I turn and my foot slips on the mud. I stumble forward, catching myself on my hands, and a squeeze of panic grips me. It’s wetter than I’d thought out here. I can feel leaf stems and rocks under my fingers, but I’ve lost all sense of direction. I don’t know whether I’m in the jungle or still in the scrub. Worse, I don’t know how close I am to the river any more. It might be metres away, or it might be tonguing at my feet with little wet laps. I feel as though I’m slipping downward, as if I’m clinging to the banks like a spider scuttled under a rock. I can’t move. There’s a blind terror waiting for me out here: something about the wet scent of trees and the way my skirt clings to my legs.
And then I see something. A glimmer, a sheen and lick of light all the way through the trees that I can suddenly make out, too. My eyes have adjusted, and the river’s a hundred metres away and safe behind its banks. I get to my feet, pushing hair out of my eyes and patting myself down. I’m on a sloping hill that leads from the house to where the convent used to be. It reassures me, recognizing this hill. For the first time since I came back I feel exact, sharp and clear and fitted into a single place and time. I turn and start slowly walking back down the slope. I can’t see the house from here, just a strange dullish red glow. Ammuma must have turned the hurricane lamps up and lit all the candles. She’s doing her work there, keeping the spirits away while I thrash through the night.
I look over to my right, feeling my skinned palms with the tips of my fingers. I’m closer to the river now, and I can see it’s risen a metre since this afternoon. It’s black and muscular, littered with driftwood from upstream and matted with vines. Out here, I remember, floods happen fast as an ambush.
As I stare at it the water glints and brightens. It looks as though there’s a tiny light underneath. Phosphorescence, I think, luminous fungi, but it isn’t any of these. It’s a hot, burning glow, getting bigger and bigger, just round the bend where the house is. It’s a reflection.
I spin round. That dull red glow over the treetops is brighter now, and I can hear a hiss. Another sound, which I recognize slowly, stupidly, from public safety videos: the crackle of flames beginning to lick their way through wood. I stare at the glow in horror, but my legs won’t move. That rocket, notes some tiny, ice-cold part of my brain, it went towards the house. I start to run. I trip when I’m near the compound, but I’m up again with my hands bleeding and my throat thick with spit. I can see the house now. Flames are coming from one of the windows, inside a wing that Ammuma keeps sealed up. I scramble back over the wall, and now I can hear her voice over the snap and surge of the fire.
‘Durga! Get away!’
She’s above me at her bedroom window, fumbling at the shutters. A piece of wood drops on my shoulder, flaming, and flies off in a burst of pain. I hesitate at the kitchen door – Is it hot? Is there anything left inside except Ammuma, unbelievably in the heart of the fire? – but the door’s cool and solid. The kitchen and dining room are clear, without even any smoke, and I run through into the hall. Out here I can smell burning paraffin wax, as the fire gallops along Karthika’s polished, deadly floors. There’s a crash and scream from Ammuma’s room and smoke blurs my eyes as I race upstairs.
I tug the door to Ammuma’s room open. There’s a screen of smoke in here, with a red, snarling core at the side where the wall’s been broken through. My eyes are stinging and my throat’s raw and I’m pushing through the blackness, just like out in the jungle. I’m blundering forward, with my breath screaming and my eyes wide open, trying frantically to reach somewhere – some infinitesimal, knife-edge somewhere – where I’ll finally find Ammuma behind the smoke.
2. Once Upon a Time: 1922
‘Mary-Miss! You have to be nice.’
Mary looks up from the full stretch of her six-year-old height to consider this. She’s not so different even now from the grandmother she’ll grow up to be. She’s snappish, small, with fierce knees and uncompromising elbows; a little bit more trouble than anyone wants to take on.
‘No,’ she says, having given her amah’s plea all the consideration she thinks it deserves. Her hair is in two satiny plaits, her fists are on her hips and she’s standing over her new baby brother.
‘It’s my house,’ she tells Anil, stamping a tiny foot. ‘You don’t even live here. You don’t even have a bedroom. It’s just the old rattan-patch.’
‘Mary-Miss!’ Ah Sim, her amah, gasps. Technically Mary’s right. Her father, Stephen, flung some floorboards on the termite nests when he found his wife was pregnant again, nailed up a wall or two, slapped a roof on the whole thing and called it a day and a nursery. But it’s the way Mary says it that sticks in Ah Sim’s throat. Ah Sim’s a black-and-white amah – white blouse, black trousers, that’s all she ever wears – from mainland China. She’s left her own baby brothers behind and she misses her family dreadfully. She’s used to sons being treated like little gods, and Mary’s cavalier attitude shocks her.
‘The jungle spirits brought him, Mary-Miss,’ she says. Fairy tales like this are supposed to be appropriate for girls of Mary’s age. Truth without the bones in, as the bomohs say.
‘Well, I don’t want him. And if he
