Leena Mishra
The train wound its way through the folds of the mountains like an old memory refusing to fade, screeching at curves where the mist clung thick to the windows and blurred everything into water and white. Rhea Kapoor pressed her forehead to the glass, her phone long dead, her city life now just a bundle of buzzing silence inside her bag. Delhi had been too loud, too fast, too brutal, each day a race against something she could not name, and she had fled without much of a plan, booking the first guesthouse she found online in a hill station she had never been to. All she knew was that it lay somewhere between the pines and the clouds, a place once held by the British and now just another dot on a tourist map, though the photographs had shown something older, something slower, something that breathed at its own pace. When the train finally sighed into the small station at dusk, she stepped out into a thin drizzle, the kind of rain that did not soak but clung like breath, and she felt her lungs opening in a way they had not in years. The taxi stand was a crooked row of jeeps with drivers sipping tea from steel cups, their eyes glancing at her city shoes and her suitcase, and she picked one at random, a quiet man with sharp cheekbones who nodded when she mentioned the guesthouse name. The drive uphill was a tunnel of shadows and whispers, pine needles littering the road, monkeys darting across the headlights, and the driver spoke only once, saying, “That place has old walls. People say the hills remember there.” She did not ask what he meant.
The guesthouse sat on a ridge like a tired guardian, its roof slanting low against the clouds, windows shuttered with peeling green paint. Inside, the air smelled of woodsmoke and rain, and an old woman at the desk greeted her with a smile that seemed both welcoming and weary. “You’re from the plains,” she said, as if she could smell the dust of Delhi still clinging to Rhea’s skin. Her room was small but clean, with a bed covered in a thick quilt and a single lantern glowing in the corner. Yet the corridor outside was lined with doors, most bolted, and one at the very end had a heavy lock, rusted but firm, and when Rhea asked casually about it, the woman only said, “That room has not been opened for many years. Sleep well, child,” and walked away. That night, Rhea lay awake listening to the rain drum on the tin roof, and though the house was quiet, she thought she heard a faint hum, like a throat clearing somewhere deep in the corridor. She told herself it was only the rain sneaking through cracks in the old wood.
Morning arrived pale and blue, clouds rolling in waves over the valley below. Rhea decided to walk into the town square, her sneakers crunching gravel, her breath white in the air. The bazaar was a small strip of tea shops, Tibetan stalls with prayer flags, and a bookstore that smelled of damp paper. People looked at her with polite curiosity, but none spoke, until she stopped to buy momos at a stall where a young man with windburnt cheeks and kind eyes said, “You are new here.” He introduced himself as Arjun Thapa, a trekking guide, though he laughed when she raised an eyebrow at his youthful face. “I take people where the maps end,” he said, “to trails even the forest has half-forgotten.” Something in his tone intrigued her, and when she admitted she was only here to wander, he offered to show her a trail the next morning.
That evening back at the guesthouse, Rhea sat by the window with her notebook, trying to sketch the outline of the hills, but her pencil moved on its own, scratching out a shape she did not recognize—a crumbling church, ivy crawling over its arches, a bell tower cracked open like a wound. She frowned, flipping to a fresh page, but again the lines curved into the same ruin, as if her hand were guided by something unseen. Outside, the mist thickened, pressing its face against the glass. The locked door at the corridor’s end gave a faint shiver as she passed by on her way to bed, though no wind stirred.
Sleep came late, heavy with half-dreams. She saw a woman in a white shawl standing on a cliff, her face blurred by fog, calling in a voice that was not entirely human. Rhea woke with her heart racing, the echo of that call lodged in her ears, and when she opened her notebook again, she found words scribbled under the sketch she did not remember writing: The hills do not forget. The clouds carry their names.
When dawn came, Arjun was waiting outside with two steaming cups of tea, smiling as if they had known each other longer than a day. They set off along a winding path behind the bazaar, through deodar forests wet with dew, the air filled with birdcall and the faint scent of pine resin. He told her stories as they walked—of soldiers who had vanished into the mist during the British retreat, of lovers who met in secret caves and were swallowed by landslides, of a trail that no map showed anymore because travelers who took it never returned. His words sounded half like warnings, half like invitations, and Rhea listened, her chest tightening with a strange pull, as if the mountains themselves leaned closer to hear her breath.
By noon they reached a ridge from where the valley unfurled in green and grey, tea gardens spilling down the slopes, clouds curling between peaks like smoke. Rhea felt something stir deep inside, a recognition she could not name, as though she had walked here long ago in another life. She turned to Arjun, wanting to speak, but at that moment a gust of wind carried a sound across the valley, faint but clear—the toll of a bell. It came once, twice, and then was gone, swallowed by the mist. Arjun stiffened, his eyes narrowing. “There is no church here anymore,” he said quietly. Rhea’s hand shook, the image of her sketch burning in her mind. And in that instant she knew: the hills had already marked her arrival.
The bell’s echo clung to Rhea’s skin long after the valley swallowed it, a sound too solid to be just the wind, and she felt her throat tighten as if she had answered a question unasked. Arjun’s eyes searched her face, his jaw tense, but he said nothing more, only gestured that they should head down the ridge before the mist thickened. The trail narrowed into a tunnel of trees, their branches weaving a ceiling that filtered the light into shifting green shadows, and the silence here was heavier, the kind that pressed against the ribs. Rhea tried to shake off the unease, yet her notebook weighed strangely in her bag as though it carried more than paper. She remembered the woman in her dream, the shawl lifting in the wind, the blurred face calling across the void, and she wondered if the mountains could plant dreams inside those who dared listen.
