Children of the Wolf (10 page)

We held the lanterns up high and called out her name every few steps. Mr. Welles swore once, quietly, under his breath, when he stumbled, and I realized that he, too, was barefoot.

Along one edge of the jungle, near the place where Kamala had entered, was a little stream. Never very full, even during the monsoon, it was now a trickle. I knew the green-and-brown scaled mahseer lay on the pebbly bottom. Pushing through the tall reeds, I held my lantern high. Along the far side of the stream, down a little way from where I stood, I could see hand and footprints.

“Here,” I called out.

Mr. Welles and Rama came at once.

“Very good, Mohandas. She crossed here all right.” He held the torch high. It barely cleared the tops of the reeds.

“Kamalaaaaaa,” he called out. “Come home. Nothing will hurt you anymore.”

It was very quiet in the aftermath of his calling. The quiet seemed to deepen the dark. Our lights extended only a few feet into the sal, although we could see the stream and its bank and all the way to the bottom, where the shadowy mahseer stroked their fins back and forth. But the jungle itself was pitch-black and still.

“We cannot track her into the jungle at night,” Mr. Welles said sensibly. “Not with only three of us. We must return to The Home. It will soon be light, and then we will go out again. The carters will help, and we can get extra men from Tantigoria.” He lowered the torch. “Of course she will no doubt have come home on her own by then, poor frightened child.” He did not mention the wild animals that roamed the sal, even this close to the city. He did not have to.

Rama suddenly spoke. In careful English he said, “She will
not
come home. She is a wolf now. She has returned to her ancestors.”

“Nonsense, her ancestors were human, just as yours were. She was never a wolf. Just a deserted child, probably turned out by her village for being slow. These heathens are a primitive people and are still given to such inhuman displays,” Mr. Welles said.

He waded back across the shallow pool.

“She is a wolf again,” Rama whispered to me fiercely in Bengali.

I did not answer, for indeed I did not know which was the truth.

“Kamalaaaaaa!” It was Mr. Welles calling again. He lifted the torch up high, as if that helped him to listen, but he was greeted only by the silence that pervades the jungle right after a loud noise.

“Come,” he called to Rama and me. “We will do no good standing here. We will wait at home, leaving the gate open and a lantern shining there as a beacon. You boys can take turns sleeping outside, and I will send one of the carters to the village so that all will be ready for morning. But do not worry. She will surely come home.”

What could I say? That light would not be an invitation to her now? That she could see in the sal at night as well as we could during the day? That I feared that she would, indeed, seek out her home—the white ant mound from which we had stolen her so many months before? But Mr. Welles would have had none of that thinking, and I did not have the words to convince him. So I followed him back without saying anything at all.

As soon as the carter had gone off down the road toward Tantigoria, I turned to Rama.

“I will watch first.”

Rama agreed at once and went back to our room to sleep. I gave the household another fifteen minutes to settle down, and then, taking the lantern with me, I ventured back across the
maidan
, watching this time where I put my feet. I felt no regrets at my deception. I knew that only I could possibly find Kamala now.

I plunged through the reeds, then located the prints that she had left in the bank.

“Kamala?” I asked loudly, part plea and part calling. I expected no answer and got none.

Taking a deep breath, I waded through the shallow stream, feeling the tails of the mahseer touch me briefly as they sought to escape my intrusion. Then I clambered up the other side.

I did not have time to be paralyzed by fear. I did not have time to think. I had to look for Kamala, and I hoped that it would be time enough.

The sliver of moon that had helped light my way across the
maidan
was obscured by the sal canopy. I had only my lantern for light.

Something flew past my head, and by the smell I knew it was a fruit bat, though its leathery wings made no sound at all. It startled me and I nearly dropped the lantern, but I forced myself to be calm. I had no wolfish night sight, and without my light I would be helpless until dawn.

I pushed through the reeds and found myself in a tiny garden-size clearing. The heavy packed dirt gave no evidence of footprints, but making my way around the edge of the clearing, I found a place where the undergrowth had been badly disturbed. It was a trail of sorts, and trusting that the bushes had been broken by Kamala’s passage and not by some larger animal, I plunged directly in.

