The Keystone Blend by Samya Jayachandran, martini

The mist in Kalimpong does not fall; it rises from the Teesta valley like the breath of something buried alive. It creeps over the ridges, thick and smelling of damp limestone and rotting cedar, until the pine trees are nothing but charcoal sketches against a grey canvas.

Nima sat on the rusted railing of the shortcut path leading to Dr. Pradhan’s estate. She liked the cold. It was the only thing that felt sharp enough to penetrate the layer of cotton wool that had occupied the inside of her skull since the "accident."

They called it an accident. A "slip" on the wet shale during the monsoon. But Nima remembered the sound most of all. Not the scream, but the crack. It was the sound of a dry branch snapping in winter. It was the sound of her own architecture failing. Since that day, the world had become a series of structural errors. Her mother’s face was lopsided; the school’s blackboard was tilted three degrees to the left; the very air felt too heavy for the mountains to support. She felt the dent in her head, she had named it “the cup”. Sometimes she imagined water collecting in it, penetrating her skull and swirling through the grey matter.

She opened her notebook. It was filled with geometric proofs and sketches of skeletal systems. She wasn't studying for the boards anymore, the school had "strongly suggested" she take a year off to recover, but she was obsessed with the physics of the human frame. The sphenoid bone, she wrote, her pencil lead scratching harshly against the paper, is the keystone. If the keystone is bruised, the cathedral of the mind leaks. "Nima? You’re going to catch a fever." It was Deepa. The Doctor’s daughter. She was wrapped in a soft, cream-colored pashmina shawl that looked like a cloud. She stood on the other side of the black iron gates of the estate, her skin glowing with the kind of health that only comes from imported vitamins and a life without damp walls.

Nima looked at her. She didn't see a friend. She saw a squatter.

"The density of your femur is higher than mine," Nima said, her voice flat, devoid of the melodic lilt she used to have. "It’s because of the calcium. Your father steals the calcium from the village children and injects it into your breakfast." Deepa flinched, pulling the shawl tighter. "You’re talking strange again. My dad says it’s just the trauma. You need your meds, Nima." "Your father," Nima whispered, standing up. Her movements were jerky, like a marionette with tangled strings. "He knows the truth. When I fell, the impact was so great that the vibrations traveled through the earth. A displacement occurred. Physics demands an equal and opposite reaction. I left my rightful place, and you slipped into it."

She pressed her face against the cold iron bars. The blunt force to her occipital lobe had done more than scar her scalp; it had rearranged her soul's geography. She was convinced that the girl in the cream shawl was a glitch in the universe. Nima was the Doctor’s daughter, the one meant for the grand piano and the tea sets and the future in Delhi. Deepa was the interloper, the daughter of the woman who washed clothes until her knuckles bled.

"I can see the cracks in you, Deepa," Nima said, her eyes widening until the whites showed all around the irises. "I can see where the bone isn't set right. You’re wearing my life, but it doesn't fit you. It’s sagging at the shoulders." Deepa backed away, her eyes filling with a mixture of pity and genuine terror. "I have to go. My tutor is waiting."

Nima watched her retreat up the manicured driveway. She didn't feel anger; anger was a soft, fleshy emotion. She felt a cold, calcified certainty. She turned back to the valley. Below, the town of Kalimpong clung to the hillside like a fungus. She saw the tin roofs of the bazaar, the smoke rising from the shanties and the tops of the pine trees that swayed like they were whispering secrets to each other. Nima reached up and touched the indentation behind her ear. The bone was jagged there, a permanent topographical error on her map. If I hit it again, she thought, the logic appearing in her mind as a perfect, golden equation, perhaps the displacement will reverse. A second strike to correct the first. She looked at a heavy, moss-covered stone at her feet. It was granite. Dense. Final.

She picked it up. It felt wonderful in her hand, the weight of a solution. She imagined the architecture of her skull vibrating, the plates shifting back into their original, divine alignment. She imagined the mist clearing to reveal the life she was owed. In the distance, the bells of the monastery rang out, the sound muffled by the fog. Nima began to hum. It was a high, thin sound that mimicked the wind whistling through a hollow bone. She sat back down on the railing, the stone resting in her lap like a pet, waiting for the moment when the geometry of the world would finally make sense again. She opened her notebook to a fresh page and drew a single, perfect dot.

Zero, she wrote. The point where everything begins and ends. The point where the pain becomes a shape.

The mist swallowed her then, turning the girl, the stone, and the notebook into a single, grey shadow.

 

Bio:

Samya Jayachandran is a school student based in New Delhi. She has lived across Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Delhi. Her writing is informed by these shifting geographies, as well as by vacations spent in her paternal and maternal villages in Kerala and Kalimpong .

Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee? Half of what you pay goes to the writers and half towards supporting the project (web site maintenance, preparing the next Best of book etc.)