The Tigers sat now in the long, dry grass of the east, watching the village of Palliyagodella. They moved as a pack. It was over quickly. The villagers were not soldiers. They could barely hold the guns they’d been given. If they could fire a gun, they didn’t know how to reload one. They reached for their tools: their paddy scythes and yam hoes, anything they could grip, anything they could strike with, anything they could throw.

Don’t waste your bullets, the commander shouted. They flipped their guns around, one fluid movement they’d made before, a mock military tattoo.

The villagers tried to run. Others reached for shelter; for each other.

When the Tigers killed their wives and their children, the Muslims screamed and cried. In Tamil. No more, but no less.

Blood in the grass, on woven palm-leaf walls, on pressed-dirt floors. It was as red as his own.

Niri sobbed. He remembered what he’d done. He wrapped his arms around Dhara tightly while she called him mahan, softly. He closed his eyes but all he could see were the villagers.

•

Faith had faltered for years. A wound that bled slowly, but not fatally. Then they brought him in and faith died. She didn’t recognise him at first. It had been two years since he had disappeared into the jungle with his unit. The hair was longer. The skin was older. The body was cleaved, pieces missing.

‘Nine lives of a tiger.’ He spat out a laugh and clenched his jaw shut.

‘Amazing he’s lived so long,’ they said. He was barely more than twenty-one.

The tiger had been trapped.

‘Help him,’ his men pleaded as they lowered him to the ground. His men were boys too.

‘Hold him,’ she whispered. She needed to shout above the cries and the chaos, but her voice hovered in her throat. ‘Hold him, please,’ she said again, this time loudly. He thrashed against them; against the pain. The bandages on his arm were blood-soaked. She had no new ones to offer him. She cut the shreds of clothing from his body, green and brown stripes fell away. She caught them.

‘Hold this,’ she whispered, stuffing his clothing into the place where his left arm had been. He screamed, his eyes widened, as if he couldn’t believe what he was feeling.

‘Hold it hard. Roll him,’ she shouted. He was so thin, his body not much bigger than when she’d first met him.

She checked his back. It was gashed and bloody but nothing more fatal than the arm. She rolled him back. She put her hand in her pocket and pulled out the needle and thread. Rajan had told her to always carry it.

‘Make sure the needle is already threaded because when you have to use it, you won’t have time,’ he’d said.

He was right.