Beautiful Ghosts Read Online Free Page B

into the ruins. A sudden unfamiliar sound caused him to turn toward the chorten. Laughter. Several of the older Tibetans were laughing, throwing flour over each other’s heads. The festival was truly under way.
    But then a hand closed around his arm. Liya was at his side, her face pale. She gestured with her head toward the old stone tower on the ridge above the ruins, nearly a mile away.
    At first Shan saw nothing but then something green at the base of the tower moved and his heart leapt into his throat. There were soldiers at the tower, at least a dozen. He quickly surveyed the yard. No one else had noticed that the army was watching. If the Tibetans were warned they would panic and try to flee, though most lived to the west, above the valley, and their path home was now blocked.
    “You have to tell him,” Liya said. “You have to try,” she added in a forlorn tone.
    Shan slowly nodded, watched as Liya disappeared into the nearest alleyway, then gazed upon the joyful Tibetans. They may have finally forgotten the hard existence they eked out of the rocky slopes, forgotten the fears that always shadowed them, but their jubilation would be short lived. He began searching for Gendun.
    He found the lama five minutes later, sitting in a small clearing at the northern edge of the grounds, looking into the five-hundred-foot-deep chasm that abutted the northern edge of the ruins. Strangely, Gendun sat with his legs casually extended over the edge of the chasm. He was watching a hawk soar in the updrafts above the gorge, his eyes shining with pleasure. He did not turn but patted the rock beside him, inviting Shan to sit. “I have not known such a day since I was a boy,” the lama said. “We would erect a white tent by the monastery in the mountains where I was born. We sang all day. The monks would fasten a secret blessing to the top of a high pole and we would take turns climbing, trying to retrieve it.”
    “There are soldiers,” Shan said quietly, studying the tattered lines of ropes and splintered wood that hung from the edge of the opposite side of the chasm, the remains of the old bridge that had once connected to the clearing, the northern foregate yard of the old gompa.
    As though in reproach, Gendun turned his head to gaze toward a long stone atop a low mound of rubble, a lintel stone from over a collapsed doorway. Someone had cleared the rubble from it, exposing words that had been painted across it, faded but still legible. S TUDY O NLY THE A BSOLUTE . On the lintel stood a framed portrait of the Dalai Lama and a fragment of a life-sized bronze statue, a graceful, upcurved hand.
    “Once this would have been a festival day for all the people,” Gendun said. His voice was like dry grass rustling in the breeze. “We are making it so again. This is the beginning.”
    For Gendun it was the beginning, but Surya said it was the end. Shan looked back at the legend on the stone, then searched Gendun’s face carefully. The old lama’s countenance could be as complex as the sky. His eyes had grown more sober. He would not abide talk of dangers to the monks, or of murderers or foreigners stalking the hills. Shan replayed in his mind’s eye the scene of Gendun looking at Atso. The lama had not been surprised, had not expressed remorse, but offered words of rejoicing on seeing the old man’s body.
    “Rinpoche, I do not understand what is happening,” he said at last, using the form of address for a revered teacher.
    “We do not just dedicate the shrine today,” Gendun declared. “We are rededicating the gompa. Zhoka is going to live again. Surya is going to reside here.”
    Something icy gripped Shan’s belly. Surya and Gendun did not understand the tyrannical, often vengeful nature of the Bureau of Religious Affairs, to whom an unlicensed monk was a criminal. They did not know Colonel Tan, who had the authority to condemn the monks to labor camp without a trial.
    As Shan looked at Gendun again he felt a sudden,