Evelyn

All day, the steamer has headed south, past Diamond Harbour, and the sacred Sagar Island, before emerging into the Bay of Bengal.

Now, it skirts up along the coastline, flanked on one side by open water, and on the other by a thick press of mangrove forests, the swampy islands of the Sundarbans. Evie likes it best when they pass close to the banks, when the dark, leafy forest seems to take over, and the quiet is broken only occasionally by paddles tossing up the fruits of the nipa palm with a hollow thud. From the deck she can see the mangroves’ spiky pneumatophores and the tiny red hermit crabs burrowing into the mud. Everyone on board hopes to spot a tiger. How predictable, she thinks. Why, one may be as enamored by the chattering macaques and shy chital, dipping their heads at the water’s edge, their large eyes liquid and wary. Mrs. Wheeler feels the same. “Isn’t this wonderful!” she’ll exclaim, and Evie agrees. Apart from the mosquitoes, it truly is.

She suspects the Wheelers were happy to leave Calcutta; they seem more at ease here, in the middle of nowhere, than in their city bungalow. It probably had not been difficult to persuade Mr. Wheeler to relinquish a comfortable posting and head back to the wild. Although it had taken a little more to convince Charlotte that it was a good idea for Evie to accompany them. You want to go where?

The steamer is a much humbler vessel than the Maloja—it is hardly as big, hardly as shiny—and carrying about a hundred passengers; twenty in first class who are mostly British, including themselves, and a handful of Indians. Mr. Wheeler tells her that on the deck below are Bengali businessmen and Marwari traders, while the crowded space at the back is taken up by tribals from eastern and central India.

“Where are they going?” she asks.

“Being taken, you mean,” he corrects her. They are indentured labor on their way to the tea estates of Upper Assam.

“Oh,” she says, suddenly silenced. She remembers the fun-loving tea planters she met at the clubs in Calcutta, and finds it difficult to reconcile their youthful frivolity with any role that demanded of them the management of other people.

Soon the forests are left behind, the boat enters the mouth of the Meghna and heads north, swerving between the islands off the coast, which are topped by morning mist and edged by armies of palmyra palms. Some are nameless and uninhabited, while others Mr. Wheeler points to and names—Char Nizam, Hatiya, Bhola; this last means “forgotten.”

“Look,” he says, “it is gradually being eroded by the sea; one day nothing of it will remain.” He says this not with despondency but crisp pragmatism: this is how it is. The world moves to its own rhythm and reasons. How lucky she is to have him as a guide, and personal cicerone.

He smokes a briar pipe just like her father, but is unlike him in every other way. There is something of the modern in Mr. Wheeler, his gaze is turned toward a larger world, while Papa, dear Papa, stands with his feet planted firmly in the past. The Wheelers are as unconventional as her family is not, content in their roles as intrepid co-adventurers, and Evie is pleased to have been accepted as a minor participant in their travels. Even if nothing comes of her trip, at least she would have had an adventure—especially since she is no Marianne North, and this might be all the world she sees.

Along the river, the landscape changes, the waterway rising on either side into forested slopes, where sometimes a bullock cart and farmer gently trundle, children run alongside waving, or cattle stand and graze peacefully. Evie watches it all with wonder, even the loading of goods onto the steamer, sacks of paddy and mustard seed, clay-fired pots and woven mats and baskets. She is mostly up in the saloon, a roofed deck perched on top of the first-class cabins, from where the view is best, and the breeze coolest. Around her lounge a few women, and many men uniformly dressed in linen suits and straw boaters.

Mr. Finlay would have made this steamer journey, similarly attired, she thinks, earlier in the month. She remembers their last meeting—at the shadowy back of the Calcutta Club, beside the fireflies and the shimmering hydrangea—and a warmth rises up her cheeks.

*  *  *

Eight days after they leave Calcutta, they reach the point at which the Brahmaputra flows into the Ganges.

The steamer chugs on, heading farther north, where the riverine plains are now covered in lush forest, and the distant low hills are softened by a smoky haze. Sometimes Evie catches a glimpse of river dolphins, gray bottlenoses taking graceful leaps into the air. Once, to her excitement, they pass a herd of elephants on the bank, bathing. Often it is just her, a flight of wood ducks, and the river. It feels abundant, as though the world is offering itself to her, and yet also oddly limiting, her journey confined only to this slim, prescribed course.

Eventually, they draw into Gauhati, a small port town with busy bazaars and a modest European quarter, standing at the foot of the Shillong plateau. Farther upstream, the river dominates the landscape, Mr. Wheeler tells her, flowing through a wide valley pointing northeast into the very corner of the empire, where India meets Tibet and Burma. Where they have docked the banks are a muddy, squelchy mess, and the mosquitoes have multiplied, but they have arrived just as the sun is setting, turning the Brahmaputra into liquid gold.

All along the roads are tall graceful betel nut palms, and the surrounding hills lie green and thickly forested. They are staying at a boardinghouse for the night, where the geckoes are the biggest Evie has seen in her life, and the crickets the loudest. They are not in Calcutta any longer, she realizes with a jolt. This is remote in all the ways the world can be—in all the ways she has yet to know. It is frightening, and delicious!

Tomorrow they set off for Shillong, the capital of Assam, most thrillingly in a hired motorcar christened Maharani. “A service only recently started,” according to Mr. Wheeler, and since it is winter, and dry, he thinks the journey should not take them more than half a day.

 

Perhaps it is the newness of the place, but Evie finds it difficult to fall sleep.

How far I’ve come from Tilbury! From home. Even Calcutta! Charlotte had been understandably bewildered at first—Why? And surely they ought to seek her mother’s advice? Except by the time they would hear from her, the Wheelers would have long ago left.

Evie had sat herself next to her hostess. “I do not know if you remember, Charlotte, but when I had just arrived you asked me whether I was ready to be married, whether it was what I wanted. And I am telling you now what I should have told you then: I am not, and it isn’t.”

She had expected this to be met with some annoyance, but Charlotte was triumphant. “I knew it!” Besides, it was quite obvious, she had added, especially when Evie had been far more excited about the botanical gardens than the Winter Ball. But why Assam? Really, as far as she had heard, it was wild, hardly civilized at all, and, worse, filled with leeches. Stay here, or travel to Orissa, she had urged, or if she wanted to venture farther, head to Delhi, and Agra. See the Taj Mahal!

Her guest insisted she wished to go east. Charlotte sighed. “I don’t think you should do it, Evie.” Evie had remained silent, thinking that nothing in the world was going to stop her.

Back in London, they would have probably received her letter by now, informing them of her decision. She is certain her family will meet the news with some dismay, though perhaps not outright surprise. They have been resigned for a while now to Evie doing what they think she ought not to. Tramping around the woods with Grandma Grace, for instance, or turning down chances to meet potential suitors, and more recently, working as Agnes’s research assistant.

This had thrown Mama into a great panic. Evie had obtained the equivalent only of a low second in the final tripos—convincing her mother that she ought to have studied the classics and become a governess, instead of scampering about in a makeshift laboratory in someone’s house. “I just don’t know what to do with you, Evie.” Florence, too, had taken her side. “Mama wants you to be happy, Evie.”

But Evie was happy—helping Agnes in the laboratory, learning to practice Goethean botany. When she tried to explain what this was to Florence, her sister frowned. “Oh, Evie, it all sounds very academic.” But it was not, Evie insisted. “It is like being in the garden with Grandma Grace.” She hoped saying this might allow Florence to see how much it meant to her, but her sister shrugged, and said, “Then why go to university?”

Then, as now, lying in a strange bed in a darkened room, listening to the crickets, she felt a little alone.

*  *  *

Maharani refuses to start this morning, despite the persistent coaxing of their Anglo-Indian driver, Mr. Pokes, and the many attempts at cranking the engine by his young helper. Eventually, they concede defeat. It will have to be a pony trap—which must now be procured at short and urgent notice, a pace evidently unfamiliar to the sleepy little river-side town.

It is well past lunch by the time they leave Gauhati.

The Wheelers stay calm through it all, although when they are finally trundling out of town Evie overhears Mr. Wheeler tell his wife that he had been a little concerned, “for night falls quickly in these parts.”

At first, they travel through low grassy hills, passing thatched huts and little else, before emerging onto a flatter road that continues for a long while. “Aren’t we meant to be heading up?” asks Evie in some bewilderment. “We will.” And they do, but so gradually that she does not notice until the air is suddenly fresher, and nips at her skin. Soon they are trailing up a slope with mountains spilling all around them.

Evie longs to take a closer look at the forests, a mix of temperate and subtropical growth, with pine, banana plants, bamboo, and even in winter, all a deep lustrous green, but because of their delayed start they are barely able to make any stops.

As evening approaches, the cold is palpable, stinging Evie’s face, reaching under the blanket spread over her knees. This feels a world away even from Gauhati, more desolate, perhaps because they are hemmed in by hills, and followed only by the melancholic drone of crickets, the sound of the wind, and a large yellow moon.

An hour from Shillong, they cross a bridge over a river roaring far below, which Mr. Wheeler said he had read was called Umïam—Crying Water. The road climbs steadily from there; on either side, the forest is now dark and thick and indistinguishable.

They enter the town to find that it wears a deserted look, the narrow sloping roads lined by rows of houses with low roofs and shuttered windows. Shillong seems to have retired and emptied for the day.

*  *  *

Evie awakens in a room filled with light, but not the kind she has seen anywhere else before, not in London, nor Calcutta. It is clear as birdsong, sharp as the edge of a knife.

They are accommodated in Mrs. Dyer’s boardinghouse in an area atop a hill in the European Quarter—La Chaumière it is called, after a crop of bungalows with straw roofs that dot the slopes. The neighborhood overlooks Government House, which is set on the next hill, amid gardens that Evie hopes she can soon visit. The boardinghouse is also a tidy bungalow with wooden floors, lime-washed walls, and a cavernous fireplace that is lit in the evenings. In employment here are a cook, and a maid, a local girl named Deng, younger than Evie—although it is hard to gauge. She has a smooth, unlined face, but eyes that appear much older.

Evie breakfasts with the others in the garden, where sweet peas are growing all in a row, and marigolds are already in golden bloom. Maybe it is the cold, but she is ravenous, and porridge with milk and honey is welcome as it has never been in Calcutta.

Afterward, Mr. Wheeler makes for the Forest Department office, while Evie, who is eager to explore, is happy to accompany his wife for a stroll about town. They are driven to a lake at the heart of the European Quarter. One long curve is dotted with bungalows, peeking through the pine trees, reserved for high-ranking government officers, while on the other stands the red-roofed Shillong Club. Good for a spot of lawn tennis, she is informed. Beyond the club, they come upon a busy commercial junction, rows of shops selling shoes, clothes, stationery. There is a chemist, and many tailors. Mr. Wheeler had mentioned that commerce in these parts was driven not by locals but by migrant mercantile communities such as the Bengalis and Marwaris. Around the market are the main government buildings, the Assam Legislative Council, the Secretariat, all built in lime-washed and tin-roof neatness, while nearby stands a half-timbered church with a tall steeple.

“Where do the natives live?” asks Evie.

In villages around the European Quarter, she is told. “Laban, I think one is called,” adds Mrs. Wheeler, “and I cannot for the life of me remember the others.”

They head back down to the lake and stroll along the pathway running along its edges, the slopes dotted with willow trees and flower beds. This seems to be a popular spot with the Europeans—many of whom are out taking the air. For a moment, Evie is convinced she has seen Mr. Finlay far ahead. Don’t be idiotic, she tells herself. It is merely someone who looks like him. He is plant hunting somewhere in the Lower Himalayas, thrashing about through hill and forest, and she is certain that not for a moment does he spare a thought for her.

 

In the evening, after an early supper, they sit by the fire, stoked by Deng to a bright hearty blaze. They feast on oranges, small, juicy, the sweetest they have ever tasted, and then Mr. Wheeler brings out a bottle of port. Glasses are arranged for all—and the wine goes down in strong and welcome warmth.

“My tour will begin soon,” he reports. And will cover the areas in and around Cherrapunjee, a two-hour journey south from Shillong. It is understood that Mrs. Wheeler will accompany him, as will Evie.

What will she discover in the wettest place on earth?

She can hardly wait to find out, but there is one thing she would like to do before they depart. “Is there someone I could speak to? About local flora?” she ventures. Someone who’s a native naturalist, perhaps.

“Hmmm,” says Mr. Wheeler. It is best for him to ask around at the office. One of his colleagues should know. “Is there something in particular you would like to inquire about?”

She shakes her head, and lies. “Not really, no.”

*  *  *

Since she became a member of the Goethean Science Society, Evie had not missed a single meeting, and even Lulu grudgingly had to admit that she was not there to waste her time, or anyone else’s.

One evening, they gathered to discuss The Metamorphosis of Plants, which Goethe had written a few years after his trip to Italy.

“What I do not understand is why he left Karlsbad in secret,” began Phineas. He held a copy of Goethe’s Italian Journey in his hand, which he considered a companion text to Metamorphosis. Evie thought it was because he was fed up. “I mean, was he not overseeing the building of roads and mines in Weimar?” She was certain it was an escape, and that if he had not undertaken the journey, Metamorphosis would have remained unwritten, and his botanical insights ungained. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” countered Lulu. To any destination lay a number of different routes . . . Though they all agreed that Italy yielded to him flora, both wild and cultivated, rich to a degree unseen in his northern homeland. That all this had set in motion a train of ideas which was to dominate his conception of the plant world for the rest of his life.

Yes, said Lulu. Now, please could they focus on Metamorphosis? It was a concise text in which Goethe had attempted to tell the story of botanical forms in process. “The doctrine of formation is the doctrine of transformation,” Lulu read out. “Genius.”

They had many questions: What did Goethe mean by “eyes of the mind”? What exactly was “intensification” and “polarity”? And most important, why metamorphosis? A term long applied to the transformation of caterpillars into butterflies and tadpoles into frogs.

“Perhaps by extending this concept to the development of plants,” ventured Ollie, “he was suggesting the presence of some kind of universal process working throughout nature. Everything alive is in a state of always becoming.”

Sadly, the original book had fared badly, and been roundly ignored by botanists and the public alike. “It took eighteen years for the first references to it to begin appearing in botanical texts and other writings,” said Lulu. It mostly sank into obscurity, translated into English in 1863 and more recently revived by Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian philosopher, in the 1880s and ’90s. Still, the text could hardly be considered “well known.”

“Didn’t he mean to also write a Harmonium Plantarum?” asked Evie, looking through her notes. Yes, but they supposed he never got around to completing it. All they had inherited was Metamorphosis, which was revolutionary, though not without its flaws, they realized.

“He had nothing to say on roots,” said Ollie ruefully. “It is as if they did not exist!”

Goethe also treated the volume as largely a complete and finished work. “Perhaps because of his nature as an artist,” added Lulu, “it ought to have been seen as a scientific treatise in progress, one that could be expanded, rewritten, and corrected.”

“He copied Linnaeus, too, did he not?” added Phineas. “In format, I mean. Writing in numbered paragraphs.” Ollie nodded. All the major scientific texts Goethe had read by the Swedish botanist were written in this manner of lists, and he thought he should, too, but that was where the similarities ended.

“He steeped himself for years in the works of Linnaeus, and respected him, but his own botanical work represented a radical departure from Linnaeus’s approach. He found it artificial and mechanical, this practice of naming, and enumerating plants.”

“And worse, he found it inadequate,” added Evie. “How was it possible to accommodate the immense variability of plant life within this static, set terminology?”

They also all agreed that the text’s moment of greatest illumination lay in how the line “All is leaf” became an expression of the principle of wholeness that the whole is reflected or disclosed in the part.

“Do you remember, Evie?” they reminded her. “No subservience between one and the other; they are both equally important, each to each.”

*  *  *

Grandma Grace would call this a claggy day; the sky clotted like cream and carrying with it the imminent threat of rain. It is remarkably changeable, the weather here, Evie has noticed. Willfully windy one moment, sunny the next, and then, without warning, gray and overcast—although thankfully with none of the heat and humidity of the plains.

She and Mrs. Wheeler head out for a spot of lunch at the Shillong Club, and then they walk to the Secretariat building up the road. The receptionist is expecting them, so they are led straight through, down a corridor leading off into many rooms with files arranged on desks like miniature mountain ranges. They stop at a locked and bolted door. As the receptionist opens it for them, they glance at each other, smiling.

They are here to visit the Assam Forest Herbarium; waiting for them inside are thousands of carefully filed herbarium sheets.

 

Afterward they discuss the herbarium at length on their stroll around the lake—How exciting! I had no idea! This treasure, all the way here in this remote town! Was it not akin to leafing through pages of history? Every sample perfectly preserved, capturing the very second a plant was picked and pressed. They discovered that some dated back to the 1870s when Gustav Mann, a German botanist, and onetime gardener at Kew, started the herbarium during his tenure here as conservator of forests. They had not the time to look through the whole collection, but what they had managed to see delighted them.

Evie is astonished by the number of bamboo species in the region. There are dozens in these hills and surrounding plains, including the gigantic Dendrocalmus hamiltonii, used by the natives for making huts and basketry, the ethereal thin-stemmed Melocanna bambusoides, the long narrow-leaved Microstegium ciliatum . . . “Which looked like something out of a Japanese picture, didn’t you think?”

