She did not know how many they were and what weapons they carried. Now the voices from the rock came loud and clear. The entire village must have made a collective decision about this. She heard voices near the bush again.

‘Our Vellapayyan can finish everything in two minutes. All we need to do is to find her.’

‘There’s a crowd now. If I had found her earlier, I’d thought I would enjoy the fair-skinned girl that has bewitched Nōndi. Now it is too late.’

‘We can still enjoy her once we’ve caught her.’

Saroja was sweating profusely. The hideout within the thicket was not going to protect her for too long. She contemplated slowly inching further into the bush, as far as she could. The thorns would tear her skin, and there might even be snakes, but so what? Suddenly, she started thinking clearly. Holding her arms tight across her chest, she tried to move her feet slowly, but they refused to budge. With great effort, she tried again, and felt like she had managed to move ahead just a bit. She told herself that if she moved to the left, she’d be moving further into the bush. It did not matter if she died of snakebite or because she was stung by an insect. She could not let these people catch her. Surely her destiny had not brought her all the way here to succumb to these ruffians.

Her body suddenly slammed against an obstacle. A tree.

Immediately, she heard someone cry out, ‘Hey, look, there! The tree inside the bush is moving!’

The sound of someone coming running.

Seized by great terror, her entire body drenched in sweat and tears, she crawled on all fours like a centipede scrambling to avoid being trampled underfoot, and started moving slowly and purposefully, determined to escape.

SIXTEEN

SIXTEEN

With every move Saroja made, some of the plants in the bush shuddered and swayed.

Would even the plants and trees betray her now?

I have come placing my trust in you. How can you betray me like this? She pleaded with every little thing her hands touched. She imagined the roots and stems of the plants to be human feet and clasped them tightly, touching them, begging them for mercy.

But they paid her no heed. Like fluttering flags that could arrest one’s attention even from a distance, everything she touched nodded and shook its head, signaling her presence. The insects that had been sitting in these plants now rose up and swarmed above in a buzzing cloud, their drone travelling through the air. The birds that had built their nests in the bush were confused at this intrusion and they flew about, not knowing where to perch. She too did not know what she was doing or where she could go.