From the basket rose the pungent scent of fermented tea and spices.
The trail rose steeply, and as it did, the vegetation changed, the low scrub-brush giving way to taller plants, nourished by mists that thickened as they ascended. They climbed a spur coated in a low forest, humid like the plains near Rangoon. Birds flitted through the trees, chirping loudly, and around them the movement of larger creatures could be heard through fallen leaves.
A sudden crash, and Edgar turned quickly. Another, this time louder, and then the distinct sounds of breaking branches, something moving fast through the underbrush. “Nok Lek, Khin Myo! Watch out, something is coming!” Edgar pulled his pony to a stop. Nok Lek heard it too, and slowed his mount. Louder. Edgar looked around him, for something, a knife, a gun, but he knew he had nothing.
Louder. “What is it?” he whispered, and suddenly, in front of them, a wild boar bolted across the trail and into the bushes on the other side.
“A bloody pig,” cursed Edgar. Nok Lek and Khin Myo laughed and their pony began walking again. Edgar tried to force a chuckle, but his heart was beating wildly. He hissed at his pony.
As the slope steepened, the path broke off along the flank of the mountain and emerged from the trees, affording the first view in several hours. Edgar was struck by how the scenery had changed. The opposite hillside rose so steeply that he felt that with a running leap he could touch the moss-coated branches on the facing slope, yet to walk there would involve a precipitous descent and ascent through impenetrable jungle. In the valley below, thicker vegetation hid any signs of a river or habitation, yet as the trail rose, the mountains opened onto another valley, where the floor flattened in a series of narrow, terraced fields. Far below, in the staircases of paddy, a pair of figures worked knee deep in water that reflected the sky, transferring iridescent seedlings to the clouds.
Khin Myo saw Edgar watching the farmers. “The first time I traveled into the Shan Hills,” she said, “I was surprised to see rice growing, while around Mandalay the land lay barren. The hills catch the rain clouds that pass up the Irrawaddy River basin, and even in the dry season, they take enough water for a second planting.”
“I thought there was a drought.”
“On the Plateau there is. There has been a terrible drought, for several years now. Whole villages are starving, and moving into the lowlands. The hills may catch the clouds, but they also keep them. If the monsoon rain doesn’t move onto the Plateau, it stays dry.”
“And the farmers below, are they Shan?”
“No, another group.” She spoke to Nok Lek in Burmese. “Palaung, he says, they live in these valleys. They have their own language, dress, music. It is quite confusing, actually, even for me. The hills are like islands, each has its own tribe. The longer they have been separated, the more different they become. Palaung, Paduang, Danu, Shan, Pa-O, Wa, Kachin, Karen, Karenni. And those are just some of the biggest tribes.”
“I never…” said Edgar. “Fancy that, hill islands.”
“That is what Anthony Carroll calls them, he says they are like Mr. Darwin’s islands, only here it is culture that changes, not the beaks of birds. He wrote a letter about that to your Royal Society.”
“I didn’t know…”
“They haven’t told you everything,” she said. “That is not the least of it.” She told him then of the Doctor’s studies, of his collections and correspondences, of the letters that he collected each month from Mandalay, letters from distant biologists, physicians, even chemists– chemistry was an old passion. “Half the mail that comes to Upper Burma is scientific correspondence for Anthony Carroll. And the other half is music for him.”
“And do you help him with these projects then?”
“Perhaps, a little. But he knows so much more. I only listen.” And Edgar waited for her to explain further, but she turned back to the path.
They rode on. It grew dark. New unfamiliar sounds shifted in the darkness, the burrowing of scavengers, the howls of wild dogs, the rough voices of barking deer.
Finally, in a small clearing, they stopped and dismounted, unloading a military tent that Nok Lek had brought. They pitched the tent in the center of the clearing, and Nok Lek disappeared inside to arrange the bags. Edgar remained outside, near Khin Myo. Neither spoke. They were tired and the song of the forest was deafening. At last Nok Lek emerged from the tent and told them to enter. Edgar slipped under a mosquito net and arranged his mattress. Only then did he notice the pair of double-barreled shotguns propped up against the inside of the tent, their cocked hammers reflecting the ounce of moonlight that trickled in through a hole in the canvas.
It took two days to climb through the steep jungle and over a mountain pass. In front of them the descent was brief, and steep, and softened into the Plateau, a vast patchwork of field and forest. In the distance, at the edge of the plain, another set of hills rose, gray and undefined.
They descended a narrow, stony path, the ponies’ hooves searching for footholds in the soil. Edgar let his body rock loosely in the saddle, relishing the stretching of muscles tightened by days of riding and sleeping on the ground. It was late, and the sun cast their shadows long into the valley. Edgar looked back at the mountains, at the crest of mist that capped the peaks and spilled over the slopes. In the fading light of dusk, Shan farmers worked in the fields, wearing wide hats and trousers that flowed about their feet. The rocking of the pony was slow and rhythmic, and Edgar felt his eyes close, the fantasy world of crags and temples disappearing briefly, and he thought, Perhaps I am dreaming, It is all just like a child’s fairy tale. Soon it was dark, and they galloped through the night, and he felt himself slumping forward on his pony.
He dreamed. He dreamed that he was riding a Shan pony, that they were galloping, that in the pony’s hair were twisted flowers that spun in the air like pinwheels as they moved through the paddy, past costumed ghosts, choreographed flashes of color against an infinite green. And he awoke. He awoke and saw the land was barren, and burnt rice stalks swayed in a slight breeze, and out of the earth grew mountains of karst, crag towers that hid golden statues of the Buddha, rising from the floors of caves like stalagmites, so old that even the earth had begun to dust them with deposits of carbonate. And he dreamed again, and as they passed, he could see into the caves, for they were lit by the lights of pilgrims, who turned to watch the strange foreigner, and behind them the Buddhas trembled, and brushed off their lime cloaks and hovered, also watching, for the trail was lonely, and few Englishmen ever passed this way. And he awoke, and before him on a pony’s back rode a young boy and a woman, strangers, she sleeping too, and her hair broke loose and streamed back to him, and flowers drifted out, and he dreamed he caught one and he awoke and they were crossing a bridge and it was dawn, and beneath them, a man and a boy paddled a dugout in the brown churning water, themselves the color of the boat and the current, and so it was only by the shifting shadows of the water that he could see them, and they were not alone, for no sooner had they passed beneath the bridge than came another boat, drifting, a man and a boy, and he looked up and a thousand bodies paddled for they were the stream and he dreamed, and it was still night, and from the crags and valleys came not men nor the blossoming of flowers, but something else, like light, a chanting, and those who chanted told him that the light was made of myths, and it lived in the caves with the white-clad hermits, and he awoke and they told him the myths, that the universe was created as a giant river, and in this river floated four islands, and humans lived on one, but the others were inhabited by other creatures who existed here only in tales and he dreamed that they stopped by a river to rest and the woman awoke and unwrapped her hair from where the wind had tied it about her body, and the boy and she and he knelt and drank from the river, and in it catfish churned, and he awoke and they were riding riding and it was morning.
They climbed the hills on the opposite side of the valley. The land became mountainous, and soon again it was night. Then Nok Lek said, “Tonight we rest. In the dark, we are safe.”