Sue's shoulders hunched forward, her frail body sinking into the sling that her two porters balanced on long bamboo poles over their shoulders. They had been climbing the steep path to the temple for over an hour, and their carefree, unintelligible chatter had diminished as they jogged, surrounding Sue in silence broken only by their steady breathing and the flapping of their shoes against the moist earth. The men's tan pants, rolled up to the knees, were spattered with the rich red earth, their black canvas shoes completely covered. She observed her surroundings through heavy-lidded eyes, overcome by waves of nausea that wracked her body as the sling swayed back and forth, focusing dimly on the man's collarbone that jutted out from his sleek brown.

She had covered her close-cropped light brown hair, newly regrown, with a dark blue scarf bought at a market, but nothing could hide the glaring fact that she was not dark-haired, dark-eyed. Not Chinese. People stopped in their tracks as she passed them, staring blatantly, as if she were not a person but some exotic animal brought in for display at the zoo. She did not know their language, and struggled with her phrasebook, pantomiming until a vague mutual understanding occurred. For a place as far away and steep as the temple in the clouds, where ordinary men did not go, she had paid these two men more than they made in a month for a half-day's transportation. She was too tired to care.

Cancer was eating her insides. Her doctors had tried everything, and the chemo had only succeeded in making her hair fall out and depriving her of her only other pleasure in life, the enjoyment of food. Too young, they said. Only forty, this shouldn't have happened. They gave her a month, a year, no one could say for certain. She left the hospital, away from the smell of death that had lingered all around her there, and sat in her house, surrounded by expensive furniture and gadgets. None of it had any meaning now. It was someone else's life. She had quit her job over a month ago, meaning to enjoy the precious time she had left, but her medications made her dizzy, nauseated, unresponsive. She stayed up late at night with the television blinking in front of her, flipping through the channels without seeing anything.

One night, for no reason, she stopped on a local news channel. A sweet, older woman in orange baggy pants and a red scarf told her story about how monks in a remote area in China had cured her cancer. No doctor could explain it. A modern miracle.  For the first time in months, Sue lifted herself off the couch and made contact with the outside world. Sue called the station in Phoenix, summoning enough energy to use the authoritarian voice that had always frightened her secretary, and convinced them to give her the woman's number. The next day they sat together in Sue's house, the woman's large black dog sitting patiently at her side as they talked.

There was nothing to worry about, nothing to fear. The woman's radiant health and strength was a testament in itself to the power of these monks, who took in strangers out of the goodness of their own hearts, healing them, asking for nothing in return. Sue thought the woman was a little out of it at times, talking in terms that were a little too "new-agey," but if these monks could cure her, she could deal with a little flightiness. The woman gave directions to the temple, and the next day Sue abandoned the sick smell of her home, leaving the keys with a neighbor in case of emergency. She thought about calling someone, at least her mother, but didn't know what to say. Finally she emailed a line to her mother, telling her she needed to go away for a while and would be back soon. There was no need for an answer. She boarded the plane and flew halfway across the world with just a large travel backpack she had bought years ago for a vacation that she never had time to go on. After a week of traveling, she was finally here.

A happy shout from the man in front, then their pace quickened as they climbed the slippery worn steps that led to the temple. She craned her neck behind her, straining to see, but she could only make out faded red walls and the outlines of tiled rooftops covered with bright green moss. The porters carried her through the wide red entranceway, past a row of stone pillars, and set her in the middle of the courtyard. They sat down on their haunches to rest near the entrance, breathing heavily, their eyes shifting between her and the exit.  They would not leave without the other half of their payment. She looked at the stone tiles beneath her feet as she tried to regain her balance, noting that the uneven surface was actually a bas-relief of some kind. The tiles were slippery in the rain, and she moved to the smoother ones on the walkway around the courtyard and leaned against a pillar to her side, inadvertently tearing her jacket against the sharp edge of the carving that wound around the stone surface. A shiver caressed her spine, sending shadowy warnings that she ignored. She shook her head, and moved back to the porters, who were silently waiting for her money, which she handed them, along with the rest of her food, and they bounded off into the fog.

