Joseph Lewis: Chimera

“Hello?” Her voice echoed softly again and again, far out into the distance and even farther up overhead.

When she reached the mound, she found it was actually a pillar rising sharply from the floor of the pool that allowed her to walk up to its edge while still standing waist deep in the cold water. The lotus leaves and blossoms clustered thickest here around the pillar and the jumbled mound on its top.

Asha explored the shape of the mound with her fingers, her eyes still struggling to see by the faint streaks of light falling from a narrow crack in the cavern’s roof. She felt the thick vines curling around the pillar and over the mound. Her fingers encountered huge leaves on stiff stalks every so often and they rustled softly as she brushed against them. Here and there among the leaves she found more lotus blossoms, all open wide to display their golden seed heads.

Standing in the cold water, she could feel the heat coming from the vines, and even the leaves and flowers radiated a slight warmth. The stone pillar itself was warm to the touch.

Asha slipped her hands under and over the vines, poking blindly into the dark places underneath, trying to feel out what was forming the shape of the mound.

“Ah!” She jerked her hand back. She had felt something softer than stone, softer than the firm leathery vines, as soft as the lotus petals themselves. Asha reached out and parted the vines, and the pale light from the cavern’s roof fell on the face of a young woman.

Her eyes and mouth were closed in an expression of perfect serenity, and as far as Asha could see the woman was not breathing. A thick mass of black hair fell from her head to the stone pillar on which she sat, all twisted and intertwined with the heavy green vines. She sat with her legs crossed and her hands resting palm-up in her lap. Her right hand was closed.

The woman exhaled.

Asha stumbled back in the cold water, staring.

“Hello,” the woman said slowly. “Thank you.”

Asha blinked. “For what?”

“For this.” Her right hand opened to reveal a muddy sliver of ginger.

“Oh. You’re welcome.” Asha felt Jagdish trembling on her shoulder, his tiny claws digging into her skin. “You’re the nun, aren’t you? You came to see the demon in the cave two hundred years ago.”

“Yes.” Her words shuddered on her thin breaths as though the air was being gently forced through an old bellows. “My name is Priya.”

“I’m Asha.” She moved closer to the pillar again and peered at the nun’s face. Her skin was gray and smooth. “You’re not like any ghost I’ve ever seen before.”

“Ah. Perhaps because I’m still very much alive.”

“After two hundred years?” Frowning, Asha touched the woman’s wrist and after long moment of waiting, she felt a single weak heart beat. And several moments later, a second. “This is incredible. How is this possible?”

“I can tell you the whole story from the beginning, if you like.”

“Sure.” Asha crept up onto the stone pillar at the woman’s feet, and pulled her legs out of the cold water. “I’ve got time for another story.”

“I entered the monastery when I was very young,” Priya said. “I don’t remember my parents or where I lived before that. I studied and worked, mostly copying manuscripts. Life was good, except for some of the younger monks. They did not approve of women living in the monastery and they would find quiet ways to harass us. Dirtying our robes, spilling our food, and so on.”

Asha nodded. “I’ve heard stories like that before. Some monks still disapprove of nuns.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Priya. “Lord Buddha was reluctant at first to admit nuns into the sangha, but only to protect them from dangerous men. He thought some people would not accept the ordination of women. Obviously, he was wise to be so concerned.”

Asha shrugged. “You can’t expect too much of people. They’re only human, after all.”

The nun smiled, slowly spreading her lips against her stiff and smooth cheeks. “Truer words were never spoken. Eventually, the tensions between us and the young monks reached a breaking point. I awoke one night to find the house in flames and my sisters screaming. Those of us who escaped out into the night ran right into the waiting arms of several men. They were masked so I can’t be sure whether they were monks or outsiders. They beat us with sticks and chased us from the monastery through the city streets. For the first few minutes, I managed to keep a few steps ahead of them with two of my sisters by hiding in alleys under trash, dirty blankets, and rotting planks.”

“You must have been frightened.”

“The most frightened I had ever been. We ran and hid, ran and hid, all night long. Whenever we looked back, we saw the fire in the monastery and the smoke blotting out the stars. And then, sometime late in the night, I turned and discovered that I had lost my sisters, or they had lost me. It amounted to the same thing. I was alone.”

“What did you do?” Asha asked.

“I walked on. It was quieter then and I didn’t see the men again. I was very tired, but still so afraid. I kept walking all night, right out of the city into the hills. And the next day, I kept walking,” Priya said. “I survived on what charity was given to me. I had nowhere to go. I knew no one in the world except at the monastery, but I didn’t dare go back. I don’t know why I kept walking, but I did. Eventually I came to a small town where an elderly monk tended a shrine alone and he allowed me to stay with him for a while. He was a very kind man.”

“You were lucky. You could have died on the road.”

“Yes, I could have.” Priya’s fingers shuddered and her hands moved to her knees. She inhaled and exhaled slowly. “About a year later, a new family arrived in the town and they came to visit the shrine. They said they had been forced to flee their village because a demon had swallowed their river.”

“So you went to cleanse the demon?”

“No. There’s no such thing as demons,” the nun said softly. “But I did come to see the truth of the matter. It was the least I could do for those people. The monk at the shrine was too old for the journey, but I was still young and strong, and to be honest, I was feeling less than useful to him. So I set out for the village. I saw the graves of the man who returned from the mountain, and then I climbed the mountain and found this cave.”

“Did you see the creature that killed the men from the village?”

“No. When I entered this chamber, I found a small girl standing here on this stone altar.”

Asha glanced down at the pillar they were sitting on. “Altar?”

“Yes. This is where the village elders offered their goats to the mountain each spring.”

Asha winced. “What was she? The girl you saw?”

“She was a ghost. A real ghost. I had heard of such things, of course, but I had never seen one before. Here in the dark, in the cold still air, the aether was thick enough for her to be seen and heard. She told me that she was the daughter of one of the elders.”

“He killed her? A human sacrifice?” Asha asked, her hand curling into a fist.

“No, he did not kill her. During the winter, the girl fell ill and died quietly in her sleep. But her father didn’t cremate her. He preserved her body until the spring and then brought her here instead of the usual offering. Perhaps he didn’t think the mountain spirit would care what he left, as long as he left something. After all, the goat would feed his family for days. I’m sure it seemed very reasonable to him.”

Asha shook her head. “Some people don’t think at all.”

“Don’t judge them too harshly. Here in the wilderness, these sorts of traditions and rituals can give people great peace of mind, even if they seem fruitless or even senseless to others,” Priya said.