“I’m Tamil!” she shouts, and stamps her foot. The glass cracks with a sound like cannonshot and breaks into jagged spikes as her body rises up until she’s hovering a foot in the air; the man collapses into the sharded water as her skin darkens a shade, then another until her hands are a glorious coal-black relieved only by her shining pink nails.
The interloper pulls himself onto an ice-floe, and squeezes out his salwar half-heartedly. “Yes, yes madam, you are Tamil only,” he agrees with a choking laugh. “You are finished with anger, no? We can talk a little bit?” He looks down at his waterlogged clothes with palpable sadness, and raises his eyes heavenward.
Unnerved by his calm, Cani wills the glass-river whole before setting her feet down on its once again smooth surface. The colour leaches from her skin slowly as she lightens to her natural brown. Her eyes, she knows, are fading from rich brown to her normal, hated, foreign pale green.
“Your dreams are very bright, very clear,” he compliments. “Good control. What is your name, magale?”
“What’s yours?” she challenges, squaring her shoulders.
“You are a very interesting child!” He laughs, not at all angrily. “My name is Prabhu. I am sa-ilu to Muhammad Anwaruddin, Nawab of the Carnatic.”
Cani wrinkles her forehead. “What is a sa-ilu?”
“I am a dream-walker – that is how I am to be talking to you now, while your body is sleeping in Madras.” Prabhu looks suddenly sheepish. “You are in Madras, no, madam?”
“My thanthai owns the liquor shop.” Her breath hitches as her dream flickers into broken bottles and smoke-damaged walls.
“Do you know Nicholas Morse?” He mangles the name, but Cani nods.
“He is the governor. Mama works for him.”
“You know anything about this fellow?”
“Of course!” Cani tosses her head; Mama had gossiped about him with her friends many times, and Cani had made sure to overhear. “He likes Bengali sweets; he has them imported at the Crown’s expense from Fort St. David in Calcutta. And,” she added, “Mama says that he spends more nights with the gardener than with his wife.”
Prabhu looks thoughtful. “You are a most useful little madam!” He clearly spots an oncoming eruption and quickly adds, “I am not saying you are too little, don’t be angry, please, madam!” Cani tries not to smile. “Now, I must go make a visit to Mr. Morse’s dream – but I will find you tomorrow. I think we will have a very interesting conversation, no?”
Perhaps it is his smile, or some sudden leaping fear that she can barely name, that makes tears spring into her eyes. “You won’t come,” she says, turning away. “You are lying to me because I am only a child.”
“What is your name, magale?” he asks peaceably.
“Canimozhi Theruvil,” she says imperiously, though she is unable to stop herself from adding, “Cani. Canimozhi is a mami name.”
“I will see you tomorrow, Cani,” Prabhu promises with a wink. He dives into the glassy surface of the river and disappears entirely.
* * *
The next day Governor Morse surrenders to Admiral La Bourdonnais. Cani wonders what Prabhu said to him in the dream, to make him give up so quickly. French troops take over White Town but mostly leave Black Town alone. “For now,” Mama says darkly to their neighbours, who have come over to gossip and help clear the shop. “I do not like the new governor, Dupleix.” Thanthai attempts to lighten the grim atmosphere by humming a song as he works, but the skin around his eyes is taut with worry.
As Cani is sweeping the floor, Mama turns to her and says, “I want my ashes to be scattered in the Ganga when I die.”
Cani thinks that she has perhaps missed some vital portion of the conversation, and tries to look wise, but Mama doesn’t seem very convinced.
“I do not want all of this funeral nonsense. People coming to the house, looking at my body, being buried in the churchyard dirt. Don’t let your papa bury me, Cani. I want to be burned and scattered.”
“You’re not dying, Mama,” she manages to say, and Mama rolls her eyes.
“Not now. But I will someday, no? And your papa will let the priests bury me at St. Andrew’s, he is not the kind of man to argue with a priest, even of a different religion. So you promise me, anjinho: cremate me like a Hindu.” Mama pauses, and then adds, “It’s much more dignified.”
“Mama–”
“Promise me, Cani.”