A bell sounded, startling her, and a man walked out of an ornately carved wood door on the opposite side and greeted her with a bow. He wore black baggy pants and a shirt tied with a blue cord, as clean and severe as his face, which looked as if it had never smiled. She teetered and bowed back. The memorized words she had prepared from her little phrasebook dried up in her throat and she mutely followed him, stepping carefully around the animal carvings so as not to lose her footing. She shuffled behind him through a dim hallway that smelled of incense with a vague undercurrent of urine, until he stopped and opened the door to a room with six empty beds. The windows looked out over the red tiled wall to lush, broad-leafed greenery under gray sky. A bulbous red fruit dangled from a branch, ready to fall. The doors were damp and warped so that even when shut, the upper part had a gap of about an inch, letting the cold air waft in from almost every angle. Out of habit, she grabbed a bottle of painkillers and anti-nausea medication from her bag, and then remembered she had given her last bottle of water to the porter. She tossed the pills in her mouth, forcing them down. She lay down on the bed without bothering to take off her jacket, huddling on the hard wood, the pills stuck in her throat, her stomach churning.

#

The gray mist made it hard to tell how long she had been sleeping. The door creaked open and the same man entered, silent, unreadable. He stood over her with a sputtering candle and waited for her to rise. She fidgeted with the zipper of her blue jacket, struggling to look alert while her mind was still fuzzy with sleep. Her throat felt dry, her body stiff from the cold, but the brisk air in the hallway cleared her mind, energizing her legs to move when they did not want to. She had trouble following him over the bumpy tiles, and glanced down to check her footing, almost wishing she hadn't. The carvings on the tiles looked as if someone had taken several animals, torn them apart and then thrown them back together at random, pressing the bodies down inside the earth. Instead she kept her eyes on the man's feet in front of her, stepping quickly into his footsteps, marveling at how he kept his shoes so spotless in the rain. He knew exactly where to step to keep his feet on level ground, nimbly avoiding the strange little mounds that twisted along the tiles. He motioned for her to sit down, gave her some tea and a bowl of rice, and began to light the incense and candles in the four prayer carts in each direction.

A dozen men filed out from the red double doors opposite the entrance and sat down in a circle along the perimeter of the courtyard behind the pillars. She could see the stars covering the black sky through faint wisps of clouds above her. Through the flickering candlelight, the dragon carvings stretched around the pillars that held them. One of the men motioned, pointed. She walked to the middle of their circle, trying not to cough from the thick haze of incense and smoke, to the raised circular stone he had indicated, and sat down on its smooth surface, the cold permeating through her thin pants as she faced the prayer cart filled with melting red candles. The monks faded into dark silhouettes.

A drumbeat sounded, then another. The monks began to chant, a low gutteral sound from deep inside the throat that amplified around the courtyard. The sounds crawled along her skin, making the hair on her arms stand up, and reverberated inside her chest, the rice she had eaten writhing around her stomach like maggots. She focused on the rows of candles in front of her, then on one, keeping the sickness out by concentrating on that one bright light. The monks chanting shook the walls, the pillars teetering on their pedestals from the force of the rhythmic drumbeats.

She did not notice the movement behind her, did not see the creature rise from where he had been sleeping inside the concrete. She did not hear the creature slither closer, the sound of its heavy scales grating against the rough tiles deafened by the monk's voices. It stood on its hind legs, the fog of its breath touching the back of her neck as it inhaled her scent. In one swift thrust of its head, it sunk its teeth into her soft flesh, its jaws snapping her neck in two. She did not have time to gasp, or even to see anything but the candle covered with red smoke, then darkness. The floor rumbled, opening up, transforming into a boiling sea of claws and teeth. Concrete bodies turned to flesh, separating from the earth, stretching as they left gouges in the floor where they had rested.  Smaller forms scuttled around her, awakened by the smell of fresh steaming blood pooling around the circle from her limp form. They fought over her, clawing and scratching each other in between lunges at her flesh, others waiting for the leftover entrails to feast on, some tearing at her leg, another backing off to a corner to claw at her shoe.

In a moment it was over. The chanting stopped. The creatures, humming in pleasure, their cold bellies warmed with her life, twisted back down into their bas-reliefs on the tiles. A smaller one scuttled back to lick the last drop of her blood, the last trace of the human that had been sitting there, and then scampered back into the base of a pillar, where its eyes drooped contently, its body hardened, blending in with the stone around it. The candle she had been staring at winked out, followed by the others, leaving the courtyard in darkness.

