No copyright infringement intended.  Just want to take my turn at detailing the archetype.  Disclaimers [or consider them promises]: Nothing hard core but definitely love between adult women; some violence as or if it becomes necessary.  Hope this isn't offensive or illegal where you're from.  If it is, stranger, best pass by.

Copyright 2000 by GlasOwl. All rights reserved.

She couldn't remember ever being more out of place: a medium-sized, not-that-young white woman with short blond hair alone on a mountain road in Nepal.  Her outfit, by Travel Smith, proclaimed her a tourist from another world as surely as if she wore a neon sign -- dark green backpack, crushable purple hat, lightweight wrinkle-free everything else in khaki with enough pockets to transport a small general store.  Just the sight of her had amused the Nepali people on the bus.

Two weeks ago, in Cleveland, Ohio, she had idly picked up Dante's Inferno, opened the book, and suddenly been seized with a desire to go to Nepal.  Curiously, it was easier to go than question the urge.  Maybe the urge wasn't quite without context; Billy had talked a lot about his trip to India, a trip that had included Nepal.  There was a village north of Kathmandu that he'd especially liked called Nungdu on the way to the Barun Preserve.  Billy's funeral had been three weeks ago.

She didn't seem to be anywhere near a village, but the thick mist could hide anything.  For all Kelly knew, a 4-star hotel might be just up the road.  As if in response to that thought, a dim figure approached out of the fog.  Unfortunately, as he came closer, he looked much more like a bandit than a concierge or a bellhop.  Wearing a long loose coat and a headscarf that revealed only the eyes, the stranger's most ominous features were a rifle slung over one shoulder and a clip of bullets over the other.

"What are you doing here?"

The voice was a woman's voice.  Speaking English.  Kelly, who had been avoiding a direct stare, was surprised into looking at eyes that were sapphire blue.  And familiar.  So familiar that she might have known these eyes for years.

Reality asserted itself.  She hadn't just come home.  She was lost halfway around the world from home.

"What am I doing here?  Good question.  How much time do you have?"

"Not much.  Can I get the short version?"

"The bus dumped me here."

"You're not Louise Bolingbrook."  Not a question.

"The UN person?"  Oh, great.  That response would enhance the reputation of all blonds.  That "UN person" was a world-class human rights authority.  Her picture appeared regularly in newspapers.  If there was a story that involved refugees, and there always seemed to be, then Louise Bolingbrook would figure in it somehow.

"Right.  Louise Bolingbrook, the assistant to the Secretary General."

Kelly couldn't tell if the response showed contempt or amusement?  Damn and double-damn.  That's what came of growing up in a small town where you would never, ever, reveal that your IQ might have shuffled out of the double digits.  You always had to pretend to knowing less than you actually did.

"You'd better come with me.  I imagine the bus driver thought you were Bolingbrook."

That did begin to explain the sudden stop followed by the driver's impatient persistence that Kelly get off the bus.  His English had been as woefully inadequate as her ability to communicate that she thought she really ought to stay on.

"Who are you?  Not that I'm not glad to see you, but you do look like some relative of Che Guevara."

"I do? Let's go.  There won't be another bus until tomorrow, so we'll have time to talk later."

"Tell me your name at least?"

"Jeri."

"Kelly."

Jeri nodded and strode off into the mist.  Kelly shouldered her pack and followed.  The tall woman spoke English, American English, but the rifle wasn't part of any standard tourist travel gear Kelly was aware of.  For some obscure reason she wasn't as worried as she ought to be.  In fact, she was oddly content.  Maybe being thoroughly lost in a foreign country following an armed stranger was being so far our of control that she could just let go and relax.  Of course, it wasn't as if she had been controling anything for a long time.  She sighed and found herself drifting back into the inner haze that had become her familiar companion.     

Soft and calm, the muffling cocoon had been her default position ever since George called and asked for her help two years ago.  She got her work done, teaching English at the two-year city college where she and George worked.  The students even liked her.  If she seemed to forget their names occasionally, or returned their papers a few days late, she still had a gift for presenting the basics of composition, and most of the students figured she was just the young airhead version of an absent-minded professor.  Outside the haze things were usually thin and jarring, with colors too bright and noises too loud.

Jeri turned to see if she was following and Kelly got a nod of approval for keeping up.  Good.  She had jogged for years, and working out at the gym had relieved some of the stress of caring for George and Russell, and then Billy. Kelly wouldn't want any mysterious American bandits in the Himalayas to disapprove of her.

Jeri turned off the road and strode along a faint path that led slightly downhill.  They walked until they came to a series of terraces edged in stone retaining walls.  The terraces looked like green steps for giants to take up and down the mountain.  Jeri waited until Kelly caught up.     "Be careful along here.  The rocks are slippery and some are loose."

Kelly nodded.  She concentrated on her footing as she followed Jeri along the maze of stone walls.  Each terrace was like a garden, with the retaining walls holding the mountain soil firmly in place.  Kelly was going to have to write Travel Smith a thank you letter and commend their hiking shoes.      Just then a loose rock slipped and threatened to upset her balance.  She almost got it back, almost got back into control, but the weight of the pack was unfamiliar and caused her to overcompensate.  The drop was ten feet or more.  In a rush of adrenaline clarity, Kelly knew she was going to fall and it was going to be bad.     "Gotcha!  You're okay now, I gotcha."

The strong arms pulled her back to safety.  Kelly was shaking.  Deeper than deja vu.  Too strong to be ignored or denied.  This assuredly was not the first time she had been gathered in to absolute safety by this voice and these extraordinarily strong arms.

Jeri was still holding her, steadying her, standing much closer than their short acquaintance warranted.

