Now, Chenni is doing crazy things, living in some dream world and neglecting household work. Thimmakka plans it very well. She goes to Puttaswamegowda’s house for the first time after her marriage, rushes into Chenni’s room like a whirlwind and berates herself for behaving so badly with her beloved sister-in-law. ‘How could I have treated you like this when you have been like a mother to me? How could I have left you and gone off to live by myself? How could I have said such nasty things about you? Some gumma must have entered my body! Will you ever forgive me, Chenni?’ she wails, exploiting Chenni’s affectionate nature.

She goes to the house every day after that and devotedly looks after Chenni. She combs her hair, calms her chatter, laughs with her, tells her stories, helps her in whatever household work that Chenni thinks she should do. She even cooks for her – miserable concoctions, made of angry thoughts, with a careless hand – but Chenni swallows them all with love shining out of her eyes. The villagers smile benignly at Thimmakka’s visible work and say to each other, we have been mistaken about her. There is good stuff in the girl after all.

Thimmakka then brings Ramappa to meet his sister. The reunion fills the headman’s house with joy. Some good spirit must have entered the village, the villagers say, see how Thimmakka has changed.

Yet, Chenni grows more and more frenzied as the time for the birth approaches. Thimmakka, exulting, decides that part three of her plan can be put into action. The next full-moon night she climbs the banyan tree, goes over the wall for the first time in her life and looks around. A herbal garden shimmers into her sight, exactly like what Annaiah said in his story so long ago. Deyi Baidheti’s herbal garden. If she remembers right, Deyi Baidheti has cured everyone, including the king and Kamadeva, from all ailments, with just her herbs. But if Annaiah is right, the garden will appear and yield whatever anyone wishes from it, not just healing herbs. She closes her eyes and makes her wish.

When she opens them, the shrubs, plants, trees and roots in front of her have a sinister glow around them, some red, some green, some white. She feels a powerful pull from a shrub with white flowers. Annaiah’s flowers, which she knows but has never seen before. She goes straight to a white flower, pulled by unknown forces. But with a massive effort, she stops just an inch short of touching it. No. She wills it away. That is not what she came for. She goes to the green shrubs, the red shrubs, she digs into the ground for the ghostly-looking roots, she snaps twigs from the gloomy trees. She brings them all in the seragu of her seere and makes her way to the Kamadeva temple.