Girl Spins a Blade Read online

  Emily sat quietly for a few moments pondering Rinpoche’s suggestion. He watched her carefully and felt the warm glow of her spirit. “How strange,” he thought, “for an old ascetic to find her so intoxicating. Norbu and Pasang are not wrong to be worried.”

  “Friendship is a form of suffering and bondage to the cycle of cares about life and death. That’s it, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Friendship is only an affectation of the individual self,” he said. “The truest master leaves that self and its bonds of friendship behind.”

  “I don’t think I have the strength to do that. I long for companionship, and when I open myself to others I find its consolation wherever I go.”

  “You are strong enough, Michi-chhori. But you have other tasks to complete before you take that path. Sonam still needs you.”

  “How can he find peace as long as I’m here? And what about the other monks?”

  “They are old enough to overcome a distraction on their own. But the boy will never know peace if you leave now. There is one last lesson he must learn from you.”

  “Can you tell me what it is?” she asked. He shook his head slowly. “Isn’t there any lesson you have for me, Rinpoche?”

  “I cannot be your guru, Michi-sama. You do not need my help finding a tutelary divinity.”

  This time Emily shook her head.

  “I don’t understand, Rinpoche.”

  “The voice who speaks in your dreams is not just any nature demon. It is your voice. You are the god of your dreams.”

  “That’s just what Sensei tells me,” she said with a laugh. “But I don’t think you mean it the way he does.”

  “The Hindus might mistake you for Surya, or Agni, or perhaps Indra, if they could see inside your dreams. Maybe even Kali. Of course, Krishna would fit best of all. But those devas are still trapped in the cycle of birth and death. They, too, must be left behind eventually.”

  “I came here to find a way past the violence of my life, but…”

  “I know, Michi-chhori. When the time is right, you will find that path, and you will be your own istadeva. But it is easy to see that the way of the warrior still beckons to you. You may need to follow it, at least for a little longer.”

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  Chapter 3: Asan Chowk

  Breakfast eaten, the kitchen cleared and made ready for the next meal, the other guests ushered out of the house for a day of touring, Emily and Mrs. Kansakar finally had the morning to themselves.

  The fading measures of a light rain tapped out a lazy tandava of Shiva Nataraja, the lord of the dance, against the ornate façade of the second floor balcony. Emily leaned across the railing to take the temperature of the sky and decided to put a denim jacket over a peach colored blouse. Mrs. Kansakar called up to her from the sidewalk.

  “Hurry yourself, child, while we have a break in the clouds.”

  “Coming,” Emily sang out.

  She peeked once more over the railing and smiled down at Mrs. Kansakar’s outfit, a traditional green sari with gold embroidery draped over a pale blue choli and orange skirt. The choli was short enough to allow the slightest glimpse of a plump belly button.

  “You didn’t tell me this was a fancy dress occasion,” she said in a teasing voice as she stepped through the front door.

  “Perhaps we need to find you some better clothes while we’re out.”

  The walk to Asan Chowk wound through the side streets of Bangemudha, where brick and wood houses crowded the lanes, expanding with each story until in some cases they practically touched overhead. Old men sat in doorways, placidly observing the foot traffic, apparently waiting for the moment when a witticism formulated years earlier might become relevant to the scene unfolding before their eyes.

  A wild-eyed man in once brightly colored rags leapt into the street to accost Emily, chattering out words she could not understand. He was so caked in mud and dust as to render him unrecognizable even to his closest relatives. Mrs. Kansakar stepped in front, holding both hands together under her nose and bowing her head politely. She pressed a small brass coin into his hands and said what sounded to Emily like a prayer. Apparently satisfied, or at least distracted, the mud-covered man bared what few teeth he had left and scurried off laughing. Emily turned to Mrs. Kansakar with a quizzical look on her face.

  “A holy man?” she asked.

  “Yes, just like the lamas you run off to see everyday,” Mrs. Kansakar replied.

  “You disapprove of them?”

  “There is so much else to see in the world, child, so much to do. What a pity to waste such beauty on men like that.”