#

In the morning she awoke to a light touch on her cheek, and scrambled upright to see a scruffy tan dog back away from her, warily wagging its tail, tongue hanging out. The monks had left her there to sleep on the cold rock until the morning dew speckled her coat with fine beads. She must have fallen asleep in the middle of the ceremony.  Annoyed, she brushed off the dewdrops, and then stopped to look at them glistening on her hand, reflecting the soft glow of the morning sun through the fog on her palm. She felt light, and a timid sensation that might have been pleasure rushed through her. The world around her glistened, sparkled, all of it crisp and clear, unblemished by pain. It had been a long time. Wanting to share this moment, she called the dog to her and patted it, admiring his thick fur, grateful that someone had stayed with her through the night, even if it was just a dog. As she stood up she marveled at how her body, so weak the night before, felt so light, as if a great weight had been taken from her as she slept. For the first time in months, she felt well. There was something she had forgotten. She couldn't quite place it, and then even that fleeting feeling dissipated with the morning fog.

#

She began to get accustomed to the routine. Morning rice gruel and egg with tea. She enjoyed their silence. During chanting meditations in the morning, she sat with them, crossing her legs on the little round pillows on the floor in a room filled with garishly painted gods she did not know. She tried to let go and just be, like her yoga teacher used to say.

And each night she sat in the middle of what she had fondly named her "Healing Circle," although she prayed to have the strength to sit through the whole ceremony without falling asleep. Each morning she woke up in the courtyard, fresh and invigorated, without any aches and pains she would expect from sitting out all night in the cold. She knew their healing prayers and chants helped her, made her feel suffused with joy. Each day she smiled a little wider, was grateful for small things, like a warm bowl of tea in the morning.

One evening before practice she rummaged through her backpack. Her pill bottles lay at the bottom, stuffed underneath a pile of half-dirty clothes. She had almost forgotten she had these. How long had it been? A week? A month? She had no way of knowing. Time had disappeared into the fog. She popped two caffeine tablets into her mouth and downed them with a glass of unfiltered tap water from the communal sink. The water should have at least been boiled, but it didn't matter here, where she felt that nothing could be unhealthy or harmful. It simply couldn't. Once again she was filled with the strange joy that suffused her more and more, and then unscrewed all the bottles of medicine and flushed them down the toilet. She felt so good. And in gratitude, tonight she would stay awake during the ceremony. She owed them that much.

The circle felt damp and cool beneath her as the monks began their low chanting. Her mind buzzed from the sudden caffeine rush. Little sparkles blinked before her eyes in the darkness, floating, small manic fireflies in the smoke.  Fog hovered over the ground, twisting around her. She smiled at the monks, eyes closed, chanting.  If only she could  achieve his level of peace.

The ground beneath her shuddered as creatures forced themselves from their diurnal resting places. The statues moved; her body froze in its place, staring helplessly into the candle flame in front of her. She could hear them scuttling around her, fighting with each other to get closer. She screamed, but no sound issued from her mouth, leaving it to echo loudly inside her head. She felt a claw being thrust through her chest, her eyes still staring forward, focusing on the candle, fighting for a way out inside her head. Her mind floated upward, turning to look at the beasts fighting over the pieces of her body. It was no longer her, just a dead thing of no importance. The candles flickered. She floated into the light.

#

She woke in bed. How nice of them to carry her back this time. She stretched, feeling her body, so healthy, so much better, so alive. In her heart and body she knew there was no more cancer. Her whole being was suffused with the desire to pass on this gift to help others. The world had to know about this. She should go home and tell them.

She had almost forgotten that she had another life before this, somewhere far away, where it was warm and dry. How odd that she could not remember. She opened her backpack and found a notebook sitting on the top. Written inside, in her handwriting, was her name, address, phone number. Sticking out near the back cover was her plane ticket. That was it, she had to go home, right now and let the world know. She would remember more when she needed to.

She did not need to have porters carry her downhill this time. She shouldered her backpack and headed for the main hall so that she could eat breakfast and say goodbye. The monks nodded passively as she pointed to her backpack and pantomimed walking down the mountain, and then went back to eating in silence. The dog had not left his post where he usually guarded her, and when she reached down to pet him goodbye he let out a soft whine. He trotted after her as she turned to go, and she realized that he would go with her all the way home. He would protect her and keep her safe, just as he had done each night. They both headed down the mountain together, to tell the world, to bring them into the light.