Read an Excerpt From Amanda Jayatissa's Island Witch

We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Amanda Jayatissa’s Island Witch, a horror novel inspired by Sri Lankan folklore—out now from Berkley.

Being the daughter of the village Capuwa, or demon-priest, Amara is used to keeping mostly to herself. Influenced by the new religious practices brought in by the British Colonizers, the villagers who once respected her father’s craft have turned on the family. Yet, they all still seem to call on him whenever supernatural disturbances arise.

Now someone—or something—is viciously seizing upon men in the jungle. But instead of enlisting Amara’s father’s help, the villages have accused him of carrying out the attacks himself.

As she tries to clear her father’s name, Amara finds herself haunted by dreams that eerily predict the dark forces on her island. And she can’t shake the feeling that it’s all connected to the night she was recovering from a strange illness, and woke up, scared and confused, to hear her mother’s frantic cries: No one can find out what happened.

The moon was high in the sky as I walked home from the exorcism—a luminous disk casting a ring on the clouds that surrounded it. We’d have a full moon in a few days again, and full moons were always auspicious.

The trees swayed gently in the night breeze, their leaves silver in the moonlight. If I closed my eyes and really listened, I could hear the gentle hum of the wind competing with the light chirp of the odd cicada. It throbbed with familiarity. Normally, this would put me at peace. Tonight it made the hairs on my arms stand up. My dream kept returning, unwelcome, to my thoughts. It was like someone was speaking to me.

She’s brought this on herself. No one can help her now.

My eyes fluttered open.

I heard a sound. A rustling. Footsteps, maybe. The strange sensation that I was being watched. Or followed. My dreams came flooding back to me and I held my breath, listening hard.

I hadn’t taken a torch of my own. I’d been far too distracted by the exorcism and Aloysius’s accusations. But I felt silly now. It might have come in useful for protection if I needed it. I should have known better than to wander by myself like this, especially since the attacks. Most mothers wouldn’t dream of letting their daughters out even to their back gardens. Mine was the same, except she had no clue that I wasn’t safely tucked away in my sleeping mat.

I felt for my suray, the talisman that dangled around my neck. My father had given it to me a month before, around the same time he told me that I wouldn’t be able to accompany him during his practice anymore. The talisman was made of brass and shaped into a small tube. It held a prayer inscribed on a rolled sheet of copper. It was meant to protect me, but I never understood from what.

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Island Witch

Amanda Jayatissa

“Please stop with all the questions, duwa. Just promise me you will never take it off, do you hear?” he had said, tying it around my neck. He had been sad, and a part of me was glad that he was. There was an ache that started within me that day, and it had yet to stop.

The suray was warm between my fingers as I listened again for the footsteps, cursing myself for being so foolish and being out here alone.

But I heard only the wind rattling between the trees.

Taking a deep breath, I continued forward.

“I am safe,” I muttered to myself. “This jungle is my home.”

I settled into a quick rhythm, my feet easily navigating their way across the soft, mossy floor. I had nothing to fear, I kept reminding myself.

That’s when a pair of arms grabbed me from behind, pulling me off the path and behind a large tree, pressing my back against its trunk as a hand clamped down on my mouth.

I’d been wrong to ignore the whisperings of the attacks when the entire village had been warning me for weeks. I’d been so stupid for ignoring my dreams. My eyes tried to focus as my body froze in fear. If I could see the yaka, then maybe I could save myself somehow. I braced, expecting the worst.

“Shh!” A familiar voice, behind a beautiful, wide smile.

“Raam!” I gasped. “You scared me.” I wanted to frown. To show him that I wasn’t happy. That he shouldn’t shock me like this. But my lips betrayed me as they curled into a grin of my own, even as my heart showed no sign of slowing down.

“I’m sorry.” The moonlight highlighted the dimples on his cheeks as the remaining droplets of my fear dissolved away. I was still breathless, only now it was breathlessness of a different kind. He leaned over, his lips brushing my forehead before he pulled away, releasing me from the tree. He smelled of sea salt and coconut, and I wished he had held me there just a while longer.

“What are you doing here?”

“I knew you’d come for the tovil, so I thought I’d wait. See if I could catch you on the way home. I’ve been missing you.” His hand reached for mine, entwining our fingers together while my heart glowed brighter than the stars.

“I’ve missed you too.” I felt heat on my cheeks. I hoped he wouldn’t notice. I don’t think I could really put into words how much I had longed for him. Not just that I wished he was with me, but that an entire piece of me was gone whenever we were apart.

“So? How are you? Are you still having those dreams?”

I shrugged. It felt wrong to give him details. How I had seen the yakshaniya’s face so clearly last night. How the taste of blood felt lush and satisfying on my tongue. How I was waking up further and further from home. It would only make him worry.

“How is work with your mother?” he tried again.

“Work with her is, you know—” I shrugged for the second time. He had been far more enthusiastic than I was when I told him about the turn of events at home. A cruel, ugly voice in my ear whispered that it was probably easier to explain to his family that he hoped to marry a seamstress rather than a Capuwa’s daughter, but, again, I shook it off. Raam was supportive and kind. An eternal optimist, searching unabashedly for the brighter side to things.

