The Dragon and the Lotus (Chimera #1) by Joseph Robert Lewis Read Free Book Online

grabbed the man’s arm with her groping, uncertain hand. “Why did you wait so long? Why haven’t you taken him to a doctor?”
    Chandra shook his head. “I don’t know any doctors.”
    “It’s all right, Priya. As long as the boy’s still alive, then there may be something I can do for him,” Asha said. “Wait here. I’ll take a look at him.”
    The man nodded. “Please, be very quiet, doctor.”
    “I will.” Asha went up to the door. “But I’m not a doctor.”
    She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. The single room of the house was pitch black. Mud and grass had been pressed into the narrow cracks between the boards in the walls, but a few slender spears of sunlight crossed the room just inside the door. She stood and waited until her eyes adjusted.
    The boy lay on a pile of blankets wearing only a thin cloth across his hips and another across his face. His bony chest fluttered up and down, his ribs shaking with the pounding of his heart. Asha could barely see him, but she could hear his whole body shivering. She knelt beside him and listened to him mutter and gasp.
    “…should have been there for…didn’t you come to tell us…died in my arms…”
    Asha frowned. “Who died?”
    “Agh!” Naveen curled up into a ball and rolled onto his side with his hands pressed to his ears.
    Asha nodded and chewed on her ginger for a moment. She pulled her bag off her shoulder and searched inside with her fingertips among the heavier things down at the bottom. The two rods had slipped down below everything else, and she pulled them out as quietly as she could. With one in each hand, she pressed the cool metal bars to the sides of the boy’s face. Instantly, his whole body relaxed. His breathing slowed and the murmuring stopped, but his heart still pounded against his chest.
    After a moment, Naveen rolled onto his back and she moved with him, still holding the rods to the sides of his head. He opened his eyes, and although all she could see were two pinpricks of reflected light, she knew he was looking at her. She smiled. “Hello, Naveen.”
    He smiled back. “Hello.”
    “Your father says you’ve been very sick for a long time.”
    He nodded. “I feel better. Am I all better now?”
    “No, not yet. But I’m working on it. Can you tell me what you were doing before you got sick? Did you eat any strange plants? Or a frog? Or a mushroom?”
    He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
    “Maybe you touched something. Some black moss on a stone, a sharp red thorn, or a gray vine with blue flowers?”
    “No.”
    “Did you meet any strangers on the road?”
    “No.”
    “Come on, kid, help me out here. Did you go anywhere special? Into a cave, maybe?”
    “No. But I did go to the old village.”
    “What old village?” Asha asked.
    “The one at the bottom of the valley. It’s only an hour’s walk away.”
    “Were you visiting your friends or running an errand for your father?”
    “No one lives there,” he said. “It’s all gone now. Just some rocks where the houses were. The forest is starting to grow over it. It’ll be gone soon, father says.”
    She frowned. “Do you go there often?”
    “Sure, in the summer.”
    “What about six weeks ago?”
    “No, it’s been too cold. But I did go down to the stream once looking for frogs. Sometimes they get frozen under the ice.”
    “And were you near the old village?”
    He shrugged. “I guess so. I couldn’t see very much that day. The fog was too thick.”
    3
    Asha used the boy’s discarded belt to tie the two iron rods to the sides of his head, but she still made him promise to hold the rods with his hands and to remain on his bed. Then she stood and went back outside, leaving the door standing wide open. Chandra leapt forward to close it, but she stopped him and nodded back at the figure on the bed.
    “He’s so quiet. The light doesn’t hurt his eyes?” The man clamped his hand over his mouth, and then slowly removed it. “And