B. Killik Klaw - Chapter 1: Kirsten

Kirsten froze at the sudden movement, against the darkness
of the apparently empty room a hand had pushed open the window. It was
brother Gallo's room and brother Gallo's window so it was most likely
brother Gallo's hand. But had he seen her? She would be punished
severely if caught out on the monastery roof at night
again.

She was stuck, she had to get past this window
to make it back to her own. Silently she crept as close as she dared
and sat down on the wide stone ledge, making herself as comfortable as
possible. The night was cold and damp and without the warmth of
movement the chill persistent, fortunately she did not have to wait
long before something happened.

A door opened from
inside the room and a surprised voice said 'Brother
Gallo!'

'Brother McGuckin.'

'I did
not think you were here, the lights were off. I came to light the
fire.'

'Please, then light
it.'

'And may I turn the lights on
also?'

'Of course, and would you care for a
drink.'

'No thank you brother
Gallo.'

One by one the lamps illuminated brother
Gallo standing at the window, he had not turned from the view. He took
the tiniest sip from and an amber liquid in a heavy
glass.

Kirsten noticed that her leg stuck out into
the new light flooding from the room, she snatched it
back.

'Brother Gallo.'

No
answer.

'Are you OK?'

'I am
concerned James.'

'About brother Langham's
letter?'

'Partly.'

'Is it
important?'

'I believe so but I do not know what it
means, yet.'

'Have you told brother
DeMontford?'

'No. He leaves for Paris tomorrow
morning, I would rather keep it from him for the moment, till we know
what it means.'

Kirsten started, she had no idea who
brother Langham was or why brother Gallo was keeping secrets from her
uncle.

'No.' Continued brother Gallo. 'It was the
child with whom I was chiefly
concerned.'

'Kirsten?'

'Yes.'

Kirsten
tensed and shrank further back into the shadows. Brother Gallo turned
at the movement but shook his head and retreated back into the room.
Kirsten hugged her knees and clenched her teeth to temper her sharp
breaths. What had she to do with anything? She edged closer until she
was right outside the window.

'Not that.' Said Gallo
in reply to something she had missed. 'No, I was wondering if we
haven't protected her too well.'

'How do you
mean?'

'Soon we shall have to send her from here, it
is a big world.'

'Her birthday is not for four months
yet.'

'A conceit to protect her, it is in fact a week
tomorrow.'

Kirsten clenched her fists and held her breath lest
she scream out. Sent from the Monastery? Her birthday? Secrets from her
uncle? What was going on. Her eyes flashed with rage. In the moonlight
the cold snow of Killik Klaw flashed
back.

She had know the story all
her life, had been told it by every brother short of something to say
to a young girl. She had heard it a hundred different times from a
hundred different people but never once questioned a word of it. Until
now.

Her father had been a journalist from Delhi, a
man who often sought refuge at the monastery. Her mother had been
brother DeMontford's sister. They had met at the monastery in Bhutan
and married and lived in Delhi. Kirsten's mother had died giving birth
to her due to a weak heart, her death apparently triggered a madness in
her father, he kidnapped the newly born Kirsten and fled to Bhutan
where he took her all the way to the summit of a mountain with the
apparent intention of killing her. Brother DeMontford assisted by two
other monks had chased him up there and rescued her. Her father died in
the struggle. She had been adopted by her uncle, her only living
family, and had lived in the monastery and been educated by the
brothers.

So why lie about the date of her birthday,
to protect her, to protect her from what? She lay in bed and mulled the
question over and over in her mind but found no
answers.

The following morning Kirsten was
up early to say goodbye to her uncle. She caught him after breakfast
loading his bags into a landrover outside the monastery gate. She
shivered without a coat while she waited, the air was bright and clear
and the Himalayan mountains seemed unnaturally sharp and well defined
under a cloudless sky, almost like a painted
backdrop.

'There you are.' Brother DeMontford said,
coming over to her. 'I thought you'd still be in
bed.'

'I've been up for ages.' She
protested.

He hugged her quickly and said. 'Goodbye
K'. Be good, I'll be back in a week.'

'Uncle.' She
said.

'Yes.'

'Who is brother
Langham?'

'Don't you know?' He said with surprise.
'Brother Langham is one of the monks that helped bring you down from
the mountain. I haven't seen him in years, he lives in Scotland now I
think.'

'When you rescued
me.'

'Yes.'

'From my
father.'

'Yes.' He said with
sadness.

'When was that?' She
said.

'Only two weeks after you were
born.'

'And when was that?'

'Oh.'
He said. 'Come over here.' He hustled her to one side, away from the
other monks and squatted down so that they looked at each other face to
face. 'Has someone said something to you?'

Kirsten
was silent.

