The Wall

by Gautam Bhatia

Genres: Science Fiction; Dystopian; Political Thrillers; Authors of color

Synopsis

Imagine a horizon. I can't. Mithilas world is bound by a Wall enclosing the city of Sumer nobody goes out, nothing comes in. The days pass as they have for two thousand years: just enough to eat for just enough people, living by the rules. Within the city, everyone knows their place. But when Mithila tries to cross the Wall, every power in Sumer comes together to stop her. To break the rules is to risk all of civilization collapsing. But to follow them is to never know: who built the Wall? Why? And what would the world look like if it didnt exist? As Mithila and her friends search for the truth, they must risk losing their families, the ones they love, and even their lives. Is a world they cant imagine worth the only world they have? For fans of Isaac Asimovs Nightfall and Ursula Le Guins The Dispossessed comes an astonishingly powerful voice in speculative fiction that explores what it means to truly be free.

 

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Release date: August 28, 2020

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 413

Sample

PROLOGUE

Who goes there?

 

As he entered the Maidan, Alvar realized that the Shoortans were following him.

He heard the murmur of voices. Clubs scraped the ground behind him. Walking past the Speakers’ Rostrum, Alvar opened his clenched fist. He looked down at the crumpled paper in his palm, its ciphered message quickly decoded:

Change of plan. The Pit at midnight. Come alone.

—G.

Alvar crossed the Maidan, careful not to look back. Far from the Wall, they had neither excuse nor evidence to accost him—yet.

He left the Maidan from the east and crossed a wooden bridge. Two quick turns took him away from the stream and into the Sixth Mandala, the Watchmen’s Circle. His feet tap-tapped upon the brick pavements, painfully loud. In the dark, Alvar wove through the deserted passages, all ordered streets and sharp angles, arrowing north.

Soon, the rows of buildings thinned. Brick gave way to flagstone. He exited into open space, and onto the Maliot Road. Beyond Sumer’s radial road, running from the Forum to the Wall, was the black ribbon of river Rasa, separating the City’s Circles from the farmlands that stretched north.

Alvar looked behind him, his heart racing. The Watchmen’s Circle was silent. He hurried across the road, to the bank. The boats lay docked in the water. He lowered himself into one of them. As he untethered it, he felt his hands tremble. But then he was away, paddling, letting the current carry him towards the Wall. To the south, he watched the Mandalas fall away—Seventh, Eighth, Ninth—and watched Sumer change shape, the buildings becoming smaller and folding into each other. Behind him, there was no noise.

At the end of the Tenth, the sound of the water changed. Alvar steered his boat back towards the bank. He sprang onto the shore, and darted across the road, into the first of the Farmers’ Circles. The mud-brick houses, built in clusters, closed in around him as he twisted, turned, and doubled back through the alleys, heading Wallwards.

By the open ground above the Eleventh Mandala’s sewage chamber, Alvar came to a halt, and looked around. He was alone.

He let himself breathe, felt his heartbeat slow down. The bare, circular patch of ground was surrounded by the buildings of the Eleventh. Alvar breathed deeply again, and stepped back into the streets.

In two minutes, the clubs sounded again.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the black Shoortan cloaks a careful distance behind. Alvar’s heart leapt, and he almost staggered. For a moment, he considered looping around and going back home. But not yet. Alvar ploughed on until he heard the sound of running water again.

There, for the first time that night, he sensed them hesitate. Even the Shoortans were afraid to cross the invisible border into the last Circles of Sumer. Alvar cleared the bridge. Almost at once, the streets narrowed into uneven dirt paths, ladders hung from empty windows, and the buildings enfolded him. Somewhere along the way, the lamps had been snuffed out, yielding to darkness.

Minutes passed. Behind him, the clubs had fallen silent. He felt them drawing closer and he heard the sound of heavy breathing. Alvar

 crouched as he walked, and began to count under his breath. One ... two ...

On five, Alvar broke and ran.

‘Stop!’

Feet pounded the ground. Alvar ran across the bridge, feeling it rock beneath him, and into the Fourteenth Mandala. Two more turns and then he saw it, a few metres away in the darkness: the tops of the buildings merged into each other, forming a tunnel. Alvar threw himself into the cavity and, as the Shoortans followed him in, he turned into the familiar little stairway to his left, invisible in the night.

