She sent them. One by one, each with the instruction and the rope and the paired older student waiting on the far side. She watched each one go with the attention of someone for whom attention had become the primary act of care — if she was watching, if she was fully present to the crossing, she could intervene. She did not intervene. She did not need to. They made it, each of them, with the water at their knees and sometimes their hips, cold enough to be a shock but not cold enough to be dangerous, and the rope holding, and the older students on the far side reaching down to grab and pull and steady.
Ritu was second to last. She stood at the edge of the water with the expression she had been wearing since the beginning — the interior kind, the kind you couldn't read from outside — and Priya crouched down so she was at Ritu's level and said: "Ritu. You've been watching everyone cross."
"Yes," Ritu said.
"What did you see?"
A pause. Then: "They all held the rope."
"Yes," Priya said. "And what happened?"
"They got across," Ritu said.
"Yes," Priya said. "You're going to hold the rope and get across. Vikram is on the other side. He will not let go of your hand once you reach him. Hold the rope and walk to Vikram. Can you do that?"
Ritu looked at the water. Then at Vikram, who was at the far end of the rope, his hand extended, waiting. Then she looked at Priya. "Yes," she said. And went. And made it. And Vikram took her hand as promised and pulled her the last half metre to solid ground and she did not stop — she walked straight up the slope toward the others without looking back, which was the bravest thing Priya had seen all morning.
Priya took Divya and crossed last. She felt the water — colder than she expected, the specific mountain-cold of a flood that had come off a glacier catchment. She felt the current — stronger than thirty centimetres of water had any right to feel, the specific deceptiveness of moving water that did not look dangerous until you were in it. She felt the rope in her free hand and she leaned left and she walked, and Divya walked beside her and held the rope with her good hand and did not let go, and they crossed.
