23, Homecoming

"I always thought there was something special about this house... every time I drove past and looked up at that strange archway I would... sort of, shiver."

"Of course you would have sensed something, beti. This house is your ancestral home. It must have been calling out to you. And I always said you were perceptive, didn't I?"

"But then Deepak said it was the headquarters of the Manjaria Women's Movement...But didn't you say this was a vegetable farm...? Carrots or something? Where are the fields...?"

"Shush, shush, shush, beti." Aunty Seema cupped Kamala's chin in her hand and squeezed her cheeks together, forcing her lips into a pout like a little child. "So many questions, just rest now and then go and take a bath. You can use the silver pitcher which the Maharaja gave your great grandmother...Then afterwards we'll eat, we'll talk, everything will be explained."

Kamala followed Aunty Seema's huge, swaying figure up the marble stairs. Shivers of light from the yellowing, wire-dangling bulbs ran off her billowing flanks. Kamala didn't want to take her eyes off her, to risk losing her again, but at the same time her eyes wanted to drink in every inch, every molecule of this house, her "ancestral home". She trailed her fingers along the walls - cool and clammy. Creamy flakes of damp plaster came off on her fingers and snowed down on her sandals. Along the corridor there were many shuttered doorways, and Kamala sensed, rather than heard outright, breathless, shuffling sounds behind them - Aunty Seema raised her voice, cheerily reminiscing about how she and Kamala's mother, used to run and play along these very corridors when they were little.

"Look," she said "See that chest over there?" The deep, curling incisions in the wood made little trees and birds and flowers leap out of its shadows... "We used to play hide and seek in there!"

Kamala was enchanted. She bent to touch it, imagining her mother, little Meera with her pigtails, crouched in the box, gleaming eyes peeking through a chink in the lid, giggling to herself... but, at the touch of the wood, a shock of cold fear ran up her arm. She snatched her hand back. Aunty Seema had sailed on, showing Kamala to her room, hurrying her to have her bath. "And then hurry down for khanna, beti, people are waiting to meet you." She shouted over her shoulder as she thundered back down the corridor.

After she had slaked the dirt and the terror and the rage of the last few unbelievable hours away from her body with cool water, she pulled the thin, white cotton cloth which she presumed was to be used as a towel around her and stood for long minutes on my balcony, the carved screen behind her, gazing up at my beautiful hill view. She dressed in the fresh clothes someone had laid out for her - white churidar trousers clinging tight round her ankles and a pale lilac kurta embroidered around the neck with fine white flowers and mangoes. She found my ivory comb on the dressing table and pulled it luxuriously through her hair, which had grown long and thick and dark in the months since she'd been here. She drew it up and looped it into a loose knot at the crown of her head, leaving her long, slender neck bare.

Once dressed, she hurried back down the corridor towards the stairs, trying not to think about those noises behind the doors. She'd seen and heard too much already today. She didn't even want to know what all this meant. She had found Aunty Seema! That's all she wanted to know, and she wanted to spend every possible second with her - especially as Aunty Seema had made it quite clear that it was not going to be safe for her to stay more than a single night... God knew what was going to happen tomorrow. But at one of the doors, something made her hurrying footsteps stop. A soft voice was singing beyond the curtain. She listened, spellbound for some reason, although there was nothing particularly beautiful about the voice... just something - familiar. And then the voice stopped too. And after a moment of pregnant silence, it spoke slurrily. "Co' here..." it said.

They must have assumed she was someone else, so Kamala started hurrying guiltily on... But the voice called after her.

"Hey, girl! Where 'r' you runni' off to? Co' here, I said. I wan' look t'you."

Kamala went back and pulled the curtain aside. An old lady was lying on a low, wide bed. Stripes of light from a kind of bamboo lampshade rose and fell across the fine bone contours of her face. Grey hair fanned out in fine brushstrokes against the pillow. Her skin was translucent - Kamala suddenly understood what the word meant as she looked at that skin - light actually seemed to glow through it. It was softly, finely gathered at the eyes and mouth and neck, in just the same places, and in just the same way that Mother's skin crinkled. At least it did on the right hand side. On the left side, the skin was slack and expressionless.

The cool green-grey eyes looked levelly at Kamala in just same way Mother's eyes did... assessing. Then the old lady laughed - a surprisingly strong, clear laugh coming from a body like fine porcelain. "Oh, now I see who you are, gir', you are my younger se'f co' into th' fushure to taun' me with my los' youth and m-m-beauty."

She gestured with her right arm to a picture on a dark, heavy chest of drawers behind Kamala. And Kamala's own face looked back at her, in faded sepia tones.

And Kamala went over to her grandmother, sat on the bed and took her limp left hand. "And you must be my future self, come into the past to reassure me how beautiful I'll be when I'm old!" They gazed at the time-teased mirror of each other's faces, touched each other's cheeks, hair, arms. Smiled at each other. Then Chitra said she just wanted to close her eyes for a minute... and after ten, Kamala realised that she was sleeping.

She tiptoed over to the chest of drawers to have another look at her other self. Then she noticed the other picture beside the one of her grandmother. Two little girls, one of them an unmistakeable miniature Aunty Seema - large even in miniature, overflowing her clothes like a warm, yeasty bread roll, her glittering eyes challenging the world, undimmed and undiminished even in that smudged little photo. Another small girl sat beside her, clutching her arm. She was everything Seema was not - arms as thin as willow twigs, eyes big and dark and earnest... or was that frightened? Her thin face framed by tightly plaited pigtails, looped back up and tied with ribbons. She had the look of someone who could see something monstrous coming towards her and knew there was nothing she could do to stop it. Kamala ran her finger across the top of the silver frame...

When she entered the dining room, there was a large group already seated around the big table. Aunty Seema sat at the head of the table - smiling in a way that Kamala couldn't quite interpret - expectant, excited. Beside her sat Sunil (with his arm in a clean, white sling) He looked up, grinning at her. "The man is not dead, Kamala Madam! He is alive! He is in upstairs room...Seema-ji is looking after him!" Kamala felt a wave of relief (coupled with a twist of confusion, the injured Manjaria man who'd been trying to attack them was upstairs? How? Why?). But she gave Sunil a big, relieved smile in return. Deepak - at the near end of the table - glanced up at her and quickly down again. Next to him, along each side of the table sat six or seven women and a couple of men. Kamala got a momentary impression of a rippling mass of gold and ivory and silk. They had all turned towards Kamala as she stood in the doorway.