"I feel it, too," Jeri said.  Her blue eyes demanded Kelly's attention, her presence, pulling her mind back from shock.  "I don't know what it is, but it's real.  We'll sort it out later.  Can you go on now?"

"Yeah.  Sure.  I'm okay."  She would be.  She pushed back the memory of that instant before being caught when she had wanted nothing more than to give herself up to falling.  She could go on for a while longer.

Jeri O'Donnell had always been her own woman.  Even before a series of choices made it necessary for her to accept all of who she was if she was going to go on living, she had been what her mother's people called strong-minded.  Usually, they hadn't meant it for a compliment.  Not much fazed her.  Not anymore.  But this odd blond tourist was definitely getting to her.

When Jeri had come walking up to the bus stop and discovered that it wasn't Bolingbrook waiting there, she'd been annoyed.   It didn't take long to figure out what had happened.  The day before, Jeri had told the bus driver where to drop off the English lady when she came, and so he had.  The wrong English lady.  The last thing Jeri needed on her hands was a silly American tourist.

But the tourist wasn't acting silly.  She was quick to gauge a situation, quick to make up her mind.  Something about her had already piqued Jeri's interest.  Maybe it was the way she thought she was giving off tough vibes when anyone could see that she was just a touch away from shattering.  And yet the toughness wasn't an act.  It was stretched and strained but it was real.     Jeri shook her head.  She had sized up plenty of people before, guessed how they'd react in dangerous situations, but this was just wool gathering.  There was no reason for her to know anything about this woman.  That was when she felt the stones shift beneath her feet and turned to warn Kelly.  Turned just in time to see the tourist begin to fall.

One step, two steps back and she had her.  Grabbed her by the arm and dug her own feet solidly into the mountain soil.  Sea-green eyes wide with fear stared back at and suddenly she was in danger of falling herself as pale fire ripped through her.  She tightened her grip and pulled.  She had her.  They were going to be okay.  She kept her grip and pulled the younger woman back to safety.  And she still felt the fire of an understanding that flowed through her deeper than blood and bone. 

And following it came the words: Too late.  You're too late.  Jeri's Celtic soul was sure that Kelly was not here by accident, as sure as if she'd been raised in her father's own beloved Derry rather than on the streets of South Boston.  Their meeting was destiny.  The question was -- to what purpose, especially now?  Had they been brought together for help or for harm?

The small weathered hut with a thick thatched roof was a welcome sight.  Inside, two people as ambiguously dressed as Jeri and wearing similar scarves looked up when the women entered, but went back to what they'd been doing after Jeri spoke to them.  Kelly didn't understand the language, but it seemed to have the same rhythms she'd been listening to since she arrived in Kathmandu.

Jeri took off her weaponry and coat and unwound her scarf.  Kelly was at last able to look at the woman she'd been following for the last two hours.  She was quite tall, with dark hair that hung past her shoulders in a thick braid. Her strong features were pleasant enough, but they seemed set into a severe and fierce expression.

Then again, the smile Jeri aimed at Kelly softened her face like the rose-gold light of dawn edges away night.

"I'll bet you're hungry, girl.  That was a hike and a half and you were carrying a pack."

Kelly was surprised by the warmth.  For some reason, she hadn't expected it.  "Actually, I'm hungry enough to eat a horse." A thought occurred to her.  "Unless horse actually is a dish here.  Please say it's not."

Jeri laughed.  A deep amused chuckle.  "Don't worry.  It tastes like chicken."

A young man brought over a dish that seemed to be mostly boiled eggs and rice.  He handed it to Kelly with a flourish, and said shyly, "Nuru."

"That's his name," Jeri explained.

Kelly smiled.  "Kelly," she said.

Something in his answering smile reminded her of Billy.  A certain tilt of the head.  Billy had always tilted his head like that.  But where Nuru's look contained a question that wondered if he was getting the meaning right, Billy's smile had invited you to be his accomplice.  Just the two of you were in on Billy's humor.  In a room full of people he could draw a magic circle around the two of you. 

"What?"  Kelly became aware that Jeri had asked a question.

"Nuru wants to know if you'd like some tea."

It was late afternoon when Kelly took her tea outside and found a place to sit on the retaining wall near the house.  The mist had lifted somewhat, still obscuring the sky but revealing a deep, narrow valley sloping down from the wall.  On the far side, green trees were interspersed with thickets of  blooming rhododendrons.

The extraordinary feeling of recognition had receded.  It was difficult to hold onto.  Kelly understood this as culture reasserting itself.  Rationality didn't recognize what she'd felt, so it was looping the experience out of the normal lines of connection.  It would be the same if she lived in a culture that didn't believe the sun rose every morning.  Then people would wake up to a daily surprise.  "By god, Frankie Lee, look how that old sun has gone and come back again."  And how many times had she thought of someone only seconds before the phone rang and that person was at the other end?  And still she thought, Isn't that an amazing coincidence? unable to fit the event into a pattern linking belief and evidence.

She hadn't even liked Billy when she met him.  He'd been George's friend, George's assistant at the school where Kelly taught.  Now she'd give anything if he could be here, seeing this country he'd thought so much about.

"So what brings you to Nepal?"

Ordinary question.  Kelly wondered how long Jeri had been sitting there beside her.  She looked pretty ordinary now, wearing jeans and a Green Bay Packer sweatshirt.  She still had the scarf but it was looped loosely around her neck.

" 'I found myself in dark woods,' " Kelly said by way of anwering.

Jeri's quietly continued the quote from Dante, " 'The right road lost.  To tell about these woods is hard -- so tangled and so rough.'  Pinsky's Dante, right?  Can you talk about those woods?"

