Yet often the humblest things of daily life, the small pleasures, seem to define existence for me. Here in this monastery we seek enlightenment, meaning, purpose. “Cheez-Its are cheddar-flavored crackers. Cheez-Its.”ĭeucalion smiled and pronounced the word more clearly than he’d done previously. He and the old monk often spoke English, for it afforded them privacy. Here he strove always to suppress his darker urges, sought calm, and hoped to find true peace.įrom an open stone balcony of the whitewashed monastery, as he gazed at the sun-splashed ice pack, he considered, not for the first time, that these two elements, fire and ice, defined his life.Īt his side, an elderly monk, Nebo, asked, “Are you looking at the mountains-or beyond them, to what you left behind?”Īlthough Deucalion had learned to speak several Tibetan dialects during his lengthy sojourn here, For several years, he had preferred to avoid people, except for Buddhist monks in this windswept rooftop of the world.Īlthough he had not killed for a long time, he still harbored the capacity for homicidal fury.
A serrated blade of Himalayan peaks, with Everest at its hilt, cut the sky.įar from civilization, this vast panorama soothed Deucalion. IN THESE MOUNTAINS OF TIBET, a fiery sunset conjured a mirage of molten gold from the glaciers and the snowfields. He possessed no psychic power of a classic nature, but sometimes omens came in his sleep. He woke from the dream and knew that it had been prophetic. Awake but manacled to the surgical table, Deucalion could only endure the procedure.Īfter he had been sewn shut, he felt something crawling inside his body cavity, as though curious, exploring.įrom behind his mask, the surgeon said, “A messenger approaches. He was the spawn of nightmares, after all and he had been toughened by a life of terror.ĭuring the afternoon, napping in his simple cell, he dreamed that a surgeon opened his abdomen to insert a mysterious, squirming mass.
DEUCALION SELDOM SLEPT, but when he did, he dreamed.
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