THE ASTROLORIST OF ZUMAR VALLEY

Madeehah Reza

When Sheuli last saw her nephew, he had been a red-faced two year old with drool dribbling down his plump chin. The man that stood on the far end of the platform couldn’t possibly have been that same baby; remnants of that cherubic countenance remained but now he was a good few inches taller than her, with wide shoulders capable of carrying the several cases she had brought.

“Khala!” Pulok called out. “It’s been too long!”

He reached out his arms to hug her before Sheuli shrunk away, instead patting him on the shoulder.

“You’ve grown so much,” she said. “You probably don’t even remember when I last saw you. We all called you Pallu.”

Her nephew’s cheeks reddened as he rubbed the back of his neck.

“Ammu showed me photographs. You look well, have you been keeping well?” He jabbered on, much like his mother would, words spilling out so fast from his mouth they might have coalesced to form a new language. Pallu took the heaviest cases, one in his hand and the other on his shoulder, and gestured in the direction of the automobile. “I’ve told so many people about you: my khala, the celebrated scholar with a photographic memory! How wonderful is that.”

Sheuli winced at his enthusiasm. “I am not celebrated, or at least not to my knowledge. Nor do I have a memory that is classed as photographic. I am simply collating information for my newest publication and this asteroid happened to have fallen in this region at precisely the right time.”

“I guess it was written for you to come here, wasn’t it? And after so long.”

Sheuli shrugged. Whether it was written or not was not of her concern; she prayed, fasted, was as thankful to her Creator as she could be, but she didn’t focus on philosophical or spiritual pursuits. Instead, she had fallen in love with what was created, namely the stars and the messages they spelled across the night sky.

Pallu bound the suitcases on top of the automobile tightly with numerous ropes. Sheuli sat at the back of the vehicle, the seats uncomfortable and worn, and looked out the window at the valley. The rolling hills that were usually lush with greenery had yellowed like an old carpet, the land parched and in need of a monsoon season that refused to arrive. Even the paper she had read on the train announced it was the worst drought seen in over a century.

The car trundled across uneven roads as Pallu chattered about his parents and siblings and the farm and how business was slow before he spoke about the asteroid. Sheuli tuned back in at the mention of the cosmic rock.

“It’s a big thing, isn’t it? I’ve read in the papers how many researchers and scientists will be coming to see the site of the crash.”

Sheuli nodded, happy to finally be talking about something worthwhile. “Indeed. I thought I’d make use of the connections I have here to see if I can examine the site before the vultures flock to it.”

Pallu gave a nervous laugh as he maneuvered over several potholes. “And that’s the only reason you came to visit?”

Sheuli paused. This was one of those moments her mother had berated her over as a child, to not be so straightforward, to read between the lines of what people had said. But Sheuli was never so good at reading people.

“And to see family,” she said finally. “It has been too long.”

This seemed to satisfy Pallu. It wasn’t long before they arrived at the gates of his family home. He unhooked the lock and pushed open the tall green doors before jumping back into the automobile and driving along at an immeasurably slow pace. Several people came out of the house, adults who looked familiar to her smiling ear to ear and a few children frowning in freshly pressed school uniforms.

Sheuli’s stomach wound itself into knots. She hated an audience. Why couldn’t she have entered in a more discreet manner? With her older sister, however, discreet did not exist.

“Everyone wants to see you!” said Pallu as he yanked the handbrake.

She exited the vehicle as gracefully as she could manage, the heel of her shoes nearly snagging on the hem of her skirt. The small crowd came forwards as Pallu untied the luggage from the top of the car. Sheuli was greeted by several family friends she hadn’t seen in two decades, as well as a couple of cousins and their friends too, but her sister was nowhere to be seen. Already the threads of her nerves were beginning to fray. The excited chatter did not stop until Pallu mishandled one of her suitcases. It fell open as a particularly vicious breeze swept through the countryside, allowing her clothes to tumble out including, most mortifyingly of all, her undergarments.

By early afternoon, Sheuli had escaped the suffocation of other people’s conversation but was yet to meet her sister. Her sister was held up in town and would not be back until the evening. Seeing no other reason to stay in the house, Sheuli made her swift exit with a map in hand and her journal stowed away safely in her bag.

