Her head was full of images, strange thoughts …. All the blood must seep into the earth, as if the gods must be propitiated, as if we have had a long drought. What new plants will grow here? Or will it remain a desert, haunted by ghosts and spirits? Shouldn’t we leave it this way, to remember them? I must go down to the river, wash my clothes, bathe, watch the water change colour—like my dreams, the dreams that will visit me night after night.

When can I ever complete this journey? Yama told where—that this is my first journey into the darkness of the underworld …. What’s that sound … a groan? Not all are dead then.

She knelt down. Her back ached with so much bending. She felt the man’s breath touch the palm of her hand like a slight vapour, a cobweb of mist that faintly wreathed round her fingers.

‘I won’t leave you alone. I’ll stay by you,’ she said, sitting beside him, wiping his face with the corner of her towel, pushing away the tangled strands of hair from his forehead. She supported his head in her arms.

‘Mother,’ he uttered faintly. His life was ebbing away.

‘Mother,’ he repeated. ‘Thirsty.’

‘Wait, I’ll bring you a sip of water. I’ll go back to my hut. Wait. Don’t move.’

No, there wasn’t time to go back, to fetch water, to give him that drink. Life-giving water? No. It would soon be over. She felt the spasms of his chest, the painful heaving of that wounded breast. She held him until he was still. Her hands were stained with blood. She wiped them slowly but the blood felt sticky, oozing into her skin, her flesh.

That was the end. All she could give him was the hope of that sip of water. And he had called her Mother. That was enough. She was a comfort to him and that was more than all the others had on all the battlefields where they gasped out their lives.

Already, so many bodies and she hadn’t found Sena yet.

What could a village do without all its men? We’ll have to take their place now, we women, she thought. I’ll go back to my daughter. Perhaps there’s still hope. They may have taken him away for questioning. Seela will have to continue living, like all the other women. It won’t be the end for us, not while we still have breath.

She rose wearily. She wanted to retch but her mouth was dry, her throat parched.

Two hundred and fifty of them. All the men in the village. Gone. Swept away in that great flood of death. But the women would bear more sons. Life had to, would go on.

The Sand Serpents