Mrs. Wheeler agreed. “That Pseudostachyum polymorphum from Sylhet, too . . . so ordinary yet so beautiful . . . I would like to paint it.”

“You must!” exclaims Evie.

Her companion laughs and agrees.

They have stopped at the Japanese-style bridge that arches across Ward’s Lake. The sky reflects silvery gray on the water. Ducks glide along, as well as a few swans. Since their first afternoon together in Mrs. Wheeler’s “herbarium” in Calcutta, they have talked about little else besides botany. Sharing observations over swampy palm vegetation in the Sundarbans, riverine reeds along the Brahmaputra, and the moss and ferns they have noticed growing here in abundance. Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler—could she say this?—were the parents she had always dreamed about. They were deeply interested in her, in the world, seeing their place in it as wanderers and explorers, rather than settlers. She could not imagine Mama and Papa anywhere else, apart from their home in Primrose Hill, with their daily routines and set little rituals. Everything, from waking to rest, dictated by the clock.

A wind lightly whips up the water. Below them, more ducks and swans drift by. Evie can see they are heading for a tiny island on the far side of the lake—it seems to be a preferred gathering point for these feathered creatures.

“Did I mention?” begins Mrs. Wheeler, “that Charles has found someone for you to speak to.” A local woman, Kong Bathsheba, who lives in a house in the woods. Evie says that this sounds more promising than she had dared hope for, and they laugh.

The sky is darker now, and the wind stronger. A light drizzle begins to fall as they head off, walking briskly down the bridge. There will be a blazing fire and hot tea waiting for them at the boardinghouse, and Evie is thinking of this when she comes to an abrupt stop.

In front of them stand Mr. Finlay and Mr. Dossett.

Then, before she knows it, they are smiling and wishing them good evening, and Mr. Finlay is apologizing for the intrusion—“But we could hardly pass by without saying hello.”

Evie is lost for words for what feels an eternity, and then she hurries to make introductions. She meets Mr. Finlay’s eye, and asks about his expedition. “I hope it went well?”

“Not too badly,” he says. Earlier this month, from Gauhati they had headed to the Garo Hills, where they collected a sizable number of orchid specimens.

“Which ones?” enquires Mrs. Wheeler.

“The small fragrant Acampe,” Mr. Dossett replies, “and the multiflowered Aerides with its waterfall of blossoms.” They are hoping to travel in the Khasia Hills now.

“How is Mrs. Hopkins?” asks Evie. Mr. Finlay says his aunt is well, and still in Calcutta.

“I am glad you found a way out of the city,” he adds.

“Yes.” She smiles. “I did.” She can see Mrs. Wheeler glance at them with curiosity; there will be questions later, which she will do her best to avoid.

“What do you hope to find in the Khasia Hills, Mr. Finlay?” asks Mrs. Wheeler.

“I am content with anything new,” he replies.

“Ah, something as yet undiscovered . . .”

He bows his head. “New is a comparative term for me, though . . . I think a collector, well, a true collector, derives just as much joy from finding a plant new to him, whether it has already been discovered or not. And any new plant introduced into England surely has already been seen and remarked upon by the people of their native land.”

Mrs. Wheeler smiles. “Very true, very wise.”

*  *  *

Only once was the GSS invited by the Cambridge Scientific Society to give a talk.

What an honor! What recognition! This was a chance not only to disseminate their ideas but also—and this was truly exciting—to attract new members. There was so much to say, and so much that could be discussed—but who would speak? After some deliberation, it was decided that Ollie would deliver the lecture, even though Lulu was the clearer-headed, more commanding speaker—things were changing but not so drastically that a woman could address a room full of men.

The talk took place on a summer evening and, thankfully, a respectable number of people showed up. Lulu, Phineas, and Evie made their way to the back of the room; Ollie, up front, looked as though he wished he were anywhere but here, shuffling through his notes, mopping his forehead with a large handkerchief. Finally, everyone took their places, and Ollie stepped up to the podium.

“All is leaf,” he began, “and through this simplicity the greatest diversity becomes possible.” He paused as though expecting someone to stop him. “I begin with this because it is the key to understanding Goethe’s way of seeing. The leaf he refers to must be understood in the universal sense as an omnipotential form and not as a particular foliage leaf.”

He slowly gained momentum, and stood taller, his voice less shaky. He started to explain Goethe’s idea of plant metamorphosis—that organs which could be quite different in outer appearance were recognized as being manifestations of the same form.

Evie looked around; a handful of Girton girls sat in one corner, a cluster of male undergraduates were crowded up in front, and from them she feared there might be mischief later. For now, they sat quiet; a red-haired chap had stuck his legs up on the empty chair in front of him. Evie turned her attention back to Ollie.

“It is an extraordinary experience to look at a flowering plant and see it in Goethe’s way,” he was saying. “Seeing the plant intuitively is to experience it ‘coming into being’ instead of analyzing the plant as it appears in its supposed finished state. Where Linnaeus was concerned with taming plants, Goethe was concerned with making the plant visible. Where Linnaeus imposed an organization on the plant so that each specimen had a place in a system, Goethe allowed the plant to speak for itself.”

It was after this that the trouble began.

Ollie had just started speaking on the Urpflanze. “Goethe’s notion of the fundamental unity of the plant was extended to the plant kingdom as a whole. He came to believe that there must be an Urpflanze, whose metamorphic variations are what we see as all the many different plants today. Goethe thought this might even exist as some kind of simple primitive plant out of which other plants would develop in time, and which he could encounter if he searched diligently enough. In fact, he did so on his journey through Sicily.”

The students at the front were openly smirking now. Someone whispered that Goethe might have been a little too fond of his drink.

Ollie continued, oblivious. “He soon came to realize, of course, that the Urpflanze could not be found in this tangible, physical way, but the idea of it offered him, and us, a certain mode of perception . . .”

Before he could sweep to a finish, Ollie was interrupted by the red-haired youth. “Are you saying the archetypal plant is the lowest common denominator of all plants?”

At first, Ollie handled this with aplomb. “It is quite commonly supposed that Goethe started with finished plants as visible to him in the environment, and that by comparing them externally with one another he abstracted what was common to them to produce a generalization. And that in this way, he found unity in multiplicity but—”

He was not allowed to finish. “So did he do that, then? Gather several sets of different plants, produce a generalization for each. Then a generalization of these generalizations until he reached the ultimate generalization, the archetypal plant?”

Only the speaker did not realize that he was being mocked. He stumbled, and faltered, and Evie could hear Lulu, next to her, catch a sharp breath. Phineas, on her other side, was as quiet as a tomb. The Girton girls were stifling their laughter.

In the next instant, Lulu was standing, saying, “This is how the analytical mind tries to find unity, in this static, inflexible way. What you speak of is the mechanical unity of a pile of bricks, not the organic unity of life. You might be required to resort to this”—Lulu looked directly at the redhead—“but not Goethe, whose mind worked differently, and, might I add, in a superior way.”

There were hoots at this, and someone booed. Lulu was trembling, but she continued. “The archetype is one plant that is all possible plants. It is not a blueprint for plants, a general plant, or a common factor in all plants. It has the quality of diversity within unity, it is the many within the one.” Her voice grew stronger, sharper now, more like her own. “Goethe saw the plant as one single organ, and he saw the entire plant kingdom as one single plant. As plant organs are fragments, containing the whole, for the archetypal organ the many plants are the fragments, containing the whole, of the archetypal plant. Do you understand?” You lout, Evie imagined she wanted to add. “The Urpflanze is inherently dynamic and infinitely flexible—and as Ollie mentioned, though you may not have been listening, or capable of comprehending, the idea of it offers us new, exciting, and necessary perspective in our practice and philosophy of science. I hope at least that much is clear.”

There was a long silence.

At the next meeting, they were joined by no new members, but they still considered the talk a triumph.

*  *  *

Evie is on her way to meet Kong Bathsheba.

The previous evening Mr. Wheeler had returned from work and told them over dinner that he had dispatched a peon to her with a message, and her reply when it did arrive was cryptic: “So be it.”

“So be it?” Evie laughed, almost spilling her soup.

“Kong Bathsheba has a reputation for being somewhat enigmatic in her responses,” explained Mr. Wheeler.

His wife turned to him. “How does the Forest Department come to be on such good terms with her?”

He cleared his throat. She has helped them on a number of occasions. “A forest fire once, that she forewarned them of, I believe, and then another time she helped detect a fungus ravaging the local pines.”

“Is she a native woman?” asked Evie, more curious than ever about her now.

Mr. Wheeler nodded. “She worked as a tea lady in our offices for some years, so she knows enough English to get by.”

It was all arranged. Kong Bathsheba sent instructions for Evie to be dropped off at the edge of the forest, from where she would be guided to the house. So here she is, following a small man, sized like a boy in his teens, with a face that looks at least thirty.

Mrs. Wheeler had wanted to accompany her but was kept away by a prior engagement. “She will be perfectly safe,” Mr. Wheeler had said, so she let Evie go on her own.

Evie is glad for this outing. The forest smells of mud and wet decay, and, somewhere not far off, she can hear running water. Her guide walks steadily, silently before her. The pine needles are slippery underfoot, and sunlight lies in patches on the ground. She would like to stop and pick up pine cones, inspect the dark velvety moss growing on the slopes and on fallen trees, but she dare not for fear of being left behind. They continue climbing, the forest unvarying around them. The town seems far away, and when they reach a clearing, she can see it lie below them.

Soon the pines give way to a wealth of fruit trees—peach, plum, guava, and pear, though only the oranges are in bright golden fruit. The edges of a garden appear, built in terraced levels, with towering Rhaphidophora scaling the trees and rows of plump succulents edging the beds. Kong Bathsheba’s house comes into view, and it is easy to imagine this as a tiny cottage somewhere in England, built with stone and wood. She thinks of Grandma Grace, and how she would have liked this place.

Her guide has melted away, leaving her to walk up on her own. Kong Bathsheba is standing at the door, wearing a woolen skirt and sweater, and, as local women here do, a checkered cloth tied over one shoulder. She is a slight woman, but knotted and strong, like a resilient olive tree. Her hair is up in a bun, and her face moon-shaped and unlined, though she is older, Evie feels, than her aspect betrays.

She gestures for her to follow, and Evie steps inside a house that is frugal and well tended. Almost as soon as they are seated, her guide, now bearer, appears with a tray—kettle, teacups—and places it on a table next to them. She does not ask how Evie likes her tea, but when it is served, it is perfect: no milk, a little sugar, strong and gingery, and with a faint hint of wood fire.

“Thank you for this, and for seeing me,” she blurts out.

The lady smiles.

Oh dear, thinks Evie, she hopes Mr. Wheeler was not misled into thinking she understands more English than she actually does. Then Kong Bathsheba speaks, and her voice is soft and grainy, the texture of dry sand.

“I will tell you not to go and it will make no difference.”

Evie pauses; her cup travels back down to the saucer. “Go where?”

“Where you must.”

This is a little annoying. “Nothing has been decided,” she informs her.

“Everything has been decided,” says Kong Bathsheba cheerfully, sipping her tea.

“Well, then I am not sure why you agreed to see me.”

“I was curious.” Again, she smiles that strange smile, “Go on, you are free to ask me anything.”

This takes Evie a little by surprise. In truth, she has many questions. For no pressing reason, she begins with “I hear you have often helped the Forest Department?”

Kong Bathsheba shrugs. “A few times. It was nothing. It is a forest department that knows very little about our forests.”

At this their eyes meet, hers are as dark as wet earth. Evie says, “I, too, know very little about your forests, but I would like to learn.” The woman does not say a word; Evie hopes this means she is permitted to continue. “It might be that I am misinformed, but I seek something . . . that I think may only be found here.”

“There are many of those things.”

“Yes, of course, but this is . . . different, I think.” Evie leans over, as though her words must reach her in secret. “Have you heard of something called the . . . Diengiei?”

Will she be understood? Has she pronounced it right?

To her surprise, Kong Bathsheba bursts out laughing.

She is loud and unrestrained and makes Evie terribly uncomfortable. Please stop, she wants to plead, just give me an answer.

Instead, the lady wipes her eyes, rises, and says, “Come.”

She walks to the back of the room, through a door, and Evie tentatively follows to find herself in the kitchen, a small, sparse space, immaculately clean. Kong Bathsheba seats herself at the hearth, where a wood fire glows. A calico cat lies curled up on the floor. She gestures to a stool—mula, as they call them here—and busies herself stirring the pots. Above the hearth, strips of meat sway slowly, deep red and streaked with fat. Evie sits, not knowing whether she ought to wait for an answer or repeat her question. Something tells her to stay quiet. Wait and see.

Next to her, the cat lifts its head, sniffs the air, and sits up, watching with interest as the food is stirred. Kong Bathsheba places some rice and gravy into a small bowl and sets it aside. She sees Evie eye it questioningly and says, “This is for Ka Mei Ramew.”

“The cat?”

Kong Bathsheba chuckles, and prods the creature, who does not budge. “She would like to think so, I’m sure, but Ka Mei Ramew is our name for Mother Earth.”

“Oh . . . and you keep out food for her?”

She nods. “Always. In . . . what is the word? . . . gratitude.”

The cat starts meowing, so Kong Bathsheba picks up a small piece of fish, fried to a bright yellow in a pan, and throws it to the floor. In an instant it is gone; the cat licks her paws and strolls out of the back door.

“She is a miaw-wa now,” says Kong Bathsheba.

“What’s that?”

“A cat who once used to stay home and then turned wild.” She adds with a grin, “I know people like that, too.” She pours out more tea, for herself, for Evie.

“Kong Bathsheba . . .” Evie begins again, hesitating. “I have another question for you.”

The lady nods.

“Who are the Nongïaid?”

This time, she does not laugh. “They are the ones who walk . . . nomads.”

“Around here?” She had read about one such tribe in Kingdon-Ward’s book on Tibet, the Drokpa, the “people of the solitudes,” who herded livestock on high-altitude pastures. “So they are a tribe without a home?”

Kong Bathsheba scrutinizes her for a moment. “Or a tribe whose home is in many places.” She sips her tea. “I do not understand you people and why you always . . . what is the word . . . define things through lack. These are people with no alphabet. This is a place with no books. This is a place with no paintings. These are people without Christ. These are people with no home.”

Evie sits there, feeling chided—perhaps deservedly so—although before she can apologize, Kong Bathsheba continues, “But it is not as if they are easily accepted around here either. People also call them bam neh shnong—the ones who cannot stay—and it is said . . . not in a good way. So they are secretive, moving around like cats in the shadows. They are difficult to trace.” She looks at Evie directly when she says this. Evie tries to sound unperturbed. “What do they have to do with the Diengiei . . . ?”

There is a trace of pity in her eyes. “They are the only ones who would be able to tell you, I am afraid. What it is. Where it is. Maybe. What I mean is they could tell you, but the question is, would they?”

The tea has turned lukewarm in Evie’s hand. The light is fading outside. They sit for a moment in silence; Evie has a feeling that she will not be getting anything more out of her.

“It is getting late,” says Kong Bathsheba, and with that, she rises and calls for someone from the back door. A little girl appears, bright and alert. With no explanation of who she is, Kong Bathsheba says, “She will take you back.”

Evie follows the girl into the garden; she is barefoot and steps lightly, her dress looks much too thin to be keeping her warm, but she is flushed as though she has spent all day outdoors. Evie can see dry grass tangled in her long hair. She is a wild child, like me, like I used to be, she catches herself thinking.

It is early evening, and shadows fall long in the forest now, in strange geometric arrangements. The girl says not a word, gliding down the path like a sprite. That is probably what she is, thinks Evie, and at that moment, the girl turns, glancing back—her eyes like the cat’s, sharp and wild and wary.

 

That evening, at dinner, the Wheelers discuss their impending departure for Cherrapunjee. It is good weather to travel—warm and dry during the day, though the nights will be even colder there than in Shillong. Evie is also informed that Deng will be coming along as a maid for the ladies.

She nods, saying little, still absorbed by her strange meeting with Kong Bathsheba. It has lent her little or no greater clarity. She is here in Assam. So near, so far. How should she proceed? Ought she go back to the cottage in the forest? See her again? She has a feeling this would not be fruitful or welcome. Just then, she realizes, Mr. Wheeler has addressed her.

“Your friends are headed there, too,” he repeats.

She blinks. “My friends?”

“Yes, dear,” says Mrs. Wheeler, “the gentlemen we met at the lake the other evening.”

The couple ran into them at the club earlier, and found that they were bound for the orchid-laden forests of Mawsmai and would be staying in the same village in Cherrapunjee as the Wheelers. “There is only one boardinghouse there,” adds Mr. Wheeler, “so I daresay we will be seeing a lot of them.”

Evie sips her chicken soup; it is hot and wholesome but goes down mostly unsavored. Everything is decided, Kong Bathsheba had told her—and if this is true, then this, too, has been preordained, that she is to meet Mr. Finlay time and time again. Does this displease her? Not entirely. Stop it, Evie! She tells herself all this is of little importance as long as she is able to seek freely what she is here to find.