They reached a clearing where moss-covered stones jutted like forgotten teeth, and Arjun paused. “This used to be an old British bungalow,” he said, crouching to brush away the wet leaves from a step that led nowhere. “Burnt down in a fire before Independence. People said the owner’s daughter vanished one night, and the family left soon after. Since then, the ground hasn’t wanted to hold another roof.” Rhea touched the stone, cold and slick, and in that instant a shiver ran through her fingers, like the brief brush of another hand. She pulled back sharply. Arjun raised an eyebrow but did not press, instead offering her water from a steel flask. “The hills remember,” he said simply, echoing the driver’s words from her arrival.
By the time they returned to the town square, evening had folded itself into the slopes, lamps flickering in shopfronts, the smell of thukpa curling in the air. Rhea lingered at the bookstore, its shelves sagging with damp pages, and her eyes fell upon a brittle volume titled Echoes of the Raj Hills. Inside, penciled notes ran along the margins in a fine hand, dated 1917, mentioning a church on the eastern ridge, a church that, according to Arjun, no longer existed. She bought the book, though the shopkeeper looked at it as if surprised anyone still touched those mildewed spines. Back at the guesthouse, the old woman at the desk eyed the book too, her smile thin. “The past comes back when it wants, not when we call it,” she murmured before turning away.
That night, Rhea sat by the lantern, turning the pages until she reached an entry that described a bell tower struck by lightning. The margins held another note, written shakier than the rest: She walks the ridge at dusk. Her shawl is white. Rhea’s breath caught, her dream sliding into place like a puzzle piece. She closed the book, heart hammering, and tried to sleep, but the corridor hummed again, low and steady. The locked door at the end seemed almost alive, its rusted lock gleaming faintly in the lantern light. She dreamed of footsteps pacing beyond it, slow and patient.
At dawn she rose with a resolve she did not fully understand. Arjun was waiting again, this time with a pack slung over his shoulder, as if he had known she would come. “Today,” he said, “we take the eastern ridge.” They walked through the bazaar, where the air was sharper, the shopkeepers quieter, as though word of their direction had already spread. The trail rose steeply, steps carved into rock, prayer flags whipping above them. Clouds gathered fast, dragging their shadows across the valley, and soon only the sound of their breath and boots filled the world.
Halfway up, they reached a meadow where wildflowers bent under the mist, and beyond it loomed the ruin Rhea had sketched without ever seeing: the church, its walls half-collapsed, ivy gnawing at stone, the bell tower cracked open like a ribcage. Rhea froze, her notebook heavy in her bag, every line she had drawn unfolding before her eyes. The bell itself was gone, but the air seemed to hum with its memory. Arjun’s face was unreadable. “No one comes here anymore,” he said softly. “They say the last service was held before the war. Then one day, the priest was found gone, and the records too. Just silence left.”
Inside, the floor was littered with shards of stained glass, blue and red fragments that glimmered even in the weak light. At the altar lay a bundle of papers, damp but intact, tied with twine. Rhea’s fingers trembled as she untied them, revealing letters in neat cursive. They were addressed to no one, signed only with an initial: M. The first lines made her breath falter: If the mist swallows me, remember I walked these hills for love, not faith. The clouds will carry my name. She glanced at Arjun, who stared at her notebook now open on the ground, the same words scrawled in her own handwriting days before.
A gust of wind swept through the ruins then, scattering the glass shards, and in its wake came the faintest sound—the toll of a bell, single and mournful. Rhea felt it vibrate in her bones. Arjun gripped her arm, his voice low. “You should not be here after dusk. The hills hold their own prayers.” Yet even as he spoke, Rhea felt a pull, not of fear but of recognition, as if someone were waiting, patient as the mist, for her to listen.
They hurried back down as clouds thickened, the path narrowing into shadows. Rhea clutched the letters, her mind racing with images of the woman in the white shawl, the silent church, the humming locked room in the guesthouse. Each thread was weaving into another, and she could not tell whether she was walking through her own life or into someone else’s unfinished story. When they reached the bazaar, lights flickered awake in the dusk, and Arjun paused before leaving her at the guesthouse gate. “The mountains choose who to speak to,” he said, his eyes searching hers. “Now they have chosen you.”
That night, the rain came harder, battering the roof, and the corridor outside her room throbbed with that low hum again. The locked door at the end rattled once, then fell silent. On her table lay the letters she had carried back, but a new line appeared on the top sheet, the ink wet as if freshly written: Tomorrow, you will hear me clearer.
Rhea sat frozen, the lantern flickering, and understood that whatever the hills carried in their clouds was no longer a story of the past alone. It had begun to fold her into its pages.
The rain softened by dawn but the air in the guesthouse carried a metallic tang, as though the walls themselves had been listening through the night. Rhea sat at her desk, the bundle of letters open before her, the newest line still gleaming faintly as if ink could travel through time. She traced the handwriting with her finger—delicate, deliberate—and whispered the words aloud: Tomorrow, you will hear me clearer. The corridor outside was hushed but alive, the locked door at the end pulsing in her mind like a heartbeat. She wanted to ask the old woman about it, but something told her the answer would be silence, the kind that guarded more than it revealed.