With a shock she noticed now that they all had the Manjaria facials markings and features that had become so familiar to her. The blood shot to her face. She wanted the floor to swallow her up, she waited for them to hurl insults at her, hurl their stainless steel thali plates and tumblers at her... she bit her bottom lip hard, gripped her snake pendant, and concentrated on getting her heartbeat steady - ready to face whatever was in store for her. Whatever the reason that Aunty Seema had allowed this to happen, it was only fair. She deserved to be punished... Aunty Seema hadn't rescued her, she had simply brought her to trial.

She sensed someone approaching her - though the footsteps were, of course, silent. They stopped in front of her. The clink of heavy bracelets indicated arms were being raised over her head. Kamala clenched her fists by her side, digging her nails into her palms to stop herself from running away or fainting... she had no idea what was about to happen to her, but remembering the fury and violence in those yellow-black eyes rammed against the car, the blood, the broken glass, Sunil's wailing - she knew it was not going to be pleasant. And yet, the scent of jasmine which now wafted over her, was rather pleasant - and now she felt cool petals, heavy and moist against the back of her neck. She looked up. The woman was smiling up at her, she took both Kamala's hands in hers and, to the cheery shouts from the rest of the table, led her, garlanded, to her place at the table, facing Aunty Seema, and to the left of Deepak.

When the shouts had died down, she looked up at the beaming Aunty Seema.

"I don't understand... why? I thought they hated me..."

"Of course they don't hate you, why should they? They practically worship you after what you did in the forest..."

"I didn't do anything. I don't remember anything... but, oh, they probably don't know. It was me who showed Greenfields where the tree was, I had a GPS on..."

Her throat thickened now that she realised that this was only a temporary reprieve... that once they knew how she'd betrayed them, they would hate her again. This time she just wanted to get it over with.

"They trusted me, Dhanmatbai trusted me, and I wore that watch which showed Greenfields where the sacred tree was. I'm sorry. Dr Singh told me I'd be helping them. It was me. They know that, that's why they were trying to kill us at the Greenfields office, and now Dhanmatbai is being tortured and it's all my fault...!" she was sobbing loudly now, covering her face with a blue cotton napkin.

"Don't be silly, beti." Aunty Seema intervened in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, as she waved the alarmed diners to continue with their meal. "Of course you didn't lead Greenfields there, they've been sniffing around Manjaria for years... and anyway, they took you there, not the other way round. And as for that gadget of yours, it didn't make any difference. What the Manjaria know about the tree cannot be measured - or destroyed - with scientific instruments. Now stop blubbing and being hysterical and eat up your dinner!" And she proceeded to demonstrate, with gusto, how it should be done."

"But Dhanmatbhai...?"

"She's quite capable of looking after herself. Now please, beti, eat your dinner."

"But then... then why were they trying to kill me?!" She blurted out.

"What?" Said Aunty Seema, her mouth full of curry. "Deepak, beta, please talk to this hysterical girl. All these questions are spoiling my digestion."

"It wasn't you they were after," Deepak said, "It was Greenfields. Not any particular person - the company as a whole. They'd gone too far this time, they've closed off the whole forest you know - and taking Dhanmatbai in like that... that was deeply disrespectful. The Manjaria have practically burned the whole office down. The people in that riot weren't local Manjaria, they didn't recognise you. We were in danger because our car had Greenfields markings. If they'd known what you'd done for them, everyone, they would never have..."

She gazed back at him, grateful, a little less confused... but still with the question endlessly going on in her mind...

"Deepak - you were there." She whispered urgently "Please tell me, what the hell is this great thing I'm supposed to have done? All I remember is stripping off and climbing into that tree."

Deepak grinned. "Yeees, that's pretty much what I remember too - ow!" He gripped his arm where Kamala had thumped him.

"Sorry, yaar, I really don't know any more. That's all I saw. But there are things these women know about that lesser mortals will never understand. If they say you did something good, just trust them and go with the flow, OK?"

She stared at him, but suddenly realised that she didn't have the energy for any more mystery or terror or relief... she was just ravenously hungry. She nodded and tucked in.

Deepak started to murmur a translation of the conversation going on around her, and gradually she was able to piece a picture together, with Deepak filling in the gaps himself. These women and men were members and supporters of a group called the Manjaria Women's Movement who were, with Aunty Seema's help, fighting court cases against Greenfields' claims of ownership of large tracts of forest land which the Manjaria had been given lifelong rights to by the British when they ruled the area. Kamala had grown to respect the Manjaria people during her time in the village for their dignity, patience, wisdom and knowledge of nature, but now she was seeing another side of them... they were barking out legal precedents to their cases, citing Government bills framed to protect their rights, comparing their cases to those of litigants in post-war Poland...

"How do they know all this stuff?" Kamala whispered to Deepak. He turned his cool gaze on her.

"How does anyone know stuff like this? They've studied law, they've read the statute books, they've discussed their cases with top lawyers..."

"Yes, but how can they afford it? I thought you had to be filthy rich to even consider legal training like that in this country? And how would they even know that statute books and things existed if they never get to go near a school or university?"

Deepak laughed gently. "Oh, well, you'd better see Ma about that!"

"Ma?"

"Seema, talk to Seema about it."

After dinner, she had her chance. Aunty Seema, Deepak and Kamala settled on the veranda to smoke and talk - Aunty Seema had progressed onto slim cigars, Deepak stuck to his cigarettes. Sunil had been ordered to go to bed early and rest his wound and the others had melted away soon after dinner. Kamala heard how Aunty Seema had taken in girls from Manjaria and other indigenous villages who had been raped - often by forestry officials or miners - and had then become destitute because they'd refused to return to their families for fear of bringing shame on them - but also, explained Aunty Seema, out of a certain sense of pride, of self-respect... and as far as they were concerned there was no irony in this. She had inducted them into the profession of the House.

"You taught them carrot farming?" Kamala asked, with a mischievous glint in her eye.

Seema looked puzzled for a brief moment, then remembered and sent peals of throaty, cigar-smoke-laced laughter bellowing up to the rafters. Kamala had realised pretty quickly what the House's real business was. She knew she should be shocked, horrified - but for some reason it all seemed terribly natural and ok. The women seemed strong and in control of their lives, not crushed and exploited. And she had to admit, the image of Aunty Seema reclining on a divan with a lustful local worthy, seemed much more natural than the one of her with the red tractor and the wellies.

