Story: Tibetan Folk Takes

We have an odd kind of case on our docket today. I'm not even sure we have the facts straight, even now. I'm going to try to piece it together here before we file a real report.

It started out after there was a painter who was burned to death. While someone seems to have caused this, by obviously lighting the fire that ended up killing the painter, it also seems like said painter did not struggle. He was not forced into the fire; there was not a single sign of struggle. However, it does not seem to be an act of suicide, either. This was certainly confusing, to say the least. We knew we had to talk to some witnesses.

There were a few witnesses at the scene. One of them was a carpenter, but he seemed a little weary of speaking with us. That was noted. There were a couple of other people willing to speak with us. They said that the painter needed to get to heaven because there was something waiting up there for him to be painted? This seemed a little out there. I knew we had to speak to the new king, but kings are not usually willing to speak to law enforcement. Yet, I knew that the king probably had a piece of the puzzle that we needed to make sense of this whole thing.

We politely asked for an audience with the king and didn't hear back for a long while. In the meantime, we did some snooping with the carpenter but he was very unwilling to speak with us. We actually were able to talk to the king before the carpenter. The KING! No matter.

We met with the king and he gave us what we were looking for. He had told us that the painter had brought him a letter, supposedly from his father, which expressed his father's wish for a temple to be built in heaven. For some reason, the king believe this came from his father, and the painter led him to believe that the carpenter (that we can't get a hold of) was the only one to do it. He then ordered the carpenter to be killed so he could go to heaven to build such a temple. This had gone through and later the carpenter came back from the dead. He came back clothed in beautiful robes and it seemed as though he had had an incredible experience. However, the temple was unpainted. To which he called on the painter (the victim) to go to the temple in heaven and paint it for the king's father.

This seems to be when the painter (the victim) was burned in a fire, apparently to go to heaven to paint. Obviously, the question must be, how did the carpenter "come back to life?" Was he actually burned to death? If not, how did he deceive all the witnesses, including the king?

These are the questions that need to be answers, and we need to talk to the carpenter. Hopefully then we'll be able to get to the bottom of this.

Author's Note: I took one of the individual stories from this folk tale unit and looked to use a completely different type of storytelling than I ever had before. This story obviously had a plot point that was a crime, so I thought a detective's perspective would be helpful. The original story goes along with the story that the detective tells, but goes a bit further to answer all his questions. The carpenter, before being "burned to death," dug a tunnel from the burn site to his home. This way, he was able to escape into the tunnel and hide out in his home. While he was "in heaven," he was actually in a back room in his house making the beautiful robes that he eventually came back in. This tricked the painter into believing that he had actually died and gone to heaven, and that it may not be so bad to die. He was burned at the burn site, but did not have a crafty plan like the carpenter.

Bibliography: Tibetan Folk Tales, by Albert Shelton. Link to reading here.

(Detective, web source: Pixabay)