The Moon bathes the forest in its pale light, white light that trickles down the leaves like droplets of the monsoon. A woman stands still at the edge of a clearing. She’s beautiful. She’s horrified. Lips parted, eyes wide and unblinking, cheeks pink, you cannot hear her breathing. She cannot hear anything. She cannot see anything, anything except the sabre-toothed Tiger, the gargantuan beast, shining red in the night, tearing apart her man. Her provider, her protector, the love of her life and the father of her baby. The baby is crying. The woman is not. The woman cannot move, so the mother does. Drags her legs away, holding her infant son as tight as she can to her chest, as perhaps then he would not hear. And she runs. She runs herself and her child to safety. The world is cracking. Shattered ground. Earthquake. Lightning. Lightning behind them. And she runs. His final gift to her. Time, to get away. It’ll be alright, he’s just a baby, he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t see.

Oh she’s strong. She’s a strong one. That’s why he had chosen to stay, all those years back. He had seen something in her, something he knew at once he could not lose. The gods are unkind, he was taken. But their son is so big now, he’s a boy. His mother wakes up in the middle of the night and starts screaming and crying. She hears the faint crackle of the branches behind her when a koel takes off, and she breaks down, wailing. She freezes when she talks, her eyes hollow out, she stares at nothing for hours and then she returns and cries some more. She has raised her boy so well. He can never sit still, he cannot be calm, he cannot be safe. Hundreds of miles and a decade and a half away from the last sighting of the red beast now, the boy and his mother can never be safe. The boy slits his mother’s throat one day in a fit of rage after she forgets to season his deer. It is not his fault. Like his mother was, the boy is afraid of the Tiger. And so will be his children, and their children, and their children after them.

Her blood draws crooked lines on the ground where she lies.

All that remains of her breathing is a series of fraught gasps. She cannot hear, and she cannot think anything, anything apart from one thing. Half-dead, she crawls back in the mud with her elbows and she finds her, safe beneath her body’s shield. Her weeks-old infant girl, covered in filth, sweat, and alien flesh, and she is crying. The most beautiful sight the woman has ever beheld. Tears erupt from her eyes and she kisses her daughter’s forehead. Another loud bang prefaces a massive weight crashing down onto the woman’s back. Crushing her and the life beneath her.

“Low! Fire low! Bloody hell, what the fuck have you lot been brought here for?!”

The last of the sepoys lower their Enfields from the warning buffer in the air to the faces of the men, women, and children in the thousands-strong crowd, screaming, crying, begging, hugging the Earth. The smoke from their rifles takes the sepoys in a stinging embrace as they keep firing. They shut their eyes tight every time they pull their triggers in near-unison. It is just so very loud. The loudest crack. Shattered winds. Earthquake. Lightning. Lightning before the crowd. Every wave of bullets crashes against the crowd like an elephantine warhammer. The walls behind are stripping shamelessly. Stone and concrete dies on the floor. Red dust patrols the air like drones. It is fascinating for the false General to see all of these people turning into unmoving things.

“Sir Ewer, you speak for the Lord Hunter and the entirety of the Committee of Enquiry. Can you please provide the conclusions they have arrived at regarding Colonel Dyer?”

“Tum logo ko jang chaahiye to mujhse boldo. Mai ek fauji hu. Mai tees saal se fauj me hu. Mai seedhaa kaam kartaa hu, mai idhar-udhar nahi jaataa. Chup-chaap apnee-apnee dukaane kholdo. Varnaa mai goli maardungaa. Angrezo par vaar karke tum logo ne bahut bari galti kari hai. Abhi tum aur tumhaare bachche is galti ka nateejaa bhugatenge.”

“What happened at the bagh in Amritsar, Reginald?”

“Thank you. In our belief, My Lord, Colonel Dyer thought he had crushed the rebellion, and the Honourable Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, Sir Michael O’Dwyer, was of the same view.”

Dyer fires only where the crowd is thickest. The guns thunder for all of the ten longest minutes of the Indian Empire. Armoured cars with machineguns cork the entrances. Corpses, legs, forearms, thumbs, ears, babies. Oh the grounds at the bagh are not just any painting. It is the false General’s masterpiece.

“But according to the information the Committee has received, the gathering at the bagh, albeit illegal, served the dual purpose of a peaceful political meeting as well as the celebration of their harvest festival of Baisakhi.”

“What about the bagh in Amritsar, my love?”

“What did you do?”

“There was no rebellion there at that time which required to be crushed, My Lord.”

“This Court will send all recorded communication to the Adjutant-General at once. Thank you, Sir Ewer.”

“I relieved this Earth of a thousand brown cunts.”

Oh how the windmill turns.

It is always where they like them to dig. They have been digging for five weeks. The entire family is here, and today they are finally done. The youngest looks up at his father and smiles proudly. The father cannot smile back. He looks at his broken wife. He misses when she still had her hair on her head. It is not all that bad, because now the soldiers will allow them to wear clothes again. The boys will be able to sleep better. A tear wells up in the corner of the father’s eye.

“Im Laufe meines Lebens war ich sehr oft ein Prophet und wurde dafür meist verspottet. In der Zeit meines Machtkampfes war es zunächst die jüdische Rasse, die meine Prophezeiungen nur mit Gelächter aufnahm, als ich sagte, dass ich eines Tages die Führung des Staates und damit der ganzen Nation übernehmen würde dass ich dann neben vielem anderen auch das Judenproblem lösen würde. Heute werde ich wieder ein Prophet sein: Wenn es den internationalen jüdischen Finanziers in und außerhalb Europas gelingen sollte, die Nationen erneut in einen Weltkrieg zu stürzen, dann wird das Ergebnis nicht die Bolschewisierung der Erde und damit der Sieg des Judentums sein,

Sondern sondern die Vernichtung der jüdischen Rasse in Europa!”