He heard them blunder past, still shouting. Alvar rushed up the stairs, taking two at a time. They twisted and spiralled, and then disgorged him out onto the rooftops.

He paused, gasping for breath. Beneath the open sky once more, he saw the jumbled rooftop roads of the neighbourhood of the Dooma spread out before him, connected to the ground through a web of ladders. The mud-brick towers, domes, vaults, and stairwells entwined around each other, creating a complex network of passageways above Sumer.

A little way beyond them was the Wall, blacker than night.

Alvar threaded his way through the terraces, ducking beneath the odd washing line that swung in the breeze, damp with the smell of freshly laundered clothes. Fourteenth ... Fifteenth ... and then he was back down. Only a stretch of field now lay between him and the Wall.

From the Dooma, he heard nothing. The City slept.

Change of plan. The Pit at midnight. Come alone.

He crossed the field. The earth felt light beneath his feet. The Wall drew closer, blotting out everything, its top vanishing beyond his gaze and into the night, high above the City. Then he saw the chasm—and the single figure keeping vigil beside it.

‘Mithila!’

‘You’re late.’

‘I was followed.’

‘By?’

‘The Shoortans!’

She sucked in a breath. ‘You sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘Shook ’em off in the Dooma.’

‘Are you sure?’ Again.

‘Yes. They’ll be lost for hours.’

‘How did they know?’ Mithila whispered. ‘We’ve not been careful enough.’

‘Does it matter now?’ Alvar asked, hoping.

A glint of starlight caught the smile around Mithila’s lips. ‘You’re right—it

doesn’t. They’re too late. The time of the Circles is over.’

He allowed himself to smile back. ‘At last?’

‘Dhara hit rock yesterday. We’re deep as can be. You won’t believe what she found.’

‘What?’

‘A chamber—but, wait. I won’t spoil it for you.’

Alvar nodded. ‘I thought something was up, with Garuda’s “change of plan”.’

‘He felt you should be here for the moment. We all should.’

Alvar opened his mouth, but stopped as Mithila raised a hand. ‘Wait. Did you hear that?’

‘What?’

‘Listen.’

The Wall rose behind them, steep, smooth, immense. And then he saw it before he heard anything. Flickering lights beyond the field, spilling out from the Fifteenth Mandala.

‘The Shoortans! ’

‘Alvar, you said you’d lost them!’

‘They couldn’t have,’ he stammered. ‘Not through the Dooma ... and those ones didn’t have lamps.’

At the edge of the field, the lights diverged. Shouted commands carried through the night. ‘Here they come,’ said Mithila, calmly.

Alvar shifted. ‘Do we run?’

He sensed her calculate. ‘No. They’ll see us. We can’t let them find the Pit.’

‘They’ll come after us—we can lose them back in the City.’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘But we can’t stay here!’

‘By the Builders, Alvar,’ Mithila said, through clenched teeth. ‘I have not dug by night for months to see it all fall to the Shoortans now. Into the Pit!’

Alvar hesitated. Then he took two steps forward and leapt into the cavity. There was a moment of falling, of panic, before his hands found the rope ladder. It swung under his weight, sending him spinning into the jagged bricks that lined the Pit. The impact almost threw him off, but Alvar held on. A second shock hurled him against the wall again, slamming his face into the side of the Pit, sending down a shower of dust and small rocks. As Alvar tasted blood in his mouth, he listened for the sound of the stones hitting the ground. It came back to him, rebounding and echoing off the walls, farther away than

had imagined.

‘Alvar! Quickly!’

He let go with his legs and slid down the rest of the way, crying out as the friction tore at his palms. Somewhere near the bottom, when a faint light was visible, he lost his grip again. Alvar fell, landing in a tangle of arms and legs, breath shaken out of him.

After a moment of darkness, his eyes blinked open to lamplight, and to the three figures that stood around him.

‘Well done,’ Dhara’s soft voice was in his ear.

Alvar struggled to his feet, Dhara helping him up. ‘I’m not an acrobat!’ he protested, massaging his temple. He was in a small, circular chamber, just a few feet across, lit by five flickering oil lamps. The walls were earthen, but he could feel hard rock beneath his feet. ‘How did you dig all this out in a day?’