Here the sal trees really began in earnest, and in the lantern light their pale trunks, mottled with lichens, gave back a quiet luminescence.

I walked for a long time and heard nothing, my ears unable to sort out from the silence the jungle noises and the beating of my own heart. But finally I stopped, and the jungle life that had ceased movement at my crashing passage resumed.

A light wind rustled the treetops, like the sound of pages being turned. I looked up, lifting the lantern as I did so. A loud
kkouk khouk khouk
broke from the tree-tops as a langur signaled danger. The cry was taken up by the rest of the troop, and there was a sudden flurry of activity high above me.

I waited, and slowly the agitation in the sal canopy died down. At last a jungle fowl’s harsh voice announced to the others that all was well.

I was suddenly aware that it was cold in the forest and that I had nothing but my trousers for warmth. Only if I kept moving, kept searching for Kamala, would I stay warm.

Looking around, I caused the lantern to bob and throw shadows that danced uncannily in and out of the trees. On one low bramble I noticed something that was at odds with the rest of the undergrowth. When I went over to it, I saw it was a piece of cloth, a colored print torn from a girl’s dress. I did not remember what Kamala had been wearing, seeing in my mind’s eye only the scuttling shadow fleeing across the
maidan
. But who else would have been deep in the jungle, running fast enough to tear her dress and leave a piece behind? I was on the right trail, and holding the piece of cloth to my cheek, I sighed—a foreign sound in the sal.

Near the thorns the trail of broken branches continued, and, farther in, I found another piece of cloth. I plunged into the thick creepers, not caring that I might disturb snakes or stinging insects, that I might fall into the pathway of a boar or a bear. All at once I felt myself a predator, as powerful as any, on the trail of my prey, and what were bear, snake, tiger, or boar to me?

A sudden break overhead in the creepers that laced the sal let in the sliver of moon, and an entire patch of forest was illuminated before me. Ahead I could see another clearing, much larger than the last, as large as the
maidan
. I made my way forward and stopped at the clearing’s edge, looking for further clues.

Stones and trees were outlined by both moon and lantern, a sharper definition than I could have seen by day. I saw shadows of deer, surprised by my sudden appearance, disappear between the trees and a thick brake of bamboo.

“Chital,” I said aloud.
“Axis axis.”

Something slithered away from my feet with a rasping sound, like sand over wood, and went back into the bushes.

And then, on the far edge of the clearing, I saw what I had, without realizing, been seeking: a tall white ant mound rising in tiers, outlined by the moon against the darker forest behind. Near it towered a giant tamarind tree.

I caught my breath. There. Kamala was there. With the wolves.

Then I shook my head. It was not, after all, Kamala’s old home. We had destroyed that den ten months before, along with the wolves in it. And for me to have gotten to that clearing near Godamuri would have taken at least two nights and three days of travel, not a few midnight hours of stumbling through the sal. This was the
real
world, after all, not the world of Araby, and I was a
real
boy named Mohandas Jinnah, not a boy named Aladdin in a magic tale.

But it was too much of a coincidence that the footprints and the trail of broken branches and the pieces of material should have led me here, to an ant mound so like Kamala’s early home, if she was not also somewhere around. And what better place to hide in than that tiered monument carved out by the ants? So, cautiously, I made my way across the clearing.

The ant mound was larger by half than the one from which Kamala had been torn. In the moonlight the beveled surfaces seemed stonelike, solid, new. But on closer inspection it was obvious that the mound had been abandoned long ago by its termite tenants. The domed roof was worn by wind and rain, and there was a large hole halfway up the side.

When I got right up to the mound, I circled it warily, hoping to find some sign of Kamala. On the far side, by a large entry hole, I found pieces of her dress, a section of the skirt that she had evidently flung off before going in, and the tattered red rag that had been her doll.

I knelt down and called into the hole, “Kamalaaaaa! It is I, Mohandas.”

There was no answer.

