The Dragon and the Lotus (Chimera #1) by Joseph Robert Lewis Page B

narrow canoes tied there. “Can I use one of your boats tomorrow?”
    5
    When Asha woke at dawn, Rama was already gone. She stepped outside and spotted the man far out on the lake, a slender line snaking out across the water from the dock to his boat. Priya stood in the doorway behind her holding Jagdish in the crook of her arm. The mongoose stood up and squeaked.
    “So, do you think you can help him?” the nun asked.
    “Maybe. What do you think about him?”
    Priya smiled. “I think he’s a very nice person. And considering how happy and content he is after losing his wife and his sight, I’d say he has a remarkable soul.”
    “Maybe.” Asha paced down the wobbling, floating dock and untied the remaining fishing boat. She sat down in the bottom of the boat and pushed away from shore.
    “What are you looking for?” Priya called from the house.
    “Actually, it’s something I’m hoping to not find.” Asha picked up the paddle and began drawing long slow strokes across the surface of the lake. The little boat glided swiftly into the rising sun that flashed and glared in her eyes. She shaded her eyes as she dragged her paddle and let the boat come to a stop above the wavering shadows on the lakebed below. Leaning over, Asha could make out the shapes of the rocks and the slithering tangles of the long grasses on the bottom. A dark fish drifted past.
    She shuffled her feet and hips, trying to get comfortable. After a few minutes, a second dark fish drifted past. It might have been the same fish.
    Asha closed her eyes and put her left hand over her left ear. In her right ear, the life of every fish in the lake, every bird in the rushes, and every blade of grass on the shore resonated through her head. She heard whispers and sighs, gurgles and bubbles, and the occasional high-pitched warble. Nothing she hadn’t heard before. Just grebes and carps and green things growing in the earth.
    With her right hand idly sweeping through the water, she drifted wherever the wind and waves carried her. Listening.
    That evening she paddled back to the dock with a mild sunburn and a growling stomach. Priya and Rama were steaming rice in a clay pot and cooking fish in grass bundles on a pile of coals in the sand. They were talking about their favorite shades of black and laughing.
    Asha cleared her throat and plopped down on the warm grass beside them.
    “Catch anything?” Rama asked as he handed her a cup of tea.
    “No,” Asha said. “Nothing unusual out there at all. Just a beautiful lake.”
    “Oh, never underestimate a lake,” he said. “Certainly not one like this.”
    “What do you mean?” asked Priya.
    “Well, I’ve only lived here a short time, but I know something about living on the water, and no matter how much you think you know about a place, there is always more to find. Everything is always moving, always changing. The fish find new places to hunt or hide. A shift in the seasons will wake up some poor creature that’s been sleeping in the mud for years and years. Things fall in and get lost. Things wash up and are found.” Rama smiled his beautiful smile. “A lake is a living thing.”
    After supper, Priya took Jagdish to one of the neighboring houses to play with the children as the first pale stars began to appear in the blue-black sky. Asha and Rama went to sit on the little walkway around the edge of his dark house with their feet dangling in the cool water. A warm breeze spiced with pepper and sweetened with mangos blew across the water, and from the other houses the soft sounds of laughter and off-key singing mingled with the rustling of the fiery palash blossoms above them.
    “So this is your life?” he said. “You travel the world listening to peoples’ stories and floating around in their boats?”
    “Sometimes I climb mountains to find rare flowers, or cross deserts for strange fruits, or stalk through forests for strange beasts.” She smiled. “But mostly, yes, I float around in