The door closed behind me with a sound I would come to know very well over the following weeks—a deep, solid thud that seemed to come from somewhere beneath the building, as if the earth itself had swallowed the lock.
Director Hargreaves walked ahead of me without looking back. His footsteps made no sound on the stone floor, which struck me as strange because the floor looked ancient, worn smooth by generations of feet, and surely such a floor should have echoed. But there was no echo. There was only the soft whisper of my own shoes and the distant hum of something I could not identify—a machine, perhaps, or a voice, or the building itself breathing.
Vidya had stayed behind in the garden. She had touched my shoulder before I climbed the stairs, her fingers light as moths, and she had said, "Remember, child. You chose this." Then she had walked back down the path toward the pond, and the banyan trees had seemed to close around her, and she had vanished into the green.
I was alone with the man who did not smile.
The corridor was long and wide, with high ceilings and walls made of the same honey-coloured sandstone as the exterior. Oil lamps hung from brackets at regular intervals, their flames steady and smokeless, casting a warm light that should have felt welcoming but did not. The floor was checkered with black and white marble tiles, polished to such a shine that I could see my own reflection looking up at me from below—a girl in a school uniform, pale and wide-eyed, following a stranger into a place she did not understand.
"Where are you taking me?" I asked.
"To your room," Hargreaves said without turning around.
"I don't have a room here. I'm not staying."
He stopped walking. For a moment, he did not move at all—not his hands, not his shoulders, not even the folds of his kurta. Then he turned, slowly, and looked at me with those eyes that held nothing.
"You walked forty minutes to reach this place. You stepped through a gate that opens only for those who are meant to find it. You climbed the stairs and crossed the threshold of your own free will." He paused. "You are staying, Nyra Raizada. Perhaps not forever. But for now, you are staying."
"I didn't agree to that."
"You didn't disagree either."
He turned and continued walking. I stood in the corridor for a long moment, my fists clenched at my sides, my breath coming faster than it should have. I wanted to argue. I wanted to run. But the corridor stretched behind me as far as it stretched ahead, and I could not see the door anymore, and I could not remember which way I had come.
I followed him.
The corridor ended in a circular room with a domed ceiling painted the colour of the night sky. Stars were painted there too, hundreds of them, arranged in patterns I did not recognize. A fountain stood in the center of the room, shaped like a lotus flower, and water flowed from its petals in thin silver streams that made no sound when they hit the pool below.
Three corridors led out of this room, each one identical to the others. Hargreaves took the one on the left.
"Your room is in the west wing," he said. "You will share it with three other girls. Your classes begin tomorrow at six AM. Meditation first, then breakfast, then your first session with me."
"Classes? What classes?"
"The classes that will help you understand what you are."
"I already know what I am. I'm a student. I'm sixteen. I'm from Suryanagar."
He stopped again. This time, when he turned to look at me, something flickered in his eyes—not warmth, not recognition, but something that might have been pity. Or disappointment. Or both.
"You cracked a window by looking at it," he said. "You wrote words in your own notebook while you were sleeping. You have a crow's feather in your pocket that has not cooled since you picked it up." He tilted his head, and for a moment he looked less like a man and more like a question I did not know how to answer. "Does that sound like a ordinary student to you?"
I had no answer.
He continued walking.
The west wing was quieter than the corridor, quieter than the circular room, quieter than any place I had ever been. The silence here was not empty—it was full. Full of something I could feel pressing against my skin, like the air before a thunderstorm, like the moment between a question and its answer.
The rooms on either side of the corridor had doors made of dark wood, each one marked with a small brass plaque. I tried to read the plaques as I passed, but they were written in a script I did not recognize—curving, ancient, beautiful in a way that made my chest ache.
"Those are the names of the children who came before you," Hargreaves said, noticing my gaze. "Some of them are still here. Some of them are not."
"What happened to the ones who are not?"
He did not answer.
We stopped in front of a door at the end of the corridor. This door had no plaque. Instead, it had a small window at eye level, and through the window, I could see a room with four beds, four desks, four narrow wardrobes, and a window that looked out onto the garden I had walked through.
"Your new home," Hargreaves said.