Instead she carried the letters with her when she met Arjun at the tea stall. He eyed her pale face but said nothing until she placed the bundle between them. His expression darkened as he lifted one page carefully. “These are not things that should just fall into your hands,” he muttered. “Most visitors buy prayer beads and wool shawls. You—” He stopped, shaking his head. “The hills must want you to know.” Rhea sipped her tea, the steam fogging her glasses, and asked quietly, “Do you believe the mountains choose people?” Arjun’s gaze was steady. “I believe memory is heavier here. We carry it in our bones, and sometimes the mountains lend it to strangers too.”
They climbed again that day, though not to the church but deeper into the forest where the trail narrowed between cliffs. Arjun said the ridge once connected to an old post road used during the Raj, though now only shepherds dared walk it. Along the way, Rhea read from the letters. Most were fragments, describing walks at dusk, secret meetings under pine canopies, fears of being discovered. One line made her stumble: I hear the bells even when they do not ring. I think the hills are echoing my name. She looked at Arjun sharply. “This is what we heard.” He did not reply, only adjusted his pace.
By afternoon they reached a cave, its entrance veiled by hanging roots. Inside it smelled of earth and damp moss, but carved into the wall were initials: M + A. Rhea touched the grooves, the stone cold yet vibrating faintly under her skin. Arjun’s face was grim. “There was a story,” he said slowly, “about a young Anglo-Indian woman and a Nepali clerk who worked for the British. They met in secret, wrote letters, promised each other a life the world wouldn’t allow. Then she vanished, and he… he was found at the base of this cliff.” He looked at her, eyes sharp. “Her name was said to begin with M. No one knows if she fell, or if the mountains took her.”
The cave was silent except for the dripping water, but Rhea felt the pressure of unseen eyes. She tucked the letters close to her chest and whispered into the dark, “What happened to you?” For a moment, nothing. Then a gust of cold air swept through, and she heard it—soft, almost tender—the toll of a bell, but this time it came from inside the cave. Arjun pulled her back, his hand firm on her arm. “Not now,” he said harshly. “If you answer, you may not come back.”
They returned at dusk, the path shadowed by crows wheeling above. The bazaar glowed with lanterns, but the people’s glances lingered on them longer than before, as if they too sensed something clinging to Rhea’s shoulders. At the guesthouse, the old woman waited by the desk, her eyes clouded with something like pity. “You went to the cave,” she said flatly. Rhea froze. The woman shook her head. “Some rooms should remain locked, child. Not all doors are meant for opening.” Rhea thought of the bolted corridor, of the ink that appeared without her hand, and a fierce curiosity rose inside her. She wanted answers, even if the hills demanded a price.
That night, she left her lantern burning and spread the letters across the quilt. One page seemed newer, its edges less brittle. She had not seen it before. Her heart raced as she unfolded it. The handwriting was hers. Not identical, but close enough to make her blood run cold. It read: I walk the ridge tomorrow. Meet me by the church. If I vanish, let the clouds carry my name until another finds it. Rhea clutched the page, her breath uneven. The rain outside had stopped, yet from the corridor came the sound of steady footsteps. She held still, listening. They moved slowly, past her door, down the hall, stopping before the locked room. The lock rattled once, then twice, then silence.
She could not sleep. At dawn, with dark circles under her eyes, she met Arjun again. He saw the new page and his face hardened. “The hills are writing through you now,” he said. “This is not just memory—it is a loop, pulling you inside. If you go to the ridge tomorrow—” He did not finish, but his eyes told her enough. Rhea tightened her grip on the letter. “Maybe that’s why I’m here.”
They walked again into the forest, though this time Rhea felt less like a visitor and more like a piece sliding into its place. The letters whispered in her mind, the bell’s toll vibrating in her bones. At the edge of another ridge, they found ruins of an old watchtower, its stones half-buried in weeds. Carved faintly into one side was a phrase in English: We loved, and the mist kept our secret. Rhea’s vision blurred. She thought she saw the woman in white again, standing on the far edge, her shawl rippling like a flag. But when she blinked, the space was empty.
Back in the guesthouse that evening, Rhea could not resist. She walked down the corridor to the locked door, her lantern shaking in her hand. The lock gleamed, its metal surprisingly clean for something unused. She reached out, fingers grazing it, and felt a jolt like lightning up her arm. Her ears rang, and faintly—just faintly—she heard a woman’s voice whisper: Tomorrow, we walk together.
Rhea staggered back, the lantern nearly falling. The corridor was empty, but the hum was louder than ever. She returned to her room, sat at the desk, and opened her notebook. Her hand moved without thought, sketching again, the pencil racing across the page. When she stopped, she stared in shock: it was herself she had drawn, standing at the edge of the church ruins, her face blurred by mist, her shawl white.
For the first time since arriving, fear truly gripped her. Yet beneath it, a strange acceptance bloomed, like recognition. Perhaps she had not come here by accident at all. Perhaps the hills had been waiting.
Morning cracked open with a thin, silver light and the smell of wet wood, and Rhea felt as if the guesthouse itself had been holding its breath all night waiting for her to wake; the letters lay on the table like small sleeping birds, and the sketch of herself at the ruined church stared back with a calm that frightened her more than any ghost story could. Down in the lobby, the old woman was already at the desk, a kettle hissing nearby, her eyes following Rhea as if the younger woman had grown a second shadow. “Aunty,” Rhea said softly, surprised at the affection the word carried, “what is behind that locked door?” The woman’s fingers paused on the chipped saucer; she had the kind of face that seemed carved by weather, lines like riverbeds mapping years of keeping quiet. “Names,” she said at last, and the word landed between them with a weight that was not metaphor. When Rhea did not move, the woman sighed, reached below the desk, and placed an old iron key on the counter, its teeth freckled with rust, its handle polished by long, careful hands. “If you open it, you do not do it alone,” she warned, voice low. “The hills listen for that sound.” Rhea nodded, a tremor of resolve running through her skin. She found Arjun at the tea stall where he always seemed to be, as if the mountain had appointed him her chaperone; when she showed him the key, his jaw tightened, yet he did not refuse. “If the room is part of the story,” he said, eyes steady on hers, “then the room will speak whether we knock or not.”
