Chapter
Twenty-Four
As Nora and Owen trudged up the Davies’ front steps, the sky exploded with color, the sun gilding the trees in gold. India’s sunrises were much like every other aspect of the country—startling in their intensity and allure. Owen motioned for the driver to stay with his trunk in the cart William had hired for them. Nora had lost everything—all of her clothing, the gifts she’d bought for her friends and family, and worst of all, the insects she’d caught and had hoped to use in the rebuilding of her decimated collection. The earrings she’d bought at the jewelry shop with Owen dangled from her lobes, and she touched one with the tips of her fingers. She’d put them, along with her brooch, on before the dinner. They’d been saved because of a party she hadn’t wanted to go to.
Had that been less than twenty-four hours earlier? Her shoulders sank beneath the weight of grief and failure.
Swathi opened the door at their knock and gasped. “What happened?”
She drew them inside, and Owen explained their departure from the party, Muruga’s attack, and the fire.
Swathi hugged Nora and called for her servant to make some tea. “I’m so glad you’re safe. You’ll stay here as long as you need to.”
Nora pulled back and shook her head. “We need to get Sita out of Kodaikanal. Otherwise Muruga will find out we’re here and realize she is too.”
Swathi shook her head. “I was expecting more time with her.”
“She doesn’t have more time.” Nora’s words came out harsher than she intended. Louder. And they drew Mr. Davies and Sita from a room down the hall.
“Akka!” Sita ran toward them and flung her arms around Nora. Nora sucked air in through her teeth at the stabbing pain from her bruises and burns, but she pasted a grim smile on her lips and ignored Sita’s questioning look.
“Hello, darling. You must go pack your things. It’s time for you to leave Kodaikanal. Your father isn’t happy, and he’ll soon find out where you are.”
Fear flashed in Sita’s eyes. “I will.”
“No, I’m not ready.” Swathi pulled Sita to her.
Mr. Davies gently loosened his wife’s fingers from Sita’s shoulders. “She’s not safe here, Swathi. You know that. And we must stay. At least until you are well.”
Swathi’s stricken cry tore at Nora’s heart, and she caught Owen’s eye, wishing she could fix this for her friend.
Sita took Swathi’s hand and pressed her lips to it. “Why do you cry?”
Swathi smiled down at her through her tears. “I’m a mother without children.”
Sita opened her mouth to say something, but a knock at the door startled everyone.
“Who is that?” Swathi said.
“Sita, go hide.” Nora pushed her toward the hall, and Sita darted away.
The servant glided past them with silent steps. He set a tea tray on a bamboo table beneath a mirror, gave them all a hard stare, then answered the door.
Pallavi stepped inside.
“What are you doing here?” Nora asked, censure and accusation in her voice.
Looking even more hunched than normal, her squinting eyes lost in the folds of her face, Pallavi hurried toward Nora. “Where is the child?” When Nora didn’t answer, Pallavi gripped her hand in a claw-like grasp and shook it. “I know she is here. You have no other friends in Kodaikanal and had no time to get her anywhere else. I told Muruga so this morning when he returned. Even now, he is gathering men to come and take her away. Where is she?”
Nora pushed her words past the lump in her throat. “Why should I tell you?”
“She needs to leave. Now. Muruga told me Sita has become a Christian, and I know he will kill her. Do you have a place to send her?”
Swathi pushed past her husband and stood in front of Pallavi. “Yes, I know a place.”
Nora pulled her throbbing hand from Pallavi’s grip. “Why? Why help her now?”
Pallavi wrung her hands, and a shadow of hopelessness crossed her face. “Our family has already lost one daughter. I won’t lose another.” She hung her head. “After her father left the baby to die, Madhavi ended her disgrace and torment. She hanged herself from a tree.” She pierced Nora with her gaze. “I will save Sita now. I will make it right.”
Her ragged words spurred everyone to action.
“I’ll gather her things,” Swathi said, clattering down the hall.
Nora shouted, her voice thin and shuddering, “Sita, come now.”
Minutes later, after a frenzy of good-byes and hugs, Sita, Owen, and Nora sat in the back of the covered cart, the driver smacking the leather reins against the horse’s back. In four hours they would reach the Kodai Road train station, and soon after, they would be on their way to Madurai and the woman who would care for Sita.
