Sergeant Feng had stopped speaking. As they drove out of the base onto the Dragon's Claw he gripped the wheel with both hands, a distant, desolate look on his face. He only grunted when they pulled into the turnout above the ancient suspension bridge. He did not argue this time, nor did he try to follow as Shan and Yeshe crossed over the span, each carrying small drawstring bags with a day's provisions.
The air was unusually still, without the wind that almost always rose with the sun. Shan surveyed the slope ahead with the binoculars. He still was not certain what to look for or where to go, only that the mountain still held a vital secret. There was no sign of the sheep that might have led him to the enigmatic young herdsman. Perhaps he needed to return to the ledge with the chalk symbols. Then, at the southern end of the ridge, he spotted a patch of red among the early morning shadows. Once he had the pilgrim in the lenses, he could see the man was moving along the track at a remarkably fast pace, rising, standing, kneeling, and dropping in the act of kjangchag, the prostration of the pilgrim, as though the movements were calisthenics.
"I still don't know what it is we seek," Yeshe said at his side.
"I don't either. Something out of the ordinary. The pilgrim, maybe."
Yeshe shrugged. "Each time we've been here we've seen a pilgrim. In Tibet it's ordinary as rain."
"Which makes it a perfect camouflage." Shan suddenly saw what had been eluding him. "Let's go," he called out, still not certain of anything except that he wanted to know where the pilgrim was going.
They moved at a half trot along the ridge, keeping the pilgrim in sight. After an hour they had nearly caught up, and rested as they watched the figure begin its descent of the ridge toward the valley beyond.
The red robe arrived at the bottom of the ridge and disappeared behind a long formation of rocks. Shan and Yeshe shared a bottle of water and waited for the pilgrim to reappear on the other side of the rocks.
"My mother made a pilgrimage," Yeshe said. "After my sister died. I was away at the monastery already. She went to Mt. Kalais," he continued. "The sacred mountain. It was a bad time. Late blizzards in the mountains. Troop movements because of the uprising."
"Such challenges add to the accomplishment."
"We never saw her again. Someone said she became a nun, others that she tried to cross the border. I think it was probably simpler."
"Simpler?"
"I think she just died."
Shan didn't know what to say. He offered Yeshe the bottle and picked up the glasses. "He hasn't come out," he observed. Feng had loaned him his wristwatch for the day, which Shan stared at in confusion. "How long since he went behind that rock?"
"Ten, fifteen minutes."
Shan leapt up and began trotting down the slope, leaving Yeshe still holding the bottle in his outstretched hand.
He intercepted the pilgrimage trail, worn by centuries of use, as it wound its way through the boulders and emerged into the rolling heather of the high valley. By the time Yeshe caught up, Shan had scouted past the rocks and retraced the route looking for a second trail, a cutoff, to no avail.
Minutes later Yeshe called out and pointed to a small hole, a low, six-foot-long tunnel created by a slab that had collapsed between two sheer rock walls. It was barely wide enough to crawl into. But by the time Shan arrived and bent to look into it, Yeshe had disappeared.
The hole, he discovered, did not end in six feet, but jogged at a sharp right angle to the left. Shan squeezed inside, following Yeshe's dim shape for fifty feet before the roof rose, then disappeared entirely. They were in a narrow, twisting passage between the rock walls, which they followed into a small canyon.
"We are not supposed to be here," Yeshe whispered nervously. "It is a holy place. A very secret place. It is protected…"
His words drifted away, his tongue silenced by the power of the scene before him. A sheer rock face, five hundred feet high, rose opposite them, a stone's throw away. Diamond-bright blades of sunlight cut through the canyon shadows, heightening the sense of elevation. A hundred feet up the wall were five large rectangular holes, windows, carved out of the rock. Three other smaller openings, obviously manmade, were arrayed above the five, leading to a final smaller opening nearly three hundred feet above them. Brilliantly colored horse-flag banners, thirty feet long and emblazoned with sacred symbols, hung from poles extended from the five windows, flapping in the wind.
The Dragon Claws, Shan realized, were about to give up their secret.
"Into the shadows!" Yeshe cautioned, stepping behind a rock as though to hide. "There is someone at the water."
Shan peered toward the end of the canyon, where a shimmering pool of water reflected the images of the flags. Under a solitary willow tree at the end of the pool sat a lone figure, his back to them.