They returned to the guesthouse together, the corridor stretching ahead like a throat, doors on either side shut tight as eyelids, the light at the far end thinning into mist; the locked door looked smaller than it had in Rhea’s fear, and yet the air pooled thicker around it, the way air does before rain. The key slid in too smoothly for a thing long unused, and when Rhea turned it, something inside gave with a sound like an exhale. The door swung inward, carrying a cool breath from the past; the room smelled of cedar and old linen, a faint trace of lavender buried under dust. Against the far wall stood a small dressing table with a mirror veined by a lightning crack, and in that broken river of glass Rhea saw herself in pieces, a face traveling in shards; beside the mirror, a trunk waited with its leather straps still intact. Arjun stayed by the door, his fingers grazing the frame as if testing the threshold for heat. “Careful,” he murmured, though he did not say of what. Rhea knelt by the trunk and unbuckled the straps; they lifted with a reluctant kindness, and inside lay the careful remains of a life: a white shawl folded with devotion, its edges frayed to a softness that made her throat ache; a handful of papers tied with ribbon more shadow than cloth now; a small bell-rope tassel, blue thread faded to the color of rain; and in a wooden frame, a sepia photograph of a young woman with eyes like lit water. On the back of the frame, in a slanted hand, a single initial: M. Rhea turned the photo toward Arjun, and for a heartbeat his face emptied of the present; he stepped forward, lifted the photograph, and studied the edge where another figure stood half-cropped, a man in a plain wool coat with a stubborn mouth and a gentleness tucked badly inside it. “I have seen this man,” Arjun whispered, his voice rough with old gravel. “My grandmother kept a box of pictures. Her father’s brother—Amrit Thapa. He worked for the British when he was young. They said he died on a cliff after ‘some scandal’ they never spoke of.” He looked up, meeting Rhea’s eyes across the years. “The letter’s A.” The room seemed to tilt slightly, like a boat waking to the pull of tide. Rhea lifted the ribboned bundle; the top page held a date—June 1917—and words that felt fresh as rain: If we cannot ring the bell, we will let the sky be our altar. If we cannot sign our names, we will let the clouds carry them. Beneath, a sketched line-map of the ridge, a dotted path curling past a mark that read Thunder Stone, past another marked Storm Crossing, ending with a small cross where someone had written We keep our promise. The bell-rope tassel lay cool and obedient in Rhea’s palm; when she touched it, a vibration traveled through her bones, the faintest, most impossible ringing. “They meant to meet at the tower,” she said, almost to herself. “When the church was closed. To make their vow to the mountains instead.” Arjun nodded once, grief and wonder braided tight in his throat. “And the bell… even after it broke… they still hear it,” Rhea said, the idea no longer strange but inevitable.
On the mirror’s cracked skin, the mist of Rhea’s breath drew a bloom that faded and then gathered again as if guided by a hand on the other side; letters formed slowly, the way frost writes on a window: Not alone. Rhea stepped back, her heartbeat stumbling, and the words blurred, then steadied: Bring him. Arjun’s gaze met the message and did not argue; perhaps there is a point beyond which disbelief becomes an arrogance you cannot afford in the mountains. He exhaled, a small bow of acceptance. “At dusk?” he asked, and the bell-rope in Rhea’s hand trembled as if in answer. They left the room as they found it, except for the letter-map and the tassel and the photograph which Rhea could not force herself to return; at the threshold she hesitated, then draped the white shawl over her shoulder, its fabric light but anchoring, a close-weather comfort, and the moment it touched her skin the low hum she’d felt for days softened into a calm like a hand placed between her shoulder blades. Aunty Agnes stood in the lobby when they emerged, the iron key in her palm, eyes watching the shawl with a sadness that made Rhea understand she had broken not a rule but a promise. “That room was hers,” Agnes said, voice thin. “She was the vicar’s ward after her mother died. They kept her like a song trapped in a box. The hills do not like boxes.” Rhea’s throat tightened. “Her name?” A small, stubborn smile lifted the corners of the old woman’s mouth as if protecting something for one last second, then she surrendered it like a prayer. “Mira Maryon,” she said. “But everyone just said Mira. It was easier when you never meant to say it aloud.”
