The Serene Invasion

Chapter FOUR





ANA DEVI SQUATTED on a girder beneath the footbridge at Howrah station and watched the Delhi Express slide alongside platform ten. She shared her perch with a grey-furred, red-bottomed monkey a couple of metres away, but that’s all she was sharing with the devil. She clutched a banana to her ragged t-shirt, and the monkey eyed the fruit with greedy, beady eyes.

“Chalo!” she yelled at the animal. It remained where it was, watching her impassively. It would be a mistake to start eating the banana now, even though she was hungry, because the monkey would be incensed by the aroma and try to snatch the fruit from her.

And every fool knew that the station monkeys were diseased, and that one scratch or bite could spell a lingering, painful death.

Down below the train halted and disgorged a thousand passengers. The crowd flowed along the platform towards the exit and the stairs to the other platforms, and seconds later Ana heard the thunder of footsteps just above her head.

The cacophony of the pedestrians succeeded in doing what she had failed to do: the monkey pulled back its lips to reveal a set of wicked, curved incisors, gave a howl, and bounded off along the girder-work of the bridge.

Ana laughed, peeled the banana and wolfed it down.

The footfalls above her head diminished, the train eased itself with a hiss from the platform, and comparative calm settled over Howrah station.

Ana missed her brother, Bilal.

Most of the time she was fine. She had friends among the kids who made Howrah station their home, a gang of boys and girls fiercely loyal to each other because they had no one else. It was the only family she had ever known, though she had a vague recollection of the aunt and uncle who had looked after her and her brother when their parents died in the cholera epidemic of 2014. Then Ana’s aunt had fled her uncle when Ana was six, and had been unable to fend for two hungry, growing children. Bilal, fifteen at the time, had taken Ana to Howrah station, where he had friends among the street kids who lived like monkeys in the rotting infrastructure of the old buildings. He’d lived with her there for a time, begging and stealing and making sure that she was provided for. Then, just as she was settling into life at the station, Bilal disappeared.

He’d gone to sleep with her one evening in the ancient goods truck they used as a bedroom, tucked up with her and a dozen other children like sardines in a can, and in the morning he was gone. There wasn’t even a gap where he had been, because the other kids had shuffled up to let another child lie down. He’d owned nothing other than a pair of shorts, a t-shirt, and an enamelled metal cup, white with a blue rim, and much chipped. After a day of searching the station and the streets around about, she’d given up in despair.

Then Prakesh, a friend a year older than Ana, had dragged her along to platform fourteen and pointed down at the silver tracks. There, crushed flat and the enamel shattered, was a cup just like Bilal’s. She’d jumped down, despite the danger, and retrieved it. On its flattened underside was the letter B that Bilal had scratched to make the cup his very own.

But Ana had refused to believe that Bilal had gone the same way as his cup, squashed beneath the merciless wheels of a train, because there was no blood on the oil-stained gravel between the timber ties, and when she asked a friendly chai-wallah if a street kid’s body had been found that morning, he had shaken his head and told her no, only the bodies of a station monkey and a dozen rats.

So what had happened to her brother?

Ten years ago now... and Ana recalled the sense of desolation, of disbelief and loneliness, as if it had been just yesterday.

For years she had thought that one day he would return, fabulously wealthy, and whisk her away from a life of begging and stealing. And even now, at the age of sixteen, she still harboured a tiny hope that this might be so. But sometimes she gave in to despair, and wondered what kind of death her brother might have met.

She heard a sound behind her and turned quickly to throw the banana skin at the approaching monkey – but it was not a monkey, or at least not a furry monkey. Prakesh, whose protruding ears gave him the appearance of a little wise ape, swung onto the girder and hunkered down beside her.

“Station Master Jangar has just said the word, get out!” he reported, staring at her with alarmed eyes.

Ana produced a gob-full of spit and dropped it onto the tracks below. Dead shot! It hit the silver rail and sizzled in the midday sun.

She shrugged. “So, the bastard is always saying get out. That’s his job.”

“No, this time he means it. Lila and Sara and Bijay have left for the park, and Gupta and Sanjay are packing up.”

Ana smiled to herself. Gupta and Sanjay, miniature businessmen in the making, had a shoe-shine box between them, a possession that legitimised their presence on the station, if only to themselves. It made no difference to Station Master Jangar when the word came down from the politicians to clean up the station.

