PEREGRINATE

CHAPTER 35

Ananya. That was the name of the kind lady who had given me her son's bicycle. The only one who believed me, and heard my cries. She gave me a piece of myself back that I had left centuries behind.

"Here. These belong to you," she said handing me a heavy wooden box. We were standing at the doorstep of her mansion, waiting for my father to pick me up.

"What is this?" Opening the lid revealed a bunch of old brown papers. I looked at her through a haze of tears. She nodded at my unanswered question.

The letters were all that I had left of him. So, despite wanting to tear into them the moment we reached home, I waited. I waited for Inder to come to me, to find me as he had promised. When he succeeded in crossing over, he could tell me anything that was there in the letters himself.

Meanwhile, I bid my time by doing everything to return.

I knew the land and the castle better than before. The first few days after returning, I would skip classes to visit the familiar areas. The kitchen, the dining hall, and the maid quarters, which were now labs. I even managed to find out Inder's room, but it was no longer a stately room befitting a prince.

Instead, it was just an old, unused room gathering dust. It took me a few tries to open the nail-shut window, but I finally managed. With blood dripping from my torn fingernails, I slid down against the wall and cried for the days I had spent in this room, yearning for the days I had missed.

The jasmine bush was no longer there. The view from the window had changed too. Time had moved on which was something I was finding extremely difficult to do.

One place I could not visit as often as I liked was our glade. Inder had built his home right on the land, encircling the tree Maitri had died below. Aunty Ananya had made it more than known that her home was open to me whenever I wanted. However, I did not want to encroach. I had noticed her son's unease around me.

I spent hours in the library, one day even going there directly instead of school. I brought books back home when the time spent in the library was not enough. My father started to come home to an empty table and uncleaned house but I could not bring myself to move from the books. They were one of my last resort to get back.

That was last week, now the only thing left to do was read the letters, which brought me to now. I was sitting against the headboard of my bed with the box of letters at the other end. I eyed it as if it was the pandora's box, biting my nails. Biting nails never had been my habit, it was Maitri's.

It was early in the morning and my father left for his office just a few minutes back. It was Friday and I had begged off from school feigning a stomach ache. Looking at the box my pretend sickness started to manifest for real.

I went downstairs to get a glass of water. As I sipped my water slowly I tried to sort out my emotions. There was largely grief, a bit of anger, confusion, fear, and the tiniest sliver of gladness. No matter how much I would like to deny it, the truth was that I was glad to be back in my familiar world.

I hated myself for it.

It came at the cost of losing Inder and it was not worth it. But I had not completely lost him yet. Maybe he had found a way after all. With renewed hope, I climbed the stairs to my room to finally read the letters.

I left the original copies with Ananya Aunty. I did not want to risk their precious heirlooms. However, she did try to thrust them in my hands one last time as I was leaving, saying that they belonged to me.

What I had in front of me were their English translations, written on cheap, modern, bleached paper. The words were not carved out by Inder's slender hands, but I gave solace to my heart by saying the words were his.