Heaven's Edge by Romesh Gunesekera Page B

rainwater. He squatted down and started to skin the bats with his knife, rocking back and forth on his haunches, humming softly to himself.
    â€˜They might have heard you.’
    Kris carefully peeled back the fur to expose the slimy, stringy flesh of the animal. ‘There’s nobody here.’
    I went inside the cave.
    â€˜What happened?’ Jaz was hunched up, on the far ledge.
    â€˜Kris has been hunting.’
    â€˜Hunting what?’
    â€˜Breakfast.’ I collected the seat-pads and took them outside. ‘So you won’t starve,’ I added.
    Jaz sighed, immensely relieved. ‘But, darling, doesn’t he know? I’m a vegetarian.’
    Further along from where we had slept, Kris discovered a shrine room. Jaz claimed that he could smell oranges, or was it passion fruit? Kris lit a white flowlux that spread everywhere. The rock walls had plaster on them; the passion was sublimated into frescoes.
    I had seen photographs of similar paintings in the outdated guidebooks I had studied before coming, but in the cave the images seemed much older than any I had read about. The pale russets, burnt ochres and delicate lilacs hovered in space like early holograms refashioning the contours of the most ancient gods. The figures seemed to shift with everymovement of the eye, reviving stories of long-lost times. I imagined old candlelight, flickering; our shadows moving among the protean pigment. These were the memories I had wanted to trace: history, myth, legend all defined in one supple line marrying the seen to the unseen, the spirit to the bone.
    â€˜How come this place has not been zapped?’ Jaz clung to me. ‘I was told all these icons, all the olden-day stuff, got completely destroyed.’
    â€˜This cave must not have been known about at the time. Or was forgotten. This whole area was abandoned by everybody.’
    Kris intervened. ‘We should go now.’
    â€˜And where, Kris, are we going?’ Jaz detached himself from me. ‘Do you even know where to go?’
    â€˜Kris will take us to the hills, like he promised. From there I want to get to this place called Samandia. Uva will be waiting there.’ I glanced at Kris, but he didn’t react. ‘We go down south, yes?’
    Jaz patted my hand, bemused. ‘You shouldn’t say that, Marc … unless you really mean it?’
    â€˜Why? Is it like going down into the underworld?’
    Jaz pinched his lips together with his fingers to stop from laughing at another of his Carnival gags.
    Near Samandia was the place, Uva said, where the first inhabitants of the island had been awakened by butterflies splashing dew at the dawn of time. The dew formed a lake and their wings a floating stairway spiralling up to heaven. It was here that the first human drowned and ascended to become a god or, according to others, where the first couple – Adam and Eve – were expelled to become reallovers, descending on steps of mortal confetti; their loins swollen, their fingers entwined, their lives ignited. Once a realm of pilgrimage and veneration, it was forsaken after the neutering of the south-west, the devastation of the lower rainforests by rogue missiles and botched nuclear deterrents.
    Uva claimed it is purely a matter of chemical balance in the body that makes us feel that the best may be behind us, or even yet to come. Touching my head with her fingertips, she added, ‘Or here, if the serotonin is spurting. Right?’
    My scalp prickled. ‘Yes.’
    That was the evening she showed me where the turtles were said to have laid their eggs in the old days.
    â€˜Are you sure?’ I had assumed it was on the other coast. In the south where the sand was easier to dig and the sea free for thousands of miles.
    â€˜There is no other beach,’ she said. ‘They must have migrated.’
    I didn’t think so. But then the butterflies migrated. We all did. From one world to another,