*  *  *

A summer ago, when she came across the Diengiei, her thoughts were occupied not with India but Japan. Evie had just read The Garden of Asia, an account of Reginald Farrer’s plant-hunting adventures on the archipelago, and was filled with longing. Oh, to see the islands of Goto! To glide into the harbor of Nagasaki! How tragic to be stuck instead on this cold little island far from all kinds of excitement and adventure!

“Might you have any other books on that part of the world?” she had asked the librarian, and was directed to William Griffith’s Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bootan, Afghanistan and the Neighbouring Countries. Well, close enough, she supposed.

She had very little idea about the region, so she opened up an atlas, and set off with Griffith, doctor, naturalist, and—as she found out later—archnemesis to Nathaniel Wallich of the botanical gardens in Calcutta. Up the Padma River in Bengal she went, following his trek to the “distant elevated land” that he called the Kassiya Hills. He stayed at Moflong, which Griffith, curmudgeonly as ever, described as a bleak exposed village; the many days of continuous rain did not help. He was warming himself at the hearth of one of the small village homes when he heard of the Diengiei, or as his translator told him, what the natives called the “first tree.” “I do not know what they mean,” he noted grumpily, “and I was so tired by the fire it could all have been a ridiculous dream.”

The first tree! How mystical that sounded. Something Grandma Grace would have loved to hear about, and she would have hastened to tell her, but Grandma Grace was gone, and Evie had no one else to share this with, so she set it aside. Until several weeks later, she came across the mention of something similar in a book by J. W. Masters Esq., the less than succinctly titled A Memoir of Some of the Natural Productions of the Angami Naga Hills, and Other Parts of Upper Assam. She almost missed it—there, buried in the list of plants, between Umbelliferae and Berberideae, was the ancient Araliaceae, which his local guide compared with the “first plant, found in the Khassiya Hills.”

She was by then a regular at GSS meetings, and it stayed with her. The first plant! What would Goethe have made of that?

Although it was not until she browsed Joseph Dalton Hooker’s Himalayan Journals that her curiosity was piqued—What could it be? And why has nobody ever seen it? His travels through the “Khasia mountains” in 1850, took him, like Griffith, up the Soormah River and into Cherrapunjee. He was amazed by the sweetness of the oranges, the immense variety of palms, and the “living bridges” built across gorges and rivers by intertwining, over decades, the roots of fig and Indian rubber trees. “These bridges are used by the people from the villages,” his local guide told him, “but also by the Nongïaid, the nomads, the ones who walk . . . so the Diengiei may be carried where they wish, or where they deem safest.” What was this Diengiei? Hooker had inquired. What the locals called the first tree. The tree that held all trees.

At this, Evie had shut the book. Then she opened it again, and read and reread the lines until they had burned themselves into her memory. Even when she put it away, it stayed with her. What could it be? The tree that held all trees.

 

“I would like to search for it,” she announced at the next GSS meeting.

Around her, chuckles break out in amusement. “In search of what now, Evie?” The trumpet tree of Brazil? Or was it the Tāne Mahuta in New Zealand?

“I would like to see those, too, but this is different,” she insisted.

Lulu had not yet arrived to declare they had no time to waste, and Ollie and Phineas were always more indulgent of her, so she told them with great and uncontained excitement about the first plant—at this, their interest was pricked.

“The first plant?”

She nodded. That is what it says wherever she has found mention of it . . .

“How many mentions?” asked Phineas.

She paused. They raised their eyebrows. “All right, just a few, but look at this . . .” She held out a book, Journey East: Mapping Calcutta and Beyond by James W. W. Wallace. “He was surveyor and cartographer to the commissioner of Assam in the late 1870s, and spent several years in the Khasia and Jaintia Hills.” She pointed to a page. “Natives here seem to believe there is a Diengiei, the one plant, though what it is exactly is difficult to discern for they seem reticent when questioned about it. It might be medicinal, for their use and knowledge of herbs is formidable.”

She looked up, triumphant. The others appeared impressed, though perhaps not as much as she had hoped.

“The one plant . . . that is not quite the same, though, is it?” Phineas pointed out.

“No,” she admitted, “but perhaps the terms are used interchangeably . . .”

“It is possible,” Ollie agreed. But what did she think it meant?

“That’s what I want to find out,” she declared.

A small silence followed. “And you will travel all the way there?” they asked.

Evie was miffed. “Luckily, Goethe did not have friends like you when he set off searching for the Urpflanze.” He did, they told her, and they reminded him repeatedly that the Urpflanze was an idea, that it was Platonic in nature, an ideal form. Yet he still searched for it, Evie was quick to point out, and once wrote to Charlotte von Stein saying “it was no dream or fancy.”

True, but what she was seeking, did it not sound like a figment of folklore? Aren’t folkloric traditions everywhere beset with motifs like these, the first tree, the first animal, the first human? And isn’t there an abundance of sacred trees scattered around the world?

She stayed silent, which they took to be defeat, or at best a quiet relenting.

“Right,” began Ollie, “shall we get on with Goethe’s color theory?”

“Yes,” said Phineas, and they began to discuss how Goethe had conducted Newton’s prism experiments, but not under special controlled conditions, and how it was then that he found something quite different . . .

It did not take them long to notice that Evie was in a sulk. They glanced at each other.

“All right, Evie, why this, then?” What made her certain that the Diengiei existed?

Evie snorted. “I’m not certain . . . How can I be? But there is something to the name, don’t you think? The first tree, the first plant . . .”

Ollie nodded. “There is, there is . . .”

“I wonder what it looks like,” mused Phineas.

She shrugged. “It’s no good sitting here resorting to conjecture forever, is it?”

Might she also remind them that this was the wettest place on earth. A place that received more than a thousand inches of rain a year! What flora might that support? Gigantic ferns, perhaps, ancient forests . . . True, true . . . they concurred. It would make for fascinating study.

“Anyway,” she continued, “I haven’t read other accounts in which something similar is mentioned . . . which I know doesn’t mean those accounts don’t exist . . . but this is what I have come across so far, and I don’t think it’s insignificant.”

 

She left the meeting later, still discontented.

She wished Phineas and Ollie had been more encouraging; from Lulu, she had not expected much support, and did not receive any. “The what?” she had asked, incredulously, and then told Evie not to be absurd, and to go if she wished to but not to bring this up again during their meetings. “I am leaving it out of the minutes,” she added primly.

Evie tramped along, simmering with annoyance. How much I miss Grandma Grace. Now more than ever, her chest hurt with a deep and inconsolable ache. With her gone, it truly felt like the end of all adventures.

“Nonsense,” she could hear her say. “Follow where you will.”

Yes! Perhaps she would. But how? How would she make it all the way there?

By the time she had returned to her room, a plan had begun to form. She could take a voyage under some pretense, secure an invitation to India, to Calcutta, which in her atlas did not look all that far from Assam. Here it was again, stubborn willfulness, making her more determined than ever. But it was simple, was it not? If no one believed her, then she had no choice but to go to see for herself.

*  *  *

Early this morning, they head out of Shillong in a pony trap, moving through a landscape of rolling grassy downs dotted with rice fields, pine woods, and low hills. The district of Cherrapunjee lies to the south, close to the edge of the plateau, from where views of the plains, vast and shimmery, can be enjoyed.

The British administration had originally set up its official headquarters in the village of Saitsohpen, Mr. Wheeler tells her, before they shifted to Shillong in the 1860s. The evidence of their presence still remains—schools, churches, a sanatorium, even an abandoned tea estate. He will be touring all the smaller villages in the vicinity, especially the ones to the south, perched at the very lip of the plateau. These were surrounded by timber gold—sal and teak forests untouched for centuries—and all this a convenient few miles from the waterways of Bengal by which the wood could be easily transported, to Calcutta, to Dacca, to the world. Evie learns from him that attention has fallen on these forests because years of laissez-faire timber practices in Burma have depleted supplies alarmingly. Forest rules, such as those requiring license holders to plant five trees for every one extracted, were flagrantly ignored. Burma had not run out of forests yet, but now, especially with rising nationalist sentiments, it was important to harness “viable alternative sources.” Though where there are forest resources, he adds, there is usually always trouble.

 

They journey at good speed, slowing down only when a riding party travels ahead of them. Soon enough, it turns off the main road and up a dirt track.

There are many such riding trails weaving around the outskirts of town, Mrs. Wheeler tells her, should she be so inclined. Evie says that sounds nice. Her mind, however, is on other things, and she asks Mr. Wheeler, “What kind of trouble?”

“The usual.” Conflict had first arisen between private businessmen and natives, over wages, commissions, land, and then when the state intervened and took over, the conflict shifted, pitting the Forest Department against the locals. “They practice jhum cultivation, slash and burn, which is very destructive, and which the state is keen to ban, and of course we are trying to preserve the forests by creating reserved areas. It is for their own good, really, but they cannot see it yet.” Mr. Wheeler is a stern critic of private enterprise, that she can tell, but when he says, “Thanks to Lord Dalhousie we have a more modern system of forest management, in which state rights enjoy precedence over all other rights,” she finds herself thinking of the young woman on the deck of the Maloja, her Republican soul, and talk about a greater push for self-government.

Once they approach Cherrapunjee, the landscape changes, with the slopes suddenly giving way to deep and dramatic gorges. To her immense surprise, the hills are barren and treeless, and the winter-yellow grass is only now turning lightly green.

“Aren’t we in the wettest place on earth?” she ventures to ask.

“Yes,” the Wheelers confirm. “Is it not what you were expecting?”

Admittedly, no. She had imagined the wettest place in the world to be lush and tropical. “All the topsoil has been washed away,” she is told. “Nothing grows.” Except in the folds of the mountains, where thickets of forest burst forth in sudden profusion, and in the deep valleys carved by roaring rivers. Along the sheer cliff faces, several waterfalls throw themselves off the edge of the plateau—apparently during the monsoon they are thunderous, though even now they froth all the way down into faraway emerald pools.

They arrive shortly at Saitsohpen to find what Griffith would probably have described as another “bleak exposed village,” and she is not entirely entranced either. The houses are constructed in stone, and the roofs sit very low, she presumes to keep the rain out, but it lends them a closed, melancholic air. The newest and largest construction is a lime-washed church, whose cross sits crooked atop the humble steeple.

Their boardinghouse, if such it may be called, stands next to a school run by a group of Welsh Baptist missionaries—and they arrive just as the children stream out, higgledy-piggledy, socks pooled around their ankles, all attired in some semblance of a blue-and-gray uniform. The lodging arrangements are simple: the Wheelers and she are each to a room. She is in a corner “bedroom,” which she suspects was until recently used for storage and whose harvested contents have been hastily emptied; the smell of sack and grain hangs heavy in the air.

Deng helps to set out her things, without saying a word.

“Are your lodgings comfortable?” asks Evie. “Your room is all right?”

“Yes,” although she looks surprised at being asked.

“Thank you for coming along with us.”

Something in her face softens. “It’s my job, memsahib.”

 

That afternoon, Evie ventures out for a walk into the village, on her own, unchaperoned. The Wheelers are resting, Deng is nowhere to be seen, and who else could she ask?

What joy! Here she is, in a small corner of the world, far from Calcutta, and London, free to do as she pleases. You always do as you please, her family would have interjected, but Evie cannot find the words to describe the delicious thrill of stepping out alone in a new—so much to be discovered—place.

Beyond the boardinghouse compound with its patchy grass and garden, the village houses stand compact and clean, each swept and neat, reminding her somehow of the tidiness of Kong Bathsheba’s kitchen. She assumes that almost everyone is out working in their fields, for it is very quiet, apart from old men dozing in the sun, or old ladies eating oranges or minding toddlers. A dog bounds up to her, wagging his tail, chickens scatter, squawking loudly, and she is beginning to feel as though everything is quite strangely bucolic, when a young man exits a gate behind her, and begins to follow. She hastens her step, but he is quick, and falls alongside her, saying, “Excuse me, excuse me, memsahib.”

She stops, and with as much haughtiness as she can muster, says, “Yes?”

He can’t be more than eighteen, with neatly combed and parted hair, wearing a white long-sleeved shirt, and waistcoat. He reminds Evie of an altar boy. “I am sorry to trouble you, memsahib, but my grandfather would like to say hello.” He gestures back, down the path. “He is the headman of the village, and considers it his duty to know who comes and goes.” Then he adds, as if it explains everything, “He is very old.”

Evie is relieved; it is only this. She walks back with him to a lime-washed house whose patch of yard up front is hemmed by a scraggly hedge. The boy’s grandfather is sitting on a mula, sunning his back. He wears a large turban, and has twined a thick shawl around his shoulders. When Evie enters, he bows lightly, and gestures to a seat next to him. His grandson remains obediently standing. The grandfather speaks in his own tongue, his voice low but authoritative; when he stops, his grandson translates.

“My grandfather says he is sorry he could not stand up to welcome you, but in winter his knees will not allow him.”

Evie smiles. “Please tell him I understand, and that I am happy to meet him.”

“He is pleased to meet you, too.”

The old man issues what sounds like instructions and the boy picks up a small basket, and offers it to her—inside are spliced betel nut and green tobacco leaf.

“He says he knows bilati people do not usually eat kwai, but he would like to offer it to you anyway . . .”

Evie hesitates, he is right, she has never tried the stuff before, but would it be offensive to refuse? More important, should she care? She steals a quick glance at him; he is undoubtedly the oldest person she has ever met, his face lined as growth rings on a tree. He has been through many seasons, and he would know many things. She dips her hand into the basket.

An hour later, Evie is lying in bed, her head spinning. It is worse when she closes her eyes, so she stares instead at the cracked ceiling swirling above her. She has tried drinking lots of water; it has not helped. This is it . . . this is how I will die.

At that moment, there is a knock on the door, and even though Evie is expecting the Angel of Death, it is Deng, here to ask if memsahib would like to take some tea with the others in the garden.

She declines politely. “I am feeling a little unwell.”

When Deng asks if there is anything she can do, Evie explains about the kwai, and how it perhaps does not quite agree with her. Without a word, Deng leaves the room, and returns with a cup.

“Oh, I could not possibly drink anything . . .” Evie begins to protest.

“Not drink. Eat.” It is filled with sugar. A few spoonfuls later, Evie is sitting up, less pale, less nauseated, and then they look at each other and laugh.

“I thought I was going to die!”

“If you do not mind me saying so, memsahib, you looked like it, too.”

“How do you eat this stuff?”

Deng grins, the first proper smile Evie has seen on her face. “Years of practice.”

 

Later, in the light of a feeble, fluttering candle, Evie enters her conversation with the headman into her notebook. He told her he had been headman for more than thirty years, that he had opened his eyes in the morning to his village, and the surrounding mountains, every day of his life. That the white men arrived long ago, maybe when he was ten years old, and he was amazed that they had stayed.

“Why is he surprised?” she had asked.

“Because for months on end here we get slap bam briew,” the boy explained. “Rain so strong and long-lasting it does not stop until it has taken lives.”

He was pleasant enough until she asked about the Nongïaid. Then his aged face clouded over. Beasts, he called them, the ones who would not stay, and for no good reason, too, merely to roam like animals in the wild. “If they are passing through, they will steal livestock, crops.” He would be happy if the white man wiped them off the face of the earth. “They are good at that,” he had added.

The kwai was already beginning to take effect, her head felt a little woozy, but Evie pressed on. “What about the Diengiei?” But she is not sure he understood for he frowned, saying, “They stole that, too.”

The boy walked her back to the boardinghouse. His name was Aaron, he said, he lived with his parents in Shillong, and he was here to visit his grandfather. He studied at St. Anthony’s, which was how he spoke English. “Don’t mind what my grandfather tells you. He follows the old ways, and those won’t be around for much longer.”

A small wave of nausea had hit by then, but Evie managed to ask, “Why not?”

It is simple, he explained, Christianity had come to them now; and they could finally make progress. His people were in the light.

*  *  *

The second party arrives the next day by noon. It is made up of Mr. Finlay, Mr. Dossett, and an American lepidopterist, Dr. Herman Swimmer—a tall, bearlike, bespectacled man whom Evie somehow cannot imagine frolicking around catching butterflies. The boardinghouse is now full to capacity, and at lunch they form a large gathering out on the little lawn.

Evie must admit she still feels ambivalent toward the fixer, although he has greeted her as politely and effusively as he has done in the past. Somehow that is precisely what disquiets her; something about him—his voice? his smile?—strikes her as fake. As Grandma Grace would have said, “I trust him about as far as I could throw him.”

With Mr. Finlay, she is thrilled and shy and trying to be nonchalant all at once—What is wrong with you? Perhaps because there is no denying it now, she is pleased to see him, and the thought that they might have some time to spend together here, in this beautiful wilderness, is filling her with more joy than she imagined.

You had just better not allow him to get in the way of things.

After the meal, Mr. Wheeler heads off to work, while it is decided that the others will take a walk to the nearest sacred grove. They follow the local guide, Bah Khrawbor, a small, wiry, talkative man, who, as befits the hill folk, skips lightly over mud and stone. The rest of the party trudges inelegantly through the undergrowth.

Each village looks after its own sacred grove, he tells them, and though each might call them by different names, Law Kyntang, Law Niam, Diengkaiñ, Khlaw Blai, they all serve the same purpose. “Do you know what that is?”

They make their guesses: spirit dwellings, preservation, a link between earth and heaven, ancestor worship.

