Man-eaters of Kumaon

Chapter 4

The dawn is cool, clear and silent. A few hours of rain the night before have cleansed the air of dust. Remus fills his water bottle at the pump and puts rice and chapati, wrapped in thick green leaves, in the makeshift bag he's fashioned from a length of cotton. The newly-sharpened machete is in his belt, and his wand is in his back pocket. Tucking the map in the bag alongside the food, he slings the strap over his shoulder and starts up the valley, walking in the damp grass beside the road to avoid the mud.

The largest contiguous section of heartwood is located about two miles from the village, beyond a small field where Remus has often stopped to talk to the old man who grows ginger-root there. The edge of the jungle is lined with mango trees, and the old man tells Remus proudly that every year his mangoes are ripe earlier and longer than any others in the valley. Remus was delighted to learn that the man remembers the days when the sahib hunter, Corbett, protected these hills from rogue tigers, and the old man was equally delighted to find a new audience for his stories. This morning, Remus stoops to collect a few mangoes that have fallen to the ground, slipping them into his bag, and calls a good morning to the man smoking in his doorway.

He walks into the jungle until he can no longer see the field through the trees, then stops. Inhaling deeply, he scents the chill air, the rich damp earth and subtle hint of flowers. The morning calls of songbirds mingle with the sporadic patter of droplets falling from leaves. Remus peers into the mottled pattern of shadow and light, appreciating the way each leaf quavers in crisp relief.

There was something different about this full moon. Something changed, and Remus has spent two days trying to figure out what it is. His self-inflicted injuries were still severe, although there were more bruises from flinging himself against the wall than bites and scratches. However, for the first time in his life, he remembers throwing himself against the magically-fortified wooden walls, clawing desperately at the dirt in an attempt to dig out, barking and howling until his voice failed, greedily gulping the aroma of humans though it was too faint to be fresh prey. He remembers the scent of the animal rooting around outside--a pig, most likely, though he isn't sure how he knows that--and he remembers the instinct that ached in every muscle of his wolf-form, the instinct that screamed, We shouldn't be here, we should be outside, we should be hunting! He has turned these thoughts over in his mind for two days now, examining them with as much objectivity as he can muster. He has no explanation for his newfound wolf-awareness; he considers the proximity of the heartwood, but seven years of transforming near--and sometimes within--the Forbidden Forest had no such effect, so he is doubtful. The clarity is unlike anything in his experience, more vibrant than the indistinct, cherished recollections of running wild with a stag and a dog, more sensible than the frantic flashes of caged desperation that pervaded his childhood nightmares.

He pointedly ignores the fierce blood-lust he felt when facing the kali vastu. He has no proof the two strange experiences are related.

Even though the memories creep into his mind at quiet moments, Remus tries to push them aside and concentrate on the jungle. There was no sign of the kali vastu during his brief absence, not so much as a scream from the jungle. The villagers keep to their homes after dark, and the young woman's funeral is over, her single finger cremated.

Remus has mapped all that he can, and it is time to take the next step. Recovering in Chandrasekhar's house, he realised that he could link simple Mobilis and Temporus charms together to track the shifting edges of the jungle in relation to the stationary village. When the joint charms were cast, the map stopped quivering and shuddering like the surface of a pond, although the borders still creep slowly if he watches long enough. He doesn't yet know if the map is shifting accurately, but it is the best he can do, for now.

All that remains is to find a way into the heartwood.

Remus has never been impulsive. He knows he has never possessed the boldness to face a problem like a bull charging a matador, nor does he understand the preference for flashy, attention-seeking tactics when a quiet word or sly manoeuvre would be just as effective. He has always been one to suffer his colds in silence, to stay after class to ask a question rather than interrupt the lecture, to spend hours perfecting charms of concealment and camouflage while his friends researched the best way to make paint pots explode. It was easy enough, in school, to disappear behind mates who were braver, brighter and louder than he. It was easy enough, later, to be the miserable, silent half of a raging fight, arms folded defensively across his chest while he formulated calm, logical, irrefutable counterarguments that he never voiced. It was easy, before, to skirt the borders, avoid the trenches, keep his head low, his nose clean and his skin more or less intact.

