He Knew a Firefly
Smita Bhattacharya
Author Bio
A self-confessed nerd, feminist and lover of all things quirky, Smita is an award winning short story writer based out of Mumbai. Potent coffee and a good book makes her day. Planning for that one big, decadent trip to a new country, makes her year. She considers herself the sum total of all the places she has been to, like a Lego puzzle being set up, one journey at a time.
Smita cares deeply for women’s issues and her writing usually reflects strong, central female characters. She’s also a fan of a genre she calls racy emotional thrillers, and her books display that predilection. She has a novel and a novella out in the reading world, with plenty more floating in the dark recesses where they came from.
Smita has a degree in engineering and Masters in Business Administration and currently works as a consultant.
Description
“And suddenly there was a crack in the sky; large dark clouds loomed overhead. A thunderstorm was approaching. I shivered and closed my eyes in fright. For a few seconds it lasted. When I opened my eyes, the sky was light and she was gone. Only her words remained in my head, whispering, again and again in an endless loop.
Come here to me.
With her playful, happy laugh.
Slightly crazy.”
Six-year-old Akshara watches her mother die. At thirteen, she watches her best friend die. She’s heartbroken, but their deaths don’t surprise her. She has a secret ─ she can glimpse into the future of those she loves. For her it’s not a blessing, but a curse; every life she touches is thrown into turmoil, friends abandon her, and she is overwhelmed by more guilt than she can bear. Then, one day, she sees her own unhappy fate.
Does Akshara bring upon her loved ones the misfortunes they blame her for? Will Akshara be able to save herself after she has lost everyone she loved? Or will she lose her sanity like her mother did?
A gripping, evocative, and sometimes surreal page-turner, He Knew a Firefly follows Akshara as she tries to light the dark, unknown pathways for her loved ones, before being ultimately consumed by the flames herself.
Book excerpt
You’ll find my story hard to believe. But it’s true. This is no ancient myth, no old wives’ tale.
This happened to me.
It was March of 1989. I was studying at the Jesus and Mary Convent, and I lived in the orphanage run by the school. We stayed in quarters behind the kindergarten block: two floors of tiny square rooms furnished with steel beds and tables, walls colored in bright blue. The rooms were small but cheerful; the sisters made sure of that. My roommate was Rosalyn, a snooty, reserved Malayali girl who slept or studied most of the time. Nobody liked her very much, and she wasn’t really an orphan. Her father had abandoned them when she was five, and her mother taught at the school. Nobody else liked Rosalyn, but she and I got along. We studied and played together often, and talked about boys.
There were close to fifty orphan girls in my convent. The orphans studied alongside regular day students. These were the ones who stayed with their parents in town. I didn’t envy them, but Rosalyn did. She envied the gold on their delicate lobes, neat socks on waxed legs, pricey shoes polished bright every morning, new books every year, trendy school bags, and water bottles bought from Fatima, the store in town with stained glass windows, the one we gazed at wistfully on market day when we cycled past. Orphans got hand-me-downs from older girls. I had a brown and blue school bag, which Rosalyn had patched along the seams, adding my name under the left flap in case someone stole it. I wonder now why anyone would have wanted to steal it. sweet dalia, chicken broth, dum biryani. It all looked and tasted delicious. I stole from them, I confess now without any shame. You would’ve known why if you’d walked into the orphans’ eatery at lunch. The stench was enough to make you bolt even before you’d picked up a plate.
On occasions, there was just molten spinach floating in a hot water bowl. Yuck. We fought when I was caught, but not for long. No one minded a great deal, and they liked me, I think, even though I did not talk very much.
I remember it was a hot, sultry day—unbearably humid. Strange waves floated in the air at a far distance, shadows from the sky playing peek-a-boo with the sun. I ran out to the playground shrieking over the singing school bell, running along coarse parapet floors, over spiky grass, hot sparks burning my feet, scorching my skin. I had taken off my shoes because we got one pair every two years, and I did not want to spoil them.
Shirts clung to our backs while we played treasure hunt. Twenty of us played: a mix of orphans and day girls. Two of the girls, both of whom loved puzzles, had prepared a list of clues and tucked them in nooks and bends for the other girls to try and decipher with their teams. Sometimes, squeals could be heard when a clue was discovered through careful guesswork, and other times, shouts of disappointment when one team found what another was looking for.
