An unexpected result of Anchita’s fight with her classmates was, on the following Sunday after she was asked to stay away from school, six or seven of them visited Deogan. They called Anchita first and asked if they could come. They were very polite, and even said they were sorry for not visiting earlier, and Anchita was quite surprised by all this, but she behaved very well with them. Although she also very clearly told them not to visit with blankets and clothes and such. This was not a village hit by floods. It was a people hit by other people, so they could just come and visit. Of course, she told herself, she could give Korok anything she liked, if he accepted it, because she was only lending things to him, and they were friends. Her classmates were not.

So they visited, and saw Korok’s garden. He was present, and showed them some of his best flowers and was very proud when they asked him questions. They walked up the hill and saw the hanal kot, and looked out at the river, and visited some of the other villagers. They told Anchita they would visit again, and thanked her for talking about it in class, and said they were sorry about everything. They also had lunch, which Korok avoided by saying he had some work at the mahji’s house. He was afraid there would be kek, but Anchita’s mother hadn’t made any, so he could have had lunch with them if he had known. And the week passed and Anchita returned to school and Korok went back to waiting for news.

Winter settled in. The sun stopped blazing, and the nights grew cold.

And then, weeks later, the Red Brothers arrived.

It was the coldest day in December. Korok didn’t have anybody to tell him the temperature, but he felt it in his bones that day, beneath the thin sweater with the three holes in the back, and under the thin blanket with the one hole through which his toes would poke out when he was sleeping.

It was late in the evening, and he had just finished making dinner—some red rice and thin dal. The mist had thickened, and had curled into the kitchen, where the lantern gave a soft light. This was not the dense fog of the northern Indian plains. This was the gentle mist of the high Deccan plateau, which settles in and takes its time and is thickest in the hours after midnight. Korok could hardly see the end of his courtyard.

And through the mist, five persons walked in. Four men and a woman.