Karma knows it is a bad omen.
He feels it in his body. A sudden chill in the summer air. A passing shadow in the white Tibetan sky. A hush in the rustle of the yellow grasses.
One moment, the yak calf was with the herd. Now it is gone—the gift for the shaman on his visit. The benefaction. Their offering. Missing.
Karma hastens frantically up the rise, climbing hill and dune as he searches, the little boy beside him scampering to keep up, three little steps for every one of his.
Bad omen. Bad luck.
This day, of all days.
The shaman is to arrive at the village tonight. Soon, the fathers of the valley will bring their sons, and the mothers their daughters, to have their fortunes told, the spirits consulted.
It is Karma’s turn to graze the herd. His lot. His fate.
His fault.
Karma’s heart pounds as he scales the last hill. The tattered prayer flags of the village outskirts come into view, trembling slightly in the uneven wind. They have been placed here purposely, auspiciously, adorning the rusted ruins of the iron wreckage said to have once been able to fly, a stupa to a miracle of the time before the destruction known only by the name of the Six Suns—six fires said to have consumed all the earth, leaving only the barrens of this remote hinterland. Now the cloth images of the Four Dignities float like ghosts against the sinking of the western sun: the snow lion, the tiger, the phoenix, and the dragon—chained to the east, south, west, and north.
An incongruous form catches the corner of Karma’s eye, only paces away from the wreckage like some offering delivered before the stupa: white fur. No movement, except for the fluttering of a few woolen strands. His heart plummets. Before he can even fully comprehend what he is seeing, he already knows it is something terrible.
The calfling.
It lies on its side. Coming down the dune, Karma flinches at the sight of the animal’s belly. A large hole gapes from sternum to flank. A jumble of intestines bulges out like a heap of spilled rope from a sack. The ground is a patch of blood so dark it looks black.
Karma is paralyzed at the sight, as if it were his own lifeblood drained to the earth.
No . . . it can’t be. Not the shaman’s offering . . .
Only hours ago, it was alive and with the herd. Now it is a bloody carcass, viscera baking in the sun.
“What happened?” a boy’s voice gasps behind him.
Karma startles. It is his little cousin Lobsang. Karma moves to shield the boy from the sight, but the child is too far out of reach, or perhaps it is only that Karma’s legs are too numb.
“It . . . it was probably wolves,” Karma mumbles. “Maybe a pack of them, or something . . .”
His voice trails. True, there have been more sightings of wild animals, but his instinct tells him this is something else. None of the meat has been touched. The yak is a calf but by no means small. Looking at the sheer size of the wound, nothing on four legs could do damage that looks like this.
A swarm of horseflies buzzes fiercely, as if to defend their quarry. A feeling comes over him, even more fearful than before. He has been afraid for the yak. But now that he’s found it, he is afraid for the village.
If not animals . . . then bandits?
Karma’s gaze flickers to the distance, to the flat horizon, the mountains long gone, where the border bandits are known to dwell. Lobsang mirrors his gaze. The vista is empty, but he knows the bandits prefer the night anyway, the better to avoid being shot by the villagers’ matchlock rifles. Still, if it was them, wouldn’t they steal the calf, not waste it? As depraved as they are, they are more deprived of food, no different from the rest of the Four Rivers and Six Ranges.
But if neither animals nor bandits . . .
Little Lobsang seems to read his thoughts. “Could it be amigoi?” he asks in a hushed voice, invoking the name for the supernatural creature that, thus far, to Karma was nothing but a child’s figment. “My father says that in the end, the cursed become even more savage because they know that their doom is near. It’s like the ghosts who mourn at night because they will never be reborn—”
“That’s quite enough, Lobsang. We shouldn’t speak of such things.”
Karma cannot help a shudder. First the missing yak, then the mutilation. Now talk of migoi, ghosts, and the coming of the Seventh Sun. The day is going from inauspicious to downright ominous.
The wind stirs, and the stink of slowly fouling meat hits them. Karma’s little cousin buries his nose in his sleeve, tangling his arm in the necklace of amber and coral that the boy’s father gave him that day.
“We should ask my father what to do,” Lobsang says, his voice muffled by his sleeve.
It is a perfectly reasonable course of action. Karma has the same urge, to leave this scene and go back to the village. But he feels as if he cannot. He is seventeen, not a child. This has happened on his watch. He cannot go back empty-handed. The bones and the hide. The hooves, the fat, and the tendons. He cannot lose the rest to wild animals overnight. As the son of the scoundrel—it would be unforgivable.
Karma makes up his mind. “There isn’t enough time. The shaman’s ceremony will be starting soon. We’ll have to drag it back with us. Salvage what we can there.” He could ask his mother to help him. He meets his cousin’s skeptical gaze. “The meat’s already turned,” he explains. “If I lose the offal . . .”
Your father will lash me for sure, is what he wants to say, but doesn’t need to.
Lobsang seems to understand the logic. A look of sympathy crosses the boy’s face, and Karma wonders if his cousin, young as he is, actually understands a lot more. If so, he has never shown it. To Lobsang, Karma is not the cursed Sherpa’s boy, not the son of the scoundrel. He is just Karma—and for that, Karma has always loved him.
As they begin dragging the carcass away, Karma glances back over his shoulder. The sun is already beginning its descent behind the dusty horizon. Something about the light, the angle of his gaze . . . a memory floods him, searing in its suddenness: an image of his father in this exact place, ten years ago. The entire village is there too. His mother; his aunt; his uncle, the headman. And a caravan, waiting. But not Karma.
He was only seven years old then, but the memory is clear. He turns his face away.
Father’s farewell.
“Are you all right, Karma?”
Karma blinks and the memory vanishes, leaving in its place the empty western landscape, the fluttering prayer flags the only things stirring. A strand of the pennants has come untethered and is snaking now in the air like a loose kite string, whistling as it whips back and forth, back and forth.
His little cousin’s head is cocked, watching him. “What is it?”
“It’s . . . nothing,” Karma says. “Nothing at all.”
He nods to resume their movement. But though they continue on to the village, something lingers in the air, sticks to them like the scent of the fouling meat they carry, certain only to ripen even more. A feeling of some ill-fated consequence of the past now finding its way back home.