Chapter 10 — Three Days

She found her at the well."I need to leave today," Meera said. She kept her voice even. Professional. "I have everything I need for the preliminary report. I'll arrange for the foundation to send a follow-up team."Kamla Devi was looking at the water in the bucket she had drawn. She did not look up."You haven't had breakfast," she said."I'm not hungry. Thank you.""You haven't had tea.""I don't drink tea in the morning," Meera said. "Old habit."Kamla Devi looked up. She looked at Meera with the eyes that did not blink and that Meera now understood were not the eyes of a person who had been in this village for thirty years. The eyes of a person who had been in this village since before Meera was born, drinking the water that had taken something from her and given something back and left her standing at a well in the mountains doing what she did to every person who came here."You found the notebook," Kamla Devi said.No inflection. No accusation. A statement."Yes," Meera said.A long pause. Kamla Devi looked back at the water in the bucket."She was frightened too," she said. "At the end. I remember." She paused. "I don't remember very much anymore. But I remember she was frightened and then she wasn't and then she stayed.""I'm not staying," Meera said."No," Kamla Devi said. "Not today."She stepped aside from the path.Meera looked at her. The old woman who was not an old woman. The person who had been here so long that the horizon of her origin had dissolved."The children," Meera said. "They were people once. They had families.""They have family," Kamla Devi said. She gestured at the village. "They have each other.""They're trapped."Kamla Devi looked at the well. "Everyone is trapped in something," she said. "At least they do not have to watch the ones they love grow old and die." She paused. "That is a specific freedom."Meera looked at her. She thought about what it meant to be a person whose only freedom was not watching other people die."I'm going," she said."I know," Kamla Devi said. She looked at the water in the bucket. "You should hurry. The children are better at keeping people than I am."