“So if everyone goes, leaving only me, then they won’t think I’m a street kid, will they? They’ll overlook me and I’ll just stay where I am, resting in the sun...” She stretched out her short length along the girder, placing her hands behind her head, then squinting up at Prakesh with one eye.

He looked alarmed – his default expression – at both Ana’s reckless posture on the girder twenty metres above the rails, and at her defiance of Jangar’s wishes.

“But Ana, he said that Sanjeev and his thugs are on their way! And you know what that means!”

His small hands were on her now, trying to tug her into a sitting position. Reluctantly she sat up, for mention of Sanjeev sent a cold jolt of dread down her spine.

Sanjeev was a fat thug and a bugger. He liked to corner boys and girls, smother them into submission with his great rolls of flab, then shove his greased and tiny tool up their bottoms. Those who protested too loudly he strangled and had his cohorts leave the bodies on the tracks for the trains to mangle in the night. If you bore the buggering in silence, you might live. Ana had survived a night with fat Sanjeev, thanked Kali that his cock was the size of a chilli pepper, and vowed never to be caught again.

“When are they coming?” she asked.

“Now!”

She scanned the length of the platform. “Where are they?”

Prakesh shook his head. “They started in the goods yard, moving west. I don’t know where they might be now.”

“Ah-cha, Prakesh. Let’s get out of here, let’s ‘don our masks and fly with the night!’”

Prakesh grinned. He couldn’t read, like so many of the other kids, so Ana often read to them from her comics. Her favourite strip was Superhero Salam and the Warriors of Dawn, who helped the poor and fought the rich and corrupt.

They mimed donning invisible masks, stood up and walked wobblingly along the girder to the timber signal box. From the underside of the footbridge they scrambled onto the sloping, slipping tiles of the box, crawled along the gutter, and shinned down the drainpipe.

They were on platform ten, in the very centre of the station, and from here they had to make their way to platform one and the unofficial exit in the fence.

They set off, zigzagging between commuters, earning curses from some and swipes from others. Ana just ducked and laughed and, a safe distance away, turned and pulled a disgusting face.

They raced up the steps and along the footbridge where, just a minute ago, they had concealed themselves from view. Two minutes now and they would be away from the station and across the Hoogli bridge to Maidan Park, a fine place to play cricket and watch the rich kids fly their kites, but nothing like the station for begging, stealing or finding a safe, warm place to spend the night.

They came to the end of the footbridge. Stairs descended to their right and left. They turned right, but Prakesh halted her headlong descent. “Stop! Look, Ana...”

The crowds on the steps were thinning now and Ana saw, staring up at them, the thin sly face of Kevi Nan, Sanjeev’s one-armed minion. He let out a piercing cry and darted up the stairway. Ana and Prakesh turned and ran down the flight of steps at their backs.

Ana stopped. Ascending the steps, pushing roughly through the commuters, was another of Sanjeev’s greasy henchmen.

She grabbed Prakesh and they ran back up the steps, turned left and raced along the footbridge.

She was accustomed to running. Every day someone tried to catch her, arrest her, or chase her away. She was adept at flight – but usually there were only one or two people in pursuit. Now, it seemed, Sanjeev had mobilised his entire street army of pimps, crooks and hangers-on. She heard more than one cry from behind her, and from the stairways ascending to the walkway.

Ana found Prakesh’s hand and pulled him close as they ran. “I know where to go. Follow me! They won’t dare to come after us!”

The footbridge was enclosed in a shell of grey corrugated metal, the rectangular panels riveted together. Here and there the rivets had loosened, or been forced, and the corrugated panels flapped. Directly above platform three, Ana knew, there was a gap in the metal.

She dragged Prakesh through the crowd until they reached the metal cladding and ran along until they came to the vertical gap, little more than a slit between the panels. In one swift movement she knelt and forced the panel outwards, revealing a gap that gave onto a supporting girder.

“Follow me!” she said, and slipped through.

She was out on the girder high above platform three, standing with her back to the drop and gripping a perspex window ledge to stop herself from tumbling backwards.

Prakesh squirmed after her, grimacing as his t-shirt was snagged on a loose rivet. He pulled himself through, tearing his shirt and almost falling forward.

