FernFolio

While the other people in their village celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights, Tara and her seven-year old brother Suraj sit watching from the front step of the family hut, mourning the anniversary of their mother’s disappearance.  One year earlier, the kind and beautiful Parvati had crept to Tara before dawn and told her that she had to go away for a while.  When they awake, hours later, Tara and Suraj and their father, Shiv, discover that not only has Parvati gone, but her father, Parbala, the village’s powerful healer, has disappeared as well.
The year that follows is a very difficult one for the two children.  Not only must they cope with the loss of their mother and grandfather, but with the unexpected remarriage of their father to Kali, a unpleasant woman whose doting love of her spoilt daughter, Layla, is in stark contrast to her cruelty toward Tara and Suraj.  With their formerly loving and affectionate father suddenly cold and remote, and Kali treating them like servants in their own home, Tara watches with growing alarm as her younger brother grows thin and sad.  She begins to think that she must take Suraj and set off into the forest that surround the village in search of their missing mother and grandfather.
However a new danger lurks.  The villagers have begun to whisper that the forest is inhabited by Vetalas, the undead, who prey upon those who venture there alone.  As men start disappearing and fear mounts in the village, a stranger appears, claiming that he can save them from the Vetalas.  Zarku, as he calls himself, possesses a third eye, in the middle of his forehead, that allows him to see into the hearts and minds of all he meets.  Though several of the villagers voice their concern about his arrival, Zarku is rapidly appointed as the village’s new healer.  Yet Tara senses that he is evil and realizes that finding her mother and grandfather may be the only way to save the village.
Tara’s desperate quest takes her into the forest and then up into the mountains, where she meets Lord Yama, the God of Death, and must undertake a harrowing voyage underground to find the fountain from which flows the Water of Life.
Part adventure, part fairy tale, The Third Eye is a marvellous story about one young girl’s discovery that true strength lies within and that, with a pure heart, all is possible.
The Third Eye won the 2009 Silver Birch prize for fiction.
FernFolio editor