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When I was ten and my sister Deepa was seven, we met the dog-duty ascetic. We’d endured needlework and hair-plaiting lessons followed by endless instruction on preparing pujas, offerings to the gods. Now we were lolling about in the shade of the mango tree outside the kitchen of our teak residence—palatial by village standards, three stories high—which housed my father’s family and the families of two of his brothers. It had rained earlier; puddles flashed and steamed in the sunshine, and the air was scented with cumin, greenery, and a faint drift of dung. The moist heat weighed us down, and we were hoping a wandering holy man would come along to distract us. If we were lucky, we’d hear stories of distant western lands populated with blue-black demons made of smoke; purple-scaled mermen with arms and chests as pink as raw fish; and spherical people who had two faces, four hands, four feet, and two sets of sex organs—so complete in themselves they never had to marry or search for enemies to vanquish. Holy men tended to come around mealtimes, and Cook, with her jowly grin and brown midriff bulging over her green-striped sari, would direct the more respectable ones to my father’s pavilion and feed the others leftover rice or lentils. Our mother, Pamita—“Ama” to us—was upstairs in the women’s quarters attempting to predict the future from grains of sand and preparing our older sisters for marriage.

At long last, we saw a holy man in the distance, shambling on all fours between the millet fields, sniffing at puddles and growling. At first, I thought he was an oversized monkey, then I noticed his long gray hair, matted and clotted with mud, all but covering his downturned face. He was also naked.

“How ugly he is!” I nudged my sister.

Deepa looked as though she was about to cry, her round little face stretching into an enormous sorrow. She loved to trick us into worrying about her; then she’d burst out laughing. “Yasi, look at his doodle!” She covered her mouth, knowing that her laughter was impertinent. But the audacity of the man’s nakedness—and of the gods for inventing it—captivated us, and we both started laughing.

“Yasi! Deepa! Stop it!” Cook stood in the kitchen doorway, her thinning gray-streaked hair pulled into a single braid like mine and Deepa’s, her scalp glistening in the heat. “He’s a dog-duty ascetic, and he deserves your respect.”

“And why?” I demanded.

“Yes,” Deepa said. “He’s hideous.” The man ignored us, skulking around the clearing, howling under his breath.

“Don’t look at him,” Cook insisted. “Come inside.”

“You can’t tell me what to do.” Spoiled, I took advantage of my position as the daughter of the village oligarch.

Cook snorted. “I’ll tell your mother.”

Deepa did her about-to-cry performance again, then laughed. “But you won’t,” she said, patting Cook’s brown slab of an arm. “You’re our friend.” Cook liked to listen to the wanderers’ stories, too, and her duty to supervise us while Ama was with our sisters gave her an excuse.

We needed to stay on Cook’s good side, so I appealed to her authority. “Why should I respect such a filthy man?” I wrinkled my nose at a waft of his odor, considerably ranker than a dog’s.

“He’s degrading his body to purify his soul,” Cook explained, wiping her curry-stained hands on her sari.

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. I knew Cook felt the same as we did. Our family followed the old ways, sacrificing to household deities to keep the universe going, then joining our ancestors above the clouds or under the hills—or wherever—then returning to earth, and on and on. My father entertained these wanderers, mainly to hear gossip that might help him marry off his daughters or advance the fortunes of my brother, Jagdish.

Cook had her eye on the ascetic, who continued sniffing around the bushes. “The dog-duty wanderer believes that when his soul gets pure enough, he’ll enter a state of absorption and never be bothered again with life on earth. If he’s right, someday he’ll be barking among the stars.”

“Well, then,” I addressed Deepa, my hilarity rising again. “Let’s purify our souls. Arf! Arf!”

“Arf!” Deepa said, and we both got down on all fours.

“I pray you won’t be reborn as dogs,” said Cook.

“But I like dogs!” said Deepa.

Cook disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a clay bowl full of pan scrapings—chicken bones, stale chapatis, and assorted greasy lumps—and flopped the whole mess on the dirt not far from the dog-duty man. He lunged for it, gobbling it up like a canine, and shambled off into the forest.