The afternoon leaned into the valley like a slow question and the sky lowered its brow; Rhea and Arjun climbed toward the eastern ridge with the shawl and the bell-tassel and the letter-map folded into a pocket and a coil of silence wound tightly between them. The forest gathered around, fir needles dark with damp, birds stitching small sounds into the cloth of air; at the place the map called Thunder Stone, a boulder shaped like a sleeping ear listened to their breath and returned nothing, and at Storm Crossing a narrow notch cut by monsoon water asked their balance for passage. Arjun moved with the confidence of someone taught by ridgelines; Rhea followed the path as if reading a sentence she somehow already knew by heart. As the ruined tower lifted through the mist like a ribcage again, a wind rose from nowhere, and the sound came—low, singular, the ghost bell tolling once, then twice, the second note hanging longer than any metal could hold. The clouds at the edge of the valley folded inward like a closing book, and in that becoming-dark Rhea saw her: the white shawl not on her shoulder now but crossing the distance, a woman’s figure at the broken arch, her face still and not-quite visible, the edges of her hair frosted with damp light. “Mira,” Rhea said without meaning to, her voice finding the name like a river finding its old riverbed. The figure did not move, but the air itself seemed to answer, the bell tremor running through the marrow of stone. Arjun’s hand found Rhea’s wrist; he did not squeeze, he anchored. “We do not step beyond the arch after dusk,” he whispered, and the way he said we made something warm settle where fear had wanted to live. Rhea held up the tassel and the wind played it like a small instrument; the bell’s echo slid over their skin like a blessing bruised by time. On the letter-map, at the cross marked We keep our promise, a water spot darkened as if the page too had begun to breathe. “You asked us to come together,” Rhea said, her words smoke in the cold, and the figure at the arch tilted her head the smallest degree, as if the past were a bird listening for grain. The tower’s broken side groaned, a stone shifting in its sleep, and somewhere below them the mountain gave a sound like a slow door opening; Rhea took one step forward—one—and the shawl tightened around her shoulders like a warning and a welcome braided in the same thread, and Arjun’s grip, steady as a rope across a gorge, held her exactly where she needed to be between leaving and belonging, while the clouds, thick with names, began to move.
The bell’s echo did not fade this time; it clung to the stone ribs of the ruined tower, vibrating through air and skin until Rhea felt her teeth ache with the sound of it, as though the valley itself had swallowed a secret too long and now wanted it spoken. The figure in the arch remained still, her shawl lifting and settling with the mountain wind, but something about her posture—waiting, almost patient—pulled Rhea forward in ways she did not understand. Arjun’s grip held her steady, yet his face was pale, his eyes locked on the white shawl that seemed too familiar now draped across Rhea’s own shoulders. “This is their place,” he whispered, and his voice carried the weight of inheritance, the grief of stories whispered at firesides but never fully told.
Rhea raised the tassel, the blue threads fluttering like a vein of sky against the greys of stone. The bell-note shivered through it again, and this time words surfaced, not in the air but inside her bones: Finish what we began. She looked at Arjun, and for a heartbeat she saw not only him but another man layered across his face, the jaw softer, the coat woolen, the eyes carrying the same stubborn gentleness she had glimpsed in the photograph from the trunk. Amrit Thapa. The overlap blurred and then steadied, as if the ridge could not tell the difference anymore between the living and the remembered. Arjun seemed to feel it too; his breath caught, his hands trembled, and he looked down at Rhea as though he had known her far longer than three days.
The tower groaned, a stone loosening, dust falling like tired snow. The figure in the arch finally moved, tilting her head toward the ruined altar where shards of glass still glittered faintly in the mist. Rhea stepped closer, her feet finding grooves in the earth as if rehearsed. She laid the tassel on the broken wood, the shawl tightening around her shoulders in acknowledgment, and the letters she had folded into her pocket warmed as if lit by an unseen flame. She unfolded one at random and read aloud, her voice carrying though the air was heavy: If the world cannot keep our vow, let the hills do it for us. Let the bell toll even when it lies broken. Let the clouds carry our names until someone calls them again. The sound of the bell followed, low and aching, and the woman in the arch raised her hand, a gesture both blessing and farewell.
Arjun dropped to his knees, unbidden, his forehead nearly touching the damp stone, and Rhea felt herself bow too, not to a ghost but to the enormity of memory itself. The mist thickened, swirling until the figure blurred into it, shawl and hair dissolving into cloud. For a long time nothing moved, only the sound of their breath and the bell’s lingering hum. Then, slowly, the air cleared, and where the woman had stood, there was nothing but an opening onto the valley, clouds rolling like tides beneath them. Rhea’s shawl slipped slightly, its edge damp with dew, and she realized it no longer belonged to her—it belonged to the hills, to Mira, to every unfinished love that had been folded into these stones. She draped it over the altar, letting it rest where the vows had lived, and the moment it left her shoulders the humming in her bones softened into peace.
When they descended, the forest seemed lighter, the birds more insistent, the ground less heavy beneath their boots. Yet something in Arjun had changed; his silence was no longer guarded but contemplative, as though a door inside him had been opened and was still adjusting to the light. In the bazaar, people looked at them differently—some with curiosity, some with quiet nods as if they had always known such a moment would arrive. At the guesthouse, Aunty Agnes was waiting, her hands clasped tight. She looked at Rhea’s empty shoulders and then at Arjun’s face, and she exhaled, a soft prayer of relief. “She walked with you,” she said. “I can see it in your eyes. She doesn’t wait anymore.”
That night, Rhea slept without dreams for the first time since arriving. The corridor was silent, the locked room no longer humming. When she woke, the letters were gone, though she had left them on her desk. In their place was the photograph from the trunk—Mira and Amrit together, the crop no longer cutting him off, the frame whole, the image clearer, as if the mountains had developed it fresh for her. On the back, where once there had been only an initial, there were now two names written in firm strokes: Mira Maryon. Amrit Thapa.
At breakfast, Arjun joined her quietly, his eyes softer than the day before. They ate without words until he finally said, “Some stories are not meant to end in silence. The mountains kept them until someone arrived who could listen.” He looked at her directly then. “You listened.” Rhea felt heat rise in her cheeks, not from pride but from the sudden intimacy of his gratitude. She smiled faintly. “Maybe I was meant to,” she said.
