The Dalai Lama's Cat and the Power of Meow (The Dalai Lama's Cat 3)

He whispers Tibet’s most famous mantra under his breath.

Ahead of us, in the distance, a group of fellow travelers is moving quickly.

“Norbu! Hurry!” Lagging behind the group, a large, powerful man points in the direction from which we have come.

“The soldiers are not far behind!”

Even before looking down at the shaggy fur on my feet, I know from the quality of the experience that I am the Dalai Lama’s dog, being carried from Tibet to India. Just as I know the person who is carrying me. In the dream he appears as a novice monk, Norbu, but I am much more familiar with him as someone different. Someone, in that curious way of dreams, who I can’t place.

We are falling behind, I realize now, because Norbu is limping. His left foot is weak. As much as possible, he is trying to avoid putting weight on it.

“Om mani padme hum.”

He is trying to catch up with the fellow travelers way out in front. I hear him grunting in pain from his wound. My safe passage has been entrusted to him. It is a purpose I know he regards as a sacred mission.

“To freedom, Little Sister,” he reminds me, looking down at me where I’m secured in the cloth harness.

It begins to snow, and the rocky path becomes slippery. The white dusting on the landscape makes the dark clothes of the fleeing Tibetans even more visible.

Norbu doesn’t possess the kind of footwear needed for robust travel through the mountains. He has nothing to match the boots of our pursuers.

“Norbu!” The man in front is turning back in our direction again. He waves his hand frantically.

There is nothing Norbu can do that he isn’t doing already. He is moving as fast as his handicap will allow.

Which isn’t fast enough.

In the cold mountain air, the crack comes like the sound of a dry, narrow branch being broken. Norbu slumps to the ground. He lies on his right side, eyes shut.

I whimper.

I can’t see anything at first. In moments, I am overwhelmed by the sweet, cloying smell of blood.

The broad-shouldered man is hurrying toward us. With a scarf wrapped around his face against the cold, I can’t see his features, but I have no doubt as to his courage. Despite the risk to his life, he is checking Norbu. He sees where the bullet has gone through Norbu’s chest, just inches away from where I am being carried. There is nothing to be done.

He slashes the harness from Norbu’s body. I feel two large, strong hands tug me upward. There is something powerful, even primal about that sensation of being lifted to safety.

For an instant, I look down to where blood is flowing from Norbu’s body and forming a bright-red stain in the snow.

I suddenly realize who this person is now.

Serena.

CHAPTER SEVEN

When you have a dream as vivid as that, dear reader, it stays with you in the days that follow. On my first-floor windowsill, absorbed by the passing moods of the weather, there would be moments where, for no apparent reason at all, an image from the dream would come back to mind and I would relive the experience.

Monsoon season was coming, so I spent a great deal of time looking out that window.

When the clouds are so low and leaden that day transmogrifies eerily into darkness, when the breeze blowing through the window is steeped in the clean scent of dust-purged streets, when the rain performs a vigorous tattoo on the Namgyal courtyard, the Dalai Lama will often get up from where he sits and turn on the corner lamp. Our room instantly becomes a haven of shelter amid the thunderous wildness. The thangkas on the walls seem to come to life then, the rich reds and golds of their ornately woven panels illuminated in the soft light, the holy beings depicted on them looking as though they might at any moment step down from their lotus thrones and into our warm sanctuary.

On such occasions, His Holiness often comes over to reassure me.

“Are you all right, my little Snow Lion?” he inquires, bending to where I sit. For a few moments we look outside, watching raindrops streaming down the other side of the window. The Dalai Lama strokes my neck or murmurs a few mantras in my ear. And it always seems to me the most curious and delightful paradox that when the world outside is at its most threatening is the very time that I feel most protected. The light within glows strongest in the darkness.

It was just such a morning when Mrs. Trinci and Serena arrived, windswept and somewhat damp. Six weeks had passed since their fi

rst meditation lesson with His Holiness. As Serena stepped into the room I studied her more closely than usual.