While the Manjaria women earned their living at night, she taught them to read and write during the day. Aunty Seema heard their stories, the stories of their families, their villages - the gradual filching of land and rights and dignity and resources by people already much more powerful, more wealthy and more educated - and she shook with indignation. She strode into local government offices, and into the offices of swanky city lawyers and demanded information. She got the women enrolled onto law courses, she got hold of politicians for them to harangue, she led them in demonstrations... she taught them how to manipulate the world outside the forest, to protect the forest.

Manjaria men and women from the villages started realising how their "fallen sisters" were fighting for them, and they joined forces with them, those whose hunting grounds had been destroyed by the planting of cash crop eucalyptus groves or the flooding of valleys and foothills for hydro-electric dams, those whose backs had been shattered breaking stones to build Greenfields' roads for less than subsistence wages, those who murmured of darker things, whose swollen eyes closed up, who started walking with a limp... in the charred remains of whose houses lay the ashes of their land rights papers...

As Aunty Seema talked, Kamala sat on a stool pulled up close to the big, cane and wicker armchair, her arm being gently stroked - catlike - by her Aunty's long, pearly fingernails. She wanted to be absorbed by her warmth, her vastness, her powerfulness - Aunty Seema, the secret memory, pulled out on the end of silver chain and caressed in the darkness for so many years that the memory faded to the fragility of a vision, something might have imagined rather than remembered... and now here she was sitting right beside the real thing - engulfed by the sweet, musty scent of her, swimming in the love that exuded from her, that lapped around the edges of every living thing for miles.

Having shown the Manjaria the ropes, given them the same weapons as their opponents to even things up a bit, Aunty Seema stepped back and watched with pride as they argued their cases in court, belted out their protest songs outside TV stations, brought their injustices to life on the streets in lively little dramas full of slapstick to make the kids shriek and pathos to make anyone with a heart weep and rage. She bankrolled any venture that they couldn't afford themselves, a press conference, a demonstration, a sit-in outside a Greenfields laboratory. She had just paid for a contingent of Manjaria to travel to New Delhi to present a complaint to the Prime Minister's office about Greenfields' closure of the forest land around the old tree. The local government, the timber and mining companies, the Forestry Commission thought twice now before they took advantage of these people... (and it didn't hurt their cause that many of these big cheeses were nocturnal clients of the House) "It used to be as easy as taking candy from a baby before" said Aunty Seema (Kamala winced) "But no more... now it's more like taking a cub from a tigress!"

But Greenfields were more subtle. They bought and bribed and spied and spin-doctored... The Manjaria played them move for move, sometimes outwitting them, sometimes succumbing to the temptation of pay-outs, liquor, jobs in the big city... Only this time Greenfields had overstepped the mark. And the tigress was lashing back...

"And where do you fit into all this, Deepak?" Kamala asked - the question washed against an impassive back as Deepak blew his blue cigarette smoke into the black night.

"Deepak?" Aunty Seema replied for him, "Oh, didn't he say? Deepak's my son."

"Your son?!!" Squeaked Kamala.

"Hi coz!" He grinned back over his should at her and gave her a wave... his cigarette leaving a ghostly, blue question mark in the air.

"Yes, my adopted son. I was on my way back from visiting him in America when I stopped off in England, remember? His ma used to... work here - she was Manjaria. She died when he was a baby. And now he's my baby, na, beta?" Deepak grunted, his face turned back to the night. "He's my eyes and my ears... my photographic eyes and my electronic ears, eh?"

And they both laughed.

Soon Aunty Seema said it was time to go to bed. She said Kamala wasn't safe in the house, Greenfield's spies would not be sleeping, they would find out she was there very soon and would find a way to get at her... so the best thing was to get right away for a while. Disappear. Become invisible.

"Yes, I agree, I think it's time I went home..." Kamala was disappointed.

"Home? How is that possible, beti? Of course! you haven't seen the news for days, have you? Apparently, those silly beggars in the Middle East are now beating hell out of each other even worse than ever, and so no oil is coming out - something one country said about another country's Prime Minister's wife in one of that nice Mr White's newspapers, apparently. So that means the rest of us have to do without fuel!"

Deepak continued "All international flights have been suspended, except for high ranking government, military and industrial people. We have to hide you inside India."

"How?" asked Kamala, realising now, that the idea of not going home was even more disappointing.

"Shshshsh! Said Aunty Seema, dramatically. "Walls have ears... you'll find out soon enough".

"What about Dhanmatbai?"

"She can take care of herself - she's a powerful old lady, that one... don't worry, now go on, off to bed!"

Kamala was tucked up in her bed and gazing out at the stars through the open casement, when Aunty Seema's warm, cinnamony presence filled the doorway. She came and lay down beside Kamala - as though she was still a little girl and not a mature young woman who almost had an agricultural degree and who was about to go on the lam from a bunch of possibly murderous industrial spies... Kamala drew out the serpent pendant and held it out to Aunty Seema. They smiled at each other. Aunty Seema stroked Kamala's hair with her soft, cool hand and Kamala closed her eyes and was a little girl again.

"So, Beti, tell me, how is your poor Ma?"

"'Poor' Ma?" Kamala opened her eyes again.

Aunty Seema laughed.

"Yes, she somehow always got called that - 'poor little Meera' even before...."

"Before what?"

"What, 'what'? I asked you how your mother was - aren't you going to give me news of my little sister?"

"She's fine... well, sort of fine. She was so upset that I was coming here, Aunty Seema! When I told her she..."

Aunty Seema looked at Kamala carefully. Waiting.

"She went into a sort of... trance. It was as though she was reliving some awful trauma that she'd been through."

She noticed the quick look of pain that passed across Aunty Seema's usually unperturbable features.

"Why won't anybody tell me, Aunty Seema. What happened to her? Why does she hate and reject India? Don't I have a right to know about my own mother?"

Aunty Seema pressed the tips of her fingers to her temples - then shook her head.

"Maybe not unless she chooses to tell you herself, hanh beti?"

"Maybe, but I feel that she, sort of, can't choose to. That whatever it is hurts so much that even if she wanted to, it would be too painful to tell..."

"You might be right... but sadly, I don't know the full story myself." Seema sighed deeply and seemed to come to a decision. "Well, I suppose there's no harm in telling you what I do know..."

So she told Kamala about the second coming of the Sadhu or the coming of the second sadhu, whichever it was, and she tried to explain how the adults of the house could have brought themselves to give away a little girl to a complete stranger (she averted her eyes from Kamala's gaze of horrified accusation), she told her how angry she had been with their mother, Chitra, with Bimla, Chitra's guardian, for sending her little sister away - how she'd raged and howled and kicked their shins and torn her clothes. But at the same time she said she knew the terror of the sadhu's curse, and she knew that, in the end, they'd had no choice.

