Starling, relieved of thirst and reasonably rested, was brimming with newfound energy, her blood pumping potently through her veins. The only drawback was that her irritation with the situation was back with a vengeance. She stomped along with Dr. Lecter like a child forced to do something it didn't want to. Brain fogged, to her every branch appeared as a snake and every protrusion the tail of an iguana. She constantly ran into the webs of spiders; slaps bestowed by stubborn bushes and fern leaves were a new normal. Not a minute passed when her shrieks didn't fill the air.

Dr. Lecter, who had initially been amused by this side of Starling, was on the verge of losing his cool.

Another shriek and he snapped.

"Clarice!" he hissed, turning and taking ahold of her shoulders.

His sudden and unexpected action frightened her. Eyes closed, she screamed in fear, only to be silenced by his hand on her mouth.

"Clarice, open your eyes and look at me," he said in a no-nonsense voice. She did.

Despite his inner annoyance, he continued in a soft voice, "Good. Now listen. I know this is tough for you. You're way out of your comfort zone, I realize that. But losing calm at every small thing won't solve the problem, will it?"

The skin of her cheeks and jaw where his hand touched her face was tingling and her lips were numb. For the second time in less than three hours, Starling was thrown off her game. It took five seconds for her to process what he had said and in reply, she could only manage a muffled, "No."

"I beg your pardon?"

She removed his hand from her mouth and said, "No, Dr. Lecter. I understand it won't solve the problem."

He nodded in approval, turned and began to walk, Starling following close behind.

"Striding through the wild is an art. Be sensitive but not overly. Become one with your surroundings, make the vegetation your friend. Listen to the trees and they'll tell you what lies ahead. Follow my leeeeaaaa..."

Dr. Lecter parted the bushes with his hands, took a step forward and distracted that he was lecturing the person behind him, tripped over a burrow freshly dug by a rabbit or a mole and fell on the ground.

Starling couldn't control herself and broke into hysterical laughter. "Become one with your surroundings, make friends with the trees. They'll tell you what lies ahead. Well, Doctor, didn't your friends tell you about the burrow?" she mocked in between her laughs.

Dr. Lecter had never seen her laugh before and as he did now, he realized he was drawn to the laughing creases around her mouth.

"Do you find the situation amusing, Clarice?"

"Very." Another round of laughter.

A minute or so later, Starling gained enough control to notice the trail of blood from his temple down to his cheek. "Dr. Lecter, you're bleeding!"

The gash he'd received from the buckle of Carlo's belt had reopened due to the fall. He touched it with two fingers and their tips turned out bloody.

Before he could do anything about it, Starling used the pocket knife to carve out two strips, one long, another short from her shirtsleeve and knelt down in front of him. She folded the shorter piece and dabbed his wound, pecking it dry. Next, she took the longer strip, wound it around his head twice and tied the ends into a knot on the side above his ear.

High, high above them, a draft tickled the trees and Dr. Lecter, lost in the dreaminess of the moment, listened. Listened to the rustle of leaves. Listened to the creaking of a colossal door in his mind as it opened and, the rattle of a memory forged so long ago that it seemed to represent another time, a different era. Listened to the rustle of the white silk of her kimono while she sewed up his finger. Eyes fixated on Starling's face, he saw through her. Beyond, the face of Lady Murasaki, like the pad of a water lily on the ripple of time, lovely and elegant as always, undistorted.

"The cut runs deep, Dr. Lecter. Bandage is a temporary remedy. It will serve for now but you need to be careful," Starling said, retracting her hands from his head.

"Thank you, Clarice."

Starling replied with a faint smile, a tacit aftereffect of her previous laughing fit and Dr. Lecter's curiosity was piqued. "May I ask you something?"

"Certainly."

"When was the last time you laughed so hard?"

Starling stared at him for a long moment as her smile narrowed and finally vanished.

Words were in her head: I don't remember, Dr. Lecter. I don't remember. She didn't say them aloud. She didn't need to.

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Dr. Lecter had wandered too far away and night had fallen, making the process of identifying the milestones he'd marked – grooves skewed into the tree trunks – a little too cumbersome than he would have preferred.

Never mind.

