I awoke to what sounded like the entire Roman army trying to slurp the anchovies out of the Mediterranean Sea. When I opened my eyes I saw the source of the noise and nearly tumbled over backward trying to back away. A huge, furry creature, half again as tall as any man I had ever seen was trying to slurp the tea out of one of the bamboo cylinders, but the tea had frozen to slush and the creature looked as if he might suck the top of his head in if he continued. Yes, he looked sort of like a man, except his entire body was covered with a long white fur. His eyes were as large as a cow’s, with crystal blue irises and pinpoint pupils. Thick black eyelashes knitted together when he blinked. He had long black nails on his hands, which were similar to a man’s except twice the size, and the only clothing he wore at all were some sort of boots that looked to be made of yak skin. The impressive array of tackle swinging between the creature’s legs tipped me off to his maleness.

I looked around at the circle of monks to see if anyone had noticed that our supplies were being raided by a woolly beast, but they were all deeply entranced. The creature slurped again from the cylinder, then pounded on the side of it with his hand, as if to dislodge the contents, then looked at me as if asking for help. Whatever terror I felt melted away the second I looked into the creature’s eyes. There wasn’t the hint of aggression there, not a glint of violence or threat. I picked up the cylinder of tea that I had heated on Number Three’s head. It sloshed in my hand, indicating that it hadn’t frozen during my nap, so I held it out to the creature. He reached over Joshua’s head and took the cylinder, pulled the cork from the end, and drank greedily.

I took the moment to kick my friend in the kidney. “Josh, snap out of it. You need to see this.” I got no response, so I reached around and pinched my friend’s nostrils shut. To master meditation the student must first master his breath. The savior made a snorting sound and came out of his trance gasping and twisting in my grip. He was facing me when I finally let go.

“What?” Josh said.

I pointed behind him and Joshua turned around to witness the full glory of the big furry white guy. “Holy moly!”

Big Furry jumped back cradling his tea like a threatened infant and made some vocalization which wasn’t quite language. (But if it had been, it would probably have translated as “Holy Moly,” as well.)

It was nice to see Joshua’s masterful control slip to reveal a vulnerable underbelly of confusion. “What…I mean who…I mean, what is that?”

“Not a Jew,” I said helpfully, pointing to about a yard of foreskin.

“Well, I can see it’s not a Jew, but that doesn’t narrow it down much, does it?”

Strangely, I seemed to be enjoying this much more than my two semi-terrified cohorts. “Well, do you remember when Gaspar gave us the rules of the monastery, and we wondered about the one that said we were not to kill a human or someone like a human?”

“Yes?”

“Well, he’s someone like a human, I guess.”

“Okay.” Joshua climbed to his feet and looked at Big Furry. Big Furry straightened up and looked at Joshua, tilting his head from side to side.

Joshua smiled.

Big Furry smiled back. Black lips, really long sharp canines.

“Big teeth,” I said. “Very big teeth.”

Joshua held his hand out to the creature. The creature reached out to Joshua and ever so gently took the Messiah’s smaller hand in his great paw…and wrenched Joshua off his feet, catching him in a hug and squeezing him so hard that his beatific eyes started to bug out.

“Help,” squeaked Joshua.

The creature licked the top of Joshua’s head with a long blue tongue.

“He likes you,” I said.

“He’s tasting me,” Joshua said.

I thought of how my friend had fearlessly yanked the tail of the demon Catch, of how he had faced so many dangers with total calm. I thought of the times he had saved me, both from outside dangers and from myself, and I thought of the kindness in his eyes that ran deeper than sea, and I said:

“Naw, he likes you.” I thought I’d try another language to see if the creature might better comprehend my meaning: “You like Joshua, don’t you? Yes you do. Yes you do. He wuvs his widdle Joshua. Yes he does.” Baby talk is the universal language. The words are different, but the meaning and sound is the same.

The creature nuzzled Joshua up under its chin, then licked his head again, this time leaving a steaming trail of green-tea-stained saliva behind on my friend’s scalp. “Yuck,” said Joshua. “What is this thing?”

