As it always did, the beast grew restless. It smelled the river’s sucking mud and the jackfruit trees in bloom; it tasted the brick-red dirt he kicked up from the road and the winds that brought clouds from the west blue with rain. But Harry had pilfered the kitchen before he left for school, taking what little Majid had left after breakfast: a pine tart and a tennis roll. He took a starchy bite out of a tart, and the beast quieted itself.
He came upon a house he thought he remembered. It was a split-level with wide, screenless windows, a green-tiled roof, and small yard full of mango trees. Two boys, one his age and one much younger, played with a ball and cricket bat in the front yard. Harry thought he recognized the older boy. He watched them play for a while, and, when the younger boy went to fetch the ball after a particularly enthusiastic hit, the older boy came over.
“I remember you,” he said, to Harry’s surprise. “You’re Harold, right?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry, I don’t remember…”
“We grew up down the street. You’re Auntie Bibi’s kid, yeah?”
“That’s right,” Harry said. He flushed with the embarrassment of not remembering anything about this boy.
“Yeah, I remember. You always looked white. You know, like your father.”
Harry, opened his mouth, unsure of what to say.
“Well, I’m Bobby,” the boy continued, rapid fire. “Want a turn with the bat?”
He offered it over. Harry paused, startled. He wasn’t any good at cricket, and he had very little food left for the beast. It had started its rumblings again; slipping itself around the pit of his stomach, prodding those tender walls with its tongue.
“It’s gonna rain soon,” Bobby said, gesturing with his full eyebrows to the changing sky. “Might as well get a few hits in while you can.”
Harry took the bat, and walked to meet Bobby’s little brother.
He played for fifteen awkward minutes, missing more throws than he should have and failing to catch any of the balls that came his way. The other boys were good sports, though, and Harry found himself laughing more than he had in a long while.
Then, while he stood between the mango trees, watching the younger brother, Abed, pitch to his brother, Harry saw a man coming down the road. He came from the direction of the prison and the mill, dressed in a fine suit and a starched shirt. He walked haltingly, swinging long arms and drunkenly swaying.
The boys stopped their game; the ball went rolling through the grass, into the thickets beyond.
“Do you know who it is?” Harry asked.
“No, I can’t quite—”
The man staggered closer, and Harry saw that there was something wrong with his face. Half was swollen, his left eye nearly shut, and his lips were distended and purpled. Blood had run down his forehead and dried over his eyebrows, caking them.
He came near enough that all three boys could make out the rest of his face: his thin moustache, his teeth so thick his lips could hardly cover them.
They all went running.
“Uncle Amir!” Bobby called as they neared.
He looked at them but there was no recognition in his eyes, no light behind them at all. He half-fell into Bobby’s arms, and the boy couldn’t hold his weight so they collapsed together into the dirt.
“Run and get Bhauji,” Bobby said to his brother. “Run!”
The boy took bolted for the houses far down the road.
“And you, go and get the ferryman’s wife. She’s a nurse,” Bobby said.
Harry balked; his heart stuttered in his throat.
“I don’t know who that is.”
Bobby looked up. He had taken the corner of his shirt, wet it with his tongue, and was wiping blood off of Uncle Amir’s face. Uncle Amir’s one open eye closed.
“Down this road. Left at the fish market, left at the baker—”
Harry was nodding but he was hardly listening. The beast had grown hungrier still; it pulled at the inside of his guts with its practiced fingers; it licked at the base of his throat so he had to swallow, and swallow, and swallow—
“Shit, man,” Bobby said. “I’ll go. You stay here with him!”
Bobby ran in the opposite direction, puffs of dust rising behind him.
Harry got to his knees beside Uncle Amir. He had never felt a hunger like this before; it opened his mouth for him, wet his tongue. A long line of spit trailed from the corner of Uncle Amir’s mouth; as it moved down his cheek it crossed a line of dry blood. The beast hummed inside Harry, it pressed lips to the back of his frantic mind.
Harry leaned down. His nose brushed Uncle Amir’s cheek and his lips touched the line of spit and the flaking blood. Oh, what sweetness, what sugar! His tongue lapped out of his mouth and he soaked in the rest of Uncle Amir’s spittle and blood. He licked the face clean of dirt and sweat and the beast rejoiced with the flavors: the salt, the tang, the sticky sweet!
Harry pulled back. He was filled with the desire to take a bite—Amir’s cheek was so full, so fatty. The beast asked, then begged. Then it didn’t beg, it demanded. Pain ripped through his bowels like the sting of spider-killing wasp boring through his intestines. He leaned forward at once, opening his mouth—
—and pulled back. He couldn’t feed the beast, if this was what it needed. He couldn’t, and yet no tennis roll had ever look as soft and as perfectly firm as Amir’s licked-clean cheek. It was plump as a quail’s breast, and it smelled like ghee. He leaned in once more and fitted his teeth into the thin, soft flesh just above Amir’s jaw. He pressed in, his crushed nose breathing in the savory warmth of his Uncle’s skin: the scent of freshly fried pholourie. Amir’s blood seeped into his mouth, washed in along his gums.
“Amir!”
Harry pulled away from his Uncle’s face and wiped the blood off his lips. Abed came hurtling back down the road with Bhauji. She was a small woman who wore a purple-flowered headscarf that flapped at the nape of her neck as she hurried to keep pace. She was out of breath from running, and her words came through in spit-racked sobs:
“He done vex those mill men now!”
She dropped to the ground. Amir seemed to be coming to himself again; his right eye blinked open when he heard her say his name.
“Come here, boy,” Bhauji said to Harry.
“Come on!” Abed implored. He pulled at his uncle’s hand, trying to get him to sit up. “Help us get him up!”
But Harry could go no nearer. It was not the pain that stopped him, not the beast’s razor-toothed insistence that he return to the man’s broken body. It was the shame. It was the taste of Amir’s sweat and blood and spit still lingering in his mouth and the pleasure that came of tasting it. He couldn’t tell if it was the beast’s pleasure or his own.
“I’m sorry,” Harry said, backing away. “I’m so sorry.”
He started running in the direction Bobby had gone to look for the nurse. The storm was all above them now; the rain started with slow but heavy drops that cratered the dirt road. It started coming faster, harder, and he turned and was running along the river, back to the piers. He didn’t think about where he was going; the beast kept him from that. It had started growing inside him, swelling his small stomach, pushing into the surrounding blood vessels and yellow fat. It crowded his lungs and his breaths brought less and less relief with each step but he still kept running until he came to a pier where some fishermen were untying their boat, readying to set off.