He shakes his head and looks at them pityingly. “They are playgrounds for the gods.” Then he repeats what Evie has heard from Mrs. Wheeler about the sacred forests in Burma, that to lift anything out of the grove—a leaf, a twig, a stone—is to risk incurring the wrath of the gods. “One time, two outsiders collected firewood from here, and they went mad,” he tells them cheerfully. “They ran out naked, leaving all their clothes behind.”

Evie spies Mr. Dossett dropping the flower he had plucked.

People are allowed to drink the water here only if they are thirsty, to pick and eat the fruit if they are hungry, and hunt the birds and animals, if and only if they are truly starving. “You must be in need,” adds Bah Khrawbor, “and everything must be consumed within the forest.”

Soon they come to a row of low stone benches, roughly hewn. “This is the place for remembering,” he says, the point at which, before proceeding to the altar deeper inside the forest, people could rest and confirm they had not left anything behind that would be required for the rituals. “From beyond here, it is forbidden to turn back. Not even to turn your head.”

At this spot, everyone’s attention is also caught by the Armillaria mellea, a small cream-colored growth, like finely dissected coral, sprouting from the mulchy soil by the path. The group crowds around, and Evie steps aside, only to find herself next to Mr. Finlay.

Perhaps because they are in this ancient forest, the evergreen trees rising high above them, the air fresh with the smell of young leaf and old, she feels emboldened to give him a smile, and say, “This is unexpected, Mr. Finlay?”

“It is, indeed.” He purses his lips, and after a moment, adds, “Though I hope . . . not entirely unwelcome?”

Her smile widens. “No, not at all.”

This seems to make him happy. He looks toward the party, still enamored of the fungus. “I must confess I do not usually travel in a group. Plant hunting is not like big-game hunting. Usually it is me on my own for months on end, but”—he steals a glance at her—“well, this is . . . a very pleasant change.”

She takes a deep breath to steady her heart.

“How long will you be here, Mr. Finlay?”

His smiles, and bows his head. “If I may, as long as you are.”

 

Only on the way back does she have a chance to speak with their guide.

They walked up to the altar—although Evie was surprised to find not just one but five, arranged in separate circles in a clearing. “Every ninety years, a new one is built,” Bah Khrawbor explained, at which to offer a sacrifice, usually a bull.

Evie stood there in silence. It did not feel like being inside a church, but something about the place inspired a quiet reverence. The deep greenness of the leaves, the smell of vegetation and cool damp rising, the moss thick and dewy—all bearing witness to centuries of gratitude and hope.

To walk all the way through the grove would take a whole day, so they turn back.

She waits until Bah Khrawbor finishes telling her how she should return in March when the rhododendrons are in bloom, and the forest transformed. “Mr. Khrawbor, you are very knowledgeable,” she begins, a compliment that he receives with neither protest nor reticence. “Maybe you know something about the Nongïaid?”

His answer comes all too quickly. “I do not know about this, memsahib.”

“No . . . ?”

He shakes his head, looking straight up the path before them.

She is a little taken aback, but presses him again. “I have read some books which mention the Diengiei . . . I am sure you know about that?”

He laughs, reverting to his smooth guide self. “What do I know about things in books, memsahib? I, who have hardly spent a year in school, and whose teachers told my parents I would come to nothing.”

“That can’t be true,” she protests. “Besides, you speak English very well.”

“That is because of Father Jones and the Sisters, and Jesus,” he adds for good measure, and even lightly folds his hands.

She has lost him now for certain, and there is nothing she can do to steer him back.

 

After dinner that night, the party gathers at the fire.

The mood is jovial and chatty, prompted in no small part by the wine consumed during the course of the meal. Mr. Wheeler is pointing out how the fireplace has been constructed with great skill—that it is cavernous, yet the back wall is perfectly angled to throw out heat and prevent smoke from belching in. Dr. Swimmer, in his gruff American way, remarks how it would have been nice had the geniuses built a few more hearths around the house, that his room is colder than anything he has ever experienced in his life.

“It is like spending a freezing night under the stars.”

Mr. Finlay turns to him. “Believe me, nothing quite compares to that . . .”

The lepidopterist chuckles. “You have probably had a few of those?”

Indeed he has.

“Oh, do tell,” everyone urges.

Evie watches him, but his expression is hard to read; he must be used to such questions.

Most recently in Burma, he begins, while on the trek to Fort Hertz, when he strayed from the caravan in search of a pheasant. “For about an hour, I wandered from one patch of forest to another, and after skirting several hilltops I returned to the open valley, picking up what I thought was the correct trail.” But it was not; he had his bearings all wrong, reading the rivers as flowing westward where they flowed east. He plunged knee-deep into icy torrents and tramped through bamboo forests fifteen to twenty feet high and so thick that he had to force the stems apart. Then dusk started closing in rapidly and he stopped for the night at the edge of a forest. It began to rain. His mackintosh had been ripped to shreds while he was buffeting his way through the thickets, but he covered his head with what remained, kept his gun and cartridge handy in case of wolves, and lay down to rest, curling up like a cat. He had no matches, nor could he, in any case, have lit a fire on such a wet night.

“But what about food, Mr. Finlay?” interjects Mrs. Wheeler.

“I had none, ma’am.” So he made do with sorrel, rhododendrons, any other young leaves he could find, and—at this, the ladies gasped—an unfortunate finch. He made it back the next day, retracing his steps, splashing through mud and snow, beset by extraordinary hallucinations, and finally stumbling into Wei-hsi town late in the evening. Never again, he adds, would he be hunting for pheasants.

“It is difficult to convey the relationship, or rather the lack of relationship between distance and time in northern Burma,” he continues. “There is no other country like it in the world.” Evie can see the Wheelers nod in agreement—she has been listening mesmerized, and more than a little envious. She has read about similar escapades—But this is real! “Elsewhere there is jungle as thick,” Mr. Finlay is saying, “there are mountains as high, climates as humid and extreme, but the combination of all three is unique.”

For the rest of the evening, he is pestered with questions.

“What must one always carry?”

Jam, for it makes everything more palatable, and whisky, for it is antiseptic, and well, it is whisky. And if traveling in Tibet, he adds, then brick tea, for it is immediately useful, and the Tibetans in the mountain villages prefer it to silver.

“What is to be most feared in the jungles, Mr. Finlay?”

In truth, the deadliest are not tigers and vipers, he says, but battalions of leeches, blister flies, ticks, mosquitoes, sand flies and horse flies, all avid bloodsuckers whose bites cause fevers, festering sores, and a crazing irritation.

“When have you been most frightened?”

Evie asks this, and he looks directly at her as he replies. “Crossing a suspension bridge, dangling in midair, swaying from side to side. I can scramble up any narrow pathway, thin as a ribbon, sheer against a mountainside, but those bridges scare me the most.”

*  *  *

Is it a dream or a memory of walking through a forest with Grandma Grace?

She was nine, and something caught her attention, a beetle, a colorful toadstool, and when she straightened up she was alone. She was not immediately frightened; she was certain Grandma Grace would be ahead, with her hat and scarf, and basket, tall, handsome, smiling, the sun behind her lighting her up like a painting.

Evie walked on, but Grandma Grace was gone.

She stumbled forward, calling out, but the woods were silent around her, undisturbed, except for the thud of her small footsteps and her heart. Soon it was a path no longer, but rough undergrowth, the trees growing taller and closer. She was crying, but not too loudly, in case someone other than her grandmother would hear her—wolves, bears, or other monsters.

When she started slowing down, exhausted, she suddenly came to a stream, and on the other side, standing as though she had always been waiting, was Grandma Grace.

“Come,” she called across the water, gesturing to her granddaughter, and Evie stood on a stone on the opposite bank and hesitated. “Don’t be afraid, darling,” she said, her arms open and waiting, so Evie leaped across.

But this is when she wakes, or the memory ends. Does she make it? Does she not? She does not remember, she does not know.

*  *  *

Every morning, Evie awakens to the strains of “Nearer My God to Thee” sung stridently, and decidedly off-key. Young, high-pitched voices float in from the schoolyard, where the children gather for assembly. Through the window, she has seen a tall, thin lady in a blue-and-white habit standing before them—she must be the headmistress—while others in similar attire cluster behind her. The lyrics are undecipherable until the last line in each verse, sung with renewed gusto: Nearer, myyyyy Goddddd tooooo theeeeeeee.

Today they are especially reverberant, and it is impossible to fall back to sleep, or indeed to remain in her room, so she washes and dresses and heads to the small front garden.

The day is chilly though bright, and the yellowed slopes around contrast starkly with the clear blue sky. On the next hill stand the church and cemetery, white crosses shining, while the rest of the township huddles around companionably.

She must admit her arrival here has been less eventful that she had imagined.

What did she expect? Well, definitely not to spend this past week strolling around sacred groves, or picnicking at Kutmadan—though it is a particularly captivating spot, at the very edge of a slope, with endless views of the green gorges.

They have been exploring, gathering bits of bubbly basalt from the open grassy slopes, visiting nearby villages famed for their weaving, and once or twice she has ventured out riding with Mrs. Wheeler. They have also hiked to waterfalls—one in particular with unusual rock formations, called Daiñthlen, once the lair of a monstrous serpent, Bah Khrawbor informed them. “He was slaughtered here,” he said cheerfully, “and they say the implements the people used are scattered in these pools.” And strange pools they were, too, hollowed into flat rock, deep and crystalline blue. On another occasion, they hired a pony trap to take them to Laittyra, to a gigantic boulder shaped like a conical khoh that the natives believe belonged to Ramhah—an evil giant who was killed, and his basket turned to stone.

This is all very well and interesting, but not at all what Evie is seeking.

She has wandered into the village several times more, but it feels futile. Just as Kong Bathsheba said, the key lies in finding the ones who walk, the Nongïaid—but how?

 

For now, she decides to try to find some breakfast.

The kitchen is built at the back, separate from the boardinghouse, and she must walk all the way through it to get there. It is dark inside, the windows barely letting in any light, and she bumps against a table, then a chair, and must bend low to step into a corridor.

A murmur of voices rises from one of the rooms, and she pauses outside the door only because she hears her name. It is Mr. Dossett, and he is wondering out loud why she is here.

Mr. Finlay does not reply right away. “We all have our reasons.”

“Yes, but what are hers? I heard her talking to the guide the other day, in the forest, asking him questions . . . Do you know about this, do you know about that? What is she looking for?”

“It might be none of our business.”

There is a moment’s silence before Mr. Dossett’s voice pipes up again. “What if she is looking for something valuable . . .” She catches her breath; she can picture his face, that sly, acquisitive smile. “Isn’t she sweet on you? You should try to find out, Finlay.”

His friend mumbles. “I don’t know about that . . .”

She does not wait to hear any more.

At the kitchen door, she meets Bah Khrawbor on his way out. He bows, avoids her eye, and walks away hurriedly. Inside sits Deng, looking surprised, and another lady trying to revive the fire at the hearth. She realizes only now that it probably is not customary for guests, European guests in particular, to show up here like this.

“Memsahib, can I help you?”

“No, I mean yes, I have come to see if I can find some breakfast.”

She is told it will be served in half an hour.

“All right, then may I get a cup of tea?” And with that, she strides in and perches on a mula. Deng almost falls off hers, and the other lady stops blowing at the embers.

“I can bring it to you, memsahib, to your room, wherever you want.”

“Right here is fine,” she says, and it is true, she does not feel like being in the main house. “If that is all right?” she adds.

Deng’s expression is as inscrutable as ever, but she nods, and busies herself.

“Thank you,” says Evie gratefully.

The cup of tea she is handed is golden red and smoky, just like at Kong Bathsheba’s, and she finds she has grown to prefer this to the usual with milk and sugar. Deng and the other lady make no conversation, either with Evie or with each other. They work swiftly, silently, and rather than being awkward she finds this calming. Outside the door, a brood of yellow chicks chirp around the mother hen, and a cat watches them lazily from atop a wall.

 

Later, at breakfast, Mr. Wheeler tells them that there has been a bit of trouble in one of the villages to the south, a small place called Umwai.

It is calmer now, he says, the private businessmen, against whom the villagers had been rebelling, have been driven out, and since it is important not to alienate the natives any further, they have been told that despite their assault on two forest officers, their only punishment is to hand over partial jurisdiction of the forest to the government. “As we did in Burma,” he adds. “It makes for a smoother transition, especially if we elicit their help in protecting the forests from fire and other threats.”

“But don’t the villagers do that already?” asks Evie. From the time she has spent here, it would appear so. “The sacred groves have been standing for hundreds of years without our intervention. Is it necessary to do this? Why must we take their forests and turn them into reserves?”

She is afraid she might have gone too far; there is silence at the table, and everyone has stopped their chattering to look over at her. She had not meant to sound this hostile—at least not toward Mr. Wheeler, but it is done now.

If Mr. Wheeler is annoyed he does not show it. Calmly, he butters his toast and sips his tea. “Yes, they have, but we find there is no strategy on their part to make any money from them. It’s a waste. Added to that is the threat from unmonitored shifting cultivation. We are here to ensure a balance between conservancy, which is a priority for us, and sustainable profit. We are here to help. One day, when the empire is gone—and it will go, if you ask me—we will leave this model behind for them to follow.”

Evie stays quiet. At the other end of the table, Mr. Dossett leans over to speak to Mr. Finlay, and she would very much like to fling her omelette at the fixer.

*  *  *

Before they left Shillong, letters had arrived.

A breathless two-page update from Bessie: Where is Assam? Does this mean you will be gone the entire season? Mrs. Ward thinks it a great pity. I do, too! There have been such splendid balls . . . and on and on it prattled, disclosing details that served only to make Evie glad to be away. The other was from Charlotte—also enclosing a letter from Agnes that had arrived after she had departed from Calcutta. It was full of Cambridge news. The GSS meetings continue—they speak of you often—as do classes and practical sessions at Balfour, and experiments at her at-home laboratory. At the time Agnes was writing, the botanical garden was golden, in the throes of late autumn. She was well, as was Edward, and they were hard at work at their books. And you? she had asked, which made Evie suddenly, stupidly weepy. Have you found it? Was Muttlebury of any help? Or shall I burn the holy basil he sent me? The last letter was from her sister, not brief and curt as she had feared it might be, but mystified. Why are you there? I speak on behalf of Mama and Papa when I say we worry, and wish you would come home. She had sat there, letter in hand, and then told herself that it was too late for regrets now, over what she ought to have shared with them, and how she could have done this differently. She was here, and that is what mattered.

She had decided, then, that it was best to put the letters away. She fishes them out now, and spends a quiet morning, out in the garden, writing.

First to Charlotte, to convey that all is well, then to Bessie—have fun on my behalf—and to Florence, sending love and reassurance.

You will be happy to know I am safe and having a wonderful time. I am seeing the world—or at least parts of it not many can claim to, and I am traveling with companions who have many exciting experiences to share. Florence, I can confess at least this to you—that my focus never has been on finding someone to marry but on living an adventure to its fullest. I am sorry for this deception on my part, I am certain you will be hurt but there it is.

She knows she ought to add that once her travels are over she will return home, that she cannot wait to be an aunt, that she will seek a teaching job, perhaps at her old school, the North London Collegiate—but all this brings to her a sense of the end of things, and she has no wish to think of that until she absolutely must.

Last of all, she writes a letter to Agnes. Touch not the holy basil! I am happy to report that Muttlebury has proven useful. Where I am now, Agnes, you would think it a dream. The ferns, and mosses, and fungi growing in the folds of the hills . . . I am yet to explore more, but I can see this is a flora befitting the wettest place on earth. As for my quest, there is little to say except the search continues. Oh, I do miss you, and the sparganium. Does it still thrive well in a bucket in your kitchen? Give it my love. And to you even more.

*  *  *

Today, Evie joins the others on an excursion to see the living bridges, the ones that fascinated Hooker more than half a century ago. She wonders if they have grown in magnificence.

They leave Cherrapunjee for a village called Tyrna, from where they begin their descent to the “riat,” or valley, with Bah Khrawbor as their guide. The dirt track is steep, at times precipitous, as the ladies had been warned it would be—in fact, perhaps they ought to stay behind? Stay behind? Mrs. Wheeler said she would have none of it, and neither would Evie. They pass a few villagers on the way, and Evie looks at them in open curiosity—they are wrapped tightly in their shawls, and carrying vegetables in conical baskets on their backs. Around her, the scenery is splendid, the folds of the mountains pleated in light and shadow, the plants growing lusher and greener as they descend. Areca palms wave over her head and plume in abundance, young bamboo culms stand sentry-like, and bright red and yellow poinsettia blossoms overhang the path.

She has carried her flower press along, and manages to find some fern specimens along the way—delicate maidenhair, finely dissected Asplenium, and leathery Polypodium with its graceful arching leaves. The day is bright and warm, the sky a marvelous blue, and while she collects leaves, she feels a rare sense of contentment.

Bah Khrawbor leads the way, and he is followed by Dr. Swimmer, the Wheelers, and Mr. Dossett, which leaves Mr. Finlay to accompany her. She wonders if he will do as his companion instructed, and ask her questions about exactly why she is here. But for as long as they walk together, he does not, which pleases her. They talk of other things, the garden they visited in Aden, the banyan tree in Calcutta, vast as a forest and ancient. How pleasurable, this easy spontaneity. It is now she notices the slant of his jaw, his well-shaped mouth, the strength of his arms as he helps her over a stream or rocky crevice. Evie does not really need help—but she does not mind that he offers, and is happy to accept.