“I know.” He smiled back. That smile again. I forced myself to take another breath.

Still holding my hand, he led me back to the path.

“Come on. Let me walk you back.”

“It’s too dangerous, Raam. What if someone sees?” Like every other girl in my position, I had to keep Raam a secret. After all, while we had spoken about marriage, Raam hadn’t exactly committed yet.

“More dangerous than you being by yourself in the jungle at night?”

It didn’t matter that it wasn’t. My weak protest was halfhearted, and he knew it. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye so soon.

We’d been together for over two years now, though it had become more serious these last few months. Once we became formally betrothed, we’d finally be able to interact with each other in public. There was something exciting about meeting in the jungle, slipping out of my hut in the middle of the night, racing back before my parents awoke. But the last few times I went to meet Raam at night, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being followed.

Raam was waiting for the right time to speak to his father—a man he feared far more than anything that happened in the jungle. It upset me that he’d been delaying it for so long, even though Raam had patiently explained it to me many times. I supposed, if I tried hard enough, I could understand. I knew what it felt like to disappoint your family, even if, in my case, I wasn’t quite sure why. I didn’t want that for him. But Raam’s father had recently been appointed to a senior position at the harbour, a role that came with more than just a significant pay raise. His whole family had recently converted to Christianity, for one. And everyone, especially Raam, his eldest son, was expected to support the British and be exemplary townsfolk. His father had even secured a junior clerk position for Raam, and even though he claimed to hate it, I could tell that this was a significant achievement for his family.

As soon as things settled down, Raam promised, he would speak to his father, and mine. I just had to be patient a few more months.

And more importantly, my mother, who had actively started seeking proposals for me since my eighteenth birthday, needed to be patient too. Even then, Raam and I would have to pretend that we weren’t already devoted to each other, that he’d simply noticed me at the market or at the temple, or some other socially acceptable location, and that he wanted my hand in marriage.

A lump rose in my throat. I wished that I could talk to Neha, my oldest friend, about this now, but she barely even looked at me when we passed in town. We’d once giggled about boys we thought were handsome, not that there were particularly many of them, but Neha had chosen a different life. Now she spoke of sin.

Sin. We’d used the term to pity someone. “Sin for him,” we’d say, “he didn’t catch enough fish at sea this morning.” Or if we accumulated enough sins, we might be reborn as something bad in our next life—perhaps a dog, or a person from a lower caste. The nuns in my old school, however, used it to talk about the burning fires of hell. Sin was something dirty. A disease we might catch, that would damn us for eternity with no chance to ever redeem ourselves. I often wondered if Neha shared this belief now.

Because there was nothing sinful in the way Raam’s body felt next to mine as we walked. Or if there was, I didn’t care.

“So, did you ask them?” Raam’s voice was low in the fresh jungle air, sucking me back to reality.

“Ask them what?”

“About going to the Devinuwara perahera? It’s happening in a little over a week. You said you’d ask your mother if you could go? So that we could meet?”

“Umm…” I frowned. I didn’t remember this. But then, I often did get a little too caught up in Raam when I was with him. Like his presence alone was intoxicating—making me forget the rest of the world. Making me forget myself.

“You got scared and didn’t ask, did you?” Raam’s words jibed at me. He grinned. “Don’t worry. There’s still plenty of time.”

I wanted to ask him then if he’d decided when he was going to speak to his family. I’d been nervous about it ever since I heard about their conversion to Christianity. There was little doubt in my mind that they would approve of my father’s profession. But my mother had told me that you shouldn’t ask questions unless you were truly prepared to hear the reply, because it might not be the answer you want. And I didn’t want to ruin the moment. The night was too beautiful.

We walked silently. I was increasingly aware of my palm getting sweaty in his, the way his breath traversed in and out of him—slow and lazy, unlike mine.

He stopped for a moment, holding me back. My heart hammered in my chest. He was going to kiss me. I took a deep breath to steady myself. There was an ache in me that only deepened the longer I spent time with him.

“Hang on,” he murmured.

“What is it?” I whispered. I gave him a small smile.

“Shh.”

A small rabbit hopped onto the path in front of us. Its white fur shone brightly as it stopped and sniffed at some weeds on the jungle floor. It didn’t pay us the slightest bit of attention.

“Sweet, isn’t it?” Raam asked.

“Yes,” I said, my mind still on the kiss I hadn’t gotten yet.

“I wonder if—” But he was interrupted.

A mongoose darted out from the shadows, grabbing the rabbit’s neck in its jaws before disappearing again.

A small scream found its way out of my throat.

“Shh,” Raam said, pulling me close.

“Oh, Raam, can’t you stop it?”

His smile was different this time. More sympathetic.

“This is why I love you, Amara. You’re so kind. So innocent.”

“Like the rabbit who just got killed?”

“Don’t be silly,” he said. His face was just inches from mine. I could feel his breath fan against me. “I’ll never let anything happen to you.”

And then his lips met mine, and the rabbit and the mongoose and the demons that preyed in the jungle all evaporated into the night sky.