  Located at the intersection of two ancient trade routes connecting India and Tibet, legend says the chowk sprang up on the spot where a fish fell from the sky. Today the market spreads out along the six roads that meet in one little square, crowded with shops and street vendors, and almost as many shrines as storefronts including, of course, a shrine to the fish.

  Mrs. Kansakar steered Emily into a little shop on Botahity Road. A sign over the door gleamed with ornate gold lettering almost none of which Emily could read, just a name in English letters: Ranjeet’s. Brightly colored fabrics hung from high shelves and draped casually in front of all the windows. Clothing hung from circular racks around the main room, folded shirts and tunics filled lower shelves along all the walls. The bell jingled as the door closed behind them and the owner, Mrs. Ranjeet, invisible at first, called out from behind a stack of fabrics on a counter in the back.

  “Welcome, welcome. I’ll be with you straight away.”

  A moment later she squeezed out from behind the counter, long white hair pulled back into a bun and somewhat smaller than Mrs. Kansakar, but in roughly similar dimensions. She wore a deep blue tunic with gold embroidery that stretched almost to her knees, and black pants hung down to her ankles.

  “Ah, Sunita-didi,” she exclaimed, hands clasped before her face. “It’s been so long.”

  Mrs. Kansakar nodded and grunted.

  “Manisha-bahini, let me introduce my house guest, Michiko.”

  Mrs. Ranjeet smiled and bowed her head, but looking her up and down the whole time, as if she were measuring her for a dress. Emily smiled uncomfortably. The two older women chatted, apparently amiably, in Nepali, or perhaps Hindi, or maybe some other tongue altogether. They spoke too quickly for Emily even to identify the language, much less what they might be saying. Judging from the frequency with which they glanced in her direction, she could guess the topic of discussion. Emily cleared her throat loudly.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Ranjeet offered politely.

  “I’m sure you want to know what we were talking about,” Mrs. Kansakar said.

  “Oh, don’t worry about me,” Emily said.”

  “Mrs. Ranjeet thinks you are too skinny, and so do I.”

  “I’ve heard that before. But it’s not like I don’t eat.”

  “That’s true,” Mrs. Kansakar said with a conciliatory nod. “But all that running and exercise. It’s not healthy.”

  She turned to Mrs. Ranjeet, muttered a few clipped, incomprehensible phrases, and smiled.

  “Come here, child,” Mrs. Ranjeet said, taking her hand and leading her into a tiny backroom. “I have just the thing for you.”

  Before she quite knew what was happening, the two old ladies had her in a pair of lime green pants and a long peach colored kurtha, or tunic. They bickered over the color of the shawl to drape over her shoulders while Emily tapped a foot. Another quick change had her in a purple choli and pale blue pants wrapped up in a saffron sari. Both women giggled and clucked over her. Perhaps they’d just discovered that being skinny wasn’t so bad after all. At least it was easy to get her in and out of clothes.

  “Excuse me, guys,” Emily said, trying to get their attention. “This is wound a little too tight.”

  “Nonsense,” Mrs. Kansakar snorted. “You’ll get used to it.”

  “She’s so tall,” Mrs. Ranjeet whispered. “Every
thing looks good on her.”

  “Shhh,” hushed Mrs. Kansakar. “She’ll get a swelled head. She’s hard enough to manage as it is.”

  Finally, after several more changes, they threw her into a broadly pleated skirt with an ornate paisley pattern and a short half-tunic on top. She did a half twirl and watched as the skirt belled out.

  “I like this,” she said. “Lots of room to move.”

  Emily put her foot down about the sari. She couldn’t imagine going through a day in an outfit that confining. How would she defend herself? It was an old habit of thinking. So much for choosing a different path, or for leaving behind her warrior self. What would Rinpoche think if he saw her now?

  After everything had been tried on, refolded and put in one stack or another, all three women were exhausted. No saris, Emily had held firm. But everything else was an explosion of color: jewel tones, ruby red, lapis blue, emerald, and bright pastels, robin’s egg blue, coral pink, lime green. “I won’t be sneaking up on anyone in these,” she mused.