'Listen K'. Sometimes it is necessary to
hide the truth for the greater good, even if it means lying to the
people it will help most. Do you
understand?'

'No.'

'I have not got
time to explain this to you now, it is a complicated business, but you
should know the truth and I promise I will tell you when I return.
OK?'

'So when is my birthday?'

'Is
that all you want to
know?'

'Yes.'

'I should not tell
you that here, we'll talk properly when I
return.'

She looked at him disappointed, wanting a
date.

'Kirsten.'

'What?'

'Probably
best not to talk to anyone else about this.' He said. 'Lets keep it
between you and me for now. I promise I will tell you everything when I
get back, you can wait that long can't you?'

She
nodded. From the car a monk leaned in the drivers side and sounded the
horn.

'I really have to go now. We'll talk when I get
back OK.'

'OK.'

'Goodbye
K'.'

'Goodbye.' She said
quietly.

Brother DeMontford walked over to the car
and gestured the driver to get in. Then he paused at the passenger side
door, told the driver to hold on one second and dashed quickly back to
Kirsten.

'If you really need to know it will be on
your birth certificate, just don't talk to any of the other monks about
this till I return okay?'

He
winked.

Kirsten smiled and mimed zipping up her
lips.

'I'll see you soon.' He said. 'No more
listening at keyholes.'

Brother Anselmo
Marten caught her as she walked back in the monastery, rapping his
walking stick on the stone floor to get her attention and reminding her
today was a school day.

'Lets get going now shall
we.' He said. 'Then we can both have the afternoon
off.'

Brother Marten was scheduled to teach her
mathematics, he preferred though to teach it in his native Portuguese,
combining two lessons into one. Portuguese was one of Kirsten's poorer
languages. Most of the monks who had helped bring her up had taken it
upon themselves to school her in their own tongue. She spoke primarily
English and French but her Spanish and Italian were not bad and she
could get by in German, Hindi and even Assamese, she also knew a little
Portuguese, Swedish, Dutch, Nepali and Dzongkha. The latter she picked
up from the women who worked in the kitchen. It was one of them she
itched to see now, she needed her help. Till then she had brother
Marten to contend with, him and
Pythagoras.

'I don't know dear.' Said
Fairuza pushing Kirsten off to one side out of earshot of the other
women. Her hands all wrinkled from the dishwater clamping themselves
over Kirsten's shoulders and squeezing with surprising
strength.

'But you do have a
key.'

'Of course.'

'Then you could
let me in.'

'Why don't you just ask brother
McGuckin?'

'I already thought of that.' She said.
'But if it is a lie he'll either not let me see or have some sort of
fake to show me.'

'That seems a little far fetched
dear.'

'But I still wouldn't know for sure, that's
the point.'

'Why do you think you've been lied to
about your birthday anyway?'

'I overheard something
last night.'

'Who did you
overhear?'

Kirsten said
nothing.

'You can tell me.'

'It was
brother Gallo.'

'What did he
say?'

'He said it was in a weeks time
today.'

'Are you sure he was talking about
you?'

'Yes.' Said Kirsten
annoyed.

'Have you asked him about
it?'

'No.'

'Have you asked brother
DeMontford?'

'Yes.'

'And what did
he say?'

'He said it would be on my birth
certificate.'

Fairuza sighed.

'Will
you help me or not?' Said Kirsten.

'I'm not
sure.'

'What if I help you clean the rooms, then I
would just be in there anyway.'

'If you only look at
your own file I suppose it is no harm.'

'Good. When
are you going to clean it next?'

'This
afternoon.'

'Good.' Said Kirsten. 'I shall help
you.'

Fairuza sighed and said something to the other
women in machine gun Nepali. The women resolutely maintained that
Kirsten understood more than she let on, which she did, but not that
much. One handed her a washed bowl and a tea towel, the air was thick
with steam and gossip, Kirsten dried
up.

The records office was on the second
floor of the west wing of the monastery, Kirsten followed Fairuza
through dark corridors and room after room, she swept the floors whilst
Fairuza dusted and carried the sack of refuse from emptying the
bins.

'I gather in most monasteries the monks would
do the cleaning themselves.' Said Kirsten.

'Most
monasteries would not bring up young girls.' Said Fairuza. 'This is
it.'

She knocked once on the door and then used her
key to open it anyway. The room was cramped and full of paper, stacked
high in piles everywhere, on top of the filing cabinets that lined the
walls and on the floor in front of them. A small computer sat on
brother McGuckin's desk in the corner looking old and dusty, fitting
for brother McGuckin thought Kirsten, who was small, old and dusty
himself. She looked at the place in despair, not sure how was she to
find anything in all the mess.

'I don't usually spend
long in here so hurry up.' Said Fairuza.