Dhara smiled, passing a hand through her wiry dark hair. Her eyes, caught by quivering lamplight, reminded him of slow-glowing embers. ‘We didn’t. It looks like someone—the Builders, I guess—constructed this chamber. We only dug this’—she gestured towards the end of the chamber, where a small tunnel opened into darkness—‘towards the Wall.’

‘Alvar, you look terrible.’ A second voice, like the sound of distant laughter.

‘Garuda!’ he said, automatically dusting down his clothes. ‘We had to get down fast. The Shoortans were coming; Mithila didn’t want to run.’

In the uncertain light, Garuda’s face tightened. ‘But the shaft is open.’

‘Not any more.’ Mithila had descended silently. ‘I pulled the cover.’

‘And the levelling?’

‘Finished a while ago. There are no clues overground.’

Garuda smiled. ‘Nicely done, sister.’

‘We’ve done it,’ said Mithila, her voice rising. ‘Six long months, but we’ve beaten the Shoortans, we’ve beaten Rastogi, and soon—soon—we’ll never need to hide again.’

‘The Shoortans don’t matter now,’ said Garuda. ‘The Shoortans stopped mattering a long, long time ago.’ Alvar saw a glance pass between brother and sister, a glance he knew well.

‘What are you thinking, Garuda?’ Mithila said.

‘Of the Builders.’ Garuda’s voice seemed to come from far away. As ever, they turned to him as he stood there, holding the room—and the Wall-bound world—in his palm. ‘Once, they built the Wall. And they left us with smara, this longing for a world

without it. Today, they will know it is over. Like Malan, we are crossing our raika. Let them do what they will.

‘Then what are we waiting for?’ Lamon, the fifth among them, spoke for the first time.

Garuda smiled. ‘Always so impatient. Don’t they keep telling you at your smithy not to strike too soon? Come, bring the shovels. One last push and we’re through.’

They walked through the tunnel at the end of the chamber and then struck out, digging towards the Wall. The soft earth—soft even so far down—yielded. ‘Keep going,’ Garuda said. ‘We should be well under, and then we can strike up.’

They worked in tandem. And over the rhythmic sound of the shovels, Garuda called: ‘One last time: what’s it going to be like out there?’

‘Look at you, playing the serious leader,’ said Alvar. ‘You who laughed at too much gravity; you who warned us not to dream too much.’

Garuda laughed. ‘We’re defeating gravity by going underneath it, didn’t you know? Fine. Let me start. Blue, I dream you, blue. Remember the song?’

‘Oh yes, I do,’ Mithila said softly.

‘In the world beyond the Wall, there’ll be blue for all of us to wear, just like the Elders. No more booby-trapped Woad Gardens. And we’ll eat sweet every day—just like the Elders. No more rahi and that damned bamboo soup.’

‘You and your prejudice against bamboo soup,’ Mithila complained.

‘You and your irrational love for it,’ Garuda said.

‘Shut up, both of you.’ Alvar grinned.

Garuda looked at him. ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘let the poet speak. If the world beyond is like a poem, which would it be?’

Alvar let himself rest against his shovel, and pondered. ‘Zaid’s, I think. Like nothing you’ve felt before—but once you have, you know it’s the only thing that will ever feel real.’

‘Mhmm.’ Garuda picked up the pace with his shovel, and as always, they followed him. Alvar felt the first beads of sweat prick his skin.

‘And you’ll be able to write it down at last,’ said Dhara, striking the earth without breaking breath. ‘Imagine, Alvar. No more paper quotas. No more living in scattered little bits. No more … orality,’ she spat out the last word. ‘And not just poems; we’ll set it all down, everything, in one place, unify the world. We’ll know at last.’

‘Know more than just by writing,’ Lamon grunted, speaking between

 great blows with his shovel. ‘I think ... of the Race ... every year ... how we must always ... turn around at the Wall … hmmmmph ... and run back, always back ... on the other side, I’m going to run … and I’ll keep running.’

‘And you’ll actually chase the sun, Lamon,’ Garuda said quietly. He shook his head, as he rained blows upon the earth. ‘What a crowd of dreamers I’ve gathered around myself!’ He laughed. ‘Now, Mithila. Are we going to have a song from you, sister?’

