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Ismael knew it would soon be time. Kneeling on his bed, he brought his head over the windowsill and looked out. Not a star peeked out. He couldn't help remembering that his mother had once described an eclipse like "a rice bowl overturned on the village". He was not used to such darkness, mainly because he was usually asleep before it grew dark, and because living in the Lion City it was never quite dark.
Ismael could not help thinking of all the ghost stories that the old woman the other children called Toothless Grandma had told. She was not really toothless but she had a row of false teeth, which she liked to click with her tongue and push out to frighten the children. Sometimes she kept her false teeth lying in a glass of water like a row of pet rocks, and she would walk about and mumble with her upper lip caved in. The children would stare snail-like, eyes protruding from their heads, and nudge each other to talk to her.
Toothless Grandma was not Ismael's grandma; in fact, he could not say if she was anyone's grandmother: she was one of the kampong women who sat under a banyan tree near the river weaving baskets. She had an evil tongue, they said, for she scolded loudly and frightened her neighbours but children with their different perspective felt her attraction for some reason, perhaps because as they gathered to play around her, she handed them coconut candy and mumbled her way through endless repetitions of tall tales.
Ismael had wandered to her tree on the evening of the second day after his arrival. The tree had drawn him; it looked like an ancient hag leaning with many walking sticks upon the solid earth or a giant praying mantis with numerous legs.
Ismael squatted near the banyan and stared at the river. Two other children, smaller than himself, played idly beside him; he recognised them as children belonging to a neighbouring house. They spent most of their time outdoors until their mother yelled for them at the end of the day.
"What're you doing?" he asked.
"Five stones," they said, flicking him quick glances, but they did not invite him to join in....