The Destined Path of Water Chapter 6: Chapter 6: Something Growing

Read chapter 6 of The Destined Path of Water by Simply No One on NovelPedia.

Rika | Age 10 The school in the new village was smaller than my old one. Two classrooms for the younger children, two for the older, a courtyard in the middle with a tree that had been there long enough to have opinions about the building around it, its roots lifting the stones in places, its branches reaching over the roof like it was trying to see what was on the other side. The teacher for our class was a woman named Divya who had a loud laugh and small handwriting and who did not make a production of my arrival, which I was grateful for. She just pointed to an empty seat and said, "That one," and went back to what she was doing. I sat down. The girl next to me looked at me for a moment and then looked away and then looked back and said, "Your bag has a broken zip." "I know," I said. "I have a safety pin if you want." I looked at her. She was small and serious with her hair in two plaits and the expression of someone who has already made a decision and is waiting for you to catch up. "Okay," I said. She gave me the safety pin. I fixed the zip. We did not speak again for the rest of the morning but when we walked out at lunch she fell into step beside me without either of us deciding that was going to happen, and that was how I met Riya, who became the first friend I had made in longer than I wanted to count. Ken and Hina were careful with me in the way that good people are careful with something that has been handled badly. Not tiptoeing exactly. Just attentive, without making the attention feel like pressure. Hina asked about my day in the evenings but did not push when I gave short answers. Ken taught me the names of things in the hills around the village, pointing them out on our occasional walks, not as a lesson, just as conversation, the way you share things you love without expecting anything back. I learned that Hina hummed when she cooked, always the same two or three songs cycling through, and that Ken made tea too strong and drank it anyway and that neither of them slept past sunrise. I learned that the house had a particular smell in the mornings, something warm and woody, and that the bird stain on the ceiling in my room had a companion I had not noticed at first, a smaller shape near the window that might have been a fish or might have been a leaf depending on the light. I did not tell them about the necklace. I did not tell them about the river or the night I had walked into it or the world below that should not have existed. I did not tell Riya either. These were things I kept in the same place I kept my memories of my parents- close, private, not secret exactly, just not ready to be spoken yet. I went to the river sometimes. Not the one I had gone into. The one here, the slower one, the one visible through the gap between the houses from my window. I would sit on the bank after school sometimes, not doing anything in particular, just watching the water. Riya came with me once and sat beside me and threw small stones in and we watched the rings spread and fade and she did not ask why I liked it here and I did not explain. The necklace I wore always. Under my shirt at school, out in the evenings at home. I touched it without thinking, the way you touch something that has become part of how your hands move through the world. The bead was smooth and always warmer than it should have been and sometimes when I held it I felt the river at night, the glow of it, the impossible air around me, and something enormous and gold-eyed moving slow through the dark water. I had not imagined it. I was certain of that the way I was certain of my own name. But I also could not explain what it meant, what it wanted from me, what I was supposed to do with the fact of it. So I carried it the way you carry something you are not ready to put down and not ready to examine, just close, just present, waiting for the moment you understand it better. October came and the rains finished and the hills went a deeper green, almost unreal, th