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It was as it had appeared from the plane during their approach: the land inside the dike was slightly lower than the ocean surrounding it. It was no illusion; their eyesight and inner ear confirmed it.

“Holland is like this in some places,” Frank said to Anna as they followed Nick and the guides. “Have you ever seen the dikes?”

“No.”

“Some of the polders there are clearly lower than the North Sea. You can walk the dikes, and it’s the strangest sight.”

“So it’s true?” Anna asked, waving at Khembalung. “I mean—it looks like it must be.”

One of their guides turned and said, “Unfortunately it is true. When the land is drained, there is a resulting subsidence. Dry land is heavier, and sinks, and then the water wicks up into it. We have gone through cycle after cycle.”

Anna shivered despite the hot wind. She felt faintly queasy and off balance.

“Try looking only one way at a time.”

Anna tried, setting her back to the island. Under a pastel blue, clouds flew in from the southwest. The sea bounced to the blue horizon, waves with whitecaps rolling in. Such a big world. Their guides pointed at the clouds, exclaiming that they looked like the beginning of the monsoon; perhaps the drought would end at last!

They walked along the dike, which was clearly old. A heavy bar mesh at the waterline had rusted away, so that the boulders held in by the mesh were slumping, and in places had fallen. Their guides told them that dike maintenance was done with human labor and the little machinery they had, but that there were structural repairs needed that they could not afford, as they could see. Frank jumped onto the waist-high outer wall, setting a bad example for Nick, who immediately followed it.

Sucandra and Padma came up the broad stone staircase, and when they saw Frank and Nick on the retaining wall they called to them. “Hello! Look, the monsoon may be coming!”

They topped the wall and fell in with them. “We wanted to show you the mandala. Hello, Mingma, you have met our visitors, we see.”

Back down on the dusty grass Charlie and Joe had been joined by Rudra, Drepung, and a group of Khembali youth who were creating a mandala on a giant wooden disk that lay on the lawn. “Let’s go down and see,” Sucandra suggested, and they walked down the steps and out of the brunt of the wind. It certainly felt humid enough to rain.

The biggest sand mandalas took about a week to complete, Mingma told them. Long brass funnels were held by the artists just an inch or so over the pattern, and when the funnels were rubbed with sticks, thin lines of colored sand fell from them. The colorists worked on their knees, scarcely breathing, rubbing the funnels rhythmically, gently, their faces down near the ground to watch the emerging line of sand; then with a quick tilt of the funnels they would stop the flow and sit back and turn to the others, to crack a joke or laugh at someone else’s.

When the design was completely colored in, there would be a ceremony to celebrate the various meanings it held, and then it would be carried to the long shallow reflecting pool in front of Government House, and tipped into the water.

“A real launch party,” Charlie noted.

“It signifies the impermanence of all things.”

To Anna that seemed like a waste of the art. She did not like the impermanence of all things, and felt there was already enough in the world to remind her of it. She liked to think that human efforts were cumulative, that something in every effort was preserved and added to the whole. Perhaps in this case that would be the mandala’s pattern, which would remain in their minds. Or maybe this art was a performance rather than an object. Maybe. What she wanted out of art was something that lasted. If their art did not have that, it seemed like a waste of effort to her.

Over on the other side of the mandala, Joe and Rudra were standing before a group of monks, and Rudra was chanting intently in his deep gravelly voice, a happy gleam in his eye. Those around him repeated