Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

As he stepped to Lokesh's side his old friend lifted the top of one of the box-like objects and with shaking hands pulled back the straps and cloth that covered its contents. It was a peche, a Tibetan book, in the traditional form of long unbound leaves of paper printed with wood blocks. "The Gyuzhi," he read in a whisper, then looked at his companions and explained that the Gyuzhi, or Four Tantras, was the most renowned of the ancient medical texts, written a thousand years earlier. He lifted the first leaf and read in silence for a moment, then pointed to the lines in the center of the page. "Possession of Elemental Spirits is caused by performing repeated sins, opposing thinking worthy of honor, failure to control the torment of sorrow." He looked up and grinned. "The causes of insanity, it means."

The excitement on his face was slowly replaced with solemn reverence as he replaced the leaf and the cover and repeated the process at the next peche, then two more. Winslow stepped forward and silently held the light at Lokesh's shoulder as the old man described the contents. "A teaching on medicinal stones," he said of the first, then explained that another was on medicines from fire elements, and the third about the use of stars to determine the most effective dates for mixing pills, written the year that the construction of Rapjung had begun.

At last Lokesh looked up and swallowed hard. "They thought- we didn't-" he began, his voice swelling with emotion again. His hand closed around the gau that hung from his neck and he cast a grateful glance back at the thangka that hung directly over the peche. On it was a Buddha figure painted blue, holding a begging bowl, the right hand outstretched in a gesture of giving. Vaidurya, the Medicine Buddha. "We thought some of these books were dead."

The purbas maintained a chronicle of Chinese atrocities they called the Lotus Book, which they had shared with Shan more than once. It listed details of lost gompas, lost lamas, lost treasures, and of those Chinese who had been known to commit the acts which had annihilated so much of traditional Tibet. Tibetan peche were listed too, sometimes, for the texts were always hand printed, and therefore never in wide circulation. Some texts were unique to the gompas which had produced them, and such texts and the wood blocks they were printed from were often among such gompas' most revered treasures. When the People's Liberation Army and the Red Guard had destroyed Tibet's gompas they had destroyed the peche within, destroying not only the texts but those who knew the contents of the texts. The Lotus Book recorded that huge bonfires had been made consisting only of the wooden printing blocks of ancient texts, and how the peche themselves had often been transported for use in the soldiers' latrines. Those peche known to be lost were listed in the Lotus Book as dead, with a summary like an obituary, often the last mention of the last work of a scholar who may have lived centuries before.

On the wall beside the peche hung a row of four more thangka, suspended from a plank jammed into a crack in the cave wall. Lokesh sighed again, and explained each one to the American in a reverent whisper. "The King of Lapis," he said of the first one, explaining that it was another emanation of the Medicine Buddha, who was often called the King of Lapis Lazuli, a gem highly valued in traditional Tibet as a healing stone. Tsepame was the next, the Buddha of Immortal Life. There was an astrological chart, of the kind used to diagram and treat disease; an anatomical chart of a human back, with vertebrae marked; one of the medicine trees used to describe the interrelationship of diseases. The last was an image of a simplistic mandala circle with claws extending from it, a head of flame at the top, and a curled tail of beads at its bottom. Shan had seen such images before, drawn by lamas in prison when no medicine was available for the sick. It was a scorpion charm, a token to drive out the demons that caused illness. Or perhaps, he thought as he saw the empty space where he knew the name of the sick was to be inscribed, a chart for teaching scorpion charms.

As Lokesh gazed upon the hangings, Winslow stepped around the chamber to each of the walls. There was another thangka- much larger than the others, hanging to the floor on one wall- another image of the King of Lapis. Beside it on another small ledge was a row of small dorjes, the scepter-like ritual objects used to symbolize the indestructible reality of Buddhahood. There were over a dozen dorjes, and though most were encrusted with dust they all seemed to be different. Some were of wood, some of iron, one had the gleam of gold. One seemed carved of lapis stone.

Shan sensed movement behind him and turned to see Chemi and Anya. The girl was standing by the woman. But Chemi wasn't trying to comfort the girl. It seemed Chemi was using the girl for support, as if the woman had grown unsteady on her legs.

Lokesh and Winslow noticed, too. They stopped, Winslow lowering the light so it made a white pool on the floor, like a small fire. They stood in silence, none of them seeming able to speak, until suddenly a woman's voice broke the spell.

"It wasn't day when he came," the voice whispered, "but not night either." Shan looked up in surprise, searching the chamber, before he realized it was Chemi. She stared wide-eyed at the thangkas, speaking to the Medicine Buddha. "It was the time just between, when the sun is gone but the night has not come. I wanted so much to believe he was coming. I had to believe it. I was so sick that believing it was all I had left. But it seemed so impossible." Her voice trembled. "I had an uncle. Before he left for India I promised him I would trust in the old ways, stay out of a Chinese hospital if I got sick. Sometimes Tibetan women go to sleep in Chinese hospitals and when they wake up terrible things have happened." She glanced at Shan, then her eyes dropped to the floor. "Part of me never expected him to come. Then he was just there. I had closed my eyes because my belly hurt so much. When I looked up all I saw was his smile. He was such a frail old thing, it seemed he might blow away if the wind grew. I was so tired, I wasn't sure if I was dreaming. This couldn't be the great healer, I thought, for he looks so frail himself. But when he touched the top of my head I felt such energy. The wind wasn't cold anymore and I just smiled and he listened to my pulses. When he asked me things I just smiled and told him, but it wasn't my voice, it was the voice of a little girl." Chemi took a step toward the thangkas, twisting her head as though trying to see them better.

"What kind of things?" Shan asked softly.

"Not about my sickness. Not at first. What time of year was I born. Had I ever taken a pilgrimage to Mount Kalais. He asked if I had ever flown a kite as a child, and did I know how to make a whistle out of a stick. How my family fared in the great struggles with the Chinese. Whether I still felt the Buddha within me. He gave me some little round brown pills and told me to drink from his bottle of drup-chu water. Then he lit some incense that he said was made of aloe wood and we talked a long time." She raised her hand as though to touch the thangka of the blue Medicine Buddha but instead she paused with her hand hanging in the air as if she were greeting the ancient image. "He wanted to know about places, about Rapjung and the plain, even about Yapchi." She slowly turned to Shan and Lokesh, as if she expected them to ask a question. "We talked about how you could smell the spring flowers at night now, and he asked why I carried a dark spot in my spirit."

Chemi's voice grew even fainter. "That's when I told him about an old woman who had lived in our village who always yelled at me for having loud dogs and how when some soldiers came long ago I told them how she kept a photograph of the Dalai Lama and prayed for his return. They took her away and no one ever saw her again. I told him I could not sleep at night, that she always appeared to me, the sight of her being dragged away by the soldiers." She paused to look in each of their faces. "He said the soldiers would have found the photo anyway and not to blame myself anymore. He said it was time to surrender the guilt, that a woman who loved the Dalai Lama would hold no blame for me. Then he put his hand on my belly and my skin burned, and my belly contracted and I think he drew something black out of my abdomen. Something changed inside me. I fell asleep and when I awoke the sun was dawning and no one was there except a little pika that just kept staring at me. I felt different; light and strong again. But there was no sign anyone had been there, and at first I thought it was a dream. But I could remember every word that lama had spoken and my weakness was gone. I stood, and I jumped in the air. That pika should have run, but it didn't move, not until I began to walk away. Then it ran to a rock and chattered, like it had to tell the world that I had lived. That maybe it had seen a miracle," Chemi added in a low voice, staring at the outstretched hand of the blue Buddha, and pushing her fingertips close to the blue fingers, just above the surface of the old cloth.