Nora shifted closer to Sita, the rough wood planks of the seat digging through her skirt and into her legs. Sita looked up at her, a strange gleam in her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me your sister had died?” Nora asked.
Sita played with the worn strap of the bag Swathi had given her. “She lives on still.” Nora didn’t have a chance to question her before Sita lifted her chin and said, “Akka, we need to stop somewhere first.”
Startled, Nora glanced at Owen before shaking her head. “Where do you need to stop? It’s not safe.”
“We must stop.” Sita pushed up the leather flap sealing them into the muggy, dusty cart and said something in Tamil to the driver. He shouted at the horse, and they turned down a street crowded with cows snoozing in the road. The cart stopped and started, taking too long to pass by the animals.
“I hope this is important, Sita,” Owen said, “because you’re risking your own safety. Nora’s, as well.”
Sita’s face glowed with certainty. Nora wished she could bottle it up and take it home with her. When had she ever experienced such tranquility? Her whole life had felt like a battle to be fought against convention and limitations. But here sat a child whose life had been auctioned off, who was about to set off on a multiday journey toward an unknown future, and she watched Nora with wise eyes that knew peace.
A peace that surpassed understanding.
Finally, the last cow lumbered away, insulted by the driver’s shouts, and they pressed forward to the end of the road. When they stopped, Sita hopped from the cart. “Come, Akka.”
Nora and Owen followed her into a squat little house. Though not much more than a hovel, it was clean, and the smell of spiced lentils permeated the dirt floor and mud walls.
An old woman sat cross-legged on a bed of lumpy mats and blankets. She held a baby in her arms and tipped the long spout of a pot into its mouth. The baby gurgled and kicked its skinny legs.
“Why are we here?” Owen asked.
Nora’s stomach clenched. “Sita, we don’t have much time.”
Sita approached the woman and said something to her. The woman nuzzled the baby’s cheek, handed it to Sita, and placed her hands over both their heads. She said something like a prayer, and Sita scurried past Nora and Owen and back into the sunlight.
Nora hurried after her and frowned when Sita climbed into the cart, the baby snug in her arms. When Nora and Owen climbed in, the cart set off again.
“What is going on?” Nora asked, casting a glance at the baby.
Sita settled it in her lap and counted the baby’s fingers and toes. She turned shining eyes up at them. “I stole a watch from Frederic’s tent and sold it to give money to the Bible-lady. She needed the money because her husband died, and she had no family. Will God forgive me?”
Nora didn’t want to diminish Sita’s sin, but Frederic had been guilty of far worse, and she thought a stolen watch the least of his problems. “I’m sure He will, if you repent.”
Sita wrinkled her nose. “I don’t regret it, though. Because it paid for the Bible-lady to take care of the baby.” She forced the infant into Nora’s arms, and Nora held the child in an awkward embrace. “I followed my father to the forest and brought her to safety.”
Nora’s eyes slipped to the baby’s narrow face, serious and capped by a thatch of dark hair. The infant gummed her fist and stared back. “You saved your sister’s baby?”
Sita nodded and gently rubbed a whirl against the baby’s scalp. “I couldn’t let her die, even if helping got me in trouble.”
Owen touched Nora’s hand. “Sounds like something someone else said this morning.”
When they got back to the Davies’ home, a huddle of men stood on the front steps, Muruga at the front, clenching his fists in Mr. Davies’s face. Owen hissed a command through the little window that allowed them to speak to the driver, and he passed by, drawing not even a glance from their attackers.
Nora’s breath released in a whoosh. The baby kicked her legs, brushing Nora’s arm with a narrow foot. She lightly pinched the baby’s toe, as small and red as a ladybird beetle, and smiled.
“I knew as soon as I met Swathi and Charan that they were supposed to be the baby’s parents.” Sita brushed her hand over the child’s wispy hair. “I wanted to wait until I was sure my father wouldn’t find me to bring her to them.”