And just look where that got you. The voice in his mind is uncharacteristically nasty.

He is walking headlong into the heartwood. The people of Pakhari learned long ago to avoid the dark places of the jungle--partly out of self-preservation but mostly because they lost so many buffalo to its greedy interior--so he has only a vague idea of what to expect. He has identified the largest area of heartwood and is walking straight across its border, because the villagers' breathless stories and historians' imprecise comments and his own careful cartography are just not good enough.

After about half an hour, the sun has risen above the mountains, washing the jungle in damp sparkling light. Remus stops and unrolls the map. The lines denoting the heartwood boundaries seem to be moving more energetically, but, as the motion is almost imperceptible, Remus can't be sure. Wondering what a Locating Spell will tell him, he pulls his wand from his pocket and touches it to the map.

"Ubilocum," he says firmly.

A spot of red light flares at the centre of the map then drifts slowly up the valley, wandering back and forth as if searching for something. It eventually settles into a jerky pacing motion at the edge of the heartwood he is trying to enter. Frowning, Remus mutters, "Not a good sign." That spell has never before failed to identify his location. Tapping his wand against his chin, Remus gazes idly into the jungle, then looks down, touches his wand to the parchment again, and says, "Prossimo locus."

The map shudders in his hand, glowing blue for a moment before fading. A tiny black cross appears near the red spot moving along the heartwood boundary. The cross doesn't stay put, though; it fades from sight, then reappears in a different place about two inches away. There it blinks uncertainly, just inside the boundary of the heartwood, before fading again and appearing in a third spot. Remus watches the mark's curious behaviour for a bit, trying to discern some sort of pattern or focus to its chosen locations. As far as he can tell, the motion is entirely random, though concentrated around the edge of the heartwood.

A Locating Spell that won't locate and a Point Designation Charm that won't designate are not indicative of a successful day ahead. "Quantum cartography," Remus says after a minute, then sighs and stows the map before continuing.

The early morning chill soon withers under the Indian sun. The land begins to slope upward and the foliage thickens, but Remus neither sees nor feels anything unusual. There is no path to follow, not even an animal trail, and before long he is struggling through thick underbrush. A thorn rips his trouser leg, and he curses, then pulls the machete from his belt and glares at the tangle of shrubs at his feet. He wants to walk in as straight a line as possible, and the daunting ferocity of the thorns makes him wonder if the heartwood is purposefully preventing this.

They do look like ordinary shrubs, if a bit bloodthirsty, so Remus raises the machete and begins to hack his way through.

Twenty or thirty strokes later, he admits that using a machete is not nearly as easy as the villagers make it look. Remus stops for breath, then pulls his wand out of his pocket and points it at the bush. "Claravius," he says, tracing a line in the air with the wand.

A trail of green light follows the tip of his wand.

The leaves and thorns shiver menacingly.

"Claravius," he tries again.

If bushes had eyes, this one would be glaring defiantly. Maybe even a little smugly.

The shrubs are, if anything, drawing closer together as Remus attempts to magically separate them. Remus looks at his wand with a frown and gives it a wave that produces a shower of golden sparks. He mutters, "Useless, unreliable charmwork," and shoves it back in his pocket. Raising the machete again, Remus sets to work.

His progress is slow, hacking through the bushes and ascending a hill that is growing steadily steeper. Once, he pulls out the map again and attempts to designate a Prossimo locus, but the result is just another quantum cross leaping artfully alongside the first. Sometime around midmorning, judging by the position of the sun in the sky, he tears his shirt for the fourth time on a blade-like thorn and decides to spare the sleeves further damage. He removes the shirt and tucks it into the waistband of his trousers at his back.

A few minutes later, Remus realises that there are no mosquitoes.

He pauses mid-swing. No mosquitoes alight on his skin or whine in his ear. There is no locust-like hum filling the jungle, no background symphony of rustling, scratching, chirping and buzzing. Remus lowers the machete, suddenly aware of his own deep breaths. The jungle is, in fact, completely silent.

