It was July, and the afternoon sun over Ladakh was the particular kind of brutal that tourists photographed and locals simply endured — bleaching the mountain paths white, flattening the shadows, making the prayer flags hang limp and still against a sky that was aggressively, unhelpfully blue.
Inside Thiksey Monastery, however, it was different. The thick stone walls held the cool like a secret. Juniper incense drifted through the corridors. The brass bell from the upper shrine room tolled at intervals — deep, unhurried, wiping the air clean each time. A thousand years of bells had soaked into these stones, and you could feel it.
Deepa Sharma was sitting in the monastery's guest room and feeling none of this.
She was thirty-two years old, she had worked for the Rathore household since she was seventeen, and she had a particular face she wore in difficult situations — composed, unreadable, giving nothing away. She was wearing it now. She had been wearing it for the past hour and a half, sitting on the low cushioned seat with a cup of tea she hadn't touched, staring at the middle distance while her mind ran in tight, anxious circles.
Madam Aanya had been unconscious for three days.
This was not, technically, new. Ever since the accident fourteen months ago — the car that had gone off the road on the Udaipur highway, the fractured leg, the something-else that no doctor had been able to name or explain — Aanya Rathore had been collapsing. Without warning, without pattern, without any cause that the finest neurologists, physicians, and Ayurvedic specialists in the country could identify. She would simply go — mid-sentence sometimes, mid-step — and then she would be somewhere unreachable for a day, sometimes two, and then she would come back as sharp and difficult and alive as ever.
Two days was the longest it had been, until now.
Now it was three, and there was no sign of her returning.
And then this morning, Guruji Nandana had appeared in Jaipur.
Deepa had heard of Guruji Nandana her whole life — everyone in certain circles had. He was the most revered wandering Buddhist teacher in the country, ageless and entirely his own, whose movements followed no schedule anyone could predict and whose counsel could not be bought or requested. He simply appeared where he was needed.
He had appeared at Rathore House at nine this morning. He had met with the family patriarch in the old study. He had emerged at eleven, and by noon a formal document was on its way to Thiksey Monastery in Ladakh.
Deepa had read it before it was sealed. She was the head of household. She read everything.
The Rathore heiress carries a severe Kaal Sarp Dosha — a malevolent alignment too powerful for conventional remedies. Only one of pure and undisturbed spiritual energy can neutralize it. There is one such person at Thiksey Monastery. He must come to Rathore House. The arrangement, as made fifteen years ago, is to be honored now.
Fifteen years ago. Deepa had been seventeen when that first arrangement had been made — when Guruji Nandana had first pointed to a four year old boy at this very monastery and said that one. She had thought it was absurd then. The unconscious heiress and the four year old monk.
Time had passed. Aanya had recovered. The arrangement had sat in the background, technically real, practically forgotten.
Until today.
Deepa looked at the untouched tea. She looked at the wall. She thought about Aanya — sharp, brilliant, furious even in sleep — and about whatever it was that kept pulling her under, and about the fact that every reasonable option had been exhausted.
She thought: I don't know if I believe in any of this.
She thought: Guruji Nandana has never been wrong about anything.
She picked up the tea and finally drank it.
In the main hall of the monastery, the atmosphere was considerably less composed.
The Head Lama had summoned Jamyang as soon as the document arrived. Jamyang was thirty-nine now — lean, quietly authoritative, the kind of person who had earned his calm through a great deal of difficulty. He stood before Rinpoche-ji with his hands folded and his face very still, which meant he was working very hard to keep it that way.
"You know why I've called you," the Head Lama said.
"Ji." A pause. "The Rathore arrangement."
"Guruji Nandana says the time is now. The girl is very ill."
Jamyang said nothing.
"There are those among our brothers," the Head Lama continued gently, "who carry exceptional spiritual energy. But there is only one who Guruji specifically indicated, fifteen years ago and again today." A pause. "You know who."
Jamyang's jaw tightened. "He's nineteen, Rinpoche-ji."
"Yes."
"He's never left the monastery. He's never — Rinpoche-ji, he's barely been to the village at the bottom of the mountain. Jaipur is — that is a completely different world, and the Rathore family is — "
"Jamyang."
He stopped.
"Do you trust Guruji Nandana's foresight?"
A long silence.
"Yes," Jamyang said. Quietly. Helplessly. "Yes, I do."
The Head Lama nodded. "Then you know what must be done."
Jamyang looked at the floor. Fifteen years ago he had stood in a similar position before a different Head Lama and been told similar words, and he had wept, and nothing had changed. Some paths, apparently, could not be argued with.
