Chapter 61

(The Manor.)

Jatray has had enough of modern medicine.

She drove down a back road that didn't get the pampering maintenance that the highways received. She eased up on the gas carefully, slowly swerving around many potholes.

She passed a few other drivers who, like herself, would rather resist giving in to the allure of the highway's fast, smoothly paved lanes.

On this often overlooked, often rejected road, where gullies descended into precipices of woodland, one could see Mother Nature had battled two moods here at the same time.

One temperment was the disorganized chaos of anger and the other was the clean cut, orderly natural beauty of serenity.

Mother Nature had stormed through on one side of the road and left bamboo trees, fractured and weary from her rampage, resting broken limbs on each other's shoulders.

A few had become uprooted. They shamelessly turned their shaggy roots, massive anthill-like pile of dirt bottoms, up to passing motorist.

On the other side