Every morning for two hours Grandmaster Li and Zerelda Sangama practised their skills with swords, long fighting knives, short throwing knives, tomahawks, sticks, and feet.

As they fought it felt as if the whole forest came to a standstill and crowded around to watch.

Yuktasri watched admiringly like everyone else, but afterwards she said quietly to her sister, ‘I know you and Grandmaster Li are the best, but please don’t intervene in my life.

I’m the one the forest women want, not you.’‘The women are all yours,’ Zerelda assured her.

‘I’ve got other things on my mind.’What she was thinking about was Grandmaster Li’s Beijing, and other unknown cities with stranger names.

Of all the Sangamas she was the only one who had an itch for foreign travel, a desire to see the world beyond her own part of it.

Pampa Kampana, perceiving this, understood her daughter’s attraction to the Chinese Grandmaster and feared the spirit of adventure might whisk her child away from her forever.

A similarly adventurous nature had brought Li Ye-He south to Bisnaga, and in the forest he told Zerelda tales of his journey by land and sea; as well as tales told to him by his friend Cheng Ho, general, eunuch, and constant voyager, in search of treasure, around and across the ocean to the west; and, in addition, stories Cheng Ho had heard from the descendants of people who had met the Italian Marco Polo at the court of Kublai Khan in the time of the Yuan dynasty.‘I have heard,’ Grandmaster Li said, ‘that there is a city across the water with your name.

In the city of Zerelda, time flies.

Every day the citizens, who know that life is short, rush about with large nets trying to capture the minutes and hours that float around just above their heads like brightly coloured butterflies.

The lucky ones who capture a little time and gulp it down — it’s easily edible, and quite delicious — have their lives elongated.

But time is elusive, and many fail.

And all the inhabitants of Zerelda know that there will never be enough time for them, and in the end they will all run out of it.

They are sad, but put on cheerful expressions, for they are a stoical people.

They try to make the best use of the time they have.’‘I want to go there,’ Zerelda cried, clapping her hands.

‘And I also have to see the city of Ye-He, your namesake metropolis, where, as I have been told, the people, who possess the power of flight, live on the treetops while the birds, who are flightless, peck around for worms on the ground.

In the trees one can find many stores selling warm clothing, because those who fly know that the air, as one rises up through its layers, rapidly becomes very cold, and it’s necessary to wrap up when you don’t have feathers to protect you.

Because of this they, the featherless aerialists, understand that every gift, no matter how wondrous, also creates problems, and so they are a modest people, with modest expectations, who do not ask too much of life.’Pampa Kampana, eavesdropping on their conversations, was unsure if they were telling each other travellers’ tales they had truly heard, or sending one another coded messages of love and desire in the form of these fabulous descriptions.

‘What is clear,’ she told herself, ‘is that they are planning to leave.’ She put a brave face on it, for grown-up children do finally leave home, and mothers must content themselves with memories and yearnings, but it was hard to hold back the tears.

Then she heard Grandmaster Li saying, ‘Soon it will be the time of year at which General Cheng Ho likes to come by boat to visit the port of Goa and eat an excellent fish curry,’ and she realized that the time of their departure would not be long delayed.She decided to take the initiative and be the one to suggest the big move, so that Zerelda would not have to feel guilty for abandoning her mother in exile.

‘Travel is good,’ Pampa Kampana said, ‘but also dangerous.

Remember that Number Two is king of all the land up to and including Goa, and that we are all declared to be witches, so we are fugitives from what he would call his justice.

If you want to meet General Cheng Ho safely and embark on his boat without any trouble, we have to make a careful plan.’Zerelda burst into tears.

‘We’ll come back,’ she said.

‘It’s just a little trip.’‘If things go well for you both, you’ll never return,’ her mother told her.

‘And in your place, considering our poor situation here, neither would I.’Grandmaster Li spoke up.

‘I have already explained to Princess Zerelda that all of this is no more than a fantasy in which we are indulging ourselves, a way of travelling in our imaginations, and I have further explained that it cannot happen, because I am bound by my oath.’‘You must miss your own country,’ Pampa Kampana said, ‘because, after all, you have been away for a long time, and this decline in our fortunes is not something you could have anticipated; and while you appear to be as expert in fantasy travelling as you are in the martial arts, it’s no substitute for the real thing.

Therefore I release you from your oath.

My daughter loves you and I see that she loves, too, the kind of journeying life you have in mind.

So we must find a way for you to eat a fish curry in Goa with General Cheng Ho, and then go on with him or without him, to China or Timbuktu or wherever the spirit moves you, or the wind blows you, to experience whatever chance has in store.

But before you leave, to keep you safe, there is someone with whom I must speak.’An excerpt from Salman Rushdie’s ‘Victory City’ with permission from Penguin Random House India