The farmer shrugged. “More or less. It’s a little worse this year. Deeper, I mean.”
“Any reason for it? Was there a well there? Or maybe there used to be a tree down there, but it was uprooted in a storm? Anything?”
The men shrugged and returned their attention to the ox and the grindstone. The miller said, “Not that I remember.”
“No, the only thing down there are Kavi’s ashes,” the farmer said.
Asha blinked. “Ashes? You scattered someone’s ashes in the corner of a field, right there at the edge of town?”
“She didn’t mean to, of course,” the miller said. “His mother Sati, I mean. The boy was sick, so sick he could barely walk when she brought him into town to find help. But none of us could do anything for him. He sliced his hand on his father’s old axe, and the cut festered. He was feverish. The wound was ugly. Muscles all tightened up. Shaking.”
“Tetanus,” Asha said, nodding. “Then what happened to him?”
“It only lasted a few days.” The miller waved absently at the flies near his head. “Some fellow came along, right at the end, and tried to help. He gave the boy something to eat, but Kavi died anyway a few hours later. Sati couldn’t carry him back home, so we cremated the body right here. Well, over there a ways.” He pointed toward the little teak tree. “She meant to carry the ashes home, but a bit of a storm came through that evening and blew the boy’s ashes all over the corner of the field. So she gathered up what she could and left the next morning. Poor thing. Her husband died a while back, you know. She’s all alone now.”
“The man who tried to help, was he a healer? An herbalist like me?” Asha patted the bag on her shoulder. “Or just a passing friend? Did you know him?”
“Never seen him before,” the farmer said. “Seemed nice enough. Funny accent though. And short. He had a bag too, but a big leather one. Black.”
Asha gripped the strap of her old woven bag and pressed her lips tightly for a moment before saying, “Did he say he was a doctor?”
The miller nodded. “May have. This was half a year ago, you understand.”
“What did he give the boy to eat? Was it a seed or a nut?”
The miller nodded again. “Something like that. Why?”
Asha pointed at the boy sitting beneath the teak tree. “Do you recognize that boy? Does he look at all like Kavi, like the boy who died last year?”
The miller and farmer exchanged amused looks. “Maybe. A little. Other people’s children all look the same to me. I really can’t say.”
“Well, his mother can say. Where is she? Where is Sati?”
The farmer thumbed over his shoulder. “She lives near me. But she hasn’t been to town since Kavi died.”
“Can you ask her to come please?” Asha asked. “It’s very important. She needs to come and see this boy. I need to know if he looks like her son.”
The farmer shrugged and said he would ask Sati when he went home that evening.
Asha thanked them both and crossed the street back toward the crowd, but she didn’t come very close. Standing at the edge of the gathering, she watched Priya sitting beneath the tree, petting Jagdish, and talking quietly with the people sitting closest to her. The entire congregation sat quietly, some with heads bowed and eyes closed, some chanting or singing softly, but most just sitting and squinting at the sky as they dragged their fingers through the muddy road, waiting.
Asha and Priya left the pilgrims at sundown, retiring to their abandoned market stall to eat and sleep. Asha told her friend about her conversation with the miller, about Sati and her son, and the doctor. Priya nodded along until she finished.
“A doctor.” Priya spread her blanket on the ground and lay down. “You don’t use that word often.”
“Only when I need to.”
“Then I take it that you think this boy is not a boy, but some creature or spirit, or maybe a ghost made flesh through this doctor’s evil craft.”
“I think those people out there are fools for lying in the road, starving themselves, and waiting for a strange child to give some meaning to their sad little lives.”
“He’s already given some meaning to their lives,” Priya said. “He’s given them hope. Belief. Everyone hears stories about sages and monks and nuns, about gods and demons, miracles, and paradise. But they’re only stories. This boy is real. And whether or not he ever speaks, whether or not he ever reveals any wisdom to us, he is real. He’s sitting out there right now, surviving without consuming a single living thing, at perfect peace with the universe, and mystically bound to the earth. He’s a living miracle. He inspires these people. You should have heard them today. They were all vowing to go home and spread the boy’s teachings.”
“What teachings? He hasn’t said anything.”
“He’s said volumes.” The nun smiled. “He isn’t afraid of droughts or floods. He’s not arguing with his family or friends. He’s not laboring to level a forest or dam a river. He isn’t fighting with the world for his own survival. He’s just quietly, calmly, serenely coexisting with the universe. Effortlessly. Can you imagine an entire world of such people?”
“A world in which no one laughed or sang or played or loved? You can have it.” Asha lay down on her own blanket.
“Asha?”
“Hm?”
“Will you tell me about the doctors who trained you? Not now, but some day, when you’re ready?”
“Good night, Priya.”
5
It was several hours after sunrise when Asha saw the lone woman coming down the eastern road from the distant farms. Priya had gone back to the pilgrims long before and the scene around the teak tree looked just as it had the day before, and the day before that. Some faces in the crowd changed as new wanderers arrived and old ones left, but they sat and waited just the same.
The woman coming down the road was middle aged, with a few streaks of gray in her black hair, and quite a few lines around her eyes and mouth. Her faded green sari swayed sharply around her legs as she moved, but she walked calmly with her head held high and came straight up to Asha in the middle of the street. “Good morning. Are you the herbalist?”
“Yes. I’m Asha. You must be Sati.”
“Yes, and I know what you want me to do, or to see.” The woman paused, her face lined a bit more deeply with thought and worry. “Come along then.” Sati led Asha back toward the western end of the village, and did not display any particular reaction to the crowd sitting in the road. She only said, “I don’t remember that little tree being there.”
Asha nodded and waited for the woman to continue, and they walked together around the pilgrims to the tree where Priya sat next to the silent boy. Asha gestured to the seated figure and said, “Please, look closely. Take your time. I need you to be certain.”
Sati knelt down beside the boy and studied his face for a moment. Asha tried to imagine whether the boy Kavi would have looked very different with hair and eyebrows and eyelashes. Will she even be able to recognize him? After a moment, Sati reached out with a steady hand to touch the boy’s arm, and then to caress his cheek. And then she stood and backed away from him.
“I can’t be certain. Kavi had such thick hair,” she said quietly. “And he was thinner. His cheeks, I mean. But the nose is the same. Maybe. No, no, they’re not the same really. His hands, his chin. I’m trying to imagine this boy dirty and hairy and laughing. No, they’re not quite the same. But they are very similar.” Sati stared at the boy a bit longer and then turned away. “And no one knows his name or where he came from?”
Asha shook her head.
“I see. Then I wish you all well. I hope I was helpful.” Sati turned to leave.
“Wait.” Asha followed her. “Don’t you want to stay and see if he speaks?”
“No.” The woman shuddered. “I don’t.”
“One last question then,” Asha said. “Do you remember the doctor who came to help Kavi just before he died? Can you describe him to me?”