“Are they poisonous?”
“I don’t know. But during the night, I watched each of our friends here wake up just long enough to eat one or two of them and then fall back asleep. They swallowed them whole.”
Priya sat very still with her hands resting in her lap and her face pointed out across the room as though she could see the people on the floor. “Then are these people starving to death? They must be if they’re only eating a single berry each day.”
“Maybe.” Asha frowned. “But why would six people all lie down to die in this house, which just happens to be providing enough food to keep them alive? There’s something wrong with these fruits.”
“No,” whispered the woman on the floor. It was same woman Asha had spoken to during the night, and though her eyes were not open, her lips were moving slightly.
Asha crept forward and leaned her left ear down to the woman’s mouth. “My name is Asha. I’m an herbalist. What’s your name?”
“Hasika.”
“Hasika, how did you come to be here like this? Are you sick? Where are you from? And who are these other people?”
“My family,” Hasika whispered. “Father, mother, sisters, brother.”
“Is this house your home?” Priya asked.
“Yes.”
Asha held up one of the dark fruits. “What are these? I’ve never seen them before.”
“I don’t know.” Hasika’s voice sounded like dry leaves on the wind. “We never noticed them either, until one day when we found one had fallen through a hole in the roof. We didn’t have much food, so we started eating those berries.”
“How do they taste?” Asha sniffed the one in her hand.
“Terrible. They sting and burn your throat and nostrils, but only if you bite into them.”
Asha nodded. “So that’s why you swallow them whole. You know, bad tastes are nature’s way of telling you not to eat something, right? How long have you been eating these things?”
“I don’t know. It must have been soon after the little prince was born. Prince Pratap.”
Asha glanced back at Priya before remembering that the nun knew nothing of recent politics and the name meant nothing to her. “Prince Pratap is now Lord Pratap Singh. He was born over thirty years ago.”
The shriveled old woman blinked. “Oh my.”
“I don’t understand,” Asha said. “There’s no way that you could all live so long just eating these little fruits.”
Hasika smiled. “Well, we don’t move about much.”
Asha looked around sharply. “Then who cleans up after you?”
“No one. No need.”
Asha frowned. “That doesn’t seem healthy.”
“It’s healthy. Unless you stop eating them.”
Asha quickly set the fruit down in the bowl and wiped her hand on her sari. “What happens if you stop eating them?”
4
“When I was old enough, I married a young man named Niraj from the village at the bottom of the road,” Hasika said. “He was a very good tracker and trapper, and he was very good at building and fixing things. So when we married, he came to live here with my family instead of having me live with him in the village. Here, he could build his own house and help my father, and be closer to the game trails. And by living away from the village, he said he could keep the smells of people off his clothing, which made it easier for him to go hunting.
“The first year was very nice. We built this house and he was able to catch more than enough food for our table and to sell in the village. But then we had a very dry summer, and there were fires, and Niraj would come home empty-handed more often than not. We were all very worried. We asked everyone for advice, even travelers on the road. There was talk about moving on over the mountains to another village closer to the sea. But one little old man said we should wait a bit longer, so we did. It was easier to wait than to go. And then one night the first of these strange fruits fell through the roof. They tasted terrible, as I said, but we were worried about starving, so we tried boiling them and baking them, and eventually we just swallowed them whole.
“Days went by and Niraj was still unable to find any food in the forest and soon we were all living only on the fruits.” Hasika sighed. “We grew weaker, of course. We knew we were starving, so one night we discussed the matter and decided to leave the next morning for the villages beyond the mountains.
“But that night, something strange happened. We dreamed. We all dreamed about this house and this forest. But the house was huge and beautiful, with rooms for each of us, and more food than we could eat, and the forest was warm and every branch and vine was drooping with bright flowers and delicious berries.” Hasika swallowed. “In the morning we talked and found we had all dreamed the same dream. My parents thought the dream might be a vision of the future, a message from Vishnu, a promise of wealth and happiness if we stayed in this house. So we stayed a little longer. Every day we ate the little fruits that fell through the roof and every night we dreamed of living in another world, a better world. And day by day, we all wasted away until we were too weak to move.”
Priya reached out to touch Asha’s knee. The nun said, “Could this fruit be cursed? Could the tree that drops it be possessed by some restless ghost? What sort of spirit would want to trap these poor people in a living death like this?”
Asha shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.” She brushed her long black hair behind her right ear, tugging free the few strands that snagged on the rough dragon scales on her skin. “We’ve been here half a day and I haven’t heard anything like that nearby.”
“Heard?” Hasika frowned.
Asha tilted her head down to show her scaled ear. “I can hear things, living and otherwise. I can hear you and your family, the forest, the animals, even the tree leaning over your house. But I don’t hear any spirits.”
“What happened to Niraj?” Priya asked. “You said the other people here now were your parents and siblings, but not your husband. Where is he?”
Hasika nodded. “After many months of living like this, lying on the floor, drifting in and out of our blissful dreams, Niraj said he couldn’t go on. He was ashamed of what had become of us. He said he would rather die outside than lie on the floor like a corpse, so he stopped eating the fruit.”
Asha glanced around the room. “What happened to his body?”
Hasika shook her head. “Niraj didn’t die. After two days without the fruit, he found he could sit up. He was still very weak, of course, but his skin was soft and he could breathe easy. He crawled outside and drank from the stream at the bottom of the hill. The next day he crawled back inside with half a mango he found on the ground. Day by day, he grew stronger eating the mangos and drinking from the stream until soon he could stand and walk, and he looked like his old self again. With only one mouth to feed instead of seven, it was easy for him live off the land here.”
“And then he left you,” Asha said.
“No. He stayed. He repaired the house, all but the roof so we could have our fruits,” Hasika said. “Niraj begged us all to stop eating the fruits. He still wanted to cross the mountains and find a new home. And I remember he wanted children.”
“But?” Priya petted her little mongoose.
“But I couldn’t give up the fruits. None of us could. The dreams are so vivid, so real. Sometimes I wonder if the dreams are the real world and this dark, dirty room is just a nightmare I sometimes fall into.” Hasika closed her eyes.
“If Niraj didn’t starve and he didn’t leave, then where is he?” Asha touched the woman’s cheek. “Where is your husband?”
Hasika sighed. “He stayed a year. For a whole year, he stayed here, watching over us, talking to us. I would wake to eat my fruit and hear him whispering to us in the dark, and then I would go back to my dreams. I didn’t
