herself.'
  'I should call on Barong Keket to protect me.'
  The pedanda cackled. 'You will be afraid, I promise you, even if you are not afraid 
now. It is right to be afraid of Rangda. My son, even I am afraid of Rangda.'
  Then the pedanda left Michael briefly and returned with a large object concealed 
beneath an ornately embroidered cloth. He set the object in front of Michael and smiled.
  'Do you know what this is?'
  'It looks like a mask.'
  'And what else can you tell me about it?'
  Michael licked his lips. 'It is very sakti.' He meant that it was magically powerful, 
so powerful that it had to be covered by a cloth 'Would you be frightened if I were to 
show it to you?' asked the priest.
  Michael said nothing. Thepedanda watched him closely, searching for the slightest 
twitch of nervousness or spiritual hesitation. After a moment, Michael reached forward, 
grasped the corner of the cloth and drew it off the mask.
  As confident and calm as he was, he felt his insides coldly recoil. For the hideous 
face staring at him was that of Rangda, the Witch Widow, with bulging eyes, flaring 
nostrils, and fangs so hooked and long that they crossed over each other. Michael's 
sensitivity to the presence of evil was so heightened now that he felt the malevolence of 
Rangda like a freezing fire burning into his bones. Even his teeth felt as if they were 
phosphorescing in their sockets.
  'Now what do you feel?' asked the priest. His face was half hidden by shadow.
  Michael stared at the mask for a long time. Although it was nothing more than paper and 
wood and gilded paint, it exuded extraordinary evil. It looked as if it were ready to 
snap into sudden life and devour them both.
  Michael said, 'If Barong Keket does not protect me, the spirit of my father will.'
  The pedanda took the embroidered cloth and covered the mask again, although he left it 
where it was, resting between them.
  'You are ready,' he said dryly. 'We shall close our eyes and meditate, and then we 
shall begin.'
  The pedanda sat opposite Michael and bowed his head. The fragrant incense billowed 
between them, sometimes obscuring the priest altogether so that Michael could not be 
certain that he was still there. The incense evoked in Michael's consciousness the 
singing at funerals, the trance dances, and all the secret rituals the pedanda had taught 
him since he was twelve years old. There was another aroma in the incense, however: 
bitter and pungent, like burning coriander leaves.
  'You must think of the dead,' the pedanda told him. 'You must think of the spirits who 
walk through the city.
  You must think of the presence of all those who have gone before you: the temple 
priests who once tended this courtyard, the merchants who cried in the streets outside, 
the rajas and the perbekels, the children and the proud young women. They are still with 
us, and now, when you wish to, you may see them. The crowds of the dead!'
  Michael looked around. He was in the first stages of trance, breathing evenly as if he 
were cautiously entering a clear, cold pool of water. There, lining the walls of the 
inner courtyard, stood carved stone shrines to the deities of life and death, a shrine to 
Gunung Alung, the volcano, and another to the spirits of Mount Batur. It was in these 
shrines that the gods were supposed to sit when they visited the Pura Dalem. Michael had 
occasionally wondered if the gods ever came here any more - the temple was so ruined and 
the odalan festivals were no longer held here - but he realized that it would be 
heretical to display doubts to the pedanda.
  The shrines to the greatest deities had eleven layered meru roofs, tapering upward into 
the darkness. Those to lesser gods had only seven roofs, or five. There were no gifts 
laid in front of any of these shrines as there were in other temples, no fruit or flowers 
or bullock's heads or chickens. Here there was nothing but dried leaves that had fallen 
from the overhanging trees and a few scattered poultry bones. There were no longer any 
temple priests to cater to the comforts of the gods.
  The pedanda began to recite to Michael the words that would gradually lift him into a 
deeper state of trance. Michael kept his eyes open at first but then slowly his eyelids 
drooped and his body relaxed; gradually his conscious perceptions began to drain away and 
pour across the courtyard floor like oil.
  The pedanda began to tap one foot on the stones rhythmically and Michael swayed back 
and forth in the same rhythm, as if anticipating the arrival of celebrating villagers, 
the way it would have been when the odalan festivals were held in the temple. He swayed 
as if the kendang drums were beating, and the kempli gong was banging, and the night was 
suddenly shrill with the jingling of finger cymbals.
  'You can walk now among the dead, who are themselves among us. You can see quite 
clearly the ghosts of those who have gone before. Your eyes are opened both to this world 
and the next. You have reached the trance of trances, the trance of the dead, the world 
within worlds.'
  Michael pressed his hands against his face and began to sway ever faster. The clangour 
of drumming and cymbal clashing inside his brain was deafening. 
Jhanga-jhanga-jhanga-jhanga-jhanga: the complicated, unwritten rhythms of gamelan music; 
the whistling melodies of life and death; the rustling of fire without burning, of knives 
that refused to cut; the swath in the air made by demons who stole children in the dark.
  Great blocks of crimson and black came silently thundering down on top of him. His mind 
began to burst apart like an endless succession of opening flowers, each one richer and 
more florid than the last.
  The kendang drums pounded harder and harder; the cymbals shrilled mercilessly; the 
gongs reverberated until they set up a continuous ringing of almost intolerable sound.
  Michael swayed furiously now, his hands pressed hard against his face. The voice of the 
pedanda reached him through the soundless music, repeating over and over, 'Sanghyang 
Widi, guide us; Sanghyang Widi, guide us; Sanghyang Widi, guide us.'
  It was now - at the very crescendo of his trance - that Michael would usually have 
stood up to dance, following the steps untaught by priests or parents, or by anybody 
mortal, yet known by all who can enter into the sanghyang.
  But tonight he was suddenly, and unexpectedly, met by silence and stillness. He 
continued to sway for a short time, but then he became motionless as the silence and the 
stillness persisted and the imaginary music utterly ceased.
  He took his hands from his face and there was thepedanda, watching him; and there was 
the inner courtyard of the temple, with its dead leaves and its abandoned shrines; and 
there was the incense smoke, drifting thickly into the darkness.
  'What has happened?' he asked. His voice sounded strange to himself, as if he were 
speaking from beneath a blanket.
  The old man raised one skeletal arm and indicated the courtyard. 'Can you not 
understand what has happened?'
  Michael frowned and lifted his head. The smell of burned coriander leaves was stronger 
than ever. Somewhere a whistle blew, loud and long.
  The pedanda said, 'You know already that your one body consists of three bodies: your 
mortal body, your stulasarira; your emotional body, your suksmasarira; and your spiritual 
body, your antakaransarira. Well, your stulasarira and your suksmasarira have fallen into