Kat Out of the Bag Chapter Ten By Steve Rudd

Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

As the sun rose, so did my spirits. The men before me were all aged and seemingly wise. You could just tell that all three of them had been born in this valley, and had all lived and worked there ever since. If any, or all, of them genuinely believed in a heaven, then it wouldn't be an, other-worldly place delighted by harp-twanging angels.

It would be here; right here in this valley. They didn't know anything other than this valley and for eternity they would remain under its spell and at the mercy of its bewitching wrath... long after their merely mortal bodies had died and decayed.

I thought sticks and stones might break my bones, but words will never scare me. Yet their words didn't scare me as I assumed they would. In fact, they hoped that I might be able to help them, so I listened intently as they explained a strange situation that had been puzzling the entire Langtang community for the past few weeks, ever since a beautiful young girl from the village had mysteriously disappeared. Quite literally, into thin air.

At first, in my pessimistically paranoid state, I feared that I was personally being accused of some unspeakable evil. I was quick to point out that I had only recently arrived at the village, having never before visited the vicinity. Each of the men, in their own little worlds, aired a slight chuckle or two before the collectively set-in-stone faces resumed their altogether more grave expressions. They knew that I wasn't guilty of anything, but they ruefully suggested that I might be able to help in their continuing search for the girl. A girl, who had coincidentally celebrated her 18th birthday on the damned day of disappearance, as though such a hard fact might in some way, be significant.

As if I might just know a little more than I was letting on when I said that I hadn't realised anybody from the village had gone missing before these men had effectively abducted me and stole me from sweet dreams.

The raging river that punctuated the serene nature of the valley seemed to be barely a harmless trickle from the height at which we were stationed, overlooking the tightly clustered village below, casually coming and going about its humble daily business. And there I was thinking that the so-called simple lives that these mountain people lived were perpetually hunky dory, unaffected by all of the problems that plague the money and the lust-driven Western world at large. I found it almost impossible to comprehend that any form of evil deeds could take place up here, near to the border with Tibet.

And yet, moral injustice had always sowed its seeds out here in the East as well as in the West, as the Dalai Lama would testify when he was forced to leave his beloved Potala Palace refuge.

The majestic scenery might, to some naïve minds, appear all sweet and innocent in its stark beauty. But for it to be breathtaking implies that it might just kill you when you least expect it.

It just depends on which way you look at things, and if indeed you are willing to lend a hand when it's most required.

© Steve Rudd 2005

Continued on www.thisisUll.com...... Chapter 11

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