Zumar Valley was at the tail end of summer but the heat still fought its way through the light layers of cotton she wore. Sheuli loosened her scarf and let it slip down her head; there was no one around in these quiet country lanes. Aside from the drought that had affected the land, the valley was rather pleasant. It made for a different atmosphere than the stuffy halls of the university or the cave her office had turned into. She thought of her cohort of students, sharp and curious, ready at a moment's notice to assist her in the field. This time, however, she needed to go alone. She had painstakingly separated the chaos of her family from the structure of her life and was not prepared for a clashing of worlds.

Two shrill beeps turned Sheuli around to see Pallu’s automobile coming towards her. He had one hand out the window, waving her down.

“You’re going to the crash site, aren’t you?” said Pallu as he leant across the passenger seat. “It’s over an hour’s walk, but it’ll take less than half that time if we drive.”

Sheuli figured from the “we” that she didn’t have a choice in this. Despite being his aunt and over a decade his elder, she slipped herself into the passenger seat without any argument. This was going to be a long trip and she didn’t want to alienate what few allies she had.

“So what made you want to become a… a…”

“An astrofolklorist?”

Pallu nodded, his eyes still on the road. “Yes! I knew it was astro-something. What sort of research have you been doing?”

Sheuli’s jaw tightened. Having to explain her job and what she researched was not her favorite thing to do. Outside of academic circles it bordered on tedious: people were either fascinated with the field and romanticized its implications or they gave a vague nod and muttered something about “doing something that was useful.” But this was her nephew, and she had seen him when he was still feeding at his mother’s breast. As she recalled, he had thrown up on her too. She shuffled further into her seat.

“Most recently, I’ve been supervising much of my students’ research. They’re working on different areas in the field, like astroagriculture and astroecology. Of course, there are also a couple of very promising astrofolkorists with rather interesting views on the possible myths we find from cosmic artifacts. A clever bunch, I have to say.”

There was a pause, as if her nephew had to absorb the concept of her world, foreign and new to him. The engine of the beat-up automobile growled louder in the quiet. A small part of Sheuli wondered if Pallu would make fun of her, like her peers had done when she first applied for her bachelors degree many years ago. But Pallu simply nodded again.

“Ammu tried to explain what it was you do, but she doesn’t really get it either. She says you’re trying to find stories in the stars.”

Sheuli sighed. “That’s one way of putting it.”

She placed an elbow on the open window and rested her head in her hand. The hot breeze played with loose hair strands, gray and silver now dotting her black. She wondered what her sister looked like now, after so many years of motherhood. “Life outside our world, as you know, has been established for at least a century, but we do not know who or what they are. The physicists will figure out how to get us into space while us astrolorists will figure out who indeed we will meet once we get there.”

The sun was now at its zenith and Sheuli was reluctantly glad she was in the car and not in the midday heat. Pallu continued to ask questions, but basic as they were, Sheuli found herself willing to explain, as if he was one of her undergraduate students. Pallu parked the car on the empty road before they walked across yellow-brown fields to the crash site. Yellow tape had cordoned off the area as a hazard, but there was no one else around except some of the locals outside a nearby outbuilding. Pallu waved as they peered curiously at them.

“Luckily, the meteorite didn’t hit any houses or the main farm,” he told Sheuli. “These people have already been struggling to sell their crops, or at least what little they’ve managed to produce. Another impact happened not too far from here, though it hit the lake instead.”

But Sheuli barely heard her nephew. She ducked under the tape and marched towards the site, limbs buzzing with excited energy, her brain whirring in numerous ways to process what she might see. It had been a while since she had seen a true cosmic artifact; her last two funding requests were denied. She was doing this all on her own coin.

The impact crater was three times as long as Pallu’s automobile. It could have fit a small hut inside, or perhaps a couple dozen goats. It had created a depression in the land, gouging the surface into quite a steep climb down to the meteorite itself. Sheuli slipped down the slope, not a single concern about her clothes or, indeed, her safety.

It must be incredibly dense, Sheuli thought, circling and watching as sunlight smoothed over its dull surface. I wonder if I could pick it up. But she knew she wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t ruin a site of scientific inquiry for dozens of her colleagues. No, she simply wanted to be the first one to see it.

Sheuli sat on the ground and took out her journal to document some preliminary observations.  She looked for any differentiated or repeating markings, any sign of a culture or intelligence that suggested something beyond what a simple rock would show. She briefly wondered why Pallu was not by her side with his inquiries; but before she looked up, his tall shadow fell over her.