Cani is saved from whatever answer was shaping itself in her mouth by the sound of Thanthai clearing his throat from the next room. “Nataline…” He trails off, and then clears his throat again. “There are some people here to see our daughter.”
* * *
It is some relief to Cani that Prabhu is real. He looks exactly the same as he did in the dream, even down to his too-wide smile of greeting. There’s a woman with him, wearing a delicate sari in ivory and lilac, draped in a strange style over her lush curves. Her eyes are arresting: large and expressive, limned in kohl. She is possibly the most beautiful woman that Cani has ever seen, even when she rolls her eyes
“She is even younger than you described, Prabhu,” she sneers in lilting English, wrinkling her nose. “Close your mouth, child, you’ll catch flies.”
“Do not talk to my daughter in that fashion,” Mama snaps curtly, her face drawing itself into the cool hauteur she uses to talk to drunken customers.
“Munira,” Prabhu remonstrates, wincing. “I am sorry, madams, sir. I am Prabhu, sa-ilu to the court of Muhammad Anwaruddin, Nawab of the Carnatic. This is Munira Begum, sa-ilu to Alivardhi Khan, Nawab of Bengal. We are here to talk about your daughter.”
Thanthai sucks in a breath, and pulls her back toward him. “You are–” He fumbles for a moment, searching for the English word; Mama has been teaching him English since they were married, but he is still not fluent. “Sorcerers.”
“We are dream-walkers,” Munira demurs. “We – Allah forgive me, what does it matter? Yes, you could call us sorcerers.”
Prabhu gives Munira a pleading look. “Canimozhi has a gift. We would like to train her.”
“She is – like you?” Mama’s voice stutters, and Cani doesn’t quite dare to look at her.
“No.” Prabhu shakes his head. “She is not a dream-walker, but she has talent. Her dreams burn brightly. She could have a great position in the nawab’s court.”
Mama turns to her, smiling over clenched teeth. “Cani, meu coração. Go make us some tea.”
* * *
The water takes forever to boil, and her hands seem to belong to someone else as she sets out the tumblers. The door isn’t particularly thick; one more step, and she’d be able to hear the low-voiced conversation in the shop. She grits her teeth, and takes the step. She can see just a sliver of Munira’s face through the opening.
“She is clearly a bright girl,” Munira offers, with a sharp little smile. “What prospects do bright girls of her background have here?” Mama says something indistinct, and Munira laughs quietly. “Come now, the girl has such a distinctive set of Portuguese eyes.”
There’s the sound of a stool turning over; to Cani’s infinite surprise it’s Thanthai that speaks, his voice hard and too loud for politeness: “She is our daughter.”
Prabhu breaks the pooling silence. “Of course, sir. We did not come here to insult you.”
“It would be insulting to pretend!” Munira’s voice, now, addressing Mama. “She will never have an easy life, will she, Cani-ki-ma? Prabhu and I do not care about her background, but your neighbours care, don’t they?” Her voice becomes softer, more contemplative. “Now, money will help society overlook many flaws. But you have no money. A shop, perhaps – but, alas,” her bangles clink together, and Cani imagines that she is gesturing to the ruin around her. “But then, maybe a position? Connections can be of value – you may have had those amongst the British officials, but as of this morning Madras is a French town. I know Marquis Dupleix; he will not take on a female clerk, even if you do regain t
he ability to write.”
“Things may change. Cani is not even eleven,” Mama interjects.
“And what will she be at twenty? A clerk to a man who is not even half as clever, if she’s lucky? A wife to a tolerant husband?” Munira’s voice cracks harshly, and Cani is certain that the dark-voiced woman means her to hear this, means the words to rend at her ears – she is obscurely glad that she can’t see Munira’s lovely, savage face. “Perhaps you can go ask the foreigners for help. Go back to Pangim and beg the girl’s father to take her.”
Mama raises up her face from her hands to say, very clearly, “He’s dead,” and the water for the tea boils over the lip of the pan and sloshes all over the floor. Cani turns her head to look stupidly at the frothing pan. She should do something about it; wrap her hands in a towel, take the pan off the fire before the water dampens the wood. But she doesn’t move.