When they finally reach level ground, they pass through a small village, Nongriat—the ones who live in the valley—where peppercorns and cinnamon are spread out to dry in the sun; the air is heady with their fragrance. Dogs bark, and women with children on their hips watch warily. The huts are compact and clean, and Evie notices that each has its own patch of kitchen garden growing chilies and potatoes and mustard leaves. She can hear the river before she sees it, a gentle roar that in the monsoon, Bah Khrawbor says, turns thunderous. Knobbly gigantic boulders line the banks, and she scrambles atop one and stares in amazement.

The water is iridescent below, and strung above it are two airborne bridges, one over the other, woven from the aerial roots of the fig trees growing on either side. Evie has never seen anything like it. She climbs up to the lower bridge and steps on it, tentative at first, but she realizes soon enough that her weight, along with that of the others, can easily be supported. The roots are trunks beneath her feet, knotted and gnarled, covered in moss, and raised at the sides like balustrades.

Bah Khrawbor tells them these are alternatives to wooden bridges, which are more easily damaged or washed away during the monsoon. Evie remembers Hooker’s account, of how these bridges were also made for the Nongïaid, so they could carry the Diengiei where they wished, or deemed it safe. It is pointless to ask Bah Khrawbor again, she thinks; he would surely still claim ignorance.

“How long before a bridge like this can be used?” asks Mrs. Wheeler.

“At least fifteen years.”

Evie is moved to silence, struck by how many decades it takes to create this, how much foresight is required, and patience. She sits on a boulder, away from the others, feeling that this place, with its deep pools and waterfalls, its glinting sunlight and butterflies, is where magic could happen.

 

They arrive back in Saitsohpen early that evening, and Evie is in her room, freshly bathed, and tired.

The trek up the gorge was backbreaking, but she has not had a more enjoyable day in a long time. All through her body runs a pleasant ache. It will not be so pleasant tomorrow, she has been warned, and Bah Khrawbor has handed her a bottle of what he calls “dawai” to massage on to her aching limbs. “Medicine,” he replied mysteriously upon inquiry. The container holds a deep red salve that smells strongly of raw herbs and shoe polish.

She is examining it in her tiny bedroom, by the light of a candle, when Deng knocks and enters. She is here to turn down the bed as usual, slip a hot water bottle under the covers, and take away the day’s laundry—tasks that she does with swift and silent efficiency. Usually, she asks if there is anything else Evie requires, Evie says no, thank you, Deng, and that is where their interaction ends. This evening though, Deng lingers, and Evie can feel her flutter uncertainly like a bird behind her. She turns around. Deng’s eyes hold the candle flame at their center. She is still deciding whether or not to speak.

“What is it, Deng?” whispers Evie.

“You asked Bah Khrawbor about . . . the Nongïaid.”

Evie cannot hide her surprise; this she was not expecting. “I did.”

Deng looks down at her hands, holding the laundry. “Why?”

Now Evie is a little confused. “I read about them in some books . . .”

“But why?” Deng is looking at her directly. This is a threat, a dare, and Evie is certain that if she lies now Deng will exit the room.

“Because they are the only ones who know about the Diengiei.”

For a long moment, Deng does not say a word, then she sinks silently onto the mula. “My mother was one of them.”

Evie catches her breath. “She was?”

Deng nods. “When she was very young, she was . . . caught.”

“By whom?”

“The missionaries.”

“I’m sorry,” Evie blurts out.

Deng furrows her brow as though unsure of what to do with this apology. “They put her in a school for orphans, even though her own mother and father were living.”

“But did she manage to . . . go back?”

Deng looks at her with pity. “Once you leave the Nongïaid, whether through your own choice or not, you cannot go back.”

“But why?”

“It is just the way it is . . . the way it has always been.”

Evie has come to realize that many things here are explained in this manner. She holds her breath when she asks, “Where is your mother now?” and immediately regrets it, for Deng says the words that are already written on her face.

“My mother died.”

“I’m sorry, Deng.”

“It was a relief for her, and for us.”

Evie does not ask why, instead she gently inquires, “Have you ever met with anyone . . . from your mother’s side of the family?”

She nods. “We have cousins, who come to see us sometimes, when they are . . . in the area. The older people do not like it, but somehow they manage to arrange it.”

At this, Evie pauses. There is a ringing in her ears, in her chest a rapid thudding. “If it is all right with you, may I meet them?”

Deng looks up at her; she does not seem surprised. “I can leave them a message, but I cannot promise they will reply, or wish to meet with you.”

 

Early next morning, Evie flies into the kitchen. Deng is not there. The other woman, their cook, Thei, without a word begins to prepare her a cup of tea.

“Oh, thank you,” says Evie, “but I am looking for Deng.”

“Deng?”

“Yes?”

Thei points in the direction of the back garden, where their living quarters stand—tiny shacks of wood and stone.

“Thank you,” says Evie, and rushes off.

In one of the rooms, she finds Deng, sitting, weaving.

“Memsahib,” she says, startled. Definitely no guest, European or otherwise, has ever set foot in here. She makes to stand, placing what looks like thin ribbons of neatly plaited bamboo on the floor.

“No, no, please . . .” says Evie. “I only wished to know whether you had managed to send a message?” She tries not to sound too excited, too pressing.

Deng gives her a small smile. “I am making it right now.”

Evie’s eyes widen. “What do you mean?”

She learns that when Deng said she would leave a message for her cousins, she did not mean via telegram, or letter, or anything that takes the form of text at all. Deng is weaving what she calls a “kyrwoh,” which she will pass on to a messenger. To Evie, the kyrwoh looks like a pretty Celtic band, to wear around the waist or neck, but in the old days, Deng tells her, kings used them to send messages to their people, from village to village, that there was a war coming, or a drought, a feast, or a funeral, or as in this case, that the recipient was being summoned. It is not used as widely as before, but for Deng and her cousins, it is convenient.

“It is all in here?” Evie holds it in her hand, lightly, amazed.

Deng nods, “Not everything that can be read is written on paper, memsahib.”

She has woven the kyrwoh to a width that conveys to the recipients that they ought to come when they can—in between “emergency” and “take your time” so as not to alarm them.

“But how will the messenger know where to find them?”

“He does not. He just knows where to leave it for them to find.”

“But . . . they could be anywhere?”

“Yes, but they check this spot often. It is how they get their news of the world.”

All right, says Evie, and now what?

“And now, memsahib, we wait.”

*  *  *

Waiting does not come easily to Evie.

How long, how long? she wonders. Sometimes they reply quickly, Deng tells her, within a week, and at other times . . .

At other times?

Well, it might take a few months.

Evie decides it is best, then, to keep herself occupied. She takes walks with Mr. Finlay—around the sanatorium where British officers are sent to recover from the illnesses of the plains, the grounds of the abandoned tea estate—where they exhume a funny assortment of artifacts, spoons and forks and old bottles—and all across the open hills surrounding the monument to David Scott, erected in 1832 and already blackened with age.

They have long talks, too. Mr. Finlay was born and grew up in Manchester, and studied Natural Sciences at Edinburgh, he told her, but before he could finish, in his second year, his father fell ill and died, leaving his family impoverished. “So I left.”

Something about the way he says it makes Evie glance at him—but there is no trace of regret or self-pity on his features. It is as it is.

“What did you do then?”

“I had to work.” With the help of a university friend of his father’s, he was offered a post in Shanghai, as a schoolmaster.

“A schoolmaster!” exclaims Evie, saying she simply cannot imagine him . . . indoors?

He laughs, admitting that that was why he did not last—before the year was out he was accompanying plant hunters such as Fritz Anderson on expeditions across China. “I went up the Yangtze River to the border of Tibet.”

Wide-eyed, Evie asks what it is that he discovered there.

“Not much . . . apart from a love for exploration.” At that, they both smile at each other. “And you?” he asks simply. “How did you come to love the natural world?”

She tells him about Agnes, and Grandma Grace, even her friends at the GSS, who helped her, she says, to see things anew. She does not add that they also think she is a bit crazy, coming all the way here on a wild quest.

“I remember you told me in Calcutta,” says Mr. Finlay, “that you were seeking something, a plant, on little more than a hunch . . .” Wouldn’t you—or rather Mr. Dossett—like to know! But before she can tell him that she would prefer not to divulge any details for her own reasons, he adds, “I am a plant hunter, so I cannot deny I am curious, but if there is one thing Anderson taught me it is—to each his own quest.”

“What do you mean?” she asks.

He looks at her a long moment. “Just that if you had wanted to, you would have told me.”

She nods. “I would have.”

“Sometimes,” he continues, “talking about something dissipates the energy you collect around it, the energy required to find it, to accomplish the mission.”

Yes, she says, yes, exactly. To open up a wish to too many lightens it, makes it frivolous. How impossibly lucky, she tells herself, that she has met the one person who understands.

 

Enjoyable as they are, their walks must be put on hold, for they go away suddenly, the fixer and Mr. Finlay, on an impromptu plant-hunting expedition—“I wish you could come too,” he tells her, and so does she, but that is impossible.

She is determined, though, not to be left behind in a lost and forlorn state. She resumes riding, and visiting waterfalls and other scenic spots. She accompanies the Wheelers on a day trip to Umwai, and treks to a viewpoint just beyond the village, at the edge of the forested plateau, from where the drop into the plains of Sylhet is high and sheer. Mr. Wheeler says that during the monsoon all this transforms into a shimmering watery basin—every year, rain from the wettest place on earth floods Bengal. Standing there, the plains spreading endlessly before her, she is taken back to a morning on the Maloja, gliding down the Suez Canal—Here, too, I am more in the world.

On most days, Evie walks out on her own.

She does so early in the morning, while the sun is still strong and bright, before the winter fog she is now used to creeps cold and silent over the golden hills in the afternoon. Deng packs her a snack of oranges, fruit buns, and rice cakes.

“You’ll go alone, memsahib?”

“Yes,” she says, “but I have company . . .”

Deng looks bewildered. “Who?”

The best kind. All the green and silently growing things around her.

She begins by exploring the sacred grove from edge to edge, finding streams, grassy clearings, a small mossy cave. It is peaceful, enchanting even, but she does little else apart from sketch, and read, and nap with the winter sun on her back—not so much for fear of upsetting the gods but the locals. Soon enough, she begins to venture farther, beyond Saitsohpen village, scrambling down the slopes to reach the forests in the folds of the hills. Here she can collect leaves and flowers, seeds and samples. As Hooker had written in his journals, it is true that the extraordinary diversity of species here is not so much attributable to the elevation, but to the variety of exposures and habitats, the pools and lakes, the tropical jungles, both in deep, hot, and wet valleys and on drier slopes, the rocks, the tablelands and stony soils, the moorlike uplands—It is a dream!

Sometimes, in this quietness, while examining a curled fern frond, or a closed jasmine bud, she is reminded of Goethe and his words. Each of Nature’s works has an essence of its own, he had written, each of her phenomena a special characterization: and yet their diversity is in unity.

 

During this time, the unexpected happens.

In this out-of-the-way part of the world, tramping through forests as she had done with Grandma Grace so long ago, and so far away, she finds she is closest to being as happy as she was in her childhood or, dare she say it, even more. Perhaps it is because of this that she finds her “seeing” improves. They had talked about it often in their GSS meetings, the seeing that Goethe called for, and although Ollie and the others had explained it to her carefully, she felt she knew of it only theoretically rather than through experience. “But what does it mean?” she would ask. “To see feelingly?”

She finds herself drawn especially to ferns. An initial glance around brings to her attention a general foliage, but on closer inspection, a great and extraordinary diversity is revealed. The majestic, and fantastic, flying spider monkey tree fern with its swirling leaves and rough, shaggy trunks; the delicate maidenhair creeper, its leaflets edged with odd little teeth; the lovely, leafy oakleaf fern, with basal rosettes sticking up like feathers; and the splendid winglike Dipteris wallichii so admired also by Hooker. Closer to the ground, tiger’s whiskers with their straight, upright stems, standing like miniature pine trees. Behind the veil of ferns a blanket of haircap moss, growing close against the slope, and which looks, from above like stars; on a fallen log, a layer of turf moss, soft and slippery like velvet.

This green! I have never known this green before, she writes in her journal. What must it be like in the rains? The rains of the wettest place on earth. How she longs to stay, to find out.

And then—this is the part she has always struggled with most—she tries to retreat into exact sensorial experience, as Goethe spoke of it. Think the phenomenon! She was afraid that this lay quite beyond her and always would, and although even here it is not as exact and undistracted as it ought to be—Maybe I don’t have the patience necessary for this?—she imagines in a way she has not before, in closer and more striking detail. Perhaps it is because of the quiet, of her aloneness, the light, the air, even the quality of plants that she finds thrillingly new and unfamiliar. The fern fronds unfolding—alive, in transition, rather than frozen in static form.

On occasion, she invites Mrs. Wheeler to join her—come, she will say, let’s go and examine the Pandanus, or see whether the sapphire berries are ripe for collecting—but the days when she is alone, she finds more inspiring. She discovers a flattish boulder perched precariously at the end of a slope—to get to which she must jump over a small gorge, between hill and stone. Then she sits at the edge with her feet dangling over nothingness, the valley falling away steeply below her. She does not think it an exaggeration to say this might be the spot where she is most in the world.

If she could infuse one thing into her scientific training, it is this feeling, intangible, inexplicable as it may be, because from it flowed all else, inspiration, no doubt, but also respect—and reverence—for the aliveness of life, and its infinite and unfathomable interconnectedness. What a science that would be! What a way of knowing! Because to isolate is to deaden, isn’t it? she thinks. To take away from . . . circumstance. But to see in Goethe’s way, to vividly perceive the metamorphosis of a leaf, the coming into bloom of a flower, is no longer to see the thing in an objective frozen present, but as a thing—a subject—with history. She realizes this here, that history can be drawn from a phenomenon by imagining it in time, and in this way also draw closer the temporal and physical relationships within all living things.

“All of us,” she murmurs, sitting aloft the boulder, the wind in her face, “every living thing carries history.”

 

The days pass by in a quiet, steady routine. She takes her morning tea in the kitchen, sometimes with a freshly steamed rice cake drizzled with honey, enjoying the smell of wood, the warmth radiating from the fire. Deng tells her that this was where the elders would recite stories, around the hearth, and she can see why—it is in so many ways a place of sustenance. They have also spoken about her mother.

“She drank herself to death on kiad.” Evie knew the word, a term for a local rice brew in these hills. “She had her children . . . all five of us, but we could never be enough for everything she had lost.” In her voice was a sadness, but also a trace of relief, as though this was the first time these words were seeing air.

Evie was almost afraid to ask, but she did. “What about your father?”

Deng shrugged. “He was sometimes there, most of the time he was not.” And then she paused, glanced at her, and said almost shyly, “But you must be wondering how I speak English . . .”

“And such good English, too!”

“The missionaries, the ones who took away my mother, they helped us out, gave me an education, and work to earn a living. And now I don’t know . . .”

“Don’t know what?” asked Evie.

“Whether to hate them or to be grateful.”

*  *  *

On the day they receive word from the Nongïaid, Mr. Dossett and Mr. Finlay return from their expedition to Mawsmai.

Evie is out in the garden, sketching, when Mr. Finlay joins her. “Do you come bearing marvelous tales of discovery?” she teases. He laughs.

He is clearly pleased to see her—and she is pleased to see this, and him, too.

“Well, Dossett is convinced we have found a new species of orchid.”

How exciting! “Though I remember you saying this matters little to you.”

“It is true,” he says, adding that he is flattered at her recollection. “I care to find a new orchid only if I may be permitted to name it after you.”

“Oh! Aerides evelynae certainly does have a ring to it . . .”

They smile at each other, and maybe it is because of the time they have spent apart, all the days they have not met, that Evie feels certain that in their exchange lies something indiscreet—a longing, a hope. He leans closer across the table. His eyes are as dark as peat, his skin tawny from his expedition. She hopes for one of them to say something—anything—that acknowledges this pull between them, but she senses him faltering.

“I have not seen you sketch before,” he says, “you have a good hand.”

“Why, thank you, Mr. Finlay. It has been said that every drawing conveys a view.”

“Yes?” He looks amused.

She nods, and asks if he draws, too.

“Couldn’t, even if my life depended on it, alas, but I have been trying to write . . .”

“Write what, Mr. Finlay?”

“A travel memoir,” he replies a little shyly.

“Oh, I love travel memoirs,” she blurts out. “I’ve read so many!”

He looks gratified. Maybe, if she had the time, and the inclination, she could take a look . . . someday?

“I would be delighted.”

They sit there, quiet for a moment, the air punctured only by the buzzing of bees, and the lunch gong from the school.

“Mr. Finlay,” she begins, “how long have you known Mr. Dossett?”

“Too long,” he says without hesitation. “Why do you ask?”

Evie shrugs. “No reason, really. I merely wondered . . .”

Mr. Finlay throws her a quick glance. “We are not friends . . . if that’s what you are wondering. He is a rascal, but a very resourceful one.” Which is what makes him a good fixer, of course. He knows how to find the best coolies and guides, where to hire the strongest mules, and can even, he adds, stump up a bit of cash when you need it—which all plant hunters do, more often than not. “He is being paid a hefty sum by Dr. Swimmer to be here,” he continues, “and since I am here, too, Dossett thinks we ought to go hunting for . . .”

