Rendezvous in Nepal 3

UBER in the Himalayas: a young blond English teacher on vacation from Ohio meets a tall dark-haired stranger who has a desperate past. Sound familiar yet? You betcha....

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.

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Rendezvous in Nepal

GlasOwl

Rendezvous in Nepal 3

Tibet lay below, the country began as a long view of a level plain cut by the braiding of shallow river channels. The travelers left Nuru at the border of Nepal and Tibet. Tashi insisted that his nephew wait in safety in case something happened to the group. His sister, he said, would never forgive him if he lost her only son. It was at this point that Kelly learned Tashi's mother had been Tibetan. He came by his knowledge of the area and its customs from a lifelong acquaintance.

They left much of their gear with him, taking only food and a few extra items. By now, everyone wore clothing that might, at least from a distance, identify them as Tibetan nomads. They had also acquired four of the rangy local horses which, Tashi assured them, could run quite fast if necessary.

"Where did you learn to ride in a city?" Kelly asked Jeri. She had been admiring the ease with which the tall woman sat her horse. Kelly had grown up in farmland, and had ridden now and then, but she hadn't been on a horse in ages and felt more than a little awkward. Louise Bolingbrook, on the other hand, looked as if she had ridden to foxhunts the moment she toddled out of her cradle.

Jeri glanced over at Kelly and shrugged. "I didn't. I had to ride for the first time a few years ago and I just took to it. It's easy."

The land was mostly arid, with rocky outcroppings. Little used by herders since the seasons were too dry to provide much grazing for goats or yaks, it was also not patrolled by the Chinese on any regular basis. Even so, they slept during the day and rode mostly at night.

Two nights after they had entered Tibet, they came to a ruined monastery. The skeleton of the broken structure, situated on a rocky rise of the plateau, emanated a majestic power even in its damaged state. Moonlight made the monastery an embroidery of pale stone and deep shadow, an abandoned lighthouse left on dry land from some ancient receding sea. Yet this apparent relic was no monument from the far past; people were still alive who had lived and worshipped here. The monastery was a testament to the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the shameful colonial policy that had dynamited the building. After, that is, any precious and removable paintings, tapestries and other sacred items were loaded into trucks to be sent to China.

Tashi dismounted and bowed his head. Then he prostrated himself full length upon the ground in prayer. When he finished, he spoke to Jeri.

"Tashi wants me to tell you a little of this place," Jeri said to Kelly and Bolingbrook.

"Especially since you're going to wait here while we go find Detsen."

The night grew thin as Jeri spoke, and dawn broke behind the ruined monastery.

"Centuries ago, a sage named Padmasambhava came to Tibet, sent by a king to teach the ways of Buddha to the Tibetans. When he arrived, he found that this country was full of demons and harmful spirits. Thus, his first task was to go through the country and subdue the demons."

"Like Patrick in Ireland?" Kelly asked.

"Yeah, a lot like that." Jeri smiled, liking the similarity. "But instead of driving out the spirits like Patrick drove out the snakes, Padmasambhava overpowered each one and bound it to Buddhist teachings. He converted all the demons into guardian deities and so, all through Tibet, these spirits still reside in their ancient homes. This is such a place, and Tashi wants you to remember that even though the monastery is destroyed, the guardian still lives here and you must be respectful. He says not to worry about doing anything right or wrong, but do be respectful."

Kelly stared at the ruins rising above her and saw how the sun had lit the stones, giving them a warm and pinkish hue. "Thank you, Tashi," she said.

He inclined his head to her.

"Too bad Pasmasambhava isn't here to convert the new demons," Louise Bolingbrook said, frowning at the broken monastery.

"I want you and Kelly to say here while Tash and I go get Detsen. If we leave now, we can be back tomorrow morning."

"Why can't we go with you?" The English woman asked.

"If we bring Detsen back here, you and he will have time and a place to talk. It's too dangerous anywhere else. Too dangerous for both of you."

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Tashi and Jeri saw little sign that there were any other inhabitants as they rode across the arid flatlands, each of them leading a riderless horse, toward the snow-capped massif that ranged ahead. Occasionally their presence sent small groups of antelope bounding away. At one point they crossed tire tracks in the soil that looked like they might be from a truck, but they saw no one. Late in the day they began to see signs of people and as evening fell, they arrived at the outskirts of the region's largest town.