They drove to the lake, and Nora pushed back the curtain so they could see the sun glinting off the water. Sita pushed her face toward it, gently squishing the baby so she could lean over Nora’s body and take in the scene, perhaps for the last time. Owen took the baby. Over Sita’s narrow back, Nora watched as he snuggled her to his chest and put his nose to her neck. His eyes met hers, and in them she saw something that made her breath catch in her throat. Something that spoke of more than stolen kisses.
Their driver took them through Kodaikanal’s streets, circling the market and zigzagging through narrow alleys. Nora dropped the curtain as they drew closer to Swathi’s house twenty minutes after they first passed.
She peeked through the window. “Muruga’s gone.”
Owen had the driver pull around the back of the bungalow, and they crept toward the back door, Owen and Nora flanking Sita and the baby. Not bothering to knock, Owen pushed the door open and ushered the rest of them into the parlor. Swathi and her husband, sitting together on the cane settee, bolted to their feet when they entered the room. Mr. Davies kept his arm around Swathi, whose red-rimmed eyes and quaking shoulders bore testament to her heartache.
Sita, holding the baby in her arms, pulled away from Nora. She smiled up at Swathi and Mr. Davies. “This is my sister’s baby. She has no parents. She has no mother.”
Swathi gasped and fell to her knees. She pulled Sita to her chest, one hand on her back, the other resting on the baby’s head. Mr. Davies knelt beside her and enfolded them in his own embrace. The baby began to cry, a thin wail that separated their cluster. Swathi stared at the child still nestled in Sita’s arms, and her own twitched.
Sita pressed a kiss to her niece’s head, her eyes sliding closed for a moment. Then she gently shifted the baby to Swathi. “Good-bye.”
Swathi held the baby to her heart, and a suppressed sob made her body shudder. She tilted her head back, eyes on the ceiling, and her lips moved in a silent prayer. Then her gaze fell on Sita, whose small face shone. “I wish you could stay with us. I would love you too.”
“I know, Athai, but it’s enough that you love her.”
Owen took Nora’s hand and squeezed it. She leaned her head against his arm, and beneath the layers of grime and torn silk and the frantic beating of her heart, something whispered to her. A cool cup of water soothing her parched throat. A breeze in the middle of India’s scorching summer. A dance beneath monsoon rains.
This is right. This is good. This is worth it.
She turned her face into Owen’s chest, inhaling the scent of ash and sweat, smelling only his strength and goodness. She didn’t hold back her tears. Didn’t deny them. Didn’t feel the need to dash them away.
“Peculiar,” Owen whispered, his lips brushing her ear, “you’re crying.”
She nodded. He wrapped his arms around her, and together they swayed to music that sounded like joy and sorrow all bound together.
In Madurai, they rested at the home of a woman named Aneeta. She lived in a compound an hour from the city, surrounded by tamarind trees and laughing children.
She’d taken in over a hundred girls and a few boys over the years, most rescued from British chaklas, child marriages, and temples where they were prostituted. Some were the children of women who had already lost hope of escaping. They chattered in a dozen languages, darting around the huts and palms, flashing like peacocks in their brilliant saris and bangles.
On the first day, Nora had slept, her body wrapped around Sita’s, on a soft mat beneath an open window. They woke and ate idli and listened to the parrots trilling in the banana trees outside. Then they slept some more.
After two days, Nora joined Owen on a trip into Madurai, where she replaced some of her clothing. Aneeta had offered them the use of a cart and driver, and now they rode back to Malarkal Vitu as dusk descended, bracing their hands against the splintered board that served as a seat and gasping from their injuries every time they were jostled against one another.
“Your face is finally showing color again,” Owen said.
She patted her cheeks. “I’ve had time to rest and think. And I’m so relieved Sita is safe.”
“She’s already made friends. And Aneeta is a warm woman. I’m sure Sita will thrive here.”
“I wish she could have stayed with Swathi and the baby. Maybe when they return to Madurai?”
“Maybe.”
They turned onto the palm-lined path that led to Aneeta’s home, and Nora rearranged the skirt of her new dress. Not a style she normally wore, the cream linen was sprigged with pink and blue flowers and the bodice featured a frill of lace and pearl buttons. Her mother would love it.
