Vandiyathevan turned around. From his stomach, his intestines seemed to rise up and block his chest. Then, climbing higher still, they choked his throat. A thousand flashes of lightning coursed through his body. The points of a hundred thousand ripe and hardened needles pierced him all over—such was the terrifying sight that unfolded before his eyes.

In the endless expanse of darkness, here and there, ten, twenty, a hundred balls of fire appeared. There was no smoke from them; there was no light; nor were they the flames that rise from burning wood below. They were mere lumps of fire. Somehow, they had risen from the earth and stood suspended. Suddenly, some of those fireballs vanished. New ones sprang up in their place.

A colossal demon, black as the night itself, like the Kabandha of legend—one without a head, with a mouth in its belly—stood there. But this demon had not one, but many mouths. He opened and closed those mouths again and again. When he opened them, tongues of fire leapt out from his belly through those mouths. When he closed them, the flames disappeared.

Witnessing this scene, Vandiyathevan felt as though blood was seeping out through every hair on his body. Never before had such terror seized him—not even in the subterranean chamber of Periya Pazhuvettaraiyar.

Behind him, he heard a laugh—“Ha ha ha!” He turned. It was Poonguzhali! At another time, that very laughter might have filled him with unspeakable dread. But now, it gave him courage. The presence of a living, breathing woman of flesh and blood beside him was like a staff to cling to in the midst of great peril.

“Did you see my lovers?” Poonguzhali asked.

“These fiery-mouthed demons are my lovers. It is to converse with them that I come here at midnight,” she said.

There was not the slightest doubt in Vandiyathevan’s mind now that this woman was quite mad. Was it possible to reach Lanka with her help?—so he wondered. Yet, from deep within, another thought struggled to surface. What was it? Something about these fiery-mouthed demons.

“Can your friend Sendhan Amudhan ever hope to compete with such lovers?” asked Poonguzhali, her voice echoing as though it came from the depths of a well. For, at that moment, Vandiyathevan’s mind was striving to recall something. Ah! At last, a great struggle—yes, now he remembered…

In lands where the earth is mixed with sulphur, water often stagnates for a long time, turning the ground into a marsh. In such places, at night, strange phenomena appear. When sulphur-laden gases rise from the earth and escape into the air, it sometimes looks as if tongues of fire are flickering above the ground. Sometimes these flames linger; sometimes they flare up briefly and vanish. People who do not understand this natural occurrence are frightened by it. They give it a terrifying name—‘the demon of the burning mouth’—and are seized by fear…

He had heard elders speak of such things; now it all came back