She knew that around the next bend of the river the tree would come into view. She knew this as the knew home. It had been many years, since she last saw the tree rise out of the mist, arching over the ancient stupa, spreading its canopy over half her village. it would still be some time before the chinese made wreck of a freight ship, which gave her passage from Mandalay, would reach her long left behind home, for the waters of the Irrawadddy ran strong and its banks were deceptive.
The flash of the sun, mirrored of the stupa's gilden roof and jewel encrusted parasol, caught her eye from afar. This crystal of light brought her home, and brought it home that life as she knew it was no more. The short few years of her absence stretched to an eternity in her mind. An eternity away from the self that left this village on the banks. How fitting it was: the river in the dry season bore her back across muddy flats, when it was swollen like a soon-to-be-mother when she had embarked and left for good, she had thought. Back in that ancient time, she felt as full as the river, and now she was dry and searched a hole the size of a shadow in her midst. She should have known how this would play, when the captain played Country Roads - in Burmese - on his one pride and Joy, his Flashlight/Radio combination device. That stupid song would stay with her until that long an dark river finally took her home. To the place she never wanted to be.
But the tree drew her in. As it used to before. Its ancient roots, growths from the depths of the earth, tangling her feet, holding her soul on a wisp of a wind. Climb it, she would, one more time with Sao Kya. To proof that she could, like going away, like returning a changeling. This golden land, with its golden stupas. Never mind the steeples she had seen in every village, the temples from times unknown to gods well loved. These had use, they made those who built them belong. The stupas of her land belonged to the tax man from heaven, and that was all. The rules where wrong from day one, or should have been updated a long time ago. When you bought yourself your own personal heaven with your own personal stupa, something went missing in the human process in between life and death.
Banks full of sand, like the heads of her people, floating past. Reflected on the ceilings of silvery waters they shone as dull beacons of no hope at all. In Burma the giver of life deigned not to return her heirs to paradise. What paradise you ask, and find no answer as eyes full of cold and bleak and rancid empty stare through you, while they ask for your permit. What permit you ask. Theirs to give and yours to crawl for. To her the only bright spot that reveals itself on this bright sunny day is the inch long insect that electrocutes itself in a flash upon the never before working outlet of power. Flags in the wind, race paddies verdant, palm trees in bloom, bamboo on huts. Rain in the past of the last season reminds us of futures full of that. That never was. She sings Country Roads in English to the captain. He shows her his rotten teeth, appreciating the tone of her voice, if not the thought of her words.
The tree now spreads further, his roots forge deep down the banks of heart when she steps to the railing - a white knuckle grip on herself. Nobody at the shoreline. Empty as it was when her father, with is crooked gait, forbade all who wanted to come see her off. Not that it was that many.
A lone figure on the lowest branch, still higher than most steeples, silently greets her in a film running backwards. Was her life backwards as well? Was he that point in time and space, on that tree that her life focaled around? Saying goodbye and hello in the same manner. Her white knuckles loosing their grip on reality. Has he been sitting there, on that steeple high branch, this whole time? All these lives? All these branches of memories? Like the Buddha under the tree, waiting for divinity, only that made more sense.
"Nobody left" Sao Kya says, "They all went your way, followed you like the lemmings that they are, even though saying you wronged them by showing them the a-way."
"No, everybody is still here" she hugs in his ear, she whispers to his arms, she un-knuckles her grip, he fills in her shadow. And takes her hand up that tree of shade over the whole village.
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