Chained

by Lynne Kelly

  He speaks so quietly now, I have to lean closer to hear him.

  “You were not born among elephants, but somehow you have a heart for them, like I do. And Nandita has a heart for you. She would lay down her life for you, like Myit Ko Naing did for me. You must do all you can now to save her. And yourself.”

  “But, Ne Min, I don’t know how. I can’t get the ax, or the keys…”

  He squeezes my hand. “If you do not want to carry her death on your shoulders for the rest of your life, you will not let anything stop you.”

  I used to think the guilt I’d seen on Ne Min’s face was about Anju, from Timir’s old circus, since he couldn’t talk Timir out of killing her. He must have felt so much worse about Myit Ko Naing, having grown up with her and knowing she died in the fire he caused.

  His hand starts to slip away from mine. I grip it tighter.

  “Ne Min, wait—” There are so many more questions I have for him, so much more I want to say to him, so much to thank him for.

  “No, Hastin,” he says. “Remember the candles? It is time for my flame to die out now. What keeps me alive will breathe life into something new.”

  I cling to Ne Min to keep him from slipping away. He can’t leave. I don’t care about the something new out there—I need the old Ne Min here. I lay my head on his shoulder and drape my arm across his chest like I’m shielding a candle flame from the wind. My arm moves up and down with Ne Min’s breathing, then grows still.

  The light that is Ne Min’s life fades away, and moves on to give life to someone else, somewhere else. All that’s left here is sadness, and it fills the room.

  Outside, the wind blows, and rings the wooden bell with a sound that is not too high, or too low, or too hollow.

  28

  A young elephant that is chained will try hard to free itself, but once it gives up, it gives up forever. Even when it is strong enough to break its chains, it will not. So it is that the smallest chain can hold the largest elephant.

  —From Care of Jungle Elephants by Tin San Bo

  From the nightstand I take the elephant book and slip the picture of Ne Min and Myit Ko Naing between the pages. I clutch the book as if a part of Ne Min still lives within.

  I place the book in my lap to flip through it, and I recognize some things Ne Min taught me. There’s a picture of a man tending to an injured elephant, pouring what looks like sugar onto the wound. On another page, an elephant lies in a river while someone rubs its skin with a coconut husk. I can almost hear the rumbling purr of the elephant as the dust and dry skin are scrubbed away.

  A herd surrounds a fallen elephant, some of them nudging it with their trunks.

  On one of the last pages I see an elephant chained to a tree. The elephant looks larger than any others pictured in the book, but the chain that holds him is so thin it is almost lost in the grass. Why does such a strong elephant allow such a small chain to hold him? Doesn’t he know he could break free if he tried? I run my hands over the rounded letters on the page and wish I knew what the words said. Those letters, written smoothly and with no sharp edges. Those words, that must say so much and hold such wisdom within their soft lines.

  I hold Ne Min’s hand once more. He finally looks like he is at peace, not holding on to the pain of elephants. He looks free, and I hope that he is.

  I take the stone from my pocket and press it into Ne Min’s hand. He is even more like this stone than I thought.

  “This stone has quite a story.” I don’t know if Ne Min can hear me anymore, but I tell him about the stone anyway. About how it survived the weight and pressure bearing down on it, how it broke away and rolled far from home and spent many lifetimes knocked around by the river currents.

  “This stone even passed through heat like fire,” I tell him. “A weaker stone would have crumbled away into nothing.”

  I’ll never know how the stone ever stopped tumbling and found its way out of the river. But I have to find my own way out of here. I wrap Ne Min’s hand around the stone in his palm and let go.

  I rush back to the stable and grab my bag. It holds my Ganesh figure, Nandita’s carving, the empty iodine bottle, Ne Min’s leaf, and the elephant box for Chanda. Nandita trumpets and swings her trunk back and forth. I think she knows that something important is happening.