Tashi stayed with the horses while Jeri made her way into the town that she had visited scarcely two months before. Detsen Phurba lived in a monastery that the authorities had permitted to reorganize. Jeri remembered her way through the streets from her last visit. There weren't that many people out after dark, but whenever anyone approached, Jeri bent over and passed for a very elderly pilgrim. When Jeri reached the monastery, she knocked quietly on the wooden doors and waited.

The doors groaned as a young monk pulled them open. His sleepy eyes grew wide with wonder when he realized how odd the pilgrim was who stood just outside. Jeri whispered the phrase that Detsen's son, her former classmate at Oxford, had given her. The young monk nodded, mastering his confusion, and showed her to a room where she could wait. About a quarter of an hour later, an elderly Tibetan joined her.

"Did I forget a footnote?" he asked with a twinkle in his eye.

"Actually, something like that," Jeri answered, smiling. Then she became serious. "Louise Bolingbrook came here to speak to you. She thinks she's seen a pattern of torturing children and she wants to go over the information with you."

"Mrs. Bolingbrook has come here? To Tibet?"

"Yes. She's at the Tanamcha ruins. Can you come speak to her? Now?"

"Yes, Of course. Give me a few moments to arrange my absence." He agreed as if he were in the habit of receiving invitations from English UN officials every day, bowed and left the room.

He was as good as his word, and in a very short time, Jeri and the monk were on their way to where the horses had been left. Again, few people seemed to be out after sunset, and the path from the town to the grove of trees was empty. Jeri was just about to relax when she realized that the horses were there but Tashi wasn't.

Jeri swore softly and looked around. The horses had been left among trees at the edge of the town but she and Detsen Phurba had seen no one and nothing as they made their way through the dusk. Tashi would have had to leave by the other direction. Jeri whispered for the monk to stay with the horses and then she hurried into the darkness, hoping her choice of a direction would prove profitable.

The path took her back into town by another route. She moved swiftly, encountering not a single person, nor any reason that Tashi might have come this way. Still, this was the only way he could have gone or surely she and the monk would have run into him. The narrow streets were empty. The town's people seemed to find little reason to be abroad at night.

Jeri was beginning to doubt her judgment when she heard a commotion not far ahead. Cautiously, she worked her way along the street toward the noise. The only light in the area was coming from a courtyard, shining out of the entrance. The courtyard also seemed to be the source of the noise, loud shouts and raucous laughter. Jeri peered around a corner, keeping to shadows.

A group of six or seven soldiers in Chinese uniform were harassing someone. Yelling and pushing a single person who had his arms up to protect his head, each soldier was using a wooden baton to strike and poke at the hapless victim. It was Tashi. The soldiers knocked him down, screaming at him. One or two swayed as if they were drunk. Jeri didn't understand the language, but it didn't really matter what they were saying. The gang language was the same as she'd heard often enough growing up in Southie. They were a bunch of punks looking to have fun from someone else's suffering. The routine was always the same and it depended on the gang having the safety of numbers.

Jeri studied the group for a minute, figuring out who seemed to be who. Not all appeared drunk, but they did look pretty sloppy. Only one of them was wearing a handgun. The rest had set their rifles aside.

"Hey!" She shouted, and stepped out of the shadows. She came toward the soldiers, hunched a little and weaving like as if she had been drinking herself, but as she walked, she took stock of where everyone was.

Most of the soldiers looked surprised. Two looked angry.

It was a dance at first, a dance with steps that went just as she'd planned. She went first for the one with the handgun. He went down when the heel of her hand knocked solidly against the side of his head. Then a spin, kick hell out of one of the angry faces, and finish him while he doubled over. Another spin, punch, turn and chop. Number three was out. Now the first planned steps were over, and the dance needed to go into improvise.

Ah, jeez, three and four were too dumb not to bunch up and they were almost a free gimme. Stupid, that's what they were. She got one in the knees with a kick, and an elbow to the throat took out his buddy. Five was still too shocked to do anything but stand there. She had picked up a baton during her progress through the group and she used it to turn his goofy stare into wide-eyed pain.

Six looked way too smart; she should have seen that earlier and taken him out in the beginning; shouldn't have let him get a chance to think. She came in close, feinted, and he got in a blow to her head with his baton that was going to hurt later. Ah, not so smart, he believed she was really going down, and here he came -- and there he went. He'd be lucky if only his nose was broken.

