Chapter One - Richard Lewis

The Zoo child didn't wilt. An unhappy furrow creased her tanned brow. She put
her lips to Putu's ear and whispered, and he whispered back. Slinging his arm around her,
he hugged her close and aimed a sly smile at Wulandri.
Bright color popped to the princess's cheeks, and she glided away, nose in the air.
The priest prepared for Nol and his family. When the Zoo girl realized she was
also invited to pray, she had sudden stage fright and exchanged worried whispers with
Putu.
Suti intervened. "Don't worry," she told the girl. "Pray with your heart."
Nol and his family took their places on the mat before the priest. The holy man
chanted mantras and rang his bell. The quavering voice, the ring of the bell, the smoke of
the incense invaded Nol's senses. As he prayed, his soul felt wide open as a blossom. The
drops of holy water fell like rain, and his increasingly tilted world was restored to
balance, if only for a time.
After the prayers, Putu's girlfriend came up to Nol. A quiet radiance was upon
her, and her eyes brimmed with tears.
"Thank you, sir," she said.
He nodded gravely. "You are very welcome, Zoe."
On the drive home, at a village high on the volcano's slopes, temple guards halted
traffic. From a side lane emerged a ceremonial procession for a sacred Rangda mask,
which a devotee carried upon his head. The Queen of Leyaks strode by, her red tongue
hanging loose between fangs, her red eyes bulging underneath her wild hair.
Mak opened her bottle of cajaput oil as the mask paraded by her window. She
sniffed deeply and said, out of nowhere, "Luhde Srikandi? They cut off her head and
marched it through the village. They pranced and cheered and chanted. Death to
Gerwani! Death to Communists! Kill them to their very roots! They used her head as a
brush, to mark doors with blood."
Nol's senses lurched. His stomach sloshed with a sudden tide of nausea.
"What do you have to talk about that for?" Dian complained. "Now I'll have
nightmares."
Arini turned to her. "No you won't, dear. Those nightmares don't belong to your
generation."
95