of the monk, his sword, and the ancient manuscripts he had died protecting were halfway down the mountain on the rickety wooden cart. The raven was never far away. By deep night they had reached her home and only then did it fly directly to the monk and begin picking, not at the flesh, but at the many arrow shafts protruding whole and broken from chest and torso.
She and her cub moved once more in unison. They pulled open the blood stained robes. Underneath was the silk tunic she had spun for him some eight years ago. It was his way of keeping his one night of transgression close to his heart. With a twist and a pull, the silk eased the many broad-heads out as faithfully as it had stopped their full penetration.
As the door closed behind them, the woman and child gathered all their healing skills, and the black bird flew up to join the darkness.
The pale monk lay still but for the occasional cough and the shallow rising and falling of his powerful chest. Selah sat quietly and watched her mother work. In stoic concentration she went about the business of healing. Infection, blood loss, and trauma were the enemies she fought against, but it was the powerful love of a woman and her daughter that kept the monk on this earthly plain.
Over the next year Selah grew in loves complete embrace. Her father took well to life on the small farm. For him the work was joyous and productive. Even the most mundane tasks were undertaken with nurturing in mind. The love between her parents was as vast and solid as the temple’s mighty mountainous foundation. Her father didn’t talk much about his former temple life, but by moonlight he would look toward distant peak and remember.
The army that had ravished it did not pursue him. Perhaps they thought that all twenty-one monks had perished, perhaps they thought no surviving monk would continue to live in the temple’s mountain shadow, or perhaps they were just smart enough to let sleeping dogs lie. The monk that knew the secrets of blade making, and the protector of the monastery’s ancestral wisdom, was now just a simple family man.
For the next eleven years they thrived. Selah, her mother, and Mah Lin lived life with the hearts understanding how strong the bonds of love are, and how fleeting life is. They knew that even if a person lives a hundred years, it is still just a blink of an eye to the mountain. As a family every minute of every day was lived and loved to the fullest.
The rain was gently misting on the day father and daughter returned happily from their labor in the fields. They worked well together and shared a love for all that was nature. They spoke on this day about the changing weather and the coming of the new season. As they crested the last hill before their home, they both fell silent. Selah felt the blood drain from her face and her stomach shrivel.
At a glance they knew that their life had changed. As they neared the house their pace quickened to a run. From a distance they saw that the smoke that always rose up at cooking time was absent. They saw that in its place at the chimney’s mouth perched the raven. Both knew even before they opened the door and saw her still form on the floor, their time here as three had ended.
She lay where she had fallen, pale to the eye, and cold like marble to the touch. Her beauty lingered long after her life force had departed. Even in death her features were calm, and serenity was her last expression. Mah Lin knelt beside his love, closed her eyes, and kissed her one last time. Selah opened the fingers of her mother’s cool hand and lifted from them the leaves of a freshly picked plant. It was woad, the flowering shrub that boils down to the richest blue. Selah was surprised because her mother had said nothing about dyeing any silk, she looked sadly at the dark green leaves and bright yellow flowers, closed her eyes, and inhaled their gentle fragrance deeply.
Death had been kind and swift. She had not suffered or lingered. Instead she had crossed from the world of flesh in one seamless step. Selah’s father said that her heart had just stopped beating, and her spirit had left in a single breath. Perhaps it was because she had put so much of her heart into the healing on that night twelve years ago. In less than a heartbeat, three had become two. For father and daughter their strength and their hope rested in the fact that they still had each other.
Together they buried her by the roots of a young oak tree. Despite Death’s kindness, the pain of her passing cut into Mah Lin and Selah like a razor sharp knife.
That evening, they knelt by the earthen hearth of the cooking fire. The orange flames from aromatic wood leapt and licked up the sides of the metal cooking pot. The water boiled fiercely as it changed from liquid to vapor. For a long time there was only silence. Eventually Mah Lin asked Selah what she saw. “The elements, father,” was her reply. “Yes, daughter,” was his.
They stood up together and reached into the fire for a burning bough. They paused on the way out only long enough to toss it gently on the empty bed. The horse had already been hitched to the wagon and the temple library already loaded. Mah Lin had drawn his sword and sliced furiously at his long dark hair. The blade was soon cutting across scalp and the blood flowed freely but unnoticed. By the time his head was shorn and shaven, the flames had filled the house and poured out and upwards from every opening.
Both father and daughter moved wearily, weighed down by the pain of transition. As they turned together and began walking away, she adjusted the sword on his back, much like her mother would have done. In the dancing light of the raging fire she saw the pentagram on its hilt. On each of the star s five points, a character: fire, earth, metal, water, and wood.
By the time they reached the mountain their old house glowed like a tiny ember, and their previous life had been transformed into just a memory.
Selah never questioned why or where they were going. This was not the time for talking; it was the time for her unwavering faith in her father’s judgment. Dawn was breaking as they reached the base of the temple’s mountain, and by mid-morning they had arrived at its blackened summit. She followed him closely with horse and cart, just as she had done with her mother many years before. Now, however, she was no longer a child, but a woman grown rich in both wisdom and beauty.
The brick and mortar that was this place lay scattered and moss covered, like the bones and armor of its dead. She held her trepidation in check and wondered if this is the only peace that war can bring. Their obedient mare had soon found water. It grazed happily in the over grass, content for now with the chance to rest. Both monk and soldier lay where they had fallen. Selah watched her father solemnly go about the business of gathering and piling the skeletal remains of his monastic brothers. Quietly she began to help him with his task.
From a respectable distance she saw her father kneel in silence beside the ragged robed bones of his abbot. To these he summoned life. With closed eyes he recalled time spent and lessons learned. Reaching into the mottled robes of the master, he removed the treasured relic he knew the abbot would have died defending. The metal shone brightly in the sunlight.
Placing the object safely beneath the folds of his tunic the priest said calmly, “The vajra, from the hands of Bodhidharma to the earliest monks of our order.” This was the connection of past with present, the object that linked steel to scroll. Seeing the unspoken question in his daughter’s eyes he offered more. “The vajra, the library, and the sword – The spirit, the mind, and the body.” His role and responsibility within the temple had not ended with the destruction of its mighty walls, it had merely been transformed.
Together on this holy ground they built a crypt of blackened stone like a monument within a monument, and when they had finished Mah Lin began the prayers for the dead. The father and husband that she had known was a good and formidable man, but here at this destroyed temple