"Oh sure, no problem.  Three funerals."

"An accident?"

"Sure.  Some call it AIDS, though.  The last funeral was three weeks ago."

" 'And youth grows pale, spectre thin, and dies.' "

"Keats.  Right.  And I thought I was the English major.  I used to think of that though, 'Ode to a Nightingale.'  It seemed to fit.  George was my brother.  My big brother.  Billy was his friend.  Not his lover, but his friend.  Russell was George's lover. . . god, I'm sorry.  I shouldn't be dropping this on you."

"Well, who else have you got to talk to in the middle of Nepal?"  Jeri laughed, a throaty chuckle, and put her arm lightly around Kelly's shoulders. "You can talk to me about whatever you want."

A large bird rose toward them from the valley and then circled away toward the other side of the valley.

"That's a griffon," Jeri said.  "A vulture.  They have two kinds of vulture here in the mountains."

Kelly turned to face Jeri without moving away.  "Who are you?" she asked.     "Jeri O'Donnell.  From Boston.  I know a little about people dying, too."

Kelly had heard of a shadow crossing a face, but she'd never seen it happen before.  She watched as memory closed Jeri's eyes and a dark pain moved over her face.

"How do I know you?" Kelly whispered.

Jeri opened her eyes and they filled the whole of Kelly's world.  She felt herself tumbling toward understanding.

The grating growl of a nearby engine shifting gears broke the silence and wrenched the two women back from their fall toward one another.   Jeri glanced away, looked back, sighed.   "Stay here, would you, until I see who that is?"  She quickly wound the scarf around her head.

Kelly watched Jeri sprint toward the house.  She was both disappointed and relieved that the intensity of the moment had been broken.  God; it would be so nice to be on some gravel street at the edge of a town full of white houses with big yards and tall elms; it would be evening and you'd be thinking about going to the Dairy Queen and deciding on a regular sundae or a banana split.  Just to float over the surface for a while would be such a joy.  Like a cloud, like foam.

The vehicle that shuddered into the open space between the retaining wall and the thatched hut was something old and rusty and had the outline of what might say ROVER on its front hood.  Two people got out and waited.  The driver was a Nepali by his looks and clothes.  The other was Louise Bolingbrook.

Kelly recognized the UN official from news photos.  She was impressive even on a remote mountainside at dusk.  Her hair was somewhere between gray and blond and she was whip thin.  She could be any age between fifty and seventy. It didn't matter.  She had achieved that sovereignty of spirit that made her presence more remarkable than youth or ordinary good looks could ever have managed.  Obviously, there had been kings and queens in her bloodline, and Kelly would wager good money that her khakis never came from a catalog.  Kelly had admired Bolingbrook's work among the world's refugees for years.  The woman had taken hold of her wealth and privilege to use like a sword in service to those who had neither.  Not from a safe distance either.  She worked at the bedsides of people who were sick, ate rice tainted by beetles with people who were hungry, and labored under fire to rescue people near battlefields. 

Jeri had come outside again and she was wearing the long coat as well as the head scarf.  She stopped a few feet away from Bolingbrook.  "Did you miss the bus?"

No smile answered her.  "You are Geraldine O'Donnell?"     Jeri nodded slightly.

"Before we go any further, I want you to know that my brother's son was killed at the post office in Strabane."

Strabane.  Kelly thought she should know that name.

"I'm sorry to hear that."  Jeri was polite but remote.

"It is my belief, Miss O'Donnell, that you may quite possibly have killed him.  Or one of his group."

"You can believe whatever you like."

"Do you deny having anything to do with those murders?"

The atmosphere in the yard was so charged it nearly sparked.  Kelly held her breath.  Jeri seemed to have withdrawn so far that she might actually have disappeared, leaving behind a stark hollow figure in a long coat and scarf.  The last of the sun, shining through the nearest mountain pass, shot a ray of light into the yard that fell on both women as they faced each other like severe angels of opposing gods.

Jeri's voice was calm and strong.  "I have no intention of dscussing any matter but the one you came here to discuss."

Strabane!  Now Kelly remembered.  That was years ago, five or six at least, probably more.  A company of British soldiers and Ulster constabulary had been ambushed and almost all killed.  It was an episode in the Troubles of Northern Ireland.  The battle had raged for several hours before the IRA had withdrawn and somehow slipped away.  U.S. papers had all been full of surprise that a small irregular band could bloody the nose of Britain's modern army and then escape.  For a while after Strabane, there were articles in print and documentaries on television giving background to the Troubles.

It wasn't something Kelly knew much about.  Her family was Irish, at least on her father's side, but like a large segment of Americans her sense of family history ended at some great or great-great who "came over."  Irish to Kelly wa s linked to Catholic and wearing a shamrock on St. Patrick's Day, and cavorting, Disney-type leprechauns looking for pots of gold.  For the most part.  There was also a reservoir of romantic notions about great legends and wonderful music and a certain pleasure in being related to such a place.  A lit major could hardly be unaware of the great myths of the island.   And if she was pushed, Kelly would admit her sympaties lay more with the nationalists than the unionists.  But it was a distant sympathy, more like having a sports favorite than a passionate attachment.

"Who's over there in the shadows?"

Kelly realized that Bolingbrook meant her.  She stepped forward still starstruck by the reputation of the UN official.  "Kelly Corcoran, ma'am.  I'm so pleased to meet you."

"Corcoran?  Do you also avoid discussion of your murders?"