“It’s a yeti,” said Gaspar from behind me, obviously having been roused from his trance. “An abominable snowman.”

“This is what happens when you fuck a sheep!?” I exclaimed.

“Not an abomination,” Josh said, “abominable.” The yeti licked him on the cheek. Joshua tried to push away. To Gaspar he said, “Am I in danger?”

Gaspar shrugged. “Does a dog have a Buddha nature?”

“Please, Gaspar,” Joshua said. “This is a question of practical application, not spiritual growth.” The yeti sighed and licked Josh’s cheek again. I guessed that the creature must have a tongue as rough as a cat’s, as Joshua’s cheek was going pink with abrasion.

“Turn the other cheek, Josh,” I said. “Let him wear the other one out.”

“I’m going to remember this,” Joshua said. “Gaspar, will he harm me?”

“I don’t know. No one has ever gotten that close to him before. Usually he comes while we are in trance and disappears with the food. We are lucky to even get a glimpse of him.”

“Put me down, please,” said Josh to the creature. “Please put me down.”

The yeti set Joshua back on his feet on the ground. By this time the other monks were coming out of their trances. Number Seventeen squealed like a frying squirrel when he saw the yeti so close. The yeti crouched and bared his teeth.

“Stop that!” barked Joshua to Seventeen. “You’re scaring him.”

“Give him some rice,” said Gaspar.

I took the cylinder I had warmed and handed it to the yeti. He popped off the top and began scooping out rice with a long finger, licking the grains off his fingers like they were termites about to make their escape. Meanwhile Joshua backed away from the yeti so that he stood beside Gaspar.

“This is why you come here? Why after alms you carry so much food up the mountain?”

Gaspar nodded. “He’s the last of his kind. He has no one to help him gather food. No one to talk to.”

“But what is he? What is a yeti?”

“We like to think of him as a gift. He is a vision of one of the many lives a man might live before he reaches nirvana. We believe he is as close to a perfect being as can be achieved on this plane of existence.”

“How do you know he is the only one?”

“He told me.”

“He talks?”

“No, he sings. Wait.”

As we watched the yeti eat, each of the monks came forward and put his cylinders of food and tea in front of the creature. The yeti looked up from his eating only occasionally, as if his whole universe resided in that bamboo pipe full of rice, yet I could tell that behind those ice-blue eyes the creature was counting, figuring, rationing the supplies we had brought.

“Where does he live?” I asked Gaspar.

“We don’t know. A cave somewhere, I suppose. He has never taken us there, and we don’t look for it.”

Once all the food was put before the yeti, Gaspar signaled to the other monks and they started backing out from under the overhang into the snow, bowing to the yeti as they went. “It is time for us to go,” Gaspar said. “He doesn’t want our company.”

Joshua and I followed our fellow monks back into the snow, following a path they were blazing back the way we had come. The yeti watched us leave, and every time I looked back he was still watching, until we were far enough away that he became little more than an outline against the white of the mountain. When at last we climbed out of the valley, and even the great sheltering overhang was out of sight, we heard the yeti’s song. Nothing, not even the blowing of the ram’s horn back home, not the war cries of bandits, not the singing of mourners, nothing I had ever heard had reached inside of me the way the yeti’s song did. It was a high wailing, but with stops and pulses like the muted sound of a heart beating, and it carried all through the valley. The yeti held his keening notes far longer than any human breath could sustain. The effect was as if someone was emptying a huge cask of sadness down my throat until I thought I’d collapse or explode with the grief. It was the sound of a thousand hungry children crying, ten thousand widows tearing their hair over their husbands’ graves, a chorus of angels singing the last dirge on the day of God’s death. I covered my ears and fell to my knees in the snow. I looked at Joshua and tears were streaming down his cheeks. The other monks were hunched over as if shielding themselves from a hailstorm. Gaspar cringed as he looked at us, and I could see then that he was, indeed, a very old man. Not as old as Balthasar, perhaps, but the face of suffering was upon him.