  As I place Ne Min’s book in the bag, I stare at the marks I’ve carved. The lines I scratched with my pocketknife each day make a long row across the stable wall. I unfold my knife and stab the point into the end of the row. My final mark.

  Nandita follows me out of the stable, then bumps into me when the roar of Timir’s truck freezes me in place. The cook shed blocks my view of the truck, so I can’t see who is with him.

  The engine quiets, and the wooden gate behind the cook shed creaks open, then closes. I peer around a tree and see three men following Timir to his office. One of them holds a large rifle.

  Together Nandita and I run to the main gate. I find Sharad standing near the elephant truck.

  “I am sorry about your father,” I tell him.

  He freezes, then turns away from the coil of rope he just loaded into the truck. His eyes narrow when he looks at me. “What are you talking about?”

  “I know how much it hurts, losing your father. But it wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “—not even Anju’s fault.”

  Sharad pounds the side of the truck with his fist so hard that I jump back from the noise.

  “No, it was mine.” He walks to the arena fence and leans on it. As he talks he stares at the ground. “I was the last one to close the lion cage that day. I thought I had locked it properly, but…”

  We are both quiet for a long time. I wonder who Sharad has blamed more all these years, himself or the elephant. The pain on his face answers my question.

  “It was an accident,” I finally say. “And it was a long time ago. But did Anju’s death help you feel any better? What would Nandita’s death solve?”

  “She could have killed me,” he says.

  “If she wanted to, she would have. And I could have left you on the ground and escaped, but I didn’t. So now you can return the favor.”

  “What?”

  “Give me the keys.”

  Sharad moves his hand to his key ring. His goodness has been buried for so long underneath so much anger, fear, and, I know now, guilt. I do not expect him to magically change, but if a bit of that goodness could dig its way out, just enough to help …

  My hand in my pocket grips my knife. If I have to, I will slice open the pocket that holds Sharad’s keys.

  He stares at Nandita as she sways back and forth next to me.

  I think I can win if he puts up a fight. He is still sore from Nandita’s attack.

  “This is a mistake,” Sharad says. He pulls the keys from his pocket. “She is a wild animal, you know.”

  The hand on my knife relaxes. “I know, and she wants to go home.”

  He does not look at me as he asks, “How is Ne Min? I told Timir he needs a doctor. He doesn’t want to get one, but maybe—”

  When I don’t answer he glances up at me. I shake my head to let him know it is too late for Ne Min.

  Sharad sets the keys on a fence post and walks away.

  I grab the keys and kneel next to Nandita. My hands shake as I slip the shackle key into the lock and turn it. The shackles clatter to the ground, followed by the chains around her neck and leg when I unlatch them.

  As soon as I unlock and open the gate, Nandita runs through it and heads toward the forest that was once her home. She turns back to me and calls out a trumpet blast.

  A hand grabs my shoulder.

  “That animal is mine!” Timir yells. “Now go get her and bring her back, or you will never work off your debt to me.”

  I cannot move. But we have come so far, I can’t let us fail now. If Nandita would just keep running, I could get myself out of here later. But she doesn’t move either. T
imir glances at her and says, “Fine. If you won’t do the job yourself—” Only when he turns toward his office do I notice the workmen standing at the doorway. One of them holds the elephant gun. Timir waves him over. I back away from the fence.

  “Take care of it now,” he says as the man approaches.

  Sharad runs to us, then leans on the fence while he catches his breath.

  The workman raises the gun and aims it toward Nandita. My hand, so used to the comfort of the stone, reaches for my pocket before I realize the stone is no longer there. But I no longer need it. I know what to do. The same thing Nandita did for me when I faced danger.

  I step in front of the barrel of the elephant gun. Standing here might not stop the man from firing, but it’s the only chance I have now of saving Nandita.

  The man moves aside and aims again. I follow.

  “Fire!” Timir yells at the man.

  Maybe this is where my story ends. I think of my village. I almost made it back. I think of my family, who will never know what happened to me. More than ever I hope that Chanda recovered from her illness, so Amma will not be alone.