'It shows.'
Said Kirsten. She paced around the filling cabinets, each was marked
with letters of the alphabet, she checked for entries under her surname
but came up empty, the same under DeMontford. Finally she found an
entry under K for Kirsten. She pulled out a small cardboard file and
opened it up on the floor. There was a lot of paper, a lot of
photocopies, official forms, inoculation records and a few letters. She
leafed through them until she found the birth certificate issued from
the French embassy, the date on it was the eleventh of July, a weeks
time exactly.

'Hurry up.' Said Fairuza rushing back
from the door. 'Someone is coming.'

Kirsten barely
heard her however. She had just seen her mothers name written in tidy
script on a letter underneath the form she was
reading.

Suzanne Suthan is safely secure
again.

Kirsten pulled out the letter and looked at
the date, it was less than one year old. How could her mother be
secure. Secure? Her mother had been dead for fourteen years? Checking
Fairuza wasn't watching Kirsten folded up the letter and put it in her
pocket and then carefully replaced the rest of the file back where she
had found it. Brother McGuckin poked his head through the door to see
Kirsten emptying the waste paper basket.

'Hello
girls.' He said. 'Are you helping Fairuza
Kirsten.'

Kirsten smiled grimly, terrified that if
she spoke she would not be able to stop herself demanding an
explanation.

'Oh.' Said McGuckin seeing her
countenance. 'Or are you being punished?'

'I asked
for her help.' Said Fairuza.

'Very well then.' He
said. 'Remember to lock up on your way out.'

Fairuza
waited till he had gone and jokingly asked Kirsten if she was still
fourteen years old or what.

'They all lied to me.'
She said. 'All of them.'

'It's only a date
dear.'

Kirsten scowled and ran out of the room and
away down the corridor.

'Aren't you going to help me
with the rest.' Fairuza called after
her.

Kirsten rushed back to her room,
bolted the door and read the letter carefully. There was only one
passage that interested her.

After escaping
last week Suzanne Suthan is now secure again, as we predicted she was
trying to make her way to Bhutan. We have instigated a routine that
ensures she is either locked up or under armed guard at all times,
though it is a strain on our resources. She talks of her daughter
incessantly and grows only more agitated as time goes on, requiring
sedation approximately one night in three. Brother DeMontford is
scheduled to visit us in a fortnight's time though I doubt he will be
able to help.

The letter was to brother Gallo from an
address Delhi. Kirsten read it over and over again searching for some
sign that it was all a lie or a mistake. Her mother was being held
prisoner by all the people she trusted most in the whole
world.

The sun's waning orange light flooded the room
and she stood up and faced the window, bathing in it. Worried that some
monk might come and fetch her for dinner she took the letter and
climbed outside. Looking down to check she was not being watched she
walked round the corner of the wide stone ledge to the warmer northern
face where the mountains loomed on all sides, gathered around in close
confidence. There she sat with her legs swinging over the edge and
brooded and conspired. She would go to Delhi and find her mother, she
would leave first thing tomorrow
morning.

By first light she was
waiting at the side of the road for the bus. Further down the way than
where the kitchen women alighted for work in the morning, though not
quite out of site of the monastery. She always wore local dress as a
matter of course but had taken care to find her oldest and cheapest
coat for the journey. In her hand she clutched an old canvas bag and
not the brand new sports bag her uncle had bought her last year. She
would look suspicious for sure, she was too young to be travelling
alone, but she would not stand out and that was what mattered. Whilst
nobody was there she took the time to distribute her supply of cash
about her person leaving only some local currency and change in her
purse. It was a considerable amount of money she had taken but no more
than she owned. All money in the monastery was kept under lock and key
of course, the key lived on a hook next to the safe, the room was never
locked until the monk responsible retired to bed, some hours later than
when she had paid a visit.

She heard the bus before
she saw it and hid from view of the passengers departing at the
monastery lest Fairuza or one of the others should recognise her even
at that distance. Then once the bus was moving again she stepped
nonchalantly into view and flagged it down. The driver looked at her
curiously but asked no questions. She took a seat to the right where
she could see the mountains through the window. She had grown up with
them and could not remember ever leaving them before. As she left them
they twisted out of shape with the new angles and perspectives,
shifting and hiding behind others, till by the time she arrived in
Tongsa she recognised none of them and her neck was sore from looking
back.

She headed straight for the railway station and
bought breakfast only when she realised she would have to wait. She was
keen to get on, she was still close and the monks would have realised
she had run away by now. If they guessed correctly they could get to
Tongsa far faster than the bus. Once she was on a train for Shilliguri
and India they would have a harder time finding her. From there she
could make her way to Delhi and her mother. She smiled to herself as
she ate and thought about seeing her for the first time, imagining how
it would be.