Chief Monk Lobsang leaves the Sarnai Monastery at twilight sans parting ceremony or retinue. It isn’t a joyous occasion to require as much. Climbing down the ancient, worn-out ladder that connected the Sarnai Monastery to Mang Yul strains his old bones, but he carries on.

He chooses to not traverse through the deadwood of the Baika Forest, but rather skirt around it, evading the shrine of the tutelary deities of the forest – 30 smooth stones smeared with red ochre and cordoned off with ropes – heading for the small pastoral village of Bayarma, south of the capital. The new capital, Lobsang corrects himself.

The Baika Forest, a boundless land of petrified plum trees that had once flourished – slumbering softwood burgeoning with tender shoots before the wretched hoarfrost settled, taking any warmth from its soul, split the cold desert nation of Mang Yul in two; a glacial north of unscalable summits of the Shiagara and its perilous passes that held ancient secrets, and a merciless salted patina over the deadland – both just as brutal as the other. The land was as vast and sparse as its populace, living in hamlets and villages in clusters near the mighty rivers Chesa and Metog.

The forest bears not only witness, but rather houses the shrieking, howling spirits who bear no resemblance to the vessels they had at one time embodied. Still, Lobsang hears their desolate, formless cries as they cling to the bare red branches, and the angry whispers of the forest’s tutelary deities hushing, rather than to comfort them. A dying god – the giver of life – unleashed a miasma, and as it spread, even Baika’s deities, benevolent beings that they were, gradually turned harsher. The deities would be furious right now, denied their own right.

*… coward … the sightless ones lead the land … none a bigger bane than you … *

Lobsang’s ears perk at the disembodied voices that, unlike the ones at Sarnai, pierce through the silence. He clutches the carnelian beads tighter, whispering prayers. The voices do not leave him alone. Such tenebrous woods could only carry with them darkness that brought out the worst of thoughts. He feels dread seep in as his ageing eyes see the sparse village of Bayarma around the mountain. Only a little while more.

The unnamed child is already two moons old by the time Chief Monk Lobsang reaches Bayarma. Two alcoves on either side of the low village gate, crowned with a dried juniper grove, house the images set in clay of Bayarma’s protective deities, shrouded as they always were; lit earthen lamps and a handful of barley placed in front of them in offering. Lobsang’s heart sinks. He prostrates in respect and forgiveness before carrying onwards.

The village’s medium – a man with sparse hair that peeks from beneath the red headgear he wears and creases upon his snowburnt face too defined for his youth – sits in front of the house with the child’s father, keeping one end of a thick coiled rope smeared with red ochre tied around his waist, and the other secured to a foundation pillar. In his hand, he holds a wooden box with something black and foul inside that makes Lobsang recoil.

The medium’s red-rimmed gaze looks on with disgust at Lobsang before focusing once again to the east, where the Baika Forest stood firm. He holds no reverence, no care for the Chief Monk, as if the deities that laid possession of his body relayed to him all he needed to know about the monk who sullied his position.

“He was guarding the house till you arrived, Chief Monk. We asked him to rest, but … we didn’t think that you would come all this way, but he told us to wait,” the child’s father says, ushering Lobsang through the low door where the dried-out parcel the women from the village had placed on the night of offerings still remained. “We did not wish to touch it,” the father explains, looking on sickly, as though the mere touch of the parcel would scald him.

He takes the Chief Monk’s knapsack and hangs it on the wooden spike in the wall of the vestibule, as his wife fearfully looks on from the inside rooms, holding a bundle in her arms. Lobsang averts his gaze. He need not see the child till he names her.

Lobsang swipes sleet off his woollen robe, holding his hands in front of the small fire lit for him. “You must think me tardy,” says he to the child’s father. “No child should remain nameless for such a long time.”

“Ama demanded it so, Chief Monk. We were told to not lose hope,” her father replies with a watery, fraught gaze, speaking of love for his child. He looks around skittishly, making sense of his own thoughts, and Lobsang feels a weight settle in his stomach. Seldom were the houses not marred with sorrow whose children he named.

He takes his seat on a low settee and stares straight ahead, as if gauging the house for any spirits or demons that linger around either him or its walls. Closing his eyes, Lobsang sprays consecrated water and vermilion in all ten directions and, at last, strikes a small brass gong he always carried thrice, purifying the place with rituals and prayers.

“Would you care for chā? It is just like the palace’s,” the girl’s father asks once Lobsang completes the ritual, ashamed of his own deprivation. “The Great Emperor has been so generous; he sent all sorts of wondrous treats for us.”

Timir, the girl’s father, says is his name. A lanky man drowning underneath a roughly tufted sheep-fur jacket, who shuffles about aimlessly, biding his time. “The medium, O Venerable One … he still wears red outside my house. It does not – what terrible days are we meant to see?”

“One cannot reason with oracles and mediums, child. He guarded your house and your newborn. Thank him, honour him and send him away with a generous gift.”

Finding assurance in the Chief Monk’s words, Timir excuses himself, going farther inside his house. Lobsang tries to not hear the hushed, desperate pleas of the girl’s mother refusing to let her child be taken for her naming ceremony.

Zerdan had sent over a generous largesse – an extravagant display of his stake in the child’s life, making certain her family would be indebted to him for each morsel that fills their hungry mouths.

Lobsang could evade this no more.

Excerpted with permission from Ayasi: The Wandering Death, Tanvi Singh, HarperCollins India.

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