Jesus God, it had never occurred to her.  She was just one more white American who felt no connection to history and suddenly this stranger was fixing an identity on her because of her name.  Kelly stopped, dropped back as if she'd been hit.  If she hadn't admired the woman it might have been easier to take the hit.  Nor was it exactly an unfair accusation, given the context of the moment, but Kelly had no defense against the withering sarcasm and bitterness directed at her.  When you're left after someone dear has died, it can feel like murder; all the things you should have done and should have said know the dreadful secret of your culpability.  Fair.  That's not fair, wailed her heart, as if the world were a grade-school playground and such words would bring a teacher who could soothe away death like a scraped knee.

"Miss Corcoran is a tourist the bus driver thought was you and dropped off at the side of the road.  She has no idea what's happening here."

"Is that so?"  Bolingbrook sighed and dismissed Kelly's existence.  "Then let's get on with our business, shall we?"

"Good idea.  Come this way."

The two women entered the hut, leaving behind Kelly, the Rover driver and several people who wore scarves around their heads like Jeri.

Kelly sank to the ground.  She was ashamed of herself.  She was about to break down in front of people who had seen the worst the world could do.  What a useless nuisance she was turning out to be.  Jeri O'Donnell and Louise Bolingbrook were alike in that they both saw the big needs and plunged in with their sleeves rolled up, willing to get bloodied if necessary.  Maybe neither one would like the comparison, but they had guts and nerve, both of them.  Kelly was feeling sorry for herself because she had been asked to be a part time caretaker for people she knew and liked.  Loved.  And then lost...

Grateful that it was now dark, Kelly sobbed the tears that never seemed far away these days.

From a distance, Jeri watched.  Her arms ached to comfort Kelly, but she held back.  Bolingbrook had labeled her a killer and Jeri had no idea how that would sit with this curiously familiar stranger.  She wasn't sure she wanted Kelly not to hold it against her.  She very well could have killed Bolingbrook's nephew.  She had no idea who she had killed or not killed that day.  Nor was that even the worst of what she'd done.

Kelly's sobs subsided.  Jeri  waited until she appeared to have reached some sense of balance, and then stepped forward.

"How are you?"

"I'm okay.  Sorry I lost it."

"Here.  Drink this.  You need to keep your fluids up at these heights." 

There wasn't much light.  The driver and two of Jeri's companions stood around a small fire that had been started near the corner of the house.  Jeri searched Kelli's face.  She could see the questions there.  As well as determination not to ask them.

"I'm sorry she took you for one of us."

Kelly shrugged as if that were irrelevant.  "Why is she here?"

"We have some documentation about what's happening in Tibet.  We thought she'd be the best person to get the information to where it can do some good."

A shaft of light shot across the yard as the door of the house opened.  Bolingbrook emerged and, after her eyes adjusted, walked across the yard to Jeri and Kelly.

"Impressive," she said.  "Can you put me in contact with the author of the report or the photographer?"

"It's too dangerous.  They're still in Tibet."

"It would make all the difference if I could talk with at least one of them."

Nuru suddenly emerged from the darkness and pulled Jeri aside.  The two of them spoke rapidly for a moment, and then Nuru left.  Jeri came back.  Even with the scarf masking most of her face, Jeri's frown was visible.

"Mrs. Bolingbrook, I believe some countrymen of yours are on their way.  You gave me your word you'd come alone."

Bolingbrook's face was unreadable.  "Surely you don't object to an ambush?"

"I object to breaking a given word.  Please see to it that this information is used." 

As Jeri turned to leave, the UN official spoke quickly.  "I didn't realize I was being followed.  I suspected, but I did not deliberately lead anyone here.  I meant it when I said I'd like to talk to your sources."

"We'll see."

Kelly suddenly understood that Jeri was about to disappear.  Without thinking, she sprinted after the tall woman.  Hearing the footsteps, Jeri spun around, a gun in her hand.  Kelly stared.  More than anything, the presence of the small weapon brought home to her the seriousness of the situation. 

Barely above a whisper, Kelli spoke quickly, urgently, before good sense could silence her.  She spoke out of a need that felt like it had just been born fully formed.  She spoke with a complete awareness of what she was asking.  "Take me with you."

A certain softness happened around Jeri's eyes.  "I can't.  Not now.  But I'll come for you, and soon."

"Your word?" Kelly whispered.

"My word."  A quiet answer.  The Englishwoman couldn't overhear.  "Thank you, Kelly Corcoran."

For what? Kelly wanted to ask, but the tall woman was gone.

So was everyone else except Louise Bolingbrook and her driver.

"Do you make a practice of hanging out with terrorists, Miss Corcoran?"

That wasn't the last time the question was put to her.  The hard-eyed men who arrived soon after were angry at losing their quarry.  They had no intention of taking Kelly's denials and explanations at face value.  They bundled her into a car and drove her somewhere in the dark.  After a long drive through the night, Kelly had no idea where the room was, the room with a very bright light, a bench, a chair, and a desk.   Kelly concentrated on the walls.  Plaster and paint had built up generations of layers that had then worn away and stained in the most interesting patterns.

"Where did you first meet O'Donnell?"  Bald man with glasses.

"I told you.  On the side of the road.  The bus driver stopped and insisted I get off."

"Insisted? You speak Nepali?"  Thick man with all his sandy brown hair.

"No.  He got out and said, 'miss, here, here.'  He said that over and over until I got my pack and followed him out."

"Why were you on that bus?"  Thin arrogant man.

"I was going to the Barun Park."

"Is that where you're going to meet the dealers?"

"What dealers?"

"Oh come, now.  We know you're going to mule drugs back to the States."

Drug dealer.  Terrorist.  And they said world travel wasn't what it used to be.  Kelly especially liked the gray-green stain that looked like Hudson's Bay.  If it would just move a bit she could start finding passable Great Lakes stains to match up with it.  Maybe these guys would try to turn her into a Little Drummer Girl.  Who'd got the part in the movie?  Diane Keaton? 

