Read Online A Year at River Mountain by Michael Kenyon - Free Book Online Page B

Such an entanglement of love and worry and release. Her face against the pillow and his arrival.
    We made fire and warmed our hands, breathing clouds of mist, listening to near-human cries: out of the milk-white sea came a small herd of cattle.
    I loved the unnamed world. I emptied hope of its contents and still it haunts its old environs, slack as a spent purse, looking for some grains of dust and a couple of thin seeds. I have in my pocket a letter to give to the abbot at North Valley Monastery and have promised to bring back a reply.
    S UNKEN V ALLEY
    A grey dog joined our party and led us west. My brother monks have travelled this way before, so their judgement was quick when the path forked; they agreed with the dog. The dog, they said, must be a North Valley dog, from one of the villages, and would lead us to the nearest pass. But the dog, though happy to be with us, did not seem trustworthy to me.
    On Snow Pass the wind was blowing. The others practised English with me as we walked. I thought we were lost, but one said if we descended more or less north then we would reach a road and soon one of the villages. The other said we should be farther east and might — it was possible — miss the villages if we turned north, but if we went east would no doubt come to a marker or shrine. “The dog is a very good sign,” he said. “Certainly a sign from which to take our direction.”
    I NNER C OURTYARD
    Rain. At first rain was in the air but not falling. Then it began. We were still wandering the narrow defile at the summit and had found no marker. And then the dog ran off among the rocks. The rain fell hard and soon turned to sleet. Our journey was in ribbons. Top Pass was hidden. The only thing we agreed on was that whatever pass we eventually did find would not be the traditional one between the two valleys. The dog was gone.
    A slash of sleet. What it chose to fall on. Where it struck skin, earth. Blame was everywhere. I couldn’t distinguish cause from blame.
    We blundered steadily on all day and then found shelter beneath an overhanging rock, and slept in the fading afternoon light, trusting snow wouldn’t bury us.
    H ARSH M OUTH
    Lost. We heard barking again; in the pitch-black distance it was a welcome sound. We peered out at the feeble light. We were soaked and freezing in the cave and we huddled together under the dripping roof and dozed, flakes dancing outside.
    A leopard crossed in front of our eyes, its tracks filling instantly with snow. The cat stopped, sniffed the air, stared across the path at us, crouched in our shallow cave. Blood warmer . Such desolation between us, then static, qi fizzing, all our hackles reared.

    Yin Earth
    Hidden White
    A LL NIGHT PRAYERS . A N ANIMAL SCREAMING . S MALL FIRE from the last of our stash of wood. Small intestine. Then stars.
    We left rice and fruit for the leopard. Smoke rose to our right as we turned north and began to descend a clear path. The leopard had not eaten us. We trudged down through the snow. Opened the outer frontier gate. Waiguan . Triple Warmer luo .
    G REAT M ETROPOLIS
    We laboured along the path from Leopard Pass for half a day before we came to this forest clearing, where the buildings and the birds seemed familiar, though the people spoke in a strange dialect. Many of them were sick. There had been waves of illness during the past year. Nothing was certain, they said. Routine was washed away.
    â€œOur seasons are disordered!”
    â€œOld streams have run dry!”
    â€œOur best well has failed completely!”
    â€œIs your winter coming too soon as well?”
    We exchanged news with the elders and the others went to sleep while I waited in a cold outbuilding for the abbot to send for me. It took an hour to dry my paper in front of the tiny fire.
    I want to go home to River Mountain as soon as possible — tomorrow if the weather is fine. Fear has tightened the faces of these people. Snow clouds are rolling