That left seven, who was gone. No. He was behind her hissing something, and she bet it had to do with a gun. She turned slowly, slumping but moving a little closer to the sound of his voice. Yeah, there he was, gun in hand, but if he hadn't shot yet, he wasn't going to get a chance. Damned if she was going to give him any more time to think about it. Like swatting at a fly. She sent the gun spinning one way and then sent him sprawling the other.

A short look around the courtyard. One of the first down was starting to get up. She didn't think about it, just walked over, aimed a kick, and he crumpled.

"Tash, are you okay? Do you need help?" He was staring as if he didn't recognize her. The sound of her voice seemed to rouse him. She took hold of his arm and urged him out into the street. They ran into the darkness.

There were no signs of pursuit by the time they got to where Detsen Phurba waited with the horses. Tashi still seemed in shock and Jeri could see that his face was swollen, but he said he would be fine for riding.

Jeri's heart was still pounding hard as they rode away from the town, not with fear, with excitement. She wanted nothing more than to go back and do it all again. She was good at fighting -- and what's more, she liked it. She liked taking out guys who thought they had the whole nine yards all to themselves and wiping the floor with them. She liked the feeling of winning, and she really liked seeing the other guy know he'd been beaten.

Nobody messed with her in Southie. She got a reputation early because she wasn't afraid of getting hurt. And she was smart. Mean and smart meant she didn't have to get in that many fights to prove she was more trouble than anybody was looking for. Fighting was out of bounds in high school and track and field was how she had channeled all her energy. But she missed fighting, missed that feeling of letting everything go but her will to win. It wasn't until she was put in prison that she realized she had a talent as well as a taste for violence, and by then she was among people who thought that was a very useful talent. They taught her technique and method.

In some part of herself, a watcher oversaw what she was doing with dismay, but that watcher was very small and very quiet -- and very patient.

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Kelly watched with distress as Jeri and Tashi rode away. The tall, fierce woman had become as necessary as air to her life. Feeling abandoned was a common theme, though, for people who had survived the death of someone they loved. 'Feel it, release it' was the rule. Watching Jeri disappear into the distance added a new wrinkle to the pattern, as if Kelly might wake up and find that everything had been a dream since she had seen the tall woman come striding toward her out of the fog. Their whole time together was completely without connection to her former life in Ohio. That was the life where she lived in an apartment, drove her Toyota Corolla to work, and taught freshman and sophomores how to organize their thoughts into passable prose. Aside from dealing with AIDS issues -- a large aside -- Kelly's biggest problem had once been trying to get a reasonably convenient parking place assigned to her by the administrative office.

"Stick with Bolingbrook," Jeri had said when she and Tashi took all four horses. "If you get caught, she has enough of an international rep to get you both out of Tibet."

"You just come back. We'll be here somewhere. I'm not leaving Tibet without you."

Jeri had frowned, started to say something, then looked at Kelly. The frown passed like a thunderhead clearing the sun and Jeri was suddenly and completely present. Her ocean blue eyes crinkled and her wide smile radiated a heart-deep joy. "I keep forgetting. Of course I'll be back. And you'll be here."

Kelly's hand clenched tightly around the crystal in her pocket. Gods grant they could stay together, that there was time yet for them. She continued to stare after the figures even as they disappeared in the grassy plain that rose and fell like a rolling sea. The proportions of the Himalayan landscape exercised a consistently awesome power; eternity wasn't a concept in the Himalayas, it was a constant presence. Kelly didn't feel dwarfed by the tremendous heights and far vistas; instead she felt stretched, urged to understand her connection to the world in this place. It wasn't simply Jeri and their relationship, everything felt new here. But then, this was why people left the familiar roads of home, left in order to answer an invitation to transformation. Surely, in every tourist, there was a pilgrim seeking the way to renew a sense of the sacred.

Bolingbrook had found a place in the sun and taken out the report. Kelly was sure that by now the woman ought to have memorized the pages, but the UN official still read with a poised pen, stopping now and then to write in the margins.

Kelly went wandering through the ruins. The monastery had been built on the largest rise in the area, capping the rocks like a castle. Clearly the builders had intended to use nature's grandeur as a mantle; even the heaped rubble and damaged walls revealed the former grace and solemnity of the structure.