With such grace the windmill turns.

“Sing your song.”

“I don’t seem to even recognise him anymore. I do not hate him, because I understand him, but he is just so alien to me.”

“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavada Gītā.”

“Everyone, say your hellos, this is Adi and he’ll be joining us in class today!”

“Hello Adiiiii!”

“Why don’t you tell us what you want to be when you grow up!”

Why are all of his dreams so bitter?

“Yes, I agree, that to hate someone is to not understand them.”

“Yes, for those of us who are not afraid. Not for those of us who are.”

“What is hate to them, then?”

“To them, it is all there is.”

Every time before, when the boy had unleashed his rage, his mother had forgotten everything else and had clung to him to beg for his forgiveness. He had begun to do this every time she disappeared into the infinite tentacles of pain in her mind. The more rageful he had been, the faster his mother had returned to him. It was not his fault. It was the only way he knew to rid her of those hollow eyes that loved him not.

“Ooh, space! So you want to become a scientist? Make exciting new discoveries about outer space for all the rest of us to see? That’s wonderful!”

The child mumbles something. All the other students are looking right at him.

“Speak up, little one, why are you so shy? We’re all thrilled to have you here!”

And his chest hurts so much.

“Yaelam Allah ‘anah lam yakhtir bibalana muhajamat al’abraj, lakin baed ‘an shahidna zulm waistibdad altahaluf al’Amriki al’Israyili dida shaebina, fukirat fi al’amra. Baynama kunt ‘ushahid al’abraj almudamirat fi lubnan, khatarat li ‘an ‘ueaqib alzaalimin binafs altariqati—

Tadmir al’abraj fi ‘Amrika litadhuiq baed ma natadhawaquhu. ‘Insha Allah.”

“You do not understand Palestine, so don’t fucking talk about it. None of you understand fucking Palestine.”

“It’s just the fucking deer, woman,” he was screaming at his mother.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry! I should have sealed the exit! I should have laid the blinds! You asked me to! I failed you, I failed our son. Just one night you wanted to rest some more, just one night it was my responsibility, and that too I fucked up. I’m so sorry, I’m so stupid, I’m so so stupid, I’m so fucking stupid and so fucking sorry,” she was wailing in his arms, her cheeks as pink as they were on the night of the full Moon. The boy pushed her back with force and slapped her as hard as he could across her face.

“Aaaarrghhhhh! Yes, yes, Kas, I deserve this. I killed you. I deserve it, Kas! Aaaaahahahahaarrrghhh…”

The boy hit her harder, screaming even louder now than she was, tearing his larynx apart and making himself bleed inside. Something so disgustingly black is covering his heart.

“U nas nye ostalos’ drugogo vykhoda dlya zashchity Rossii y nashego naroda, krome togo, kotorym my budem vynuzhdeny vospol’zovat’sya segodnya. Situatsiya trebuyet ot nas reshitel’nykh y nemedlennykh deystviy. V svyazi s yetim, v sootvetstvii so stat’yey 51 chasti 7 Ustava OON y vo ispolneniye dogovorov o druzhbe y vzaimopomoshchi, ratifitsirovannykh Federal’nym Sobraniyem 22 Fevralya s.g. s Donetskoy Narodnoy Respublikoy y Luganskoy Narodnoy Respublikoy,

Ya reshili provesti spetsial’nuyu voyennuyu operatsiyu.”

“You have hurt me so much, Adi.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to hate you. I want to forget you. I want you to never have existed. I want you to not be real.”

“I know.”

Now, she is not seeming to be coming back like she did every other time. She lies in the dust down below, black blood erupting from her collar. She chokes and shakes on the ground and the boy stomps his leg on her stomach, again and again, screaming at her to stop and just come back to him. It is not his fault. It is not his fault. It is not his fault.

“Slava Ukrayini! Heroyam slava!”

“The world is burning, and I’m not even sure how it started.”

“It started with the beast.”

“The beast? What beast, brother?”

“Sing your fucking song.”

Cracking lands.

“The Hunter Committee remains of the opinion that Colonel Dyer made a grave mistake in continuing firing as long as he did.”

“We hold India by force. Definitely by force.”

The crack so very loud.

“Sie müssen jetzt den Gruben ins Auge sehen, die Hände hinter dem Rücken.”

The father’s face withers.

Shattered men.

“What beast? What beast, brother?”

“It was there, that night, the night of the full Moon. A hundred thousand years ago. Did you see it?”

Earthquake.

“Why don’t you tell us what you want to be when you grow up!”

“I want to become a man so strong that I can make sure that my children are not afraid of the Tiger.”

Lightning.

“Do you want to forget me also, Adi?”

“But I am so fascinated by the agony of remembering you.”

Lightning before the civilisations.

“We think that it is our kind that rules this planet—”

“They’re afraid, oh gods, they are all afraid. You are afraid. All of us are.”

“—But it is not. It never was. Ever since the fear took the first of our kind, we have been its slaves.”

Lightning before mankind.

“Do you not see it? It’s everywhere. It always has been. It’s been killing us since before the histories. It corrupts and destroys and it spreads its death to every corner of the world.”

Can the windmill ever beat the wind?

“What rules this planet then, brother?”

When there is finally nothing left of his mother anymore to destroy, the blackness swallows the boy whole.

The forest shrieks and trembles.

“The fear of the Tiger.”