Slipping the machete into his belt, Remus leans down and examines the earth. He turns over a few loose stones, sifts through the damp dirt and finds nothing. No beetles, no ants, no spiders. He takes a few steps to the side and peers under a few more stones. Still nothing. Telling himself confidently that the lack of six- and eight-legged creatures is a curious observation, not a reason to panic, Remus begins to search more methodically. He looks closely at the bark of the jungle trees and crawls on his knees to inspect the roots of the thorny bushes. He pushes his hand into one leafy shrub, attempting to shove the branches back.

The bush bursts outward in a violent explosion of shrieks.

Remus stumbles back, falling hard against the trunk of a mango tree, and watches a blue Himalayan magpie thump its wings angrily up to a branch overhead, scolding him raucously. After his heart has resumed beating, Remus exhales in a choked laugh, "Bloody bird!" He stands up and brushes the dirt from his trousers, notes that the machete could very well have impaled his thigh in the graceless fall, and wonders if perhaps his belt isn't the best place to carry the blade. Blood still racing, Remus aims one last glare at the indignant magpie, upon whose wings he places blame for the renewed ache in his fading bruises, and resumes his painstaking climb. He tries not to watch every step for insects but notices their absence nonetheless, silently trying to convince himself that he is terribly foolish for worrying over the lack of bugs when a few weeks ago he would have rejoiced.

After another thirty minutes or so of battling the bushes, Remus is no nearer the summit of the hill. He finds a smooth stone and sits down, catching his breath a moment before drinking from the water bottle. He cleans the blade of the machete with his handkerchief and begins to peel a mango, wiping the juice on his trousers as it drips over his hands. Tossing a sliver of peel into the jungle, Remus listens to the quiet sound it makes hitting the ground.

He raises a slice of fruit to his lips and freezes.

The hair on the back of his neck rises, and he feels a chill, despite the sun. A long, tense moment passes in which Remus listens, watches and inhales as quietly as possible. The jungle is still preternaturally silent. The magpie has ceased squawking. No wind stirs the leaves. He cannot determine what is different, cannot calculate the change.

But Remus knows, without a doubt, that he is being watched.

He concentrates on the jungle before him, lowers his hand, mango slice still balanced on the blade, and studies the pattern of light and dark. He is looking for something that doesn't fit--a shape, a shadow, a movement--but sees nothing amiss. Turning his head with excruciating slowness, he scans the jungle to one side, then the other. He listens for breath, a gentle footstep, a rustle of leaves. Though he knows this is an exceptionally bad time to be thinking of man-eating tigers, he recalls Corbett's dramatic descriptions and looks for patches of red in the shadows. Inhaling slowly, silently, Remus sniffs the air, detecting no trace of the rich, earthy, blood-soaked scent of the kali vastu. Frozen with indecision, Remus considers his options. He can turn around, slowly, hoping that whatever is watching him--stop thinking about tigers--doesn't notice the movement. He can reach for his wand and pray that the heartwood allows him to cast just one defensive charm. He can sit here for another hour or so and hope the tiger--there are no tigers in the heartwood--loses interest. He can hold his breath until it hurts and curse the impulse that led him to believe reading Corbett while travelling in Kumaon was a good idea.

Remus glances down and sees the mango in his right hand, crushed to a pulp. Giving it only a second's thought, he flings the mango to the side; it crashes through a bush and tumbles down the slope. The sudden burst of noise surprises the magpie on its branch. As the bird fires off another round of piqued reprimands, Remus stands up and spins around, pulling his wand from his pocket.

He examines the shadows for patches of black and red, shapes out of place, the slightest twitch of motion. There is nothing. The vegetation upslope is thinner than the jungle below, and he is forced to admit that there is no place for anything larger than a dog to hide effectively.

Remus is suddenly struck by how ridiculous he must look, poised in a fighting stance with a machete in one hand, wand in the other, nary a predator in sight. Forcing himself to relax, he slips the blade into his belt and puts his wand back in his pocket. With a sigh, he raises a hand but stops just before spreading mango juice over his face, and wipes the hand on his trousers instead.

It is past noon; Remus notes the position of the sun and frowns. He wonders just how long he was sitting on that stone, imagining nonexistent predators, and decides to start back in order to be out of the jungle by dark. He turns and begins picking his way down the slope. The path he carved has been swallowed by the forest and Remus is soon wielding the machete again, finding it difficult not to overbalance and tumble down the mountainside. It is mid-afternoon before he reaches flatter ground, and even then he's nowhere near the jungle's edge. Remus guesses he's further up the valley than he intended to be, so he turns south, toward the village.

