Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

Winslow dropped to a rock and they sat in silence. A new vision rose in Shan's mind: Jokar in a lao gai camp, being flogged by guards as he tried to push a barrow of rocks up a hill.

"He only wanted to teach us again, to bring the healing home," Nyma said finally, in a mournful whisper.

In the morning, Lin was sitting up, leaning against the wall. He seemed incapable of speech, or at least not inclined to speak, but his eyes restlessly watched the Tibetans and his good hand restlessly searched his pockets, making a small pile of their contents. Cigarettes, matches, a whistle, a small key for manacles, and a tiny pouch of ochre cloth tied with a thread. Whenever Tenzin appeared in the circle of light cast by the butter lamps, the colonel pointed at him, sometimes making small grabbing motions like an angry crab, sometimes rubbing his eyes as if to see Tenzin better. Anya still did not leave his side, and she held a bowl of tea from which he sometimes sipped, though he winced whenever he lifted his head to swallow.

Jokar was gone. No one had seen him leave. Lhandro's mother said it was the way of such creatures, that they would just spirit away. Winslow thought he had seen someone walking on the western trail in the grey light of early dawn. Lokesh looked exhausted. He had stayed up nearly all night with Jokar, long after Shan himself had collapsed of fatigue onto a blanket. Shan watched as he tightened the strips of cloth binding Lin's wrist, then, deeply focused, as if unaware of anyone else in the room, pulled a bowl of brilliant white salt from the shadows. Lokesh placed Lin's hand, the hand with the broken wrist, over the bowl, and began rubbing the salt over the hand. It was Lamtso salt, the empowered salt of the sacred lake, and Lokesh was washing Lin's hand in it.

Lin did not react, but simply watched with the same rapt attention as Lokesh while the old Tibetan applied the salt with a kneading motion, then gently wiped the skin clean with a scrap of cloth. When he was done he folded what looked like a prayer scarf around the wrist, tied the arm into a sling around Lin's neck, pushed himself to his knees, and rose. Lin watched him expectantly, and raised his eyebrows, as if he were going to ask Lokesh to stay, but just watched uncertainly as he stepped away. Shan followed him outside to where Lhandro's mother was churning butter tea. The two men took their bowls of tea and walked to the rim of the plateau. Neither seemed to know what to say about what had happened the night before.

"So many times we have climbed up mountains because you thought you saw a giant turtle or a deity with ten arms," Shan finally observed. He had lost count of the number of times, in fact, but he never said no when his friend insisted they climb. "Last night, it was like the turtle was finally there."

Lokesh offered his crooked grin to Shan and nodded. "Those are the words."

"Is it true that you knew him? At Rapjung?"

"I was only a low initiate. But he remembers. We spoke for hours last night about Rapjung and Yapchi Valley, until Jokar wandered away and sat with Tenzin by that old tree. He remembers how I was always with Chigu Rinpoche, how Rinpoche had hoped I would stay to live at Rapjung for training."

No one stayed at Rapjung to live, Shan thought bitterly. "But he escaped before the army came."

"He had been called away by the Dalai Lama's personal physician. In a secret message, when the Dalai Lama fled to India. Jokar was one of the youngest instructors and they wanted him to help establish a new Tibetan medical college in India. All these years that is where he had been, building for a new future in India."

"It's such a long way to come. Hundreds of miles. He appears to have no money." Shan remembered the tattered robe and shoes. "Knobs have been chasing him." But he knew that meant little to Jokar. Once he was on the course intended for him he would be as likely to change it because of knobs as Gendun, or Lokesh. The Beijing Shan would have laughed when told deities protected such men. But there were times it seemed the only explanation.

"He said it is a pilgrimage of sorts," Lokesh continued. "He said if he had money he might be tempted to ride buses and go into towns. He has traveled on foot, always on foot, close to the earth. Eight months now, staying with rongpa here and there, sometimes traveling with dropka and their herds. Healing where he can. Uncovering old roots he said, as though the old ways were still in the land and in the heart of the people and simply had to be discovered again. He makes the old medicines when he can. Sometimes entire villages have sat with him through a night, to hear of the Dalai Lama and of the old days in Tibet and he reminds them of ways of healing they thought they had forgotten."

"But why come here?"

"This is where he spent nearly fifty years of his life, at Rapjung. He was sent there as a young boy while the thirteenth Dalai Lama still lived. In India, he was senior lama of the new school for many years. It was time to finish there, he said. I think now he wants the old school to be born again."

"Rapjung?"

Lokesh nodded. "He says he met other healers while walking from India, that they all know of Rapjung and many asked if medicine herbs still grow there. He said he saw the ruins, but he also saw new buildings." They exchanged a meaningful glance. Jokar did not know about the fire. "He said Tibetans must learn how to stay the same by practicing change." Lokesh paused and nodded again, slowly, as if contemplating the words. "The rumors must be true. Jokar must have come to take the seat of Siddhi, the defiant leader from the ancient tales."

"The knobs have spies in India," Shan said. "They would have learned about such a prominent lama embarking for Tibet to gather the people and restore an institution of the old order. They would consider it the gravest of sins against the government. It is so dangerous for him."

Lokesh nodded. "Duties," he said sadly. There was no need for more words. It had become their own shorthand. Shan had had the same conversation with Lokesh, and other Tibetans, often. Soldiers would do what they had to do, Lokesh meant, and the Tibetans would do what they had to do.

"He would have been safe staying here, for a few days."

"Who could presume to tell him to change his plans? He is visiting all the old places. The herb meadows. The mixing places. While he does so he will look for medicine for the sick colonel."

Shan considered Lokesh's words. "What does he say of Lin?"

"The bone at the top of his head was cracked. But there was something else, worse, from before the rocks fell."

"He was already ill?"

Lokesh nodded heavily. "Heart wind." The tantric medical system Lokesh and Jokar practiced believed that the heart-center was the intersection between the physical and spiritual beings. Not the physical, beating heart as such, but the center of the awareness and life energy. Heart wind meant stress on the heart center brought on by intense anger, fear, or other mental imbalances. Jokar would not address one of Lin's maladies without addressing them all. "There are medicines that could help perhaps, but in such cases all the imbalances are related," Lokesh said.

"Jokar says that heart wind seems to be the most common ailment in Tibet today." Lokesh's gaze drifted toward the trails. He, too, seemed to be looking for Jokar. "He said something else. He said that bringing Lin from the rocks to here, that was part of the healing, too. For everyone."

Shan weighed the words. Jokar meant that it wasn't just Lin who suffered an imbalance, that perhaps they all shared an imbalance, and that for Tibetans to bring a hated colonel from what would have surely been his grave may have begun another healing as well.

"Jokar says there was a small grey plant with heart-shaped leaves that grew on the slopes near Yapchi that would be helpful. He asked me if I remembered the ways of harvesting and mixing."