"We are not supposed to find this place," Yeshe warned again. "We should go. We can ask permission from the old-"
"There is no time for permission," Shan said, and moved toward the pool. There were small irises growing among the rocks, and a flock of birds at the water's edge.
"Not everyone is glad that you came," the figure said when Shan was ten feet from its back. It did not turn. The water and the rock gave a strange resonance to what was the voice of a child. "But I had hoped we would meet again. They say things about you I do not understand. Now we can speak once more."
"Your sheep have lost you again, I see," replied Shan.
The youth turned about slowly, wearing a grin. "Welcome to Yerpa."
Shan gestured to Yeshe, who stood behind him. "This is-"
"Yes. I have been told. Yeshe Retang. You may call me Tsomo."
He rose and silently led them back toward the passage they had just left, then veered to the canyon wall where he entered a narrow cleft obscured by the shadows. Tsomo led them for twenty paces through the darkness, until they reached a dim butter lamp at the bottom of a winding stairway carved out of the living rock.
They climbed the steps until Shan's feet ached; they rested, then climbed further. Along the corridor were several low doors leading to darkened chambers. From one came the sound of a solitary prayer, from another a fetid smell and an abject groan. At last they reached a large chamber lit by a single long window and dozens of candles.
The walls were covered with murals, paintings of guardian deities and the past and future Buddhas. It was not the chapel Shan had expected. It was far smaller, and he began to understand that he was not in a gompa at all, but in another type of holy place he did not recognize. A solitary man in the robe of a monk was on the floor, tapping a tapered metal tube from which vermillion sand fell. He sat at the edge of a six-foot-wide circle, most of which had been filled with intricate shapes and geometric designs composed of colored sands. The unfinished portion where he sat was inscribed with chalk.
"This is the Kalachakra mandala," Tsomo explained. "A very old style."
The sand painting was in concentric rings which led to square lines depicting the walls of three palaces, one inside the other. Inhabiting the palaces were scores of deities presented in minute detail.
"It is about the evolution of time," Tsomo continued, "the folding of time, because Buddha cannot bear to abandon a single soul, so that time continues in a great circle until all beings are enlightened."
Shan knelt reverently at the edge of the sand. The monk bowed his head toward him and continued working, building the mandala one particle at a time.
"Seven hundred twenty-two deities," Yeshe said behind him in a hushed tone. "They used to do this in Lhasa every year, for the Dalai Lama."
"Exactly," Tsomo said enthusiastically, pulling Yeshe forward for a closer look. "Dubhe trained with an old lama from the Potola. When it is completed it will have all the traditional deities, each one different, each in the prescribed position. Dubhe has worked on it for three years now. In four or five months he will finish. We will consecrate it, and celebrate its beauty. Then he will destroy it and start again with fresh sand." Tsomo gestured to shelves of rough-hewn timbers that lined the lower walls. They held scores of small clay jars. "Some of the sand from each mandala ever made here has been kept. It is very sacred, very powerful."
They continued along a corridor to a bigger room lit by four windows, more of the rectangular openings they had seen from below. The chamber held wide, sloping tables of rough wood along its perimeter, most of which were empty. Three monks and a nun were at work, each surrounded by butter lamps and containers of brushes and ink stones.
Shan saw the look of deference from those at the tables as Tsomo approached, and the nervous way they studied Shan and Yeshe. They had been prepared to receive strangers, but clearly were uncertain how to react. They chose silence, letting Tsomo explain the elegant manuscripts they were transcribing, writing from ancient bamboo tiles and tattered prayer books onto long narrow pages that, in the traditional style, would not be bound but covered with silk wrappers. Above the tables were shelves holding scores of similar silk packages. They were called potis, Trinle had told Shan once, books wrapped in robes. At one table a monk sat not with brushes but with long chisels and gouges. He was carving the long boards between which the potis were tied. Shan paused at the table, surprised not by the intricate detail of the birds and flowers the monk was carving, but because the man could create such beauty despite the fact that one of his thumbs was missing.
The nun rose and wandered toward them. "The history of every gompa in Tibet," she said, gesturing to the far wall. Her voice was rough, as though from lack of use. "There are letters from the Great Fifth to the kenpos announcing funds for new chapels. There are the original plans for the rope bridge across the Dragon Throat."