“Orchids,” she finishes for him.

He laughs. “You don’t much like him, do you?”

Evie shrugs. How is she to explain that he makes her uncomfortable, like he is watching her when he thinks she is not looking? Or that he inflames her with his remarks about the “sly natives” or their ugliness and stupidity. To Mr. Finlay she says simply that she prefers it when he is not around.

“I am sure he will be off plant hunting again soon”—he gives her a small smile—“though I am happy to stay where I am for now . . .”

Good, says Evie, for she would die of jealousy if he went off again on another trip so soon. It isn’t fair!

“One day, Miss Alexander, you will travel the world.”

She looks at him, gray eyes meeting his own, steady and strong. “Oh? And how are you so certain?”

He reaches across, turns her hand over gently, and runs a finger down her palm. He smiles. “It is written in your stars.”

 

She is heading to her room afterward when Deng rushes up to her. “I received a reply,” she says, breathless. Evie glances about them; there is no one around. She motions for Deng to follow her inside. Once she closes the door she turns around.

“And?”

“They will meet us.”

Evie drops into a chair. “When?”

“Tomorrow morning.” Then she adds apologetically, “The messenger fell sick, otherwise we would have heard sooner.”

Evie says it is all right, that she is just glad they received the message.

“Where do we meet them?”

“Usually in a tea shop, but the headman of this village . . .”

“Does not feel too kindly toward them?”

Deng nods. “Which is why they have asked us to come to the lawkyntang. At the remembering stones.” They will be meeting her mother’s youngest sister’s daughter, and her brother.

“When did you last see them?” asks Evie.

“Almost a year ago,” she replies. “It is getting harder for them to set up camp near Shillong . . . people do not like it, they chase them away . . .”

“Where do they go? What do they do?”

Deng shrugs. “They have no choice. They have to keep even more on the move.”

 

All through the evening, Evie can hardly keep still, and least of all make conversation at dinner—or eat, despite the fact that Thei in the kitchen has miraculously managed to “roast” a whole chicken, and has not steamed the vegetables until they are pulp.

To her joy, Mr. Dossett excuses himself after dessert—“bit of work to be done”—and leaves the dining room. A bottle of port is fetched to celebrate the plant hunter’s return, and when they gather around the fire, Mr. Finlay is pestered for tales of their recent travels. This is a relief—lately conversations have been more lepidopterously inclined than she would like. Evie knows all about how difficult it has been for Dr. Swimmer to “relax” his specimens in this cold; how they turn brittle and splinter at the prick of a pin. This evening, Mr. Finlay regales them with funny stories from their latest trip, including one about his encounter with the fever nettle, a plant that causes severe itching on contact with the skin.

“As if you are on fire!” he explains. “And you cannot put it out!”

Evie and the others laugh; she is feeling benevolent toward the world, prompted by the port and the warmth, and the thought of tomorrow. She listens intently, holding closely her happiness and excitement.

Later, when she is off to bed, she bumps into Mr. Finlay outside; he had stepped out to smoke.

“Your travel memoir will be superb.” She can barely make his face out in the dark, but she can tell that he is pleased, and smiling. “You are a wonderful storyteller.”

“And you, Miss Alexander, are . . . wonderful.”

She looks at him, their breath changing to white mist.

“I am glad you’re back.”

“Are you?”

She nods.

He steps closer, bringing with him the smell of smoke and leather. “Miss Alexander,” he says, and in his voice she detects the faintest tremble.

“Please, call me Evie . . .”

“Evie, would you allow me . . .”

They are standing close to each other, closer than ever before. The air is suddenly warm between them. She thinks he is leaning in toward her when a door, a window, somewhere, in the wind clangs shut. They are startled apart. Then they quietly laugh.

“Well,” she says, “I must go . . .”

He takes her hand and presses it to his lips.

“Yes, of course,” he says, “good night, sweet Evie.”

*  *  *

Long before breakfast, when no one is up or about yet, Evie is awake and dressed and ready. Ought she take her notebook? Yes. Her sketchbook, too? Why not? And for good measure, a pebble from the river at Nongriat.

When Deng knocks, she is at the door in an instant. “Memsahib, let us go.” She follows, pulling her shawl tight around her, for it is cold, the sun is pale, and last night’s mist still clings to the hills. They are almost out of the boardinghouse compound when they bump into Mr. Dossett.

“Good morning, Miss Alexander.”

She returns his greeting with a distinct lack of warmth.

“Where are you off to so early?”

“I suppose one may ask where you are back from so late?”

He grins, although in his eyes something flashes, anger, contempt; but Evie bristles, too, from nervousness, and a strange feeling of having been found out.

“Deng is showing me . . . the village,” she says, and then is annoyed she succumbed to offering him an explanation, one that sounds flimsy even to her ears.

“Well, I must not keep you from your exploring.” He steps aside gallantly, sweeping his hat low.

 

Only when they enter the forest does she begin to recover her composure. It is colder here, and quieter, too, except for the chirruping of birds.

“Will they be there, Deng?” she asks, suddenly tentative.

“If they have said so, they will, memsahib.”

It takes them a little more than twenty minutes to arrive at the remembering stones, but the clearing is empty. With the sun hidden, the light around them is milky pale, falling thinly on the leaves and undergrowth. Evie looks at Deng, eyebrows raised, but her companion seems unperturbed. “We wait.” She proceeds to sit on a stone, and Evie follows. The forest stays silent, with no echoing sound of footsteps or voices.

No one’s coming. No one’s coming. She tries to distract herself with the fan-shaped oyster mushrooms growing like stairs up a nearby tree. No one’s coming.

It isn’t long though before Deng turns and exclaims. Two figures stand behind them, silent as cats, clad in cloaks of dark gray wool, pulled over their heads and tied under their chins. The boy, who is smaller, stands a little way behind the girl, even though her own slight frame barely gives him cover. Deng rushes over, and for a moment Evie thinks the girl will not drop her walking stick, nor the boy his bow, but they do, and they embrace, uttering exclamations in their own tongue.

Evie stands aside, feeling like an intruder, and when they finally turn to face her, she offers a nervous hello. Deng makes the introductions. The girl is Phyrnai, the boy Ïada. They are quite visibly siblings, both with the same high slant of cheek and eye, the same small rounded nose. Their hair is long, unruly, and windswept.

The girl nods. “Kumno?” The boy says nothing, his eyes curious yet cautious.

“Thank you for meeting me,” says Evie.

She expects Deng to translate for her, but the girl nods again. “We were not far.”

They seat themselves around one of the larger remembering stones, except for Ïada, who paces noiselessly at the edges of the clearing. From under her cloak, from a cloth bag on her back, Phyrnai extracts bunches of fruit—wild oranges from the Garo Hills, where they spent the winter. Some for their cousin, and some for Evie, too.

“Oh, this is so kind.” Evie is mortified she has not brought anything in return, even though Phyrnai waves her apologies away.

She sits in silence as the cousins converse, their language sharp yet musical. In her time here, she has familiarized herself with some Khasi words, but this is dialect, she thinks, and they do not use the few words she knows—except Diengiei, at which there is a pause, and Phyrnai glances over at her. Even her brother turns, his hand moving along the length of his bow. Perhaps they are not pleased at her snooping around like this, but she supposes the worst they could do is send her away with nothing more than wild oranges.

Finally, Phyrnai turns to her, and asks haltingly, “How do you know about the Diengiei?”

Evie was expecting this, and has tried to prepare a clear, simple response. She leaves out Goethe and his Urpflanze, and how the Diengiei had caught her attention because she had been introduced already to his ideas, and plunges straight into how she had read about it in some books. “I like learning about other places,” she says, “other people, other kinds of plants . . . The world is very big, and full of mystery, don’t you think?” They stay silent, so she continues. “I read about the Diengiei, and I was curious . . . It sounds like it is something very special that can be found only here . . .” It is also called by many names, isn’t it? she adds. And there is confusion, isn’t there, over what it might be?

The cousins converse again briefly between themselves.

“It is what the other ones said, too,” Deng tells her.

“The other ones?”

“Yes, the bilati men who came before you.”

Evie blinks. She is more than a little surprised.

“You thought you were the only one?”

Truthfully, she had. “When were they here?”

“Long time ago, before I was born,” says Phyrnai—which Evie would not number at more than twenty years.

She itches to ask what happened to them, but feels it might not be the appropriate moment. What matters right now is her winning their trust, and she has a feeling that all these questions are a test.

“Why do you want to find it?”

This, too, she had expected, though she has a less straightforward answer. A love of adventure! She avoids using the word scientist, saying instead that it intrigued her. There is a notion, she tells them, that somewhere there could exist the original plant, the one from which all others arise. “Not that I think that is what the Diengiei is,” she adds quickly, “but I have not read about anything else like it . . . And I wondered whether it was real, and why not many had seen it . . .”

Deng shakes her head. “What Phyrnai means is what will you do if you find it?”

“Oh, nothing.”

There is a moment’s silence, the boy has stopped pacing, even the birds seem to be quiet. Then the two young women laugh, loud and unrestrained. It reminds her of Kong Bathsheba.

“But I mean it,” she insists.

Look around you, she is told. Do white people come to our lands to do nothing?

Evie has no answer.

They converse again in low tones, and she is certain they are speculating on how best to refuse her. When Deng finally addresses her it is to say that her cousin thinks it better that they part ways amicably. “I know you must be disappointed, I am sorry,” she adds, and sounds it, too. They make to pack up and leave, and Evie stands there, holding the oranges, cold and numb. This is it. This is how her adventure ends. At the remembering stones with nothing to remember.

Ïada approaches them now, perhaps to bid his cousin goodbye. The Nongïaid drape their cloaks over their shoulders, tying them neatly under their chins; in a moment they will have melted back into the forest, and be gone, like leaves blown by the wind.

“Please,” says Evie, suddenly, and they stop to look at her. “Please,” she repeats, “though please is—is . . . perhaps nothing would be enough, really . . . but I ask that you consider, if only for a moment, how what might seem one morning’s conversation is the smallest part of a long, long journey.” She pauses helplessly. “A journey that has made little sense to anyone else, my friends, my family, and honestly, sometimes even to myself, but . . .” She takes a deep breath. “If there was a way . . . the tiniest chance even . . . that I could do this on my own, I would, because I’ve traveled so far, with much hope and little else . . .”

The others stay quiet—the boy is impatient, Deng gazes at the ground, while Phyrnai looks at her strangely, silently. Evie continues, confused, unsure what it is she wishes to say.

“My grandmother would tell us . . . be more in the world . . . and no one seemed to understand that . . . Not my sister, or my parents, maybe not even my friend Agnes . . . and it is hard to explain, but I think this is my way of trying to find out what she meant, not by being shut inside a classroom or a library, but being in this forest with you. I know this is an enormous favor to ask . . . and I wish . . .” She is mortified to feel the sharp, hot prick of tears. “I wish I had some way to convince you . . . but I don’t . . . except to say, please, I would be grateful for your help.”

The forest is quiet again, with no wind, no rustling leaves, but beyond its edges someone calls in the village, a dog barks. The world rolls on.

Phyrnai turns to Deng, her voice low and urgent. Evie does not believe she has been her convincing best—what on earth was I saying?—and she stands aside drooping, out of steam. They speak for what seems like ages; Ïada has lost interest and disappeared into the undergrowth. The sun is much higher now, although hardly stronger; it will be a cold overcast day.

“All right,” says Deng. Evie nods, assuming she means it is time to head back to the boardinghouse, and turns to make her way out of the forest. “All right, they will take you,” repeats Deng.

This does not register at first, and Evie stares at them in disbelief.

“We must walk, two or three days,” says Phyrnai, her face calm, watchful, steadily holding her gaze. They will leave early tomorrow morning, before daybreak, for this is not a Nongïaid-friendly village, and they must swiftly move on.

Evie opens her mouth to request more time—How would she explain this to the Wheelers? To Mr. Finlay? How would she make preparations so quickly?—but she is relying on someone else’s goodwill, and that being the case, there is little room for negotiation.

She decides simply to say yes, she will be ready.

*  *  *

In her first few weeks at Newnham, Evie was expected, as a new girl, to return the calls she had received “at home” from the others at the college. Most faces faded into a blur, except for a Miss Philippa Bowen, whom she remembered in particular.

The girls Evie had visited so far had been busy at their needlework, writing letters, or reading. Miss Bowen was arranging rocks. Where others displayed pictures of family and pets in their rooms, she had rock samples spilling out of boxes onto her desk, some on the floor. All this overseen by Fergus, Sidgwick Hall’s resident cat—a furry black creature with green eyes, seated on the windowsill in a patch of sunlight.

Miss Bowen had grown up in Lyme Regis, on the Dorset coast, she said, and spent most of her time tramping around on the beach. “Look what I found this summer.” An unassuming peach-brown limestone slab, but when Evie turned it over she gasped. It was hollow, filled with . . . “Calcite crystals.” Rosette-shaped, and radiating from a central boss, glinting in the light. “Isn’t it a wonder?”

Evie nodded, hardly able to speak. She was shown other specimens—rocks with ripple marks formed by waves on shallow water, some with mud cracks the color of silver, dreikanter rocks sand-blasted by the wind.

“In your room is a million years’ worth of time,” said Evie.

“Yes, you are right.” She looked around her. “And all the world, too . . . For who knows where these have formed, and where they have been washed away to and from.”

The stones lay silent, but not quite—like plants they, too, revealed wordlessly.

Miss Bowen stepped up to the window. She stroked Fergus, who pushed his nose up against her palm. “Did you know,” she began, “one of the rarest stones in the world is the grandidierite, found only on Madagascar . . . It is said that if you hold it up to the light, it is not one, not two, but three colors . . . I would love to see it, wouldn’t you?”

Evie agreed.

“It is crazy, isn’t it? For someone who has never left the south of England, and who may never leave this island, to long to travel to Madagascar . . .”

“Is it?” said Evie. “I would not wish . . . for this to be all the world I see.”

Miss Bowen turned to her. “Then what must we do?”

In that instant, Fergus leaped gracefully out the window, and was gone.

They decided that this was exactly how one ought to set out on an adventure.

*  *  *

When they leave, dawn has not yet broken, though the sky is lightening in the east. The mountains stand bare and dark, patiently waiting to be transformed into slopes of grassy yellow.

The previous night, Deng gave her a cloak, similar to the ones worn by her cousins. “It is a jaiñ kup, you will need it,” she said. Evie already possessed a traveling paletot, but she takes it along, not wishing to hurt Deng’s feelings. Apart from this, she carries very little—a change of clothes, her sketchbook, her plant press, and for some reason, the last letters she had received from her mother, Agnes, and Florence.

They are joined by Phyrnai and Ïada at the edge of the village, and their party walks in silence. The cricket chorus has ceased, and cockerels crow across the valley as the sun rises. Evie has bid the Wheelers farewell—I wish to go on a trip, she told them, trying to sound casual. She did not think they would attempt to dissuade her from the plan—but it was sudden and unexpected and she was not sure how they would react. She would be gone for a few days, she went on to explain, accompanied by Deng, who was taking her to see her uncle’s village. This last was a fabrication, but Deng and her cousin had supplied her with very little to go on. It gives her a chance to see the area more extensively, she added for good measure, before they return to Shillong, and for her, eventually to Calcutta.

Mr. Wheeler turned to his wife—“Well, what do you think?”—and she looked at Evie a moment, and said, “I think no matter what I say Evie will go anyway.”

Evie made no attempt to deny this.

“I’m happy about one thing,” said Mrs. Wheeler,

“Which is?”

“That you are not turning into a pukka memsahib.”

Evie is thinking of this, smiling to herself, when Phyrnai calls out in warning. They are walking on a road with a sharp drop to the right, and a small landslide has narrowed their path to a precarious ribbon. They clamber over mud and stone but make it through safely.

The valley is flooded with light now, and the sheer cliff face shines warm and gold. Phyrnai points to something. “Do you see those rocks?” Halfway up the cliff three boulders jut out, balancing miraculously one on top of another.

“Yes,” says Evie.

“They say when those fall Sohra will vanish.”

Sohra, she has learned, is what the locals call Cherrapunjee. Why do bilati people keep naming places that already have names? Deng had asked her.

“And how will they fall?” she asks.

The cousins glance at each other. “We do not know . . . Maybe when an earthquake will come again, like the one that opened the ground to the center of the earth.” Mr. Wheeler had told her about it, the Assam earthquake of 1897, whose ructions were felt in distant Calcutta, and which made the Brahmaputra rise more than seven feet. “Every fifty years, it comes,” adds Deng matter-of-factly, as they begin to descend.

They will be walking a path that trails through the valley. Insects chirp, and there is birdsong in the air; around them the leaves catch the sunlight and shimmer. It is difficult to imagine this as a site of terrifying destruction.

Just before midmorning, they stop to rest—like birds, the siblings eat oranges and nuts, while Evie and Deng slather slices of bread with jam. Mr. Finlay was right, thinks Evie, jam will turn out to be the most useful item they have carried.

 

They walk through the afternoon with the sun high above them, shortening their shadows and those of the trees to stubs.