She told Kamala too about their father's disappearance at the same time. Some people said that a man who leapt in front of a train, whose body was found mashed beyond recognition on the railway tracks that same day was her daddy, but she refused to believe it. So did Chitra. They even refused to go and look at the remains, at the 'personal effects' that the police had collected. They knew that however broken hearted he might have been at the loss of his darling Meera, would never have thrown his life away and deliberately abandoned his beloved Chitra and his other darling, Seema. They guessed he might have followed Meera and the Sadhu to the station, but nobody knew what had happened to him after that. Seema, Bimla and Chitra convinced themselves that by some horrible coincidence he had been abducted on that same evil day, and, feeding each other's desperation, weaving the threads of a frail fantasy together to try and bolster up an even frailer hope, they waited for him to escape and come back to them. But gradually the knowledge grew in their hearts that he was never coming back.

Chitra never recovered from the loss of her baby and her husband on the same day. She was soon struck down with a stroke that paralysed the left side of her body and had been bedridden ever since. "I met her" smiled Kamala through her tears... "...my Grandmother" Aunty Seema nodded, smiling too. Bimla too succumbed to the shock and seemed to age a hundred years within the space of a few weeks. One night, she wandered out onto the veranda of her old mistress' bedroom and was found there in the morning sleeping peacefully - never to wake again. "You're not scared of ghosts are you, beti? Because Bimla could never be anything but a good spirit... a guardian angel..."

"Please, Aunty Seema... " murmured Kamala, "I'm a scientist!" Aunty Seema laughed, and continued her story. Though there was not much more to tell.

A few years later the postcard had arrived. ‘Meera (Mary) Steel’ and an address - in thin, blue ink. No-one had ever been able to explain who sent it or why.

Yes, that was messy, I admit. But believe me, it isn't easy in my current straitened circumstances to get everything - everyone - lined up as they should be... and do it subtly too. But resorting to sending a mysterious postcard - I'm almost ashamed of myself!

"So you see, baby, I can't tell you. I don't know what happened to her after that. But didn't we do the right thing? See how well off she is now. I don't know how she came to meet your father, go to Bilaiti, have you... I'm just glad she did. The sadhu must have made that possible. Maybe nothing else did happen to her to make her hate us so much, maybe it was the pain of leaving her family - even if it was for her own good...that could be enough."

"Yee-es, that could be enough" echoed Kamala.

But they both had a small, niggling voice in the back of their minds say - there must have been more.

22, Interrogation

"What happened"?

"I'm sorry Mr Sharma. As I said before, I don't really know."

"A power surge of that magnitude could not have occurred accidentally. Nor could anyone in the vicinity have survived it. Yet the co-ordinates of the... occurrence... coincided precisely with your location on that night as transmitted to the Padma Series satellites by your GPS device... Indian made satellites are considered the best in the world, they are used by the Americans, did you know that, Miss Steel?"

"Yes, I did, I..."

"Our investigators are out there now, checking the area for evidence and analysing the data. These are dangerous times, as you know, Ms Steel - there are military powers out there that... We've sealed off the village, no-one can go in or out. With Mr White about to grace us with his presence, we can't afford to take any chances. We will soon discover exactly what occurred, but I am keen to know what your part in it all was, Ms Steel. We are not entirely ignorant, you see, of your political leanings."

"What do you mean? I don't have any..."

"These poor tribal ladies you took with you could have been killed..."

Kamala laughed..."That I took with me? What are they, children? And anyway, what do I know about the forest?"

"That is just what we are trying to ascertain, Ms Steel. What do you know?"

"All I know is what I've told you already; I went with Dr Singh to the village and assisted in the research there. Dr Singh asked me to go with the indigenous women and watch their full moon ceremony because he thought there might be a tree involved which would help in the research... I'm not even sure what the research was, he never told me the full story! Why don't you ask him?"

"Oh believe me, we will. He and Ms Jensen have been flown to Greenfields Asia head office in the capital to file a full report of their research. We will be checking their account against yours. So, you went with these ladies to the forest, and then...?"

"And then, as I told you before, they started... sort of... singing, the moon came out, I stood up and I... um... felt a bit faint, so I leant against this old tree... and that's the last thing I remember until I woke up. I must have passed out. I have these funny turns sometimes..."

"'Funny turns'? What is that?"

"Um... episodes, things happen which I... I can't really explain. Hallucinations, I suppose. Black outs. I've been taking tablets. Sedatives."

The sound of Mr Sharma's pencil tapping on the table made the pause seem much longer than it really was. Kamala realised she was pressing her snake pendant so hard between her fingers that they were starting to tingle with pins and needs. The sound of the air conditioner seemed to swell and press against the walls of the little room, press in on Kamala's eardrums, her eyeballs, her throat. She picked up the glass of water in front of her and took a sip. Mr Sharma stared at her for a moment, a small muscle at his jaw throbbed, then he broke into a dazzling smile...

"I'm sorry to be tiresome Miss Steel, but are you absolutely sure you've remembered to tell us everything?"

Polite and pleasant though Mr Sharma, of Greenfields Asia Incorporated, might be - something about him made her uneasy. Maybe it was his silent side-kick... she realised now that the introduction she had been expecting since she entered the room almost an hour ago had never come - like the second shoe which never dropped. She hadn't said anything herself since Mr Sharma's last question. He spoke again, but although his smooth politeness never wavered - his voice took on an icy quality which made her throat feel dry;

"Forgive me, Miss Steel, perhaps I didn't make myself clear... what I meant to say was - you are lying."

Kamala's throat felt even drier. She took another sip of water.

"I'm not ly..."

"Miss Steel, please don't insult my intelligence"

"Ok, ok. I'll tell what really happened, it's no big deal, I was probably half cut on that root wine...No great scientific mystery."

"'Half cut'?"

"Drunk...I had a sip of some drink Dhanmatbai gave me, it made me a bit light headed. When the moon came out, I..."

Mr Sharma and the Silent Sidekick glanced quickly at each other. The Silent Sidekick, moved for the first time. He scribbled furiously for a second or two on a note pad on the desk in front of him. Kamala looked down at her hands clenched together in her lap. She'd just have to tell them. She couldn't bear the embarrassment. What would they think? The urbane Mr Sharma with his flashing gold wedding ring, and the silent, smirking man sitting beside him, never saying a word. But she'd been in here for over an hour now - they knew she was holding back, and as long as they thought that there was something more she could tell them, she knew they wouldn't give up. She didn't know what they were after, but unless she told them the truth, however shameful and insignificant, they would never end this ghastly meeting.