“If you want to learn something, sit next to me.”

He obliged, like a child in a classroom. Sheuli liked that. He seemed willing to learn, unlike many of those in her family. Pallu began to reach out when Sheuli tapped the backside of his outstretched hand with her pencil. He flinched away.

“We don’t touch, not yet anyway. We only observe.

“This artifact is irregular in shape, its size just smaller than an average human hand. It is pointed on one side and slightly rounder on the other, almost like a teardrop. There are small dents on its surface. On previous artifacts, these thumb-like impressions have been found to contain inscriptions associated with the Yuvzahi culture.” She spoke as if she were reading a textbook, eyes flicking between her note-taking and the meteorite.

Pallu listened patiently before speaking. “Yuvzahi? You mean… we know what the aliens are called?” He looked up at the clear sky, both bewilderment and disbelief suspended in his expression. Many people had refused to believe that there was life outside of Earth since the century-old discovery.

Sheuli shook her head. “We do not know what they are. We simply know these markings—which we have recorded from dozens of artifacts—are from an intelligent source. The name Yuvzahi was given as the first segment of an inscription that resembled our Latin letters. Of course the English would want to put their stamp on extraterrestrial cultures first,” she added darkly.

Sheuli rummaged in her bag and produced a magnifying glass before crouching forwards. The surface of the meteorite gleamed with a dull gray sheen. Sheuli wondered what the artifact would have looked like before the Earth’s atmosphere had burned it to a large pebble, shaping it into a droplet of stone. And why had it formed this shape in particular? That was a question for her physicist colleagues at a later date. She blew lightly on the meteorite and watched as a thin layer of dust scattered into the air. The surface gleamed brighter; and there they were, barely imperceptible inscriptions, translucent with a hint of dark sapphire.

“Blue… not silver. That’s new.” She bent down further, so close to the artifact she could kiss it.

“You there!” a loud voice called out from the rim. “This is a restricted zone!”

An officer in khaki uniform marched angrily toward them. Pallu looked up sheepishly.

“Sorry, we’re just leaving!” He tugged Sheuli’s elbow, trying to hurry her along.

“You could be arrested for this!” yelled the officer who, on closer inspection, did not seem that much older than her nephew.

“I went to school with him,” said Pallu under his breath, hastily pasting a polite grin on his face. “He’s a stickler for the rules. Let’s just go.”

︎

His name was Prabesh, but he pointedly kept telling Pallu to call him Officer Rao, which Pallu did not do.

“This is simply a misunderstanding,” said Sheuli to Officer Rao. “I am Dr. Majumdar, a researcher from the city. I’m sure you have more important things to worry about, Officer.”

Rao was a lanky fellow with a dark mustache that seemed frightened to grow. They stood far from the crater, back on the road next to Officer Rao’s vehicle. He opened the passenger door and motioned inside. “I’m afraid I’ll have to take you down to the station.”

“Come on Prabesh, it was clearly a mistake,” said Pallu, his hands gesturing dramatically. “You can’t be serious.”

He was indeed serious. A few moments later they were inside the car. Sheuli let out an exasperated grunt as the late afternoon heat bore on inside the stuffy automobile. Pallu leaned forwards, his hands gripping on the shoulders of Rao’s seat. “Prabesh, remember we used to play rounders after school, and I used to beat you? Because you always had your nose stuck in some book.”

Rao did not say anything, but Sheuli was sure she could see the edges of his mouth twitch in the mirror. They could not have driven more than twenty minutes before a terrible clap of thunder cracked across the valley. No lightning had preceded this and no rainstorm followed; but thick and dark dust quickly filled the air. The vehicle swerved before Rao regained control. They stopped abruptly in the middle of the road. A trail of white blazed in the sky, marking out a flight path that ended somewhere up ahead the lanes where they stood.

“It’s another meteorite,” said Sheuli. “It’s crashed nearby.”

Ignoring Rao’s protests, she leapt out the car and marched into the dusty fog, Pallu following with a smirk. Her nephew could have easily outstripped her but he kept pace with her, which she appreciated as she did not know these roads even when the weather was clear. Shouts and cries grew louder as they clambered over uneven ground. Sheuli had never seen the birth of an artifact. She had always observed the object of research in a sterile environment, years after its discovery. Breathless and tired from the day’s exertion, her excitement urged her forwards across the dried grass. Her colleagues would certainly be jealous when she told them this story.