He decided to take assistance of his nose. Resolving and associating an odor is more exerting than only smelling which he'd been doing on his way here, even though it was more of a playful art for him. He exhaled sharply to clear his sinuses and sniffed the air, detecting a variety.

Mmm, Magnolia ... He knew that aroma and followed for forty steps, front shirttail bunched up into a compact bundle, turning at the spicy scent of ... Sweet Williams, beautiful. There was the pungency of half a dozen dianthus-es guiding him and the sweetness of both confederate as well as star jasmines – true jasmines, wild ones, not the garden variety types. And, of course, the kadams, indigenous to the Ghats – another couple of steps for that, which he took out of context in order to avoid the stench of squirrel droppings.

All this made him arrive at the fourth makeshift milestone and he caught a whiff of Starling's natural scent.

While walking further, his mind wandered at the influence of her scent. Two days into their journey, it was too early. Too early to begin a different journey, to begin her transformation, take the first step to bring Mischa back from abyss. Too early, he told himself, again and again, with each step he took.

In the swarming dark, Starling saw a floating pair of red eyes and felt her pocket for the knife. She hoped it wasn't an animal, hoped it was Dr. Lecter and it was. Pulled like a bow string, she relaxed when he came near and her hand fell away from the safety of the knife. It felt strange. Settling at the same time. Strangely settling.

"Did you find anything, get anything?" Starling asked, eyes flying to the bandage.

"Kumquats. I tasted one. They are fresh and ripe," Dr. Lecter said, bouncing the bundle a little with his free hand. His lower abdomen was exposed upto his navel, pale skin glistening in the scarce moonlight. Starling's eyes moved from inspecting the bandage on his head to appreciating his toned stomach.

When he handed her her share – fifteen or so kumquats, she diverted her eyes elsewhere and hoped he couldn't detect the heat radiating from her cheeks.

As the Doctor settled across from her, Starling studied the small, oblong and flawlessly orange-skinned fruit in her hand, rotating it clockwise and turning it top down. Wary but hungry, she dug her teeth into its skin superficially and found it hard and sweet on her tongue. When she took a generous bite, juices flowed and its tang made her teeth turn sour. Her head jerked back in reflex and she spat the fruit out, repulsed

"I see you've never had a kumquat before," Dr. Lecter said, observing her every move. "With juice it isn't edible. Nibble off the skin at the top and squeeze the juice and seeds out. You can eat the rest." He showed her how. Starling repeated and popped the remains into her mouth. Just a little bit tangy and a lot sweeter, she found it delicious.

Dr. Lecter watched as a droplet sneaked out of her lips and gliding down, suspended from her chin. Starling's face was bright against the darkness surrounding her, behind her. The image moved him just as much as the shadow play in The Madonna of the Rocks that he had enjoyed a couple of years ago in The Louvre while en route to Glasgow.

Even in the deficient light, his eyes could detect color, saffron of the droplet and copper green of her eyes. He willed for the saffron to shrink, slowly wane into aubergine and it did. Copper green should remain, he decided. A memory came to him on its own. Mischa's blue eyes twinkling as she held the dark grape in her hand whole, her pink lips turning purple as she squeezed it dry with her baby teeth, gums mostly, juices running wild.

Starling wiped the droplet off and Dr. Lecter reminded himself once again: Too early. Only this time he refused to follow.

"What is your favorite fruit?" he asked.

"Orange," Starling replied absently, nibbling and squeezing.

"Ah. Oranges might be difficult to find in these jungles though kinnows should be readily available. We are already into the season. Why is orange your favorite?"

"I don't know. Why is anything anybody's favorite?"

"Well, for one, you can say taste. But I don't believe that is the reason in your case. If I were to guess-"

"Taste," she said quickly. "That is it." Her face was willfully expressionless as she put the kumquat in her mouth.

Dr. Lecter watched her chewing the fruit and took in the vacancy on her face. He knew too well that this time he didn't have the convenience of the leverage he had in Baltimore and Memphis. Nevertheless, encouraged by the possibilities and at the same time, cautious of the obstructions, he decided to proceed. "Oranges of this part of the world are quite famous the world over. In the Lecter Castle where I grew up, everything was grown in the kitchen garden – vegetables, fruits and herbs – it was huge and diverse – but oranges were ordered from a British trader who would buy them from the orchards in Nagpur and ship them to Manchester and later to our house in Lithuania. Every season, my mother insisted on it. She liked oranges too much."