How stupid they'd feel when they realised that instead of some sinister scientific espionage agent, what they had here was just a silly student girl, pissed on local hooch, stripping off in the middle of a forest and passing out in a hollow tree trunk. They'd sack her. Send her home. Tell Mother. Oh God! Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked hard - determined not to make herself any more foolish than she was already going to seem. Still staring down at her hands, she took a deep breath and told them everything, right up until the closing of the lips of the ancient tree around her face. When she'd finished, she looked up, her facing blazing with shame, but relieved that she'd be able to go now. However she'd expected Mr Sharma and his silent companion to react - laughter, disgust, scorn, lewdness - she didn't expect this. Mr Sharma's face was dark with anger. His fingers - wrapped around the pencil - white, and then the pencil snapped. He threw the broken pieces down on the table, and Kamala jumped back to avoid being blinded by the ricocheting shards.

Through tight lips, Mr Sharma, now standing over her, hissed. "You little gori bitch! You think we're a bunch of superstitious primitives, don't you? You think you can fob us off with some mumbo jumbo story... just because you've dressed up in a sari for fancy dress, just because your father screwed some Indian whore... it doesn't give you the right to come here and mess with our country, lie to us, patronise us... We have powers you can't even imagine, just wait... We'll get to the bottom of this with or without you. We know that you are some kind of activist in UK and that your associates have been sending you libellous allegations about our organisation."

He snatched a piece of paper out of the Silent Sidekick's hand and read "'We've found out some pretty scary things about your beloved Greenfields... Forget guns, forget weapons of mass destruction, think Weapons of the Apocalypse... there's nothing they want more than a good, profitable world war, and they've got it all set up... all they need now is the ammo.' Do you deny you received this from your informants in London? Hmmm? Do you deny that you are an activist who takes part in violent demonstrations against legitimate businesses enterprises who are merely trying to better the life of the average Indian?"

He flung a computer printout on the desk in front of her, bearing an image of her own face, fists up-raised, mouth yelling, eyes gleaming - a fuzzy Amelia just visible behind her left ear. Kamala was speechless. She just stared back at him, open mouthed... Mr Sharma was clearly heartened by the effect he'd had on her and decided to press home his advantage. "If you don't tell us, we'll find out anyway. We have your precious... " He twisted his head sideways to look at the Silent Sidekick's notes " 'Dhanmatbai' in custody right now (thank you for that piece of intelligence at least, you've confirmed our suspicions that she plays a significant part in all this) - and we are not constrained by diplomatic etiquette in our methods for questioning her..."

"WHAT??!!" Kamala screamed. "What do you mean you've got her 'in custody'? You're not the fucking police! You're just a jumped up company security guard...what are you doing to her? Get her out now! Take me to her...." The words were tearing through her sandpaper dry throat, while her mind cowered in a corner of her head saying, well done, Kamala, now you've really, really blown it... she waited for the new 'nasty policeman' Mr Sharma to explode, have her arrested, put her 'in custody', have her tortured - but to her amazement she realised that he had sat back down in his chair and both he and the Silent Sidekick were pressing themselves as far back as they could in their chairs staring at her in what looked like... fear.

With a sudden wave of relief that she'd got away with it... for now... she turned sharply and marched to the door, barking "Ok, if you won't tell me where she is, I'll find her myself!" Just as she reached it and was turning the handle, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass panels at the top of the door and flinched. Her eyes glittered like the coals of Hell, her face was pulled taut and gaunt with anger, her chin struck out - lengthening her neck, the twined snakes at its base looked hot and volatile, her hair - full of dust and sweat - was flattened against her skull... she looked like she was about to strike venom into a tiny morsel of a mouse. Striding down the corridor of Greenfields Asia Incorporated's sub-regional office, her legs - which kept catching in the folds of the sari that Dhanmatbai had dressed her in that morning - started feeling less solid and her sudden burst of confidence was evaporating fast.

She could hear raised voices in the air, sense anger, fear, crackling up through the nylon carpets, through the soles of her sandals. Some of it was her own, but there was more, much more, and it was growing, building up, like a raging river pressing against a dam. She strained to see if she could hear the sound of Dhanmatbai screaming... Where were they holding her? What were they doing to her? She had to find her, it was her fault they'd got her... Oh god, it was all her fault, the GPS watch, all the information she'd given Dr Singh, and now she'd given these bastards the ammunition they needed to do unspeakable things to that dignified old woman, who had trusted her, loved her. She'd betrayed her, she'd betrayed her. Remorse and terror welled up into her eyes... her view of the corridor clouded over and she didn't see the man coming towards her.

They'd collided before she knew it, he grabbed her arms. The rage that had given her such persuasive powers with Mr Sharma came lashing back, and now gave her a strength and ferocity she'd never known she had... she hit out with arms and knees and teeth, she knew she could kill him... would have killed him, but something about his voice broke through her fury... a voice like warm chocolate. She wanted to weep with relief, she wanted to throw herself into his arms like the sissy heroine of some dodgy forties film and let him carry her away from all this in his strong, brown arms.

But he was hissing "Come on, we've got to get the hell out of here... it's not safe. Quick, this way!"

He dragged her through a peeling door set in a recess of the corridor, and down a dark stairwell which reeked of garbage and piss. The voices were getting louder - angrier.

"No, stop, we've got to go back. They've got Dhanmatbai!"

"I know. There's nothing we can do... can't you move any faster, dammit?"

The multiple forces now pulling and pushing at her were paralysing her - the sari wrapping itself around her legs with every step, the tide of anger washing against the outside of the building, the crackling fury radiating from within it, the gaping hole of not knowing what she'd done to Dhanmatbai... But Deepak, pulling her down the stairs, three at a time, his fingers sunk into her upper arm, his other arm round her waist shoving her on, overwhelmed all other forces. It wasn't just his physical insistence - it was his certainty of the immediate danger they were in that she sensed and knew she couldn't fight. She'd have to come back for Dhanmatbai.

She grabbed fistfuls of the slippery material which was sucking at her shins, pulled them up to free her legs and bounded down the steps in time with Deepak. They'd reached the last flight of stairs now.

"What's happening, Deepak? Where are we going?"

"We're going to somewhere safe...just shut up and run, I'll explain everything later."

"But the danger's out there... we're going towards it..."