Kelly carefully climbed a tumble of large stones and found herself atop a broken wall that delineated a once large room. The wall opposite her was almost intact although it had been deliberately pitted in even lines by what looked like gunfire, and seasons of wind and rain, sunlight and storm, had faded the wall's once-bright colors. Still, as Kelly stared, she thought she could make out sections of a mural that went from floor to ceiling, something that had been meant to teach, to move, to transform. Kelly sat down on the wall where she had been standing and let her eyes roam over the ruined mural.

If she let her gaze drift off center, she could see a row -- no, two rows -- of skulls painted near the bottom of the wall. Death, death in life, both states merely illusion, the soul moving from one to the other like a sounding bell. Kelly's knowledge of Tibetan religion was sketchy, but like most people, she'd always wondered about reincarnation. Sometimes it seemed like a comforting idea, a promise that an end really wasn't, a way to make justice a possibility. If pressed, Kelly would have described her idea of between-lives as a kind of Greek agora where people wandered around in pleated robes and greeted old friends while planning for the next life like you'd plan for a vacation. But what Tashi had told Jeri about souls wandering around in terror and illusion as they desperately sought for a way back into a body was hardly comforting or peaceful.

But how else could she explain the connection between herself and Jeri, except by believing that they were renewing, not beginning an acquaintance? When she had first seen Jeri on the roadside, when Jeri had caught her as she began to fall, she had known the woman in a way that she had never known anyone before. Kelly was familiar with the story of separated souls searching for their other halves, and perhaps that applied, although there was something a little Disney-like to that, just as there was to her charming story of the between-life. Put to it, Kelly thought that you probably couldn't remember things outside of life easily because the experience didn't make sense in earthly terms. Meaning you couldn't get your mind to stretch around the other than rational aspects. Unless you spent a long time trying to understand, like people did in this country.

But if you examined the concept behind a story like the lost halves of a soul, then you found a belief that you could find your wholeness by following desire, that the yearning that haunted the quiet spaces of a life had both reason and purpose. What had happened to Kelly in that long instant when Jeri had caught her back from falling off the retaining wall, had been like being blown open by a wind out of eternity.

But if she took the reincarnation part of Buddhist belief, shouldn't she also accept the part that said coming back was to be caught on the wheel of illusion, of error? If that were true, then how come she felt like who and what she was with Jeri was the essence of her soul and the intention of her spirit? That was how she did feel and she wanted her whole life to be an embrace of that truth.

When she and Jeri made love -- and they had managed, although it was still difficult for Jeri -- when they were together, there had been long moments when Kelly felt she was being conducted to another realm, a place of connection where darkness was a rich brew of essential meanings.

She shook her head. Words were inadequate, but certain words were the core of the experience. Essence -- that was one core word; darkness was another. And meaning. Meaning wasn't something attached only to the mind, meaning was about being wholly engaged, seeing and feeling and surging toward. It was as if Kelly became a point of fiery light propelled along and through connecting webs of meaning. When at last she came back to find herself in Jeri's arms in this life, she could bring back so little of where she'd been and what she'd known.

What she knew for sure was that sex wasn't a simple matter. She thought she remembered reading once that sex was the way anyone could find his or her way back to their eternal nature, that it was one spiritual practice available to everyone.

"I believe this is a picture of Padmasambhava and his consort." Louise Bolingbrook's arrival startled Kelly.

"Consort?" Kelly tried to refocus and find two figures in the mural. All she could see was the hint of a dark blue Buddha-like image.

"They're making love. She's sitting on his lap."

And she'd been thinking . . . Kelly felt the blush rise up and turn her face hot.

Louise Bolingbrook took a seat not far from Kelly. She looked at the mural, but there was a touch of amusement in her voice, as though she knew Kelly's discomfort and was enjoying it.

"You know, once I paid money to hear you speak." It was a thought that had annoyed Kelly several times throughout the journey, and this seemed like the time to voice it.

You couldn't say that Louise Bolingbrook burst into laughter, but her chuckle was quite amused and without irony. "Oh dear, I hope I wasn't too expensive."

"No. You were part of the student lecture series that came to Northwestern. And I remember that you were impressive then."

"And now?"

"I don't believe this, you're fishing for a compliment?" Kelly looked at the English woman with surprise. "All right, you're still impressive."

"Thank you. Aren't you in a bit over your head?"

"How on earth could you mean that?"

"I believe you really did meet Miss O'Donnell that day in Nepal. Now here you are, in Tibet, accompanying one very dangerous person and in danger of meeting other dangerous people."