Ana reached down and steadied him. Wide-eyed with fear, he stood with his back to the drop and edged towards her.

“This way,” she said, and stride by sideways stride made her way along the length of the footbridge.

Once before she had evaded a policeman this way, and her escape had become a legend among the kids of the station. The cop, a stick-thin youngster, had managed to squeeze through the gap in pursuit and follow her along the outside of the footbridge. He had gained on her, but he had reckoned without Ana’s daring. They had been directly above platform two, with the train just leaving the station, and Ana had waited until the very last carriage was directly underneath. Then she jumped the three metres to its cambered roof, landed with a jarring impact and lay face-down and trembling as the train flashed beneath the bridge and away from the station, carrying her to safety. She had jumped from the train at its first stop and caught a night train back to Howrah and to a hero’s welcome from her street kid family.

She hoped they would not be forced to jump onto the roof of a train this time.

She looked back along the length of the footbridge, but there was no sign of pursuit. Periodically they came to the grimy windows, and every time they did so Ana ducked and edged along beneath the window. As they approached the last one, however, she chanced a glance through. Kevi Nan was standing with his back to the window, smoking a bidi and shouting orders to his cohorts. Ana ducked.

“What?” Prakesh asked, fear in his voice.

“Kevi,” Ana spat. “But he didn’t see me.”

“Ana...” Prakesh looked fearful, clinging to the ledge like a baby monkey. “How do we get down from here?”

“Don’t worry. Follow me and do just what I do, ah-cha?”

They inched along the ledge, over platform two and approached platform one. At the end of the footbridge was a loose drainpipe, its metal streaked with slime, which descended to the platform. She had once climbed up this to reach the roof of the signal box – but the rickety section of the pipe was above the level of the roof, and now it would be the first section they’d have to negotiate on their descent.

A minute later they came to the pipe and Ana paused. She looked back at Prakesh and smiled. “We are doing well. They have not found us. Let’s rest before we climb down, ah-cha?”

Smiling bravely, Prakesh nodded.

She scanned the platform. A train was due in, and platform vendors were preparing for the rush. Chai-wallahs jostled each other for the best positions, along with kids selling trays of biscuits, cigarettes and lighters.

“We’ll wait till the train pulls in,” she told Prakesh, “and climb down then.”

Concealed by the crowds alighting from the train, they would squirm across the platform and through the gap in the fence. In Ana’s mind she was already free, and recounting their escape to their friends in Maidan Park.

Two minutes later she heard a distant, mournful hoot and the Lucknow Mail eased itself into platform one. Doors sighed open and, amid a cacophony of vendor’s cries, a thousand passengers surged from the carriage and along the platform.

“Follow me!” Ana cried.

She clung to the slippery drainpipe and slid down painfully, pausing at each joint to rest and look up. Prakesh was just above her, the corrugated soles of his feet gripping the curve of the pipe.

She set off again and looked down. The next section of the drainpipe was where it was loose. She looked up and said, “Prakesh, the pipe just below me will not take the weight of both of us. Let me go first, and when I shout up, you follow, ah-cha?”

“Ah-cha,” he said, peering down at her.

She reached the loose section and slipped down carefully, feeling the pipe wobble with her weight. She reckoned she was about three metres above the concrete platform, and would have risked jumping but for the constant to-and-fro of commuters directly below.

She felt herself tip slowly and looked up in time to see the pipe come away from the joint just above her head. For a long second she was held in the perpendicular, like a monkey balancing on a pole, and then the drainpipe dropped outwards like a felled tree. Down below, Ana caught a glimpse of startled commuters moving to avoid her. She let go of the pipe and leaped, falling painfully on the soles of her bare feet and rolling. The pipe clanged down beside her, hitting the concrete like a tubular bell but missing her by a fraction. The crowd flowed around her, muttering their displeasure, but Ana was oblivious.

She leapt to her feet, looked up and down the platform in case her sudden arrival had alerted Kevi Nan and his men, then peered up.

Prakesh was clinging tearfully to the pipe high above, his descent halted. There was now a two metre gap in the drainpipe between the boy and the next section of pipe. He peered down at her, eyes wide and wet with tears.

“Ana,” he called down pitifully, “don’t go!”

“I won’t!” she cried. “Listen to me – you’ve got to jump, ah-cha? I’ll catch you.”

