Excerpt from Book Four, World on Fire

Sister Tathagata had lived for three thousand years and had spent millions of hours in meditation, her peaceful quest for Abhisambodhi (high enlightenment) enriching her mind as well as nourishing her body. Had it not been for her intense spiritual training, she would have lived no longer than an ordinary human, perhaps even less than a century. But despite her impressive resume, she had thus far failed in her quest to gain eternal liberation from suffering.

The High Nun often asked herself why she could not attain her goal. Certainly it was not from lack of effort, sincerity, or experience. Yet she had failed where others of her kind succeeded, witnessing three noble ones achieve enlightenment during her lifetime, their endless string of births exhausted.

Why not Tathagata? They called her the Perfect One. But they really should have called her the Flawed One. Surely there was something in her makeup that prevented her from achieving enlightenment. Perhaps it was because she was so attached to the beauty of rain.

Normally before she slept, the High Nun lay flat on her back and meditated, watching the frequency of her breath reduce to as few as one inhale and exhale per minute. Finally she would allow herself to sleep for three hundred of these breaths, and during that time she rarely if ever moved, other than the barely discernible rise and fall of her bony chest. But as she lay inside the crowded tent alongside four other nuns, this night was different. Her breath came in gasps, as if she were fending off suffocation in a nearly airless void. She tossed and turned, bumping into her nearest bedmates. When she did manage to sleep, she dreamed of rain, rain, rain. She stood naked in a thunderous storm, her head tilted backward so that she could engorge herself with water, but no matter how much she drank, her thirst was not quenched. And sometime during the dream, the rain turned crimson and became blood, and she drank that too. When she woke, her mouth was dry but her skinny body was sheathed in sweat, as if in the throes of a deadly fever. It was then that the smell inside the tent intensified. At first she thought it was just her own sweat or the sweat of the others. But finally she realized it was something else entirely. Like a predator within easy reach of its prey, Sister Tathagata smelled food.

In some distant region of her mind, she heard herself giving a lecture in the temple of Dibbu-Loka: “Thought leads to action. Action leads to habit. Habit leads to character.” Now her thoughts were consumed by a wicked desire to bite and rend, lick and slurp, chew and swallow. If she allowed her thoughts to become action, what then? A portion of her was disgusted by the mere possibility, but another part was tantalized.

Tathagata heard a growling sound, low and sinister. She sat up and looked around, attempting to discern its location. It took her a few moments to realize that it came from her own throat. She ran her tongue along her teeth. Where they had once been small and flat, they now were large and jagged. She put her hands to her face. Her lips were grotesquely swollen and her eyes were bulging from their sockets. She sensed strength in her arms far greater than she had ever experienced. And never had she felt so hungry. Her thirst for water was gone. She wanted to eat — juicy meat. The blood-soaked flesh would quench her thirst as well as her desire.

She heard another growl, this time clearly not her own. There were screams, feminine in timbre, from a faraway tent. The sound enraged her and spurred her into action. She buried her teeth into the neck of Sister Kilisatti and bit down hard. The flesh tore away as easily as moist parchment. Blood splattered Tathagata’s face. She drank it like the blood in her dreams.

Soon after, she ran.