* * *
When at last she comes back into the room, her face is carefully blank but she has no tea. Nobody seems to notice. Munira is perched on the shop’s stool like an impossibly lovely rani; Cani’s mother looks thin and worn in comparison. Cani finds herself feverish with hatred, wanting to pull the lovely smile from Munira’s face with her hands and stamp it underneath her feet.
“There you are,” Munira says. “Now, Mrs. Theruvil–”
Cani clenches her fists and says, “Be quiet, Munira.” Only, instead of saying it calmly, she shouts it so loud that everyone in the room turns to look at her. Cani feels her cheeks flush. “Just – stop,” she bites out, hands shaking.
Prabhu stands up in a flash of bright silks. “Little madam,” he begins soothingly, but Cani is not to be reasoned with. She feels hot and wild and powerful.
“Shut up, all of you.” Her vision is blurry; Thanthai’s concerned face and Mama’s churn together. She sits down on the floor, and to her surprise no one speaks. “You have money, don’t you?” The silence persists, and Cani glances up at Prabhu, who nods once. She holds his gaze. “I want you to give my parents money. Enough money to rebuild the shop, to pay for a doctor for Mama’s hand.” Something bitter and mean makes her add, “Just one of the rings on your fingers would probably be enough.”
Prabhu exchanges a look with Munira. “Yes,” he agrees. “We can pay.”
Thanthai’s expression drops, and then he comes and settles on the floor next to her. There is something in his face Cani cannot put a name to, but it makes her limbs feel heavy. He reaches out a hand tentatively, and strokes her hair. She starts to cry under his gentle ministration and he whispers her name. She stops sobbing all at once, and his hands tighten in her hair.
“Don’t go, my daughter.” His voice is a plea rather than a command, as if he somehow knows that right now, she cannot be commanded.
She places her hand on his lined cheek. “I want to go with them, Thanthai,” she tells him in Tamil, meeting his eyes. “I am going.”
It’s simple enough after that: she doesn’t have many clothes, and she leaves her one doll behind on her pallet. Mama makes everyone tea, finally, and Munira makes pleasant small talk with the room at large until Cani is ready. Thanthai hugs her and talks too much as the time comes to part, but Mama stays back, unnaturally quiet until Cani approaches her.
She has no idea what Mama thinks; her face is unreadable, even as she bends down to give her a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t come back, anjinho,” she whispers into Cani’s hair, so quietly that her voice is the merest suggestion. “Don’t look back.”
* * *
Prabhu and Munira have an oxcart waiting at the crossroads down the street; Cani climbs on and they begin their journey to Mysore in jostling silence for half an hour, maybe forty minutes before Munira turns toward her.
“Do you know what purdah is, child?” she asks, and Cani shakes her head. “Why would you? You’re not Muslim, or well-born. I was kept separate from men from the moment of my birth, only attended to by women, only allowed to glimpse the wider world through shutters and veils. I was told that it would be haram, a sin, to look upon the face of a man who wasn’t husband or brother. I was seventeen before I looked a man in the eyes, and do you know what happened?”
Cani shakes her head, even more confused by Prabhu’s long-suffering look.
Munira leans closer: “Absolutely nothing!” She begins to laugh uproariously. “Nothing at all. Don’t worry, child. You’ll understand what I mean soon enough.”
* * *
They make camp in the dark; Cani moves to help the driver and attendant, but Prabhu pulls her back. “You’re not a servant, magale,” he tells her kindly, before pulling a small glass vial from his robes. The liquid within glints unnaturally green in the darkness, and Cani suppresses a shiver. “Besides, we have work to begin.”
They usher her into Munira’s tent, and tell her to lie upon the cushions. The sheets are made of cotton colour-blocked with vegetable dyes, finer than anything she has lain upon before. She looks up at Munira and Prabhu, and sees herself as they must see her: scrupulously clean, at mama’s insistence, but somehow rough and mean and small. She feels unpleasantly like a little girl as Prabhu opens the vial, and tilts her head back to spill a droplet of the green tincture on her tongue.
“This will help you sleep,” he whispers, as he lays her head down. “You will soon be trained to sleep at will, but for now, this will help. Sleep and dream, madam, sleep and dream brightly.”