“I can’t!”

“You must. There’s no other way, and soon Kevi Nan will be here! Jump and I will catch you.”

Peering down in fear, he nodded.

“I’ll catch you, Prakesh. After three. One... two... three!”

He launched himself, all flailing arms and legs, and Ana reached out and closed her eyes. He hit her and they rolled across the platform, Ana clinging to him despite the pain. The impact knocked the breath from her lungs, and her elbow throbbed when it struck the ground.

“Prakesh?”

“I’m fine, Ana! You caught me!”

She stood and pulled him to his feet – then yelped in fright as a hand gripped the back of her neck and squeezed.

She looked up, fearfully, into the fat face of Station Master Jangar, with his vast grey moustache and turban. The Sikh was jabbering to someone at his side, and she recognised the thin, rat-like squeak of Kevi Nan. She attempted to peer around and up, her movement restricted by Jangar’s grip, and managed to see a hand slip a fifty rupee note into the Station Master’s breast pocket.

Then Kevi Nan gripped her upper arm and half dragged her along the platform. She looked back at Jangar and Prakesh. Her friend had his fist crammed into his mouth, his eyes wide and tearful.

Ana managed a smile and a quick wave before Prakesh was lost to sight in the surging crowd.

She struggled, but Kevi Nan just increased the force of his pincer grip and Ana wept in pain. She hopped along as Kevi raced through the crowd towards the station’s exit, holding her breath against his stench. Kevi Nan had only one hand, which he used for eating, and consequently his backside went unwashed. He tried to disguise the smell with rosewater, but for some reason this just made it worse.

He hauled her from the station and along a busy street, then down a quiet alleyway. From time to time when his crab-like grip seemed to slacken, Ana put in a token struggle – but Kevi Nan’s one hand seemed stronger than two and he just sneered at her feeble attempts to get away.

At one point as they hurried down the alley, something flashed high overhead, and both Kevi Nan and Ana looked up. She saw a bright glint of light, like sunlight glancing off a pane of glass, but nothing else.

“Let me go!”

“And deprive Sanjeev his pleasure, Ana Devi?”

She was shocked that he knew her name, as if this, along with his grip, was another violation. “Sanjeev-ji has been watching you, Ana, watching you and waiting.”

What was he talking about, she wondered. Sanjeev was so fat that he hadn’t left his room for years, so how could he have been watching her?

“I have rupees,” she said. “Twenty rupees. I’ll give them to you if you let me go!”

Over the years she had managed to save a rupee here and there, and had amassed the grand total of twenty which she had concealed behind a loose stone in the outer wall of the station’s Brahmin restaurant.

Kevi Nan laughed. “Twenty rupees? Sanjeev will pay me ten times that for your yoni, Ana!”

Something froze within her. Her yoni... Sanjeev was going to take her properly, this time, draw blood and deprive her of her virginity. She stared ahead, unseeingly, frozen at the thought.

Kevi Nan dragged her down a rat-infested alleyway, past slums where infants stared out with huge, kohl-black eyes. Some of the kids were older, perhaps her own age, and she hated the quick look of pity in their eyes as she passed.

They came to a high wall and a green-painted gate. Kevi Nan called out, and the gate opened just enough to allow them to squeeze through. He dragged her along a garden path overhung with a riot of unkempt trees and bushes, towards a familiar house painted as pink as a chunk of barfi. Ana felt her stomach turn as she recalled her first time here, years ago, and what Sanjeev had done to her.

They passed into the house, across a cool tiled hallway, towards a green double door. Kevi Nan called out, “I have the girl, Sanjeev-ji!” He eased open the door with his right foot and thrust her into the room.

The door closed quickly behind her. Ana stopped her headlong rush, regained her balance, and stood blinking in a room illuminated by a thousand flickering candles.

The heat was overpowering, along with the cloying scent of incense and dhoop.

When her vision adjusted to the glittery twilight, she gasped as she made out the figure ensconced in the corner of the room.

Sanjeev Varnaputtram was fatter than any fat man she had ever seen, and far fatter than when Ana had last seen him. He sat on a bed in the glow of the candles, naked but for a towel draped across his lap. The rolls of fat that made up his chest and belly were slick with either sweat or massage oil. His arms and legs stuck out at odd angles, forced apart by the amount of fat that encircled his upper arms and thighs.

