A pair of men passed him on the road. One was wearing a gigantic wide-brimmed hat like those worn in common postcard images of rice-field workers, except the brim sloped down over the ears so that the front framed the man’s face like a giant duckbill. It is true, they are like Scottish Highlanders, thought Edgar, who had read this comparison but had never understood it until he saw the broad hat and wide kiltlike trousers. Ahead, the women he had followed entered another house, where a girl stood, holding a baby. Edgar stopped to watch the flight of a mynah bird, and saw them peering out of the doorway at him.

Soon he came across a circle of older boys playing chinlon. It was the same game played by the children in the camp clearing, although it always turned to football once Edgar tried to join. Here he stopped and watched. One of the boys held up the ball to him as if inviting him to play, but he shook his head and nodded at them to continue. Thrilled by an audience, the boys returned to the game in earnest, using their feet to keep the woven rattan sphere in the air. They tapped and dived and back-kicked, and did high-whirling cartwheels to send the ball soaring. Edgar stood and watched for a while, before a stray ball flew his way and he put his leg out to stop it, and the ball bounced back into the circle and one of the boys continued to play. The others cheered, and Edgar, slightly out of breath and flustered by the effort, couldn’t help but smile as he bent to dust off his boots. He watched for several more kicks, but then, fearful that he wouldn’t be so lucky the next time the ball flew his way, he continued his walk.

He soon passed another set of homes, where a group of women sat in the shade of the house by a loom. A naked little boy chased some chickens across the road and paused to watch Edgar as he passed, this new animal being apparently much more interesting than squawking birds. Edgar stopped by the boy. His face was completely covered with thanaka, pale like a forest sprite.

“How are you, little chap?” said Edgar, and crouched and held out his hand. The boy stood and stared impassively, his abdomen swollen and dusty. He began to urinate. “Aaaii!” A young girl ran down the steps of a house and picked up the boy, pointing him away, trying to contain her giggling. When the boy had stopped urinating, she rotated him and placed him on her thin hips, in imitation of the older women. She wagged her finger at the child. Edgar turned to walk away and saw that more children had gathered in the road behind him.

A woman led a water buffalo up the road, and the children parted for the mud-caked beast to pass. Edgar watched the animal’s thick, brushlike tail flick lazily at the flies that landed on its back.

He continued to walk, the children following at a distance. Soon the trail rose slightly, and he could see out over a small valley covered with terraced, fallow rice fields. At the side of the road, a pair of men sat and grinned the broad Shan grin that he had become accustomed to. One of the men pointed to the group of children and said something, and Edgar answered, “Yes, quite a lot of children,” and they both laughed although neither understood a word the other had said.

It was near noon, and Edgar found himself sweating profusely. He stopped for a moment in the shade of a small grain store and watched a lizard do push-ups on a bare stone. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. He had spent so much time tuning the piano or sitting on his balcony that he hadn’t experienced the sun, nor the drought. The dead fields shook in the searing heat. He waited until he thought he was dull enough for the children to leave, but the crowd only grew in number.

He walked along a road that seemed as if it led back to the camp. Soon he passed a small shrine where someone had set out a wide assortment of offerings, flowers, stones, amulets, small cups whose contents had long evaporated, dry sticky rice, small clay figurines. The shrine itself was built like a small temple. It was similar to ones he had seen in the lowlands, built, the Doctor had explained, to please a spirit whom the Shan called “the Lord of the Place.” Edgar, who never counted himself a superstitious man, searched his pockets for something to leave, but found only the bullet. He looked nervously around him. There was no one there but the children, and he backed away.

He continued. Far ahead on the road, he saw a woman walking with a parasol. It was an image he had seen many times in the lowlands, but not yet on the Plateau: the sun overhead, a lone woman hidden beneath her parasol, her dress shimmering in the mirage of the road. The air was still, and he stopped to watch the thin line of dust rising from her feet. And then suddenly he realized the incongruity of the scene, that Shan women, with their wide-brimmed hats or turbans, rarely carried parasols.

A hundred paces away, he recognized Khin Myo.

She approached without saying anything. She was wearing a fine red silk hta main, and a pressed white cotton blouse that hung loosely and swayed in the breeze. Her face was painted with thick, even lines of thanaka and her hair was pulled back and fastened with a pin made of polished teakwood, carved in a delicate filigree. Several strands had worked themselves loose and fallen over her face. She brushed them back. “I have been looking for you,” she said. “The cook said that he had seen you walk up to the village. I wanted to join you. One of the Shan girls said that the nwe ni, ‘ipomoea’ I think you call it, have started to bloom, and I thought we could walk there together. Do you feel well enough?”

“I think so. I think I am finally better.”

“I’m glad, I was worried,” she said.

“So was I…I dreamed a lot…strange, terrible dreams. I thought I saw you.”

She was silent for a moment. “I didn’t want you to be alone.” She touched his arm. “Come, let’s walk.”

As they moved slowly down the road, the crowd shuffled along behind them. Khin Myo stopped and looked back at the children. “Are you going to bring your…how do you say it?”

“Entourage?”

“A French word, no?”

“I suppose so. I didn’t know you speak French.”

“I don’t. A couple of words only. Doctor Carroll likes teaching me the meanings of words.”

“Well, I would love to learn how to say ‘Go home’ to my entourage. They are charming, but I am not used to such attention.”

Khin Myo turned and said something to them. They squealed and ran back several paces before stopping to watch again. Khin Myo and Edgar continued to walk. The children didn’t follow.

“What did you tell them?” asked Edgar.

“I said that Englishmen eat Shan children,” she answered.

Edgar smiled. “Probably not the type of propaganda we want,” he said.

“Oh, quite the opposite. A number of the most famous Shan spirits eat children. And they have been worshiped since long before you arrived.”

They walked and followed a trail that rose over a small hill. They passed a house that Khin Myo said belonged to an old woman with an evil eye, and she warned Edgar to be careful. She said even this with a playfulness, a lightness, and the sense of sadness he felt from the memory of their talk by the river seemed distant. They entered a small grove of trees and began to climb the hill. The trees thinned, and the ground became spotted with flowers.

“Are these the ones you are looking for?” asked Edgar.

“No, there is a meadow on the other side of the ridge. Come.”

They reached the top of the hill and looked out over a field of tall shrubs, covered with dark red and salmon-colored flowers.

“Oh, how lovely!” exclaimed Khin Myo, and she ran down the trail with a childlike gait. Edgar smiled and followed, walking, but then, reflexively, his legs began to run as well. A little. Khin Myo stopped and turned, and she started to say something, and Edgar tried to stop, but the downward momentum of the hill prevented him, and he skipped, once, twice, before finally stopping before her. He was out of breath, his face red and flushed.