Meera saw me. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. That silence—that absolute, terrified silence—was louder than any scream.
The man with the knife laughed. Soft. Like gravel rolling downhill. “Go back to sleep, little cock. This is not your business.”
We ran.
It was a night sewn shut with clouds, no moon, no stars—just the thick, breathing dark of our village on the edge of the forest. I was twelve, my little sister Meera was seven. We shared a string cot on the verandah because the summer heat made the tin-roof house feel like a kiln.
“You saved her,” my mother said to me.
“Meera?” My voice was a cracked whisper.
Meera’s side of the cot was empty. The thin cotton sheet lay twisted, and a small, sandaled footprint—fresh, deep—pressed into the dust near the broken step.
I didn’t think. I grabbed the iron pestle my grandmother used to grind spices—heavy, cold, a foot long.