Nora had gone to the dressmaker’s that morning as soon as they arrived in the city, and was promised something simple before she left. When she went back to pick it up and change out of the silk gown that was long past needing to be shed, she groaned at the sight of it.
“It’s too much,” she told the little Welsh woman who dressed all the fashionable Europeans in Madurai.
“It will look wonderful on you!”
“I only want to look clean and presentable.”
The dressmaker glanced toward the door that shut out the rest of the shop and Owen. “He’ll like it.”
“I don’t like it.” But Nora had sighed and stripped out of her clothing, kicking the dress into the corner. “Fine. I need something to wear. Just make sure all the rest of the items I’ve ordered are unadorned. Simple.” She took the skirt and wrinkled her nose at the pleats and ribbons trailing down the back. “I guess I’ll have to purchase a bustle today as well.” She could already hear Owen laughing at her.
But he hadn’t laughed. Even now, he sent admiring glances at her that warmed her insides.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Why? You look beautiful.”
“I look exactly the same as I do in my regular attire.” She crossed her arms and stared forward, over the head of the driver.
Owen poked her side. “Percipient, your prickles are showing.”
She bit down a grin. He liked her prickles. And even if he thought she looked nice in lace and ribbons, he liked her still in plain wool.
“Look,” he said, pointing toward the sky.
Above them, a butterfly flapped. It dipped and landed in Nora’s lap. There it spread its brilliant wings, showing dusky blue and black as soft as the fabric of Nora’s skirt, and round orange “eyes.”
“It’s a blue pansy, I think,” Owen said. “Junonia orithya.”
Nora held her hand over it, ready to cup her fingers and trap it beneath them. Ready to catch one final keepsake. One that wouldn’t disappear in flames.
Her hand wavered. The butterfly fluttered its wings.
“Do you want it?” Owen asked.
“Yes.” But she couldn’t bring herself to pinch its thorax. To see its life seep away and watch it become still. “I think . . . I think I’d like to remember it just like this.” She slid her finger toward its legs, then lifted it between them, shifting so that she faced Owen. Her eyes met his over the blue pansy. “Some things are better left to memories.” They couldn’t always be caught and mounted, a token of things that had been.
The butterfly lifted from her finger just as they pulled onto the expanse of dirt that circled the main house. A half dozen children, Sita among them, spilled from the door.
“Akka!” Sita darted toward the cart. The weariness stooping her shoulders had lifted in the days since they’d arrived. Her bright smile and dimples flashed without reserve now, and she ran and played and danced without concern.
Owen hopped from the cart and came around to help Nora down. With his hands spanning her waist, he set her on the ground, and a gaggle of children surrounded them. Sita’s warm hand slipped into Nora’s, and she tugged her forward, chattering about a caterpillar she’d discovered. A mosaic she’d made out of beads. A friend she’d made.
Nora smiled down at her, feeling more than seeing the soft edges of memories hemming Sita’s thick braid and shining brown eyes. A dream floating away. One that wouldn’t be caught and pinned down.
With her free hand, she reached for Owen’s, and he rubbed his thumb over her skin. As though knowing her thoughts—the crushing sense of loss—he leaned toward her. “Just enjoy this moment, Nora.”
Beside her, Sita hung on to Nora’s hand and hopped down the path after her new friends. She was all vibrant color and unrestrained joy. A butterfly who had escaped. A drifting dream.
Three days later, Nora’s clothing was ready. She wished she’d ordered more than two simple skirts and three bodices. More than two sets of underclothes and a nightgown. Because then she’d have more time in this place of rescue and peace. More time with Sita.
Sita walked beside her now, down the palm-lined path. They’d finished breakfast, and Aneeta had shooed them from the house, telling them to say good-bye in private, away from dozens of prying eyes.
“Must you leave? Can’t you stay?” Sita clasped Nora’s hand.
“Our ship leaves from Madras next week, and we must get the next train from Madurai if we’re to make it in time.”
“What if you just stayed? There are so many insects in this area. Beautiful Lepidoptera. I could continue assisting you.”
A macaque scampered in front of them and launched himself up the trunk of a palm. Settling atop a tight bunch of coconuts, he screamed down at them. Nora tugged Sita farther along the path. “I wish I could, but it’s time for me to go home.”
