Beautiful Ghosts by Eliot Pattison Page A

inside, brushing away the old dirt. Then the girl came, with Gendun following,” he added, gesturing toward a rock a hundred feet away where the lama sat watching Dawa, who sat at a spring, washing the blood from her dress, her aunt and uncle watching her forlornly fifty paces beyond, sitting with the other children. “She won’t let Gendun or anyone get close to her. She says she wants to go home to her Chinese factory town. She says she hates monks. She says she hates all of us for tricking her.”
    Images of Dawa’s day in the ruins flashed through Shan’s mind. She had felt confusion and fear at first, then awe and joy, finally horror and grief. “She came to learn about life in Tibet,” Shan said in a tight voice.
    Lokesh nodded soberly. “We must take Surya back to Yerpa. He wants much healing.”
    Shan had never heard his friend’s voice sound so frail. He watched Lokesh gaze with a strange, sad longing toward Zhoka. “What happened to Surya also happened to the girl. What did we misunderstand?” the old Tibetan asked Shan. Shan could only shake his head slowly.
    After a moment Shan approached Dawa and sat on the grass beside her. She did not acknowledge him, just kept washing, pushing at the blood on her dress.
    “I know you saw something terrible under the ground,” he began. “I went down there. I saw the blood, and the bones. It was so dark. There were sounds. I was frightened, too. But there was no body. Did you see a body?”
    The girl made a sound like a whimper. Not a whimper, he realized. She was humming. With a chill he recognized the song. “The East Is Red,” one of the standard hymns of political officers, a favorite anthem for the public address systems in Chinese schools. Shan sat in silence, looking back at Lokesh and Gendun, trying to understand why they would not approach Surya. “Dawa,” he pressed. “I need to know what you saw. I will help.”
    The girl stopped her frantic washing, catching the bloody water that dripped from her dress in one hand, staring at it with a terrible fascination. Just as he was about to rise she looked up. “He had an eye in his hand,” she said in a tiny voice. “And a nail through his body.” She began her chilling song again.
    As he rose and moved back toward the tower a figure rushed past, stopping so abruptly at the entrance to the tower that she almost stumbled inside. It was Liya, panting, steadying herself with a hand on the rocks. “Quickly!” she called to Surya, then stepped into the shadows. “He has to leave,” she gasped as Shan joined her. “We must carry him if there is no other way.” Her voice drifted away as she stared at the monk.
    Surya was urgently working at the wall at the rear of the little chamber, rubbing it with a strip of cloth torn from his grey underrobe, muttering something under his breath. It was a painting. Surya was frantically cleaning a painting, a mural that could have been painted a century or more earlier. To the left of the old painting were the characters of the mani mantra, invoking compassion, each faded letter ten inches high. On the wall to the right was a recent work, a complex painting of deities that would have taken many days to complete. Shan studied the rich, vibrant style of the second painting then turned to see Lokesh beside him, his eyes reflecting Shan’s own surprise. The style of the painting was unmistakable, familiar to them. It was Surya’s work.
    But Surya was ignoring his own painting.
    “Which is it?” Liya asked in a whisper as she stared at the image on the back wall that Surya was cleaning. Shan, too, was not certain of the central deity. It was Tara, the protectress, in one of the fierce emanations meant to combat specific demons and fears, but each major deity had multiple forms and he did not recognize this one.
    Shan turned, as had Liya, to Lokesh, but his old friend just stared at the painting, his mouth open. “A terrible thing,” Lokesh whispered and gazed back