The smell of wet earth always made Aarohi think of endings.
That afternoon, the skies had split open over the hills of Bhagirathpur, a village cradled between seven folds of mountain and silence. Monsoon had arrived early, pounding the tin roofs, soaking marigolds at temple doors, and making the elders mutter about omens.
Aarohi squatted on the floor of her herb room, grinding jatamansi roots with a stone pestle. The scent of damp roots and sandalwood filled the small space. Her hands moved automatically, mixing powders and oils, but her mind was elsewhere—on the laughter echoing outside.
Veer.
Twelve years old. Too thin, too brave. He was always out during the rains, barefoot, chasing frogs and pretending to be a hero from the Amar Chitra Katha comics they kept under their mattress.
She stood, wiping her hands on her kurta. The clouds had darkened again, their bellies swollen with something more than rain. It wasn’t just water in the air—it was weight. Like the hills themselves were holding their breath.
“Aarohi didi!” a voice screamed.
It wasn’t Veer’s.
By the time she reached the edge of the cliff, people were already gathered, their umbrellas blooming like lotus petals in the storm. Someone grabbed her arm—a hand, trembling and soaked, pointed toward the slope.
A section of the hill had given way.
Mud, trees, rocks—all collapsed into a roaring, brown wave that had swallowed the path Veer used to walk home from the stream.
She didn’t scream.
Not even when they pulled out his shoe an hour later. Not when the priest shook his head. Not when her aunt tried to close her fist around hers and whisper “Let him go.”
That night, the villagers lit ghee lamps in the temple of Ma Nanda Devi, goddess of the mountains. They placed Veer’s shoe on a banana leaf with sandal, flowers, and rice. In the tradition of their land, no body meant no cremation. Only silence.
Aarohi sat by the lake alone, the rain now reduced to a mist. Her brother’s voice still echoed in her ears. “Didi, one day I’ll be king of these mountains. You’ll see.”
She couldn’t see.
Only the darkness stared back.
Then, from behind the trees, she heard footsteps. Soft. Measured.
A man, cloaked in black, with hair as white as moon ash, emerged from the fog. His eyes glowed faintly red. He walked with a limp and carried a satchel of bones.
“You’re Aarohi,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
“I knew your mother. Long ago. When she still whispered to the trees.”
The man sat beside her like he had always belonged there.
“There is a way,” he said. “But it costs.”
She turned to him sharply.
“What did you say?”
He smiled, slow and sad.
“I said, there is a way to bring the dead back. But the price will bleed through every corner of your soul.”
She swallowed, heart pounding. “You’re Baba Anant.”
The villagers called him pagal baba, the mad mystic. Said he had once crossed into death’s shadow and returned broken. He hadn’t been seen in years.
He reached into his bag and pulled out a scroll sealed with black wax.
“This is Kaal-Praarthana. It asks Time to give something back. But Time never gives freely.”
Aarohi stared at the scroll. The air grew colder.
“You have three nights to decide,” he whispered. “On the third, the Blood Moon will rise. And if you break the rule—”
He pointed to the lake.
“—the water will not remain just water. It remembers everything ever drowned in it.”
Then, without waiting for her reply, Baba Anant walked away, fading into the fog.
Aarohi remained still for a long time, her hands wrapped around her knees, the scroll burning in her lap like a hidden flame.
The rule had been taught since birth: “Never bring the dead back. Let the river carry them. Let the mountain keep their breath.”
But what was the point of rules, if they only taught you how to let go?
What if she didn’t want to let go?
What if she wanted her brother back?
Even if it meant breaking the one unbreakable rule.
The candle sputtered as if gasping, shadows flickering across the wooden walls of Aarohi’s herb room. The scroll lay unrolled on her desk, the black wax seal now broken, the script etched in an ancient form of Sharada, the sacred script once used in Himalayan temples before the priests were silenced by modern tongues.
She had spent the day deciphering its verses, her eyes bloodshot from translating line by fragile line. There were no incantations. No chants. Just instructions, poetic and cruel.
"To turn the river backward, you must give it a shore. To steal a breath from Time, offer it your own. Speak not to gods. Speak not to men. Only the lake listens. On the night the moon bleeds, let the living offer the dead a gift."
She had found it—Veer’s old compass. A plastic thing with a cracked dial and a missing lid. He’d won it at the Mela by cheating at the ring toss. Claimed it would help him find treasure in the forest. He had named it “Chakra.”
She clutched it now, her fingers trembling.
The village had returned to routine by morning. That’s how Bhagirathpur grieved: with stoic chores and soft whispers. Women swept courtyards. Children, now quieter, walked in straight lines to the path of the little schoolhouse. But eyes lingered on Aarohi wherever she went.
She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t sleeping. She had stopped bringing herbs to the sick.
She was waiting.
On the second night, she visited Baba Anant again—this time deep in the forest, beyond the old banyan where crows nested in the shape of omens.
He was already lighting a small fire from moss and dried root, as if he’d known she would come.
“I’m ready,” she said.
He looked up. “No, you’re not.”
“I will be.”
He stirred something thick and black in a stone bowl. “You think the ritual is about magic. About saying the words. But it is not.”