"The danger's everywhere - you know that. Stop! Shshsh."

They'd reached the bottom of the stairs. In the pitch dark she could smell musty sacks, stale sweat, motor oil, bidi smoke, the sweet rot of garbage, strong now. They must be in some kind of storeroom which doubled as living space for some lucky servant. Over the sound of her hammering heart and hers and Deepak's breath sawing painfully, trying not to make a sound and failing, she could hear the voices loud and clear now. They virtually surrounded the building, the voices were behind them and on either side, but not in front of them... the anger in them was raw and ancient, and it was haemorrhaging through a fresh wound.. and it was all centred on where they stood. She was just starting to wonder what they were waiting for when a blade of light sliced through a crack in the door with a roar.

"Now!" Deepak yelled and, flinging the door open, yanked her through and pushed her into the front seat of the Tata Sumo which was swerving towards them, screeching tyres, door hanging open.

"Kill the fucking lights, for god's sake, Sunil!" Deepak hissed, pulling the back door shut behind him. "And slow down - we're trying to sneak out quietly, not do a bloody Bollywood car chase!" "Sorry, sir, habit." Grinned the driver and switched the light off. But it was too late. A shout of discovery peeled away from the general chanting at the front of the building and a man came running around the corner - a white cloth tied around his head like a bandana, and a long-handled, sharp-clawed implement in his hand. He swung it down towards the windscreen, the iron claws coming straight for Sunil's face...

The car lurched forward as Sunil slammed his foot on the accelerator. There was a sickening thump and the car tipped slightly, rocked twice as first the front, and then the back tyres rolled over the body. Kamala could see the iron claws sticking out from underneath the car, like the lifeless hand of a slain giant. More quickly than she could have imagined possible, the Sumo, that only a moment ago had been alone in a dark, empty back alley, was completely surrounded by surging bodies, red eyes, screaming mouths, clenched fists.

Sunil was weeping. "Hai Ram, Ram! I've killed him. I've killed him in cold blood! Somebody's son. And now they're going to kill us. I deserve it, Deepak-bhai, Kamala Madam, I am a murderer, but they are going to kill you too... because of me. I have murdered you. Oh, ma, forgive me, I have killed everybody...". He was sobbing loudly, his elbows on the steering wheel, his head in his hands. Deepak leant forward from the back seat - squeezing his shoulder.

"Come on, yaar, pull yourself together. You were saving your own life... don't think about it now, just ease the car forwards, gently." But it was hopeless. There was no way the vehicle could move through the solid wall of bodies, not without killing many more of them. And Sunil was broken. He could not have driven now even if the crowds had parted like the red sea and beckoned him through...

"Sunil-bhai, I'm sorry!" Deepak was saying now "I should never have dragged you into this. Kamala, I'm sorry, I tried - It's me who's killed us all..." He had to raise his voice over the yells of the crowd, was almost yelling himself now. Kamala looked back and saw that tears were streaming down his cheeks too. She looked back at the press of bodies around the shuddering car, the fingers clawing at the windows, the faces contorted with rage pressed up against the glass, the dark eyes in blazing yellow pools boring into her.

There was something about them... something familiar... then it clicked. The skin the colour and sheen of walnut, the smudged tattoos showing beneath the white headbands tied across broad foreheads... So that's it, she thought. Of course, it makes perfect sense. She had betrayed them. They had given her their hospitality, they had fed her and sheltered her and told her their stories and in return she had brought destruction to their forest. The matriarch had put her trust in her, honoured her and allowed her into their most sacred ceremony and she had rewarded her by getting her arrested and tortured. And now one of them was dead. Not because of Sunil or Deepak, but because of her. And Sunil himself and Deepak were going to die too. Because of her.

There was a loud crack and Kamala felt something spatter on her right cheek and arm. She looked down and saw that she was speckled with blood. For a moment she wondered why she couldn't feel any pain. Then she looked at Sunil and realised it was his blood she'd been sprayed with. The arrow had come straight through the windscreen... its tail end was still in the hole it had made on the way through. Its head was buried in Sunil's left shoulder. He hadn't moved or cried out. He'd accepted his fate and knew he deserved it. But Kamala knew that he didn't. She knew that she had unleashed this chaos on all of them. She knew that it was her responsibility to put it right. She reached up and pressed a button. The hum of the sun roof sliding open was drowned out by the howls of rage that now flooded into the car.

Deepak grabbed her arm, shouting "What are you doing....? Kamala, are you fucking mad, sit down, get down, don't put your head up there, they'll blow it off...." but her arm slithered smoothly out of his grasp and his voice was soon far below her. She knew now what to do.

Oh how I laughed, my beauty, when we rose up like that out of the roof of the car! Did you see the look on their faces? Like they were seeing a ghost! They couldn't see me of course, my arms wrapped tight around you, all they saw was your sari wrapped tight around your sinuous body and your hair billowing out in the wind like a cobra's hood. And your eyes glittering like the coals of hell and your long, white throat... and we rose up and up, and flowed over the front of the car, the long tail of your sari flowing behind you, following you over the windscreen, over the bonnet and on the road, as the crowd parted like the red sea before you. Did you see the look on their faces? Not the fear and the shock so much... but the respect! They worshipped you, my baby. And so they should. You are their saviour. You are everybody's saviour.

Kamala moved slowly but steadily forwards. The car followed her like a well trained, but frightened, puppy, though Sunil still slumped, inert with grief and shock, his hands hanging limply in his lap. At the end of the corridor, which ran between the now petrified and silent bodies, someone was waiting for her.

The light from the main street which crossed this unlit back alley plunged the huge figure into silhouette, fizzed a halo at the edge of the cloudburst of hair, glinted off the gold that ringed each arm from wrist to elbow, gleamed blood-red off the curves of the huge, silky bosom. Kamala didn't need light to recognise her... after all she'd been waiting for years... had been expecting every minute she'd been in India to see her again.

The gold braceleted arms reached out to enfold her again.

21, Enlightenment

Once again Kamala found herself walking softly, swiftly through a forest path, one of a stream of women - silent but purposeful. This time, though, it was evening and the forest was already in darkness - the odd shaft of blood-red sunset piercing the gloom and seeming to set a leaves and twigs alight in its wake. Dhanmatbai led the procession, a black bundle under her left arm, a long wooden staff in her right hand. A group of older women followed, then Banu and Kamala and then the younger women. They had all bathed carefully before setting off, and one or two women had stayed behind because, as far as Kamala could understand, they were menstruating.

