Jamila Gavin - The Wheel of Surya

The same wind suddenly sent a heap of dead leaves scurrying and rattling across the palace roof, and made the girls’ sarees billow out like sails. A flock of green parrots exploded into the sky with a wild screech. If only they could have leapt as easily into space from the parapets and flown down to the lake side. If only their sarees could have turned into wings and given them the power of flight. Instead, they stood, helpless and rooted.

It was like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. They saw the terror of the children as the boat began to fill with water. The children used their hands, frantically trying to scoop out the water. It was all so fast. Suddenly, the three children were up to their waists in the water, then their chests and then . . .

Edith was aware of a whimpering at her side. Marvinder’s fingers were clawing at her saree and she began to run, first away then back to the balustrade, then away, then back. Her whimpers became fierce screams, squeezed out of her body in short gasps. Then suddenly she was gone. Edith was hardly aware of it, for Edith just stood as if she had become one of the hard, grey, immobile palace stones; inactive; doomed, as these stones had been doomed to be a dumb, passive witness; to see but never to forget.

They looked so small, so insignificant, struggling there in the water. Their splashes were no bigger than a dog might make as it swims after a stick. Then suddenly, there was nothing except a blank expanse of water. No boat, no children.

Edith gave a deep sigh as if she were eternally weary. She turned away, and wrapping her saree tightly round her body wandered down like a sleepwalker to the grand chamber. Edith lay down on a cushion, her head on another and closed her eyes.

She slept.

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