Prologue: The Devil and The Old b***h
**Taken straight from the book**
Down in Hell, the Englishwoman known around Jaipur as "the old b***h" was taking tea with a demon. She was silver-haired, straight-backed, and thin-lipped, with a stare that could shoot laughter from the air like game birds. She was not at all liked by her countrymen, but even they would have been shocked to see her here.
"Come to the point," she told the demon impatiently.
If he looked faintly human, it was because once upon a time he had been. He was little and ancient, with a moon-round face as withered as old apple peel, half of it colored red like a wine stain. "Remember, my dear," he replied with a genial smile, "a handful may survive naturally. Earthquakes are full of surprises. Children still alive, like buried treasure? It makes the spirit soar to see them pulled out into the sunlight."
"Indeed," she said. There had been an earthquake in Kashmir. She had sent her shadow out to see it, and it had slipped among the ruins of villages, relaying the devastation back to her through its dulled senses. Shadows have no ears, so she couldn't hear the lamentations of the survivors, which was as she preferred. She said, "You will give me the children, Vasudev. You know there's no arguing with me on this matter."
"Estella, you wouldn't deprive me of the pleasure of our negotiations, would you? They're what I live for."
"You haven't been alive for a thousand years. If you were, you might take less pleasure in bartering for children's souls."
"Do you think so? I scarcely remember what it was like, being alive. I recall certain...appetites. The sight of a woman's navel could drive me mad. Children, though? I have absolutely no memory of caring anything about them." He poured tea out in chipped cups and added sugar and cream to his own.
Estella took hers and sipped it black, replying bitterly, "I well believe that." It was Vasudev's particular way with children that accounted for her being here at all, a lone living human descending each day into Hell.
There was a tonic the demons brewed to keep their ancient flesh whole when they passed through the flames. More than fifty herbs and barks went into it, along with the mixed waters of sacred rivers. Once, many years ago, Vasudev had forgotten to drink his daily dose and he'd burned passing through the Fire. Half of his face had remained this vivid crimson ever since, and when he went up into the living world, children stared at him. And while he had never been overly disposed to spare their souls before, he began to become downright perverse about it, culling the young at every opportunity. Even when some more likely candidate might be lying by - an ailing grandparent flush with memories of a long life, for example - he would take the child instead, every time.
Yama, the Lord of Hell, had seen that some balance was called for, and he had appointed Estella to parley on behalf of the children. For more than forty years now she had served as Ambassador to Hell.
She calmly sipped her tea and said, "Ten."
"Ten?" Vasudev chuckled. "How sentimental of you. What would people say? They'd call it a miracle."
"A miracle never hurt anyone."
He thought it over. "Ten children clambering out of the rubble, white with the dust of their ruined village. Those great dark eyes of theirs...No. It's too many. It's too rosy. The little beasts will come to expect to survive. I'll give you five. Or, if you're game," he said, his small eyes glinting, "we can spice things up with a little curse."
"I despise your curses," Estella said with a shudder, then added, after a pause, "Eight."
"Eight?" Vasudev scoffed. "No, I don't think so. Not today. You can have five, or you can let me have some fun."
Estella felt a weight settle on her heart. Vasudev got in these peevish moods sometimes, and she knew he would dig in his heels now, and tomorrow, and the next day, until he had his fun, and she never knew what form his 'fun' might take. He might give her a few extra children in the bargain, but only on the condition they grow forked tails, or never fall in love, or wake screaming every night for the rest of their lives. He had endless imagination for curses.
Wearily, wearily, Estella asked, "What do you have in mind?"
Vasudev laughed and swung his little legs in his chair. His feet didn't quite reach the ground. "I'll tell you what I have in mind. You can have your ten Kashmiri brats... for free..."
"Free? Estella repeated. No soul was ever free. Every child she saved she purchased in trade. It was her own dark work to select those who would die in their place, and she had an ever-changing list of the wicked from whom to choose. High up on it now were a slave trader in the Aravalli Hill and a captain in Calcutta who had kicked his groom to death because his horse threw a shoe. Heart attack, drowning, a fall from a horse, they would meet such ends as that. Estella always dealt sudden deaths, even to those who most deserved lingering ones.
This was the office she had performed since she was a young widow and had found her way down to Hell on her own, like Orpheus of myth. Unlike Orpheus, though, who had charmed his way past the three-headed dog and enchanted Persephone with his lyre, Estella had no music at her fingertips with which to win Yama's sympathy. He had not given her her young husband to guide back up to the world. Instead, he had given her this job to do. It was an ugly job - earthquakes, floods, pestilence, murder, souls slipping always through her fingers - and her resentful demon counterpart took every opportunity to make it uglier.
"No, really," he insisted. "Free! Ten children shall survive and no one shall die in trade for it! All you have to do is deliver a curse I've been dreaming up. The Political Agent's wife, the songbird, you the one? She's had another brat and the christening is tonight. Were you invited? No? Well, that oughtn't stop you. Here is what I want you to do..."
He told her his idea.
Estella blanched. "No!" she said at once, appalled.
"No? No? All right then, how about this? I'll give you all of them. Every child in that village!"
"Every...?"
"Every last little brat will live! How can you say no to that?"
She couldn't say no, as well he knew. She would have nightmares over this curse for the rest of her life, and Vasudev knew that too, and that was his favorite thing about it. After a long miserable silence, Estella nodded.
Vasudev chuckled and chortled and went off whistling, leaving Estella to her work. Still pale, she took a flask from her pocket and drank down her daily dose of the tonic Vasudev delivered to her, lest she too be burned passing through the Fire. Then she walked slowly into it. When she reemerged some time later, she carried the souls of two babies in her arms and the other children walked behind her in a row like ducklings. Silently, they followed her out of Hell.
And far away in the mountains of Kashmir, the rescuers, on the very verge of giving up, unearthed a pocket of air and pulled twenty-two children out of the rubble alive.
It was a miracle.