"What did O'Donnell look like when you first saw her?" Bald man.  Reasonable question if it hadn't been asked over and over already.

"Tall.  Black, gray black coat.  Long coat.  And a scarf around her head.  And a rifle.  Over her shoulder."

"You make a habit of going off with strange women carrying rifles?" Arrogant man.

"Why not?  There wasn't much else to do and she had a nice voice."  Damn.  She shouldn't have let him get to her.  She needed to just answer what they asked.

"Nice?  Nice?  You call someone who's killed men, women and children 'nice'?  You want to see pictures of how nice she is?  I've got a photo, in living color, Miss Corcoran, that will show you the bloody body of a four-year-old with the head half gone and the brains all over his mother's arm.  Just the arm, because the rest of her is missing."

Jesus, it could be true.  She had no way of knowing.  And it did matter.  "I'm sorry," she said wearily.  "I can't help you."

Bald guy with glasses asked her a question but in a language she didn't understand.  Then, some familiarity from hearing old songs let her recognize the words as Gaelic.  She shook her head.

"So what does your murdering dyke girlfriend look like?"  Sandy haired guy.

"She never took off the scarf.  I just know she had blue eyes."

"You a lesbian, Miss Corcoran?  Did you think you'd go off and get a little of blue eyes before the next bus came?"  Sandy haired creep guy.  Sandy-haired dick-head guy.

Was she a lesbian?  She had been before George called and asked if she could help him take care of Russell.  "I'm sorry, Sis, but I can't manage by myself any more."  She might have lost her card as a practicing lesbian by this time.  These days she wasn't much of anything.  Listener.  Driver.  Runner of errands.  Funeral mourner.  The curious part was that she hadn't even thought of it the whole time that she'd been following Jeri O'Donnell through the mountains.  Not that butch had ever been a real big attraction for her in her former life, but she doubted sandy-haired dick-head would be interested in erotic nuances.

"I know this isn't the US and your accents suggest we come from different legal systems, but at home we have a saying: are you guys going to charge me or let me go?" 

Odd how they didn't get to her the way Bolingbrook had.  "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger," Billy always said.  Then he'd laugh and add, "I think this is killing me." 

Abruptly, bald head with glasses stood up.  "Thank you for your time, Miss Corcoran.  We'll be in touch."

And they were gone.  Just like that.  They even took the light.  She'd been left somewhere in the middle of the night with everything from her backpack strewn all over the floor.

She packed by the light from her reading flashlight.  Pushed the bench close to a wall.  Lay down on the bench and closed her eyes.  The night was nearly over.  She'd find out where she was in the morning. 

When she woke up at dawn, Kelly found a road only a short walk from the door. She just turned right and started walking and not long after that a weathered Nepali man driving an old pickup stopped for her.  He didn't speak English, but he let her know that the town they were approaching was called Nungdu.  With a cheerful smile, he dropped her off near the town's center, waving away her offer of payment.

Nungdu was on the tourist trail and even at this early hour there were a few English speakers out to give directions.  Soon Kelly lay on a lumpy hotel mattress, staring up at a plaster ceiling.  Not as interesting as the interrogation room walls had been, but no slouch either when it came to suggestive stains left from seasons of monsoon humidity.  Be it ever so humble, and it was, the room was home and felt just fine.  And it was less than 24 hours since Kelly had been put off a bus along a foggy road and met by a woman wearing a long coat and a rifle. 

Going over it again.  Kelly had met a woman who killed people and she wanted more than anything to find that woman again.  Not that Jeri's history didn't matter.  On one level it was inconceivable.  Things like IRA ambushes happened in movies and newspapers.  Ordinary killings -- how was that for a phrase -- happened far enough away from her world that they could be successfully ignred.  Just like others could successfully ignore thousands of young men wasting away into a hideous array of diseases.  It wasn't distance that made different worlds, it was experience and expectation and the web of drama that you spun yourself into.  She and George had grown up in a town where everyone lived in each other's pockets, and then they'd ended up in a city where an ambulance could come for you and the people next door didn't even know you were gone.

If Kelly had an ounce of Midwestern brain left, she would get on a plane and get as far away from Jeri O'Donnell as possible.  She was in over her head.  Way over.  But she wouldn't leave.  Couldn't leave.  Not while there was a chance that she might find Jeri again.  What she had felt had been beyond question.  Some kind of connection that went beyond attraction, beyond words, beyond blood and bone, something that roused a knowing so deep that if she didn't trust that knowledge then trust never had and never would make sense.

Kelly drifted into a restless sleep and woke a few hours later.

Curiously, she felt more awake than she had in longer than she could remember.  With some anticipation, she set out to see the town.  The sun was shining warmly as she wandered through the shops and stalls along with other t ourists.  A variety of languages hummed around Kelly like so many chirping birds, pleasant but untranslatable.  The colors of Nepal amazed her.  Vibrant reds and intense greens.  She stopped to look at a particularly bright and complexly embroidered  piece of cloth.

"Oh - h - h."  Kelly caught her breath.  An array of crystals lay on the cloth.    Some were the size of small pencil stubs and one was as thick as her wrist and about four inches long.  Another dozen ranged in between.  They were all astonishingly clear, as if someone had taken ice and removed anything that wasn't light.  She picked up one shaped like a pointed plum and was delighted to see what looked like a level made of tiny bubbles bending through the interior.  She turned the crystal slightly and the plane o bubbles disappeared while several rainbows formed near the tip.   "Gemmy things aren't they?"  The speaker sounded as satisfied as if she'd made them herself.  "They're quartz.  That's how they grow here."