The only other woman who was not present, once again, was Ms Jensen. Dr Singh had tried to insist that Ms Jensen go too, but the women had been equally adamant that she stay. Dr Singh demanded an explanation, and Deepak spoke to the women for some time. Then he turned to Ms Jensen.

“I’m sorry Ms Jensen,” for the first time since Kamala had met him Deepak had appeared to be smiling - or rather trying to stifle a smile. “…but they don’t believe you’re a woman. I‘ve tried to explain but they say that the trousers, the boots, the hair all prove that you are not a woman.”

“Vot rubbish! Vould you like me to prove it to them?” She’d snapped, grabbing for the buttons at her trouser waistband.

“No! No!” Deepak and Dr Singh had shouted simultaneously - rather to Kamala’s disappointment, she thought it would have been rather interesting to see the reaction of the village women to the revelation of Ms Jensen‘s pale genitalia. Men were so prudish sometimes.

“It doesn’t matter,” Dr Singh had said. “I’m sure Ms Steel can handle it. Just do what I told you before, Ms Steel. Ms Jensen, you will be most useful back at base camp - I have some figures I need you to help me to collate.”

Ms Jensen had scowled, but hadn’t argued any further. As she and Dr Singh had turned to go back to the research tent, Deepak leaned towards Kamala.

“I didn’t have the heart to tell her that they not only don’t think she’s female - they don’t even think she’s human!” He’d said softly. Kamala stifled a giggle, partly at the thought of the poor, proud, dehumanised Ms Jensen, and partly at a sudden feeling of light-headedness that came over her when Deepak’s warm breath touched her neck.

She thought she’d seen her laughter echoed in his eyes, but it instantaneously evaporated (had she imagined it?) and then he’d looked at her earnestly, pleadingly “Don’t go!” he’d whispered fiercely, grasping her arm. It was almost as though he was concerned for her. Her heart had given a lurch, but then she’d realised that he probably meant “Don’t sell them out”, and she’d shaken him off.

“It’s not as simple as that - you don’t understand, they’re waiting for me.” She’d started moving towards the women, but he had pulled her back for an instant and whispered “Ok then. I’ll be close by.”

The forest path was almost entirely dark now, Kamala could just about catch the pale flash of the white bone decoration around Banu’s ankles flashing in and out of her skirts as she marched ahead of her. She concentrated on this, partly so that she could see where she was going and partly to distract herself from the thought of the stifling darkness around her - a darkness so complete it filled her eyes, her ears, her mouth as close and remorseless as a black velvet shroud. Unfamiliar sounds belched, and screeched and rattled at her out of the blackness, and she wished that the women would talk or sing, or even tread a little less softly. And there was something else - she sensed, rather than saw, that alongside the path there was a silent, slithering, scuttling accompanying her every step... she squeezed her fists tight, breathed in deeply and tried not to think about it.

Then suddenly she sensed a feeling of space, the faintest breath of light - or a slight loosening of the darkness. Banu put her hand gently on Kamala’s shoulder and they sat down on the ground. It was hard and stony, and Kamala tried desperately not to think about what might be creeping across the earth towards her exposed ankles. She tugged the hem of her sarong down over them and hooked it under her toes, making what she hoped was a an impenetrable tent for her legs. The darkness was making her eyes ache - she needed just a moment, a flash of light or shape or anything to help her get her bearings. She felt like she was floating in space, being suffocated by nothingness.

Over her sarong she was wearing a long-sleeved sweat-shirt bearing the Greenfields logo, and now she lifted the left cuff just a fraction to see the winking green light of the GPS wrist-watch. Reassurance. Guilt. But she was here, now, and there was nothing she could do. If the tree was nearby, the watch had already zapped its co-ordinates up to the satellites swinging over their heads and down to the listening post in Mumbai. Dr Singh was probably reading them off his laptop at that very moment and noting them in his little black book.

Just as she was beginning to wonder how long they were going to sit there for in the darkness and silence, Kamala started to sense, rather than hear, a low, steady humming sound. The grains of sand on the hard ground beneath them seemed to be vibrating with it. The fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck arched. Her scalp prickled. The humming was slowly growing stronger, louder, more intense. Where was it coming from? Kamala looked around her, but of course, could see nothing but blackness. Then, beside her, she heard Banu take a deep, cleansing, filling breath and suddenly it was obvious. The sound was coming from the women themselves. For some reason, Kamala’s heart lurched. She gave a soft, experimental hum herself… it was instantly whisked into the greater sound, a leaf in a vast, steady wind-gust. It didn’t seem out of place. It seemed right.

So she took a deep breath and hummed again, and this time she kept the sound going, on and on, for longer than she could ever have imagined possible, her voice was at the same time inside her body and everywhere - the voices of the other women were flying beside hers, lending it their wings, taking it higher than ever before. She felt every chamber of her lungs emptying themselves out into the soft, thrumming, black night air… and when there was not an iota of breath left in her she stopped. Relaxed. The humming continued all around her, weaving itself into her hair, her veins, like a swarm of bees in a mist. And without any effort at all her body contracted and the air flowed back into her and slowly she felt every chamber of her lungs inflate again, fuller, stronger, more vibrant than before. And again she hummed and filled the night with the softness and power of her voice.

The darkness in front of her took on a different quality. She looked up. A space of more concentrated blackness the shape of a human figure. Kamala's heart contracted for a second - but then the figure bent forward and moved closer to her face and she saw it was Dhanmatbai. Her eyes were serious but kind and there was something about the way she was looking at Kamala that reminded her of the odd occasions when she'd caught Mother looking when she thought she was asleep. A look which seemed to express all the love and concern and pride that she couldn't, for some reason, demonstrate more physically. Dhanmatbai had pulled something out of the black bundle at her waist and now she was holding it out to her. A small clay bottle.

Dhanmatbai pulled the rag stopper out releasing a strong, sweet, nutty smell, which Kamala recognised from the white root they'd dug up in the forest that first time. She'd smelled it again in the village, as Dhanmatbai slowly stirred something in a big grey clay pot over the fire, murmuring an extra seasoning of words into it. She was murmuring again now, her words forming a subtle counterpoint to the humming around them. Kamala took the bottle and drank. A warmth and lightness spread through her chest, rose slowly and shimmered in her head, sank and gently swirled in her loins. The humming swam back into Kamala's ears, and she took a deep breath and swam back out into the humming.