The air grew hotter as they progressed, like a suffocating chador had been thrown over the fields. They reached a panicked crowd that stood at the edge of a newly formed crater, a couple of men working on the small fires dotted around. Officer Rao came up from behind them, his mouth a thin line as he surveyed the scene.

“This is the third time in two weeks,” said a middle-aged woman carrying a basket on her hip. “What on earth is going on?”

“It’s a bad omen, I’m telling you all.” An old man hobbled away from the crater, wagging his walking stick at them. “This happened when I was a boy—my mother remembers. Violence from the sky, the land refusing to grow anything. We are being punished.”

As more voices joined the discussion, Sheuli slipped quietly between the bodies and down into the crater. The dust fog grew thicker, scratching at the back of her throat, coating her tongue. She pulled her scarf over her mouth and ventured on carefully until the ground smoothened out. This new artifact was, once again, no bigger than her palm. Another misshapen teardrop with a smoking exterior. It would have been imperceptibly different from the other terrestrial rocks were it not for the same dull sheen and inscriptions that glowed sapphire. Sheuli dared not to touch it but her fingers itched.

Pallu appeared behind her. “I don’t think it’s safe to stay here.”

Sheuli nodded. “Let’s go home. I have a call to make.”

︎

On the second floor of the university’s grand library was a tall bookshelf filled with astrolore research. A dark green book flitted into Sheuli’s mind when she saw the second meteorite, the pages flipping over until she reached a section part way past the middle. Her mind pulled the text closer, zooming into the footnotes until she could see the cracks in the ink:

One such example of this is found in the East Bengal region on the subcontinent: Gazi’s Shower. This phenomenon, named after the astronomer Manik Gazi, was first considered a common meteor shower. Preliminary research has shown inscriptions on crash debris, strongly suggesting a link between the relics. The text itself is yet to be deciphered. Gazi’s Shower occurred over 150 years ago, the sole occurrence of its ilk.

The footnote ended there but she knew there was more discussion around the topic—if not in that green book, then in another. She was sure Manik Gazi and his research were relevant to the events happening in the valley.  She had to contact one of her students and ask them to find that book.

Rao refused to let them go, so Pallu told him to come over for dinner. This blindsided him, his dark eyes startled into confusion. He reiterated that they were trespassing on property clearly marked for the authorities and that they needed to be taken down to the station. Pallu asked him if he preferred murg pulao or freshly made daal.

At her sister’s house, the hubbub had not quietened down; in fact, the number of people inside had doubled. The sun was low in the sky, casting golden rays through the windows and across the faces of everyone that had gathered. It seemed the nearby impact had created a source of tension for the locals. They all congregated at her sister’s to discuss it, though the woman in question was still nowhere to be seen. Pallu was dragged into the gathering by several older women, harassed with interrogations about the meteorite. One passed sweets to him, while others gasped at the dramatic points in his story. Even Officer Rao was brought into the discussion, his composure shattered as he sat down and wiped his brow, accepting the offer of a cool glass of sharbat.

Sheuli kept her head low in the crowd, eyes darting around the room to look for the telephone before she was noticed. But her stomach dropped as she heard Pallu mention her name.

“Sheuli, I didn’t know you were in Zumar!” One of the women stood up, grabbing both of Sheuli’s hands and pulling her into a tight embrace. “I haven’t seen you since you were... well, since you were a girl!” Sheuli looked at the woman once she was released, recognition hovering on the periphery of her memory; she was much older than her, probably around her sister’s age, with wisps of gray hair poking out of her cotton dupatta wrapped casually around her head. Perhaps a friend of her sister’s?

“It must be ten, no, twenty years since you last came!” exclaimed one in a sky blue kameez, moving forward to embrace her also. Sheuli felt helpless, passed around like a doll.

Another waved her hand as she sipped her cha. “No, she hasn’t visited since Anwara had Pulok.”

A cup of cha was pushed into Sheuli’s hand, which she spilled. She clutched her scalded hand as the women interrogated her about her work and her life in the big city, and the most important question of all, her search for a husband.

“There must be many eligible suitors in the city, no?”

