Shan’s heart leapt. “Lokesh?” he interrupted. “You saw Lokesh?”
“Yes. Uncle Lokesh. He came after dark and asked if he could sleep in our stable. He asked about you, said he was going to Jamyang’s shrine the next day and then he would find you. But when he heard about the abbess’s body he changed his mind. He said the body must go up the mountain, back with Jamyang, that it would be what she wanted, that it shouldn’t be left for the police to find again. He said he would show us a way that would avoid the roads.”
“To the flesh cutters.”
“The ragyapa, yes.”
“Ani Ama was the one who was to carry the whisk, to take over for the abbess. She agreed. She said she would go, just four of us. I realized it was Cora’s chance. By the time they reached the road there were five.”
“You mean the American joined them.” Shan let out a sigh of relief. Lokesh and the American were safe. Public Security hated the flesh cutters, loathed even having contact with them.
“A message should go to them,” Shan said. “The American should stay there. Lokesh should stay with her.”
“Lokesh is with her,” Chenmo said in a tight voice. “But not at the flesh cutters.”
“What do you mean?”
Pain was filling the novice’s eyes. She seemed unable to speak.
Shan studied her and thought he understood. “I am sorry. I ask too much. If you were found to be helping me you would not be cleared to wear a robe.”
Chenmo took a long time to answer. “One of those purbas, one of the free Tibetans who came across from India, explained something to me the last time I saw him. The government is not giving robes to those without families. They rely on families as hostages, make them sign guarantees saying they will not allow their son or daughter or brother or sister to engage in disloyal acts. If the monk or nun is disloyal, the families are put in prison. He said an orphan like me will never be given a robe registration.”
Shan had no words of comfort. “I ask too much,” he said again. “Just tell me where to go to find out what happened.”
Chenmo bit her lip. “I don’t think I can. I will have to show you.”
The novice said nothing as they descended in a more direct path to where Shan had left his truck, then only pointed at intersections, leading him on a narrow gravel track that took them in a wide arc around the convent ruins and into the field of rock outcroppings behind it. He slowed as a line of hoofprints merged with the track, then again as they passed a set of truck tire tracks that swerved onto their road from behind a huge boulder. The route the truck had followed into the rocks was little more than an old farm path. He considered the low hills it disappeared into, realizing he had seen them from the opposite side. The path led to the farm used by Lung and the Jade Crows.
“Here,” Chenmo said abruptly as the truck entered a small clearing in the rocks. The tracks he had been following had entered the clearing and gone no farther.
Chenmo seemed to withdraw into herself, and he left her in the truck as he explored the flat circle. He needed no further explanation of what had happened, for the soil told the story. A small horse accompanied by several people had entered the clearing from the south, from the direction of the nun’s hermitage. One of the footprints was that of Lokesh, a peculiar barred impression left by strips of rubber glued on the soles of his boots by a cobbler the year before. Two or three figures wearing expensive athletic shoes had emerged from the truck. The horse had gone on to the north side of the clearing, its tracks deeper from a load that had been added.
When he returned to the truck Chenmo was holding his map, biting her lip again. She was pointing to a new destination, a road he did not know that climbed in steep switchbacks out of the valley, cresting the high ridge before continuing over a long plain into the unknown hills of the next county. She looked up expectantly.
“Not until you speak to me,” Shan demanded. “I want to know who was in the truck with the body.”
“Some of those Chinese men from that farm. Rough men. They scared me. Most of us stayed in the shadows. Ani Ama spoke with them.”
“Did Ani Ama know the men? Did she seem acquainted with them?”
“Yes, she knew them. She had been to the farm with the abbess.”
“What words were spoken?”
“Not many. Those men were frightened of the body. They had wrapped the abbess in a sheet tied with rope. On the rope they had fastened some kind of a charm with drawings of black birds and snakes on it. Ani Ama started to get angry, saying they should take it off, that it was an evil charm. Then Uncle Lokesh stepped out of the shadows. One of them, the oldest, asked how to clean the body of the dead, and Lokesh explained how we do it. Then he pulled away the charm and just folded it into his pocket and thanked them. He whispered a few more words and they backed away as if scared. I asked him what he had said. He told them they had not brought death with them, but a cocoon from which a beautiful butterfly would emerge. After they left he had us lay the body on a blanket, then he lit incense and led us in prayers. Only then could we tie the abbess to the horse for her journey. He kept patting her as we tightened the ropes, as if to comfort her, speaking the death rites. The abbess may have been close to the deities, he said, but she had not been ready to die that day.”
Shan studied the map again, tracing with his finger an alternate route, a detour that would connect with Chenmo’s mysterious track farther up the slope. He turned the wheel and followed the tracks left by the truck that had brought the abbess’s body.
“No,” Chenmo protested. “Please, Shan. Those men scare me.”
“Just a quick look, that’s all,” Shan assured her.
When he pressed on she began saying her rosary.
At last the truck crested a hill overlooking the Jade Crow compound. Chenmo gasped. A column of dark smoke was rising from the farm. He eased the truck back, out of sight from below, and darted to the crest with the binoculars.
A sentry was posted on the road leading to the camp, armed with what looked like a pitchfork. The little stone stable above the compound had something new, a solitary prayer flag fluttering from its roof. The little grain crib Shan had seen in ruin was entirely gone now. Its salvaged timber had been used for a new structure of crossed planks, from which the smoke now rose. At least half a dozen figures were arranged in a circle around the intense fire. The Jade Crows were burning the body of their leader.
* * *
The sun was low on the horizon by the time they reached the long grassy plain that straddled the two counties. Shan looked uncomfortably behind him. At the crest of the ridge above them was the county line, where the meager protection he enjoyed would disappear. On the other side he would just be an ex-convict without travel papers.
Chenmo had stopped speaking. She simply pointed onward, toward the crest, more than two miles away.
They had nearly reached the top of the ridge when she signaled for him to stop and jumped out of the truck, running up the slope. She was standing on a ledge that overlooked the wide plain behind them when he caught up with her, looking out over the grassland with fear in her eyes. She pressed a fist against her mouth as if to stifle a cry. A chill began rising up Shan’s spine. What was it that so terrified her?
“We climbed quickly, using the road at first,” she suddenly explained. She pointed toward the end of the plain where the land rose steeply into more fields of rocks. “We were nearly at the trail that leads to the high country when we saw them. They were running toward us. There was no time to react.”
Shan’s mouth went dry. “You mean soldiers.”
Chenmo shrugged. “They wore uniforms. They had guns. We had so little time. Uncle Lokesh said the abbess had to escape. Three of us went with the horse, running up the trail. When Lokesh ran out into the open to distract the soldiers, the American followed and ran past him as if to help him. Cora was strong, very fast, too fast. She fell. Uncle Lokesh went to her and Ani Ama ran to the two of them. They tried to carry Cora away but the soldiers caught up with them. We watched from the rocks above. When they were gone I was sent back to tell the hermitage.”