She often wondered afterwards how she’d known - how any of them had known - the exact fraction of a second to stop. But the same moment they did, cleanly and perfectly at a precise pin-point in time, the full moon broke from behind the clouds and spilled an avalanche of light down onto the clearing. A spiky black shadow shot out from each of the women, sitting at even spaces all around the clearing, a soft silvery gleam outlined each covered head. Slashed across some of them was a deeper shadow - Kamala saw now that there was a tree in the centre of this clearing too, but this one was not tall and straight, with arms up-stretched. This was an old wreck of a tree, a tumble-down, knock-kneed hag of a tree, with arthritic elbows and untidy strands of what looked like dead moss hanging raggedly from a few thin branches that sagged from the trunk - or what was left of it. In the moonlight Kamala could see that most of the centre of the trunk was hollowed out.

She wondered for a second if the women were paying her and Dr Singh back for their planned betrayal with a cruel joke. You wanted a sacred tree? Well here you go - here’s a sacred tree for you. Hahahahaha! But no. She could feel the heavy weight of seriousness in the air around her. Every mind was entirely focused on the moment, every soul subsumed by the moment. This was more than the sum of seventeen individual women sitting in a circle humming, this was a living entity, it was timeless and boundless. She knew that, despite all appearances, the tree was not dead. She knew this because the tree was calling to her.

Unmoving, it held out its bony branches and said “Come, child. Come”

Kamala resisted the call. She had sworn that the next time she felt one of her funny turns coming on, she was not going to give in to it - she was not going to let herself go stark raving mad. She sat tight. What on earth would the other women think if she leapt up in the middle of their ceremony and started prancing round the sacred tree? She glanced at them. They were all gazing at her expectantly. The tree said.

“I am waiting.”

Banu nodded her urgently forwards, and Kamala could resist no more. She got up and started walking forwards. Something - a root, a bush? - caught at the corner of her sarong and it pulled away from her as she stepped towards the tree. A delicious swirl of cool night air wrapped itself around her bare legs and thighs and bottom. Like she sometimes had been in childhood dreams, she was vaguely aware that she was walking through a crowd of people - and had no pants on!

But unlike the dreams this didn’t seem wrong. The onlookers were not jeering, they were simply there. What seemed wrong was the sweat shirt. She pulled it over her head and dropped it behind her.

The neck of her sweatshirt had caught on her hair band and had half way pulled that off too… she reached back and brushed the band off completely so that her hair poured down her back. The night air enfolded her body completely now. She moved steadily closer to the perfectly still, but nevertheless beckoning tree. And as she reached the inner edge of the circle of women, Dhanmatbai reached up and snapped the last impediment to her nakedness off her wrist. As Kamala took the final step into the space inside the tree trunk, naked as a newborn, she heard a satisfying crunching sound and knew without turning her head that the GPS device was being rhythmically crushed between the wooden staff and a rock, the way she'd seen Banu grinding spices to a paste with a stone pestle and mortar.

Kamala turned and leaned her back against the rough, cool, inner chamber of the tree. The ridge at the back fit perfectly with the groove down the middle of her back, as though it had been made to measure. I'm home, thought Kamala. Yes, I am home, said the tree. You are my Mother, thought Kamala. You give me life, said the tree. The faces of the women were turned towards her each with an identical expression that was not an expression, but which partook of a vast and unshakeable peace. Something flashed white between the trees at the far edge of the clearing. Then the age-crusted lips of the tree trunk began to draw shut across her face and the last thing she saw before the darkness completed itself, was Deepak bursting through into the clearing, his eyes wide, his face pale, his mouth a speechless cavern.


* * *

Kamala woke in her wooden cot back at the hut. She felt more rested, more alive, more complete than she had ever remembered feeling in her life… though she did have a vague memory of one time… she couldn't quite place it... it was a milky, soft, moist time... and at the same time she felt so tired she couldn’t even open her eyes. She heard a voice saying… “She’s smiling! She’s ok!” A voice like warm chocolate. A voice she wanted to pull around her like a fleecy blanket, to sink into like a warm bath. “When will she wake up?” I’m awake, Kamala wanted to say, keep talking. But she was too sleepy. So she let herself drift away again.

Some time later - a lifetime it seemed to her - another voice came, this one was somehow more complicated, it was smooth on the outside but jagged inside like human skin covering sharp implements, jagged bones. “Where is it? Where is it? Search her… That item is worth several lakhs of rupees! Someone must have stolen it! Or she’s dropped it! Send someone back into the forest to find it. Tch! This is what comes of entrusting valuable equipment to irresponsible young girls!”

Kamala wondered who this voice could be referring to. Not her, certainly, because she, she now knew, was not young. She was as old as the universe itself. And not irresponsible - she knew she was responsible for something huge… if only she could remember what it was… It amused her to think that someone could be so upset about the shifting of one tiny, single, object from one place in the universe to another - when eternity was sparkling and undulating endlessly around them and folding yeastily back on itself to recreate itself again and again… with a little help, of course.
“What’s she got to smile about?” the voice said tetchily.

Another few aeons of darkness passed. Then a voice that was not a voice said.

GOOD GIRL. GOOD GIRL.

And Kamala smiled in her sleep again. When she semi-surfaced again later there were more voices, these ones were rough yet smooth (the opposite of the smooth yet rough voice earlier) - in the way that an animal’s fur can be, in the way a tough little stream shoving steadily across its rocky bed can be. At first the meaning of the voices was hidden behind a kind of mist, but soon the mist melted away and the sense of it crystallised in Kamala's mind.

“This was a good thing. The maiden did well.”

“Yes, we were lucky she came.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it - she was sent.”

“Luck is one way of talking about that.”

“Yes, you are right.”

“So it is well now? It is safe?”

“I don’t know. The Mother's belly has been filled, her thirst has been slaked again, thanks to this girl. But something is not right.”

“What?”

“It is hard to say. The bangle she wore… it is dangerous.”

“You broke it.”

“Yes, but it is still dangerous.”

“What should we do?”

“I don’t know. Things are starting to happen which are beyond my understanding.”

“The girl will know.”

“No. She knows nothing.”

“But she is powerful”

“Her power is good in one world. In this other world it is no good. They are using her.”

“What can we do?”

“There is nothing more we can do. This is beyond us. We must wait and see. And hope for help.”

A shadow of anxiety fell across the vast golden lagoon of Kamala’s happiness, it wormed into her sleep and gave her troubled dreams, a grain of unease in a soft oyster of joy creating pearly nightmares - swelling into an urgent sense that she had something she had to do... had to do.

When she finally woke up properly and opened her eyes, she was ravenously hungry.
"What happened?" she murmured.