Deepa and I were still on all fours. “We didn’t get our share!” I complained, and Cook suppressed a laugh.

“Your souls aren’t pure enough,” she retorted, and went back to the kitchen, which by now swarmed with her daughters and grandchildren grinding spices and sifting stones from heaps of orange and ocher lentils.

I gave Deepa a look. Our dog imitations were about to ripen into a full-blown enactment.

“Let’s take off our clothes!” Deepa said, already tugging at her red-and-yellow-dotted shift.

“We’ll get into trouble.”

“You’re a scaredy mouse—squeak, squeak! You’re not a dog at all! Dogs will laugh at you!”

“I don’t care what the dogs think,” I said, “but I do care about Ama finding out.” Our mother could confine us to the dreaded women’s quarters.

“Ama has to understand, we’re purifying our souls.” Deepa grinned. “And it’s so hot today!”

True, the heat had not let up, and my thick black braid, flopping like a dead squirrel on my back, weighed me down. The shining puddles beckoned, reflecting the infinities of a cool, blue sky. Besides, I couldn’t let my little sister get the better of me.

“Wuff, arf, wolf, glumph!” I yanked off my own shift and tossed it against the mango tree. Deepa followed suit, barking and howling and laughing. We headed for the puddles. “Doggy needs to cool off! Arf!”

The deliciously cool ooze of the water swept us into a splattering and laughing frenzy. The calf-deep puddles erupted into gray clouds around our bare feet; black mud spangled our honey-colored bellies and butts. “More!” I shouted. “More purity!” I was up to my knees and elbows in muddy water and could feel the grit of it between my teeth. “Roll like a dog!” I ordered Deepa, as I threw myself down into the gray slop. “Arf!”

Half a dozen kitchen children had gathered around to cheer us on. “Clean up your souls!” I said. “Leave your bodies in the mud!”

Suddenly, I was flying through the air backwards, my head nearly wrenched off my neck. Slam! The back of my skull hit up against something hard. It was Jagdish’s chest.

“Yasodhara!” he shouted. “Cover your shame!” Clutching my braid, he yanked me out of the puddle. My scalp stung, feeling like he’d pulled out half my hair.

Deepa was crying, but I willed myself not to. The kitchen children vanished.

My brother was fifteen, as tall as our father, and his voice had the resonant depth of early manhood. He dragged me by my wrist, the back of my skull throbbing, my ears ringing as though my head had been invaded by locusts. Deepa trailed along, whimpering.

Jagdish pushed us toward our heap of garments—“Pick these up!”—then pushed us behind jasmine bushes big enough to conceal us from passersby. “What if someone saw you acting like little whores! You’ve darkened our father’s good name.”

“Whores don’t roll in the mud,” I muttered, having no idea what they did do. My anger, which would remain a problem for much of my life, was working hard to replace the shame, pain, and fear, and almost succeeded. “We’re purifying our souls,” I told him in my haughtiest voice. “We’ll be dancing in the deva realms while the demons torture you in hell.”

“You stand right there, or hell you’ll pay.” My brother’s handsome face flamed with a fury that overwhelmed mine. Deepa and I huddled together in the bushes.

In the time it would take a mango to drop from a tree, Jagdish sprinted to the cistern and back, and before we knew it, a torrent of water crashed over Deepa and me, knocking us to our knees.

Gasping, I shook my head to clear it, trying to figure out how to get back at him.

“Please don’t tell on us,” Deepa said in her best baby-sister voice.

Jagdish sighed, handing us rags to dry off, his anger seemingly spent, or perhaps Deepa had won him over. Most likely, as I would learn one day, Jagdish simply didn’t want to make unnecessary enemies—even powerless ones—because he already had too many, starting with his grown-up male cousins who ruled over him. “Put your clothes on and come with me,” he said. “I won’t tell Ama how you disgraced yourself, but I’m going to tell her about the dog-duty charlatan. You shouldn’t be down here listening to these crazies. You should be with your sisters, learning to purify your body, not what you think is your soul.”

“But—” I tried to plead with him.