Kelly looked at the woman who had spoken: another tourist, an older woman, with a friendly smile whose gray hair still had a peppering of red.

"Do you know stones?"

"That's what I'm here to buy.  I make jewelry and sell it.  My name's Meg, from near Berkeley, California."

Something inexplicable made Kelly hand the woman the crystal she had picked up.  Meg took it from her, and closed her hand around the stone, shutting her eyes.  For what seemed a long time, she stood there in rapt concentration. 

"It's a lovely stone," she said quietly, giving the crystal back.  Her eyes narrowed and she looked more closely at Kelly who felt as if she were being scanned as the crystal had been.  "These crystals are guides.  When you're ready for them."

"Thank you," Kelly said, releasing the breath she didn't know she'd been holding.  She turned to the Nepali woman who had been waiting patiently and paid for the stone.

Kelly wandered aimlessly after that.  She found her way out to the edge of Nungdu and rested on some rocks that gave her a view of the towering peaks that ringed the valley.  It was warm where the sun shone directly down.  The snowy peaks made one forget that this was a tropical latitude.

Kelly understood that she was waiting, making herself available.  Hoping that Jeri would come to her here. 

"What do you think, George?" Kelly whispered aloud.  "Do you think I'm crazy to want to be with someone I've only just met?  Do you think I'm crossing a moral line to be attracted to her at all?"  She took the plum-sized crystal from her pocket and turned it round and round, watching it catch and transform the sunlight.

"I can't take care of myself and Russell anymore, Kell.  I hate to ask, but could you help us?"  Her brother's voice had been so full of shame for his need, and his struggle to ignore the shame broke Kelly's heart to hear.  George was her big brother, the guy who took care of her, and it was costing him to lose his capacity to cope.  Smart, handsome, effortlessly kind, he had always made everything appear easy. 

"I think I like girls," she had said to him during one of her visits from college.

"Oh, my dear!  I was so hoping.  Russ, break out the champagne.  Kelly's one of us."

He was so big, big-hearted, big-minded, that Kelly had grown up in the shade of his protection without ecountering much of the world's harsher aspects.  He ran interference with their parents, supporting her choice to go out of state to school.  Then he got her a job at the college where he was in administration.  He had an acrobat's skill at negotiating between holding on and letting go.

Russell and George wanted to stay home after they got too sick to work.  They were endlessly gentle with each other.  Through the waning days of their lives, Kelly felt that she had been given a gift at this opportunity to share their time together, not a burden.  Everything fell away from them but their tremendous hearts, and their love seemed to grow as their bodies diminished.

Only once did she see despair intrude.  She was living in the condo's spare room now and had come in from teaching.  George was sitting in his robe at the kitchen table.  This was unusual because he always made a point of dressing each day, as if it were a discipline like a monk's round of prayers or a warrior's exercise drill.  He was weeping, silently, but when Kelly tried to hug him he waved her away toward Russell's room.

Russell was sitting propped against pillows, his room full of the paraphernalia of the very sick.  He was staring at one terribly thin arm, so shrunken that the bones were visible, and on it the large dark Kaposi's mark. After a while he looked at Kelly, his eyes large in his thin face.

"My grandfather and my uncles died looking like me," he said.  "Only I have this spot, and they had tattoos from Hitler.  What does it mean, Kelly?"

What does it mean, Kelly? She heard him asking that long afterwards.  She could still hear him.

Russell died first.  George lingered.  From thin, he went to impossibly thinner.  All the strength of young manhood that was in him fought to live when he would have been content to leave.  His body's capacity to be healthy bound him to longer suffering.  And still he managed to live with grace and humor.  He and Kelly would sit together in the lounge chairs on his condo balcony and gaze at the city around them and talk about the town where they grew up.  Billy, George's assistant from school, was staying with them now.  He and Kelly took turns caring for George.

Kelly hadn't liked Billy very much when he became George's assistant at the school.  She thought at first that it was internalized homophobia because he acted out and no one was ever in any doubt about his orientation.  But that wasn't it.  It was how he used cleverness and quips to hold people at arm's length.  It could be fun, but after an extended amount of time with Billy, she would realize that not one part of it had been real or personal, and she was just tired.  It was his shtick, but it wasn't one Kelly appreciated.

Until he came to help with George.  George did like the jokes, and the distancing and the cleverness.  George let Billy help him with personal things that he had never allowed Kelly to do, either for himself or Russell.  And Kelly began to see that Billy was in love with George and determined to keep it hidden.

Kelly thought Billy was tired the way she was tired.  George's last days had been dreadfully wearing.  He was so ready to go and his body had worked so hard to stay alive for one more hour, one more minute.  Kelly had gone into Russell's room where Billy was staying to get something and Billy had been changing shirts.  She saw the spot on his back, as big as a peanut jar lid.  That was the absurd comparison her mind made: as big as a peanut jar lid.  She couldn't say anything, she couldn't even back away and pretend she hadn't seen.  She just stared.  Then Billy turned around and saw her there.  He started to pull on the ragged tatters of his attitude, but suddenly it was just too much and there was only room for the fear he'd been hiding.  Kelly held out her arms and he came to them and they cried together.

What does it mean, Kelly?

It was several weeks after Russell's death.  She and George had been on the balcony, and Kelly had been savoring George's presence beside her.  They stayed in comfortable silence for a long time.  Finally, she stirred and opened the subject she had been working toward.

"George, later, when things are worse, do you want me . . ." she stopped, still not sure how to phrase it.

