The Anniversary · Eleven Steps From the Edge · Pulse Beat
On the third anniversary they went up together, the whole village. It was a clear, cold, blue morning, with the first frost on the grass, and a line of people in their best clothes walking up the…
On the third anniversary they went up together, the whole village.
It was a clear, cold, blue morning, with the first frost on the grass, and a line of people in their best clothes walking up the long track to the cairn. They carried flags, and butter lamps in jars, and a great flask of tea. Pema walked at the front, Karma's hand in hers. Behind them came Tashi, and Peter, who had returned to be there, leaning on his stick, and the thirty boys and three girls of the school.
They stood around the stones in the thin bright air. The lama said the prayers. The wind took the flags, and sent them flapping out like a flock of bright birds toward the white wall of the range.
When the prayers were done, Karma, now eight, came forward, and in front of everyone, with her father's golden-brown eyes, took something from her pocket. It was the little battered camera. "Papa took a picture for me," she said clearly. "So I took one for him."
She raised the camera and photographed the cairn, the mountain, the flags, the long line of people. Then she turned and took one of Tashi, and one of her mother, and one of the old man with his stick. "There," she said. "Now he has it too."