LITMIR.BIZ

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couldn’t name. Sadness or maybe confusion, as if she didn’t know how to answer such a basic question.

      “Your name,” he said, making it easier for her.

      “I am Lilith.”

      It didn’t fit her, not at all. But he didn’t press. “Your surname?”

      She shook her head. “I have no surname. My…father would not give me his.”

      He didn’t know what to say to that so he offered his own name as a way of building further trust. “I’m Tarak Hammer-Smith. My father was English, but my mother was Indian. She was a niece to Punab. It is how I came to be here.”

      “I thought you came to be here because of a bullet hole in your leg.”

      Tarak ignored the implied censure and asked his own question. “Why are you here?”

      He didn’t think she would answer, but he had to ask it anyway. She was a jewel, he thought. Half woman, half creature. So completely beautiful. But she was tucked away in the jungle among lepers, nuns and celibate monks. It made no sense.

      “Are you a Catholic missionary?”

      She shook her head. “I am here because I have nowhere else to go. Because I choose to stay.”

      “You came to my room a few nights ago.”

      “You were in pain. Sometimes I can help make pain go away.”

      “You’re a healer?”

      Again, she shook her head. “No.”

      “But you brought medicine. I remember drinking from a cup and then…”

      And then the pain had stopped. Almost as if he’d gone numb from the roots of his hair to his toes. He hadn’t been asleep and whatever he’d sipped had done nothing to reduce his fever. But the next thing he knew the nun was leaning over his leg with a small knife in her hand.

      She’d found part of a bullet fragment the medic he’d gone to in Monteria had left behind. The extraction should have been excruciating, but he hadn’t felt a thing. Funny that it all came back to him now. But why shouldn’t it? He’d been awake the entire time.

      “What was in that cup?”

      “I need to get back to the village,” she said in answer to his question. “First I must dispose of the water. You need to leave.”

      Dispose of the water? Was it some ritual she needed to perform? “I’ll empty the basin for you,” Tarak offered as he took a step toward her.

      “No. You cannot. I must do it. Stay back. Stay back!”

      Tarak stopped in his tracks. He was now only a couple of feet away from her, and he could see the fear return. She was pressed against the partition and couldn’t easily get around it. For all intents and purposes he had her trapped.

      “Please, you must stay back,” she whispered.

      “Easy. I told you I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to touch you. I wanted to touch you that night. I remember that. Your skin is so…”

      “No,” she said and pressed herself against the partition out of reach of his hand. “You cannot. You need to understand. I will hurt you.”

      “You’re not making any sense.” But since his ultimate desire was to win her trust, he folded his arms over his chest. “I hate things that don’t make sense.”

      He watched her search for a reply and finally she shrugged her shoulders. “Tough.”

      He tilted his head back and laughed. It certainly wasn’t the answer he’d been expecting. “All right. You win. For now.” Tarak took a few steps back from her and with each one he could see her relax. “But, Lilith, I will see you again. And next time you’d better come with some answers.”

      She said nothing and so he began to head back to his room. Then he stopped as the image of her body came to him, an image he would enjoy conjuring for some time to come. Turning, he saw that she was wrapping the ties around her arms to secure the billowing silk to her body.

      “Lilith?”

      She snapped her head up, no doubt surprised he was still close. “Yes?”

      “It is an interesting necklace. But if you’ll pardon me, I must say that I don’t think it suits you.”

      Chapter 4

      Lilith stared up at the straw roof of her hut and considered her next move. Considering she was into her second hour of thinking, she feared the answers wouldn’t quickly be forthcoming.

      It was his fault. The stranger’s. No, not stranger, Tarak.

      She’d gone up to the monastery to clear her mind so that she could think rationally about what needed to be done. Now all she could think about was his gaze on her, looking at her in a way that she’d never been looked at before.

      She’d been desired before, but it had been different then. She’d been barely more than a child. Just thirteen. But her father’s brother called her closer to a woman than a girl. A temptation, he’d said. She remembered the look in his eyes whenever he stared at her and thought again of Tarak. Definitely different.

      Her uncle hadn’t listened to the warnings that she shouldn’t be touched. Perhaps he should have known better, but that was her father’s fault. Her father had only told others in the village where she lived that she was not to be touched because she was cursed.

      Unclean.

      It was what she believed, too, until she began to understand that what she could do went beyond superstition. Beyond her father’s hatred.

      On that day her uncle caught her alone. He professed that he didn’t believe in curses. He said he would take her to wife if she behaved and did everything he wanted. She remembered the bolt of fear that had shot through her system and how that had caused her skin to dampen with what she believed back then was merely sweat.

      She tried to run, but he caught her. Then he tore away the heavy coverings that she wore in layers to protect herself from the cold as well as from incidental contact, and she watched as his hand roughly cupped her barely there breast.

      Suddenly his eyes popped open and he hissed through his teeth, struggling to catch his breath. Before she could pull away from him he fell on her. Dead weight.

      Her father found her struggling to crawl out from underneath the body. He blamed her for enticing his brother, for causing his death. For being born cursed.

      She tried to explain she hadn’t meant to kill him. She just had.

      That night he took her to a monastery in Nepal where it was known that one of the monks would soon be leaving for India. He’d warned the monk of her perfidy and insisted that she live among the outcast. The monk obeyed and brought her to this village.

      What revenge she might have if her father knew how she’d flourished here. In this place she wasn’t seen as inherently evil or cursed. Here she helped people and worked to find spiritual fulfillment that would help her to someday forgive herself for taking a life.

      Yes, he would be outraged to know that she had made a home here.

      Lilith bolted up from her sleeping mat as a question occurred to her. Her father hated her. She’d always known that. As a child she imagined it was because of her sickness. As an adult she came to believe it was because she’d caused him sadness, the death of a wife he must have loved greatly.

      But the woman who’d given birth to her wasn’t his wife. According to Jackie, Petra had been chosen from a family in Tibet who were well paid for their youngest daughter. Her father, Gensen, was from a village far south of that. Had he even known Lilith’s surrogate mother before her birth?

      Lilith struggled to recall what she’d read earlier. There had been so much and it had all been

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