Tulip - E-book - ePub

Central Asia, 1880's. A field botanist stumbles across the rarest of tulips growing in a female shaman's garden. She seduces him, but before they make love she insists they both eat a tulip bulb (the side effects are supernatural yet useful). Afterwards, she sells him twenty-one tulip bulbs and adds her personal prayer wheel and a curse to the bundle. Months later, after arriving in Holland, the valuable bundle goes missing.
Convinced a poor, crippled dock worker is the thief, the botanist goes in hot pursuit. When the botanist's horse returns without the cart or the botanist, his son asks the local Constable to investigate. The next day the Constable catches the dock worker's wife with a gold coin in her hand. It's so improbable that he becomes suspicious and  immediately takes the beautiful woman home. After searching for signs of the botanist, the cart, or the bundle (all while openly lusting after the wife) he finds no physical evidence, but believes that the wife of the recently gravely injured dock worker (now bedridden and comatose) is hiding something. Over the course of a few days the wife and teenaged daughter consume six tulip bulbs and  use the supernatural powers to defend themselves against both the constable and the curse.
Though four people die in four days, three survive the curse and even discover treasure and new love.