Asha pushed through a curtain of leaves hanging across the trail and saw two small houses in the distance, two little mud and wood shacks leaning into the shadows by the side of the path.
“Houses,” she said softly.
The left shack’s window and door gaped dark and vacant. One wall had lost several planks and the thatching on the roof was perilously thin, revealing the timbers. The right one stood in better repair, though still crumbling from neglect, and it had a tattered cloth hanging across the window and the doorway as well.
“Can you describe these houses?” the nun asked.
Asha heard a dry cough inside the house on the right. She heard nothing from the house on the left. She shrugged and said, “Half empty.”
2
Asha approached the curtained doorway slowly, calling out, “Hello? Is there someone here?” No one answered. She looked around the path and the empty house across the way, but there was no sign of anyone else around. Priya shook her head. “I don’t hear anything.”
Asha cocked her head and closed her eyes. She listened with her right ear, listening to the soft music of all living things, the harmonies of plant and animal and human souls. She heard the shushing and sighing of the trees and the frenetic buzzing of the forest’s ants and beetles, and even a few birds and snakes, some of them far away. And from inside the house she heard the beating of human hearts, the gentle tides of warm blood flowing through aged bodies, the faint humming of human souls only barely alive and barely aware.
“Someone’s here.” Asha drew back the curtain in the doorway and leaned inside. She saw six bodies lying on the floor, all resting peacefully on their backs or sides, eyes closed, chests rising and falling with an almost invisible rhythm.
“How many?” Priya asked.
“Six. All alive, but…” Asha stepped inside and knelt beside the first person, an old man with skin so dry and shriveled it felt like tree bark. He was cool to the touch. Moving on, she found them all the same. All elderly, frail, rough, and cool.
“Are they dying? Is it a disease?” the nun asked.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” Asha said as she inspected the last body. “They don’t seem ill, just very old. Close to death, really.” She set her bag on the floor and rummaged through it for her tools. She pulled out a small mirror and held it over a woman’s mouth and watched the tiny plume of fog form on the glass. “Barely breathing, but the lungs are dry. Weak pulses, but steady. They may not be able to wake up. Too weak to move, no way to feed themselves. They’ll die soon.”
“How strange. Is there no one caring for them?”
Asha looked around the shadowed room. She saw six bodies in tattered clothes, each one covered by a moth-eaten blanket, each of their heads near the center of the room where a cracked and stained wooden bowl sat. The bowl was empty. “I don’t know. Maybe someone else lives here, someone younger who takes care of them. A nurse or a monk or a child. Maybe they’ve gone out for food.”
“What should we do?”
Asha glanced out the window. “It’s late. We’ll stay the night here and look after these people. Hopefully their caretaker will come back soon and then we can ask about their condition. Maybe I can help. Maybe not.”
They shared an apple for supper and then the two women and their little mongoose curled up in the corner of the room and fell asleep.
From a dreamless oblivion, Asha awoke. She lay very still, peering into the darkness. There had been a sound, but she was not sure if it had been a true sound in her left ear or something stranger in her right ear. The dragon scales itched but she did not touch them. She sat up and looked around the room. Priya lay snoring on her back with the little mongoose Jagdish curled up in her hair. The six elderly sleepers appeared unchanged, all lying at different angles to fill the floor space according to their heights with their heads all clustered in the center of the room and their legs spiraling crookedly out to the walls.
A soft thump drew Asha’s gaze to the center of the room where the bowl made a black circle in the shadows. Beside the bowl a small black shape rested on the floor. Round but lumpy, the thing teetered and rocked for a moment before coming to a stop. She looked up and saw several holes in the roof thatching all large enough that she might put her whole arm through them. Outside a light breeze troubled the trees and the leaves shushed and sighed like a wave crashing over a beach and a second thump sounded in the center of the room. Asha peered into the shadows and saw another little black shape rolling inside the bowl with a third one next to it.
She crept to the bowl and picked up one of the little black objects and found it was a fruit, though not one she recognized. It had a rough, wrinkled, leathery skin covered in prickly little hairs. Asha held the fruit to her ear, listening for the telltale thrum of life, the sound of the seed’s tiny, unborn plant soul. After a moment she heard it. The fruit rang like a silver coin flung into the air to spin on the wind.
“No.”
Asha stumbled away from the bowl and tripped over someone’s legs, falling back hard on her rear with the fruit clutched in her fist. “Who? Who’s there?”
Silence. Asha stared around the room. Priya was still sleeping soundly in the corner. And when Asha turned her right ear from side to side, she heard only the aetheric hums and whines and booms of the forest, the insects, the birds, and the six old people lying on the floor. Souls everywhere, but none of them new.
“Please.”
Asha looked down and saw a wrinkled face with yellowing eyes staring up at her. The old woman was drawn and thin, weathered and withered like an old tree desiccated by the sun and the wind in some dry and thirsty land.
“You’re awake.” Asha knelt beside the woman and cradled her fragile head in her hands. “Why are you all alone here? Who is taking care of you?”
“Fruit.” The woman shook her clawing fingers at the morsel in Asha’s hand.
Asha gave the rough little fruit to the woman, who gently pressed it whole between her lips. After a moment of awkward jawing and grunting, she swallowed it. The woman smiled. “Thank you.”
Asha leaned down close to the woman’s face, trying to inspect her eyes and mouth in the darkness. “Is there someone coming to care for you?”
“No,” the woman whispered. “We’re alone.”
“But you’re dying.”
“No. Not dying.”
Asha frowned. “Go back to sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”
The woman closed her eyes.
3
When the sun’s first pale pinks and yellows streaked the sky, Asha was still awake. She sat in the corner with her back against the wall, staring out across the room. Priya yawned and sat up. Jagdish rolled out of her hair, shook himself from whiskers to tail, and then squeaked for his breakfast. Priya nudged the little mongoose away and he scampered out the door in search of his own food.
“Did you sleep well?” the nun asked.
“I spoke to that woman.” Asha pointed at one of the motionless figures. Then she pressed one of the rough fruits into her friend’s hand. “I heard these falling through the roof. Eight of them fell into the room during the night.”
Priya rolled the tiny fruit in her palm. “What is it?”
“It looks like a gurbir, almost like a strawberry. But different. Darker and rougher.” Asha took the fruit back. “Don’t eat them.”
