Above the Shan Hills, a smudge of light spread up the sky. Edgar expected to see the sun rise, to mark the day as the start of the final leg of a journey he had begun to think he would never make. But it was hidden in the clouds and the land brightened gradually. Ahead, Khin Myo opened a small parasol.
They rode east for several hours at a slow pace, along a road that ran past dry rice fields and empty granaries. Along the way they passed processions into town, men leading oxen to market, women with heavy loads balanced on their heads. Soon the crowds thinned, and they found themselves alone. They crossed a small stream and turned south on a smaller, dustier road between two wide, fallow rice fields.
Nok Lek turned back. “Mr. Drake, we go faster now. It is days to Mae Lwin, and the roads here are good, not like in Shan States.”
Edgar nodded, and gripped his reins. Nok Lek hissed at his pony; it began to trot. Edgar kicked at the flanks of his. Nothing happened. He kicked harder. The pony didn’t move. Nok Lek and Khin Myo were getting smaller in the distance. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He hissed.
They galloped south along a small road that paralleled the Shan Hills to the east and the Irrawaddy to the west. Edgar stood in the saddle with one hand on the reins, the other holding his hat. As they rode, he found himself laughing, thrilled by the speed. On the hunt, they had only walked the ponies, and he tried to remember when he had last ridden a horse this fast. It must have been nearly twenty years ago, when he and Katherine had spent a holiday with a cousin of hers who had a small farm in the country. He had almost forgotten the pounding thrill of the speed.
They stopped in the late morning at a rest station for pilgrims and travelers, and Nok Lek bought food from a nearby house, curries and scented rices and salads of mashed tea wrapped in the leaves of a banana plant. As they ate, Nok Lek and Khin Myo spoke in rapid Burmese. At one point Khin Myo apologized to Edgar for not speaking in English, “There is much we need to talk about. And I think you would be bored by our conversation.”
“Please don’t mind me,” said Edgar, who was quite content with their spot in the shade, from which he could see the blackened rice fields. He knew they were burned by farmers in preparation for the rains, but it was difficult to convince himself that it wasn’t the sun’s doing. They stretched for miles, from the river to the abrupt rise of the Shan Hills. Like the walls of a fortress, he thought as he stared at the mountains, Or maybe they are falling, like fabric over the edge of the table, pooling on the floor in small hills and valleys. His eyes searched vainly for a road that broke the facade, but found none.
They rested briefly after lunch, and then remounted the ponies. They rode all afternoon and into the evening, when they stopped in a village, and Nok Lek knocked on the door of a small house. A shirtless man came out and the two spoke for several minutes. The man led them to the back, where there was another, smaller raised structure. Here they tied the ponies, rolled out mats on the bamboo floor, and hung mosquito nets from the ceiling. The entrance to the hut was to the south, and Edgar arranged his mattress so that his feet rested by the door, a precaution against any creatures that might visit during the night. Immediately Nok Lek grabbed the mat and turned it. “Don’t point your head to the north,” he said sternly. “Very bad. That is the direction we bury the dead.”
Edgar lay down next to the boy. Khin Myo went to bathe, and later slipped back quietly through the door. She lifted her mosquito net and climbed under it. Her mat lay inches from Edgar’s, and he pretended he was sleeping and watched her arrange her bed beside him. Soon she lay down and soon her breathing changed, and in sleep she shifted so that her face rested close to his. Through the thin cotton of the two mosquito nets, he could feel her breath, soft and warm, imperceptible were it not for the stillness and the heat.
Nok Lek woke them early. Without speaking, they packed the thin mattresses and mosquito nets. Khin Myo left and returned with her face freshly painted with thanaka. They loaded the ponies and rejoined the road. It was still dark. As he rode, Edgar felt a tremendous stiffness in his legs, his arms, his abdomen. He winced, but said nothing; Khin Myo and the boy moved gracefully and unencumbered. He laughed to himself, I am not young.
Instead of continuing south, they took another small road east, toward the lightening sky. The path was narrow, and the ponies occasionally were forced to slow to a trot. Edgar was surprised at how Khin Myo managed to balance herself, let alone hold on to the parasol. He was also surprised that, when they stopped and he collapsed in exhaustion, covered with dust and sweat, she still had the same flower in her hair that she had plucked from a bush that morning. He told her this, and she laughed. “Do you too wish to ride with a flower in your hair, Mr. Drake?”
At last, by late afternoon on the second day, they reached a set of small dry hills covered with brush and scattered boulders. The ponies slowed and followed a narrow trail. They passed by a crumbling pagoda with peeling white paint, and stopped. Khin Myo and Nok Lek dismounted without speaking, and Edgar followed. They left their shoes at the door and went through a small portal and into a dark and musty room. A gilded Buddha statue sat on a raised platform, surrounded by candles and flowers. Its eyes were dark and mournful, and it sat with its legs crossed, its hands cupped in its lap. There was no sign of anyone else. Nok Lek had brought a small wreath of flowers from his bag and set this on the altar. He knelt, and Khin Myo did the same, and both bowed low, so that their foreheads touched the cool tiles. Edgar watched Khin Myo, the tied bun of her hair shifting, baring the back of her neck. Catching himself staring, he quickly bowed in imitation.
Outside the pagoda, he asked, “Who maintains this place?”
“It is part of a larger temple,” said Khin Myo. “The monks come here to take care of the Buddha.”
“But I don’t see anyone,” Edgar said.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Drake,” she said. “They are here.”
There was something about the loneliness of the place that unsettled him, and he wished to ask her more, about what she was saying, what she was praying for, why she had stopped here and not at any of the other countless pagodas. But she and Nok Lek had begun to talk to each other again.
They mounted their ponies and began to walk. At the top of the hill, they stopped to look back over the plain. Despite the low altitude, the flatness of the valley afforded them a view of their journey, a lonely country of empty fields and twisting streams. Small hamlets clasped rivers and roads, all of the same brown color of earth. In the far distance, they could discern the grid of Mandalay, and farther, the snaking course of the Irrawaddy.
The road descended over the other side of the hill, and they followed a small rise to a group of houses which lay at the base of a larger mountain. There they stopped and Nok Lek dismounted. “I will buy food. Maybe we don’t see anyone for a long time.” Edgar sat on the pony and waited. The boy disappeared into one of the houses.
Some chickens wandered in the road, pecking at the dust. A man lounging on a platform in the shade of a tree called out to Khin Myo and she answered him.
“What did he say?” Edgar asked.
“He asked where were we going.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said we are riding south, to Meiktila, but we came this way for surveying.”
“Why lie?”
“The fewer people who know we are going into the mountains the better. This is a lonely place. Usually we travel with an escort. But because of circumstances, this is somewhat…unofficial. If anyone wished to attack, we have no help.”
“Are you worried?”
“Worried? No. Are you?”
“Me? A bit. On the ship from Prome, there were some prisoners, dacoits. Fierce-looking fellows.”
Khin Myo studied him for a moment, as if weighing what she should say. “It is safe. Nok Lek is a very good fighter.”
“I don’t know how reassuring that is. He is a child. And I hear they travel in bands of twenty.”
“You shouldn’t think of such things. I have made this trip many times.”
Nok Lek returned with a basket, which he fastened to the back of Edgar’s saddle. He bid good-bye to the man in the shade, and hissed his pony forward. Edgar followed and raised his hand in greeting. The man said nothing as the Englishman passed.