Tsomo pulled Shan by the arm as the nun led an awestruck Yeshe along the manuscripts, away from the door. They moved up more steps to an inner chamber deep inside the mountain. It had the air of a classroom. There were only two lamps in the room, both on a small altar. At the far end were shelves of pottery, most of which was broken; above the pottery were symbols painted on the wall. There was a carpet on the floor, and seat cushions on which two monks sat.
One of the monks was facing away from them toward the altar. The other, an older, austere man with twinkling eyes, greeted them with a slight bow from his waist. "You are most persistent, Xiao Shan," the monk said in Mandarin. There was the sound of bare feet scampering behind him. Three boys in the robes of students moved inside and sat behind the monk who spoke. They looked at Shan with round, bewildered expressions.
"You have presented us with quite a dilemma, you know," the old lama continued.
"I am only investigating a murder." Shan's eyes moved back to the symbols above the pottery. With a start he realized he had seen them before, made in chalk at the ledge above the Dragon Throat Bridge.
"Yes. We know. The prosecutor was killed not far from here. Sungpo the hermit is detained. The 404th is on strike. Seventeen priests have been tortured. A prisoner has been executed. The Public Security Bureau is poised for another atrocity."
"You know more about the 404th than I do," Shan said in wonder. "Are you the abbot of this place?"
The man's smile seemed to cover his entire face. "There is no abbot here. My name is Gendun. I am just a simple monk." As he spoke his fingers worked rosary beads carved of dark reddish wood. "Will they send you back there, when it is done?"
Shan paused, considering the man, not the question. "Unless they choose a worse place."
Another boy appeared with a pot of buttered tea and filled bowls in silence. From somewhere came the sound of tsingha, the tiny, chimelike cymbals of Buddhist worship.
"You said I was a dilemma," Shan said as he accepted one of the bowls.
"Yerpa is the secret room of a house never seen, built in a land of shadow. Three hundred years ago one of our scholars wrote that in a book." Gendun paused and smiled at Shan. "We write books for each other sometimes, since no one else can see them. He said we were between worlds here. A stopping-over place. Not of the earth, not of the beyond. He called it the mountain of dreams."
"The eye of the raven," the other priest said, still with his back to them. Something in his voice sounded familiar.
Tsomo smiled. "In the library there is a poem, about the dead of winter. Among a hundred snowy mountains, it says, the only thing moving is the eye of the raven."
Shan realized that Gendun was looking at Feng's wristwatch. Shan extended his arm.
"What do you call this?" the monk asked.
"A watch. A small clock." Shan removed it and handed it to him.
Gendun looked at it with wonder in his eyes and held it to his ear. He smiled and shook his head. "You Chinese," he grinned, and handed it back.
Tsomo left his side with a small reverent bow, and knelt beside the second monk, who still faced the altar.
"Even before the armies came from the north this place was known only to the few who needed to know," the old monk continued. "The Dalai Lama. The Panchen Lama. The Regent. It is said to be one of the caves of the great Guru Rinpoche," he said. "It is a world in itself. Usually those who come never leave. It was as you see it five hundred years ago. It will be like this five hundred years from now," he said with absolute confidence.
"I am sorry. But if we do not go back soldiers will come. We mean no harm."
"The tunnel can be sealed against searchers. It has been done in the past. For years at a time when necessary."
"He could teach us the way of the Tao," Tsomo interjected. "We could better understand the books of Lao Tze."
"Yes, Rinpoche. It would be wonderful to have such a teacher." Gendun turned to Shan. "Are you able to teach these things?"
Shan did not hear until he was asked the second time. The monk had called the boy Rinpoche, the term for a venerated lama, a reincarnated teacher. "An old abbot once said to me, 'I can recite the books. I can show you the ceremonies. But whether you learn them is up to you.' "
Tsomo gave a small laugh of victory, then rose and poured Shan more tea. "They say in parts of China it is impossible to separate the Tao from Buddha's way."
"When I lived in Beijing I visited a secret temple every day. On one side of the altar sat a figure of Lao Tze. On the other sat Buddha."
Tsomo's eyes grew round again. "Things always seem so far away from the top of a mountain. We have much to learn."
The moment was magical. No one spoke. The sound of the tsingha grew closer. A boy appeared, the small cymbals dangling in front of him. Behind him came two women, nuns, one carrying a tray with two covered bowls and the second a large pot of tea. They set the objects before the altar, and the monk who knelt there, his back still to Shan, began a ritual of blessing.
