Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

Half a dozen pallets lay unrolled along the rear wall of the chamber beside one of the piles of kettles and pans Shan had seen tied together at the village. Nyma ventured through a doorway that led to a room dimly lit with butter lamps, and motioned for the men to bring the litter forward. The second chamber they entered was larger than the first, perhaps fifteen feet wide and twenty feet long, with an open air hole in the roof. Two openings without doors led to small rooms that appeared to be meditation cells. An old faded thangka of the Medicine Buddha hung between the cells. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness Shan saw several shapes rise from the shadows where they had sitting by the back wall. Lhandro's parents were there, and Tenzin, with the three purbas who had been waiting for him at Yapchi. In a corner behind the purbas was the equipment he had seen in the canyon by the village. At the back wall Lepka was examining several large, very old clay jars that appeared to contain dried herbs.

Lokesh and Tenzin did not hesitate as Lin was laid on a pallet. As Shan's old friend bent over Lin's limp form Tenzin collected all the lamps in the room and placed them beside the pallet. Winslow appeared and produced his electric lamp as Lokesh placed three fingers along one wrist, then the other, then the neck.

"Why bring a hostage?" one of the purbas asked with barely concealed anger. "We can do nothing with a hostage. All he can do is betray our secrets."

Lokesh looked toward the door, then back to the fiery Tibetan. "I don't understand. Is there a hostage?"

"This damned officer," the purba growled.

Lokesh knitted his brow in confusion. "Ah," he sighed after a moment. "No one brought a hostage. We brought a man who needs our compassion."

The purba with the green sweater, who had been speaking with Winslow, turned to Shan in disbelief. "You took him out of the rocks? You dug him out of his own grave?"

Lhandro's father hobbled over, lowered himself to the floor, and began helping Lokesh as he washed Lin's face, rinsing the cloth in a bowl of water and wringing it out for Lokesh. "You should be grateful to this man," the aged rongpa said.

"Grateful?" the purba spat.

"He is the one who made everyone run so fast. If he had not," Lepka said, "some of us would have been below when those rocks fell, instead of those unfortunate soldiers."

The purba groaned in exasperation, wheeled about, and left the chamber.

Lokesh toiled hard over Lin, washing him, massaging the hand of his broken wrist, repeatedly taking his pulse. As Nyma went outside to look for better splints, Lokesh looked into Lin's ears and mouth, then listened again, his eyes closed, at the pulse on Lin's neck and finally, removing the colonel's boots, at each of his ankles. He washed the wound on Lin's head once more, with a grim expression. Injuries to the crown of the head were especially unfortunate, for that was where, if it had to migrate from the injured flesh, the spirit would depart the body.

"I will make tea, for when he wakes," Lhandro's mother offered.

Lokesh's face was strangely clouded. "This one will not wake for a long time, if ever," he said, then rose stiffly and left the room.

Ten minutes later Shan found him sitting near the front edge of the small plateau, watching the sun set over the Plain of Flowers. Shan studied his friend, trying to understand the melancholy confusion on his face.

"The best healers at Rapjung were those who did not even begin studying medicine until they had spent years of learning as a monk, getting thoroughly familiar with their inner Buddha," said the old Tibetan. "They said that no healer could restore the balance of health in a patient unless there was also balance in the spirit of the healer."

Lokesh almost never complained, but when he did it was always about his own shortcomings. To think that somehow Lokesh felt himself at fault for not being able to deal with Lin's injury brought a stab of pain to Shan's heart. "I remember the lamas in our barracks saying once that if left to ripen to its true nature a soul will inhabit a body for many decades, then one day pop off like a ripe fruit," Shan said, following Lokesh's gaze toward the Plain of Flowers as he spoke. "But they also said that if left to grow in the wrong places spirits could became so rotten they will tumble off prematurely."

Lokesh offered a slow nod in reply.

They watched the sun disappear. The horizon glowed in a brilliant line of pink and gold under a distant layer of clouds.

"It isn't that it may be his time to die that disturbs me," Lokesh said quietly. "It's just that he is dying and I know no medicine, I have no words, I know not even what hopes to express for a man like that, or how to reach his spirit if he dies. There must be millions of Lins in the world and it pains me to so little understand them. I can make no connection with them. Not with me, not with the earth, with the world I know. How can I address the essence inside?" Lokesh sighed. "It makes me feel so incomplete, Xiao Shan. There can be no healing when such gaps exist."

Shan, too, had no words. It pained him deeply to think that the wise, kind old Tibetan was made to feel incomplete by a man like Lin.

They sat in silence as night fell. Shan began to realize how unique the little plateau was, sheltered from the north winds by the immense tower of rock behind it, open to the south, with a view for dozens of miles over the low ranges to the west and south, and beyond them, the starkly beautiful changtang. In Tibetan tradition it would be considered a place of great power. "The hermits who came here," he said at last. "Were they from Rapjung?"

"It wasn't exactly a hermitage. I knew it, or knew of it. There were two places on this side of the mountains, in the high lands above Rapjung. For centuries, every summer the medicine lamas came to them, because of their power as mixing places. There was a place they called the mixing ledge at the edge of a huge cliff, and another nearby called the herb shelf."

"Mixing places?" Shan asked.

"There are medicines that take hours to mix right, because special prayers have to be said over them, special sanctified tools used, with very precise portions to be mixed, in correct sequence, to keep the earth power in them. Once a batch was begun, the mixing could not stop. And for certain medicines the lama had to be in the correct state of mind, which meant they would come and sit in cells or sit out under the night sky until they reached the proper level of awareness. In the summer, I think, with that mountain wall behind to reflect the light, the full moon must shine on this place like no other. The mixing ledge was said to have a healing power of its own, as if the place itself was a medicine."

They watched the vastness of sky and land before them as it surrendered to shadow. Eventually a woman's soft voice called out, close behind them. "There is food."

Shan turned to see Nyma. She seemed uninterested in eating and sat on a nearby rock. "Where will we go?" she asked after a long silence. When neither of her companions answered, Nyma replied to her own question. "The Mountain Combat Brigade is on the other side of the mountain," she said in a brittle voice. "They will think we killed those soldiers. That dobdob is stalking us, probably waiting somewhere on the mountain right now. Down below is Norbu gompa, with all those howlers.

Some of my people feel such hate. Some want to go back and sabotage that oil camp." She looked at Shan. "They have no hope. They have only anger left."

"You know where that would lead," he warned, "if there is armed resistance, even the hint of it, the army will come and stay. Martial law will be declared, and a man like Lin will run the district, for years."

"Sometimes today I have felt anger, too," she confessed. "Our village. Our precious village…"