His head, perfectly circular and absolutely bald, was a tiny thing perched on the mountain of his shoulders.

Sanjeev’s appetite was prodigious. Rumour was that he consumed six take-away curries from Bhatnagar’s – an expensive restaurant Ana had only ever dreamed of entering – every day. On the rickety table beside him a pile of a dozen ghee-coated silver trays suggested that the rumour might be true.

Now he was smiling, and a gold tooth – the tooth she recalled with horror from all those years ago, when he had tried to kiss her – caught the candle-light and winked.

She backed up against the door, pushing against it. The wood rattled but did not give, and she knew that Kevi Nan had bolted the door from the outside, just like last time.

“My, my,” Sanjeev purred. “How you have grown. How, Ana Devi, you have blossomed from the vicious little she-cat you were, into a beautiful woman... Yes, indeed you are – a woman. Now...” he patted his lap, “come and sit down, Ana.”

“No!”

He chuckled, as if delighted at her spirit. “In that respect you have changed little, Ana Devi. Still you are as feisty as you were... what, five, six years ago? You fought, then, if you recall, scratched like a lion cub. It made for even more enjoyment.”

He gestured to the wall. “I have been watching you, Ana, watching you grow, mature, become the beautiful young woman you are now.”

She stared at the wall beside the bed, and saw what he was talking about. Stuck to the wall was a photograph of her, taken very recently. She wanted suddenly to sob. It was as if Sanjeev had stolen a part of her. She wanted to take the photograph from him; that it belonged to Sanjeev seemed wrong.

“I have been waiting, Ana, biding my time. When I received the photograph...” He gestured with a tiny hand. “I knew that the time was right.”

The actual photo was not the only violation, she knew; someone had stalked her, sneaked up on her and taken the picture without her knowledge. What should have been her privacy had been despoiled. She felt sick. She was a street kid, but surely this did not mean that her life was not her own, a thing to be shared, abused, without her consent...?

“But if I may say, Ana, a beautiful woman such as yourself should no longer be wearing the apparel of a child. Look at that t-shirt! Filthy, and ragged, and doing little justice to the delights it conceals. Your breasts are those of a goddess, Ana Devi, and yet you choose to cloak them in rags! And your shorts...” He shook his head and tutted. “Are you aware of how wonderful you would look in new clothes, a sari, a shalwar kameez?” He pointed across the room to a table bearing a pile of folded, silken clothing.

“They are yours, Ana Devi. Please, take off those rags.”

She stared at him and almost sobbed, “No!”

He chuckled, and the sound sickened her; it was the sound of privilege, and power, the sound of someone who knew full well that his desires would be satisfied.

He reached down, took hold of the corner of the towel which covered his midriff, and cast it aside.

She could only stare at his manhood.

His balls were huge, grotesque things, surely as big as coconuts, and by comparison his cock was tiny, really and truly like a small chilli pepper, apart from the domed, shiny thing at the end. It stood to attention above the coconuts, and Ana would have laughed had she not felt so terrified.

He reached out to a small bedside table, picked up a golden genie-lamp, and tipped it.

A thread of golden oil drizzled out, saturating his manhood.

“Ana,” he said, “take off your clothes and come to me.” And his voice was no longer tender, cajoling, but hard and forbidding.

He reached down and played with his oiled cock, coaxing it further upright. Its dome strained, empurpled.

“I said, come to me!”

The words to deny him would not form in her mouth, so she just shook her head and darted a glance around the room, searching for something she might use as a weapon against him.

She saw nothing, and anyway knew that resistance was useless: his leering cohorts were outside the room, very likely now laughing at what their boss was about to do to her.

She backed up against the wall, shaking her head.

“Very well, if you will not come to me...”

He called out, and instantly the door burst open, startling her. One-armed Kevi Nan and a rat-faced man strode into the room, staring from the naked Sanjeev to the cowering Ana.

“Shall we rip off her clothes?” Kevi asked, eyeing her.

“Nai!” Sanjeev said. “Here.”

They hurried over to him, took his arms and hauled him to his feet.

Ana glanced through the door. Two other men stood there, big Sikhs with their arms crossed on their broad chests, barring her escape.

“Chalo!” Sanjeev shouted, shooing his aides from the room. They hurried out, closing and locking the door behind them.