  A few feet away, the old women were holding hands and smiling at each other.

  “Thank you, Manisha-bahini,” Mrs. Kansakar said.

  “Maybe she’s not too skinny,” her old friend said with a laugh. “Now I understand.”

  The women slipped again into another tongue she couldn’t understand, obviously exceedingly pleased with themselves. Emily cleared her throat.

  “How much is all this?” she asked, reaching into her pocket.

  Mrs. Kansakar laughed out loud. Mrs. Ranjeet bowed her head to Emily with both hands pressed together. Then she reached up to place a hand on her cheek.

  “It was so pleasant to meet you, chhori.”

  ~~~~~~~

  Out on the street, Mrs. Kansakar showed her the best spice shop. On another side street, fruit and vegetable stands crowded along the sidewalks under large umbrellas, produce bulging out of enormous, burlap-lined baskets. Potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, several types of khursani peppers, spinach, kale and mustard greens soon filled a large market bag.

  “This way, child. We still need some bananas, a mango and beaten rice. It’ll make a nice treat for Sonam after school.”

  “Who is that for?” Emily asked, pointing at a large pagoda-like structure with several stacked roofs, topped by a crescent moon. The entire upper structure was wrapped in what looked like an immense fish net.

  “The temple of the goddess of food,” Mrs. Kansakar said with a snort.

  “And those two?”

  She tipped her head toward two more structures on the north side of the square.

  “The tall one honors Ganesh. The little one is for Narayan, or Vishnu.”

  “Ooh, let’s go see,” Emily cried out, tugging on her benefactor’s arm.

  After some resistance, a frown and some loud grumbling, Mrs. Kansakar allowed herself to be led to the entrance of the Ganesh shrine. A golden doorway overhung with three large bells faced them, topped by a large, semi-circular medallion depicting the elephant-headed god surrounded by demons and assorted serpents. The temple was too small for visitors to enter. One could only admire the statues inside from the street.

  “Why does he only have one tusk?” Emily asked.

  “Oh, who knows why people imagine him in any particular way?”

  Emily looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

  “Oh, why must you be so persistent, Michi-chhori?… Fine, he is the god of obstacles. Perhaps his tusk was an obstacle.”

  “Is that the best you can do?” Emily replied, with her arms folded.

  “Okay, if you must know, my father liked to say he broke it off himself when he needed a pen.”

  “A pen?”

  Emily was hardly satisfied by this account. Mrs. Kansakar shrugged.

  “That’s the story. He was writing down a poem and his pen broke. He didn’t want to miss a single verse, so he broke off the tusk and dipped it in the inkwell.”

  “Must have been quite a poem.”

  “I suppose, if you care for that sort of thing. The poem is called the Mahabharata.” Emily finally seemed satisfied. “Let’s go home, child. We have work to do.”

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  Chapter 4: Meditating with the Monks

  Norbu and Pasang were resistant to the idea. Rinpoche insisted on including her in a special meeting… as if she were actually one of the monks, and he expected the senior monks to meditate with her! What could he hope to accomplish?

  Late that afternoon, Norbu met her at the gate to the outer courtyard. She arrived dressed like a Newari market woman, in tunic, pants and shawl. At least that was better than the running suit or blue jeans she usually wore. He showed her into the central hall, where Rinpoche and several monks were waiting.

  Rinpoche’s instructions to the monks: be open to suggestion. To the girl, he said: “Slow your breathing.” And then they sat, quietly, eyes closed or unfocused, breathing, all around the room. She sat in one corner, as far away from the rest of them as she could get. Perhaps she sensed their disapproval.

  The experience turned out to be quite peculiar, and utterly new. For Norbu, the goal in meditation had always been to leave himself behind, not to carry corporeal images with him, to transcend the usual shapes of sensory experience. But now he noticed the tug of a very particular sensation. Could this be what Rinpoche had in mind?

  He felt the sun on his cheek, and then the shade. The clarity of the sensations startled him. Cool, crisp dirt and fallen leaves crinkled under his feet. Water sounded in the distance—a river, or a waterfall?—he followed the path toward a light up ahead. Tall trees arched overhead, forming a canopy at least thirty feet up. Smaller trees, tropical and lush, palm fronds and oversized ferns reached out to him through the leopard shade. The forest thinned out ahead and he saw the gleam of a clearing through the last few branches. Tall grass, with butterflies and other flying things dancing in the sunlight, the invitation could hardly be resisted. He pushed his way out of the shade.