“I will remember you always.”
“And I you.”
Nora was well-acquainted with grief. She recognized the symptoms—the heaviness in her limbs and thickened throat. The leaden way she walked beside Sita, as though she couldn’t take another step. The way her heart—an organ she was certain had little to do with her actual feelings—tightened and then seemed to shatter within her chest.
She recognized them and was helpless to resist.
She stopped in the middle of the dusty road and drew Sita to her. She rested her chin on the child’s head and sniffed to stem the tears. “You have changed everything. For me. For your sister’s baby. For yourself. You are brave, and I’m so proud to know you.”
Sita tilted her head, peering up at Nora from eyes that had seen too much. “Let’s not cry today.”
Nora dashed away the tears that had slipped down her cheek and smiled. “All right. What shall we do?”
A mischievous grin appeared on Sita’s face, and she splayed her hands above her head. “Let’s dance, Akka.”
Nora laughed and matched Sita’s pose. Sita began to sing a beautiful song in a language as different from English as India was from Nora’s own country. A song that told a story in words Nora couldn’t understand, about joy and beauty and life.
A song of friendship and love.
A song that pierced Nora’s spirit and made her forget her grief.
They danced beneath the shade of palm trees, Sita’s sweet voice punctuated by an irate monkey’s shrieks. They moved—Sita gracefully, Nora less so—in tandem.
And as they swiveled their hips and waved their arms, Nora impressed Sita’s smile onto her heart and into her mind. She never wanted to forget its brilliance. Never wanted to doubt, for even a moment, the value of what she had learned and discovered in this faraway place.
Nora stood at the ship’s railing as it slipped from the Madras harbor and began its three-week journey to England. They’d stay with Owen’s widowed aunt in London for a week before boarding another ship to New York. She’d be home soon.
She had sent a letter to her mother from Madurai, telling her she was headed home, but not explaining why so soon. Hoping she wouldn’t ask.
Small fishing boats slid past them, the rowers balanced on flat feet and pushing shirtless bodies against the long oars. The city disappeared into the smoggy horizon, and Nora, blinking eyes gritty from lack of sleep, turned away from India.
“Are you okay?” Owen touched her arm. The skin beneath his eyes sank into dark circles, and worry lines pulled his mouth taut.
She nodded. Then shook her head. “In truth, I don’t know. I can’t help but feel I’m leaving too soon. I want more time to work. More time with Sita and Swathi. I want to stay more than I want to go home. Everything feels a little undone.”
Owen chewed on his lower lip, then turned back to look toward the city. When she joined him at the rail, eyes trained on the city of Madras fading on the horizon, he asked, “What do you see?”
“Water. And just past that, a mind-bogglingly complex country full of paradox. Colorful insects that capture the imagination. Children who capture hearts. A place that has captured me fully.”
Her quiet laugh danced around the edges of her mouth. “I think I’ll stick with science.”
“You accomplished so much here. I see a land where you learned your worth as an entomologist.”
She tilted her head. “You see that?”
“You discovered a new butterfly species in this place. You learned to let go and dance.” He glanced at her, and his eyes softened with the memory.
Nora flushed, remembering the way she’d moved beneath the heavy sky to music that pulsed just below her skin. Even now, she swayed just a bit, as though she could hear Sita’s song in the sea breeze.
Owen cupped her cheek, his thumb rubbing the planes and angles of her jawline. “I see a place where you made a stand and realized some things are more important than your career. A place where you learned to let your guard down and allow something more than science and work and insects—and yes, even that journal—fill your heart.”
Warmth filled her belly and swept through her. She leaned into Owen’s hand, then turned and pressed her lips to his palm, breathing in the earthy scent of India’s land and air.
He bent to whisper in her ear. “India is the place you loved me first, and for that, it’s my favorite place of all.”
She wished for a lonely shola forest. She wished for a waterfall that sprayed her face with cooling mist. She wished for a few more moments alone with Owen in a bouncing mattu vandi before life went back to normal.
As she leaned as close to Owen as she dared in so public a setting, her heart soared upward, a small piece breaking away and staying behind in this land of unfinished work and intoxicating dreams.