Sanjeev faced her. His enormous gut had slipped. His erection peeked out from the fatty overhang, its oiled and swollen end shining in the candlelight.

He grabbed a stick from where it leaned against the wall and waddled towards her.

She had assumed the stick was a walking stick, but as he advanced he raised it at her and said, “Now, undress quickly! Quickly!”

She pressed herself against the wall, her arms tight across her breasts. He advanced, his flesh-rolls wobbling, his absurd cock bobbing.

He paused before her. His sudden closeness filled her with dread. If he were to reach out now he would be able to touch her. She made a feeble whimpering sound and was ashamed of her fear.

His face was drenched in sweat and he was shaking with lust.

He raised the stick again and said, “We can do this one of two ways, Ana Devi. You can come willingly to my bed, or I can beat you senseless. Either way, the end result will be the same. You will be mine, whether you like it or not.”

She shook her head, mute and terrified.

“But if you come willingly,” he said, “I will be gentle, and afterwards... the new, fine clothes will be yours, along with a hundred rupees. A hundred, Ana, think of all the things you could buy with a hundred rupees.”

She began weeping then, despite her best efforts not to.

“Never,” she cried, “never!”

“So you cannot be bought,” he laughed, “with money, but I wonder...”

He towered above her, a giant mound of flesh. His tiny, greedy eyes gleamed. “But I wonder if you would be more amenable if I were to tell you about Bilal?”

She stared up at him. She had doubted she could be shocked any more, or frightened further. But the way Sanjeev said her brother’s name filled her with fear.

“Bilal?” she said. “What about him?”

“You miss him, Ana. Oh, I know how much you miss him. My little spies... Rajeev, Kallif...” He smiled. “They tell me all about your dreams of the day when Bilal will return...”

She had wondered about Rajeev and Kallif, where they disappeared to for days on end, suddenly reappearing with rupees and bags of barfi.

“What do you know about Bilal?” she asked.

His eyes twinkled. “Take off your clothes, Ana, and let me see the perfection of your little body.”

“Tell me what you know about Bilal!” she demanded. “Where is he? Is he alive?”

“Oh, he is very much alive, Ana, alive and prospering.”

She felt hope beyond hope, even if it was being granted her from the mouth of a monster.

“How do you know this?”

“I have my spies, Ana, my informants.”

“Where is my brother?” she demanded.

“He is alive and well, but he will have forgotten his little sister, long ago.”

“No! No, Bilal would never forget me. Never...”

Sanjeev laughed. “Then why haven’t your dreams come true, Ana? Why hasn’t he returned to rescue you from a life of thieving and beggary?”

She shook her head, crying openly now, past all shame. “I don’t know,” she said in a tiny voice. “Please, tell me...”

“Bilal left Kolkata,” he said, amazing her. “He was plucked off the streets by the representatives of an agency which educates street kids like yourself. Eventually, according to my sources, he left India and was taken to America.”

But why didn’t he come for me...? she wanted to ask.

“Now, Ana,” Sanjeev wheedled. “Please take off your filthy t-shirt and shorts.”

She pressed herself against the wall and shook her head.

“Would you prefer the stick, Ana? Would you like me to take you the hard way?”

She wanted to lash out at him, push his fat bulk so that he fell over and bashed his head on the marble floor, but she was paralysed with fear.

Sanjeev raised the stick and Ana winced and closed her eyes.

A second passed, then two, three...

An agonising eternity seemed to elapse.

She peeped out between her fingers, which she had raised to protect her face.

Sanjeev appeared to be frozen, the stick high above his head. His eyes bulged and his fat arm shook with the effort of attempting to bring the stick down. She wondered if he were having a heart attack.

To her left was a shuttered window. She summoned all her courage and made a decision. She ducked beneath Sanjeev’s raised arm, ran to the window and pulled it open, knowing that it would be barred. Her heart leapt when she saw not bars but a flimsy fly-screen. She reached out to steady herself – and her hand touched something soft on the table. The pile of expensive clothing...

As Sanjeev gasped behind her, wheezing as he turned and attempted yet again to hit her with his stick, she kicked out at the fly-screen and, as it shuddered and fell out from the window frame, she grabbed the clothing and leapt through the open window.

