‘Are those scars glowing—’

‘It’s a tattoo, you dumbass,’ Dhara said.

‘. . . -hawt- . . .’ Yuvan croaked.

‘Deh. Remind me to tell you about it later,’ Fayza whispered to Aman.

Aarti was fuming. She stood up, stormed towards Idhika and knelt in front of her. ‘A fine yogini indeed.’ She nodded sarcastically. ‘STOP SHOWING OFF!’

Idhika was unmoved.

‘How are you doing this?!’ Aarti grabbed Idhika by her shoulders and shook her with all her might—her sole intention to snap Idhika out of her meditative trance.

Idhika fell on her side and fainted.

Shocked, Payal put aside the buttermilk-filled kamandalu. ‘What have you done?’ Dhara exclaimed. Aarti instantly stepped back. Everyone froze, unable to understand what to do, but something stirred inside Aman. He knew picking a fight with Aarti wasn’t going to help him make friends, but maybe because he knew what it was like to be bullied, he jumped up and ran to Idhika. His knees slid and halted right before Idhika’s body, which was gasping for air. Her body was shaking. Aman held her shoulders with both his arms, but he couldn’t make the convulsions stop.

The large bird had been high up in the air when it suddenly lost life and started to fall. It looked unconscious, as if it had been shot. It gathered speed as it plummeted to the ground. As it got closer, Aman saw that its beige wings had a span wider than his body, and it was coming straight for him.

THUD! Aman and Aarti only just managed to step aside in time as the creature hit the ground, very close to Idhika. Clouds of dust circled Idhika’s body, her twisted limbs mirroring the awkwardly wrapped legs of the bird and its sunken beak. Then the bird’s eyes started bleeding and streaks of red rolled down its fur.

Feeling queasy at the sight of blood, Jagrav scurried off into the bushes. Ujal and Prithvi loosened the grips on their bows, now assured that the bird would not attack. Aman tended to Idhika, whose hair was white with dust. Everyone gathered around her.

‘Finally!’ Savitri noticed first. ‘Acharya Ashwini is on his way back.’

Aman spotted Fayza running towards them from the eastern end of Maidaan. He hadn’t known when she left to fetch their teacher. Acharya Ashwini limped alongside her and Chitra. Macchli, too, was with them, orbiting two identical, seven-foot-tall men, whom Aman later got to know as the Alok brothers, Ghanisht and Ekram.

‘Step back!’ Acharya Ashwini said. ‘Give her breathing space.’

‘Will she be fine?’ Fayza asked.

‘There’s hope,’ the acharya said. ‘She’s not lost yet. You found me in time.’ A cotton string ran over his shoulder and back down to his waist, and on it was suspended a small matka. Acharya Ashwini lifted the clay plate from over it and used it to pour a yellowish liquid between Idhika’s lips.

Idhika spluttered, coughing most of it out, but before long, her eyes blinked and her chest heaved with life. She slowly lifted herself but turned her head downwards. ‘I’m sorry, guru-ji. I failed. And instead, this is what has come of it. I thought I could Atmay- . . . I have before . . . I don’t know how I lost my concentration.’ Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she struggled to meet the eyes of the bird’s cold body.