The days that followed unfurled like clear mornings after storm. Rhea walked the trails with Arjun, sometimes speaking, sometimes letting silence carry the weight of what they had witnessed. The mist still came, but it no longer pressed against her ribs; it felt like company, not warning. She sketched again, and her hands obeyed her will this time, capturing the ridge, the bazaar, the curve of Arjun’s profile as he pointed out distant peaks. The notebook filled with images that belonged to her alone, not borrowed echoes.
On her last evening, she stood at the ridge one final time. The tower still crumbled, the altar still broken, but the air felt different—emptied, yet not hollow. She whispered the names aloud: “Mira. Amrit.” The valley answered not with bells but with silence, the good kind, the kind that seals a wound. Rhea knew she would leave in the morning, return to the city and its unrelenting pace, but she also knew she carried something she had not before—proof that love, even unfulfilled, could carve itself into stone and mist until someone set it free.
As she walked back, Arjun caught up beside her, matching her pace. They did not speak of the future or of promises, but when his hand brushed hers, she did not pull away. For now, it was enough to walk together, their shadows long on the path, while above them the clouds drifted quietly, lighter at last, carrying no names but their own.
The valley seemed lighter after Mira and Amrit’s names were spoken, yet the silence that followed did not feel like an ending; it felt like a pause, a page turned but not closed, and Rhea sensed it even as she walked the bazaar with Arjun two mornings later. The air had sharpened after rain, prayer flags snapped bright above the lanes, and the world should have felt ordinary again, but something in her bones knew the mountains had more to say. She carried the photograph always now, tucked inside her notebook, and each time she looked at it she felt both warmth and unease, as if a completed story could still ripple outward. That morning, when she stopped at the old bookstore again, the shopkeeper—a man whose face was lined like paper left too long in the sun—slid a small wooden box across the counter without explanation. “Found it behind the shelves,” he said. “Figured it belonged with you.” Inside lay scraps of paper bound in twine, brittle and singed at the edges, written in both English and Hindi. The first page, dated 1920, spoke not of love but of codes, trails, meetings at midnight. At the top someone had scrawled: For the hills are kind to secrets.
Rhea showed them to Arjun at the tea stall, her pulse quick with recognition. He read silently, his brows drawn. “These aren’t Mira’s,” he said. “These are later. Rebels used this town. My grandfather used to whisper that couriers carried letters through the ridges, right under the noses of the British.” He tapped a line written in Hindi, the ink faded but legible: The bell will ring when the message is safe. His mouth tightened. “Mira and Amrit may have been more than lovers. They could have been messengers too.” The idea expanded between them, unsettling and thrilling. Rhea thought of the bell tolling when no metal hung in the tower, of the tassel trembling in her palm. Perhaps it had been more than a lover’s vow. Perhaps the hills had kept more than one promise.
Arjun suggested they walk farther that day, to a ridge few visitors touched. The trail began behind a Tibetan monastery, climbing through forests so dense the air turned green. The monks they passed nodded, eyes curious but not unkind, and one old monk touched Rhea’s sleeve gently, murmuring a blessing she did not understand but felt like a thread tied around her wrist. The climb was harder than the others, stones slick with moss, steps cut long ago by hands that expected armies of boots. At a bend they found a milestone half-buried in weeds, its lettering chipped but readable: Jhilmil Crossing – 2 miles. Arjun grew quiet then. “My grandfather used to mention Jhilmil. He said a fire once lit the ridge at night, signals passed from torch to torch. They said the British feared that light more than guns.” He looked at her. “The papers you found mention fires too.”
By late afternoon they reached a plateau where the clouds pooled thick as milk. The ruins of a stone watch-post crouched there, roofless, its walls still blackened with soot. Inside, on the floor, lay more scraps of paper, hidden beneath a loose stone. Rhea lifted them carefully, her fingers trembling. These were addressed, unlike Mira’s letters. Names signed boldly: R. Mukherjee. A. Thapa. M. Maryon. Rhea’s breath caught. Mira’s name again, but not as lover now—as participant, conspirator. Arjun bent over the pages, his lips moving silently as he read. “They carried messages,” he said, wonder mixing with sorrow. “She wasn’t just a girl who fell in love. She walked with rebels. My blood is in these pages.” His hands shook slightly as he held them.
The mist thickened suddenly, swallowing the valley below. In its swirl came the faint glow of light, as though torches still burned on the ridge. Rhea blinked, but the glow held, trembling against the fog. She heard voices too, urgent but muffled, the cadence of people passing words hand to hand. Arjun gripped her arm, his face pale but fierce. “Do you hear them?” he whispered. She nodded, her chest pounding. The air shifted then, and a single line of sound lifted through the mist: the bell again, but this time faster, insistent, not mournful but urgent, like a call to move, to run, to act. Rhea felt her throat tighten. “They’re still carrying the message,” she said.
The watch-post seemed to breathe, its blackened stones humming faintly. Rhea laid the new bundle of letters on the ground, unsure what else to do. The glow flickered stronger for a moment, then softened, as if the valley had acknowledged her offering. When the mist finally broke, the light was gone, leaving only the empty plateau and the weight of history pressed into stone. Arjun bent and touched the ground with his palm. “They never told us this,” he said. “Not in school, not in the stories. Mira and Amrit’s love wasn’t just a scandal. It was a shield. They hid words in vows. They kept the fire alive.” He looked at Rhea, his eyes burning. “And now we know.”
