Joseph Lewis - Chimera

“What’s that?” Priya asked.

“When his heart stops.”

A last dry exhalation seeped out of the boy’s mouth and a tiny wisp of white vapor slithered out of the corner of his mouth.

“There.” Asha grabbed Naveen by the arms and flipped him over onto his chest. She placed both hands on his shoulder blades and began pressing down in quick, sharp thrusts.

“What are you doing?” Chandra grabbed her arm.

Asha shook him off. “He inhaled the aether when he was down in the village. It’s still in his lungs.”

“Aether?”

“Yes, aether. The mist.” Asha eased off, massaging the boy’s back in longer, slower pushes to compress his chest.

“But you told me that aether needs to be cold or else it breaks up,” Priya said. “His fever is the worst I’ve ever seen.”

“Aether needs to be cold to collect and become visible. It doesn’t matter how hot or cold it is if it’s trapped in your lungs.” Asha kept her eyes on Naveen’s mouth. The trickle of mist was so faint and thin that she could barely see it, and it vanished utterly an instant after escaping his lips. “Normally, if you inhale aether, you just exhale it like regular air. But aether is the one thing that the souls of the dead can control, and they’ve been holding the aether inside Naveen’s lungs to give themselves an anchor in his body. We need to get it all out.”

“What about his heart?” Chandra hovered over her. “You said it might stop.”

Asha wiped the sweat from her eyes. “It already did.”

Chandra was yelling and wailing, Priya was asking urgent questions, and even Jagdish was squeaking shrilly.

“Shut up! All of you!” Asha couldn’t see any more aether oozing from Naveen’s mouth or nostrils, and she could no longer hear the whirlwind murmurs of the countless lost and angry souls around him. She rolled him over onto his back.

“He’s dead!” Chandra collapsed around his son’s head, cradling it in his lap.

“Not yet, he isn’t.” Asha pulled one of the copper tubes from her bag, opened the end, and slid a small golden needle out into her hand. There were three faint scratches on the needle. She placed her left hand on Naveen’s chest, feeling the ridges of his ribs under his thin flesh.

There.

She plunged the needle into his chest up to the first thin scratch on its side. The boy’s eyes snapped open and he sat up straight, his shoulder clipping his father’s chin and sending Chandra tumbling backward. Naveen gasped and blinked at Asha, and then at Priya, and then at the golden needle still protruding from his chest.

“Breathe. Just breathe. Close your eyes and focus on breathing for me.” Asha plucked the needle from his skin and then she held his wrist to count the beats of his heart. She listened to his lungs and nodded slowly. “It’s over now.”

An hour later, Naveen sat outside in the grass drinking tea from a chipped cup and playing with Jagdish.

“It’s a miracle. It’s like nothing even happened,” Chandra said.

“Don’t fool yourself. Your son suffered an intense physical agony for weeks with his mind trapped in a nightmare that none of us could ever understand. And he very nearly died.” Asha slipped her bag over her shoulder. “You made a mistake once and a lot of innocent people died because of it. The least you can do now is learn from what’s happened here today. Pack your things, burn this house, and take your son somewhere else, somewhere where he’ll have friends and a normal life.”

Chandra nodded. “I will. Soon. When he’s stronger.”

“If you’re smart, you’ll do it today. Priya, we’re leaving.” Asha called to Jagdish and the mongoose leapt from the boy’s lap and scampered up Priya’s outstretched hand to her shoulder. Asha frowned. “Traitor.”

Priya smiled. “Oh stop. He likes you. He just likes me more.”

They set out on the path through the bamboo forest again, traveling through the deep shadows and the deep silence of the misty wood.

The nun cleared her throat. “I thought we were going to rest there and get something to eat. Are you going to tell me what happened in the village?”

“Nothing to tell,” said Asha. “I found some flowers and made some medicine.”

“And?”

Asha glanced at her traveling companion. “And I gave some career advice to a dead man.”

“Oh.” A moment later, Priya said, “Why does it bother it you when people call you a doctor? Why do you always correct them?”

“Because I’m not a doctor. Doctors pretend to understand more than they do. They expect people to bow and scrape before them, and to pay them. And they fail as often as anyone else, the difference being that people tend to die in a doctor’s care.”

“Are you talking about the doctor who trained you?”

“I’m just talking.” Asha quickened her step, trying not to think about an untended garden of dark pink peonies at the top of a gravel path on a cold mountainside, a brown spotted viper hunting rats among the rocks, and two small graves lying side by side in the shadow of a little maple tree.

As the sun came to rest on the western edge of the world out beyond the bamboo leaves, painting the sky in dark shades of crimson and violet, they came to a crossroads and Asha paused. Priya stood beside her, the bamboo wand in her hand, the milky lotus blooms glowing softly in her hair. “Which way now?”

“Chandra said there was fighting somewhere to the west. The Persians may be in Rajasthan. And as far east as this valley, apparently. I’m not eager to stumble onto a battlefield any time soon.”

“Neither am I. But where there is a battlefield, there are usually people in need of help. Perhaps in need of medicine,” Priya said, petting the small mongoose. “After all, what’s the point of traveling across the country, of seeing all these places and learning about medicines, if not to help people?”

“I don’t know. It’s never as simple as just handing someone a cup of tea, is it?” Asha said. “We’ll go south for a while. Maybe we can find some place warm where people need help, at least for a season or two.” Asha started walking. “I’m tired of these mountains and ghosts. They’re depressing.”

Asha gazed out over the still surface of the vast blue waters. The lake stretched out to the horizon where only a thin black line marked the far bank. A warm breeze rushed across the wide open fields behind her, rippling through the endless rows of jute and beans and the distant mango orchards to gently push her toward the lake where the wind sent a thousand tiny wavelets to wrinkle out across the water.

“You like it here,” Priya said. The nun plucked the little mongoose from her shoulder and set him on the ground. “Jagdish likes it too.”

“Jagdish likes it wherever you are. I think he’s addicted to the smell of lotuses in bloom.”

Priya smiled. The dozen white lotus blossom nestled in her thick black hair were always in full bloom, always open and exhaling their unmistakable scent. The nun insisted that the roots in her scalp did not hurt her at all.

Enormous white clouds drifted serenely across the sky, riding the wind wherever it took them and casting enormous shadows on the face of the earth. Wide-winged and long-legged birds sailed overhead in the thousands, flocking in every direction at every height. They swooped down by the dozen to flutter and splash into the lake where they swept back their wings to float and bathe and fish.

To her left, Asha watched a crested grebe strut regally along the bank. It paused to consider her, displaying its proud white mask and black crown, and then it slipped into the water to join its companions. Asha stepped back onto the dirt road that followed the lake’s winding shore line and said, “There are worse places in the world. Much worse.”