Free Grandmaster by Molly Cochran Page B

watched, barely moving, listening for the faintest sounds, seeming to communicate with one another without words. Justin watched with them, trying to achieve the perfect stillness of his fellow travelers, but always he was aware of the sound of his own breathing, the obtrusive clumsiness of his own body. When he slept, he still shivered in the cold. When he walked, he alone, of all the men, frightened birds and small animals with the noise of his footfalls.
    "I am not like you," he told Tagore.
    "No being is like another. But you will learn what we know."
    "Will you teach me?"
    "Yes. That is why I have come," Tagore said.
    "How?"
    "In time, you will understand how."
    "And when I learn?"
    "Then you will understand how much you have yet to learn."
    It was dawn. In the distance, the towering Himalayas rose out of a pink mist. Below them, just ahead of the group, was spread a large mountain lake, still as glass and surrounded by a purple ring of flowering wild rhododendron.
    At the edge of the lake, one of the men wound his robe between his legs and walked slowly into the water. With a short bow toward the men on shore, he dived under and was gone.
    They watched for some time, long after the ripples on the surface of the water had subsided and the lake returned to its perfect stillness. Justin began to panic. "What did I do this time?" he whispered.
    Tagore smiled. "Nothing. He has gone to tell others of your arrival. Many will come to see you. As he has the farthest to travel, he must leave first."
    "But he hasn't even come up for air."
    "That is not necessary." With only a small nod from Tagore, the remaining three men folded their robes. Each in turn bowed to Tagore and the boy. Then they, too, entered the water and were gone without trace.
    "How long can they stay underwater?" Justin asked.
    "As long as they must. There are those among us who have lived in death for years."
    "Lived in death?"
    "That is what we call the suspension of breathing, the slowing of the bodily processes. In our practice, we learn to control our bodies through the union of our spirits with the forces of the universe. It is called yoga."
    Justin made a face. "I've heard of yoga. It's where people sit around twisted into pretzels. They don't do what you do—walk without making noise, hold fire in your hands. They don't stay underwater for days, I know that," he said cynically.
    "You know, you know, you know," Tagore said. "Tell me, is there anything you don't know?"
    Justin was ashamed. "I'm sorry," he said. "It's just that the things you do don't look like anything I've seen before." He looked up. "I guess that doesn't mean it's not possible."
    Tagore smiled. "A beginning," he said, "Now you will swim the lake."
    "Me?" Justin was horrified. "But I can't do that," he said.
    "And why not? Do you not have the same limbs, the same organs as we?"
    "You know what I mean," Justin said dispiritedly. "I can't do magic."
    "Ah," Tagore said, raising his eyebrows. "It is magic you wish to perform."
    "Your kind of magic."
    The old man nodded. "Come," he said. He led Justin to a small stream near the thicket of rhododendrons and picked a hand-sized rock off the ground. "If this rock were made to disappear—not hide, but disappear completely, never to exist in the form of a rock again—would you consider such an act to be magic?"
    Justin looked at the rock. "Yes," he said.
    "Very well." Carefully he placed the rock in the middle of the stream.
    "What did you do that for?"
    "It is the magic you requested," Tagore said. "I have placed the rock in water. You see it now, but in a century the rock will be gone, disappeared forever. The flow of the water will have worn it to nothing."
    "I get it," Justin said, disappointed. "There's no magic."
    "You are wrong, my son," Tagore said quietly. "It is all magic." He sat down. Not a petal moved on the thousands of blossoms around him. "When you accepted to eat with the rest of us, you learned to endure hunger. When