‘No – you’ve only just discovered each other —’

  ‘We have a lifetime,’ said Satyavan, breathing in the night, ‘and you have return tickets valid for weeks yet. When does your new term begin?’

  ‘Come,’ said the Swami, waiting by the door of the Rolls, ‘would you like me to drive you?’

  Just now the stars must be nesting in the niches of the magic towers at the Jantar Mantar, like doves coming home to their cotes.

  ‘Good night!’ whispered Malenkar, holding the door of their car for his wife.

  ‘Good bye! ’ breathed Kamala. ‘ Ashok, can we give you a lift?’

  ‘I’ll send you a recording of the music,’ promised Ashok, and touched the butterfly ribbon of Anjli’s plait as her father lifted her gently into the Rolls, among the grain-sacks and the experimental feed. She breathed lightly and long, smiling on his shoulder. She had everything in the world she wanted, and she was never going to look back.

  ‘Tomorrow… ten o’clock!’ whispered Satyavan.

  The Malenkar Mercedes drew away first, the lofty Rolls proceeding majestically after. The two of them were left alone in the silence bone-white with moonight. The unuttered notes floated silently across the pale space and nested in the tall hedge behind which the cars had vanished.

  ‘Raga Aheer Bhairab,’ said Tossa in the softest of undertones. ‘To be played in the early hours of the morning…’

  ‘… when the guests are departing…’

  —«»—«»—«»—

  [scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]

  [A 3S Release— v1, html]

  [July 28, 2007]

  Table of Contents

  click for scan notes and proofing history

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  Ellis Peters, Mourning Raga

 

 

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