Mithila paused just long enough to throw up a hand. ‘Didn’t you say that once we break the Wall, we’ll break the Circles too? I don’t have to be a Seventh Mandala singer any more.’

‘True, but we haven’t broken the Wall just yet,’ Garuda smiled. ‘And, by the Builders, we all know you can sing. Just this once, sister,’ he teased. ‘A song for all of us.’

‘Oh, fine!’ said Mithila, but her eyes were dancing. ‘This will be the last time on demand, I’m warning you.’ She let the sound of iron striking earth hum in the air for a moment. Then she began to sing, soft so that only they could hear, but pitched to pierce through the layers of soil and earth that lay between them and the World.

Beyond the Wall, the sunrise swift

Dispels the iron dawn, to lift

The shards of mist, and sunbeams fall

Upon a World without the Wall ...

Her voice swirled around them. Alvar felt it bear him, weightless, rising and falling like the Rasa on a rare stormy day.

Beyond the Wall, the moonset late

Forgets—

Clang!

And then Mithila’s spade passed clean through the earth, striking something solid, rebounding in her hand.

They all halted.

‘This can’t be,’ she said.

Garuda prised away the earth with his hand. Lamon brought the lamp close. By its light, they saw that familiar, featureless black; blacker than all.

‘Oh, no,’ said Mithila. ‘Oh no, no, no, bloody Builders, no!’

‘The Wall,’ breathed Alvar.

‘Right down to the rock,’ said Garuda. ‘Oh, we should have known.’

They stared at each other, at Garuda, at the Wall.

‘Six months,’ Mithila whispered. ‘Six bloody months for this?’

Lamon let out a cry, and smashed his shovel against the Wall. It recoiled viciously in his hands, forcing out another cry, this time of pain. The sound of the clash rang in their ears. He dropped the shovel, and Alvar watched it fall—almost float—to the ground, a fall that spanned an age. Lamon sank to his knees, palms on the earth.

The Wall remained undented.

Eternities passed, before Garuda recovered first. ‘Come on now,’ he said. ‘Back to the chamber.’

They tramped back in silence. In the room, nobody spoke. Alvar stood under the shaft he’d just descended. His mind was drifting. Moments ago, he had been thinking of the morning, when they would return to tell a stunned Sumer that the Wall had been breached for the first time in memory. That the Circles were broken, and so was the Shoortan myth of circular Time. That the sun was unbound, and the stars, which even now were visible far above …

The stars. He could see them through the shaft again.

Alvar spun around. ‘Garuda! The cover!’

Garuda’s head jerked up, something nameless flickering in his eyes. Then Lamon cried out: ‘Alvar, behind you!’

He turned, just in time to see the rope ladder slithering up and out of sight. Across the chamber, Dhara said coolly: ‘They’ve found the shaft.’

Garuda joined Alvar, and together they stared upwards. A dusting of starlight glimmered in the slice of sky surrounded by the black shaft. There was no sound from above. He felt Garuda’s arm around his shoulder.

The silence wore into minutes. And then he heard it: a series of thumps overground, muffled. Garuda’s grip on his shoulder tightened.

Then the stars went out again.

Alvar turned back to the others. ‘They’ve covered the shaft. With a boulder most likely.’

Dhara exhaled. ‘Shit.’

Garuda walked back to the centre of the chamber. As always, he was the first to find words. ‘We’re done. That boulder will not be moved.’

‘No!’ exploded 

 Lamon.

‘Oh, why are you so surprised?’ Garuda turned to him. ‘We had warnings. Once, twice, so many times. Remember what the Shoortans do to those who cross them? Remember what they did to Arimun?’

‘The Watch—’

‘Will not come. Why would they? And even if they did, what can they do?’ Garuda paused. ‘What can anyone do? The Shoortans will just invoke the Compact.’

They all looked at him.

‘You,’ said Mithila after a while, ‘are very calm.’

Garuda shrugged, a familiar gesture. ‘Life and death in this City, Mithila—what difference does it make? We die above ground and decay in the Towers of Rebirth, or here beneath, we’ll fertilize the soil either way. What else is there this side of the Wall?’ His glance shifted, and they followed it towards one end of the chamber. There, Alvar saw it for the first time: a bottle, surrounded by tumblers.

