called out excitedly. Moments later several monks ran out of the gompa to greet Padme.

"Rinpoche! We were going to send out searchers!" the first to reach him called, then cried out in dismay as he saw the injuries on Padme's face and arms.

Men in robes quickly surrounded Padme, supporting him at each shoulder as they escorted him past a small collection of rundown habitations and through the two tall square pillars on either side of the gompa gate. Shan and his friends stared toward the monastery uncertainly, then with a blur of movement a small brown dog was at Tenzin's feet, barking in a shrill, high-pitched frenzy, tugging his pant leg, tearing it. Tenzin bent to put a hand on the dog's head, and the dog bit it. Suddenly a stone flew through the air, hitting the dog on its side. The animal yelped and scurried away around the corner of the gompa wall.

Lhandro stepped to Tenzin, who held up a bleeding finger, and produced a water bottle to wash the wound. Shan surveyed the small buildings by the gate. In front of one crumbling packed-earth house a man with shaggy white hair and leathery skin sat under a crude awning, bent over a foot-powered sewing machine, working on what appeared to be a monastic robe. Another man, nearly as old, his head heavily bandaged, leaned against a rusty metal barrel, asleep. An old woman in a heavily patched chuba, her eyes glazed with cataracts, sat in the doorway of another house, little more than a hut, spinning a small prayer wheel. No one looked up. No one showed a victorious smile after witnessing Padme's return, or even after driving away Tenzin's attacker.

There was a single new construction outside the gate, a long narrow open-faced shelter of cinderblocks with a tin roof and a dirt floor. It was a familiar fixture of Shan's prior incarnation; they were called newspaper huts in Beijing or, by some, Party shithouses. Inside, on the back wall, a long glass-enclosed case displayed a recent copy of the official newspaper published in Lhasa, in Chinese. Shan looked back at the Tibetans scattered around the buildings. He doubted any of them spoke, let alone read, Chinese. Hesitantly stepping into the hut, he gazed down the row of newspaper pages, at the end of which was a board on which local announcements had been pinned. He quickly scanned the pages. A speech on foreign relations from the Chairman in Beijing was reproduced in its entirety, taking up three pages. A company from Shanghai, whose name he recognized as an entity owned by the People's Liberation Army, was building a hotel for tourists at the base of the Potola. Production of timber in eastern Tibet continued to surpass all records. The beloved abbot of Sangchi gompa, one of the largest in Tibet, previously reported to be defecting to India, was now known to have been kidnapped by members of the Dalai Cult- one of Beijing's favorite labels for those who resisted the party line in Tibet. A new hydroelectric facility had been dedicated southeast of Lhasa. A senior leader of the Dalai Cult, the notorious Tiger, was now believed to have killed Chao Yu, the heroic Deputy Director of the Bureau of Religious Affairs in Amdo town. Shan read the story twice. There was no reported evidence, just a statement from Public Security about the Tiger's record of violence and treason. The Tiger, the reviled reactionary puppet of the Dalai Cult, an accompanying article reported, would soon be cornered by Public Security forces and would meet the people's swift justice. A Tibetan school in Qinghai had sent the Chairman a map of China constructed entirely of rice. A Chinese school girl had saved a drowning lamb in Shigatse. There was a photograph of the lamb.

Shan paused at the last panel, half of which was taken up by a single announcement from Norbu gompa and the council that administered the township. A May Day festival would be conducted at Norbu, where the economic progress of the township would be celebrated in coordination with the holiday activities held in Beijing in honor of the global proletariat. Citizens were expected to participate, and a sheet with numbered lines was stapled below the proclamation for families or work units to sign up to display the fruits of their labors. The date was ten days away. Only one line had been filled in. Lhalung Pelgyi Dorje, it said, in the hurried scrawl of a prankster. It was the name of a Tibetan who, over a thousand years before, had killed a king who had almost extinguished Buddhism with campaigns of terror so severe they had not been seen again until the communists arrived. The hero was coming to Norbu, the writing said, and would bring one stale dumpling to honor the Chairman. No one else had subscribed to the May Day celebration. Shan studied the weary Tibetans who sat outside the gate. It was as though some of the local population were trying to embarrass the gompa, and others were scared of it.

"If we left now, we might reach the sheep by dark," Nyma suggested in a near whisper, as though she suddenly had doubts about receiving the blessings of the lamas. But before anyone could reply a middle-aged monk in an elegant gold-fringed robe emerged from the gate, smiling, his arms open in greeting, followed closely by two boyish monks.

Shan froze for a moment, and glanced with worry at Nyma. He recognized the monk, whose nose was long and hooked. It was Khodrak, the one who called himself abbot.

"Forgive us," Khodrak said. "We were so overjoyed at the return of our Padme that we neglected you." Shan looked over the monk's shoulder, past the gate. Over the ornate front door of the central building was a small banner in elegant Chinese script. Serene Prosperity, it proclaimed. "Those who saved our Padme are welcome in Norbu gompa," Khodrak proclaimed in a gracious tone, gesturing them toward the gate.