  He wasn’t alone. He couldn’t see the others, but he heard voices murmuring, lots of voices. And then he saw her. She was so bright he didn’t exactly know how he recognized her. Looking at her was like looking at the sun, searing and yet somehow not painful. Two dark spots in the center of the fire beckoned to him. Eyes? They glanced to the side. He followed where she led, to a stream along which a footpath meandered back across the meadow to the waterfall that was its source.

  He couldn’t see the top through the mist that formed naturally around so much falling water. It might as well have been as high as the sky. The vertical river crashed down with a roar. When she stepped behind the curtain of water on one side onto a rocky ledge, he followed. The air behind the falls was cool, humid, dark. He saw her up ahead, glancing back at him meaningfully, before she disappeared into what looked like a hole in the cliff face.

  Bright as she was, when he got to the mouth of the cave, no light could be seen. A blast of hot air pushed him back as he tried to enter, but he pressed on through. Perhaps this is what Rinpoche meant. Is he here, too? The floor fell away beneath him with each step, and he began to move faster and faster, until he was running out of control. Soon he felt himself in free fall, hurtling toward what seemed like the bottom of the world.

  Dark as coal at first, he noticed a tiny patch of faint lights in the distance. He seemed to be accelerating toward them at great speed. As the cave narrowed, the pressure grew enormously, threatening to crush him. Breathing would require an enormous effort. Better not to breathe at all.

  Just as the weight pressing on him threatened to become unbearable, he felt himself propelled out the other end, as if he’d been spit out of the world like a watermelon seed. Hurtling now through endless space, surrounded by a billion lights, as many as the stars in the sky, he no longer felt himself anywhere. The cosmos spread out in all directions and he’d been dissolved into it, along with all the other voices he heard in the meadow. But for the fact that he was now everywhere at once, he
’d have felt adrift in the enormity of infinite space.

  Eventually, he found that he could see the whole from a single point of view, a cloud among the stars, perhaps a nebula like the one in the belt of Orion. He saw a vast wheel of light, composed of so many smaller lights, turning slowly on its axis. And further in the distance, more wheels turning each in their own time, perhaps as many wheels as there were stars.

  The cloud from which he looked out on the cosmos grew brighter and hotter, until it seemed to be gathering itself for some new thing. The brightness all but coalesced into a single point, and then burst from the cloud, moving at tremendous speed in a vast, gradual arc, all the while turning on its own axis. Was that her? Or was it a completely new birth? He watched as she found a place among all the other wheels of light.

  Norbu felt the breath move into his lungs, filling him up, expanding his chest, pressing against the edges of the world. As the breath left him, the cloud seemed to dissipate and all the lights rushed away into an even greater distance. Soon it was pitch black, no light at all. The air was cool and quiet. He felt the stone tile of the floor, and heard the breathing of the other monks. When he glanced around the room, he saw the look of astonishment on the faces of the other monks that he assumed must also be scorched into his.

  How strange her meditations must be. No transcendence. She doesn’t leave the material world behind, but somehow manages to leave herself behind to become one with the whole. Is this what it means to be a deva? The power he felt inside her, if that’s really where he had been, it was immense, as big as the world itself.

  The girl was nowhere to be seen. And Rinpoche was gone, too. He scrambled to his feet.

  “Pasang, where are they? Where’s Rinpoche?”

  The other monks looked around the room nervously. Where had they gone?

  ~~~~~~~

  “Please, stay here, Rinpoche,” Emily said. “Let me go by myself.”

  “No, Michi-chhori. I will come with you.”

  “We must hurry, please, Rinpoche-la,” Nawang said, with his hands pressed together in front of his face and his voice trembling. “They’re gangsters. They might hurt Sonam.”