LONG ago, in a land where the rivers whispered to the roots of the ancient rainforest, there lived a woman named Miloh. She dwelt in a dilapidated farm hut—a langkau umai—clinging to the steep hillside. The hut was a skeleton of bamboo and rotting bark, for the man of the house had long departed to the land of the ancestors, leaving Miloh and her only daughter, Seregenting, to face the hunger of the seasons alone.
Seregenting was a child of six, with eyes as deep as mountain pools. As the months of the hill-paddy cycle began, a cruel hollow took root in her belly. Poverty was a shadow that never left their doorstep. As Miloh toiled under the sun, the cycle of the earth became a cycle of waiting.
