Slash and Burn

he really could use a little spiritual backup. Instead, he had to emulate his long-time hero, Inspector Maigret of the Paris Sûreté, and use his brain. There was never a useful ghost around when you most needed one.
    He abandoned his search for relics he knew for certain they’d never find, and went in search of Inspector Phosy. After a brief consultation they walked together over the ridge to Ban Hoong where everyone seemed to be going about their business. Rice huskers husked, grain pounders pounded, and chicken pluckers plucked in their time-frozen warp. The headman’s son was still sitting in the middle of the central square with his collection of insects. He currently had three in active service buzzing around his hat at the end of their tethers. The peak of the cap provided a perfect landing platform. While Siri and Ugly stood watching him with the same fascinated expressions on their weathered faces, Phosy gathered together the village elders for an impromptu meeting.
    “We’re working at the place you led us to,” Phosy told them. “We were wondering whether anyone in the village has ever come across wreckage from the crash there.”
    The elders huddled and Phosy sat on the bench provided for them. The answer was no.
    “Then, apart from the tailplane falling through your roof, you have no other physical evidence that the craft came down where your sorceress said it did,” Phosy continued.
    The answer was no.
    “How old was your sorceress?”
    “Ninety-two,” came the reply.
    “And she was in control of her faculties?”
    “No, she was as mad as a loon,” came the reply.
    “And what did this mad old woman say when everyone awoke in the morning?”
    “Nothing,” came the reply. “She was unconscious after hitting her head on a branch. She didn’t wake up for three days.”
    “And when she came round, what did she say then?”
    “She said the sky dragon had crashed into the moon and sent it bursting into the jungle to the east.”
    “And she was certain of the location?”
    “Yes.”
    “Did you notice the charred jungle and the smell of smoke when you passed in that direction?”
    “No,” they said.
    “And you didn’t think that was odd?”
    “Yes.”
    “But you didn’t question her word?”
    “She’d been our sorceress for sixty years. She’d birthed many of us. It would have been disrespectful to doubt her word. She’d never once lied to us.”
    Siri wandered into the meeting hut. He and Phosy consulted.
    “Did she develop any peculiar conditions in her later life?” Phosy asked them. “Anything you noticed that was unlike her?”
    They huddled again.
    “There was one thing,” they said.
    The teams were gathering their equipment and preparing for the hike back to the trucks when Siri and Phosy marched jauntily out of the jungle.
    “Of course you can both afford to be smiling,” said Judge Haeng. “We’re all here digging and scratching like peasants while you two run off into the woods together. Don’t think we didn’t notice. If you don’t want your per diem docked you’d better have a good excuse.”
    “Would it help that we’ve found the real helicopter crash site?” Siri asked.
    “Where?” said Madame Daeng.
    “How?” asked Civilai.
    Peach passed on the news to the Americans and they gathered around. Phosy told of the ninety-two-year-old sorceress who’d pointed to the crash site and the fact that in her twilight years she’d started to confuse words, particularly opposites. She would say no but mean yes. Say left but mean right.
    “It’s a condition called Gerstmann syndrome,” Siri told them. “It’s particularly pronounced when talking about directions. The speaker isn’t confused. She honestly sees a mirror image of an event taking place in a different location. In this case it appears she saw the moon explode in the east. She’d watched the helicopter crash and seen the trees burst into flames. When she came out of her coma she was convinced the event took place right here but in fact it all happened to the west of the village. We went to look in the opposite direction and found the site just two kilometers away.”
    “But that’s ridiculous,” said Haeng. “Two kilometers from the village and nobody there noticed it?”
    “What the villagers found there was a large area burned to a crisp. They assumed it was set alight by one of the fleeing Hmong groups to prepare the land for planting. That wouldn’t have been at all surprising