The Kashmir Shawl. Rosie Thomas

wings.

      The pass itself was obscured by intermediate outcrops, and Nerys thought grimly that they would be climbing for ever. Archie was far ahead but Myrtle matched her pace to Nerys’s. They exchanged occasional words of encouragement, but most of their energy was taken up with just placing one foot in front of the other.

      As they mounted higher, Nerys began counting the number of bends still to be negotiated. There were seven, then five, then only one more.

      ‘Is this it?’ she begged Myrtle, dreading a false summit and a concealed cliff still to be negotiated.

      Whenever she glanced backwards the wide brown desert of Ladakh had receded further, and she knew that they were crossing into a different country.

      ‘Nearly,’ Myrtle puffed. ‘Why must Archie dash ahead all the time?’

      They came out on to a broad stretch of ground with chortens outlined ahead against the sky. Archie and the forward party were waiting for them. Down the slope Nerys glimpsed the picked-over bones and hide of a dead pony that must have fallen from the line of a caravan. It was a still day, but the air surged around her and she retied the strings of her straw hat.

      They crossed the saddle of the pass, thankful for the almost horizontal ground, until they drew level with the chortens. The rough stone mounds were strung with hundreds of flags, faded or still bright, with ragged white streamers festooned between them.

      Myrtle and Archie stood with their hands linked, silently looking west. Nerys came up beside them, and stopped short. Spread beneath her feet, unrolled like the most magical of carpets, was the Vale of Kashmir.

      The folds of land swept up towards them, lower ridges cloaked with ranks of sombre fir trees and the higher ones bright with silver birches. Long seams of snow lay in the shaded gullies, and waterfalls laced silver threads down purple rock faces. A haze of warmth blurred the great hollow of the Vale, but she could see distant pasture lands, ripe fields, and the curves of a river. After the bare grey and brown landscape she had just crossed, the soft blend of a thousand shades of blue and silver and lavender mingled with pale green and gold seemed too sumptuous to be real. She stared at it for a long time, with the scent of rich earth and sweet water drifting up to her.

      Myrtle had not been exaggerating.

      It was the most beautiful place Nerys had ever seen.