"I've done all right so far." Kelly didn't like the turn the conversation had taken. Worse, she was aware that she had just responded like a teenager being questioned by a parent.

"You've done remarkably well, that's not my point."

"Things happen, Mrs. Bolingbrook, whether you're ready for them or not, whether you've planned for them or not. All I know is that I belong with Jeri, no matter what, no matter where. I'll figure out what that means as I go along. How much preparation did your mother have when she managed to keep you alive in that Japanese internment camp in Malaya?"

The UN official sighed. "Yes, but these violent passions have violent ends, and I don't see you as a violent person, Miss Corcoran."

"Delights."

"What?"

"Friar Lawrence says 'violent delights have violent ends' not 'passions.' But we're not Romeo and Juliet." Kelly was oddly touched by what she realized was Bolingbrook's concern. "We're both --"

The noise began as a low growl in the distance and it was so familiar to the two women that neither registered they were hearing an engine approaching for a minute or two. Then both women leaped to their feet and sought a view of the land below.

A truck was slowly grinding its way toward the monastery ruins. With a camouflage painted cab and a canvas covered back, its military look was unmistakable.

"Do you think they're going to come here?" Kelly asked.

"I think it would be very foolish to act as if they're not. Let's go get our packs."

They slid hastily down the heaped rubble. Kelly slowed to help Bolingbrook.

"I can make it, Miss Corcoran, go on ahead to where we left our things."

Kelly thanked whatever spirits still hung around the monastery that neither she nor Bolingbrook had unpacked anything or started a cooking fire. Then she saw the English woman walking toward her and took back the thanks.

The UN official was walking toward her with a pronounced limp.

"I'm sorry. I slipped. I should have let you help me."

Kelly peered over the edge and saw where the truck had stopped. There was no road up the hill. The soldiers, though, were beginning their climb, and carrying gunnysacks instead of guns.

"Looters," Bolingbrook said. "Scavengers. They'll be looking everywhere for something of value."

"But they won't be looking for us," Kelly said. "Come on, let's go down the other way."

The two women made their way slowly. No bone was broken, but Bolingbrook had sprained her ankle badly and the pain was severe. Still, she gamely leaned on Kelly as the two picked their way cautiously down the rocky slope. They were about half way down when Kelly stopped.

"I'm going to take a chance and leave our packs here, Mrs. Bolingbrook."

"Please call me Louise, Kelly. I think we're past the formalities."

"Okay, Louise, just wait here a moment."

The rocks were quite large but Kelly wrestled one out of position. Then she went back and got the packs and pushed them into the space she'd made. They should be safe here from anyone's sight. All the while, she listened to the soldiers who had gained the heights. They had no reason to be quiet and they were talking and laughing in normal tones that made it easy to keep track of where they were. Kelly pushed the rock into a secure position and then motioned for Bolingbrook -- Louise -- to follow her. Once more they cautiously proceeded downward.

A rock rolled past Kelly followed by a short cry. Louise had slipped again. Kelly grabbed her arm and got them both behind rocks. They held their breath and listened. For a long moment their was silence and then a babble broke out. Kelly didn't know the first word of Chinese but she was sure the translation went: What was that? Where did it come from? Over here. I don't see anything. What could it be?

Kelly pointed to a cluster of rocks and gestured for Louise to go there. The rocks were off the easy route down, and should protect her from anything but a direct search. Kelly waited until she saw the English woman make it to the shelter. Louise looked back, surprised that she was alone.

"Stay there." Kelly mouthed the words and gestured forcefully. Several pebbles bounced past her and she realized she didn't have too much time. She buttoned the long Nepali coat and wound the scarf around her head; then she took a long moment to look down and plan her next moves in detail and sequence. A deep breath, a thought of Jeri for comfort and courage, and Kelly began moving fast.

At first she moved laterally until, just about where she had thought it might happen, she heard a shout above her. Then she began leaping downward. She jumped, slid, leaped again. She could hear the shouting behind her but she ignored it. Suddenly she slipped on a loose rock, and her heart flew up into her throat. All the fear that she'd pushed aside turned into a sickening rush of adrenaline as she fought to find her balance while she kept falling and sliding. All at once she was on her butt, and it was the best of all possible body parts to land on. She pushed herself up and kept on moving the way she'd planned.

Incredibly, she made it to the bottom, to where the rocks ended and the plain began. From here, she had sighted her way toward a slight rise that dipped and would take her out of sight.