George didn't wait for her to finish.  "No, Kell.  I'm ready to go through this."  He spoke slowly.  It wasn't that easy for him to talk anymore.  "It seems to me that what we know about anything is so little.  Does anybody read R.D. Lang anymore?  He wrote . . . let me get this right . . . 'what we think is so much less than what we know, and what we know is so much less than what there is, and what there is is so much less than what we love, and to that extent we are so much less than what we could be.'  Something like that.  I want to believe there's meaning in this and I want to be as true to that as I can, Kell.  So I am where I am and I won't try to control that by saying this part of my life is worthwhile and this other part isn't."

He was quiet for so long then that Kelly thought the talk was over.  But he had something more to say.

"It's about love, Kell, I'm sure it is." 

The sun had gone past the peaks.  The evening air was growing chill.  This didn't seem to be the day that she was going to see Jeri O'Donnell again.  Kelly walked slowly back toward her hotel.  She was feeling different somehow.  The haze that had been so much part of her internal landscape was gone, at least for the moment.

A short distance from the hotel, Kelly ran into Meg from California again.  In the way of tourists traveling alone, they greeted each other like old friends and discovered they were staying at the same place.   It wasn't too surprising since the hotel was inexpensive and near the center of the town, but Kelly couldn't help a small suspicion.  She knew the Brits would be watching her.  It was possible that the California jeweler was a plant.  If this were a book by John LeCarre, Meg would definitely be on the English payroll.  Since it was real life, Kelly decided the woman was probably who she said she was.

They ate together at a restaurant near their hotel.  It was small and simple, with thick wooden furniture painted in bright Nepali patterns.  Before they parted company, they made plans to meet and go sightseeing the next morning.  As Kelly drifted off to sleep, clutching the crystal in her left hand the way Meg had suggested, she thought how different this day had been compared to the one before.  The life of a tourist was truly unpredictable.

Kelly woke feeling a hand on her forehead.  She didn't have to open her eyes to know who it was.

"Jeri."

Sleepily Kelly noted that she was still holding the crystal.  She set it on the bedside table and reached for Jeri's hand.  It was a strong hand that she found, she could feel that, a hand that knew hard work, a competent hand.  She liked holding it, feeling the long fingers, knuckles, strength.

"I've been waiting for you."

"Yes.  I promised." 

Kelly felt a soft kiss brush her forehead.  Everything was so familiar, as if several pieces of a puzzle were sliding into place and making a whole picture.  She opened her eyes.  There was enough ambient light in the room to see the shape of the woman who sat beside her on the bed.

"You need to be careful," Kelly said.  "I'm pretty sure the bad guys are watching me."

"Kelly, they're not the bad guys."  There was pain in her voice.  "I'm the --"

Kelly put her fingers on Jeri's lips, stopping the words.  "Your enemies then."

"Yes.  All right.  That will do.  Did they give you a hard time?"

"Not too bad.  Only thumbscrews, no rack.  They don't believe we just met."

Jeri laughed quietly.  "I don't think I believe that myself."  She took Kelly's hand in both of her own, squeezed it, growing serious.  "I came to say good-bye."

"No, you didn't."  Kelly's voice was husky.

"Yes.  I have to go.  You don't know how much it means that I met you, but we can't be together."

"Why? Is there someone else?"

"No."  The answer was short and sharp, and then she repeated it much more softly.  "No, there's no one else."

"You're not going to tell me you're straight."  Kelly spoke with exaggerated disbelief.

Even in the dark, Kelly could see the gleam of a challenge in Jeri's eyes.  She could see this because the eyes came steadily toward her until she closed her own and felt the touch of soft lips on her mouth.  It began as a gentle kiss, easy, slow, tentative.  She could feel Jeri holding back even as they cautiously explored, asking and answering the questions that are part of a first kiss.  For herself, Kelly began to be lost in the upwelling of feeling. She was having trouble breathing, and she felt like she was riding a wave into a rich and compelling darkness.  This was what Plato meant:  her soul was rising to meet and merge with this other soul, to greet the lost . . .

Jeri tenderly disengaged and sat up, breathing raggedly, still holding tightly to Kelly's hand lest she think there was rejection involved in stopping.

"I can't.  I'm sorry."

"Jeez . . . please god don't tell me you've made a vow of celibacy!"

"No . . . you idiot; you dear, sweet idiot.  I have to go and I don't want you to get more involved with me."

"Jeri, listen.  Please listen.  Carefully.  We are involved.  That's why you're here.  That's why I'm here.  I trust this more than I trust life itself.  If this isn't true then truth isn't possible.  If we betray this then we'll be less than nothing."

"Oh, god.  Kelly.  You  don't know. . .  I can't.  I've already betrayed us, don't you see that?" 

The anguish was overwhelming, alive in the room like a thing unto itself. 

Kelly thought she understood what Jeri was saying.  She thought she might understand how turning to violence could be an act of despair and betrayal.  For an instant she was tempted to give in.  Only for an instant.  Then she deliberately shifted gears.  As if they were discussing some utterly ordinary event, she asked, "Where are you going?"

"I can't . . ." spoken out of habit, stopped, reached for trust, ". . . Tibet."

"Why?"

"Bolingbrook wants more proof of what's happening there."

"How are you going to get it?"

"We're taking her over the border."

"That settles it.  I know you could go more safely without me, but I can keep up with her without a problem any day of the week."  Kelly slid out of bed.  "Can I take anything with me?" 

"Kelly . . ."

"No, Jeri.  I'm going.  You didn't come to leave me.  You came to get me.  You know you did." 

