The Dragon and the Lotus (Chimera #1) Read Online Free

monks or outsiders. They beat us with sticks and chased us from the monastery through the city streets. For the first few minutes, I managed to keep a few steps ahead of them with two of my sisters by hiding in alleys under trash, dirty blankets, and rotting planks.”
    “You must have been frightened.”
    “The most frightened I had ever been. We ran and hid, ran and hid, all night long. Whenever we looked back, we saw the fire in the monastery and the smoke blotting out the stars. And then, sometime late in the night, I turned and discovered that I had lost my sisters, or they had lost me. It amounted to the same thing. I was alone.”
    “What did you do?” Asha asked.
    “I walked on. It was quieter then and I didn’t see the men again. I was very tired, but still so afraid. I kept walking all night, right out of the city into the hills. And the next day, I kept walking,” Priya said. “I survived on what charity was given to me. I had nowhere to go. I knew no one in the world except at the monastery, but I didn’t dare go back. I don’t know why I kept walking, but I did. Eventually I came to a small town where an elderly monk tended a shrine alone and he allowed me to stay with him for a while. He was a very kind man.”
    “You were lucky. You could have died on the road.”
    “Yes, I could have.” Priya’s fingers shuddered and her hands moved to her knees. She inhaled and exhaled slowly. “About a year later, a new family arrived in the town and they came to visit the shrine. They said they had been forced to flee their village because a demon had swallowed their river.”
    “So you went to cleanse the demon?”
    “No. There’s no such thing as demons,” the nun said softly. “But I did come to see the truth of the matter. It was the least I could do for those people. The monk at the shrine was too old for the journey, but I was still young and strong, and to be honest, I was feeling less than useful to him. So I set out for the village. I saw the graves of the man who returned from the mountain, and then I climbed the mountain and found this cave.”
    “Did you see the creature that killed the men from the village?”
    “No. When I entered this chamber, I found a small girl standing here on this stone altar.”
    Asha glanced down at the pillar they were sitting on. “Altar?”
    “Yes. This is where the village elders offered their goats to the mountain each spring.”
    Asha winced. “What was she? The girl you saw?”
    “She was a ghost. A real ghost. I had heard of such things, of course, but I had never seen one before. Here in the dark, in the cold still air, the aether was thick enough for her to be seen and heard. She told me that she was the daughter of one of the elders.”
    “He killed her? A human sacrifice?” Asha asked, her hand curling into a fist.
    “No, he did not kill her. During the winter, the girl fell ill and died quietly in her sleep. But her father didn’t cremate her. He preserved her body until the spring and then brought her here instead of the usual offering. Perhaps he didn’t think the mountain spirit would care what he left, as long as he left something. After all, the goat would feed his family for days. I’m sure it seemed very reasonable to him.”
    Asha shook her head. “Some people don’t think at all.”
    “Don’t judge them too harshly. Here in the wilderness, these sorts of traditions and rituals can give people great peace of mind, even if they seem fruitless or even senseless to others,” Priya said.
    “I don’t mean that!” Asha rubbed her eyes. “Even out here in the middle of nowhere, people should know better than to abuse a body. He should have known what would happen to his daughter’s ghost if he didn’t burn or bury her properly.”
    “You come from the north, don’t you?”
    Asha nodded.
    “Well, here in the south ghosts are rare. They aren’t seen. They aren’t spoken of. At the monastery, I don’t believe I ever heard a