Chapter 10 — Inside

Thousands of them. Embedded in every surface. The same variety as the exterior arrangement above the opening — human molars, animal canines, the small precise teeth of river fish, the flat grinding plates of something Priti could not immediately identify. Covering every surface not covered by living root or bark. Pressed in at every angle. Some new-looking, white and clean. Some ancient, grey-brown, worn."Don't touch them," Priti said.Nobody was going to touch them.Rohan was filming. The footage from this point is among the most technically careful work of his career — every shot deliberate, held for a long time, the composition precise. He filmed the walls, the floor, the roots, the teeth. He filmed his colleagues moving through the space.He filmed Lata's face.The footage of her face, which she saw much later, showed her looking at something off to her left with an expression she did not recognize as her own — not frightened, not awed, not the professional composure she deployed in difficult situations. Something older than her face. Something that was in her face rather than on it.She does not know what she was looking at."Can you feel it?" Samir said.He was in the center of the space. His voice was different — not the director's voice, not the performance of curiosity that his work required. Quieter. The voice of someone speaking because they needed to hear a human sound."Yes," Priti said.The feeling: in the accounts, it is described variously, but the common thread is: something reading you. Not looking — reading. The specific sensation of a presence that was not interested in your surface but in the inventory of your interior. What you had. What you carried. What you could afford to give.Lata wrote: It felt like hands inside me. Not threatening. Not painful. Thorough. Like a customs inspection. Like something deciding what it was owed.* * *Samir was the first to speak about what he heard."There's a voice," he said."I don't hear—" Lata started."Not here." He touched his temple. "In here."Priti looked at him. "What does it say?""It's not saying anything," he said slowly. "It's — asking. The same question. Over and over. What I would give."The silence.Then Rohan lowered the camera.In four years of working with Rohan Nair, Lata had never seen him lower the camera during a live shooting situation. He was a person who could film through almost any level of personal discomfort — she had seen him film while vomiting after a boat trip, seen him film through a sandstorm in Rajasthan, seen him film in a hospital corridor when the documentary subject was dying in the adjacent room. He did not lower the camera.He lowered it now."Rohan," she said.He was looking at something she couldn't see. Or something that wasn't visible from her position."It's not asking me," he said. "It's already decided."