Valley of the Mountain Goddess - Table of Contents 

 It was Rajan who woke up first. He rekindled the fire and awoke his friends.
 The wind was cold and sharp and beat their faces like a lashing whip. By Sabu’s watch it was four.
 They had lost no time in reaching the pond and, by operating the water lift, getting out of the valley. When they reached the islet, they had made a campfire on the rock and squatted around it for a while. By midnight, the three of them had huddled under the blanket the old woman had left on the rock near the pond, trying to warm each other.
 They decided to start their voyage by five. To start earlier in the bitter cold and darkness would be difficult and risky.
 Priya had not told them her story yet. Now Sabu asked her to tell them how all it had happened.
 When she recalled the events that finally led to her imprisonment in the cave, she shuddered and burst into tears.
 “At any rate, we’re going home and there’s nothing more to worry,” Rajan tried to console her.
 Priya finally overcame her tears and told them how the man had cheated her away from her dear home into captivity.
 * * * * * * * * * * *
 Priya was the only daughter of a rich merchant. Gopi was their chauffeur and servant. Gopi had been associated with the household for long and, though he went away in the evenings, was like a member of the family. It was Gopi who took Priya to school and back home in the evenings. He knew so many interesting stories and would tell her a new one whenever she asked him. Rajesh and Bindu, too, went to school by her father’s car. Priya’s father had agreed to accommodate them on her persistent recommendations. It was great fun travelling with these little friends. Bindu was seven and Rajesh eight.
In the evenings, when class was over, Gopi would be waiting under the mango tree with the car.
 It was Thursday. School over, Priya ran to the mango tree as usual. She saw her two little friends running to the tree from the opposite direction.
 But where was the car? Never before had she had to wait. But neither Gopi nor the car was to be seen anywhere. Priya felt very bad when she missed her dear Gopi standing smiling beside the white car under the mango tree. 
 All the vehicles started moving out of the school compound. There were two-wheelers, cars and vans; all going out with children, but their car was nowhere to be seen. 
 “Look! Our car is at the gate!” cried Rajesh pointing.
 All the three ran to the car.
 The car was the same, but the driver was a different person.
 “Where is Gopi?” Priya asked the driver, rather displeased at finding a stranger at the wheel.
 “Gopi’s had a sudden chest pain. Your father’s asked me to fetch you to the hospital as Gopi wishes to see you,” the cruel faced man with a big moustache said.
 As she got into the car, her mind was in a whirl. She had heard of people dying suddenly of chest pain.
 The new driver did not let Bindu and Rajesh get into the car.
 “You may go home on foot,” he said to them in a tone that pained Priya.
 “Let them come, too!” Priya said sternly.
 But the driver would not hear anything of it. The car began to move.
 “Stop the car!” ordered Priya.
 “My child,” said the driver, “Gopi’s condition is very serious. We don’t have any time to waste.”
 When she thought of the dying Gopi, she forgot all about the two helpless little friends.
 She bent forward and asked the man, “Where is Gopi?”
 “In the hospital.”
 “Which hospital?”
 “You’ll be there very soon.”
 She did not like his tone. In fact, she resented her father for sending such a rude fellow to fetch her. 
In fifteen minutes the car had left the city.  She watched school children going home and the leisurely pedestrians and vehicles going past them.
 Suddenly a fear seized her - was she being kidnapped?
 She decided to shout for help the next time she saw shops and people. She slid down the glass and waited. The car turned to a by-road.
 He opened the door for Priya. She didn’t see any building nearby that looked like a hospital, but she began to get out. Suddenly, he made her smell something pungent and she did not remember anything afterwards.
 When she came to herself again, she was lying in a cot in a big room. It was six by her watch. She had the feeling that a night had passed. The horrible events of the previous day came to her mind like a nightmare.
 She could not even guess where she was. She burst into tears and, rushing to the door, tried to open it. It was locked. She tried to open the ground glass windows but could not.
 At eight, an old woman entered the room and locked the door behind her.  She carried a cup of tea, a few biscuits and two boiled bananas in a tray. 
 Priya asked her, “Where am I?  Why has he brought me here?”
 What she got in reply was a few strange sounds.
 “Perhaps the sight of the skull opened her ears and loosened her tongue,” suggested Rajan and all of them laughed.
 Priya lived in solitary confinement for five days more. On the sixth day the kidnapper arrived in person. He tore a sheet from her drawing book that was with him. Holding out one of the pictures her father always loved to look at, the wicked man commanded, “Write!”
 In those red eyes and on his stony face she saw the devil himself. She wrote as he dictated. “Father, I am alive. Save me from death. Give him what he demands. Or you won’t see me again!”
 He left the room without another word.
 Two more nights passed. In the third night he came again. He bound her hands behind her and blindfolded her. She felt being lifted up and carried down a flight of steps. It soon became clear that they had reached the open when she felt the cold night air. He sat her on the seat of a vehicle, which she thought was a jeep and said, “No noise, or you will be dead!”
 The jeep ran for a long time. It stopped and he began to walk again carrying the prisoner. She realised that they had reached a lakeshore because she could hear the song of waves beating against the shore.
 “I was in the boat for an hour perhaps,” Priya said.
 “We saw everything afterwards,” said Rajan.
 At five, they launched the raft. By the time it was broad daylight, they had not reached the middle of the lake. Their plan was to cross the lake to the west shore and move northwards. The kidnapper’s route was alongside the east shore, and they were anxious to avoid meeting him.
 Priya was given the duty of watching the lake for any valloms or boats. After a while, she reported that she could see a vallom moving alongside the cliff north of the islet from which they had started.
 If it was a fisherman’s vallom they might help them. But the vallom was very far away - at least five miles from them.
 Priya, who was watching the vallom, whispered after a while, “It’s him!”
 The vallom was now moving alongside the islet.
 Asking Priya not to lose sight of the vallom, the boys tried to accelerate the slow pace of their craft.