The fierce glitter in his brown eyes stopped me. With the side of a finger, he rubbed the developing cleft in his chin. It was a habit he had, edging his fingernail in that cleft, as if trying to deepen it. “I said I wouldn’t tell. If I did, you’d be locked in the women’s quarters until the day you marry.”

The threat was clear, so as he marched us up the stairs to our mother’s domain, I was grateful things weren’t worse. As long as he didn’t tell about our naked adventure, Ama would probably confine us for a week or so, and then, preoccupied as ever with our older sisters, release us to our own devices.

The teakwood women’s quarters were gloomy as always, despite the carved shutters letting in jiggles of sunlight over the patterned red and green tapestries affixed to the dark walls. Once inside, I sat cross-legged, sullenly spinning cotton into thread, wrinkling my nose at the jasmine perfume and the unending gossip of my mother, aunts, sisters, and cousins’ wives. Their stories were mostly tales of childbirth deaths, disappointing marriages, and the dismal and frightening present age, with the old gods drifting away or deigning to speak to only a few priests and prophets.

“Dog-duty man was right,” I told my mother as Deepa and I wound dreary balls of undyed thread. It was our second day in captivity, and our elder sisters and other female relatives were out making offerings at the village temple. We sat in the smallest room, devoted to the spindles and spinning wheels, barely able to accommodate the three of us. “When I die, I want to go to the land of eternal bliss and stop riding the stupid samsara wheel lifetime after lifetime.”

Ama slapped her forehead. “And what land is that? Did he tell you there’s some land out there?”

“No, he didn’t talk at all, Ama. He was a dog,” I said, happy for her ignorance, which I could now correct. “Cook said he would end up in eternal bliss.”

“She was toying with you.” Ama smoothed her sari, which was teal with a bright orange border. She was beautiful, with symmetrical features, a torrent of shining black hair, and glimmery brown eyes with the classic fish shape craved by all women. She also had a precision of movement, as though every gesture had been taught to her by the gods. But her voice was severe. “The only bliss comes from following Mitra’s rules and playing our roles as best we can, trusting in the Rta and the devas to guide us. They will reward us with bounty and joy.” Her words sounded wooden, as if belonging to some dead aunt.

“You don’t seem happy,” I said. “All you do is worry about your daughters not marrying into the right clan and whether you put the right number of millet grains in the offering fire. You hardly go outside these rooms. Maybe the gods are leaving because they’re bored.”

“Don’t you speak to me that way.” Ama plucked the misshapen thread ball out of my hand and threw it down like a dead rat. “I’d be perfectly happy to live in harmony with the divine order—except that human filth like the dog-duty ascetic and the so-called holy men your father invites to his table are driving the devas away.”

“I like the wanderers,” I said. “They have more fun than you do, even the dog-duty man.”

Deepa chimed in. “I’m going to be a dog-duty when I grow up.”

Ama glared, and Deepa screwed up her face as if about to cry, then burst out laughing, as always. “I will!” She glanced at me for support. I did a poor imitation of a righteous frown.

“Enough,” Ama said. “I hope none of the gods are listening.” She glanced down where she’d tossed my thread ball on the floor. “What a mess,” she said. “I have to rewind the whole thing.”

She stood up in a swoosh of blue and orange. “You will stay here the rest of the day and meditate on your proper position in this earthly realm.” She strode over to the windows. The room, though small, was a corner one, and its two windows let in enough light for spinning. Now Ama closed the shutters. “I don’t want to hear giggling or even talking in here. You must learn decorum.” She stood at the door, speaking in her borrowed voice. “A woman’s gift to men and devas is her beauty, which requires silence. Beauty gets lost in chatter.” The door closed behind her, followed by the rattle of the latch. We were locked in.

The closed-up room was stuffy and darker than ever, the shutters’ carved filigrees allowing only the tiniest glimpse of flickering green mango leaves, as doves cooed and mynahs whistled amid the wretchedly joyful laughter of the children outside. Monsoon season would soon be upon us—who knew how many more days of sunshine we’d have before being confined to these rooms even more?

“I can’t stand it,” I whispered and creaked open a shutter as quietly as possible. A branch of the tallest mango tree extended to within a finger’s length of the window. But how strong was it?

Deepa crowded close to me. “Are you going to climb out?”