“Then what is it?”
“It is about belonging,” he said. “The lake doesn’t give back what doesn’t belong to it. If your grief is selfish, it will give you back a mirror. Not your brother.”
Aarohi narrowed her eyes. “I’m doing this for him.”
“You’re doing it for yourself.”
She said nothing. The fire cracked.
Anant rose, handed her a flask of liquid the color of crushed plums. “Drink this before the third night. It will open your spirit. But be warned—you will see everything that wants to be forgotten.”
“And the lake?”
“The lake remembers,” he said, voice low. “It is the doorway. But doorways are made to both enter and exit. Don’t expect only Veer to come through.”
She returned home through the shortcut behind the temple, the scroll tightly wrapped in a cloth soaked in sandal paste. The trees whispered that night. Her mother used to say “the forest watches the ones who lie.”
Aarohi wasn’t sure if that was meant to be comforting.
That night she dreamed of Veer, but he was older—closer to sixteen, wearing clothes he’d never owned, his eyes glowing like molten silver.
He was standing at the edge of the lake, barefoot in the cold water.
“Why are you calling me back?” he asked, not with anger, but with curiosity.
“I miss you,” she whispered in the dream. “I can’t—”
“But you never asked if I wanted to come back.”
She woke up gasping, drenched in sweat. The compass in her fist was warm, almost hot.
The third night was coming.
And with it, the Blood Moon.
The moon rose like a wound in the sky—round, swollen, and red as fresh bruises.
Even the dogs didn’t bark that night. Even the wind didn’t blow.
Aarohi stood at the edge of Sapta Amrit Lake, wearing her mother’s rust-colored shawl and carrying three things: Veer’s cracked compass, a bottle of Anant’s plum elixir, and a sliver of hope sharp enough to bleed.
She had drunk the potion just before sunset. It had tasted like earth and stars. Since then, her senses had begun to split. She could hear the thoughts of moths. Smell memories in the wind. Time had become a spiral: past and present circling her like vultures.
Baba Anant was waiting at the far end of the shore, standing beside a circle of salt and turmeric ash. His eyes looked heavier than they had in years.
“Are you certain?” he asked.
Aarohi nodded. “He’s mine. I brought him into this world. I will bring him back.”
Anant’s voice was quiet. “Then remember: the lake gives, but never for free. If Veer returns, something else must stay.”
She stepped barefoot into the lake, up to her ankles. The water was colder than bone. She placed the compass on a floating lotus leaf, whispered Veer’s name, and began to hum the tune they used to sing when he was scared of thunder.
“Veer, Veer, light so near, Come where the moon is clear...”
The compass began to spin. The lotus shuddered.
And the lake opened.
Not with waves. But with silence.
Suddenly, the water stilled unnaturally. No ripples. No breeze. Just a perfect mirror. Aarohi saw her reflection split—into two.
One version was her. Weeping.
The other was cold-eyed, bloodless, and smiling.
And then—Veer stepped out of the water.
He looked the same. Clothes soaked, eyes wild. He fell into her arms. “Didi—what happened? I—I was lost. Then I heard you.”
She sobbed into his hair. “You’re home. It’s over.”
But it wasn’t.
Behind him, something else was rising.
It wasn’t a creature. Not really.
It was absence. A void in the shape of a boy. Where it stood, the stars blinked out. The grass shriveled. It had Veer’s face, but hollow. A version of him who had stayed behind. A debt unpaid.
Baba Anant screamed: “You opened the gate too wide!”
The Void-Thing walked forward, not touching the ground, eyes blazing with hunger.
“Give it balance,” he shouted. “The lake must keep what it gave!”
Veer clutched Aarohi. “Don’t let it take me!”
Aarohi knew. Her breath slowed.
There were only three ways this could end:
The Void takes Veer back.
The Void takes both of them.
Or Aarohi trades herself.
She kissed Veer’s forehead. “You are more than my brother, Veer. You are my second heart. And hearts... can only beat in one body.”
Then she turned to the thing with her brother’s face and whispered, “Take me.”
It was not a moment.
It was a collapsing.
The air folded inward. Light shrank into a pinpoint. Aarohi was swallowed—not in pain, but in memory. She saw every moment with Veer—his first steps, his first lie, his first poem. She smiled even as her body faded.
The void consumed her.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————
In Bhagirathpur, the winds still whisper her name.
They speak of Aarohi not in mourning, but in reverence—as the girl who challenged the mountain’s silence and gave her breath to mend a broken one.
Veer never left the village. He grew roots, not wings. The boy who had once run barefoot through monsoon puddles now brewed medicines under moonlight and planted marigolds for every child who lost someone too soon.
The lake, once feared, has become sacred. No one steps into it. But on every Blood Moon, a lamp is floated on its surface, carrying a wish whispered by the living to the ones who walked beyond.
Sometimes, on misted mornings, children claim to see a woman by the edge of the lake, her rust-colored shawl fluttering in windless air, humming a tune no one alive remembers teaching them.
And once a year, when the parijat flowers bloom, Veer lights two lamps:
One for the sister who gave everything.
And one for the promise she kept.
In the breath between life and legend, Aarohi lives on.
React
