The effect was exactly as he had hoped. The stick caught in the spokes, stopping the bike so abruptly the rider flew over the handlebars.
“Cao ni ma! Fuck your mother!” the man spat in Chinese as he hit the ground. Seeing that his prey had left the trail, he lifted the bike in two hands and threw it toward them before fumbling for something in his pocket.
Shan did not linger to see what sort of weapon he had. He grabbed Hostene and dashed behind a boulder, watching as the man recovered his bicycle and rode away.
As they waited to be sure their attacker was gone, Hostene replaced the videotape with another from his pack and they sat by a bubbling spring, watching a second tape on the camera. On it Abigail described how sacred mountains anchored the Tibetan gods, much as they did in the Navajo belief system. After several minutes the screen abruptly went black. Hostene looked as if he had been struck. He had lost Abigail for a second time. “Battery,” he muttered, and silently stowed the camera in his pack.
The sun was nearly gone, and Shan was fixing the location of the next grove of trees in his mind so they might reach it in the dark, when a sleek gray shape swooped across their path. He paused a moment to admire the creature and walked on, before realizing that Hostene was not following.
“What is it?” he asked.
“The owl. It’s an omen. We must make camp.”
“I can find the way to the next grove,” Shan countered. “I can. .” But seeing the way Hostene stared at the patch of sky where the owl had disappeared, he silently began to gather fuel for a fire.
As they arranged their blankets under an overhanging ledge, Shan asked why the American military had taught Hostene Mandarin. His companion explained that the Navajo were often considered linguists because usually they were raised speaking two languages, that sometimes, as in World War II, the army still assigned the Navajo to speak their native tongue in combat zones in lieu of a code. But Hostene had gone to language school during the Vietnam War to enable him to serve on planes that took off from the United States, refueled in Guam, and patrolled the Chinese coast, monitoring Chinese radio broadcasts.
“You must think me an old fool,” Hostene said as they lit their fire. “A lawyer and a judge, frightened by a little gray owl.”
Shan said, as he pulled out some of the cold mutton dumplings Dolma had packed, “The only fools are those who do not obey what their hearts tell them. I often made camp with Lokesh because he thought he saw a face in a rock or believed a pika was trying to tell him something.”
“It’s not exactly that I”-Hostene struggled for words-“I never. . it’s just that here we are on the sacred mountain with my niece trying to connect with the sacred things and. .” He shrugged. “To our old ones, an owl was a harbinger of death.”
“Whether we do it for the old ones or for Abigail or for the owl or because my legs ache,” Shan replied, “this is where we will make camp.”
Hostene smiled gratefully. “We don’t do well with death, my people. For centuries we lived in hogans, round houses made of logs and earth. If someone died in a house it was abandoned and a new hogan built. Ghosts were to be avoided at all costs. My father would undergo a purification rite whenever an owl flew close to him. He said otherwise someone in the family would die.
“When my sister was dying, she talked to Abigail about her birth, things that her mother said she must know. Abigail wasn’t born in a hospital like she’d always thought, but in a hogan. They never mentioned it before because when she was a teenager, they realized she would have been embarrassed. An old singer was there to bless her first breath. The first thing she tasted was corn pollen mixed with water, to make sure the holy people were aware of her and blessed her too. They used a special cradleboard for her, one that had been in our family for ten generations. Then, when she laughed, we had a welcoming ceremony.”
“Laughed?”
“It is our old way. You know a baby is truly a human, and that it will live, when it laughs out loud. A feast is held and gifts are given by the parents to all their friends, especially rock salt, to honor Salt Woman, one of our Holy People. Special amulets were given to Abigail as an infant, which she was to keep all her life. A small pouch with soil from each of our sacred mountains, small stones from secret places, other things no one may speak about.”
Hostene searched the dark sky and shivered, pulled his blanket over his shoulders. “But when she was young, maybe five or six, a terrible thing happened. Her family was visiting that same old singer, the hataali. When they were outside she found his sacred objects used in the ceremonies. She put his ceremonial basket over her head and broke open a pouch of sacred pollen. They say such a sin will affect the child who commits it later in life. Her parents asked for a chant, a purification, but the next week the old man got sick and never recovered. Abigail was due to go away to the government boarding school. The rite was never performed. They tried to bring her back for it but the government teachers wouldn’t permit it. They said that was exactly the kind of thing she had to stay away from. Later, we found out they had thrown away all her amulets.
“Abigail made light of it when she first heard the story, saying she would use it in her classes to illustrate the psychocultural elements of taboo. But it’s been troubling her recently. One night after we arrived on the mountain, she admitted she was worried that what had happened when she was young might affect her work here, might blind her to important signs here on the mountain.”
Shan said nothing. They retreated into their rock shelter. A cloud had passed in front of the rising moon. From somewhere higher on the mountain an owl called.
Hostene was awake at dawn. Shan had been tortured by nightmares, and been up for hours. Hostene declined the dried fruit Shan offered him for breakfast. They continued on to the next grove of trees, where they found only the remnants of dozens of small conifer cones consumed by the pikas. At a second grove there was only a ketaan stick jammed into a crack in a painting and broken off. Shan pointed to the many boot prints in the soil, and they each picked a set to follow. Shan went in the opposite direction from Hostene, after they’d arranged to meet back at the painting in ten minutes. But Shan’s trail soon disappeared at a rock ledge. He stood, staring at the treacherous-looking summit, still covered with small patches of snow. He was about to go back when a shadow appeared on the rock beside him and he heard muffled murmuring. He lowered himself to the ground and began to whisper a mantra.
The shadow moved one way, then another. Up, then down. When the hermit finally showed himself he circled Shan, who maintained his recitation. Rapaki finally squatted in front of him.
“On the summit,” Shan ventured, “wait the secrets of the Lord of the Mountain.”
The hermit’s eyes grew round. “At the top crouches the great one,” he said in the singsong rhythm he used for all his utterances. “His mane of turquoise flows everywhere. He spreads his claws upon the snow.” Rapaki’s head bobbed as he looked up and down the slope, as if searching for something.
“You are trying to reach him. I want to help too.”
“When there was a fertile field, there was no master.” Rapaki’s voice was like a machine in need of oiling. “Now the master has come and it is overgrown with weeds.”
The only intact book in the hermit’s cave, Shan recalled, had been the Song of Milarepa, the teachings of the greatest of the Tibetan saints. He realized that every sentence Rapaki had just spoken was a verse from the sacred text.
“In strict seclusion without man or dog, you may have the torch to see the signs.” Shan also knew some of the verses.
Rapaki responded with a rapid fire of words. Those that Shan made out seemed to be disconnected. Honored by the waking dead, he heard, face like the circle of the autumn moon, then finally, raksa raksa svaha, the ending of what was called the mantra for cheating death.