Sheuli shrank. “I suppose.”

To her mortification, she could see Officer Rao smirking at this cross-examination. Before the agony could continue, Pallu came back with his father, himself the image of his son though with grayer hair and a skinnier physique.

“There’s been a roadblock in the north towards the town because of another impact,” said Titu Bhai. Sheuli jumped up at this, ready for a chance to leave this circle.

“We think Ammu’s been stuck behind it, so we’re going to get her.”

“But you left your car on the roads to the south,” said Sheuli.

Almost as one, everyone looked at Rao, who sat nestled in between the ladies, a cup of cha and saucer clutched in his skinny fingers. He stared back and shook his head. “No, no way. I’m not taking you anywhere except the station.”

“Ah, come on, Prabesh,” said Pallu. “It’s my mother. She’s fed you when you came over after school so many times. She even patched up a bleeding knee for you, remember?”

Rao frowned. “That was years ago. Why do you keep bringing up the past?” For once, Sheuli echoed his sentiments. She didn’t like how the women had known her long before she had even known herself, had seen her as an awkward child, and insisted on bringing it up. It made her feel horrifyingly naked.

“Pallu, leave it. If he doesn’t want to bring the car, we’ll just have to walk,” she said.

“We?” said her nephew.

“Well I’m certainly coming with you.” She barely glanced back at the circle of women. The telephone call would have to wait. “It’s not a question.”

Pallu smirked as they left. “You’d rather take on alien objects that might very well cause you harm than talk to a few old ladies?”

“Believe me,” said Sheuli, relief flooding through her. “I know which one is worse.”

They heard from passersby that the impact had hit a small homestead and the resultant debris had caused the block. Late evening turned to night as darkness swept over the valley; coupled with the fog, they could have been walking in pitch-black darkness were it not for the torch Pallu brought along.

“Will we even see her through this?” Pallu asked his father. The walk was long and tiring, but Sheuli was glad the sun had set. Dread gnawed at the pit of her stomach. She shook it away.

“We will,” said her brother-in-law resolutely.

“I suppose this is new?” she asked. “This hasn’t happened before in the valley?”

Titu Bhai shook his head. “Perhaps many many years ago, before I was even born. I’d heard from my grandmother but I always thought it was just a story.”

“What was the story?” asked Pallu. His voice had grown smaller than it was in the house, when he had regaled the circle of ladies with his own tale.

“A shower of fire from the heavens that destroyed many farms. But this fire was strange—it was blue.”

The words pricked at Sheuli’s ears. Once again the green book appeared in her mind, its pages turning in the wind.

“People said it was cursed,” continued Pallu’s father. “That it brought bad tidings. Others said it was a warning for the wayward behavior in the valley.”

They reached a crowd of people, most of whom were shouting over each other. Sheuli shrank back and hovered as she tried to see where the dust fog originated from. Here it was thick and dense: they must have been incredibly close to the crash site. She could feel the heat of the fire, whether it was blue or not. Snatches of conversations informed her that the impact site was on the other side of the roadblock.

Ahead of the crowd, the remnants of a house stood, lit by a dozen lamps and torches. Many people were attempting to clamber over it from over the broken walls, getting caught on sharp edges and kicking down pieces of wood. Others helped them back down to safety. Officers stood in attendance, wearing the same khaki uniform as Rao’s, but much older and more severe looking. They shepherded the crowd away from the debris, shouting that it was not safe for civilians and that they would see to everyone having safe passage through.

No one had much faith, it seemed.

“Ammu has that bad shoulder,” said Pallu to no one in particular, absently handing his aunt the torch. “There’s no way she could climb over that.” He ran to climb through the debris but an officer got in his way. Sheuli stood aside, feeling helpless as she did in situations that required practical know-how. That required her to take initiative, to persuade people and anticipate their emotional reactions. No, that was far too unpredictable. Even the thought of it made her insides squirm.