We played for a while, happy and free with the unfettered joy of childhood. The sun was harsh on our heads even at four in the afternoon. It had begun to cool down only a bit; drops of water fell on our skin and we thought maybe it will rain now, just a little. But it never did. Hot and flushed we ran, conspiring in hushed whispers, thrilled in the discovery of tiny paper chits with scrawled messages. Until we suddenly heard a cry. It was full of pain, oh so much pain. We froze in our tracks.
“There, see there!” someone screamed, pointing to the far end of the playground at the swing that shuddered aimlessly. We looked beneath the swing’s wobbling seat. It was Rosalyn! It was my dear friend and playmate lying on the grass, her body twitching as if yanked by strings, once, twice, three,
four times. We ran as fast as our legs could carry us over cement parapets, flower hedges, fence, shrub, and bushes, on to the far end of the playground, the spot where I had seen the strange waves. A few from my group broke away and rushed to inform the school watchmen and Mother Agnes.
The others thought it was a seizure of some sort; maybe she had tripped over a stone and fallen. She was clutching her right arm, which was swollen and bore a nasty red blister. She was having trouble breathing. Throat bloated. Pupils dilated. Neatly tied pigtails splayed around her contorted face like gangly tentacles.
But it was a snakebite.
I was only thirteen, but I knew it was a snakebite. How did I know? I’d seen it before.
“Stay away, stay away!” I shouted to my friends. “It’s a snakebite. The snake could be around.” But I had little reason to worry. The girls were huddled in a corner, weeping and shivering in fear.
I ran to Rosalyn because I wasn’t scared. Nothing could happen to me. I wasn’t being bigheaded.
I knew because I’d seen it before.
I had not known how it would happen or when. But I’d seen her on that swing, thin legs ruffling the grass below, unsettling the striped yellow snake that would plant its deadly venom and slither away. It
wasn’t coming back. But it was leaving behind a misfortune that would need to be undone.
When I’d told Rosalyn, she’d laughed. But I knew; I knew. It was going to happen. I had to do something.
I had imagined the alternatives, the many possibilities. I had worked out all possible reactions, remedies, and cures, asked the school doctor with pretended curiosity and looked it up in library books. I was prepared.
I whispered in her ear. “It’ll be all right, Rosalyn, I’m here. I’ll take care of you.”
She continued twitching, white spittle forming at the edges of her mouth, tiny drops dribbling down in shapeless forms to gather in the grass. She was going into shock.
I was nervous but prepared. It came to me, everything I had read or heard in preparation for this moment.
I took out the gray and blue striped tie we wore as part of our uniform, kept her hand as rigid as possible, and quickly tied the cloth around the top of the blister as a tourniquet. I cinched it tight and
snug.
The Young Scientist article on snakebites said that a tourniquet keeps the snake venom in one place, so although you may lose a limb, your life is saved. But the pressure should be just right, enough to not totally stop the flow of blood to the heart. Sucking out the poison, contrary to popular belief, can actually lead to more harm. I don’t remember now why exactly.
I pulled the cloth tighter and tighter to stem the blood flow, to stop the course of the venom. Her body was going limp, her breathing shallow and labored. Black pupils swam in the whites of her eyes for
few seconds until they had toiled enough. The lids closed down on them rapidly.
“Only a few more minutes, dear Rosalyn, and you’ll be in safe hands,” I whispered.
School attendants and watchmen lifted the barely-conscious, battered body onto a stretcher and ran to load her into the tiny four seat ambulance the school kept for emergencies. Mother Agnes sat beside her bed praying on the rosary, eyes shut tight. We watched as the van disappeared through the school gates, siren blaring.
Oh, they called me a hero and congratulated me. They gave me a certificate, a medal, and chocolates. It was quite an honor. And the chocolates were tasty.
But Rosalyn did not live.
She died.
I knew this was to be the end, because I’d seen her die. I’d seen her die before. I’d tried to save her from the end I’d seen, to change her fate so that she might live, but it was not to be.
Do you know why?
Because this was to be her fate.
And fate you cannot change no matter how hard you try.
I am Akshara.
This is my story.
Author Website
http://www.smitabhattacharya.com/