Shan knew he had heard the voice before, but there were so few monks he knew outside the 404th. Had he seen this man at Saskya? At Khartok, perhaps? He strained to see the man through the dim light as the nuns and monks spoke in turns, ceremonial words that Shan did not understand. When it was over the monk at the altar stood and straightened, then turned to face Shan.
"Are you ready?" he asked. It was Trinle.
They studied each other in silence. Shan felt strangely overwhelmed. For some reason he felt unable to ask how Trinle had spirited himself out of the camp, or why he had laboriously masqueraded as a pilgrim to reach Yerpa. Instead he followed them, Trinle and Tsomo and the two nuns, as they began climbing still another set of steep stairs, a narrow twisting passage worn, like the others, from centuries of use. After a minute's hard climb they reached a landing. The stairs continued ahead, but a dimly lit passage led to the left, toward the heart of the mountain. Along its sides several heavy wooden doors could be seen before the passage curved out of sight.
The group continued up the stairs, climbing in silence for at least five minutes. Twice Shan had to stop and lean against the wall, not from fatigue but from a strange overwhelming sense of passing through something, of straining against a barrier. He seemed to be hearing something but there were no sounds. He seemed to be seeing swarms of shadows shifting on the wall but there was only one steady lamp, carried far ahead. It was as though each step took them not toward another part of the mountain but toward another world. Each time he paused, Trinle was waiting with his serene smile.
They reached a landing with a thick wooden door, intricately carved with faces of protective demons and fastened with a heavy wrought-iron latch. Tsomo waited for them to gather on the landing and form a single-file procession, then opened the door, and led the way into the chamber with a low prayer.
There was no one inside. It was a sparse, square room, perhaps thirty feet to a side, furnished with one rough-hewn table and two chairs, a large iron brazier for holding coals, and several shelves of manuscripts. One wall was covered with an intricate mural of the life of Buddha. The opposite wall was of cedar planks, with a central wooden panel that seemed to match the door but it had no hinges or latches. It was held fast with huge hand-wrought bolts, fastened with nuts nearly the size of Shan's fist. On the floor beside it was one of the illuminated manuscripts, just below a black rectangular panel, perhaps ten inches high and twenty inches long.
Trinle silently lit more butter lamps and turned to Shan. "Do you know the term gomchen?" he asked, as casually as if they were together in their hut at the 404th. "It is little used these days."
Shan shook his head.
"A hermit of hermits. A living Buddha, on a lifetime hermitage," Trinle said.
"It was the Second who decided the gomchen had to be protected," Tsomo continued. "A sacred trust. A small remote holy place had to be selected, to shelter his home so deeply that the secret would always be kept."
"The Second?" Shan asked in confusion.
"The Second Dalai Lama."
"But that was nearly five hundred years ago."
"Yes. There have been fourteen Dalai Lamas. But only nine of our gomchen." Trinle's voice, almost a whisper, was filled with uncharacteristic pride.
Tsomo was at the manuscript now. He opened it to a page marked with a strip of silk. The serene smile returned to his face as he read.
The nuns uncovered the tray and set bowls of tsampa and tea beside the manuscript. It wasn't a black panel on the wall, Shan realized. It was a hole in the wall, an access to a room beyond. He remembered the small solitary window high in the face of the cliff.
"You care for a hermit here," he said in a whisper.
Trinle put his finger to his lips. "Not a hermit. The gomchen," he said, and silently watched as Tsomo and the nuns prepared the food. When they were done, Trinle joined them in kneeling on the floor and prostrating themselves toward the cell, chanting as they did so.
No one spoke until they had climbed down the long flight of stairs and reentered the small chapel where Shan had discovered Trinle.
"It is hard to explain," Trinle said. "The Great Fifth, he said the gomchen was like one brilliant diamond buried in a vast mountain. Our abbot, when I was young, said the gomchen was all that was trying to be inside us, without the burden of wanting."
"You said there was a trust. A gompa that protects the gomchen."
"It has always been our great honor."
Shan looked up, confused. "But this place. It is not exactly a gompa."
"No. Not Yerpa. Nambe gompa."
Shan stared. "But Nambe gompa is gone." Choje had been the abbot of Nambe gompa. "Destroyed by army planes."