The sound of running water is a surprise. For a moment he considers the possibility that he's heading the wrong direction, but although he can no longer see the fields in the distance, he has no doubt about which way the village lies. He certainly didn't cross a stream on his way up the hill, but there is one in his path now, a cheerful burbling beck that is slightly too wide to jump across and just barely too fast and deep for Remus to feel comfortable wading through.

He walks downstream a ways, looking for stones or a fallen log to serve as a bridge. He finds a likely spot just below a steep cascade, where a jumble of debris has formed a dam for a clear, deep pool. Before risking the crossing, though, Remus decides to eat some of the food he brought with him. He rests in the silence, chewing thoughtfully for a few minutes, then crouches by the pool, cupping his hands to drink. Before touching the water, Remus admires the absolute stillness of the pool, thinking its mirror-like surface is rather remarkable. He lowers his hands into the cool water and lifts them, dripping, to his mouth.

In the ripples, he sees the shadow of a man behind him.

His heart leaps into his throat and Remus spins around, falling forward on his hands when he loses his balance.

There is nobody there.

The jungle is silent; there are no retreating footsteps, no stifled breaths. Casting his gaze about wildly, Remus stares at every tree trunk and leafy branch, searching for any hidden shape, any shadow he might have mistaken for a man. He stands up and takes a few steps forward, hesitating before peering around the nearest tree and into the surrounding jungle. Turing back to the pool, Remus looks into the water again and sees nothing but the dying ripples and wavering reflection of trees. Swallowing hard, he kneels again and leans close to the water; the stones and sand at the bottom of the pool form no man-shaped patterns. With a trembling hand, Remus reaches out to touch the water again, creating another dance of ripples, and sees nothing.

Suddenly aware of the painful dryness in his throat, he cups his hands to drink, glancing over his shoulder just before raising the water to his mouth. After a few mouthfuls, he stands up, nervously surveys the jungle once more and searches for the driest steps across the tangle of sticks at the end of the pool.

The shadows grow long, and Remus quickens his pace, still looking over his shoulder every few minutes. As he walks, he catalogues the unusual characteristics of the heartwood: lack of insects, inconsistent landscape features, some type of magical impediment that makes spellwork difficult. He isn't sure he can include his strange feeling, hours before, of being watched, or the shadow he thought he saw in the pool, but he is beginning to understand why explorers of ages past have carefully avoided descriptions of heartwoods in their texts. An enigmatic sentence such as: And, ye, we did scout the magical wood though it be dark and secretive in its mysteries, is far more impressive than: There were no bugs and I had a creepy feeling.

He can be sure, however, that the light is fading fast and he has still not reached the edge of the jungle. Walking is not so difficult that he needs the machete, but he is increasingly frustrated with the logs and shrubs that block his path. After a few clumsy stumbles Remus forces himself to calm down and walk quickly, not recklessly, for the edge of the heartwood cannot be far ahead. He simply wandered too far north when he was coming down the hill, distracted by unfounded worries about tigers.

He does not think about how unfamiliar the jungle seems, its trees larger and more gnarled than he is accustomed to.

He does not think about the river that ought not to have been there.

He does not think about the reflection in the pool.

The sun sets.

All at once, the jungle is filled with a cacophony of insects.

Remus stops. Though the noise seems deafening at first, he quickly realises that it is no louder than the usual sounds of the jungle. The buzzing, chirping, rustling, scraping, clattering noises serve as constant reminder that the jungle is always seething with life; he hadn't realised how much he missed them. Lowering to one knee, Remus watches in fascination: ants are scampering up narrow branches; beetles emerge from underneath leaves; a spider lowers itself on a line of silk.

Standing up again, Remus says, "Very odd." His voice sounds muffled, dwarfed by the insects, and he resists the urge to repeat the words louder and more clearly. He resumes walking, more quickly, determined to make it out of the heartwood before night truly falls. But the sky grows dark rapidly, and soon Remus is anxiously watching the shadows, worried that his own noisy footsteps will prevent him from hearing anything else.

