Free Beyond the Sky and the Earth by Jamie Zeppa

C. I try to write letters home even though the headmaster says that another landslide has blocked the lateral road and there is a bandh, a strike, in Assam. It will take a week or three to clear the road, and no one knows for sure about the strike, the last one went on for one hundred days. Writing will put things in order, or in sentences at least. I begin but cannot get beyond the first lines. After that, I fall into an abyss, sit blankly, blinking, staring.
    A thick white mist moves into the valley one afternoon, bringing a cold, solemn rain. It rains all night, and at dawn the roof begins to leak, directly above my bed, directly, in fact, on my head. I get up and push the bed to the far wall. The sound of rain on the metal roof is the saddest thing I have ever heard. Outside, mist lies in deep drifts over everything. All around, the mountains sleep, blankets of cloud drawn up to their shoulders, over their heads. The teachers in the flats below have set buckets under the eaves and have strung up a clothesline in the stair-well. Mr. Sharma whistles as he hauls his buckets of rainwater in. I resolve to stop feeling sorry for myself. I, too, will set out buckets to collect water; I will snap out of this sorry state.
    I walk to the bazaar, skirting the deep puddles along the road, stepping gingerly over cow dung. Children come out of the shops to stare at me. “English, English,” they call shyly, and when I wave at them, they giggle and hide. Shopkeepers emerge from their shops to watch me pass. I feel a spectacle, and turn hastily into the nearest doorway. Inside, I point to what I want, a box of milk powder, two boxes of biscuits—no, not Orange Cream—okay, okay, Orange Cream, a jar of instant coffee. I am smiling painfully and nodding at the shopkeeper’s questions. I don’t know what he is asking. “Gila,” I say, which means “yes, it is.” He looks at me quizzically. It is not the right answer. What was the question? I cannot live here if I don’t speak the language.
    Back out on the road, I contemplate visiting a few more shops, just to see what is available. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a blur. A dog growls, and there is a sharp pain in my ankle. I look down and see a tiny puncture, a spot of blood. But why did it bite me, I whine to myself, and then I realize. Oh god, oh god, I’ve been bitten by a rabid dog. I’ve come all the way across the world to die of rabies. I have to identify the dog. Yes, yes, the health lecture is coming back to me: confine the dog immediately and watch it for ten days for signs of rabies. But which of the twenty dogs milling around was it? I rush back into the shop.
    “Khu, ” I say breathlessly. Khu is dog. “Khu—” and I make a biting motion with my hand and show my ankle. The shopkeeper clucks sympathetically, but shows no alarm.
    I have to ask if he knows the dog, if he thinks the dog is rabid. How do you say rabid in Sharchhop? I am thinking frantically. Mad. I could ask, is the dog mad? But I don’t even know the word for “mad.” I use the closest thing. “Rotsigpa?” I ask. Was the dog angry? The shopkeeper stares at me. He thinks I’m crazy. I can just hear him telling people, “What could I say? I guess it was angry. It bit her, didn’t it?”
    I flee to the hospital, where the tiny puncture wound is washed with hot water and antiseptic soap. The Norwegian doctor there listens to my story and goes up to the bazaar. He and his family have been in eastern Bhutan for several years, and speak fluent Sharchhop. While he is gone, I eat marzipan cake and drink black coffee brought by Liv, the Norwegian nurse. How is this cake possible, I want to know. And will I get more of it before my throat closes up and I have to be tied to a stake like Old Yeller? When the doctor returns, he tells me he doesn’t think the dog is rabid. “There is a brown dog in the bazaar who is always biting people,” he says. “Was it a brown dog that bit you?”
    “Yes,”