Now Korok had to prepare the next bed, this one of medicinal plants, some of which he was to pluck the following week when they were ready. He would place them in special polythene bags and mark them with stickers from the epho’s office and someone from the epho’s team would send them off to places where Korok imagined people dressed like doctors would study them. Dig, dig, turn over …

‘Korok! Korok! There you are.’

Anchita was waving from her chair on the verandah. Korok raised his hand—he had never been comfortable with waving because people didn’t do that in Deogan—and smiled.

‘Come here,’ said Anchita.

Korok gestured to the flower beds to show he had a lot of work, but Anchita waved again, insistent, so he went to her.

‘Your flowers won’t die if you ignore them for a few minutes, O Great Flower-pen.’

Korok nearly choked on being called a god but realised it was funny for Anchita, and just smiled. City people talked in a strange way.

‘You didn’t come in the morning. I know, I looked for you. Are you all right?’

Korok said he was, and didn’t tell her about talking to the mahji. He wasn’t sure someone like Anchita would want to hear the advice of a toothless old man.

‘Cake?’ she said, uncovering a big steel box and handing it to him. ‘Maa made it. Have.’

Korok, never one to refuse free food, took a rectangular slice, dark brown with raisins on top, light brown and spongy in the middle.

It was sweet, and sticky, and smelt of orange and must have been made of eggs and such. It was horrible, and stuck to his teeth and palate.

‘Delicious, isn’t it?’ said Anchita.

Korok, who did not know what a kek should taste like, imagined this must be a very fine one, whether he liked it or not, and smiled horribly, his teeth stuck together. He sat down on his haunches and tried to swallow it as quickly as he could. He suddenly felt thirsty.

‘Have another. As many as you like.’

Korok took another, grinned again. It was still sweet, sticky and horrible, but he could not think of a polite way to refuse it. The things city people ate.

‘So is there one?’ asked Anchita.

‘Hmm?’

‘A pen for flowers.’

‘Umm-hmm,’ he shook his head and chewed rapidly.

‘It’s okay, eat your cake first,’ she laughed and waited for him to wipe his lips after he was done.

‘A pen watches over a place, not things,’ he said at last, his throat dry. ‘If the place has flowers, the pen watches over them too.’

‘So there is no pen for your flowers?’

Korok had to explain that pens could not just be created for places; they had to have lived there for a very long time, in sacred sites, and there were complex rituals for finding and binding them.