Nobody answered their daughter's question that night, not really. Sekar had held her hand until she drifted off still waiting for a reply, and Rama had lain awake afterward turning three centuries' worth of guilt into no better an answer than silence had already given her. But mornings kept arriving whether the question got answered or not, and work kept needing doing, and somewhere in the grinding, ordinary press of that, the family kept moving forward because there wasn't another direction available.
Sekar's bark scraps multiplied fastest. She'd started with single words scratched into the pale inner bark Ratna gave her by the bundle, rice, water, child, danger, and within a month the scraps had grown into columns, then into something closer to a private grammar, cross-hatched in a hand that grew steadier every week.
