“Is something wrong?” asked an elderly woman behind them.
Asha didn’t turn to look at the woman. “Probably. He’s not breathing and he has no heart beat. How long has he been here like this? When was the last time anyone saw him eat? Or even just move?”
No one answered. The nearest pilgrims just shrugged and shook their heads.
“No one?” Asha grimaced. “How long have you been here?”
They answered one by one:
“Two days.”
“Four days.”
“Seven days.”
Seven days, at least. Asha sighed. The boy might have died just recently, just hours ago, perhaps even during the night while she slept nearby. If so, he would be cool in a few hours, and he would finally fall over.
“We need to move him,” she said softly. And then louder, “I’m sorry, but we need to move him. He’s not well.”
No one seemed to have heard her. No one stood or spoke, or even looked at her.
“You there, come help me, please.” She looked at two young men near the front who had glanced in her direction. One of them looked away but the other frowned and nodded and stood up. He came over to the boy and Asha directed him to stand across from her so that together they could lift him. The boy’s whole body was so firm, so stiff, that she hoped they could simply carry him away in his seated posture and avoid making a scene.
Together she and the young man bent down and took hold of the boy’s legs, and lifted. Nothing happened. Asha strained to the point of grunting out loud, but the boy did not move. She pulled up so hard that her feet began to sink down into the soft wet earth. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her assistant was faring no better so she let go and waved him back. After a moment’s rest, she directed the young man again, this time to dig their hands as far under the boy as possible. The earth was cold and a bit slimy, but they both reached under to form a platform with their arms and again they tried to lift him.
And again the boy did not move, did not even shudder or jostle. He remained perfectly still. Asha dismissed her confused assistant with a grateful look. A soft murmur ran through the gathered onlookers, but she ignored them.
“What happened?” Priya asked. “What’s wrong now?”
“We couldn’t lift him. It was like he’s nailed to the earth, or he weighs as much as an elephant. I can’t explain it.”
The nun smiled. “I don’t suppose you’d like to entertain the thought that this wise child can bend space and matter to make himself too heavy to lift?”
“Not just yet,” Asha said calmly. She chewed her ginger and studied the boy. Both she and the young man had reached far under the boy to lift him, shoving their hands through the muddy topsoil, but she hadn’t felt anything strange that might be holding the boy down. “What’s his name? Does anyone know?”
A few people shook their heads.
Asha stood and said to Priya, “I’m going to take a look around. I’ll be back soon.” She slipped around the edge of the pilgrims’ circle and paced slowly toward the center of the village, her arms folded across her belly, her brow creased in thought. For the rest of the morning, she wandered around each little house, each little market stall, and each little animal pen. She greeted the handful of people she found and asked each of them, “When did the boy first arrive?”
And they would answer, “About seven days ago.”
She would say, “Who is he? Where did he come from?”
And they would shrug and go about their business.
So on she went, studying the grasses and the ants and the flies, looking and listening for answers. Why is the boy too heavy to lift? How is he surviving without food or water? Where did he come from? And why did he come here, of all places?
The ants and flies couldn’t tell her.
Around noon Asha sat down at the eastern edge of the village to eat a dried date and watch three young girls playing in the muddy road. They chased each other, flinging little clumps of mud and laughing. Asha was about to get up to move farther from their range of fire when one of the girls ran straight over to her and squinted down at her. “Can you make him go away?” she asked.
“Who?”
“The living Buddha,” the girl said. “I saw you try to pick him up. Are you his mother?”
Asha grinned and shook her head. “No, I’m not. I’m an herbalist. I was just trying to help him. Why? Why do you want him to go away?”
“Because that’s where we used to play, in the grass. But our parents all said to stay away from those people, so now we have to play over here, in the mud.”
Asha looked over her shoulder across the village at the distant cluster of bodies in the road. “I guess it is a little nicer down that way. Plus you have the tree to climb.”
The girl shook her head. “That tree’s way too tall to climb. No one can reach the first branch!”
Asha smiled. “Not the almond tree. I meant the little teak tree. Surely you could climb that one.”
“The little one? No, that wasn’t there before.”
The girl started to turn back to her friends, but Asha caught her hand. “What do you mean, it wasn’t there before? Before when?”
“I don’t know. Before that boy showed up.”
“You mean seven days ago?”
She nodded.
Asha let her go and she ran back to her friends to resume the serious work of shouting, chasing, kicking, and tossing small globs of mud at each other. She stood and walked back toward the pilgrims, but stopped well outside their circle where she could see the gnarled tree clearly. It was no more than twice her own height, maybe less. By its size alone, she guessed it to be at least three years old, though from its miserable appearance it could have been much older. But not less. And not a mere seven days.
4
At the edge of the grass, Asha looked down the shallow slope at the wet field below and behind the stunted teak tree. Farther out she could see the rows of oilseed stalks waving gently in the breeze, but in the corner of the field closest to her, Asha saw where the oilseed plantings ended in a ragged line and a swamped, marshy patch of earth began. A few planted stalks poked up through the stagnant black water, but not many. Flies buzzed over slimy, wet mounds that glistened in the midday sun. Nothing so large as a frog seemed to be moving in the water. A thick oily film lay on the surface painting dark rainbows in perfect stillness.
Behind the little teak tree she saw a few pale roots twisting down through the mud into the oily water below. She drew back the hair from her right ear and cupped her hand there, listening. After a moment she heard the low humming of the oilseeds and the grasses and the almond tree, all softly resounding like bells rung long ago but not quite done echoing their final notes. Flies and hornets and butterflies danced across the fields alone and in swarms, all tinkling like broken glass in her cursed ear. But down in the dark muck, she heard nothing but a few sickly tufts of grass and the occasional bug skating over the oily pond.
Back in the center of the village, Asha found the ox-drawn mill crackling and grinding as the turning wheel crushed wheat into flour. Two men stood watching the ox shuffle in its little circle. Asha guessed the man in the shabby sandals to be the farmer, and the man with the shabby hat to be the miller.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Can either of you tell me about that little teak tree where the boy is sitting?”
The men gave her a tired glance, and then exchanged a tired glance of their own. The miller said, “That tree wasn’t there before. The boy must have brought it with him.”
Asha chose not to challenge the man’s conclusion. “And what about the oily pond behind it? Has that corner of the field always been flooded like that?”