Starling's face did not change but her chewing mellowed. She had never in her wildest dreams thought that Dr. Lecter would intentionally or even accidentally depart with any information about himself. She hoped it wasn't a quid pro quo. She was too tired for it.

"Tell me about your mother," she said.

"She was of the Sforza on one side and a Visconti on the other. Very beautiful, I tell you. I have the color of her eyes but not the shape. Hers were deeply creased with defined brow bones. They enhanced the nuances of her aristocracy. You would look at her and know she was a noble, that kind of woman. When I was young, I used to observe the grace of her walk and try to imitate it. Never succeeded really but it was heady and made a good game."

Starling smiled at the picture of a young Hannibal Lecter walking behind his mother, trying to copy the groove of her walk, both mother and son maroon-eyed.

"So, you're an aristocrat?" she asked. It was more of a confirmation than a question. The FBI, herself included, should have picked up on it, she thought, given his obvious attributes. Impeccable mannerism, refined tastes, even comportment, everything about him screamed he was highborn.

"Yes. I'm the descendant of Hannibal the Grim. I lived the first eight years of my life in the Lecter Castle built by him more than five hundred years ago. It was an opulent structure with spacious corridors, plenty of rooms with high ceilings and many, many decorations. Grandiose, with every modern amenity, yet conventional with its fortification and moat. I remember distinctly I used to throw bread to the black swans on the water of the moat." Behind his eyelids: Mischa holding on to Hannibal's hand for balance while she threw bread to the swans and hiding behind his leg when the alpha swan spread his wings, hissing in challenge.

He didn't mention Mischa to Starling.

"Eight years, you say. What happened after?" Starling asked, completely immersed in their talk.

The hologram of memory disappeared as the Doctor blinked. "War," he answered, evenly without any buildup. "The Nazis plundered and destroyed the castle. I was orphaned. Later, my uncle took me under his tutelage. He was a respected artist in France, drew the most detailed sketches I can remember, beautiful paintings. A decent man."

He would have told her more had she inquired. She didn't.

Starling felt honored with what he had given her. And indebted. It wasn't a quid pro quo. That much was clear and it made all the difference in the world. She had to repay him with something significant, return the honor.

Dr. Lecter read the thoughts behind her eyes and reclined against a tree, observing her with concealed glee like a child waiting for its wind-up doll to sing and dance.

Starling chortled as she began, "As a child, I was a tomboy. Didn't let my hair grow long until I was ten. My mother complained about it but I never cared. Climbing trees, thrashing in ditches, riding big goats on a dare, you name it. I did everything a boy does.

"You asked me in your letter about my happiest memory in the kitchen. Whenever I used to fall down from a goat or hurt myself, my father would gather me up against his chest and bring me to the spare kitchen. He would place me on a ladder-back kitchen chair, kiss the top of my head and sit opposite me. Oranges were always there on the table, big and round, from our neighbor's orchards. Sno balls too if it was the first or second of the month – that's when he was paid. He would peel an orange with his Barlow knife with its tip broken off and alternately pass me one section and eat the other."

Starling's reflection shivered in Dr. Lecter's pupils and words read or heard someplace sometime wafted through his head, in his head: …bloom, Rose in the gloom.

A small smile covered her lips but its tone was somber. "That's why orange is my favorite fruit," she completed and lay down on her back with her hands behind her head, looking up at the crescent moon, pale and stained, through the dark leaves.

Away from the humdrum and obligations of her city life, Starling, for the first time in so many years, desired on her tongue the coconut-ty taste of the springy icing on the sno ball, the taste of her childhood, a happy cord.

The babbling and chirping sounds outside had no effect on the music in the sprawling corridors of the Doctor's memory palace, which originated from a koto in a specific room. He rotated his head and saw the smile on Starling's face broaden, its tone changing finally. In the dark beyond, a glimpse of he and Lady Murasaki on her terrace, his cheek against a weeping cherry, watching the harvest moon rise with her song and the terrace rise with the moon.

He hadn't called for the memory. He never did. He cruelly pushed it away and while watching Starling lick her lips, called for the memories of Mischa to envelop him. But the music did not fade.