She sleeps in the dark. The moon wrapped in flames from the torches that reach the sky becomes blood red. Then, burnt to a cinder, it goes black and falls in ashes at dawn. She lies in bed thinking of the bali ceremony. Far bigger and greater than the golden snakes that emerge out of the red anthills were the serpents that had writhed and twisted round that demon head crowned with wide blue-black hoods. Those serpents had eyes that saw into the night through the flames to where those demons, the yakkas dwelt—Maha Sohon Yaksaya, Riri Yakka, Kalu Kumara Yakka, the Gara Yakku and Ratha Yakku. The peretayas, spirits of the departed, lurked in graveyards and desolate places. All power and fear lay within the great effigy of the yakka, with its towering figure, its huge loins.

This yakka must be propitiated with offerings and rituals—offerings of flowers and fruit, the slicing of hundreds of limes, the slashing of the neck of the sacrificial cock bird. The kattadiya dances through her dreams, leaping into the darkness torched with flames. Yet, before she sleeps Janine kneels every night at her mother’s feet and says her prayers. Mother sits on the four poster bed and the two girls kneel on either side of her. ‘Gentle Jesus meek and mild …’ they repeat after her. They wear cotton nightdresses that billow out, fresh white cotton sun-dried and ironed out by Mungo. They lay their heads on their pillows but sleep does not come easily. The sounds of the bali drums start up from the village of exorcists. The anodha tree in the garden comes alive with the stories that Mungo has related from her own childhood store of folklore. There are rakshasas in the trees, hiding there to catch you and carry you away. You must be careful not to be tempted by the kewun tree, where the kewun, soft and dripping with honey, hang like ripe fruit. If you eat of that tree you will be charmed. You will have to follow the rakshasi and be killed, eaten up, your bones cracked and split for the marrow. If you drop your fingernails or the hair from your head, you will be charmed. The charm will have to be dug out by the exorcist or you will get ill or go insane. There is poison and evil in speech and in sight and in thoughts. Evil in the mind of others—kata vaha as vaha vas dos; the evil may be uttered or thought. You can languish away. The plants will shrivel and die. The black clay pot in the paddy field is painted with white chunam, a grotesque grimacing fare, to scare away the birds and keep away the evil eye from blighting the harvest. The faces of the people round Janine are gentle but can they protect her from the demons that they themselves will never see?