Shan sensed that everyone in the room felt the same detached, otherworldly nature of the moment. It was indeed as though Jokar had come from another world, had been spirited there because he was needed, and was only visiting before ascending again to the deities. The lama was unlike any man Shan had ever seen, ancient yet ageless. When he had touched Shan, in the moment he had sensed his father nearby, something like a surge of electricity had shot up Shan's arm. Sometimes deities visit, Anya had said, and change people's lives forever.

Oddly, the lama was missing the little finger on his left hand. Only a tiny stump remained where one had been. Shan remembered Lokesh speaking of how the medicine makers in Rapjung had sometimes wielded huge cleavers to chop herbs and how young students, before understanding the rhythm of the cleavers, sometimes lost fingers to the blades. It must have happened decades ago.

Shan let his awareness drift and in his mind's eye he was on Rapjung plain, nearly sixty years before, and a young Lokesh was with his old teacher Chigu and with Jokar, as a young healer monk then, perhaps still in training. Behind them in the distance the graceful buildings of Rapjung rose up the slope. Geese flew overhead, and Jokar was exclaiming over a rare herb he had found. A lark flew and landed close by, and it became a boot, and Shan saw four stubby fingers pushed in his face by a man in dark glasses. Realization swept over him like a wave of sickness, and he was suddenly back in the chamber, breathing hard and very cold. He rose unsteadily and stepped outside.

Moments later Nyma caught up with him as he sat with his back against the mountain wall, looking at the sky. "What is it? Are you ill?"

"Not sick," he muttered.

She stared at him then took a hesitant step backwards as though she saw something that frightened her.

"You remember, Nyma, that morning at Norbu when we thought the knobs were going to take us?"

"I will never forget that terrible morning," she answered, and sat beside him.

"The knob doctor was impatient, he was unhappy with Khodrak and the committee, as if they were wasting his time. He had come for a purpose, from far away, not from local Public Security."

"A special squad of doctors," Nyma said, "probably from Lhasa."

"But not just arrived from Lhasa. Gyalo said they had been traveling hard, a long time, from the Indian border." Shan sighed and gazed back at the stars. "The doctor looked at that officer and held up his fingers. Four fingers. I thought he was mocking Khodrak, saying that there were only four of us when there was supposed to be five."

"But they wanted Tenzin."

"Someone wanted Tenzin." Shan nodded. "Khodrak I think, and Tuan. But that knob officer was there for something else. There was a reason that special medical team had been traveling with the knobs. For weeks, coming from near the Indian border. At Norbu Tuan said the doctors were there because of an agitator from India. I thought he meant the resistance, even the Tiger. But he meant Jokar."

"I don't understand."

"His fingers. He pushed his little finger back and held up the other four. A strange way. Most would just push the thumb down and show four fingers. But he used his thumb and three fingers."

"Like Jokar," Nyma said in a slow whisper.

"Not like Jokar," Shan said. "It was Jokar he was indicating. He was looking for the medicine healer with four fingers, tracking him with a team that could lure the sick from him with offers of Chinese clinics and hospitals, and find evidence through those who use traditional healers. The government thinks he has stirred up a path of reactionary practices all the way from India."

"If that's true," a voice said out of the darkness, "it would explain why the medicine fields are being burned." Winslow stepped beside them.

"But why?" Nyma protested. "The rumors, the reports. They make it sound like the government is seeking some terrible criminal. He is a healer. He is so important to Tibetans." She looked at Shan and her eyes dropped to the ground. She had answered her own question.

Winslow dropped to a rock and they sat in silence. A new vision rose in Shan's mind: Jokar in a lao gai camp, being flogged by guards as he tried to push a barrow of rocks up a hill.

"He only wanted to teach us again, to bring the healing home," Nyma said finally, in a mournful whisper.

In the morning, Lin was sitting up, leaning against the wall. He seemed incapable of speech, or at least not inclined to speak, but his eyes restlessly watched the Tibetans and his good hand restlessly searched his pockets, making a small pile of their contents. Cigarettes, matches, a whistle, a small key for manacles, and a tiny pouch of ochre cloth tied with a thread. Whenever Tenzin appeared in the circle of light cast by the butter lamps, the colonel pointed at him, sometimes making small grabbing motions like an angry crab, sometimes rubbing his eyes as if to see Tenzin better. Anya still did not leave his side, and she held a bowl of tea from which he sometimes sipped, though he winced whenever he lifted his head to swallow.

Jokar was gone. No one had seen him leave. Lhandro's mother said it was the way of such creatures, that they would just spirit away. Winslow thought he had seen someone walking on the western trail in the grey light of early dawn. Lokesh looked exhausted. He had stayed up nearly all night with Jokar, long after Shan himself had collapsed of fatigue onto a blanket. Shan watched as he tightened the strips of cloth binding Lin's wrist, then, deeply focused, as if unaware of anyone else in the room, pulled a bowl of brilliant white salt from the shadows. Lokesh placed Lin's hand, the hand with the broken wrist, over the bowl, and began rubbing the salt over the hand. It was Lamtso salt, the empowered salt of the sacred lake, and Lokesh was washing Lin's hand in it.

Lin did not react, but simply watched with the same rapt attention as Lokesh while the old Tibetan applied the salt with a kneading motion, then gently wiped the skin clean with a scrap of cloth. When he was done he folded what looked like a prayer scarf around the wrist, tied the arm into a sling around Lin's neck, pushed himself to his knees, and rose. Lin watched him expectantly, and raised his eyebrows, as if he were going to ask Lokesh to stay, but just watched uncertainly as he stepped away. Shan followed him outside to where Lhandro's mother was churning butter tea. The two men took their bowls of tea and walked to the rim of the plateau. Neither seemed to know what to say about what had happened the night before.

"So many times we have climbed up mountains because you thought you saw a giant turtle or a deity with ten arms," Shan finally observed. He had lost count of the number of times, in fact, but he never said no when his friend insisted they climb. "Last night, it was like the turtle was finally there."

Lokesh offered his crooked grin to Shan and nodded. "Those are the words."

"Is it true that you knew him? At Rapjung?"

"I was only a low initiate. But he remembers. We spoke for hours last night about Rapjung and Yapchi Valley, until Jokar wandered away and sat with Tenzin by that old tree. He remembers how I was always with Chigu Rinpoche, how Rinpoche had hoped I would stay to live at Rapjung for training."

No one stayed at Rapjung to live, Shan thought bitterly. "But he escaped before the army came."

"He had been called away by the Dalai Lama's personal physician. In a secret message, when the Dalai Lama fled to India. Jokar was one of the youngest instructors and they wanted him to help establish a new Tibetan medical college in India. All these years that is where he had been, building for a new future in India."