Something whined past her ear and then a puff of dust lifted just to her right. Jesus, someone was shooting at her again.

Kelly took off. She thought to run in a zigzag pattern. The last weeks had acclimated her to the altitude, and adrenaline was doing the rest. She saw another puff of dust and it was wide of where she was but that was scant comfort. She didn't really like anyone shooting anywhere within miles of her, particularly if it was at her.

Then she was over the rise and the ground was sloping down again. She turned and jogged a long way from where she had disappeared -- hopefully -- from sight and then she crawled back to the top. She peered back and was surprised at how far she had come. Across the plain, she could see the khaki figures on their way back up the hill. They had no intention of interrupting their search for treasure to pursue one lone nomad.

Kelly lay where she was and watched the monastery. After a while, the adrenaline wore off and she discovered that mostly she was bored, and hungry. She stayed where she was though. Every so often, a khaki figure came to the edge of the rocks and peered in her general direction, but Kelly was sure she looked like a rock or a shadow from the vantage of the heights. It was a bit like playing hide and seek on the dairy farm where she grew up. She may have spent her adult years in cities, but once a farm kid, always a farm kid. The sun was warm and Kelly drifted into a dreamy series of memories of playing with George out in the pastures. The younger kids were still babies, so it was Kelly and George who roamed out over the hills or fished in the stock pond or followed the creek back towards the neighbors.

The sun's warmth was dwindling, and Kelly was getting more and more hungry. She had the leather water bag with her, part of the gear each of the travelers had got used to carrying, so at least she wasn't about to become dehydrated. She tried to remember what Louise had to eat or drink, but she couldn't recall. The UN official would just have to take care of herself for a while longer. Kelly had no doubt that the woman had sense enough not to waste the safety Kelly had created for both of them. If they were lucky, the soldiers would take whatever they'd found and leave soon.

They weren't lucky. As the sun set, a glow from the heights showed that the soldiers had started a fire. Damn and double damn. They meant to stay the night. Kelly thought about sneaking over to their truck to see if they'd left any food, and she thought about sneaking back up the hill and finding Louise and the packs. She rejected both ideas. It might be safe, but the soldiers might just have set up a guard against any nomads with ideas of robbing them. She just didn't have enough of an idea about what went on in this country. She was safe for the moment, and she couldn't think of any good reason to gamble with that.

The night chill came on quickly. Kelly was cold. She found a shallow depression to snuggle into, but it didn't offer a lot of protection. She couldn't remember ever having been this cold. The coat was wool, and so was the scarf, so she wasn't worried about freezing. At least she didn't think she was. Much as she resisted the idea, she decided she'd better get up and walk. Maybe she could find a better shelter.

She was careful not to go too far. The monastery height was a massive darkness and she wasn't too worried about losing it. She wondered what Louise was doing. She thought about climbing up to the Englishwoman but again decided this was too full of possible danger. She found another rock and gave it a chance as a place to shelter. She didn't lay down but hunkered with her back against the stone.

Stars. The sky was thick with them. She looked for the constellations she knew. Orion. The Pleiades. Not a lot, but comforting to find. She wished she knew how long it was until morning. Then she thought about George and Russell and Billy and remembered that she was lucky to be able to look forward to a time when her discomfort would end. She'd admired them so often, as they got sicker, and she'd wondered how it felt to know you weren't ever going to feel well again. She'd used this thought before as a kind of scold to keep from feeling sorry for herself, but this time, she actually did feel lucky. She was waiting for Jeri. As sure as the sun would rise, Jeri was coming back to her.

She drifted in and out of sleep, in and out of a series of dreams. Sometimes she was running again, pursued, and sure to be caught. Then she'd wake up and remember she had escaped, she was just cold. In some of the dreams, she was with Jeri, only both she and Jeri were other people. She woke curious from these, but the dreams had taken the situations so for granted that there was nothing to grab hold of and remember. So she just dozed again, hoping to go back to the dream.

At last she woke to the sight of the sky growing lighter. And as if the promise of the sun weren't enough, she heard the sound of an engine starting. Maybe, just maybe, the soldiers had decided to leave.

Using the uneven terrain to keep hidden, Kelly found a place where she could watch the soldiers pack themselves into the truck. They all seemed to be leaving and they didn't seem to have discovered much to take with them. Good.