"Ah yes," Trinle said with his serene smile. "The stone walls were destroyed. But Nambe is not those old walls. We still exist. We still have our sacred duty to Yerpa."
Shan, numbed by Trinle's announcement, thought of Choje back at the 404th, performing his own sacred duty to protect Yerpa. He became aware that Tsomo was sitting beside him. "He writes very beautifully, when he is not meditating," Tsomo said. "About the evolution of the soul."
Shan remembered the manuscript in the antechamber. The gomchen communicated with them by writing religious tracts in the manuscript. "How long has it been?" Shan asked, still awed. "Since the bolts were tightened."
Trinle seemed hard-pressed to answer. "Time is not one of his dimensions," he said. "Last year he recorded a conversation with the Second Dali Lama. As if he were there, as if it had just taken place."
"But in years," Shan persisted. "When did he-"
"Sixty-one years ago," Tsomo said. A flash of joy lit his eyes.
"It was a very different world," Shan observed reverently.
"It still is. For him. He does not know. It is one of the rules. Outside is irrelevant. He only considers Buddhahood."
"At night," Tsomo said with a strangely longing tone. "He can watch the stars."
"You mean he doesn't know about…" Shan struggled to find the words.
"The troubles of the secular world?" Trinle offered. "No. They come and go. There has always been suffering. There have always been invaders. The Mongolians. The Chinese, several times. Even the British. Invasions pass. They do not affect our good fortune."
"Good fortune?" Shan asked, his voice breaking with emotion.
Trinle seemed genuinely surprised at Shan's question. "To have been able to pass the current incarnation in this holy land." He studied Shan. "The suffering of our people is unimportant to the work of the gomchen," Trinle said with new concern in his voice as he studied Shan. It was as though he felt a need to calm his visitor. "He must not be burdened with the world. That is why there was so much concern, the first time you met Tsomo."
"When I met Tsomo?"
"Consultations were made. Had he been contaminated? we asked."
"If it is unimportant inside, it must be kept unimportant outside, I told them," Tsomo offered.
Suddenly, with painful clarity, Shan understood. "He could die soon, the gomchen."
"At night we can hear him coughing," Trinle said heavily. "There is blood sometimes in his basin. We offer more blankets. He will not use them. We must be ready. Tsomo is the tenth."
The announcement sent a shiver down Shan's spine. He stared, speechless, at the vibrant, wise youth who soon would be locked into the stone forever. Tsomo returned his stare with a broad smile.
They walked Shan back to the library where Yeshe, still wide-eyed, was poring over the manuscripts. As Trinle and Tsomo joined Yeshe, Gendun appeared at the door.
"I believe Prosecutor Jao was killed to protect Yerpa," Shan said abruptly, before they entered the room.
"The prosecutor had many enemies," the old monk observed.
"I mean, I believe his murder was committed on the Dragon's Claw to protect the gomchen."
Gendun shook his head slowly. "Every morning we have a prayer. A blessing of the wind, to be gentle on the birds. A blessing of our shoes, to keep them from treading on insects."
"What if there were other Tibetans who wanted to protect you, who cared less than you about killing insects?"
The old man looked very sad. "Then the trust imposed on us by the Second would have been broken. We could not accept being protected by a violation of a holy vow."
Shan moved around the room and paused at the row of windows, Gendun joining him a moment later. The small pool was lit by the sun now. Near the water, lying in the sunlight, were four figures on blankets. They were not meditating, but lay as though debilitated, without the strength even to sit.
"You have sickness here?" he asked the monk.
"It is the price we pay. In recent years there have been new diseases which our herbs cannot cure. Sometimes we get pockmarked faces and fevers. We sometimes move to the next life at an early age."
"Smallpox," Shan said in alarm.
"I have heard that name, from the valley," Gendun nodded. "We call it rotting cheek."
He studied the frail forms below him with a sense of helpless horror. What was it Li had said when he mocked Dr. Sung? Sometimes in the mountains they contract diseases that had disappeared in the rest of the world. He had a sudden, waking nightmare, in which all the monks had died of disease, and left the gomchen sealed in his chamber. He blinked away the vision and turned back to the room. Gendun had stepped to the table beside Yeshe. Shan was unattended for the moment. The monks were all with Yeshe now, who was firing a barrage of excited questions at them as he studied another ancient manuscript. Shan quietly moved out of the room.
