Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Last Refuge

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"But except for these natural disasters, the NAC wasn't hit?" Toni-Marie said.
"No ma'am, but what happened was a lot worse than anyone anticipated."
"Oh, I know, but it didn't happen everywhere!" she cried excitedly and threw her arms around him,
dissolving them both into puddles of ectoplasm. After which she gathered herself back together, shook
herself back into shape as he did, and said, "You lovely man, you have just given me terrific news. Come
on, Mikey, my family's in Texas."
"But, Toni-Marie, how do you know they survived?" Mike asked.
"Some of them are bound to have. We Adairs are survivors."
Chime settled into her trance, putting from her mind the lens, the cavern, Inez and the others, the cat who
guarded her, Meru and Stoney, all of the spirits who would be only too glad to take over her soulless
body if they could get through her puny safeguards. One-pointed concentration was required. The point
was finding survivors, finding souls-any who were left, of course-but she couldn't help entertaining a wish
to direct her consciousness so it wouldn't wander around at random but would accurately seek out the
most worthy spirits first.
She put the wish from her as a distraction and settled into the trance, breathing at first so slowly and
deeply thatall of the world centered on the air she took into her, as if by breathing deeply enough, she
could inhale air from far away Shambala and exhale it into this troubled world. Then she forgot all such
concerns and images and even forgot that she was breathing in a certain way, so that her breath grew
shallower and slower and suddenly she was looking down at herself and at the cat, at the valley, at the
mountain ranges.
The mountains melted and flowed into other mountains, different valleys, until at last she found herself
regarding the ruins of a monastery set like Shambala at the foot of an enormous, ruined mountain. Living
people were there too, soldiers in what was left of their uniforms. They were a miserable lot, covered
with sores and with ill-healed burns and broken bones, their uniforms tattered, some with limbs
gangrenous from frostbite. They were thin and starving, but they stared with concentration almost as
pointed as hers at a throng of ghosts in the robes of monks.
She knew that these monks were long dead, but to her astral form they seemed almost as vivid as the
soldiers.
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They were weeping, sobbing as some of them broke invisible stones high above the ruins, wrecking
long-demolished buildings with invisible tools. A swarm of others were centeredaround an invisible
space, and tears gleamed on their cheeks as they beat with all their might at something in their midst that
only they could see.
After a while one of the soldiers who had had enough broke into the ring of ghosts, parting them like
mist, shouting, "Please, please stop, holy men! Your teacher is long dead. Stop tormenting yourselves like
this!"
"Get a grip on yourself, Fu Ping, they can't hear you," another soldier said, and Chime knew it was his
own sadness that made his tone harsh. He hauled Fu out from among the ghosts, and Fu argued with him,
waving sticklike arms in fevered agitation.
"Of course they can. Who do you think showed us where the hidden grain stores were? You think I just
fell into that by accident? Who do you think has tended our wounds, has made this place one where fear
does not reach us-except for times like these?"
"Once out of every twenty-four hours isn't bad," another comrade said with a shrug. "All other places,
the living nightmare plagues us all day and all night. Here, after the ghosts finish their haunting for the day,
they quietly return to being good holy men and healing and caring for the sick. That's us. We were lucky
to find them."
"But they're suffering so much-can't you feel it?"
"Of course I can, but I'm suffering too. So is Lin Minh, so is Huan Po, but we can't do anything about it."
He did not sound as resigned to this as his words suggested. The agitation, fear, and sorrow in the air
were tangible, far more real even than the bodies of the ghosts.
Chime approached the monks. "What are you beating on?" she asked one of them.
Without pausing to look at her or wonder, one of the monks spoke to her while he continued to pound
on the target in the center."Our beloved master, Takster Rimpoche. We are beating him to death."
"There is no one there," Chime told him.
The soldier Fu Ping rushed among the monks once more, and this time his eyes boggled as he beheld
Chime.
"What is it now, Fu?" another comrade asked wearily. To a man squatting beside him, he said, "Not long
now and we'll be eating him too, I fear.And after he was the one who warned us all to leave Lhasa
before the end."
"Maybe that's a good reason to just kill him now," another said bitterly. "I think I would rather have
died."
"That can still be easily arranged."
But Fu Ping was clutching the air where Chime's astral image appeared, gazing up at her yearningly.
"Make them stop. Please make them stop. I know who you are. You're black Tara, one of their saints.
You're supposed to be compassionate. You must make them stop. They are not the devils Lieutenant
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Shin told us about. They are kind people. They have fed us and cared for us. At every hour save this
hour, this place is peaceful as nowhere else I have been before, and I know it is because of them. But
then once a day they come out here and tear apart their home and beat their old master to death again
and I know it's because they think we are making them do it. I curse the day I came to this wretched
country. Why oh why did I not remain to die with my family? I swear to you, OTara, that I had no hand
in the matter you see these ghosts act out before you."
Chime turned back to the monk. "Your master isn't there, you know."
"We know, but our acts toward Takster Rimpoche remain. Our shame at committing this act survives us.
Better I should have been beaten to deathbefore I beat him. It all came out to the same thing in the end.
He was eighty-five years old when we killed him, and had lived for many years as a hermit until he chose
to return to teach and to enlighten us. That was just before the Chinese invaded. He tried to teach us
ways to strengthen ourselves and our faith, to bean armor against them, but one day the soldiers came [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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