Louise Bolingbrook had gone back to the packs and taken out a sleeping bag. When Kelly found her, she was sleeping soundly, looking quite peaceful. As Kelly stared, the English woman opened her eyes.

"Good morning, Louise; would you like your tea here or up on the terrace?"

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When Jeri and the two men arrived around midday, they were greeted by two women who seemed to have become considerably more friendly than one might have expected from a single day together. There was a tinge of giddiness in their greetings. As soon as she was introduced to Detsen Phurba, though, the UN official was all business. She waited until he got the tea that Kelly had ready and then she took the Tibetan aside. Jeri didn't envy him the grilling he was surely about to get.

"What happened here?" Jeri asked as Kelly handed her some thick, warm tea.

"You first. What happened to you? You look bad, but Tashi looks terrible."

"A patrol found him. He tried to talk his way out of it, but they weren't interested in listening. Where are the packs? Tashi said there was some salve in his."

"Probably made with yak butter," Kelly muttered as she handed the pack to Jeri.

"Ow. . . god . . . don't make me laugh. Of course it's made from a base of yak butter. "

"Here, let me do that."

Kelly took the container from Jeri. Tashi was lying down in the sun. He opened the eye that wasn't completely swollen shut and attempted a slight smile as Kelly cautiously washed the blood and dirt from his face. He was stoic, but Kelly could tell that even a slight touch was painful.

Jeri's face was by no means as bad as Tashi's but a swollen purple and red bruise ran from the hairline down along her cheekline. Her eye was still getting darker and would probably look a lot worse than before it got better. Very carefully, Kelly began cleaning the area.

Detsen Phurba paused to let Louise Bolingbrook finish a note she was writing and looked toward Jeri and Kelly. The dark-haired woman was sitting cross-legged with her face tipped up while the younger blond knelt beside her, carefully applying a salve.

Detsen Phurba smiled. "I wonder if they know how clear it appears that they love each other," he said.

Bolingbrook glanced up from her notes. Reluctantly she nodded. "Yes, it does seem rather clear, I agree."

"Yet this doesn't please you?"

The English woman was silent for a minute. "Miss O'Donnell and I have an area of discord."

The Tibetan nodded. "She is a warrior. She will make enemies."

"My people are more inclined to think of her as a criminal."

"Yes? To my mind she is a young Bodhisattva, young in the accumulation of compassion, I mean. There is still much for her to overcome, especially much anger. The other woman will teach her, I think, teach her to be wiser in her battles. This is not the first time they have made this journey together."

Louise Bolingbrook stared at Kelly and Jeri, caught in the vision that the monk had raised for her. It did seem that the air wavered and she was seeing through several layers of time, seeing this scene repeated like the sound of a note struck on a large bronze cymbal that echoed through the ages. She watched the various images return to one, coalesce back to the present moment. She sighed.

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"Good-bye, Louise." Kelly felt definitely sad to be bidding the English woman farewell. She had already hugged Tashi and Nuru, but she was hesitant about embracing the UN official. Tales of British stiffness restrained her. Then she flung caution to the winds and enfolded the older woman in her arms.

"I'd still pay money to see you." Kelly walked away to give Jeri and Louise privacy.

The English woman and the daughter of Irish ancestors faced each other across a gap that the last few weeks had done nothing to diminish. Perhaps they had been facing away from it, but now it was there, deep and full of unforgettable events.

"My father's eldest brother was killed in North Africa in a tank battle with Rommel's forces," Bolingbrook said at last. "Later, my father worked in NATO with a German officer who had been in the same battle. I want you to know that the information you've helped me gather is quite important. If I can ever be of any assistance, Miss O'Donnell, please, do call me."

Jeri's surprise was evident. She glanced aside and gazed at the high peaks in order to collect her thoughts. "Thank you. And if you need me you know how to get in touch. I -- I'm glad to have had this opportunity to travel with you."

With a nod and a slight smile, the UN official joined Tashi and Nuru and the three of them started down the mountain trail toward the town far below.

Kelly moved close to Jeri, and the tall woman put her arm around her. "You know," Kelly said, tipping her head up for a kiss, "if we went back to Cleveland, I could start the fall term and probably get you on my insurance. I can teach and you can keep busy around the house."

Jeri's look of horror was so spontaneous that Kelly burst out laughing. Served her right after all the yak butter jokes.

"All right, then, what's your plan?"

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