Chapter 14 — The Return

"Samir doesn't remember what happened inside the walls," he said. "He told me this morning. He has the footage but he doesn't have the memory. Not anymore." He looked at the opening. "Priti can't hold the geometry. You—what did it take from you, Lata? You knew, on the boat. I could see it. What's gone?"She looked at him."My sense of danger," she said. "The specific feeling that I'm in danger. It's gone." She paused. "I am standing outside a thing that processes people and I feel completely safe and I know that's wrong and I cannot feel the wrongness of it."He nodded. "That's what it does," he said. "It takes the thing that would make you leave.""Yes," she said."So how are you going to get me away from here?" he said. Not challenging. Genuinely asking. The question of a person who wanted to be helped and was not sure help was available.Haripada, behind all of them, stepped forward."Rohan-babu," he said. Quietly. "I am going to tell you something true. The temple has taken much from you. It will take more if you stay. But if you come away now — if you come away and you do not return, ever — what is left of you will rebuild. Not all of it. Never all of it. But what is left is still enough to be a person." He paused. "A person who is changed. But still a person.""How do you know?" Rohan said.Haripada opened his right hand. The palm, turned up. He showed it to Rohan.In the center, a scar. Old, faded, shaped in a way that was not the shape of an accidental wound."I was here once," Haripada said. "Thirty years ago. I was younger than you. I was not as careful." He folded his hand. "I came back. It took thirty years. But I came back. Most of the way."Rohan looked at him.Something moved in his face. Something that was trying to be the weight of something — trying to reassemble from the fragments of what had been removed."Okay," he said.He stepped away from the wall.Lata took his arm.They walked.