I was having second thoughts. “Maybe we should try the door latch first.”

“Ama will hear us. But if we go out the window, we can climb back up the tree and get back before she even knows we’re gone.”

Trying to steady my breath, I looked out again at the leaves, slick in the afternoon sun, the branches heavy with fruit, bunches of mangos dangling from single stems as if arranged by the devas to make harvesting easy. The baby mangoes, green with the faintest hint of rouge, had a while before they’d ripen, which meant they wouldn’t fall and attract attention.

No one was around. “I’ll go first,” I said, asserting my big-sisterhood once again.

I leaned out the window, my heart suddenly faltering, suspended over the abyss between the window and the ground three stories below. Still, the main branch was thicker than my thigh and sloped gradually down to the trunk, where other branches sprouted into a convenient ladder nearly all the way to the ground. Slowly, I leaned as far as I could out the window and grasped the branch. It was steady. I looked out above the trees at the land of freedom beyond, the hills of new grass rippling silver in the wind, glossy white clouds tumbling in the blue northeast, everything freshened and sweetened by the first monsoon rains. How I wanted to get out into this glorious day! I took a deep breath, and after the stuffiness of the spinning room, the breeze filled me with the confidence of air-devas skittering through the sky. In a single motion, I grabbed hold of the branch and swung myself around so I could shimmy down to the trunk. My shift had ridden up awkwardly, but there was no one to see. “It’s your turn,” I said in a loud whisper. “But don’t grab the stems, they won’t hold your weight.”

“I’m lighter than you.”

“Just don’t!”

Framed by the window, Deepa’s round face puckered with terror, and all at once the beautiful free landscape in front of me contracted into my own fear, and all I could see was the ground far, far below, the clay soil trampled and packed hard as stone. I regretted ever having thought of this cockamamy plan.

Then Deepa broke into one of her wide grins. “I’m a bird!” she whispered. “Yesterday I was a dog; now I’m a bird.”

“That’s not funny,” I said. For once, her terrified-child act had failed to amuse me. I wrapped my legs around the branch and held out my arms. “Be careful,” I said.

She fell into my arms, the front of her first, clawing hands and a wild-eyed face and heavier than I expected, the branch swaying, my heart pounding through every part of my body. “Hold on!” I said, still taking care to whisper. I had to let go of her with one arm or fall myself. With my other arm I clutched her hot, squirming little body as the branch continued to sway. My arm ached. Shiny mango leaves pitched to the ground.

“I’m all right,” she said in a gasp. “You can let go.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” I said. “I could hoist you back up.”

“No! Let go! Don’t be a squeaky-mouse.”

I let loose of her and started climbing down the branch, keeping my eyes on my hands to avoid the twigs. I’d almost reached the trunk when the branch jerked upward.

I stared at the emptiness where my sister had been, my heart paralyzed, the world rocking back and forth so violently I feared it would break apart. Had Deepa jumped back inside the window? She’d had an excellent hold, I knew that for sure. She must have gone back inside.

Far below lay a broken puppet staring up at me, wearing Deepa’s red and yellow shift.

Without knowing it, I’d started screaming her name over and over and over. A crowd of women from the kitchen and loincloth-clad men from the fields appeared from all directions, swarming over the small figure on the ground, hiding it from my view, but not before I noticed the green mangos scattered around it. I had warned her! I wrapped my arms and legs around the branch I lay on, still howling as if only the tree could save my sister, reaching down with its branches and sweeping her back up. Then I saw my mother hurrying toward the crowd. Her scream split the air, swallowing my voice and every one of my thoughts. All I could do was hang onto the branch. I didn’t even see our two maids until they grabbed my shoulders and hauled me back into the dark room.

I lost all sense of time. Surely, not enough of it had passed since we’d climbed out the window for anything bad to happen. Surely I could climb back inside the moment just before we decided to escape and everything would be fine!

My mother burst into the room. “What have you done? You killed my baby!”

“No! I wanted her to go back…” I stared up at Ama, unable to say anything more, and then I fell backwards into moonless, starless night.

I awoke in Ama’s arms; she was crushing me against her and weeping. “It’s not your fault, it’s mine. I never should have locked you in.”

