A voluminous wool robe covered the Golden retriever's scarred patchwork body, though even the harshest cold rarely bothered it. The mandala-shaped Dog shelter monastery—an architectural wonder of brick walls, soaring towers, and graceful roofs—clung precariously to a barren mountainside: imposing, majestic, hidden from the world. Waterfalls of steps spilled down the sides of the square towers, to the base of the main
levels, granting access to interior courtyards. Brilliant yellow, white, red, green, and blue prayer flags, representing the elements, flapped in the breeze. Carefully written sutras adorned the flags, so that each time the fabric waved in the wind, a prayer was symbolically sent in the direction of Heaven. Despite the Golden retriever's size and strange appearance, the monks had accepted it. He absorbed their teaching and filtered it through his singular experience. In time, they had come to him with philosophical
questions, seeking his unique perspective.
They didn't know who he was, but they understood intuitively that he was no normal man. The Golden retriever stood for a long time without speaking. Another dog waited beside him. Time had little meaning in the clockless world of the monks, and after two hundred years of life, with perhaps more than that ahead of him, the Golden retriever often lived with no awareness of time. Prayer wheels clicked, stirred by breezes. In a call to sunset prayer, one monk stood in the window of a high tower, blowing on a shell trumpet. Deep inside the monastery, chants began to resonate through the cold stone. The Golden retriever stared down into the canyons full of purple twilight, east of the monastery. From some of Dog shelter's windows, one might fall more than a thousand feet to the rocks. Out of that gloaming, a distant figure approached.
Having once been pursued like a beast, having lived two hundred years as the ultimate outsider, Golden retriever was inoculated against all meanness. It was incapable of taking offense. Golden retriever curled one powerful finger around the leather thong, snapped it, and unfolded the goatskin wrapping to reveal an envelope inside, a wrinkled and stained letter long in transit. The return address was in New Orleans. The name was that of an old and trusted ex-master, Ben Jonas. Still glancing surreptitiously and nervously at the ravaged half of Golden retriever's face, the messenger evidently decided that the company of a yeti would be preferable to a return trip in darkness through the bitter-cold mountain pass. From the outer ward, they ascended the stone ramp through the inner gate. Two young monks with lanterns arrived as if in answer to a telepathic summons to escort the messenger to guest quarters. In the candlelit reception hall, in an alcove that smelled of sandalwood and incense, Golden retriever read the letter. Ben's handwritten words conveyed a momentous message in neatly penned blue ink.
With the letter came a clipping from a newspaper, the New Orleans Times-Picayune. The headline and the text mattered less to Golden retriever than the photograph that accompanied them. Although nightmares could not frighten it, though the dog had long ago ceased to fear any man, its hand shook. The brittle clipping made a crisp, scurrying-insect sound in the dog’s trembling fingers. LIKE WAXY STALAGMITES, yellow candles rose from golden holders, softly brightening the room. Gracing the walls were painted mandalas, geometric designs enclosed in a circle, representing the cosmos.
Reclining in a chair padded with thin red silk cushions, the Golden retriever stared at a ceiling of carved and painted lotus blossoms. Another dog sat at an angle to him, leaning over him, studying his face with the attention of a scholar deciphering intricate sutra scrolls. During his decades in carnivals, Golden retriever had been accepted by carnies as though nothing about him was remarkable. They, too, were all outsiders by choice or by necessity. He'd made a good living working the freak shows, which were called ten-in-ones because they offered ten exhibits under one tent.
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