Tikkipala by Sara Banerji

out of reach. Something like a tiny hammock, about the shape and size of a grape, seemed to be swinging inthe breeze. A little woven thing decorated with sparkling stones. Something that people must have made. This was no random piece of nature. Perhaps, she thought, some clever child from the village had come playing up here and made itself a dolly cradle. Standing on tiptoe on top of the boulder, she began to try to get a foothold in the first part of the smooth rock. She jumped and leapt, trying to snatch the hammock down, grabbing at it as if it was a piece of ripe fruit she was trying to pick. After ten jumps, suddenly it came away with a snap, as though it had been attached quite tightly to the rock, and she had the thing in her hand. She sat down to examine it and felt amazed. The tiny thing, which seemed to have been woven from long human hairs, was decorated with the most minute and finely worked semi precious jewels, a thousand of them strung along the hairs. As she started to open the bag, there came a humming sound as though a beetle or a wild bee was inside. Quickly she put the thing down but as though her touch had woken something inside, the bag began to quiver. Perhaps, thought Sangita, there is a mouse in here. Cautiously she enlarged the opening with her finger and peeped in, then reeled back dazzled. Inside the bag lay a dark blue stone, and at its heart, a red glowing centre. She pulled the stone out, dazed with hope and joy. She knew what it was. She had found the Ama.
    The Raja, watching with his binoculars, saw his wife suddenly stop, reach up, seize something from the ground, and then still clutching it, sit down. ‘She is crazy,’ he told himself. ‘She probably knows I am looking and that is why she is carrying on like that,’ but all the same he felt a surge of hopefulness. But then, even from this great distance, though he could not even see Sangita’s expression or hear her voice, there came flashing from her hands a sharp red light.
    He rose, entirely suffused with hope.
    Sangita held the stone on her open palm and stared at it while the red heart flickered on her face, dazzled her eyes and buzzed against her palm.
    â€˜Where is my child?’ she whispered. ‘Where is the life I made?’
    Nothing happened. It was like the time she had given milk to Ganesh. Ganesh had drunk in the end, so the stone might become active, too, if she was patient. But after a while, just as she had begun to fear that the servants and her husband were right and the whole thing was a silly superstition, the stone began to shudder.
    She let out a small shriek, and clutched the stone before it fell. She closed her fingers over it and held it tight and inside her fist she felt the stone grow hotter. After a while, unable to bear the pain, she opened her palm. At once the stone began to swing round like the needle of a compass until it was whirling and the light radiating from it was so bright that she had to shut her eyes.
    Then the stone shot off Sangita’s hand and struck her painfully in the stomach. Before she could snatch it, it fell to the ground and the dazzle diminished.
    â€˜Oh, stupid,’ said Sangita aloud and bent to retrieve it, where it lay flickering in the dust. She began all over again and the same thing happened a second time and this time inside her body she felt something shiver, as though a life was settling there, and she understood.
    Then, as she stood there, smiling, the stone began to get hot and in a moment Sangita could not longer hold it. With a shriek of pain, she hurled it away. For a while she watched as it went spiralling and flashing down the mountainside. Once it struck a rock so hard that a little chip flew off. She heard it tinkling on, as it fell for quite a long time, then it was gone and even the flashing light was hidden somewhere downamong the trees. But Sangita did not mind because the stone had already told her what she wanted to know and she