Mawya’s Tide

Prologue: The Bone Flute

Long before partition, before maps, there was the Mawya—the living breath of the Sundarbans. Fisherfolk say it sleeps in the mangrove roots, exhaling through tiger lungs and tidal blood. But when the shrimp farms came, steel cages devouring the brackish creeks, the Mawya began to choke.

Now the tides bring carcasses: dolphins with their sonar stolen, tigers skinned but still breathing, and the khals that sing at night in voices of the drowned.

Chapter 1: The Honey Collector’s Debt

Rahima knew the price of trespass. Her father had paid it when he took honey from a hive guarded by a tiger-shaped shadow. They’d found his boat drifting with a single clue: his lungs filled with golden mangrove pollen.

The Mawya collects, her grandmother warned, stitching tiger teeth into Rahima’s braids. Work for the bhodrolok, but never take more than salt and rice

The bhodrolok—the shrimp farm barons—paid in crisp notes that stank of formaldehyde. Rahima cleaned their offices, scrubbing grime from glass tanks where tiger prawns grew fat on mangrove pulp. At night, she dreamt of roots knitting her ankles to the riverbed.

Then the foreman handed her a rusted key. Clear the old shrine. The sahibs want to build a dock.

The shrine of Bonbibi. The Mawya’s throat.

Chapter 2: The Goddess Weeps

The statue was smaller than Rahima remembered. As a child, she’d left offerings of jaggery here, praying for her father’s soul. Now Bonbibi’s stone eyes streamed sap, the sweet-sour scent attracting hornets. Beneath her feet lay a mud-caked ledger, its pages filled with names.

Kalpana Ghosh – 5 kilos prawns. Debashish Roy – 12 hectares cleared. RAHIMA CHOWDHURY – 1 shrine defiled.

Her name glistened wetly, ink still fresh. A root snapped behind her.

You shouldn’t be here.

The man wore a forest guard’s uniform, but his eyes were wrong—pupils slit like a cat’s. A bagh-mard, the tiger-possessed.

The Mawya is awake, he hissed. It writes debts in the book. Yours is… creative.

Rahima fled. That night, the river spat out the foreman’s body, his skin tattooed with mangrove saplings.

Chapter 3: The Tide-Marked

The bhodrolok called it sabotage. Rahima called it justice.

Workers began vanishing. Not drowned, not eaten—*unwoven*. A watchman was found with his veins replaced by creeper vines. A mechanic’s fingers bloomed into pneumatophores, breathing mud.

Rahima found the ledger again, floating in a tide pool. New names glowed:

ANWAR HOSSAIN – 3,000 fry stolen.

FARZANA AHMED – 7 nests crushed.

And hers, now bolded:

RAHIMA CHOWDHURY – 13 years of silence.

The bagh-mard cornered her at the fish market. The Mawya wants a collector. Not of honey—of debts. He pressed a bone flute into her hand. Play where the khals sing. Follow the tiger’s shadow.

The flute was carved from a human femur. Her father’s, she realized, noting the chipped knee joint.

Chapter 4: The Unhoneyed Hive

The khals’ song led her to a mangrove island where the trees grew inward, forming a hollow hive. Inside, walls throbbed with amber light. Tiger prawns scuttled over skeletons in worker overalls, their eyestalks fused with prawn shells.

At the hive’s heart hung a cocoon of roots. Within it pulsed a woman made of wax and tiger fur—Bonbibi, or something wearing her skin.

Rahima, it crooned. You’ve fed the Mawya your anger. Now feed it your voice.

The bone flute burned. Rahima played.

The note was not sound but sensation—the creak of roots strangling steel, the howl of tides reclaiming dredged land. Outside, the shrimp farms collapsed, cages bursting as prawns grew monstrous, snapping their bindings with claws sharp as scythes.

The wax Bonbibi laughed. Good. Now the final debt.

The ledger appeared. Rahima’s name now glowed atop a list: RAHIMA CHOWDHURY – 1 life owed.

Chapter 5: The Living Tide

The bhodrolok came for her at dawn, armed with nets and machetes.

Witch! their leader spat. You’ve killed our harvest!

Rahima stood waist-deep in the river, the bone flute raised. I’ve harvested you.

She played. The river answered.

Mangroves uprooted themselves, walking on tangled roots. Tigers materialized from mist, their roars harmonizing with the flute’s cry. Workers threw down their tools, eyes glazing as mangrove pollen filled their lungs.

The bhodrolok screamed, but the Mawya was patient. It peeled them slowly—flesh from greed, bones from profit.

When it was done, Rahima waded ashore. The bagh-mard waited, holding the ledger. All names were gone except hers.

RAHIMA CHOWDHURY – debt paid.

What now? she asked.

He smiled, fangs glinting. Now you collect.

Epilogue: The New Hive

The shrimp farms are gone. The Sundarbans breathe again, though the khals still sing of salt and vengeance.

Rahima walks the tides at dusk, bone flute hanging from her neck. Fisherfolk leave offerings: jaggery, betel leaves, vials of river water. Some claim they’ve seen her father’s ghost, his lungs blooming with orchids.

In the reclaimed hive, a new statue grows—a woman of mangrove wood and tiger whiskers, her mouth a hollow for fireflies. The terracotta dolls chatter now, stuffed with prawn shells and shredded contracts.

And the bhodrolok?

If you sail past midnight, where the water turns black as ink, you’ll see their faces in the waves—mouths stretched wide, forever swallowing the tide.