The undergrowth here is more lush than on the barren hilltops, and early rhododendron flowers punctuate the view with sudden scarlet and white. They fall naturally into a traveling order: the boy skips nimbly first, followed by Phyrnai, and Evie finds herself usually beside or in front of Deng. She wishes the girl ahead would pay her more attention, but she seems to have undertaken the expedition as a duty to be fulfilled rather than a generous favor. She shows no interest in her, with no questions except the ones asked yesterday in the sacred grove. Evie has many, but restrains herself, as she suspects they will not be welcome.

Whether it is deliberate or not, they pass no villages on the way. Perhaps the Nongïaid feel this is safer. Evie also wonders whether there are wild animals about. Had she not heard Mr. Wheeler speak of Himalayan black bears and clouded leopards? It might be wiser to not inquire. What she does ask is where they will be spending the night, and she is told, “You’ll see.”

 

By early evening, she is weary, her feet are beginning to ache, and she is relieved when Phyrnai signals for them to stop. It is not a special spot in any way, though there is a stream close by, and the ground seems comfortably level and dry.

Phyrnai and Ïada set about busily gathering wood, while Deng collects water. Evie sits on a small tree stump—How can she help? She is not even sure how to make such an offer. Out in the wild, is she still a guest? Are they not the ones doing her a favor . . . ?

She is thinking this through, when a cry—of someone in pain—rises from the direction of the stream. Deng! Evie rushes over. Deng lies fallen at the edge of the shallow water, grasping at her leg. She must have slipped; even before Evie gets up close, she can see the swollen ankle, already turning an ugly purple.

“Deng,” she calls, and just then the cousins also arrive.

Evie stands aside, for they seem to know exactly what to do. Ïada disappears into the undergrowth, reappearing in a few minutes with what looks like a sheaf of leaves. Thynriat, they call it, as they crush the leaves quickly, and pat the paste onto her ankle. Over this, Phyrnai gently ties strips of cloth torn from Deng’s jaiñkyrshah. Deng looks pale but manages to totter to her feet. It is clear, though, that she will not be able to walk any great distance.

“I am sorry, memsahib,” she says, almost in tears, and Evie says she must not be, that they must hurry back so she can see a doctor.

“Oh, I don’t know . . .” she begins.

“Deng, we must have that ankle attended to . . .”

The cousins converse, though Phyrnai seems to be the one taking charge, talking briskly, firmly. Finally, Deng nods, and looks up at Evie. “You will carry on.” Evie makes to protest, this is absurd, but Deng continues. “We are close to a family friend’s village. Phyrnai will take me there, and they will look after me. You may wait here with Ïada, and tomorrow you can continue.”

Evie does not know what to make of this, she is flustered and stung by worry, but also secretly, guiltily relieved—“Why don’t I come along?” she offers, but she is told that it will be quicker if their luggage is left behind, guarded by her and the boy.

“We must go before it gets dark,” says Phyrnai.

Evie says a brief goodbye, please take care, and they are off, descending into the valley. Ïada shoots her a glance, looks as if he does not want to hang around, and bounds off into the forest.

Wonderful, thinks Evie. Now I sit and wait for a leopard to show up.

 

There is no leopard, and not a soul either as dusk gathers and the crickets set up their persistent grinding. A forest is a very dark place, Evie realizes. It also feels like hours and hours have passed, but Ïada has not returned and neither has Phyrnai. What if this was all a ploy to be rid of her?

Alone in the shadows, this seems a distinct possibility.

One word though forms itself in her mind through the cold and disquiet. Fire. Why has she not yet lit a fire? Probably because she does not know how. She picks up the wood the siblings had gathered, collects some dry grass and leaves, and sets up a small bonfire as best she can. She is certain there will be matches in one of the bags, and fishes around for them. Don’t waste any, she chides herself as she strikes one and then another, and nothing catches. Carefully, with the next match she lights the tinder in several places; it begins to smolder. Gently she blows, and a flame flickers and she has never been happier—As though it is the first fire, what a wonder this sight!

In the half hour it has taken her to get this going, night has fallen, and she is hungry. Should she call for the boy? Why hasn’t he returned? She eats more bread, but worries about how little is left. Don’t be absurd, she tells herself, if nothing else, she can find a village tomorrow, buy some rice and eggs. But tonight, well, she would have to survive. She bunches the bags together and lies down. What must the Wheelers be doing? And Mr. Finlay? She flushes at the thought of him.

The night before, she had met him again after dinner, outside, smoking.

“Evie . . .” he said as she approached, “I have been waiting . . .” Hours, days, all his life!

“I have some news,” she began. “About the plant I’ve been looking for.”

He blew out smoke, and nodded.

“I met Deng’s . . . friends . . . who said they will take me, and show me.” She expected him to ask many questions—Who are these friends? Are they trustworthy? Will she be safe? How long will she be gone? And really, would she just tell him now about this plant?

Instead, he grinned widely. “This is superb news.”

“It is?”

He looked at her inquiringly.

“I mean, yes, of course, it is . . . I have been wondering about it for so long, and I planned all of this . . . to be here, somehow . . . and now . . .”

“And now?”

She stayed silent, unwilling to admit it.

“And now you are getting what’s called plant hunter’s feet.”

She couldn’t help laughing. “What?”

“The itch to travel, along with trepidation over what is to come . . .”

She nodded.

He dropped his cigarette and stubbed it out with his foot.

“When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow.”

This time, he laughed. “You don’t waste a moment, do you, Evie? Good on you . . .” Every day, he continued, you wake up and the world lies before you, waiting to be explored, but tomorrow—and this is the best part—that’s exactly what you are going to do. He smiled at her, in the dark she could see his eyes shining. “Evie, there’s nothing like the call of adventure.” She was about to say that this was true, when he added, “But I ask only one promise from you . . .”

She held her breath. “What?”

“That when you are back, and you have found it, we will celebrate, and you will tell me all about it.”

In a flush of joy, and gratitude, she stepped up and kissed him, right then and there. For a moment he was taken aback, but his mouth softened against hers quickly, and their kisses grew deeper, more urgent. When they parted, they were breathless.

“Evie,” he whispered, “come back soon.”

Now, on her own by a feeble fire, she is not so sure why she left in the first place. Come on . . . she tells herself again. You are finally on your way! It is not long, though, before tiredness overcomes her, and despite everything, she dozes off.

 

When she opens her eyes, she sees two figures sitting across from her. The siblings have returned, and she almost cries out in relief. She sits up, and Phyrnai nods to her; she is stirring a pot over the fire, which is now well tended and ablaze.

“How is Deng?” asks Evie.

“She will be well.”

Phyrnai hands Evie a small wooden bowl, holding soup, or a clear stew, with ginger and pungent mustard leaves. Delicious. Nothing has ever tasted as wholesome in her life. They eat in silence, quick and hungry.

“I learned your language from Deng, you know,” says Phyrnai suddenly. “She taught me. My father, he is the rangbah, our people’s elder, he will be angry if he knows this, but I think we need to learn English . . .”

“Why?” asks Evie quietly.

“Because we do not know what will happen now the bilati are here.”

Evie is silent a while before saying, “Thank you for telling me.”

“I am telling you only because you did not ask.”

After eating, Ïada lays his jaiñ kup on the ground and pulls it over himself—it serves both as mattress and blanket. Evie understands why Deng, poor Deng, had insisted she take one along. Soon the boy emits little snores. Phyrnai stares into the fire, looking thoughtful, staying quiet.

Evie sighs. A lonely journey lies ahead.

*  *  *

When she wakes, it is long into daylight, and around her the remains of last night’s meal and camp are gone, except for a mound of soft ash where the fire had burned. Phyrnai and Ïada have been patiently waiting.

She is mortified, and apologizes profusely, then hurries to wash at the stream. Her muscles ache, much like the day after her trip to the root bridges, but she readies herself, uncomplaining, and they set off and make steady progress. They are climbing today, up an open and unforested trail, edged by long grass arching in the breeze. It is all quite uneventful until Evie slips while crossing a stream. Her feet are soaked, as are the edges of her dress.

“Are you all right?” asks Phyrnai.

“Yes, I’m fine, thank you.” And that is as far as the conversation goes. Fortunately, the sun is strong in the sky and dries her off quickly.

On the way, the landscape varies little, though sometimes they are on higher ground from where the views of the valleys are breathtaking. When she pauses to admire the sight, the other two also stop and wait.

“It is so beautiful,” she cannot help saying out loud once, and she thinks she sees Phyrnai break into a smile.

 

That evening, they stop for the night in a cave, or rather a hollow in a hillside that is shielded by thick undergrowth. This time, Evie helps gather wood and dry leaves; she walks to a stream—quite a distance away—to collect water. She waits hungrily as the stew warms, bolstered with mushrooms foraged along the way. From somewhere, Ïada has managed to find eggs, so those are thrown in, too. It is a feast. She helps with the clearing away; the cleaning will be done in the morning. Then she spreads her jaiñ kup on the floor and gathers it around her just as she saw the boy do, and falls fast asleep.

At some point, she wakes. It is still dark. It is silent. What woke her? She has no idea, except something in the air feels tense and alert. Ïada is sleeping, but when she sits up, she sees Phyrnai crouching, watching at the mouth of the hollow. She rises and moves toward her as quietly as she can. For a long while, they are both silent until Phyrnai says, “Someone is here.”

“I—how do you know?”

Phyrnai does not reply. She inches forward, then stops. Evie can hear it too now, footsteps, a definite rustling of leaves and undergrowth. It paces once, twice, and then fades.

“Is it an animal?” Evie whispers. Phyrnai shakes her head. This time Evie does not question how she knows.

“Someone is following us,” she says.

“But . . . why?”

Even in the dark, the girl’s eyes glitter as she looks at Evie. “You tell me.”

The implication of this dawns on her at once. “No one else knows,” she promises. “I have not told anyone why I’m here.”

“Is that true?”

Evie swears solemnly that it is.

Phyrnai nods. “I will make sure we lose them tomorrow.”

They remain at the entrance listening, but the footsteps do not return. The crickets wail wildly, and a light wind brushes through the trees, scattering the view of the half-moon hanging overhead, but all is otherwise silent.

Evie moves back to her corner of the cave. Ïada, even if he hasn’t been sleeping through it all, has not budged. She wraps herself in the jaiñ kup; the ground is hard and she is wide awake. She senses it might be the same with Phyrnai. Many questions crowd her head, but the one she falls asleep to is Who did those footsteps belong to?

*  *  *

The next day Evie and her companions trudge along the river winding through the valley.

“Do you think we are still being followed?” she asks.

“No. I made sure of it,” Phyrnai tells her firmly, and she feels a little reassured.

It is a crisp, fresh morning, and this also helps banish from her thoughts the strange events of the previous night. Ïada is also a happy distraction, bounding up and down the boulders like a squirrel, showing off, making them laugh. “He’s a dear!” exclaims Evie, and Phyrnai beams. After this, she begins to walk alongside her, and Evie hopes this means she is more amenable to conversation.

When they stop to examine some alarmingly fresh leopard tracks on the muddy path, she asks, “Are the Nongïaid afraid of wild animals?”

“Not the ones inside the forest.” Walking along, she continues, “Maybe you do not know this but the wild is kind.”

It is not what Evie expects to hear. “Why do you say that?”

“Because it takes only what it needs.”

Later, as they pause a moment to watch the river flow past, she inquires why it is that they move from place to place.

Phyrnai frowns slightly, as though it ought to be obvious. “There is somewhere for every season. The Bhoi plains in winter, the forests around Shillong Peak in summer, the hills around Mawkyrwat at harvest times, and during the rains,” she shrugs, “there is nowhere to hide.”

“Have you always been moving?”

At this, Phyrnai looks at her bewildered. “Haven’t we all always been moving? Until someone decided staying in one place was better . . .” They tramp on in silence; the track is slippery from the mud. “People are made to move,” she continues. “Even when they stay in one place, look how they grow their food . . . A few years here, then there . . . They clear the land with fire, then move on, allowing the land to rest.”

Evie hesitates, saying she has heard this is destructive.

“To let the land rest? And fire . . . it also brings out new growth.” She points to the trees and shrubs around them. “We do what everyone has always done, move with the seasons of the earth. Some have stopped. I do not understand why.” She looks at Evie. “To be still is to be without life.”

 

For lunch, they feast on a jungle fowl that Ïada has hunted.

Like Kong Bathsheba, they set aside a small portion of their meal. “For Ka Mei Ramew,” remarks Evie, and the siblings look at her in surprise.

The bird is succulent and filling, and they rest a while after their meal beneath an overhanging hibiscus shrub, enjoying the cool, quiet afternoon. They pluck at the flowers, showing Evie how to suck on them for nectar. Tired from all his scampering, Ïada falls lightly asleep, clutching his bow to his chest.

“Does he carry this with him all the time?” asks Evie.

“On the day of his naming ceremony, a Khasi boy is given three arrows . . . to protect himself, to protect his clan, and to protect his kingdom. My brother is very serious about his duty,” she says with a smile.

As they pack up to leave, putting away the bowls and cooking utensils, Evie asks where the rest of their belongings are—have they left them behind with the other Nongïaid? Phyrnai tells her that this is all they have, that they own only as much as they can carry.

This afternoon, the light is particularly golden, and falls flickering through the trees. I am here, thinks Evie in a rush of happiness, remembering the morning when the Maloja docked in Bombay. I am here—with the bush warblers swooping in the sky, with the water rushing in the distance, with the wind in the trees.

Before evening falls, they stop at a ledge that they have spent an hour climbing to. “Is this where we are spending the night?” asks Evie warily; it is precarious, the ground dropping sharply away on almost all sides.

“No, here we watch the sunset.”

And so that is what they do. The outline of the mountains has softened in the fading light, and the sky has turned a silvery orange. Evie thinks she might bring out her sketchbook, but something about the way the brother and sister sit, gazing at the horizon, makes her decide against it. It is enough to carry this moment as a memory.

 

In the glow of the fire that night, Evie writes up her notes.

Phyrnai watches her for a while, before saying, “You know, there is an old story we tell about a book . . .”

“Oh?” says Evie. “I thought . . .” The people of these hills had no script.

Phyrnai looks at her inquiringly.

“Please,” she says hastily, “I would love to hear it.”

The story is about a Khasi, a foreigner, and a book of wisdom . . . she begins. From the other side of the fire, Ïada interrupts; it sounds like he is teasing his sister. Phyrnai ignores him. “He says I am a bad storyteller.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true.”

She grins. “You will find out.”

A long, long time ago, when the world was young, a Khasi and a foreigner were summoned by God . . . U Blei . . . to a mountain, the name of which is now lost. They did as they were told and traveled there, and stayed for three days and three nights, and in this time U Blei set down the laws of life in two books and gave them one each. Phyrnai deepens her voice. “Now return to your people,” U Blei tells them. Ïada dissolves into giggles. His sister glares at him but continues. “On their way back, a river they had crossed earlier had risen and become very deep because of the rain. They had no choice, they would have to swim, but they did not have anything with which to protect their books. Do you know what the foreigner did?”

“What?” echoes Evie.

“With his long hair he tied the book on top of his head and he swam across. The Khasi, who had short hair, put the book in his mouth. Like this . . .” She mimics biting something between her teeth. “But the river was very strong . . . and he was so afraid he might drown that he swallowed the book in fright. He returned to his people empty-handed but he said that he would teach them everything . . . whatever he could remember. So they called a great durbar of all the Khasis, and with his help they decided on . . . how do you say . . . the guidelines . . . the rules on how to lead a good life. Since that day, Khasis have passed traditions down like this . . .”

“Through the spoken word?” finishes Evie.

Phyrnai nods. “We call it ka ktien. Wisdom from our ancestors who attended the great durbar after the sacred book was lost.”

“But without books, how do you remember?”

Phyrnai glances at the journal. “This is not the only way. You think if it is not in a book, it is light, that it can be lost in the wind, but to not have books means . . .” She struggles to find the words. “It means we remember more carefully.” From the ground, she picks up a pebble, sharp and glistening. “Our word for memory is kynmaw,” she adds. “To carry like a stone. You see? For us memory is a stone we carry. We do not take remembering lightly . . .”

For a long moment, Evie is silent. She thinks she somewhat understands but she is also unable to grasp this completely. Questions whirl about in her head. She supposes it is possible to pass on values and a moral code through the spoken word, but what about something more complex . . . like the law? In her father’s office, she remembers reams and reams of papers, constantly referred to, filed away, signed, sealed, exchanged, notarized.

“I mean,” she persists, “things like contracts . . . are they not required to be written?”

“We give someone our word, we keep it. It is a matter of honor,” says Phyrnai simply.

“But if you break a written contract, you can be held accountable in court, you can be punished, and justice can be served . . . What happens if one breaks the spoken word?”

Phyrnai shrugs. “You must live with yourself.”

Around them the forest has been robbed of all distinction by the night—the trees are only shadow. Ïada has fallen asleep. The fire is burning low.

“Also,” adds Phyrnai, lowering her voice, “we have mantras.”

“Mantras?”

She nods. “To make people pale and sick, and some to give them bad dreams.”

What does she mean? wonders Evie. Magic spells?

Phyrnai chuckles. “My favorite is one that makes a mula stick to your backside when you stand up.” Evie laughs along with her, agreeing that it is indeed an excellent curse.