But I would never be able to pry her blaming words from my heart.

 

Over the next day, time jumbled even more. I lost the order of things. Night seemed to come and go, with everyone praying in the main altar room and the priest and the doctor conferring in rumbling, muted voices. Then I was back in the sewing room, still calling Deepa’s name; then night returned in a different form, full of chants and incantations, and through it all my mother and sisters kept weeping. At other times all sound fled from the earth.

Finally, the next morning Ama wrapped me in a white sari so tightly that it hurt my hips and belly. She and my sisters were dressed likewise. Voices murmured around me, sounds without form. Someone offered me milk-rice pudding, but I turned my head away. I dwelled in my own silence, and a thought was struggling to emerge from it, like someone in danger of drowning.

My sister wasn’t dead.

She couldn’t have died, the branch was too thick and steady. And when she climbed out the window, I had held onto her. Perhaps she had fallen, but surely not far enough to kill her. She’d just been knocked out. When I had this thought, it became clear that I’d known it all along. Then I remembered I’d seen her—when? Sometime late yesterday or last night. She’d been lying on a plank behind our home altar, bouquets of lilies and heaps of plumeria all around her, the onyx statues of Mitra and the little household gods staring out over the praying mourners. But Deepa was just sleeping, just knocked out, wrapped in a white sheet. She didn’t look dead, not like my aunt or my grandfathers with their closed eyes sunken like dried-out puddles and not like my baby cousin, his skin gray and his skull wrinkled like an overripe plum. And not like the accident-mangled or sickness-ravaged children and adults I’d caught glimpses of through the years.

Hands were pushing me out our front entrance into blinding sunlight. Twenty or thirty women in white saris had gathered under the trees, along with an equal number of men in lungis, mostly white. The women were keening, and my mother occupied the center of the group, her long hair tangled down her back, her voice raw and hoarse. The old priest, dressed in a white dhoti, stood just outside the group, and now he started walking, holding up an incense burner, filling the air with choking fumes. My father, Suppabuddha, followed. The adults parted, and the sight of the cart with the wrapped-up body burned itself into my memory for all time. One of the male servants led a donkey to the front of the cart and hitched it up.

Deepa’s face was covered. “She won’t be able to breathe!” I dashed forward and threw myself on the cart, intent on tearing off the wrappings.

“Yasodara!” Jagdish lunged at me, almost throwing me to the ground. “Stop tormenting our mother! You’re old enough to understand the difference between life and death.” He clapped his hand over my mouth. “If you don’t shut up, I’m locking you in the cellar. We’re taking our sister to the charnel ground.”

Another thing I’d known all along.

Still, I would have tried to pull my sister off the cart, but my brother held me fast. And I realized that if I really wanted to help Deepa, I would have to follow the procession so I’d know the route. She didn’t look dead. I clutched that thought to my heart like a cherished secret. I would come back that night and rescue her.

 

I’d only seen the charnel ground once and from a distance when we were on the road to visit our cousins in another village. It was on a long slope next to the river outside of town. Although we’d passed it well before the driest time of year, the grass on the slope seemed worn and faded, except for patches of lurid green grass that nourished itself on rot. From the road, we could make out a couple of face-down naked corpses and scattered white bones, but by far the worst sight was what appeared to be huge beasts, brown-black and heaving, five or six of them randomly positioned over the field.

It took me awhile to see that they were vultures in clumps so thick they appeared as single beings, flapping their multiple wings and plunging their slimy meat-colored heads to gulp down innards, the way I’d seen them consuming the occasional dead dog or rabbit. But never so many, and never like this.

Ama had ordered us to look away. She said that it was bad luck to gaze on such a sight, and that we were fortunate not to be passing the charnel ground at night, when roaming spirits hovered above, mourning their lost flesh and driving living beings mad with fright. At the time, I’d feared the vultures more than the ghosts, and now as I followed the cart with my sister, I was glad that by nightfall the birds would have all disappeared.

Our procession stopped even farther from the charnel ground than the road my family had taken before. As the priests and the cart with Deepa headed up the dirt road without us, I felt only desolation coupled with my ongoing guilt. I closed my eyes and reminded myself that I would soon see her again; for now I knew the way to get here.

