Free A Far Horizon by Meira Chand Page A

you,’ Rita assured her.
    ‘This is not how it was the other night. You told her to pretend.’ Emily took hold of herself. The memories of shamans and her own yearnings should not blind her to the facts. She tried not to hear the vulgar words unreeling from the girl.
    ‘That is not correct. The spirits have hold of her, just like a puppet. How otherwise could a young girl know so many bad words?’ Rita protested loudly.
    All Emily wanted now was for this harlot to leave. Rumour had it that half the men in Calcutta had lain between her legs. She only hoped Roger was not amongst them. But anything was possible and she was too tired to care. Life was like a narrow tunnel with the wind behind her, blowing her on.
    ‘Go, please.’ Emily turned to the window, her eyes on the Hoogly. She must free herself from the inexplicable hold the girl seemed to have on her. She had been drawn into the imaginings of an unstable child.
    ‘Go? The girl brings your dead sister to you and you ask her to go?’ Rita exploded. Anger gave her the courage to despise the Governor’s wife.
    As she spoke there was a crash. Sati had whirled into a Chinese vase perched on a marble base. She sat splayed on the floor, fragments of china about her. Rita ran to her but Sati shook herself free of her mother and dabbed at a cut on her wrist. The anger was hot in her face and her eyes were wild and liquid. Emily watched from a few feet away. She made no attempt to go near the girl. Sati was not the exhausted creature of the other night, drained of normal life. It took all Emily’s strength to battle with the shame of knowing that she had been taken in by impostors. And yet confusion still filled her. A forgotten vein had opened within her. She stared at Sati’s bent head as she sucked at the hurt on her wrist. Even now somethingabout the girl cut through her anger and left her perplexed. When she looked at Sati she was filled with regret. The mother was another matter: gold-digging Black Town trash. She rang for the servants.
    ‘See to them, a bandage, refreshments, whatever they need, then escort them out,’ Emily instructed when a bearer entered, hardening herself and turning away.
    ‘Give some money for her effort. We are coming so far, paying for a palanquin, exhausting ourselves for you. It is taking everything from her to summon up the spiritis. They feed on her, drain her dry.’ Rita’s voice flapped about hysterically.
    Emily nodded and left the room, returning with some coins.
    *
    Even as they departed, Emily’s mind refused to quieten down. She imagined the girl seated in a palanquin, imagined her journey on the road as Fort William grew gradually distant. Now, about her, the room was silent, nothing intuitive beckoned, no powerful residue remained. And yet her eyes still turned over shadows, seeking what lay behind. The girl’s absence seemed only to heighten her presence in some unfathomable way. Why should she follow where the girl led? Why did the wildness of her face during that strange rhythmic dance not fade from her mind? She was filled by a sense of loss.
    Yet even as she settled in a chair she saw that whirling, instinctual being, her skirts full, her hair blowing free, her chant a rhythm from the past, disembodied yet immediate. The root of light and the coil of darkness were centred within the girl. Emily knew there was also a place within herself where that same instinctual force resided. She understood her longing now, and her sense of loss.
    The sounds of the fort and of the town came distantly to Emily. The lowered tatties dripped from their frequent dousing of water but failed to cool the high-ceilinged room. From her chair Emily stared at the river beyond the bougainvillaea balcony. Upon the water floated barges stacked with hay, rice or animals. A large raft ferried crowds of people back and forth. Great Indiamen were anchored in midstream and pleasure boats floated nearby. Corpses, discarded aseasily as empty cocoons,