Read Beyond the Sky and the Earth for Free Online Page A

Jamie Lynne!
    Chuni tells us stories when we get tired of Sharchhop grammar. “This is a true story,” she begins, “this really happened,” and tells us of cloud fairies, wicked stepmothers, lamas who change into birds, prophetic dreams, a talking raven. A holy man throws his seven sons into the river to find out which ones are demons, and three turn into black dogs. “Be careful of poison villages,” she warns us. “Some villages are poison, especially in the east, Tashigang-side. You should never eat or drink anything there.” I want to get this straight, especially since we are all going “Tashigang-side,” but she has already begun the next story. Witches, a yeti, battles won by throwing hailstones back. All her stories have markers in the physical world. It happened there, at the rock by the river, she says. That is how the place got its name. You can still see the imprint his body left, the ruins of the castle, the burnt tree, it’s on the way to Paro, it’s near a rocky outcrop in Lhuntse, not even birds go there now.
    Gordon drives us back to the Paro valley one afternoon for a picnic of bread, cucumbers and tasteless tinned cheese, past the airport, at a sunny clearing near the river, where we stop beside a chorten, a monument made out of whitewashed stones with a square base, a globular middle, and pointed top. Chortens are complex Buddhist symbols representing the body of Buddha, Gordon tells us. Inside there are precious stones, written prayers, relics. In Nepal, most chortens have been desecrated and robbed, but, in Bhutan, this is extremely rare. The Bhutanese still believe in the sanctity of these monuments, and would expect divine retribution if they disturbed one.
    Across the river, hanging from a cliff is the monastery of Taktsang, the tiger’s nest, where Padmasambhava and his flying tigress landed. The flying tigress does not seem half as incredible as the monastery itself, which looks as if it has been glued to the cliff face. “Imagine,” Sasha says, “hauling up all the stones and wood, and then actually building it up there. A few people must have fallen to their deaths.” Gordon says the only death he knows of is recent: a tourist supposedly fell trying to get a good picture.
    Afterward, we drive to Drukgyal Dzong, built in 1647 to celebrate the victory of Bhutanese troops over invading Tibetans. In 1951, a fire started by a butter lamp consumed most of the fortress and now the dzong stands in ruins. The road loops around a stone marker and continues back to Thimphu. Lorna is singing some twangy country song about “the end of the road.” But the end of the road is the beginning of a wide footpath that disappears around the green bulk of a mountain. Beyond is a snow peak, the sacred mountain Jomolhari, home of the goddess Jomo, over seven thousand meters above sea level. Years ago, the Royal Government gave an international climbing team permission to ascend the mountain under the condition that they not disturb the goddess, and the team apparently kept their promise and did not set foot on the actual peak.
    A man passes us, leading three ponies laden with sacks and bamboo baskets, their bells singing softly as they step carefully off the tarmacked road, onto the other, older road. Watching the ponies pass, I feel for a moment that I am an illusion, standing in jeans and a sweatshirt outside a landcruiser, a camera dangling against my leg. What are you doing here, the landscape asks me. I don’t know yet.
    I begin to wonder what is happening beyond these mountains. I want the eleven o’clock news, The Globe and Mail, I want this program to be interrupted by a special bulletin. In Bhutan, news seems to be all word-of-mouth, what someone heard from someone else two days or two weeks ago, rumor and gossip and travelers’ tales. News of the road conditions, for example, fluctuates wildly. We are told that the passes are blocked with snow, we will not be going to our postings for a