WHEN EARTH MEETS THE SKY

The torches came first. Then the voices, hundreds of them, rising from the villages. "Manipur da Angreji leiba," the leader shouted. "Yaroi! Yaroi!" the followers roared back. "British can’t stay in Manipur." "Angreji Manipur thadoktuna," the leader declared. "Hankharo! Hankharo!" The cry rang out from the followers. "The British should leave Manipur." Langlen heard it from the edge of the village, where she'd gone searching for her mother. She ran faster. Smoke already hung in the air from the burning carts. "Ima!" she screamed. Gunfire cracked through the night. She shoved through the crowd. An old man stumbled past her, blood streaming from his temple. Two children clung to each other beside an overturned barrel. Smoke swallowed them. Then she saw it, her mother’s blue innaphi with yellow flowers, crumpled in the mud near the checkpoint. Sakhi lay on her side, one arm stretched toward the village. Her mother's eyes were open. A dark stain spread across her chest. "Adumai touba yaroiye, Ima." The word came out small. "No, Mother, please. You can’t do that." Langlen dropped to her knees and gathered her mother against her chest. Sakhi's hand was still warm. She held it with both of hers. "Ima, eibu thadok tuna chakhino, hougatlo se!" she whispered. "Mother, don’t leave me." The gunfire continued. But Langlen heard nothing except her mother's heartbeat fading. When the British soldiers finally retreated, she still sat there. Dried blood stiffened her clothes. The village elders found her at sunrise. One of them said her name twice. Her fingers had gone stiff around her mother's arm. She'd closed her eyes once. Slow. When she opened her eyes, the smoke was thinning. She could see the checkpoint. She looked at it for a long time.