elves aren’t real
Yuki didn’t believe in elves anymore — no more fairytales and make-believe for her. From now on, she promised herself only to believe what was real.
Like a lucid dream state hallucination, what she saw now, through the drizzling rain, backdropped by the incomprehensible Himalayan mountain range shimmering brilliantly through the haze of a triple rainbow, was a hoard of buzzards too bloated to fly. The birds were devouring the remains of her dead sister. The birds hobbled around like little drunks. Yuki wondered why they called this a sky burial. There was no burying involved.
Everyone had died in the plane crash. Yuki’s mother, her little sister, her dog, her father, the young English couple on their honeymoon, the Australian pilot, and his wife were all dead. Yuki walked away from the wreckage without a scratch as if by magic, as if in a dream. She was high above the Himalayas only moments ago, giggling and excited to see the mystical home of the Dalai Lama, the Potala. Now, the plane was unrecognizable. A crumpled, smoldering pile of steel and glass and rubber crushed into the emerald-green mountain pasture like a discarded cigarette. Yaks grazed as if nothing had happened.
Yuki had watched the men, the local yak herders, pull the bodies of her sister and parents from the plane before it burst into flames, devouring the other occupants. That was four days ago. To Yuki, it seemed like a lifetime ago. It was difficult to tell what was real.
The old monk recited his strange chant in a low, steady, monotonous voice:
Om Gate, Gate, Paragate, Para Sam gate Bodhi svaha
Om Gate, Gate, Paragate, Para Sam gate Bodhi svaha
Om Gate, Gate, Paragate, Para Sam gate Bodhi svaha
Yuki watched the funeral workers cut apart the bodies of her linen-wrapped parents. Men with oily black knives and crooked yellow teeth smoked their brown cigarettes, joked, and laughed as they dismembered her family. The men tossed severed body parts into the air. The moment they hit the ground, the limbs disappeared into a frantic cloud of tearing beaks and swirling feathers.
Yuki watched as a worker rose from his low squat to retrieve one of the now nearly flesh-free bones from within the circle of vultures, then place it into a heap. Another man with a missing eye lit a cigarette and wiped the sweat from his face. He took a leg bone from the pile and smashed it with a large, smooth stone. The stone met bone with practiced precision. The femur splintered into a greasy paste. The man mixed the bone and marrow paste with barley meal, human fat, and the falling ash of his cigarette. He rounded the mixture into baseball-sized meatballs and hurled them to the vultures. The birds waddled with determined effort to the last of the day’s offering and gorged themselves before barely managing to lift off and fly away.
Yuki looked up at the monk holding her hand, “Is this real life or a dream?”
The elderly monk smiled, nodded, and replied, “Yes.”
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