 

The moon, three days past full, rose late, but well before midnight. I slept in the same room as my three older sisters, and now I had to wait for their steady breathing and little snores before I could start my journey. At least we weren’t locked in from the outside, I thought, as I crept down the wooden stairs to the side entrance. The air was sour and weighed down with stale incense from the previous day, and when I opened the door, the fresh night atmosphere braced my spirit and pushed away my fear, at least for a while. The lopsided moon was big and yellow. Although its light was still weak, I didn’t dare steal a lamp. The only thing I took with me was one of my own saris to wrap Deepa in so she wouldn’t have to return home naked. I wore my dark blue day-shift, which would be easier to run in, if necessary.

The windless night, cool in contrast to the dead air inside our house, seemed to heat up as I made my way to the packed dirt road that went around our village, a cluster of twelve wooden dwellings and thirty straw-and-wattle huts. Only a half-dozen scattered lamps glimmered faltering yellow light; the entire village looked to be asleep. Not that I walked in silence; frogs and crickets clamored and dogs barked, echoing through fields of freshly sown millet, mist-gray in the light of the rising moon. I was glad for the creatures’ noise; it would mask any sounds I might make.

As I walked along the empty road, my fear, which I tried to ignore, began to swell up, tightening my chest and making it hard to place one foot ahead of the other. I reminded myself I’d never seen a ghost (unlike almost everyone I knew), so I wasn’t afraid of them. After all, these roving spirits never did anything. Still, anxiety sped up my mind, spinning off new problems. I had to face the possibility that Deepa really was dead, or that she’d died when they brought her to this terrible place. If so, I would have to beg her spirit to return to her body. I’d try to reason with it. What good was a spirit without a body? And if her soul was hurrying off to another life, did it really think it could find one better than Deepa’s? We had a wealthy father, a loving mother, beautiful sisters, a houseful of servants, and—as much as I clashed with Jagdish—a brave older brother dedicated to protecting us. Deepa’s spirit could end up inside a dog—especially since we’d played that foolish dog-duty game. What if our heedless play created bad karma, which forced Deepa into the animal realm?

By the time I approached my destination, the moon was shining in my face, making it impossible at first to make out the bodies and bones, except for dark patches and faint white shapes. The voices of the little night creatures echoed ominously in the stillness, but at least the vultures were gone. I increased my pace, as if I could leave my trepidation behind; then I hit a wall of stench that knocked me to my knees. The other times I’d seen the charnel ground it was from a distance, and it had been downwind. Tonight there was no wind at all.

I held my nose, but the smell leaked in, a combination of feces and decaying flesh, yet worse—it had an ultimacy about it as if it were the source of every foul odor in the world, warning me to run from it as far and as fast as possible. I staggered to my feet and forced myself forward. I had yet to arrive at the charnel grounds proper.

“Deepa!” I cried out, hoping she would come to me and we could both flee this wretched stench. But all I did was momentarily silence the crickets.

I kept walking, gagging with every step, so preoccupied with the odor that I didn’t realize I’d reached the grounds until I almost walked into a bloated corpse, its huge, pale face inflated almost to bursting, the mouth a writhing ball of worms, black excrement for eyes. At this point, my body heaved, and the smell of my own vomit knifed up through my viscera. It actually provided relief from the smell of death, but not from the horror pounding through my veins as I stumbled up the slope, the sickening crunch of rotting bones under my feet. Now on the charnel hill, I could see well enough, and it was horrible! I had to get Deepa out of here, but where was she? I dodged an armless skeleton and another naked corpse, this one face down, arms and legs flung out at impossible angles as if the body had been tossed carelessly from above.

Where were the spirits? By now I was in the center of the field, the moonlight turning the corpses a glistening gray and the bones chalk-white. “Deepa!” I called out, again and again. I screamed when I almost stepped on what once had been a baby, its head little more than a mashed piece of fruit, its mouth an empty hole in the center of its face. Reflexively, I looked up; surely the spirit of such a little one would still be hovering above its body, unsure where to go.