The fog began to lift with the wind, but only just. Two hills flanked the road, their peaks now visible. The hill to the east looked the least troublesome, though still a considerable climb. She could get a better vantage point from the top, perhaps find a better path for the civilians to get through. Sheuli looked around—both Pallu and his father were now deep in an argument with a trio of officers—and slipped away. The hill was steep but she had climbed steeper before, and besides, the clamor of people quieted with every step. Once she was at the top, sweat dripping down her back in streams, she found a wall of dust. She gripped the torch like a knife, its white light cutting through the haze. She walked a while, not knowing the direction nor the time, the noise of the crowd now a distant mutter, until she stumbled into grooves in the ground and fell backwards. The crater loomed in front of her, deeper than the other two, the ground scorched clean of shrubbery—and, in the middle, a stone teardrop, glowing faintly in blue. Small fires crackled around the stone, the result of the impact’s energy.

She bit her lip. If she went to the bottom of the crater there was no telling how she’d get back up. But something about the small artifact called to her, tugging at her heart. She wanted to hold it, to be united with it.

Against her better judgment, Sheuli climbed down, holding on to the rough terrain as best she could to avoid tumbling over. Once at the bottom she walked carefully to the center, stopping for a moment to examine the small fires; they were not blue and burned like normal earthly flame. At the center, she kneeled down to examine the stone. The inscriptions on this one shone a brighter sapphire, as if the stone had an internal light. She wondered how the inscriptions had survived the burn of the atmosphere. Sheuli poked the meteor with the edge of the torch. It was difficult to push, confirming her theory that it would be incredibly dense, but it did not damage the plastic of the torch. Very carefully, with the back of her hand, she pushed against the meteor. It was warm, like a freshly made samosa. She picked it up and held it in both hands for a fraction of a second before dropping it in shock. It tumbled down to the ground, making a louder thud than it should have for its size.

Was that... a pulse? No, she must have imagined it. Her exhaustion must be scrambling her senses. She picked it up and felt it again: a heartbeat as gentle as a newborn’s against her palms. She squinted at the inscriptions on the artifact, poring over their curves and lines, trying to make out what it could possibly mean. But the words—if that’s what they were—had no rhyme or reason. They were not like any markings she had ever seen.

A voice called out from the other side of the crater. It called out loud to no one in particular, but a spear shot through Sheuli’s heart. She would recognise that voice anywhere, the same voice that gabbled to her several times a month, imploring her to visit. Without thinking, Sheuli ran towards it, her hands still cupping the heavy stone. As she came closer, she saw her sister slumped against a boulder, hair plastered to her forehead, her kameez torn and darkened by dust. Her plump cheeks, the same cheeks that Pallu inherited, were red from exertion, a small bloody gash down the right side of her face.

Sheuli gasped, “Apa!” and rushed to her sister’s side. “What, how did you get here?!”

“I fell,” groaned Anwara. “It was so dark and then the dust, it was impossible to see where I was going and I just stepped and fell into this hole here. I can’t move.”

Sheuli’s heart broke. She had never seen her sister so vulnerable, her sister who was a decade older than her, who had moved away after marriage when Sheuli was just a little girl, who seemed so much wiser and mature. Her sister, who would always make sure her guests were treated well, was sitting at the bottom of a pit. She grabbed Anwara’s hand.

“Can you stand? Are you hurt?”

“Just my leg, I must have twisted the ankle. Sheuli, what are you doing here?”

After a short explanation Sheuli tried to raise her sister up to stand before she collapsed again.

“I can’t walk,” croaked Anwara. “Sheuli, maybe you should go get help.”

“I’m not leaving you,” said Sheuli firmly. A glimmer of a smile formed on Anwara’s lips before it faded into a groan.

An hour passed. To conserve energy, Sheuli told her sister to try to rest, and soon Anwara was snoring softly. Sheuli allowed her sister’s head to loll against her shoulder while she rolled the artifact up and down the ground with her palm. The pulsing rhythm was still there. It was bewildering as it was also, strangely, a comfort; she was not sure when help would arrive, but at least this heartbeat was here. None of the texts had mentioned something so... alive in an artifact. She began to wonder if the meteor was more like an egg, as if a strange alien hatchling would appear in time. She looked up at the night sky, at the stars that twinkled and had mesmerized her since she was young. If only the science of astrolore was as simplistic as most laymen thought: that the constellations would rearrange themselves into a message for an insignificant human creature that crawled the Earth.

Sheuli took the meteor in both hands and raised it above her head, looking at the artifact with the backdrop of the stars. It gleamed slightly. She turned it ninety degrees, watching as the inscriptions became brighter and brighter still until—

They began to move.