The tincture is viscously bitter, coating the inside her of her mouth and spreading through her limbs until she wakes in a dream sheened a sepulchrous green. To her surprise, she has not conjured up her home, but rather the temple courtyard thick with the smells of burning camphor and tulsi. The temple floor creaks and that’s when Cani stumbles to the side and realises that her dream-temple is a vast ship, floating on a churning verdant river of leaves and grass.
The sound of clapping makes her turn sharply, but doesn’t quite wipe the joy from her face; Prabhu and Munira are standing on the wood floor of her frigate-temple, looking around with some interest. Prabhu is crowing exuberantly. “See, Munira, I told you she had power!”
“She still has much to learn,” Munira says primly, but Cani catches her slanting a calculating look in her direction.
Prabhu ignores Munira to bestow a genial smile upon Cani. “Most dream unknowingly – they would not even know if we entered their dream. That is why I was so surprised that you saw me, when I stumbled into your glass-river dream.”
“Can I…” She stops, and turns away from Munira. “Can I enter other people’s dreams, like you?”
“No, magale,” Prabhu shakes his head. “You dream stable, strong dreams – you are a conduit to the dream world. We sa-ilu rely on people like you to help us safely access the dreaming, and guide us home. You are having a rare gift, madam.”
Munira yawns exaggeratedly. “It is time I returned to my own duties. Alivardi’s planning to ambush some Maratha raiders tomorrow. I promised him I would… disturb their sleep tonight.” She flashes them both an unpleasant smile.
Prabhu returns the gesture sincerely, even bowing slightly. “I thank you for coming, Munira. I did not want to arrive at the girl’s house without a woman present. It would have been – untoward.”
Cani raises an eyebrow at that – Munira had hardly charmed her parents – but then again, Thanthai would probably have thrown out a lone middle-aged man who came to their house and asked to speak to his daughter.
“You owe me a favour, Prabhu, and don’t think I won’t collect,” she warns, opening the iron temple gate and disappearing as she walks through it. Cani’s dream feels somehow lighter with her departure.
Prabhu watches the swinging gate for few long moments before shaking his head as if to clear it. “Now, madam.” He tilts his head towards her. “Let us begin.”
* * *
Prabhu teaches her to stretch the boundaries of her dream by slow degrees on their long unfurling journey to Mysore. The first night she is only able to paint in tha
nthai’s liquor shop, but a few weeks into their journey she is able to build up all of Black Town and then more, farther, a dream that encompasses White Town and the glistening, gleaming river rushing away across the plain and pulling at the very edge of her consciousness as it goes.
By the evenings her mind already feels hammered thin with their cart-jolted lessons in history and courtly etiquette, but then she slips into dream and Prabhu asks for more. Her mind convulses and writhes and spreads and she populates the streets of Madras with much-hated mamis and the baker’s boy down the street with the shy smile and the street-sweepers and vegetable sellers and smell of sizzling mustard from their neighbour’s in the early morning and even La Bourdonnais on the French flagship, watching her dream-town with his brass-handled telescope hung with a glittering chain.
She tries to imagine Mama in their room, but there is something wrong with the way her starched second-best work sari drapes against her waist, something not quite right with how her hands move as she rolls chapatis on the mat, how her eyelashes catch the flour in the air. Cani changes her, cautiously at first, but then more desperately, trying to recall exactly how her lips stretched, just so, and as she shifts and pulls on those delicate details the edges of her dream begin curling up like blackened paper; the river boils to dust, the ships capsize, and the trees all turn to mice running in screaming circles but Mama’s face still isn’t quite right–
“Cani,” Prabhu interrupts urgently, voice shaking. “Focus, madam! Keep your dream stable!”
She turns her head and all the walls turn transparent; the perspective buckles and heaves, and she is looking down at Madras through the lens of a telescope perched on the back of an enormous, jewel-beaked eagle. Prabhu pulls himself up from one of the eagle’s talons and clutches her around the waist, muttering a prayer to Shiva and Saraswati. “O, whatever god is listening,” he continues his litany somewhat blasphemously, “please save me from overenthusiastic little ladies!” He peers over her shoulder, and she follows his gaze: her carefully constructed Madras is a ruin.
Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History Page 10