Finally, he stops. We need to make a decision, he thinks.

Remus frowns. I need to make a decision. Think about it rationally. While he is reasonably certain which direction he needs to go to reach the edge of the jungle, the heartwood's relentless demonstration of mutable geography means that he is, essentially, lost. Remus considers consulting the map again but dismisses the idea, knowing it will do no good. He does not know how long it will take him to reach the border he should have arrived at hours ago. In the dark, without the sun to navigate by, he runs a greater risk of straying from his chosen direction and wandering around in circles. It is possible he will spend the entire night walking through the jungle and never find the way out.

A mosquito tickles his neck; he is still shirtless. He sets the bag down to pull his shirt back on, and as he is buttoning it he hears a rustle of leaves to his left. He turns his head quickly but sees nothing. As he slips the final button through its hole, he considers his options. Stop or keep walking. Jim Corbett would select a tree, fashion a clever rope seat and settle in for a long, painful, sleepless night, rifle in hand, man-eater prowling the darkness. Thinking about the way the kali vastu sprang and bounded against the tree trunks as if weightless, Remus acknowledges that perhaps climbing a tree will not be as effective against this creature as it was against the tigers. He remembers the agonised scream when he cast the Sanguinis curse and wonders if he does, in fact, have a decent chance of protecting himself, even in the dark, in the kali vastu's territory. He remembers the high, mournful wailing of the mother when they brought her daughter's finger back to the village, wrapped in clean white cloth. And yet the cry of blood for blood, and the burning desire to rid a countryside of a menace than which there is none more terrible, is irresistible....

He remembers plunging into the jungle after the kali vastu, no thought in his mind except the fleeing prey. And that, he knows, was hardly a thought at all.

The moon has not yet risen.

Remus settles to the ground with his back against a tree, machete in one hand and wand in the other. He does not know whether he is setting the trap or falling into it. But he waits, and he feels the blood racing in his veins, the tremor of his right hand as he grips the wand.

His legs have grown stiff when he first hears the crack of a twig.

Remus whips his head to the right and sees the shape almost immediately. About thirty feet distant, half-hidden behind the base of a tree, is the kali vastu, crouched so low and motionless it seems more like a black stone than an animal, indistinct and shapeless except for its eyes. The great golden eyes blink once, slowly. For several minutes, Remus and the creature stare at one another.

Then it begins to flow.

Remus tenses immediately, but the kali vastu is not moving toward him. It shifts to the side, long, graceful appendages moving away from the main body, eyes never leaving Remus. It crawls to its own right, beginning to circle him anticlockwise, its motions deliberate and almost completely silent. The creature never fully detaches from the shadows, blending effortlessly from one dark patch to the next. On the night air Remus catches the creature's distinctive scent, a strong, pungent odour of moist earth and freshly spilled blood, so sharp it is almost a taste more than a smell; Remus licks his dry lips and opens his mouth to inhale more deeply. The golden eyes disappear behind a tree, but soon emerge on the other side, still fixed on his. The creature slides along the ground so slowly that, at times, it seems not to be moving at all, but its progress is steady.

As it nears the position almost directly before him, Remus notices a subtle change in the gloom of the forest. The moon has risen. His heart begins to beat faster, and the kali vastu stops, blinking its golden eyes once. The jungle is suddenly filled with a long, low keening noise, completely unlike the piercing shriek he has been expecting. The insects fall silent and the moonlight seems to tremble. Remus shivers despite the heat.

The creature continues its circle, slower yet, still calling. The tone changes when it takes in a breath, and Remus listens for that slight hitch, focusing on that minute modulation as proof that the kali vastu is a living, breathing creature, a creature that can tire, be confused, scared or injured. The heartwood may play by its own rules, but the kali vastu still breathes, and as such it is vulnerable.

Never once glancing away from the golden eyes, Remus reviews curses and hexes in his mind. Stupefy did nothing and he worries that its magical cousin Impedimenta will be equally ineffective. Incarcerous is not an option with those claws. Sanguinis gave the creature pause though apparently did no permanent damage. Asperix comes to mind, if only as a way of silencing that maddening moan. Cavitatas is a good way to stop a leaping enemy, but Remus isn't sure the dense jungle provides enough room for the air currents to gather properly; Reducto might be a better choice.

