“All right, tell me,” Bernhard Zimmerkrug said, crossing his legs and opening the notebook he kept for the documentary. Something was missing, and he couldn’t go home before he’d found it. “As many details as you have. Who built the house, who lived there, what happened to them? Any stories associated with it, anything at all. This will be very helpful for our documentary, you understand?”

“Hari,” the woman replied. She sipped her tea and looked out over the paddies. Her house was on the outskirts of Anathakandu, behind the cricket field. “I’ll start now, yea?”

“Please. I’ll record our conversation, if that’s okay?”

She shrugged and took another sip of the tea. Bernhard turned the audio recorder on and placed it on the table between them.

“Please, Ms. Mandari. You can go ahead.”

“Hari.” Another sip of the tea, another pause. “The house was built by an Englishman, many years ago. You know that after the Portuguese and the Dutch, the British colonized the island? They were the first outsiders to control all of it, from the harbors to the hills, and they brought the tea. Anyway, this Englishman, he built a huge house for his family. Could have been in 1875, or maybe 1890. He grew rich off the tea trade—he owned plantations in the hill country. He was a powerful man. A greedy man. A man without imagination.”

“Sorry to interrupt.” Bernhard leaned forward. “But what does that mean? A man without imagination?”

“He didn’t understand this country, and he didn’t understand what he was doing. At least according to my mother. She heard it from her mother’s mother, who got it from a family who worked at the house. This Englishman, he was an animal in his previous life, a sow or a sheep. He had a flat mind—he couldn’t conceive of pain in other people. Not in people, and not in nature. His house was carved into the forest, driven like a stake into its heart. Whatever lived there before, the construction wounded it. Its blood clotted, its limbs shrivelled.”

“Again,” Bernard sighed. “Forgive me, but I don’t understand. The man cut down the forest to build the house?” Bernhard checked the recording. “Or are you talking about wildlife? About people living there?”

“No, not people. Animals were there, of course, and the trees and plants.” Mandari looked out over the paddies, and her eyes clouded for a moment. “But I am not talking about them. The forest itself was hurt, the spirit who dwells in it. Anik Amma. The White Lady.”

“I’ve heard this before, Bernhard.” Julia peeked out from behind her camera. She had set up her equipment far enough from the table to not be intrusive, but close enough to hear every word. “It’s a myth of the island, a sort of ghost that roams the forests. She appears to cart drivers when they rest at the roadside, and she asks them to guide her to the next village.”

“Okay,” Bernhard said, frowning. Sometimes he felt as if the cultural divide was insurmountable, as if he could never learn enough about this country. Julia had more of a connection to the land than he did; she spoke to the camera crew and the local videographer, who knew the folktales by heart. “Then what?”

“She carries a baby or a small child, and she asks her victims to carry it,” Julia said, eyes bright with mischief. “If they do, they die the next night in their sleep. Some British engineer wrote about her after he traveled Ceylon.”

Mandari shook her head. “She is not a ghost, and she is not bad. They call her the old lady of the forest, but she renews herself with swarming young bodies, with the pips of fleshy fruit. The saps and juices of the jungle flow through her. Her eyes are oily seeds, her teeth blossom in the night soil. She brings luck and keeps away the wild animals. Anik Amma nurtures those who live in the forest, and sometimes those who live around it.”

A flock of birds rose from the treetops and circled over the fields—bulbuls or maybe ioras—their chirping loud in Bernhard’s ears. Mandari sighed. “But not many are left living, no? The land has dried up. The people move to the cities, that’s why. But the Sap Mother is still here, learning a new way. Always learning.”

“Yes, due to climate change, I understand. We’re here to document this.” Bernhard wiped sweat from his forehead and shoved the damp handkerchief back into his pants pocket. “But I don’t understand what this forest deity has to do with the house? First, you say she was here before the people, now she needs people?”

“Have you ever worked on a farm? With dairy cows? When you forget to milk them, what happens? They are in pain, they cry and bellow. If you wait long enough, they go mad. There have been cows long before people came and built farms: but still, without people, without milking now they would go mad. Humans change the world around them, no?”

“I have heard that in some places, people are keeping their cows in the forest, and they seem fine.”

“Maybe someone else is looking after them. Here, we keep them close.”

“How do you know this Sap Mother exists?” Bernhard scratched the stubble on his chin. “Have you seen her?”

“I saw her. My mother saw her. My grandmother saw her. In the old days, she took the children without parents and raised them as her own. Now, the loris and the jungle mice suckle at her teats.”

“Fine. All right. Let’s say there is a forest spirit that doesn’t like the house. Is there anything about the house itself you can tell me? Who lived there after the Englishman?”

“For a long time, nobody.” The woman produced a cardboard box and took out a faded photograph. It showed a tall, heavy-set man and four children, the mansion towering behind them. The brightest part of the photo were the man's eyes, like two drops of spilled coconut milk.

“This man was living there as a caretaker. His name was Ushintha, and he mostly kept to himself. He was from another area, where he was a farmer. During the wartime, some kids came there from the North to stay with him.”

“What happened to them? When did they go back?” Bernhard clutched his pen and prepared to make special note of the woman’s answer. “I’m trying to establish a timeline.”

“People came there. Maybe they came for Ushintha, but the kids were already gone. No one saw them again, ever. People questioned the caretaker Ushintha, but he claimed not to know where the kids went. If you ask me, they’re still there.”

“They can’t be. I’ve been to the house, it’s abandoned.” Bernard blinked. “According to your knowledge, what happened then?”

“Ushintha moved out, and the house stood vacant for many years.”

Bernhard propped his elbows on his knees. “Why do you think people came for him? You mean for money? He was a bad businessman?”

“He had bad luck. The rains didn’t come to his fields, then they came all at once, followed by more drought. Where he’s from, the irrigation tanks are broken, fallen into disrepair after the colonizers changed the old systems of maintenance and ownership that they didn’t understand, after they imposed their own laws and customs on our people. You must know about this, about the temple and the tank, our ancient heritage. Sri Lanka has always been a hydraulic civilization, and our people have developed sophisticated ways to preserve water. The reservoirs store the rain, and the farmers use it to water their fields in dry times. But not everyone is close to the tank, and many tanks are in a bad state, their bunds collapsed, canals caved in. It’s a hard livelihood, very risky.”

“I see.” Bernhard scribbled a note to research this later.

“It wasn't too popular, this house, always driving the people away. You’ve been there, right? You feel drained and exhausted just from stepping into it. The stairs are too steep, the corridors too long, the doors too low. You have to contort to fit into it. You have to bend and bow. And it gets hot and dry in summer. Too dry.”

“You visited many times?” Bernhard asked. “At least the house provides some shade. We were filming in the paddies the other day, and the sun is brutal.”

“I’m still sunburned all over." Julia showed her red arms and neck.

Mandari placed the photograph back into its box and closed it. “After Ushintha, a family bought the house, a rich lawyer from Colombo. He came here with his wife and two children.” She lowered her voice. “One of them wasn’t right in the head. He was too trusting. I used to play with him, you know? A special kid, and that's what got him in trouble. He didn’t understand about the forest, and he didn’t understand his mother’s fears.”

“How so?” Bernhard held his pen ready. It always took a while for people to open up, and he had learned to recognize the moment. The next part was important. “What happened with him and that family?”