“Please, Kamala, come out. Come home.”

My own voice echoed around the clearing. Sighing heavily, I realized how cold I was. In the sal after midnight there is a sudden drop in temperature. In the winter months it can be fatal. The only shelter was before me. Shivering with the cold—and with fear—and pushing the lantern ahead of me, I crawled into the dark hole. I hoped that it was not the home of more than a lonely, frightened girl.

I
FOLLOWED THE TWISTING
tunnel. It was so narrow my shoulders scraped the walls and I could not turn my head to look behind. The light from the lantern illuminated only a few inches ahead before the tunnel took another turn. I could scarcely breathe.

Although I could not have been crawling longer than a few minutes, it felt like hours. My knees and one hand and both shoulders were already scraped and raw. I sweated and felt faint. Then I coughed, and the lantern began to flicker. I swallowed another cough, but still the lantern faded, having little air to feed its flame and hardly any kerosene left at all.

Another turn and the lantern suddenly flared up. I realized, with a start, that I was passing the hole on the side of the mound. As my head came even with it, I peered outside. I could see, as through the wrong end of a telescope, a cluster of pale stars.

Then the tunnel turned once more, and as I followed it, the stars were gone.

Ahead the tunnel suddenly widened into a small cave. The light from the lantern shone on a dark form. It was Kamala, her knees clutched to her chest, unmoving.

I left the lantern and crawled to her.

“Kamala,” I breathed into the silence. “It is Mohandas. Speak to me.”

There was no indication that she heard, even that she still breathed.

I reached her side and put my palm on her back. The skin was cool and dry, but it rippled under my fingers as an animal’s does when it is touched. At least she was alive.

“Kamala,” I said, “do not be afraid. No one will hurt you. I am here. Your brother. Your friend. Mohandas is here.”

She began to whimper, then to grunt and grind her teeth. She hugged her knees even more tightly.

I lay down behind her and put my arms on her shoulders. “Hush,” I said. “Mohandas is here.” I held her and soothed her with a whispered litany until we both fell into an exhausted sleep.

In the total dark there is no way of knowing how much time has passed. Awake and asleep become much the same. We woke, we slept many times in that den until the lantern burned out and I could distinguish things only by touch.

It might have been days, but it turned out to have been only hours when hunger growled in my stomach and woke me. Cramped from lying huddled around Kamala on the packed sand floor, I tried to stretch. My feet hit one part of the wall, my hand another. It was close in the den, difficult to breathe. I had to fight to remember who and what I was.

“Kamala, come. We cannot stay in here,” I mumbled sleepily.

She whimpered again.

I knew then that she could not or would not help herself. If I wanted her to come out, I would have to drag her.

Feeling around, I finally found the lantern near the tunnel entrance and then the entrance itself. I stretched out until I could touch Kamala’s heels, and I tried to pull her toward me, but she would not let go of her knees, and I could get no leverage with which to pull her.

“Please, Kamala,” I begged. “Help me. We cannot stay here, or we will die.”

The words meant nothing to her.

What could I do? I had no way to pull her resisting body to the tunnel entrance, and even if I could get her that far, I could not force her bent limbs to straighten and in that way pull her along the winding path. So I crept on my bruised hands and knees, passing the brilliant window of day, until I came out into the lighted forest.

It was already morning, and the clearing had a slight mist rising from a
nullah
that still had water in it. I slid down the steep embankment and splashed water on my face, then stuck my head into it and drank deeply.

Rubbing the drops from my eyes, I looked around. Lying against one bank of the
nullah
was a large stick, no doubt washed downstream by the recent rains. I picked up the stick and hefted it, then slammed it against the bank. It did not break.

Climbing back up, I mulled over my plan. I did not dare go back to The Home for help. What if Kamala died in the meantime? What if I could not find this clearing again? No, there was only one way.

I went back over to the mound and with the stick began to dig feverishly, stopping only once in a while to catch my breath.

I heard again, as if in a dream, Mr. Welles’ voice in the clearing near Godamuri, saying, “Dig!”