Tightening his slippery grip on the machete, Remus remembers the creature's blood and claws shining in sharp contrast to the formless mass of its body.

The creature is at ten o'clock.

It falls silent for a moment but resumes the cry almost immediately. The few brave crickets who dared chirp are hushed once again.

The creature is directly to his left. Remus fights the urge to turn his body to face it, ignoring the strain in his neck and dryness in his eyes. He will not move; he will not do anything that the creature could interpret as hostile. It passes behind another tree, fading almost completely into the shadows. Remus watches the patch of moonlight on the opposite side of the tree; when the creature emerges, for the briefest moment, the tenebrous form seems to writhe in a confusion before coalescing into a feline crouch once again.

Remus is running out of curses. The creature seems to have every advantage, being both magical and physical, and he feels woefully unprepared to deal with a shape-shifting foe who uses teeth and claws as well as shadows.

Eight o'clock.

Remus tries to plan what he will do when the creature is behind him. The moon is quite high now, invisible through the canopy. Its light seems subdued for two days past full but Remus doesn't dare glance upward.

The kali vastu is now almost directly behind him, and Remus twists around to keep it in sight. It sinks to the ground, barely distinguishable from the earth, and streams in one fluid motion into the cover of a thick patch of undergrowth about fifteen feet away.

The creature is silent.

Holding his breath in momentary indecision, Remus strains to catch any sound--an intake of breath, a rustle of leaves, anything. But the jungle is eerily quiet. He lowers his left hand, the one holding the machete, to the ground and shifts his weight to push himself into a crouch, never taking his eyes from where he believes the kali vastu to be. He begins to stand, his legs protesting after being motionless for so long. When he is fully upright, Remus watches the shadows and listens. Gradually, the jungle insects resume their noisy night-time activities. Remus resists the urge to shush them. There is no motion in the darkness ahead of him.

Then a snap to his left--he turns quickly but sees nothing. It could have been a twig breaking or a beetle landing. Remus becomes aware of the pain in his chest from holding his breath. He forces himself to exhale, swallowing to relieve the dry tightness in his throat.

He sees the eyes and hears the scream in the same moment.

The kali vastu is ahead of him and to the left, about fifteen feet away, staring unblinking from the cover of a dense thicket of small trees. It screams again, and Remus' blood races. He instinctively raises the machete, and the creature darts sideways, weaving through the branches and coming to a stop in a clear spot between the trees. With the third scream, Remus can see the creature's mouth, the long teeth curving upward from the bottom jaw, the black tongue between them.

Remus forgets his earlier decision to defend himself only. He points his wand and shouts, "Asperix!"

The scream breaks off with a strangled choke and the creature recoils. But it recovers almost instantly, screaming again and rolling forward, a blur of black motion. Remus steps back and aims. "Deflectere!" The wave of opaque silver light pulses outward but the kali vastu leaps through it, unaffected. It poises to spring. "Sanguinis!" The curse hits the creature between its forelegs--in the splash of red light its limbs are thin, elongate, dragging the shadows in tendrils--and it screams in pain.

Again, it recovers immediately and storms forward. "Sanguinis!" Remus feels the claws catch his upper arm and a spray of blood across his face as the creature's head snaps back. It reels around, shivering and shuddering as if trying to shake the curse from its head, then lowers itself to the ground about ten feet from Remus and makes a low, growling noise as it slithers away. Remus can hear the blood in its throat, the gurgling that gives way to a high-pitched huffing noise as it retreats and folds into itself, shrinking into a tight, dark, amorphous mass, golden eyes blinking rapidly.

Remus casts, "Asperix!" again, but the creature vanishes into a thicket, making no attempt at silence. The moonlight whirls in its wake, a confusion of light and dark that obscures the broken branches for a moment before snapping into clarity.

Remus runs after it, disregarding the tearing pain in his shoulder, but the loping kali vastu is much faster than he. Following its cries and the sound of it crashing carelessly through the jungle, he stumbles into a swirling perturbation of shadow and gasps as his skin is set afire with magical energy. Remus plunges through the pulse without pause but soon loses sight of his quarry. He does not stop tracking it, though, following the scant trail of blood even as the strangled cries grow further and further away.

