Excerpt from The Last Gods of Indochine by Samuel Ferrer, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Phrai reflected, the fan stopping beside the explorer's face. "No, they are in London, with your wife."

"London?" he murmured. "All four of them?"

"No, monsieur," Phrai said. "You only have two small children, a boy and a girl."

"No, there are four. And what of the monkey-healer? Is he still here?"

The door nudged open and Nion entered. He approached and looked over Phrai's shoulder.

The explorer asked, "Where did he go?"

"Who?" Nion asked.

"The Lotus-Born. The monkey-healer."

Phrai whispered to Nion, "He keeps talking about a boy who heals monkeys."

Groaning, the explorer began rocking from side to side. Phrai tried to pour more water into his mouth, but he turned and it dribbled off his face. Nion sat down on the bed. The man's eyes, bolted with red, stretched wider.

"Do you see that?" he asked, eyes flitting across the roof.

"No," answered Nion, not looking up.

"It's so beautiful. Yet so dangerous to me. The Sea of Milk."

The explorer's face suddenly went limp, his chest sank, and wind sighed out of his mouth. Phrai quickly grabbed his flaccid wrist. There was still a pulse. Nion wiped his face off again, begging him not to go to sleep. Eventually, the man's lips quivered again with life.

From the bottom of his lungs, he gurgled, "I have—I have seen it a number of times now. I have seen him a number of times now. Many lives. Many centuries."

Phrai and Nion didn't recognize this ancient voice; it came not from the pipes of his throat, but rather, a place much deeper.

His eyes rolled upwards, leaving two slits of white in their place. Phrai grabbed both of his hands and squeezed. "Don't go to sleep, monsieur!"

"The Sea of Milk awaits me again. So beautiful to others, but so tragic to me!" he said. "And my poor, poor children—I'm sure I heard them in the forest!"

He lurched onto his side and Nion braced him from falling off the bed where he convulsed and gagged on air. A gurgle from the bottom of his throat rose, popped, and he vomited pure white fluid onto the floor. The puddle had the brackish smell of the sea.

He rolled onto his back, chin now lacquered. Breathing heavily, he looked past the two young men and declared, "He is here!" His eyes widened further, his breathing shortened, and he asked the last questions he would ever ask, directed at that empty space in the room: "Do not consider the suffering of others? What of the two children I still have left?"

1.

Paris, 1921.

The glassy surface of the Seine River flowed with civility, sundering in two at the Ile de la Cité. Like a citadel, tall walls rose from the water to join with its residential part. A quaint reading park, tucked away at the base of the islet where the water parted, contained a small garden and a pair of trees. With their autumn leaves blending, the willow and plane tree held each other like an elderly couple. Golden leaves butterflied between them.

Jacquie couldn't help but feel she was saying goodbye to autumn as well. This was, after all, a goodbye to most everything familiar to her. Her focus came back to the glass, noticing the ghost of Great Aunt Adèle upon its surface, this woman who was both family and nearly a stranger. She studied Adèle studying her. Holding her bowl of coffee, Adèle's hands had a slight tremble. Yet again, Jacquie was having to justify her decision.

"I want to feel as if I knew him," she said to the window, fingers settling on the porcelain cameo at the base of her throat. She knew that would not be enough to satisfy her great aunt, just as it had failed to do with all the others.

"You can get to know him through me. We can talk about it. You don't have to do this."

Excerpted from The Last Gods of Indochine by Samuel Ferrer. Copyright © 2016 by Samuel Ferrer. Excerpted by permission of Signal 8 Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.