She was in the riotous garden surrounding the house. She hesitated, looking right and left. Sanjeev’s strangled cry from inside the house galvanised her into action. She gained her bearings and stumbled to her left, through fronds and ferns towards what she hoped was the garden gate. Seconds later she came to the concrete path. To her left the front door of the house was still shut. She turned right and sprinted to the gate, reached it and hauled on the circular, wrought iron handle. She heard the door open behind her and an explosion of outraged cries.

The heavy gate opened slowly and Ana dived through, turned right down the alley and ran like the wind.

A minute later she came to the main road and the surging crowd, and with elation swelling in her chest she threw herself into the flow of humanity and allowed herself to be carried away to safety.





TWILIGHT CAME DOWN swiftly across the city and Ana made her way to Maidan Park.

She would lie low for a few days, allow perhaps a week or so to elapse before she returned to the station. Sanjeev would have his men on the lookout for her, eager to exact his revenge. To her knowledge no one taken into Sanjeev’s lair had emerged without giving him what he wanted, and many a child had met their deaths by denying him.

Perhaps, she thought, she should leave the city altogether?

And what he had told her about Bilal? Had her brother really, truly left the city, been educated and taken to America? But why would Sanjeev have lied about such things? Why would he have told her that he had been educated and taken to America – unless it were true?

Perhaps, she thought, something had stopped Bilal from coming back for her. Perhaps, one day, soon, he would do just that.

She came upon a crowd of excited rich people pointing into the sky, where the light of the emerging stars seemed dulled, and the sun, on the horizon, was bloated to fully twice its size.

She thought of Prakesh, and hoped that Station Master Jangar had let him off with a warning and a minor beating, and thrown him from the station. She searched the park, but found neither Prakesh nor any of her friends.

She slipped into the shrubbery where a few months ago she had concealed a bedroll she had found in a skip. Now she curled up on it and, using the silken clothing she had stolen from Sanjeev’s room as a pillow, settled down to sleep.

She was listening to the sound of the city, the roar of distant traffic, the tragic hoots of the trains, when suddenly all noise seemed to stop – and a sudden, eerie silence reigned. Above her, the branches of a tree, formerly moving back and forth against the moon, were still.

Then she was asleep, or assumed she was asleep, though it had come upon her suddenly, and she was visited by a strange dream – but not the usual one of vicious policemen and angry station masters.

She was lying on her back on... No, not on anything, but floating in a grey mist. She felt naked, and she thought she should be frightened, but a calming voice in her head told her not to be afraid. The odd thing was, the voice was not her own.

She tried to struggle, but she was paralysed. All she could move was her eyes; all she could see was the grey mist... and something in the distance, the head and shoulders of a man or woman, watching her in silence.

Then she felt something dancing on her chest, and swivelled her eyes to look down her body. What she saw sent a jolt of alarm through her. There was a big spider down there, on her belly and climbing slowly towards her head, a spider with long legs as silver as the cutlery in the Howrah station restaurant.

She wanted to scream, but could not make the sound.

The spider approached her, its limbs tickling her chest. Then it was crawling over her chin, her face. It paused, pulsing slowly up and down, above her forehead.

She felt something touch the skin of her brow, as if the spider were applying a tikka mark to the centre of her forehead. She felt pressure then, and wondered if the spider was pushing something into her head.

She closed her eyes, and the voice in her head told her to be calm.

Seconds later she felt the spider skitter back down the length of her body. She tried to sit up but could not.

She awoke suddenly, and then did sit up.

She was in the bushes in the park, on the bedroll with the new clothes she had snatched from Sanjeev’s room. She remembered what had happened there, how she had escaped.

Her thoughts were interrupted by something in the bushes to her right.

She turned, gasping. She made out a golden glow, and a shape that was in some way familiar.

A figure was seated in the bushes perhaps three metres from her, and she recognised its head and shoulders from her dream.

The figure was golden, and featureless, and its interior swam and pulsed with light.

It sat cross-legged, watching her calmly.

“Who are you?” she asked.

The figure – man or woman, she could not tell – stared at her even though its face did not possess eyes, and said, even though it did not have a mouth, “Do not be afraid, Ana Devi.”

“How do you know my name?” She felt strangely calm. “What do you want?”

She had the impression that the golden figure was smiling.

“We want you,” it said.