He thought about the night he had found Tenzin — a June night, mountain rain, the smell of something wrong on the road. The crumpled car. The adults who hadn't survived. And a four year old boy sitting in the mud beside them, impossibly small, who had at some point dragged his parents together so they were side by side — so they would not be alone — and had been sitting there calling for help in a voice worn down to almost nothing.
He had brought Tenzin back to the monastery that night. He had thought: here he will be safe. Here he will heal. Here I can look after him.
Fifteen years later, here they were.
"I'll tell him," Jamyang said.
Jamyang did not go to find Tenzin immediately. He stood in the corridor for a while first, composing himself, because Tenzin would notice if he wasn't composed, and then Tenzin would spend the entire conversation trying to comfort him rather than processing his own feelings, which was exactly the kind of thing Tenzin did.
He knew where to find him. At this hour, on a Tuesday, all the monks were in the east courtyard for afternoon prayers.
The east courtyard prayer hall was the coolest room in the monastery in summer — sheltered by old poplar trees that turned the light green and dappled, soaked in the smell of old wood and butter lamps and decades of incense. Three rows of monks sat on cushions, sutras open, voices rising and falling in the familiar afternoon cadence.
Every monk appeared to be in a state of focused devotion.
Jamyang's eyes found Tenzin in approximately four seconds. This was not difficult. Tenzin was in the third row, and Tenzin was the tallest person in the room by a noticeable margin, and Tenzin was — very, very slowly — tilting forward.
Jamyang put a hand over his eyes briefly.
Tenzin Sonam, nineteen years old, lanky and sharp-featured and possessed of arguably the purest spiritual energy at Thiksey Monastery, was falling asleep during afternoon prayers. Again. His eyes were closed. His head was listing gently toward the considerably shorter senior monk sitting directly in front of him — Brother Lobsang, who had at some point in the last decade stopped being surprised by this and moved into a state of resigned anticipation.
Tenzin's head drooped.
Further.
Further—
Bonk.
It was, if anything, more impressive now that he was nineteen and his head was considerably larger. Lobsang let out a pained sound. Several monks looked up. The supervising monk turned sharply. A poorly suppressed ripple of laughter moved through the hall.
In the third row, a very tall, very dazed monk slowly raised his head. Blinked. His hand came up to touch his forehead, found it sore, registered what had happened, and then — with the particular resignation of someone for whom this was not new information — he tucked his hand back into his robe and bowed his head toward Lobsang's back.
"Maafi, Lobsang Bhaiya," he said. His voice was sleep-rough and entirely sincere.
"Again, Tenzin," Lobsang hissed.
"I know. I'm sorry. I was — it was the cicadas, they're very — "
"Prayers," Lobsang said pointedly.
"Right. Yes." Tenzin straightened up, picked up his sutra, and attempted to relocate his place in it with the focused energy of someone who was absolutely, definitely awake now.
He was asleep again in six minutes. Jamyang watched the whole thing from the doorway with an expression of profound fondness and profound sorrow in equal measure.
When the supervising monk finally noticed and opened his mouth, Jamyang stepped forward.
"I'll take him," he said. "Rinpoche-ji wants to see him."
He walked to the third row and touched Tenzin's shoulder.
Tenzin came awake immediately — he always did, the moment someone touched him, alert in an instant in a way that had always struck Jamyang as the leftover reflex of a child who had learned early that the world could change without warning. He looked up, saw Jamyang's face, and went very still in the particular way that meant he was reading the situation.
"Bhaiya," he said quietly. "What happened?"
Jamyang held out his hand.
After a moment, Tenzin stood up — unfolding to his full height, considerably taller than Jamyang now, which still occasionally startled him — and followed him out of the hall.
Behind them, the afternoon prayers continued. Lobsang finally, gratefully, moved to the front row.
In the guest room, Deepa Sharma was on her fourth cup of tea and her second hour of waiting, when the novice monk knocked on the door and said that the Head Lama was ready to receive her.
She set down the cup. Straightened her dupatta. Put her face back on.
In the corridor outside the Head Lama's room, a nineteen year old monk stood with his prayer beads in his hands and his eyes on the middle distance, turning them slowly, rhythmically, like something he did when he was steadying himself.
He didn't know she was there yet.
She studied him for a moment — tall, lean, younger than she'd somehow expected, with the kind of face that looked like it defaulted to openness, like keeping things in was a skill he hadn't fully developed.
She thought: Madam Aanya is going to be absolutely furious.
She thought: good.
She thought: maybe furious is exactly what she needs.
The prayer beads moved through his fingers. His lips moved faintly.
Om mani padme hum.