Rounding a tree, Remus brushes his left shoulder against the bark and hisses with pain. For the first time, he pauses to look at the injury. The sleeve of his shirt is almost torn off, and there are three deep slices, edged with black as if the skin were burnt, where the kali vastu's claws caught his bicep. Blood flows freely from the wound. He tears the sleeve away and dabs at the cuts with the cloth, then points his wand and says, "Santiorus." A cool breeze washes over his arm, but the wound is not cleaned. Remus tries again, "Sanitorus," and still there is no effect. He knows better than to try magically closing the wound before cleaning it, so he simply wraps the sleeve around the gashes as best he can, catching one end of the cloth in his teeth to pull it tight.

As Remus resumes the trail, he notices that the sky has lightened considerably and feels a mixture of guilt and relief. The kali vastu screams in the distance. It likely won't bleed to death from its wounds--if it can bleed to death at all--for already the blood trail is almost impossible to follow, and he spends several minutes trying to locate the next damp patch. He stops, feeling like an exceptionally worthless hunter for injuring his prey badly and then promptly losing it, but his chances of finding the kali vastu in the daylight are slim; it is no coincidence that it appeared the moment darkness fell. Also, his inability to heal his own injury, which is beginning to throb quite painfully, means that he has to get out of the heartwood or risk leaving his own bloody trail.

The kali vastu screams once more, to the north, even further away.

In the south, there is an answering shout. Remus turns at once and begins walking. He hears another shout and quickens his pace, running until he sees a break in the trees ahead and a field beyond. He emerges from the heartwood almost exactly where he entered and stops abruptly, catching his breath.

Four villagers are gathered by the old man's house. One of them sees Remus and calls out, and immediately they run over to him, talking excitedly in Hindi. He catches only a few words and shakes his head to show them he can't follow. Crowding around him, they touch his arm and lead him to the house. The old man and his wife appear in the doorway, and the woman quickly ducks inside, returning a moment later with a porcelain jug of water. One of the men begins shouting down the valley; the others motion for Remus to sit on the stool the old man brings from inside. Remus does so gratefully, suddenly exhausted. He lets the old woman wash his arm and realises he is still holding both machete and wand. He puts the wand in his back pocket and sets the machete on the ground. The bag is still slung over his shoulder, the cotton strap across his chest now stained with blood. He is relieved to see that the map is still there--crushed, but still there.

Men are approaching from down the valley, dim silhouettes in the pre-dawn. One of them is Rakesh, who reaches Remus quickly and looks down at him, eyes widening at the sight of his bleeding arm. He pauses, as if uncertain what to say, then declares, "We have been looking many days, Mr. Lupin."

"I was track--what?" Remus stops abruptly. "Many days?"

"Seven," Rakesh confirms.

"But I--" Remus closes his mouth, unsure of how to respond. He is quiet for a long moment, then says, "Seven days?"

"Sat," another man agrees, nodding vigorously. "Ji ha, sat."

"Yes. We have been looking during the day." Nodding at Remus' arm, Rakesh adds, "We were certain the kali vastu had taken you." One of the men says something in Hindi, and Rakesh translates, "They thought it would attack this morning. They heard it scream."

"Oh, um...it's injured." Seven days, Remus thinks. It was a long night, but not that long. He has lost hours to the heartwood before, wandering the borders, but he didn't know it could steal entire days. Remus stands up, ignoring the old woman's protest. He wants nothing more than to return to his bungalow and heal his arm--or walk farther from the heartwood to heal it, if necessary--and go to sleep.

"You hurt it? Will it live?" The hope in Rakesh's voice is unmistakable.

"I don't know," Remus says. "I followed it, but it was still moving too fast."

"Mr. Chandrasekhar's driver came for you."

Remus looks at Rakesh, surprised. "Why?"

"To take you to Haridwar." Remus had forgotten the arrangement, and he nods slowly. Rakesh adds, "He has probably told Mr. Chandrasekhar that you are dead."

"Well." Remus runs a hand through his hair, realising too late that his fingers are sticky with blood. "We shall have to let him know that is not the case."

The two miles to the village are long. Remus stumbles into his bungalow just as the sun rises over the mountains.