They returned as dusk pulled its shawl across the slopes. In the bazaar, a group of older men were sitting by the tea shop, their eyes following Arjun with quiet recognition. One of them rose, a thin man with white hair, and said softly, “Your grandfather’s blood walked with theirs.” Arjun stopped, startled. The man nodded once. “We remember.” Then he sat again, sipping his tea, as though nothing unusual had passed.
Back at the guesthouse, Rhea could not sleep. The locked room remained silent, but her notebook filled again, not with sketches she could not explain but with words, lines she had not chosen: When the bell rings without metal, listen. When the fire glows without flame, follow. The hills still carry what the world forgot. She read the lines aloud to herself, her voice low in the lantern light, and for the first time she did not feel afraid. The story had not ended at Mira and Amrit’s vow; it had folded outward, carrying rebellion, memory, names. And now it had reached her.
She lay down, staring at the ceiling where the shadows shifted with the lantern flame. Tomorrow, she knew, the hills would call again. Not with ghosts this time, but with voices still waiting for their words to be heard. And somewhere deep inside, Rhea understood that she was no longer only a visitor here. She was becoming part of the promise the mountains had made long ago, a thread woven into mist, carrying names not yet finished.
The morning air was clear as glass, each pine needle glistening with dew, yet Rhea felt a tension threaded beneath the calm, as if the hills were holding their breath. She walked with Arjun through the bazaar, their steps unhurried, but the bundle of rebel letters pressed against her side like a second heartbeat. They stopped at the tea stall, where the old men sat again, quiet as stones. This time one spoke before they even ordered. “The Jhilmil fire,” he said, his voice brittle but sure. “My father saw it once, in ’42. He said it carried the cry of freedom further than guns could.” His gaze settled on Arjun. “Your blood was there, boy. Don’t forget.” Arjun’s jaw tightened, but he bowed his head slightly, the gesture both acknowledgment and burden.
Later, as they climbed the trail toward the ridge again, Arjun said nothing for a long time. The silence pressed heavy until finally he spoke. “I grew up hearing fragments. My grandfather would talk in half-phrases, stop himself, shake his head. My father never mentioned it at all. Now I see why. They wanted to protect us. To keep the story buried, because stories are dangerous when the wrong ears listen.” He looked at her, his eyes shadowed. “But the hills don’t let stories die.”
At the ruined watch-post, the mist was already gathering, curling low over the ground. Rhea laid out the letters carefully, as though setting an altar, and Arjun placed a stone on top to keep them from lifting into the air. As soon as he did, the valley stirred—the faint glow flickered again, stronger now, outlining the ridge in a trembling fire that could not have come from this century. Voices rose in the mist, clearer this time, snatches of speech in Hindi and English, urgent, determined. Rhea closed her eyes, letting the sound wash through her, and words formed on her tongue without thought: “Carry it east. Through the monastery pass. Light the next torch.” She startled herself, but Arjun only gripped her arm. “You’re hearing them,” he said quietly. “The rebels. The couriers. You’re carrying their voices.”
The fireline stretched across the clouds, brighter, alive. In its glow, Rhea saw fleeting shapes—men and women with satchels strapped to their shoulders, shawls pulled tight, their faces blurred by time but their movements certain. Among them, she thought she glimpsed Mira again, her white shawl lifted in the smoke, passing a paper to Amrit, whose hands were steady despite the storm raging around them. Rhea gasped, tears stinging her eyes. “They’re still walking,” she whispered. “Still passing the message.”
The glow dimmed as suddenly as it had risen, leaving only the watch-post and the letters on the ground. But the air was charged, alive, as if every tree on the ridge leaned closer to listen. Arjun crouched, lifting one of the letters. “Look,” he said. The ink shimmered faintly, as though wet though the paper was dry. New words had appeared, curling across the margin in a hand neither of them recognized: Do not let the names end with us. Rhea touched the words, the ink warm beneath her fingers, and she felt a pull inside her chest, not of fear but of responsibility.
They carried the letters back down the trail in silence. In the bazaar, a small crowd had gathered by the time they returned, locals who glanced at them with curiosity and something deeper, an unspoken acknowledgment. A monk from the monastery approached, his robe whispering against the ground, and without a word he extended his hand. Rhea placed the letters in his palm. He bowed his head and said softly, “The hills choose their keepers. You have heard them. Now you must decide if you will keep them alive.”
That night at the guesthouse, Rhea could not rest. The corridor was quiet, the locked room still, but her notebook opened itself in her lap. Her hand began to move, sketching not ruins or ghosts this time but maps—lines of fire across ridges, arrows pointing toward hidden passes, circles around villages she had never seen. When she stopped, the pages glowed faintly in the lantern light, and the names appeared beside the routes: Mukherjee, Thapa, Maryon, Singh, Bose. She stared, her chest rising fast. The hills were giving her the network, the threads that had once carried rebellion through their folds.
Arjun came when she knocked on his door, his hair tousled with sleep but his eyes alert. When he saw the notebook, his face changed. He sat beside her, tracing the lines with his finger. “These are real places,” he said. “Passes we still use. Villages I know. You’ve drawn them exactly.” His voice trembled with awe. “This is history we’ve never been taught. They trusted the hills more than the world.”
Rhea closed the notebook, her hands shaking. “Why me?” she asked, her voice raw. “Why not someone from here, someone who belongs?” Arjun looked at her steadily. “Maybe because you’re between worlds. You don’t carry the silence we were taught to keep. You listen differently. Sometimes it takes a stranger to hear what we’ve learned to ignore.” His words sank into her like rain into dry soil, frightening and comforting at once.
