“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.”
Chapter 3
1
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.”
For the next hour they strolled along the water’s edge and Asha described for Priya the birds gliding across the lake, the tall flowers on the shore, and the expanse of farmland to their right. Hundreds of tiny figures stooped in the fields, poking and weeding and prodding and snipping. Priya tapped the road lightly with her long bamboo rod, tracing the edge of the grass and nudging little pebbles out of her path.
In the distance, Asha saw a dark shape towering above the hills. The ancient temple rose sharp and sheer to a level roof, a rectilinear silhouette of black on sky blue. She wondered idly how many hundreds of statues, how many countless painted gods stood posed along the tiers of the temple walls, and which one presided over the region. Shiva, probably. She didn’t wonder very long. It never mattered unless there was a festival, and then it only barely mattered. At least, not to her.
She chewed on the sliver of ginger in the corner of her mouth. “There’s a town up ahead. We’ll probably get there by supper time if we keep up the pace.”
“But you don’t want to keep going this way, do you?”
Asha sniffed. “It’s a nice lake. I’d like to stay here a day or two and look at the frogs, and snails, and maybe the lilies. You never know when you might find something new.”
Priya sighed. “You know, I’ve been hoping to stay somewhere larger than a village, at least for a little while. I have so much to teach people. So much to tell them about the things we’ve seen and done. How big do you think this town is?”
Asha squinted at the massive temple rising high above the trees. “I’m guessing it’s pretty big.”
“All right then. We’ll stay by the lake for a few days and you can play in the mud, but when you’re done we are going to that town and we are going to talk to people. Real people. Lots of people. Deal?”
Asha rolled her eyes. “Deal.”
They continued along the edge of the lake and passed the turn in the road that led south toward the temple. As the sun blazed small and white overhead, Asha spotted a handful of houses nestled in a grove of slender trees crowned with fiery orange flowers. Asha smiled. “Palash.”
“What’s palash?”
“A tree. A beautiful tree. It’s called the flame of the forest.”
“Why is it called that?” asked the nun.
“You’d know if you saw it.”
“Is it good for anything?”
“Skin cream,” Asha said. “But mostly I just like to look at it. I think I found a place for us to stay for the next few days.”
There were four houses together at the water’s edge and each one had a small floating dock jutting out into the shallows where fragile canoes bobbed on the waves. Two jute-string fishing nets hung from the trees.