I layer the fire just like Papa showed me and move my numb hands slowly, trapping a match between my thumb and forefinger. I strike it against the box, but it tumbles to the wet ground.
I clench my jaw to fight back the tears as more snow begins to pile up against the shelter. Using all my concentration, I strike the match again. It sparks and I nudge the yellow flame toward the fine strips of kindling. It crackles straightaway, but the kindling burns in a second, then dies out.
I check on Jeevan inside the shelter, tell myself to stay calm, and go through each step once more. This time it works. I’ve done it. It’s a small fire, but the bark is alight. I gather smaller sticks and edge them toward the flame, which grows stronger. The glowing logs sizzle and spit as the storm blows even more fiercely.
I collect the drier branches from under the trees and pile them onto the fire, saving some in the shelter so we can have dry wood for the morning.
Inside, Jeevan coughs and mumbles and the snow keeps falling, floating through the trees, turning everything ghostly white.
I hope the fire is big enough to keep the tigers and leopards away through the night.
I take a glowing stick from the fire, look into the opening of the shelter at Jeevan with his eyes closed tight, and imagine that it’s incense. I circle him with the smoking ember and say a prayer.
I throw the stick back in the fire, take Jeevan’s hand, and hold it tight.
If only you’d stayed at home like you planned, you would have been safe.
“I’m here,” I whisper, tears sliding down my face. “You’re just tired, that’s all, you’ll be fine in the morning …”
And then I say another prayer, in silence this time.
Please get better … Please, Lord Shiva, don’t let him die.
All through the long fear-filled night, I listen to the wind whistling through the branches of the shelter, petrified that Jeevan is getting worse, or that the fire will go out. I imagine snow leopards waiting in the darkness, ready to pounce and devour us.
“Ma!” calls Jeevan, coughing. “Are you all right, Ma? I’m sorry.”
I leap to feel his forehead. It’s hotter than yesterday and even now, in the first light of dawn, his cheeks are burning.
“Jeevan?” I whisper softly, stroking his hair, like I know his ma would.
He’s lost in his own deep cavern of fever and haunted dreams and doesn’t answer.
“Jeevan,” I try again.
His laugh is high and strange sounding. “The tigers,” he says, gasping. “My papa said be careful of the tigers.”
He’s not making any sense, but I know it’s the fever speaking. Once, when I was ill, Ma told me I said odd things in the night. She laid a fresh cotton sheet on my bed, dampened my forehead with a cool cloth, and stayed with me until I was better.
I have to get this scarf off, but it’s so tightly wound around him that I can’t. He needs to stay cool—I should have done this last night. I grip it tightly, tugging it free, and hurl it aside. “I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll look after you better.”
I look out into the smoky-gray dawn, the wind whirling loose pine needles from the trees in spirals to the ground. I’m grateful that at least it’s stopped snowing, and even though the fire is smaller, it’s still glowing.
There’s no food left in the bag, only the water we collected yesterday, and I know if I want to save Jeevan, I have to find help. But without a map to guide me, how will I find my way? Jeevan is the star reader.
I prop him up and put a bottle of water to his lips. “Jeevan? Try to drink this.”
He sips with his eyes still closed and I lay him down again, dampening the edge of the scarf, dabbing his forehead with cold water. I don’t want to leave him in case the fire goes out and his human scent calls animals from miles away, but if I don’t go, he might die. Fever claimed his brother and now might be coming for him, and guilt stabs me again and again.
Outside, everything is hushed and veiled in white. I hear something move far up in the trees and raise my head to see what it is. A lump of snow falls to the ground by my foot and a loud clucking sound makes me jump.
The spirit bird! Its wing tips are outstretched as it flies down through the branches and lands on top of the shelter.
My heart pounds with amazement and gratitude. “Have you come to help?” I begin to feel braver and more certain that it must be Nanijee, because why else would I sense that rhythm again, the one that feels like it’s connecting me to my ancestors, making me feel less alone in this forest wilderness?
I stand on a log and stretch my fingers toward it like the last time, but now I really want to feel its feathers, to see whether the touch reminds me of my nanijee’s hand. It stays still for a moment, bending its head toward me, but hops away as I try to stroke its wing. “Dearest Nanijee,” I whisper. “It has to be you … Doesn’t it?”
I jump to the ground and it sits watching while I bring the dry wood out of the shelter, piling the branches upright all around the glowing embers of the fire and pushing kindling into the gaps to get it going. I then stack all the wood on the fire so it’s as high as I can make it, the dry wood crackling, shooting fiery sparks into the air and making my face tingle with heat. At last, I warm my frozen hands, raw and scratched from carrying the branches, and pause.
All this time the spirit
