the tunnel, slip around the loose rocks, and pull them back to seal the opening of the cave. The heavy thumps and crashes of falling earth and stone continued to reverberate through the ground long after the opening had been blocked and Asha sat listening to the wailing of the dead girl deep inside the mountain.
Then the voice in the cave fell silent and Asha frowned, straining to hear. For a time, there was nothing but the wind in the giant trees overhead. But then, softly, in the distant depths of the mountain, a gentle sighing rose from the stones. And then the earth wept.
It was like nothing Asha had ever heard before. It was the falling of winter snow, and the tumbling of a single leaf on an autumn breeze, and the sinking of an old stone into the soft mud. It was gentle and soft, the sound of something slowly dying unseen and unloved. It was so quiet that Asha could barely hear it, and so terrible that she felt guilty for hearing it at all.
And it went on for hours.
8
In her sleep, Priya’s breathing grew stronger as they rested in the warm afternoon sun. Asha inspected the thin green shoots in the nun’s arms and one by one she plucked them out. The gray woman shuddered and murmured softly. But when Asha began to tug on the longer lotus blooms on her head, Priya stiffened and gasped. Asha let go and held the woman’s hand. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.” Priya sat up. “Are we still in the cave?”
Asha shook her head. “No. Open your eyes and you’ll see the setting sun.”
The nun touched her face and gently massaged her eyes open until she could blink them normally. She swept her colorless irises across the ledge. “I can’t see anything.”
Asha touched her hand. “Your eyes. I’m sorry. They’re dead.”
Priya nodded slowly. “I suppose that’s the price of living for two centuries in the dark.”
“Maybe if I remove the rest of the lotus, it will help.” Asha moved behind her and carefully grasped one of the long tendrils.
Priya cried out, “Please, stop!”
Asha let go, frowning. She parted the nun’s hair to examine her scalp and saw that the lotus roots snaked under her skin in long white lines. “It’s in deep. I’m not sure how to remove it without hurting you, or even killing you.”
“It’s all right.” Priya reached up to stroke the leaves and blossoms in her hair. “It’s a small sacrifice for the freedom to go back out into the world and tell people the things I’ve learned.”
“I could cut away the plant above your skin at least.”
“No, thank you. I want to keep them as a memento of my time here.”
They spent the night on the grassy ledge sleeping back to back under Asha’s wool blanket. When morning came, she saw that the stream had dried up completely and only a little water still shimmered in the deep pools farther down the mountainside.
“She did it again. That poor girl,” Priya said. Tears fell from her sightless eyes. “I had hoped I had given her the peace she needed. I thought, after all this time, she had learned to accept herself and her place in the world.”
Slowly, hand in hand, they descended the steep path beside the dry river bed. The giant trees stood in silent watch over them, the heavy vines creaking quietly in the morning breeze. At the bottom of the mountain they found only a muddy track where the river had been.
It took three long days of slow walking to return to the village where they found the people sitting along the banks of what used to be the source of their livelihoods. Asha introduced Priya to them and let them marvel at the youthful nun crowned in flowing black hair festooned with white lotus blossoms.
“When will the river come back?” Kishan asked.
“It may not,” Asha said. “Priya’s sacrifice gave your village two hundred years of life here, but that’s over now. You’ll have to find new homes somewhere else, or learn a new way to live here if you choose to stay.”
For two weeks, Asha and Priya remained in the village. Priya slowly recovered her strength while learning to walk, dress, and feed herself without the aid of her eyes, and day by day the color returned to her ageless skin. Asha took the villagers deep into the forest to help them find edible plants and to teach them how to transplant the herbs to their gardens in the village.
Then one morning Asha awoke to a familiar shushing sound, the constant white noise of water rushing over stones and down gullies, pouring through channels and crashing into pools. She stood up, her blanket still wrapped around her shoulders against the pre-dawn chill in the air, and she walked down to the river running clear and deep through the middle of the village. Small brown birds bathed in the shallows and large silver fish floated serenely in the deep shadowed pockets at the bottom. Jagdish chittered under her hair, and her dragon’s ear heard two deer grazing downstream and a pack of dogs loping through the trees far to the east.
Priya, holding her bamboo walking stick and wearing a cloth tied across her eyes, came down to stand beside her.
“The river came back,” Asha said. “Higher and stronger than before. Your ghost gave it back.”
“Yes.” Priya nodded. “I suppose she just needed a little time to adjust to being alone. Or maybe she was just surprised when I left. Maybe I should have said good-bye. But in any case, I think she’s at peace now, truly.”
“Good for her.” Asha stuck a ginger sliver in the corner of her mouth and patted Jagdish on the head. “So what will you do now? Stay here in the village?”
“No. I’ve just learned that dragons exist and that trees have souls. I want to see what other wonders are running loose in the world.” Priya smiled. “Where will you go?”
“West, I think.”
“West sounds very nice. I’m ready to leave whenever you are.”
Asha raised an eyebrow at the little nun with her thick black hair full of soft white blossoms. “Well, all right. But no chanting.”
Chapter 2
1
The bamboo forest stretched on and on in every direction, the trees growing so close and thick that Asha couldn’t see more than a few paces from the path. A hundred dark shades of emerald and jade painted the walls of the forest on every side, each segmented trunk and stalk leaning at its own unique angle as though too ancient and tired to stand up straight. The dead brown trees still stood as they had in life, leaning gently on their green neighbors as though unwilling to accept that death had already claimed them.
“It feels like walking through a long hallway,” Priya said. The nun swept the path ahead of her with her slender bamboo rod. The only scent in the forest came from the lotus blossoms on Priya’s head. Her saffron robe was faded, her woven sandals were powdered with dust, and the cloth covering her eyes was frayed. “The trees are so close they feel like walls.”
Asha chewed on the sliver of ginger in the corner of her mouth, listening.
Nothing.
There was nothing out there. No birds overhead, no deer moving through the trees, not even crickets hidden in the underbrush. There was no underbrush. Every spare inch of earth was riddled with bamboo roots and stalks. The forest was not merely silent, it was empty. Even now in the first month of spring, it was empty.