Garuda laughed, a pale sound that bounced off the walls.

‘Something amusing you?’ Mithila asked.

‘Just a little irony.’ His voice was still light.

‘Little?’ Mithila echoed.

‘You know, I was named for flying—after those great birds we sometimes see over Sumer. Instead here we are, buried. I’d brought celebratory drinks from the Citadel, but come, let’s toast irony instead.’

‘I’m not going to celebrate this.’ Mithila’s voice shook.

‘We can celebrate trying.’

‘Garuda, we just failed.’

‘As you please,’ said Garuda. He took a tumbler and poured into it. Alvar wondered—ridiculous thought really—what drink it was.

Garuda took a draught, and held his tumbler up. Alvar saw the lamplight glance off it. And when Garuda spoke once more, his voice was quiet.

‘I dreamt of a new language. A language that would be free. New words with which we could ... draw all that we would see beyond the Wall. Taste it. We would dream in our new language. Here in Sumer, words are a pale reflection of things as they are. As they should be. But there, beyond the Wall, words would be alive. Breathing. Real.’

His voice changed again. ‘I was flippant, Mithila, I’m so sorry. Can we at least drink to those who will follow us some day?’

There was no reply. As the silence grew, Dhara walked across and picked up a tumbler. Garuda poured for her. Alvar thought he saw their fingers brush, but it was so swift that he couldn’t tell if he’d 

imagined it.

‘Thank you, Dhara,’ Garuda said softly. ‘This was all you—the digging, the calculations, the reinforcement of the pit. You’re the best engineer I’ve known, outside The Select.’

Dhara laughed. ‘It’s of no use now. In this City, who will ever need to dig like this again?’

Lamon had come up behind her, and now he too picked up a tumbler.

‘And thanks to you too,’ said Garuda, pouring once more. ‘I wish I could have seen you win the Race this year, Lamon, for the Eighth.’

Alvar took a step forward, but caught sight of Mithila’s still figure in the shadows, and stopped.

‘To the dreamers of tomorrow,’ said Garuda. The three of them drank.

Alvar heard Dhara gasp out loud. ‘It’s good!’

‘The Select’s drink from The Select’s hoard,’ Garuda replied, smiling. ‘They will not miss it.’

A sudden, sharp sound cut through the stillness. Lamon had hurled his tumbler to the floor. A dark stain began to creep along the ground. He sank down, cradling his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking.

Nobody said a word. Dhara had begun to pace. Mithila stood rigid in her place, while Garuda sipped carefully from his drink. Alvar looked from brother to sister, and then walked across the chamber to Lamon, kneeling down beside him. He put an arm around his shoulder. After a while, Dhara joined them.

Garuda put down his tumbler, and went to where the shovels were lying, carelessly tossed upon the ground. At last, Mithila came out of the shadows. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Digging.’

‘What! ’

‘What?’

‘What’s that going to do now?’

‘Remember that song about a second Sumer beneath the surface? The Sumer of the Builders, from where the Rasa flows? The Sumer of this chamber, maybe? Who knows what we may find? Anything’s better than sitting here, waiting.’

‘Any tunnel you dig here will collapse upon itself very soon,’ said Dhara. ‘We don’t have reinforcing bricks any more, remember?’

‘Maybe we’ll find something before that,’ replied Garuda. ‘No one’s ever been here before either, remember?’

Dhara laughed again, an odd sound in the dimming lamplight. ‘Anything's

possible. You might even hit one of the crapholes and meet a crappy end before the tunnel falls in on you.’

‘Hilarious,’ said Garuda, but at that moment, Mithila stomped over to him, and knocked the shovel out of his hand.

‘This is madness, Garuda!’ Alvar thought he saw Garuda flinch. ‘Who knows what might—could—happen?’ Mithila continued. ‘We have to ... have to save our strength. We need to live.’

‘Madness?’ Garuda’s voice grew sharp. ‘No more mad than anything we’ve done in the last few months, Mithila. And no more mad than going to sleep here, hoping to wake to a miracle. You know this. Nobody is coming to save us.’ His eyes were fixed on Mithila, his arms extended to her. But Mithila’s fists were clenched, and she was staring at the floor.

Finally, she looked up. ‘Go, then.’

