The Memorist

Chapter 107

Indus Valley, India-2120 B.C.E.

Ohana woke up with her father leaning over her bed, prying the bone from her grip.

“How could you take this? It’s not bad enough that you acted like a whore with him when he was alive. But this? You stole one of his bones?” His eyes glittered like metal, his lips were curled in a snarl.

She’d seen him angry before; he was a stern father, but this was cold fury.

“Please, let me have him back.”

His fingers tightened around the white bone. “No. Keeping such a thing you will bring evil down on your head-” spittle flew from his mouth “-and on my house,” he said and strode out of her bedchamber.

Jumping up from her bed she ran after him, catching up to him in the courtyard and reaching for the bone. They struggled for a few seconds until he regained control and, brandishing the bone like a weapon, a look of revulsion in his eyes, he held it over her head.

Ohana went from not having had any idea who had killed Devadas, to a possibility that turned her stomach. Tears of shame filled her eyes. Not for what she had done with Devadas but that by doing it she might have been responsible for his death.

“Did you kill him?” She gasped.

The force of her father’s hand on her cheek sent her reeling backward and she fell. Pebbles ripped her palms, and a sharp pain shot up her spine.

Her father looked down at her, his lips narrowed in contempt. “How dare you speak to me like this? Go back into the house. Immediately.”

It didn’t matter that she was disobeying him-she leapt up, grabbed her lover’s broken bone and raced through the garden, out into the road-and kept running. Even after he stopped trying to catch her, she kept going, running toward the only place she could think of where she could be safe.