When all is dark and silent, and the fire has died down almost completely, Phyrnai speaks up again. “You know why my brother says I am not a good storyteller? Because for us, telling a story is like leading someone through a forest . . . It is richer the more time you spend in there, the more you walk around and stop to look at the trees and the flowers and the leaves. He says I walk too straight through my story.” She grins. “Too quick. That I am too much in a hurry.”

*  *  *

On the last day of their journey, Evie and the siblings walk through the outskirts of some small villages. Children run behind them squealing “memsahib, memsahib,” men throw curious glances their way, while the women keep their eyes to the ground, the baskets on their backs laden with winter vegetables, bound for the market.

“Do you not buy anything with money?” asks Evie.

Phyrnai shakes her head. “If we take something, we leave something in return. Sometimes people do not find what we leave behind, and they call us thieves.” They walk in silence for a while before she adds, “I cannot say we have never stolen. Sometimes the winters are very long, and oranges are good but they are not meat, but we try to take only as much as we need, never any more.”

By early afternoon they reach the edge of a forest, and the path before them lies hidden in the undergrowth. The grove is thick, and they must walk carefully in single file. Every so often, Phyrnai breaks off a branch to mark their path, possibly so it will be easier for them to find their way back.

When they stop for a short rest, by a stream running shallow and clear, Evie asks a question she has long wished to. “What should I expect? You know, when I see the Diengiei . . . Is it a tree or something else?”

Phyrnai cups some water in her hands and splashes her face. “Do you know the story about the Diengiei?”

No, she admits she doesn’t.

“There are many stories about it, actually. Some say it is the tree that U Blei planted to punish man and his infinite greed, that it grew and grew and covered the sky until the sun couldn’t shine through. Others believe it was a golden tree, like a ladder, linking earth to sky, man to god and the whole universe, but that again, as punishment for man’s evil ways, it was cut down and the link was broken, but that because the Diengiei was planted by U Blei, it survived, and was saved . . . by my ancestors.”

“Oh,” says Evie, drawing breath.

“That we, the lowly but swift of foot, protected the Diengiei from those who wished to find it and use it for their own advantage. But in truth we ourselves do not know exactly how it came to be this way . . .”

“But that is what you continue to do? To protect it?”

She nods.

Evie presses on. “Why is it called the tree that holds all trees?”

Phyrnai looks over at her. “Because it does.”

 

When they resume walking, the sun has shifted, and the trees seem to crowd closer around them. A hornbill perches high above, watching, and Evie feels as though there are many invisible eyes on her. She grows increasingly uneasy; all she can hear is the thud of her own heart. Everything seems constricted—to this path, this moment. She shudders, hoping it will not be long before they get there.

Overhead, gray clouds have gathered in thick and voluminous company.

“It looks like rain,” she remarks.

“It will not rain,” says Phyrnai, “but it will get cold.”

This is true. As they set out deeper into the forest, the temperature falls, and despite the distinct warmth of spring in the air lately, the afternoon carries a deep chill. They pass tall evergreens and Khasi pines, and here and there, orchids droop from branches. Evie would normally be tempted to stop, but not now, even though she does pause a moment beneath a blue vanda that is glowing in the light. When they rest again, she hears a sudden sharp crack, a twig breaking, like a gunshot in the quiet.

“What’s that?”

“What’s what?” asks Phyrnai. Then she says, come on, they must be off.

Where are they leading me? For a brief moment she wonders if this is some sort of terrifying trap? But to what end? She is not worth any sort of ransom. She has nothing of any value on her person. She begins to wish, though, that Deng were with her, or Mr. Finlay; that she were not with strangers.

Soon they begin to climb a gradual slope. Evie barely registers it all—the fallen tree balanced oddly against its neighbor, the frenzy of ferns beneath her feet.

“Is it here? Are we close?” she asks.

Phyrnai glances ahead. “Almost.”

At the top, they come to a clearing with a stone altar, similar to the one at the sacred grove in Saitsohpen village; this one is damp and heavily mossed over.

It has been a while since the last sacrifice.

“Look,” says Phyrnai, pointing. Evie glances up. There, on the branch of a towering pine, grows a cascading symphony of a plant. A glorious orchid in pristine, immaculate white.

“What is it?” she whispers.

“What you seek.”

Phyrnai and Ïada are watching her; she can feel the press of their gaze as she takes in the sight. She wants to say it is beautiful, but the words fail in her chest and on her tongue.

She steps closer, and the orchid seems to shimmer, its leaves rich and dark and abundant. It is unlike anything she has seen before, and surely the world hasn’t either. A cloud orchid, but more resplendent, with white flowers growing all along the stems, in hundreds and thousands of blossoms, bursting, glowing forth.

Just then, a sudden stamp of footsteps rises behind her, and at first she thinks it is her companions, but they move always noiselessly. It is some other person, or perhaps there are more than one. She hears an unexpectedly familiar voice—Bah Khrawbor, speaking in Khasi to the siblings. They remain mute, watching him, standing rooted to the spot. Ïada is a little way behind his sister, his hand tightly on his bow. Then someone else follows the guide—Mr. Dossett, whom Evie somehow is not too surprised to see.

“Good afternoon, Miss Alexander,” he says. “Just look what you have led us to.”

The siblings stare, and something in her snaps to realization. “I did not know,” she tells them. “I did not know they were following us.”

Phyrnai gazes back in disbelief.

“You must believe me.” They think she works with him, with the fixer, that she has led him here intentionally. Panic flutters in her chest, but what can she say that would make a difference now? “Why are you following me?” she asks, trying to keep her voice steady.

Mr. Dossett cocks his head. “Why not? I have always wondered what mischief you were up to. When Mrs. Wheeler told us you would be leaving, I thought . . . hmmm, I’d like to see where she is headed. Mr. Finlay thought it a good idea, too.”

“You’re lying,” she spits at him.

He smiles. “I am. He has no clue. Mooning about, awaiting your return.”

His gaze rises to the orchid, his eyes gleam, the corners of his mouth turn up in delight. “This is even more priceless than I had imagined.”

The next thing Evie knows, he is giving instructions—while he uproots this specimen, Bah Khrawbor is to destroy all the others of the same species that he comes across around here. “We cannot have anyone else finding this,” he adds briskly.

“No,” Evie blurts out, “you can’t do that!”

“Pardon me, miss, I don’t know about you, but this is what we came for.” He steps up, holding a small, sharp knife in his hand. “If you like, we can name it after you.”

In her anger, she splutters. “The people here . . . they hold this sacred . . . you can’t be so ignorant!”

“Ignorant?” He laughs. “Indifferent is more like it.”

Evie’s blood is in her ears, the world is roaring. She is enraged, but more distressed now by what he is about to do. Will no one help? She looks around wildly; Bah Khrawbor is hacking away at anything that is growing before him. The siblings have moved farther away, almost disappearing into the trees.

Mr. Dossett lifts his hand. The knife glints, catching the light.

Evie does not know what it is that throws her forward. “No,” she shouts, pushing him aside. “Stop it,” he says in irritation. “Move away.” But Evie does not listen. She lunges at him again, but this time he swipes at her with the knife, she dodges, holding out her hands, and the blade slices cleanly across her palm. The pain is astonishingly sharp, but it does not stop her from pummeling him with her fists, blood splattering onto his coat and his shirt. He recovers just enough to lift the knife again—she can see his face, contorted in anger, the blade drawing closer—He will kill me—but before he can take another swipe, someone has grasped her shoulders, saying curtly, “Come,” and Mr. Dossett, with a yelp, drops the knife to the ground—an arrow has wounded his arm.

He screams, his eyes bulging. “You bitch . . .”

He reaches for her but she is tugged away, and suddenly she is fleeing through the undergrowth with Phyrnai and Ïada on either side. Branches slap her shoulders, twigs snap beneath her feet, and above them, the rustle of startled wings. It seems they will run forever, and in the gathering dark there is no sense of direction. All the world is a forest.

 

Eventually, they start slowing; Evie is finding it difficult to keep up. Sharp stabs run down the length of her arm, up her shoulder, in her head, and there is blood on her dress, her sleeve, down to her elbow, and flowing still, gushing from the wound.

They stop at a small clearing with a silver pool.

Her companions scoop up water for her, and she drinks gratefully. Ïada disappears and returns in a few minutes with a handful of leaves—tobacco, she thinks, and wild garlic—but first, says Phyrnai, they need to stem the blood. She grasps Evie’s hand in both of hers, presses a leaf over the wound, and speaks a string of words into it, over and over.

“I cannot do what my grandfather does with this mantra,” she says apologetically; “he is an experienced healer, but it should help for now.”

They wash and bind her hand with the leaves, and a strip of cloth that Evie tears from her dress. In her hurry, she has left her bag of belongings behind.

“Do not worry,” says Phyrnai, “now you can travel lightly.”

Evie gazes down at her hand. It looks like someone else’s—alien to her in its raw, swollen redness. It throbs painfully, but the greater hurt lies elsewhere.

“I didn’t know they were following . . .”

“We believe you,” says Phyrnai. In this light, it is hard to make out the look on her face, but Evie thinks she glimpses some softness.

“I am sorry about the Diengiei . . .”

The siblings glance at each other.

“That was not the Diengiei.”

Evie looks up in disbelief. “What do you mean?” she manages to stutter.

Phyrnai sits beside her. “There are a few things we need to explain . . .”

*  *  *

Every evening, Agnes stepped out to water her garden.

“It is so tiny,” Evie would tease. “One day, I wish for you a garden the size of Kew.”

Agnes, as practical as ever, would then remind her that she would need to employ a hundred gardeners and be as wealthy as the king. Later, after a quick supper, and coffee with Edward, they would set up for an evening of work. Miss Sargent had been unwell lately, and had asked Agnes to continue some of the experiments she had been conducting on monocotyledons. Evie’s favorite time, though, was when they sat at the kitchen table, drawing. Agnes had a skilled hand—her father was an artist, after all—while Evie fumbled along, always the one to attempt conversation and ask questions.

One evening, she glanced up, at a sparganium plant standing in a bucket between them, while Agnes was absorbed in capturing a tangled root.

“Why do we do what we do?” she asked.

Usually, Agnes would not stop, offering a reply while continuing to work, but this time she looked up.

“Why do we do what we do?” she repeated.

“Yes,” said Evie.

“Well, I do what I do because I am trying to find, not the right answers, but the right questions. It is much harder, I think, because we must look beyond our so-called area of specialization, and try to draw from the history of simply everything that might be involved in framing the question. To ask the right question is to look beyond the borders of botany and philosophy and art and mysticism. Suddenly, they all matter, because they always have.”

Evie was silent, absorbing all of this.

“And you?” asked Agnes, smiling.

“I can’t say anything half as articulate,” she protested, but Agnes would have none of it.

So she stayed quiet for a while, and then began. On her visits to see Grandma Grace, as a child, they would collect leaves to press between the pages of a book—a palmate chestnut, an egg-shaped alder with serrated edges, a sharper, more pointed silver birch, and her favorite, a deep-lobed hawthorn with its distinct teeth on the tip. Grandma Grace once told her that these trees were under the protection of fairies, and if the tree was cut down, they might seek revenge.

“And they did,” said Evie. “When Grandma’s neighbor cut down his hawthorn to build a conservatory, he died in his sleep. At least that’s what she told me. But . . . that is not the point of the story.” Evie picked up a book from the table. “I guess what I am trying to say is, where does knowledge really lie? In the book? In the leaves? For Grandma Grace, it was always the living over the dead, the organic over the inanimate. For me . . . well . . .” She looked up at her friend. “I am still trying to find out.”

*  *  *

At first the siblings say they will explain everything to her tomorrow. She is wounded, and exhausted, and she must rest. In the morning, she will feel better, they will reapply the herbal paste and bind it with a new strip of cloth. “For now,” says Phyrnai, “you sleep.” Only when Evie insists, no, please, no, do they light a small fire, and set her down close to it, handing her a cup of warm water with crushed turmeric and honey.

“How are you feeling?” asks Phyrnai.

Far from well. “Better, yes.”

They watch her as though at any moment she might swoon.

“I’m all right,” she says. “Please tell me . . . what you said you needed to explain.”

Phyrnai glances at her brother. “You know, when we met first, we told you we could not help you, but this was not true . . .”

“What do you mean?”

“We cannot say no to anyone who wishes to see the Diengiei. The Nongïaid are its keepers, but we are . . . we are also bound by this agreement . . .”

“But why?”

Phyrnai hesitates. “Because it does not belong to us. It does not belong to anyone. We are only its caretakers.”

Evie blinks. “So you must agree to everyone who asks?”

“There are not many . . . But still, because we cannot say no, our people have made up some . . . tests. If anyone asks us to take them to the Diengiei, we say first we will not, to see how they react . . . If they insist, we show them something like what we showed you, a beautiful orchid.”

Evie’s heart is once again racing. “And what do you test?”

Phyrnai looks down, unable to meet her eye. “What the person wants to do, what their intentions are, why they want to find it. Many fail at this point. Usually, they see the orchid, and like that man today, they want to take it . . .”

“And those who do not?”

She pauses. “Very few do not, but they will be taken to the Diengiei . . .”

Evie shakes her head. “I don’t understand. Even if there are very few, as you say, surely word about the Diengiei would spread? When they return after having seen it . . . it doesn’t make sense . . .”

“There is something else.” Phyrnai looks at her, her eyes soft and sorrowful.

“Which is?”

“They must join the Nongïaid.”

The forest by then is filled with night, and night life. The steady chorus of the crickets, the swoop of invisible wings, the rustle of something small and secret.

“I’m sorry . . . what?”

Phyrnai repeats herself. Evie’s breath feels short, her head takes a little spin, and then she wants to laugh, like Kong Bathsheba, like the cousins at the remembering stones, loud and incredulous. I hear such strange things.

Phyrnai is undeterred, and goes on to explain: “They can say no, and we take them home safely, but if they wish to know the secrets of the Diengiei . . . this is what they must do.”

Evie has no words. In her head hums a light blankness.

She finally manages to say, “It can’t be true.”

Phyrnai places a hand on her arm. “It is. You must decide.” She stands up, and adds gently, “I am sorry, it cannot be any other way.”

Evie shakes her head, it is impossible to believe. “No . . . but they can leave, can’t they? I mean, what are these rules?” She suddenly feels enraged. “How are they binding? Are they written somewhere? Who decides? How can this be?”

Phyrnai looks at her a little sadly now. “I have told you. We give people our word, and they give us theirs. It is enough. They become keepers, too. It is no small thing. To hold knowledge is to hold responsibility, and to know truly is to know deeply, to give of yourself so that the knowing means something more than mere words. True knowing changes you; we believe you cannot go back to how you were in the world before. It has always been this way . . .”

There is a long silence. A bat swoops low overhead. Something in the fire hisses.

“But what happens . . .” begins Evie. What happens to those who leave?

She cannot bring herself to say this out loud; she is missing something—about a community to whom, over the centuries, everything binding lay in the spoken. What had Phyrnai called it? Ka ktien.

Eventually, she asks, “When you say join the Nongïaid, what do you mean?”

“It is as it sounds,” says Phyrnai quietly. “They learn our language, they move around as we do. You become one of us. You do not have to. You have a choice. But you must decide.” And with that, she joins Ïada on the other side of the bonfire, and spreads out her jaiñ kup for the night.

Evie lies here now looking up at the dark outlines of the forest, the sky that shimmers between cloud and branch and leaf, still finding it all hard to believe. It is a dream, it is a dream. Dare she scoff at the whole thing? Was it an elaborate ruse? But Phyrnai has been so clear, so definite—it would make little sense for her to be untruthful. And why would she? It does not feel like she or her brother mean Evie any harm. They have tended to her wound, and looked after her, and been nothing but kind.

And so . . . what if it were true? Evie allows the thought to linger, to sink in, to settle.

Above her, an owl hoots. From the undergrowth comes a quick rustle. But she is lost in thought and these noises do not distract her. Almost from nowhere, something comes to her—how in Goethe’s last moments, when he was eighty-four, he turned to the window, saying, “More light, more light.” Lulu and the others were convinced he was talking about the curtains, but Evie thought to herself that he was not. That he wanted his journey to go on and on, to be a learning after learning, taking him only toward one illumination and then another. Is this also what she desires?

As the night deepens her mind drifts. She is tired, so tired, but sleep will not come. How did this day begin? This journey? She cannot recall. Everything before this moment in the forest is a haze. Everything before is here. Is this the journey’s beginning or the journey’s end? Always both, she thinks, and always neither.

She turns onto her side; the fire is little more than a pile of glowing embers. It is so dark now that she cannot see her companions. She might be the only one in the forest. She, and the gods who are out to play, and the ones she imagines with her.

Her mother and father, with their quiet ways; Florence, and her new life; Agnes, steadfast and steady.

And Mr. Finlay, dear Mr. Finlay, his fingers on her palm. You will travel the world.

She will not fall asleep. This night will last and last, so she must never need to decide, to go, to stay. Dawn will not break over the mountains and pour into the sky, the roosters will stay quiet, the crickets unwavering, the sun will not shine.

And then it will.

The day will brighten, and the hour will come when she must rise, and tread upon the earth, and make her way through the forest.