Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

It was a common problem for visitors to Tibet and could strike even seasoned mountain climbers without warning. Winslow himself had told Shan about the American tourists who died every year of the sickness. It could be an embolism, or edema in the lungs or the brain. Usually the only treatment was significant and immediate descent.

Winslow's eyes fluttered open. "Pills. I have pills," he said in ragged gasps. "I left them with the pack horses."

Shan quickly found the American's rucksack among the caravan packs and located a small glass bottle labeled Diamox. He gave two of the white tablets to the American with some tea, and a few minutes later Winslow opened his eyes and raised his thumb and index finger in a circle, the American okay sign.

Shan and Lokesh sat with him as he gulped down a bowl of tea. "Sorry," Winslow said. "It happens. No big deal really. Except I was at a five-hundred-foot drop off when it hit me. This guy," he said, pointing to Dremu. "He saved my life."

The words seemed to confuse Lhandro, who had never lost his distrust of the Golok. The rongpa stood hesitantly, poured a bowl of tea and handed it to Dremu. The Golok slowly extended his hand and accepted the tea with an uncertain expression.

As if he had to prove his point, Winslow reached for his pack and ceremoniously unpacked his little metal stove. He called Dremu to his side and handed the device to him. "I've only got the one extra fuel tank," the American said apologetically, and handed the Golok the little blue tank Shan had seen in the pack.

Dremu gazed wide-eyed at the stove, smiling one instant, then looking solemnly at the American, then smiling again. "You saved my life," the American said again, loudly, as if he wanted to be certain everyone in the camp heard. "I was looking out over the cliff and suddenly everything was spinning. Next thing I know I'm leaning over the abyss and Dremu has me by the belt, pulling like a yak. He saved me for certain."

Unexpectedly, a sense of contentment fell over the camp. The American had recovered from near death. Chemi, a new friend, was healed and heading home. The brave monk Gyalo had chosen to spend the first night of his new life with them. Shan, Lokesh, Winslow, Lhandro, and Gyalo sat huddled in their blankets, watching the moon again, exclaiming every few minutes over shooting stars.

Suddenly a low agonized groan resonated through the darkness. Winslow pulled his electric lamp from his pocket. Lhandro grabbed his staff. Lokesh grabbed his mala.

Shan darted toward the sound. It was Nyma. She was rapidly uttering a mantra, with the sound of crying, bent over Anya.

"She was feeling strange all afternoon, she told me, said she stopped once by the trail, shaking all over, then it passed. She said it was okay now, that sometimes it didn't mean anything, that he might not be waking up, that sometimes it was like this, and nothing happened, as if he had dreamed something, or had a nightmare, but was still asleep."

A chill crept down Shan's spine. Nyma meant the oracle, the deity that spoke through the young girl.

"But look at her…" Anya was shaking visibly, convulsing, her arms and legs jerking off the blanket she lay on. One of the girl's hands was clenched around one of Nyma's. A trickle of blood ran down the back of Nyma's hand. The girl's fingernails were digging into the nun's flesh.

"Christ!" Winslow cried with a helpless glance at Shan. "She must be epileptic. It's a seizure. Grand mal they call it. Put something in her mouth," he gasped, "to protect her tongue."

"Above all," Lhandro said in a solemn tone with a hand raised as though ready to deflect the American, "you cannot block her tongue."

Shan pulled Winslow away and tried to explain to the American what the Tibetans thought was happening.

"An oracle!" Winslow cried out, anger in his voice now. "Dammit, she's a little girl. You can't believe-" His words choked off as he studied the Tibetans, half a dozen now, sitting around the girl with grave, even scared expressions, not trying to help Anya despite their affection for her, only waiting. Lhandro darted to the packs and returned with a pencil and paper.

"Christ almighty," Winslow whispered in frustration. He stared uncertainly at the Tibetans, who gathered around the girl with butter lamps. "Jesus, Shan, you can't believe…" His voice drifted off and he stepped closer to the convulsing girl, as though he still might intervene to protect her from injuring herself.

Shan didn't know what to believe, except that he knew what the Tibetans believed about the girl. All he and the American could do was watch.

Gyalo sat near Anya's head. "My grandmother was visited, too," he declared in a soft voice. "We should make a welcoming place," he said, and began a quiet mantra. The others joined in immediately. Shan found that his hand was clasping his own gau.

"In my mountains," Anya suddenly said, "in my heart, in my blood." It sounded like Anya, Shan told himself, though a weary, distracted Anya. It could be a dream of some kind. Perhaps the girl had simply been exhausted from the trail, perhaps she had collapsed in slumber and was singing one of her spirit songs in her sleep.

Anya stopped trembling and seemed to stiffen, then grew very still as she spoke again. "Deep is the eye, brilliant blue eye, the nagas will hold it true." A chill crept down Shan's spine. Winslow gasped and stepped back. This wasn't Anya's voice. It was a cracked, dry voice, an old person's voice. It sounded hollow, like it was coming down a long tube.

There was movement at Shan's side. Lhandro was busily recording the words of the oracle. The voice echoed in Shan's mind. The eye, the oracle said. But the eye was not blue.

"Bind them, bind them, bind them, you have to wash it to bind them!" the voice croaked on. "So many dead. So many to die," it said in a mournful tone. A chilled silence hung over the camp and Lhandro, his face ghastly pale, looked up from his writing.

"Who will give voice when the songbird is gone?" the voice said, then spoke no more. With these final words Anya, though lying flat, somehow seemed to collapse. They waited in silence, no one moving, as though the words had somehow paralyzed them. Nyma stared into Anya's eyes, as though searching for the girl. Lokesh kept slowly nodding, and Nyma began rocking back and forth on her knees. Gyalo washed the girl's face from a bowl of water. No one spoke. Lokesh began his mantra again. Lhandro stared at the words he had written, then handed the paper to Shan as if Shan would know what to do about them. Shan stared uncertainly at the hurried scrawl, unable to read the handwriting. But he had watched, and knew Lhandro had not written the final words of the oracle. Who will give voice when the songbird is gone? the oracle had asked.

They sat for almost an hour, until Anya revived, rubbing her eyes as though coming out of a deep sleep, then suddenly pointing upward. A brilliant meteor shot through the sky, so close they heard it.

"The deity of Yapchi, the one whose eye you have, and that oracle," Winslow said in a small voice, still shaken by what he had witnessed, "they are the same? I mean I know there can't really be…" The American's words drifted away. There can't be a deity in the valley, he was about to say, just as, a few minutes earlier, he had been about to say there could be no oracle.

"I don't know," Shan replied hesitantly. "I don't think so."

Neither man seemed able to put their feelings into words. Because what they mostly felt, Shan suspected, was confusion.

After a long time Shan borrowed the American's light and went out with the red-circle pack among the sheep. He found a flat rock and salt in a pool of moonlight, cutting the threads away, reaching in for the chenyi stone. It was the first time he had looked at the stone since the day it had been sewn into the salt pack at Lamtso. He sat with the eye in front of him and stared at the dim outline in the rock, not knowing why. At least it might help him focus, might help him reach into his awareness in the way Gendun had taught him.