Chapter 10 — Three Days

She had been in Sunderkhal for three days. She had not eaten or drunk anything the village had offered.She thought about this with the specific quality of relief that had fear inside it.She thought about Rajan Sood, who had come here for two days in October 2019 and had drunk the tea at the first meeting and then gone back the next day and then disappeared.She thought about the man from the district health office in 1998, who had come back white-haired and sleepless. How long had he stayed? Had he eaten? Had he drunk something but not enough — a partial exposure that had not suspended him but had damaged him?She thought about Dr. Amrita Bhardwaj, who had come in 1979 as a botanist and had become, over four years, whatever Kamla Devi was.She thought: how many women had held that role before Amrita? How far back did this go?She thought: how long do the children stay children?She needed to leave. She needed to leave today, before evening, because Paro had said they would not let her go in the morning, which was the most coherent information she had received and she was treating it as reliable.The satellite phone had no signal. Her mobile had no signal.Bhim Singh Rawat was waiting at the Langsi bridge. He had said he would be there. She had to get to the bridge.She could walk the four kilometers. She had done it in forty-five minutes. She could be at the bridge in forty-five minutes from the moment she left the village.The question was the moment she left.She had observed the village for three days. She had noted the patterns. The children were always present — in the square, on the terraces, at the edges of the paths. There was no hour, from dawn to midnight, when the square was unoccupied. The path to the motorable road passed through the square. She could not leave without passing through the square.She thought about Paro's voice. I don't know if I can go.She thought about the girl's palm pressed into a stone on the eastern terrace. A date she couldn't read. How old was that stone?She made a decision.She picked up her notebook. She wrote, in the margins, a message to whoever found it if she did not come back — concise, factual, the specific locations of the stones she had found, the notebook under the bed, the names from the panchayat records. She wrote Devraj's name and number. She wrote: the water is the mechanism. Don't drink it.Then she packed her backpack completely. Every item. She put on her heaviest jacket. She put the satellite phone in her front pocket where she could feel it.She went to find Kamla Devi.* * *