Then I realized: there were no ghosts. No souls, only people who had turned into Things. These Things were far more awful than mere objects, more soulless than something that hadn’t had a soul to begin with. They seemed to deny the very possibility of souls, not to mention life itself and the warmth and vibrancy of love. Far better to be haunted by armies of roving spirits, even demon spirits, than to have the image of these corpses settle in my heart. But now they had, forever.

A shapeless new fear lurched up inside me, one I couldn’t articulate at the time and didn’t want to in any case. Cold sweat sliming my body, I kept on. These Things were not Deepa. Deepa was alive and trapped here, and only I could save her. I broke into a run, passing a heap of skulls, trying to make out her shape on the slanting moonlight ground. “Deepa!”

Then, praise be to the devas, I saw her familiar form, silver-pale in the moonlight, up the slope just two or three body-lengths away. The vultures hadn’t touched her—why would they? She was alive, lying much as she had on the plank behind our altar. I started toward her, but a sudden sound made me stop.

My engrossment with the smell and the sight of the corpses, plus the bleat of the crickets, had prevented me from hearing the other noises all around me.

The sounds of feeding.

Wild dogs, a good thirty of them, had spread out over the field singly and in groups, growling and gulping as they fought over the gore. I could see them clearly now, gaunt and ragged-eared, snarling and snapping with jagged rows of teeth polished white by moonlight and their greedy saliva. One of them was headed toward Deepa.

I broke into a run and reached her first, throwing my sari over her and snatching her up. She was heavy as stone, and oddly stiff—from fear, I told myself, but I had no time to think about this. Staggering under her weight, I backed away from the dog, which was almost as tall as I was, only to have another one join it. They crouched down, one black, one a scruffy gray in the moonlight, as if about to leap, their growls growing louder. I was terrified to turn away from them, which would in all likelihood prompt them to launch themselves on top of us. “Go away!” I shouted in the most fearsome voice I could manage.

Now two other dogs approached.

I slung Deepa around, holding her collapsing form up in front of me, pain clenching my arms. “Wake up!” I screamed. “We have to run, now!” Her weight was getting unbearable, and she didn’t move. I turned her stiff body to face me. “Wake up!”

Then I saw her face, without expression, mouth half-open. Her eyes were also partway open, cold dull slits in the moonlight, as uncaring as gashes in stone. She was a Thing.

She couldn’t be my sister.

The first dog jumped, landing on the corpse’s back. If I didn’t let the dog have it, he and all the others would tear me to shreds.

I dropped it and ran.

 

I didn’t stop running until I was halfway home. Then I fell and lay face down in the middle of the road, sobbing into the dirt. All I could think of was the hollow shell of Deepa’s absence, now filled only by the horrible image of her as a Thing. Then another image came to me, and the shapeless fear I’d first struggled against in the charnel field finally took form.

I, too, would someday be a Thing.

So would everyone I loved and everyone else, from the strongest warrior to the youngest baby.

No! I shouted into the night, and the village dogs erupted in barking. Reflexively, I filled with hatred, then I stopped. They, too, were going to turn into Things.

Why hadn’t I seen anyone’s spirit? Had they left the corpses to go live elsewhere? But what could spirits possibly be without bodies to give them form? I struggled to my feet and started walking, not caring if the dog clamor I’d caused woke up villagers who would drag me home to be punished. No matter if my mother locked me up in some room. With this newfound knowledge of death, it didn’t matter where I ended up.

The dog racket died down, followed by the tiniest puppy yelp. I jolted to a stop, remembering that Deepa’s spirit might be in a dog.

Was it possible?

That’s what the wanderers were trying to find out.

At that moment, the only worthwhile pursuit seemed to be this search for spirit. Certainly, such a quest was the only thing that could make my grief bearable. Under the white misshapen moon, I knelt down and promised my sister that if at all possible I would find her soul so she could be with her family again and not have to travel though realms of samsara, lonely forever. I would look for the solution for all souls, for some way to save every being from the awfulness of death. As soon as I was old enough, I would go forth into homelessness and become a wanderer myself, uncovering the truth. I’d never marry, that went without saying.