  “I can’t,” the man says. “The boy’s in the way!”

  “Just shoot him,” says Timir.

  The man steps aside and aims the gun. Again I follow, and stare into the blackness of the barrel.

  He lowers the gun. “You hired me to shoot an elephant,” he says to Timir. “I’m not shooting a boy, too.”

  Timir grabs the gun. “Then leave the job to someone who can do it.” He hands the gun to Sharad. “Take care of it.”

  Sharad looks from the gun to Timir, then to me. He raises the gun. I place myself between him and Nandita.

  This must be what Ne Min meant about being brave. Never in my life have I been so afraid, but here I stand.

  We all jump at the rifle blast when Sharad fires—straight up into the sky. I look behind me to see Nandita galloping toward her forest home again. I know I should run, too, but my knees will give out under me if I move.

  Nandita stops and turns back to us.

  What is she doing? “Go on!” I yell as I wave her away. “Go home!”

  But Nandita does not go. She kneels onto her front legs.

  I turn back to Timir, and for the first time ever I look him right in the eyes. For all his yelling, for all his demands, he has never done anything. He might kill a mouse and never feel it, but he’s afraid of anything that takes real work. He never lifted a shovel to dig Nandita’s trap, never spent a moment training her, never even filled the trough or pitched hay. He is like a thundercloud that never produces rain. And he will not come after us.

  “She has worked for you long enough,” I say to him. “And so have I. If you are so brave, go get her yourself. She won’t be as gentle with you as she was with Sharad.”

  I run to Nandita, to take the last ride she will ever give.

  Nandita heads to the forest with me on her back. I close my eyes to feel the wind on my face as she runs home. The wooden bell on her neck clip-clops along with her gallop. She trumpets and runs faster when we hear the answering calls of her herd. I lean forward and cling tighter to her neck so I will not fall off.

  We pass the banyan tree where the trap used to be, and Nandita runs alongside the river, deeper into the forest. When we see the herd in the river, I reach up and pull myself onto a tree branch that Nandita passes under. Only then do I realize I still have Sharad’s key ring. I laugh and toss it into the river. With no way to start the elephant truck and no way to lock the shackles, they will have a hard time catching a new elephant anytime soon.

  The elephants trumpet and spin circles and touch Nandita with their trunks, celebrating even more excitedly than they did at the fence.

  From a branch that hangs over the riverbank I watch Nandita standing in the river with the other elephants. Water splashes over her body, and she sprays her friend Indurekha with her trunk, just as she did when I first saw them last year.

  For the rest of her days, when Nandita is hungry, she will eat. When she is thirsty, she will drink from the river. She will walk without chains wherever she wants to go. When she is tired, she will rest. Someday she will be a mother—a good one, I know, a fierce protector of her children. Maybe one day she will be the leader of this herd.

  I climb partway down the tree, then jump onto the riverbank. I’d like to give Nandita a proper goodbye, but I do not want to interrupt her homecoming.

  From my bag, I grab Nandita’s Ganesh carving, the one she still holds in her trunk sometimes while she sleeps. She probably doesn’t need it anymore, but I place it on a low branch, just in case. Maybe when she sees it she will think of me.

  I turn away to continue my journey to my own village. I don’t know what I will find there. It might not look the same as I remember, but I am going home.

  Water splashes and a branch snaps behind me. I do not turn around. For one last time, I will let Nandita sneak up on me.

  When I feel her trunk on my shoulder, I turn around and act surprised to see her. She looks like she is laughing as she touches my head and face with her trunk. I step closer to give her a hug, and she places her trunk on my back. The rope that holds the wooden bell around her neck catches my eye. Why hadn’t I heard the bell when she approached?

  Both clappers still hang on either side of the bell, so it does not look to be broken. I grab the bell and shake it. The sticks tap against the sides, but the clip-clop-clip I usually hear is gone. Mud drips onto my hand, and I turn the bell over to see more mud packed inside it.