"This is not my home."
"It will be."
He opened the door and stepped aside. I did not move. I stood in the corridor, staring at the room, at the beds, at the window, at the three girls who were sitting on the beds and looking at me with expressions I could not read.
One of them was small, no older than twelve or thirteen, with hair so black it looked blue in the lamplight. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, holding a worn teddy bear that had been mended so many times it looked more thread than fabric. Her eyes were huge in her small face, and when she looked at me, she smiled. Not a friendly smile. A nervous one. The smile of someone who had learned that new things were usually dangerous.
The second girl was older, maybe my age, with sharp features and sharper eyes. Her hair was cut short, almost like a boy's, and she wore a grey salwar kameez that looked too large for her thin frame. She was not smiling. She was watching me the way a cat watches a mouse—not because she wanted to hurt me, but because she wanted to understand me, and understanding required careful observation.
The third girl was the one who made me stop breathing.
She was sitting at the desk by the window, her back to me, her head bent over a book. Her hair was long and dark and fell in waves down her back, and she wore a white cotton dress that looked old-fashioned, like something from a photograph my mother might have kept from her own youth. She did not turn around when I entered. She did not acknowledge my presence at all.
"That's Meera," Hargreaves said, pointing to the small girl with the teddy bear. "She's twelve. She's been here for four years."
The small girl waved. I did not wave back.
"That's Kavita." He pointed to the sharp-eyed girl. "She's sixteen, like you. She's been here for six years."
Kavita nodded once. A short, sharp nod that said I see you and I am watching you in equal measure.
"And that's—"
"I know who she is," I said, though I did not.
Hargreaves looked at me for a long moment. Then he nodded, slowly, as if I had passed some test I had not known I was taking.
"Your orientation begins in the morning," he said. "Try to sleep. You will need your strength."
He left. The door closed behind him. I heard the soft click of a lock, and then silence.
I was alone with three strangers in a room that smelled of jasmine and old wood and something else, something I could not name but recognized anyway. The same something I had felt in the garden. The same something that had been pressing against my skin since I woke up this morning.
The girl at the desk finally turned around.
She was beautiful. That was the first thought that came into my head, and it was such a strange thought that I almost laughed. Beautiful. In this place, at this moment, with everything else happening, my mind had chosen to notice that a stranger was beautiful.
Her face was heart-shaped, with high cheekbones and a small straight nose and lips that were pressed together in a line that might have been concentration or might have been disapproval. Her eyes were the colour of honey in sunlight, and they were looking at me with an intensity that made my skin prickle.
"You're the one," she said.
Her voice was low and quiet, the kind of voice that made people lean closer to hear.
"The one what?" I asked.
"The one who cracked the window. The one who wrote the words. The one the crow has been following." She closed her book and set it on the desk. "We've been waiting for you. Some of us longer than others."
I wanted to ask who she was. I wanted to ask what she meant. I wanted to ask why the lock had clicked when Hargreaves left, and why the window looked out onto a garden I could no longer see, and why my mother had never told me any of this existed.
But the words would not come.
So I walked to the empty bed—the one against the wall, the one with the thin mattress and the white sheets and the pillow that smelled of lavender—and I sat down.
The girl with the honey-coloured eyes watched me.
The sharp-eyed girl watched me.
The small girl with the teddy bear watched me.
And somewhere outside, in the garden I could no longer see, the crow cawed three times.
I lay down on the bed. I did not close my eyes. I stared at the ceiling, which was painted the same colour as the circular room's dome—deep blue, with stars I did not recognize.
Tomorrow, Hargreaves had said. Meditation. Breakfast. My first session.
Tomorrow, I would begin to learn what I was.
Tonight, I would lie here in this strange room with these strange girls and listen to the silence that was not empty.
The girl with the honey-coloured eyes stood up from her desk. She walked to my bed, her bare feet making no sound on the stone floor. She looked down at me for a long moment.
"My name is Aanya," she said. "And you are going to need a friend here, Nyra Raizada. Whether you want one or not."
She turned and walked back to her own bed.
I watched her go.
I did not say thank you.
I did not say anything at all.