The hallway was clear. He ran up the first flight of stairs to the landing and stepped into the dimly lit passage. He pulled one of the butter lamps from its niche in the wall and opened the first door.
It was a small room, not much more than a closet. Its shelves were filled with folded tapestries. A huge cedar trunk held nothing but four pairs of worn sandals.
The next room was bigger, but its only contents were clay jars of herbs and boxes of ink brushes.
The third contained huge ceramic jars of barley and, on a central table, a four-foot-long wrought-iron wrench. He stopped in frustration. There should be costumes. He had been certain there would be costumes. Someone had broken the trust and used a costume from Yerpa to kill Jao. He followed the curve of the passage at a jog, passing four more doors until he reached the end, where a large tapestry of the lives of Buddha was hung. He pushed it aside. It concealed a door.
The room was larger than the others, mustier, heavy with the scent of incense. He held up the lamp with a sigh of satisfaction. Gold brocade flickered in the light. The costumes were there, eight in all, laid out on deep shelves along each wall. His hand closed around the gau on his neck and he stepped forward. The skeletal leatherbound arms of the creatures hung out of the sleeves. He stepped to the nearest, raised the lamp to the head and groaned in horror.
He fell to his knees. A dry heave wracked his belly.
"It is a very special place," someone said behind him. It was Tsomo.
Shan slowly looked up, filled with self-revulsion. "I didn't-" he croaked. "I had to know. If there were costumes. For demon dancers."
Tsomo nodded, forgiveness already in his eyes. "It is understandable. But this is a poor hermitage. We do not celebrate many festivals. We have no such costumes."
Shan stood and lifted his eyes. "I was afraid you had Tamdin here. I had to…" He did not finish the sentence.
"Not here. Here-" Tsomo extended his hand reverently toward the silent forms on the shelves. "Here it is just a few old men asleep in their mountain."
Shan backed out, the scene of the mummified hermits of Yerpa forever seared into his brain.
As he closed the door, Tsomo smiled serenely. "Sometimes I visit them, to meditate. I am very peaceful when I am with them."
When they met Yeshe at the door to the mandala room, Gendun handed Yeshe and Shan each one of the small jars from the shelves.
"A hundred years ago there was a very great mandala, done by a monk who was soon to become our gomchen. These are the last of his sands."
Yeshe gasped and pushed the jar back. "I cannot take such a gift."
Gendun smiled. "It is not a gift. It is an empowerment."
Shan saw that Yeshe understood. The gift was their trust. The old monk put his hand on the back of Yeshe's head and uttered a small prayer of farewell.
They spoke no more until they were at the rock maze that led out of Yerpa. Yeshe had already disappeared into the rocks when Tsomo put a hand on Shan's shoulder.
"Why do you do this?" Shan asked. "Why endanger your secrets with me?"
"I would be saddened if you thought them a burden."
"Not a burden. An honor. A responsibility."
"Trinle and Choje, they decided it was no longer honorable not to let you know."
"But will it help me find the murderer?" Shan said in a near whisper, his hand clasped around the jar of sand in his pocket. They had given him empowerment. Could the secrets of Yerpa empower him to save Sungpo?
Tsomo shrugged. "Perhaps it will just make it easier when you do not find him. You must remember what you told me that first day. From Lao Tze. To know that you do not know, that is best." The youth gave a small smile that seemed almost mischievous.
"There is something that puzzles me about you," Shan said. "The gomchen knows nothing about the world outside. But you are the future gomchen. You know about it. Invaders. Murder. Massacre."
Tsomo shook his head. "I do not know those things. I am trained not to look beyond the mountains. I have heard of such possibilities. Like our ninth heard of the Great War and that the Emperor Pu Yi had been dethroned in Beijing. But they are only words. Like hearing of the atmosphere of a distant planet. Like fables. Not one of my realities. I have not encountered them." He studied Shan in silence for a moment. "I have encountered you. You are the most outside I have ever been."
Shan didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "I'm not much to judge the world by."
"There is no need to judge. I only celebrate what the great river of life pushes toward us. One day in his book, our gomchen drew a picture of a Buddha with long flat wings. It is what he saw when an airplane flew over."
Shan looked up at the high, tiny window, barely visible in the afternoon shadows. "I am envious," he said.
"Of the gomchen?"
Shan nodded. "I think it is best," he said heavily, "to know of not knowing."