  Nandita has given me another gift from Ne Min. I laugh as I remember the story he told me while he was carving Nandita’s bell.

  “Some elephants, some of the smart ones, are mischievous. They clog their bell with mud to block its sound, if they wish to hide from you. Then you will have to search longer, but you will find her, and she will come to you.”

  I untie the rope from Nandita’s neck. No one will need to look for her anymore. With the river water I clear the mud out of the bell, then pet Nandita’s trunk once more. I will hang the bell outside my window, and when the wind blows, I’ll think of Nandita and Ne Min.

  Sometimes, I’m sure, I will wake up and look around for Nandita, or I’ll smell breakfast and wonder what Ne Min is cooking. Then, as Ne Min said, the remembering will hit me with a pain that drops me to the ground. But I will stand up again. The sadness will be woven with a happiness that makes it worth feeling, and I will not run from it.

  * * *

  The river narrows, and I stop to rest on a moss-covered rock. I don’t know how much farther the river will run, so I remove the empty iodine bottle from my bag. The chill of the riverbank seeps through the legs of my pants as I kneel to place the bottle in the water. I take time to enjoy the feel of the river current running over my hand. Before I return the bottle to my bag, I cap it tightly to hold in the last I will ever see of this river.

  I move on toward my desert home, somewhere far ahead of me. Behind me, I hear a distant trumpeting in the forest, a joyful sound I have not heard from Nandita before. Finally, she is home.

  * * *

  It’s been three days since I left the circus grounds. At times I’ve been able to catch a ride on the back of a grain truck to help me get to my village faster, but I’ve had to walk much of the way. One night a nice farmer let me stay at his house overnight so I wouldn’t have to sleep outside. His family didn’t have much to eat but they shared their dinner with me and refilled my bottle with water before I left.

  Scatterings of thorny babul and kikar trees stand along the landscape now, instead of the towering forest trees that covered the road with a canopy of branches. I pass fields of chilies, the fruits turning orange and red. The roads I walk are no longer shaded, but that means I’m closer to home.

  Last night I walked until I couldn’t move anymore, then found a place to sleep under a roheda tree. My muscles groaned when I stood up this morning to continue my journey.


  I’ve been walking all day long, but somehow the sun isn’t going away. The bottle has been empty for a long time now, but I keep checking for one last drop. My exhausted body aches for rest after walking so far. How can I come this far just to fail, so close to home? But I see no water anywhere around me. I must try to keep walking and hope to find a drink somewhere. When I shove the bottle back into my bag, my hand brushes the wood of my Ganesh figure. I take it from the bag and hold it in my hand while I think about all I have been through since the day I carved it.

  I’ve been separated from my family, never knowing if my sister survived or if her illness took her. I have seen a loved one hurt and another die. I have lived as a prisoner. And I broke free.

  The journey ahead of me is still long, but whatever obstacles it holds, I know I’ve made it through far worse. I have to keep going.

  I look to my right and notice something approaching in the distance. Too wide to be a person walking, but too slow to be a truck. As it gets closer I make out the curved horns and nodding heads of two bulls pulling a bullock cart.

  The driver stops the cart next to me when I wave. In a scratchy voice I ask how far he’s traveling. He will be passing by my village. The ride will be slow, but I will have a chance to rest. I climb onto the cart and sit atop the rice bags piled in the back. The driver hands me a jar of water, then snaps the reins of the bullocks to drive us forward.

  In two gulps I drain the water jar. Even on the rough burlap of the rice bags, I fall asleep.

  I wake when the driver calls to me. The cart has stopped. It doesn’t seem like we could have ridden long enough to be near my home yet, but when I sit up the driver points toward my village. I thank the man as I hand him the empty water jar, then jump down from the cart to follow the sunset to my home.

  I’d forgotten what it felt like to have sand in my shoes. Sand blows in my eyes, and I laugh. I cry when I see a camel.