‘You won’t come with me?’

‘No.’

Garuda let his arms slump to his side. ‘Won’t you at least say goodbye, my sister?’

Silence. Alvar felt an urge to stand, to move into the space that had opened up between them, as if the Wall was between them. He stayed quiet.

Garuda waited. Mithila did not speak. He picked up the shovel and turned, finally. He walked towards the tunnel they had just dug, and as he walked, he began to hum. Alvar recognized the tune. It was the dream song of Taraf, the first of those who had rebelled against the Wall, centuries ago. It was a tune that did not exist any more, outside of a few scrolls and whispers around firesides.

Who sees above an endless ground

The sun upon a farther shore

Who sees the sky unwalled, unbound

Will live in dreams forevermore …

Garuda was lost to sight before his voice faded. For a while, they heard the sound of his shovel. Then that too dissolved.

Time passed. Alvar sat down against the wall, and stared into the shadows. Before his eyes, the lamps shaped themselves into fires, small fires by the Rasa, around which they all sat. And he heard the notes of the dream song float into the summer sky, as a harp played in the background. Alvar closed his eyes.

When he opened

them again, three of the lamps had been extinguished, and the chamber had grown darker. By the far end, Lamon and Dhara were dozing. Mithila sat opposite him, chin resting on cupped hands.

‘Mithila?’

‘What are you thinking?’

‘Of the night when Garuda played the harp. When Carina of the Dooma came and sang to us the poems of Taraf; you remember her? And we first heard the world call out, and we knew we had to do this.’

‘And you told me that the Builders had got it wrong.’ He heard her sigh. ‘Because the world is so much more than what the Shoortans draw—straight lines, perfect circles. They were wrong, and we would see.’

Alvar smiled. ‘So obsessed with harmony.’

Mithila laughed out loud. ‘Live a poet, die a poet, eh, Alvar? Still thinking of your manifesto, even here, even now.’ Her voice softened. ‘And we thought we would change everything. Us, a bunch of nineteen-year-olds. Remember Taraf’s dreams. Break the Circles. End smara. Start the world over.’

Alvar was silently, recalling Garuda’s harp and the dream singer’s voice.

‘What went wrong, Alvar?’

‘We won’t ever know now.’ To fill the silence, he went on quickly: ‘And what were you thinking?’

Mithila hesitated, then said: ‘Of Rama.’

‘Oh.’ Alvar chuckled. ‘Your infatuation, as Garuda would say?’

‘The one thing Garuda didn’t understand.’

‘Did you love her?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps.’ She shook herself lightly. ‘Stop talking in the past tense, will you? It’s not ... pleasant.’

Time descended on them like a thick blanket, slowing down as it came. It was then that Alvar began to notice a faint staleness in the air. The last of the lamps had begun to flicker. Mithila stood up.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To the Wall. I will end there. We can at least make it a little poetic.’

Then she was gone, her footsteps echoing after her. Alvar sat, hands clasped around his knees. He had a brief vision of Mithila, standing alone in the darkness facing the Wall, as she had so often done overground, alongside Garuda, while the stars swirled overhead, in the days that were already beginning to blur, their dim edges like the memory of a dream.

The last lamp faded into nothingness. Alvar was left to himself, and the closing lines of the dream song played in his mind:

Who dares to dream these exiled dreams

Is doomed to dwell in worlds of pain …

When darkness came next, it was absolute.

 

PART ONE
THE FORUM

The passage of Time drove us to accept the Wall among the natural order of things.

After all, we had no choice.

And yet, there were moments. As children, we had dreams; dreams in which we saw things we could not name or understand. We only knew they existed beyond the Wall.

As we grew, these dreams and their memories began to fade. Their vanishing marked our passage into adulthood. Or so we were told.

But they never disappeared entirely. Something was left behind: a longing that remained with us every waking moment.

Some days, it was too much. Then we went to the Wall, looked up at the sky, and beat our fists against that smooth black … thing. We raged, we wept.

Smara, they called it. The yearning.

The yearning for a world without the Wall.

—Unchained Histories, by Taraf

 

One

A Sign in Autumn

The wind cut her face. It was a cold wind, carrying rain from beyond the Wall. Mithila shivered. Propped on one knee, she faced the Shoortan Temple, with its single spire stabbing the sky. It was the hour before the lamps, and the light was wan. A short distance away, a thin mist rose from the Rasa.

