As she lay sideways, tears rolled down her cheeks. She had no idea where she was and if anyone would even come searching for her. She wished for Bhavesh to be her rescuer. There was no one she wanted to see more. She wanted to look at his face, tell him that she hadn’t left him. Coming to Vanyasa hadn’t been her choice; she had been abducted. She recalled the last time they had talked—over a month ago.

‘Stop deflecting, Bhavesh!’ She ran her fingers over his hand, his phantom right thumb. They lay in each other’s arms, behind the brambles, across a river from their land in Madhya Pradesh. ‘We are old enough now to fend for ourselves.’

‘Are we?’ he asked.

‘You know what the elders say. The jungle is thinning, and the city folk are now as close as the southern pond. There’s no future here . . . But in the city, we could do anything, any work that would feed us. Think about it, Bhavesh; we wouldn’t have to sneak arou—’

‘What’s this?!’ Bhavesh stared at the bruises on her arm. ‘Who did this . . . Was it . . .’

Prithvi nodded.

‘WHY? Punishment for breaking which rule?’ Bhavesh said. ‘No one knows about us, so it can’t possibly be that—’

‘It is! Your old friend still has his suspicions, Bhavesh. Or have you forgotten when Ujal saw us together in the fields last year? This is what I mean, love. It’s getting increasingly difficult for us here. You know what,’ Prithvi was now joking, ‘I will do it. In the morning tomorrow, I will go to the southern pond and wait for an hour at sunrise . . . and if you don’t decide to tag along, maybe I’ll find myself a boy among the city folk.’

Bhavesh laughed. ‘I guess then I have no option but to join you.’

They both knew that they could only dream.

Within a few hours of that rendezvous, when Ujal and Prithvi went out hunting, they had been drugged and kidnapped by the Alok brothers, thrown in the back of a small truck, and delivered to Sanaka in the valley. But Prithvi knew Bhavesh would have assumed that she had gone to the city and followed her there.

She stood up, trying to ignore the pain in her shoulders. The hut she was in, with its considerably ornate interiors, was unlike any she had seen in Vanyasa. Ascetics of the valley only considered their homes as roofs over their heads, perhaps not more than a necessity—but this cottage was someone’s home. Wax overflowed from candles that occupied every ledge and sill. A turquoise curtain served as a door and opposite it was a fireplace supporting a teapot.

She was alone. Prithvi knew she had to act fast. She decided against the main exit and went to the window. When she drew the pink-dyed curtain aside, light illuminated the interiors. The view was obscured by tall peaks coated green with vegetation, the result of recent rains.