Before dawn, the bell tolled again—not mournful, not urgent, but steady, like the strike of a clock calling time. Rhea sat up, her heart pounding. She understood now that Mira and Amrit’s love was one thread, but the fabric was larger, woven with rebellion, sacrifice, memory. And somehow the hills had placed the fabric in her hands. She did not know yet what to do with it, but she knew she could not fold it away.
In the grey light of morning, she and Arjun stood on the ridge once more. The valley stretched beneath them, vast and quiet, but in that quiet Rhea felt the weight of names pressing, asking to be carried. She turned to him, her voice low but certain. “We can’t let it vanish again. If the clouds carry their names, then we have to be the ones who speak them.” Arjun nodded, his jaw set, his eyes shining with something fierce. “Then we speak.”
And as the sun rose, the mist lifted, and for the briefest moment, Rhea thought she saw the fire again, stretching across the hills, a chain of light that had never truly gone out, waiting for someone to notice that it still burned.
The hills woke with a restless wind, bending the tall deodars until their branches scraped the air, and Rhea knew before she opened her eyes that this would be her last day here, not because she wanted to leave but because the mountains themselves had set a rhythm and she had reached the final beat. She dressed quietly, tucking the notebook into her bag, the photograph of Mira and Amrit folded inside its pages, and when she stepped into the corridor the silence was complete, no hum, no footsteps, just a stillness that felt like expectation. At the desk Aunty Agnes looked up, her eyes softer than before. “The clouds have carried their names long enough,” she said. “Now you must carry them too.” She pressed a packet of food into Rhea’s hands, as if this were an ordinary journey, but her fingers lingered a moment, squeezing gently, a blessing hidden in a simple touch.
Arjun waited at the edge of the bazaar, a rucksack on his back, his face solemn but calm. They did not speak at first as they began the climb, the trail familiar now but heavier, as if each step pressed into more than stone. The air was clear, the sun sharp, yet mist gathered stubbornly along the ridges, moving in and out of view like breath. After an hour they reached the ruined tower again. The altar was still there, the shawl Rhea had left draped softly, untouched by weather as though the clouds had guarded it. She paused, her chest tightening. “We end it here,” she whispered. Arjun nodded.
They set the notebook on the altar, opening it to the map where routes and names glowed faintly in the morning light. The breeze lifted the pages, shuffling through sketches of ruins, ridges, fire-lines, faces she had drawn without meaning to, until it settled on the photograph tucked in the back. Mira and Amrit stared out, whole now, framed in clarity, and behind them a faint suggestion of others—men and women blurred, countless faces overlapping like echoes waiting to be remembered. Rhea touched the photograph, her hand steady. “They wanted to be more than memory,” she said softly. “They wanted to live in voices, in footsteps, in stories.” She looked at Arjun. “We can give them that.”
The bell sounded then, not faint, not mournful, but full, strong, as if a tower still stood, as if a rope had been pulled by hands eager and alive. The note rolled down the valley, struck the ridges, and returned, repeating itself again and again until the whole sky seemed to ring. In its resonance, Rhea saw the fire once more, the line stretching across the hills, torches passed hand to hand, rebels running through the night. Mira and Amrit walked among them, no longer blurred, faces bright with urgency, their hands clasped even as they carried messages. Mira turned, her eyes catching Rhea’s across time, and in that look Rhea felt no sorrow, only completion. The vow had been kept.
Arjun’s hand found hers, firm and grounding. “What now?” he asked, though his voice carried no doubt. Rhea exhaled, her breath trembling but sure. “We tell it,” she said. “Not as ghosts, not as whispers, but as history. We speak their names until the world cannot forget them again.” The bell struck once more, softer now, like agreement, then faded into silence. The mist began to lift, peeling back from the ridges, revealing valleys wide and clear, rivers glinting like threads of silver in the sun.
They walked back slowly, the weight in their steps transformed into something else—responsibility, yes, but also release. In the bazaar people paused as they passed, eyes following them with quiet recognition. The old monk from the monastery bowed deeply. Children ran beside them, laughing, unafraid. It was as though the mountains themselves had whispered ahead: the names had been carried forward, the fire lit again.
At the guesthouse, Rhea packed her bag. The shawl remained on the altar; the letters had returned to the earth; only the notebook and photograph came with her. When she stepped into the lobby, Agnes was waiting, her eyes shining with both grief and pride. “You listened,” she said simply. “That’s all the hills ever wanted.” She cupped Rhea’s face in her hands for a moment, then let go.
The jeep ride down wound through forests still wet with dew, monkeys watching from branches, prayer flags snapping farewell. Delhi waited below, loud and merciless, but Rhea no longer felt afraid of it. She carried something with her now, not a burden but a thread linking her heart to the mountains, to Mira and Amrit, to the rebels who had trusted fire and bells more than guns. Beside her, Arjun sat silent, but his hand brushed hers once, a quiet promise that their story was still unwinding.
At the bend where the valley opened wide one last time, Rhea leaned out the window, eyes on the peaks. The mist curled upward like smoke, shaping itself for a heartbeat into letters she could almost read, before dissolving into sky. She smiled through the sting in her throat. “We won’t forget,” she whispered. “Not while clouds still move, not while names still matter.”
The jeep turned, the mountains slipping out of sight, but the echo of the bell followed her, steady and sure, a sound that belonged not to the past but to the living, carrying forward, carried always.