She waited for a denial but there was none.  Jeri sat silently, her head bowed in the darkness.  As surely as if it were her own mind, Kelly felt the shame as Jeri realized the truth of what Kelly had said, realized the truth and took it for a weakness.  Kelly returned to the bed and knelt beside Jeri. She took Jeri's head in her hands and made the other woman's gaze meet her own.

"And I'm glad to go.  You dear, brave woman, we'll work through this.   If you hadn't come for me my soul would have withered.  From now on your eyes are my home, and your arms are my shelter, and your heart is my safety." 

Kelly had no idea where the words came from, they were like water flowing from a spring.

A small smile lifted one side of Jeri's mouth.  "Jesus, woman," she said, putting on a touch of accent, "and I thought you were only American Irish.  You have the gift of the Gael, don't you?"  She sighed.  "All right.  Take about half  of what you brought from the States.  Bring all your papers.  We'd better get going."

Kelly moved quickly, shifting things in and out of the pack.  It had taken hours of lists and rethinking to plan for her trip to Nepal, now it took less than ten minutes to separate out the essentials.  She stacked the rest on the table top and left a short note leaning against it.  Meg should find it easily when she came to get Kelly for breakfast. Meg, take what you can use and ignore the rest.  Events are taking on a crystal clarity.  I've gone on for now.  I hope we meet again. K

"There," Kelly said to Jeri.  "That should stop anyone wondering if they need to report a disappearance."

Kelly followed Jeri out into the hall and they slipped like shadows through the darkness.  Jeri let the way to an opening onto the roof.  The buildings were fairly close together and they didn't need to go down to street level until they were a fair way from the hotel.  It was cloudless night with a waxing moon, bright enough that Kelly was more worried about being seen than she was troubled by lack of vision.  They saw no one.  As they left the town, Jeri stopped keeping to shadows and they stepped out onto open ground, going for speed.

Only once did they stop and that was shortly after dawn as they climbed a steep and rocky path.  Kelly was laboring to match Jeri's speed, but the other woman moved uphill as if she were on level ground.  Kelly looked up and saw that Jeri had stopped and was waiting for her.  The tall woman watched her approach with an unreadable gaze, a frown that almost might have been anger.  Before Kelly reached her, Jeri walked toward her, took her head in both her strong hands and kissed her.  It was a hard kiss, and Kelly understood it was to seal the covenant she herself had put into words a short time before. 

"I'll never ask you to leave me again," Jeri said.  She turned then and they resumed climbing.

Kelly decided that her heart did indeed know how to sing.  It was good to be a literature major; one learned loads of phrases to keep in reserve until they became appropriate. 

A few hours later, Kelly gave up.  "I need food," she called when Jeri looked back.  "Can you make me any promises?"

Jeri grinned.  "I can do better than that."  She glanced around and found a place where they could sit and look back the way they'd come.

The town lay far below them like a cherry pit in a bowl while all around them towered peaks of the world's highest mountain range.  It was startling to see how far they had climbed.

"Here." Jeri handed her a thick disk of wheat bread, a chapati, and a thermos of strong tea.

"You do know the way to a girl's heart.  What's next after the picnic?"

"Aren't you the cheap date?  We should get to where we're meeting Bolingbrook before dark.  She's not expected until tomorrow.  How are you holding out?"

"Okay.  I spent a lot of time at the gym.  It was the best medicine for the stress of being with the boys.  It gave me a focus for all the pent up energy.  I'm in pretty good shape."

"You'll get no argument from me.  We won't be going too much higher than this and it's lack of oxygen that'll do you in up here."

"How dangerous is it where we're going?"

Jeri chewed thoughtfully for a moment.  "It's a crap shoot, Kell.  It's not a place where the Chinese usually go, but they're unpredictable.  We'll just have to be real careful."

Kell.  George had called her that.  Most people settled for Kelly.  It felt really good to hear someone call her "Kell" again.  "How did you get involved with Tibetans?"

For a long time Jeri didn't answer.  She looked at her half-finished chapati without appetite and wrapped it, replacing it in the food pack.  She gazed toward the far mountain peaks but she was looking inward.  Kelly waited.  When Jeri answered, she spoke as someone who has chosen to use words as a penance.

"I planted a bomb in Belfast.  It was supposed to go off half an hour later than it did.  That's not an excuse, and it wasn't the first operation I'd been in, but we were going to call in a warning.  Eleven people were killed.  Six were kids.  At first I tried to tough it out, said things like that happen in war.  Said that's how you fight in the late Twentieth Century.  Said bombers in planes kill more.  Said they'd done far worse to us.  But I couldn't sleep much anymore.  I would have got myself killed but that would have been too easy.  I owed more than one life.  I went south down to the Republic and I went off by myself for a while.  I didn't have a vision or anything, but after a while I knew I had to atone.  Not a Christian thing.  Not prison either; I don't give them the right to judge me.  But I have to make my living be of particular use now.  My life isn't really my own.  It's owed to the dead."

A huge bird, the bearded vulture, called the lammergeier, sailed in lazy circles in the middle distance, looking for carrion.  Kelly had read that only the South American condor was larger.

"Things like this, like trying to find a way to get help for the Tibetans, it's what I do now.  If Bolingbrook hadn't needed more information, I'd be on my way to Afghanistan.  There's a women's community needs to get out before the Taliban get to them.  So. Questions?"

"Heaps.  But not now.  Mostly about how you got from Boston to Belfast, but I want the big answer.  I can get it later, right?" 

Kelly got to her feet and extended her hand to Jeri.  When the dark-haired woman took it, Kelly was surprised again by her strength.  "What do you do to keep in shape?" she asked, admiringly.

"Why, ma'am," Jeri drawled,  "I run from the law.  Keeps a gal on her toes it does."