Around her, the towers of the Forum loomed in the evening. From the centre of the circular City they overlooked Sumer, as they had done for centuries: shadowed hulks of alien white stone that never faded—smooth without a crack or fissure—as though in a time out of mind, the Builders had carved them from of a single block and thrown them up to the sky.

Then the doors of the Shoortan Temple swung open. Mithila saw a procession emerge. Soma first, slowed by age, painfully erect. The white cloak of the Shoortan Matriarchs was upon her shoulders, and a crown upon her brow. In one hand, she held the Iron Circle of the Shoortans and in the other, the Heartstone. From a distance, Mithila saw the stone pulsing.

Rastogi walked behind her, with his receding hairline, flared nostrils, and shapeless dark coat. Beside him, there was another figure, hooded and cloaked in ochre. After them, in strict files of four, came the Temple authorities, and then the Acolytes in a group, in their plain linen garments, holding up their ceremonial clubs. A lilting voice rose in song, praising the life-protecting Wall.

As they crossed the Council Hall, Mithila thought she saw Rastogi send a sharp glance her way, but the High Priest passed on, and did not look back. The march reached the banks of the Rasa. The singing stopped. Gently, almost lovingly, the Matriarch turned to the figure behind her, and removed the ochre hood. Mithila watched the black hair cascade down to the waist. Soma made the sign of the Circle, and Rastogi’s harsh voice carried in the air. ‘Until the light of the full moon, we give you to the Rasa, to be cleansed and reborn in service to the Wall. Stay well, Minakshi.’

Swift as thought, the figure slipped out of the ochre robe and slid into the river. The song began again, joyous. The procession turned. It passed her, and once more Rastogi seemed to look at her. Mithila dropped her gaze. She watched them disappear into the Temple.

Once the Forum had returned to its quietness, she rose and took slow steps towards the Rasa. She didn’t see Minakshi until she was almost on the edge of the bank. Then she did: only her hair above the water, her face turned to the Temple.

‘A little cold for a swim, isn’t it?’

Minakshi twisted around in the river, a flush spreading across her face. ‘You have no right—’

‘I have no right?’ Mithila’s voice matched hers.

She did not reply. Then she lifted her head and looked directly at Mithila, that familiar, blank gaze. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Because ...’ She stopped, swallowed. ‘Because ... is it too much to want to see you, just once?’

‘Do you still hope?’ Minakshi’s voice was no longer as hard.

‘How can I not?’

‘For your sake, Mithila, stop. The Circle only turns one way. By tonight I shall be—’

‘Priestess of the Wall,’ Mithila completed. ‘Yes, I know.’ She knelt upon the bank. ‘Six years ago, when I first saw you walk with the Shoortans, I thought you were playing a joke on us all. But it’s not funny any more, is it? Do you ever think of father, who still can’t understand? Do you ever think of Garuda? Of me?’

Minakshi’s face closed again. ‘Father made his choices. You have made yours.

I told you—we’re not going back.’

‘Why!’

Not a question but an accusation, hurled into the evening after six years of waiting. Six years of reliving that summer night when Minakshi had disappeared from the house, leaving behind only a note saying that, of her own free will, she had decided to enter the Temple. ‘A joke,’ Ananta had said, laughing, although both Mithila and Garuda detected the anger, the confusion, the faintest panic in their father’s laughter. ‘She’ll be back.’

She had never come back.

Now she shook her head. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Try me.’

‘Not now. Not tonight, Mithila. Leave me, please. This is not the time to sort our memories.’

Mithila remembered that voice, its finality. She stood up. ‘I’m going. But I hope you’ll speak to me some day and explain. I want to understand.’ She turned and walked five paces, before stopping and swinging around. Under her breath she added: ‘Oh, my sister, I need to.’

Minakshi made no reply. Mithila repeated, louder now: ‘Can’t you see that I need to?’

Minakshi only turned her head away.

Mithila stood there as if she’d been slapped. ‘Or maybe,’ she said, searching for words, ‘the fact that you’re doing this idiotic ritual—the Rasa at night when it’s so cold—tells me you’re lost already. ..