Her arms locked into position as she watched the deep blue inscriptions scatter across the surface of the cosmic rock. They swirled across, almost glittering like stars themselves, until suddenly stilling. Then, like a celestial zoetrope, a story revealed itself to her. Sheuli watched in silence as the inscriptions turned into shapes: a round, Earth-like planet in the center of a shower of small dots. Was this the meteor shower? Was this what Pallu’s father had described? The dots sunk into the planet, the markings burning brighter until the whole planet grew in size and pulsated for a few moments, like a beating heart, like something alive. And then, nothing. The inscriptions dulled until their light was a dim fraction of its initial glow, and returned to their original position.

Without a shadow of a doubt, this was a brand new discovery, one that could catapult her into the pantheon of scholars. There was strange technology at work—technology or magic? whispered a part of her—which indicated this intelligent culture was far beyond human comprehension. And yet, this was a message. There was no doubt about that. This was a message for humans.

“Apa,” she murmured. “Apa, wake up.”

Anwara grunted, rubbing her eyes before realizing where she was. “What’s happened? Have you found help?”

“Look at this.” Sheuli shook the artifact but nothing changed; she raised it higher into the sky but still nothing happened. “How odd. It did it a moment ago. It… it’s a message. For us.”

Anwara sighed softly, placing her head back on Sheuli’s shoulder. “You sound just like when Abba bought you your first telescope and you broke it.”

Sheuli frowned. “I did not break it. It was cheaply made; a child’s plaything. It didn’t even show me the clouds in the sky.” When her sister barked a laugh, Sheuli shrank where she sat. Here she was, back to being the little sister. The one that followed everyone else, that asked incessant and annoying questions, that was more interested in examining the way the blades of grass grew in the field than playing in the pond with the other children. The one that was abandoned by her older sister, and had abandoned her in turn. And now they sat at the bottom of a pit with little hope for help.

“I’m sorry,” said Sheuli quickly before the words caught in her dry throat.

“For what?”

“For not visiting. For this being the first time I’ve seen you in twenty years, injured and in a crater.” She could have laughed at the absurdity of the situation had it not been for the overwhelming rush of emotion. The torch flickered with the last of its battery power before they were both plunged into darkness.

“Oh, Sheuli,” whispered Anwara as she winced in pain. “I should have come to see you, too.”

“You were busy with raising a family and taking care of the farm and I—”

“And you were busy with your research, your students. Whenever you speak about it all, I always know you are in the right place for you. You answered each of my phone calls by telling me an interesting fact; I may not have understood it all, but I loved hearing the excitement in your voice. Like when you first got that telescope.” Warm tears pricked Sheuli’s eyes. She had no idea if they were going to be rescued or whether they'd starve in this crater. For once, true fear settled in her bones. Sheuli pressed her cheek against Anwara’s head and bit her lip to stem the tears. Her hand slipped into her sister’s. They both squeezed tight. 

“Hello!” called a familiar voice from above. Sheuli turned sharply to look up, her vision distorted by the lack of light and her own fatigue. A shadow lingered above before another torchlight flashed down at her. It was Officer Rao.

︎

Rao had been called to attend the roadblock with his fellow officers but became lost in the ensuing fog and had stumbled upon the impact site. Once there, he located the rest of his squad along with Pallu and Titu Bhai. The group managed to get the ladies back into the safety of an automobile and were headed straight to the nearest hospital.

Sheuli stared out of the window as the landscape sloped alongside her. In the darkness of the night, she couldn’t see much, but she knew the grass was dry, farms were depleted of their crops, the yellow of the hills, the sad state of the people that lived off the land. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the window, ignoring the bumps of the wheels against several potholes.

Manik Gazi...

Manik Gazi... Gazi...

Ghazi’s Theory of Revegetation: A New Addition to Astroagriculture.

Her eyes shot open. Of course she hadn’t linked the two; the English, with their inconsistent transliteration, had used two different ways to spell Gazi’s name in two different books. Her student had remarked on it when he brought her both journals. Realization settled into cold certainty in her. Sheuli called out to the rest of the car, “We need to evacuate everyone out of the valley, immediately.”

Titu Bhai turned around in the passenger seat, Pallu and his mother looking at her from the side. Rao kept his eyes on the road. When no one spoke, Sheuli continued, “This is going to keep happening, this bombardment of meteors. I don’t know for how long—if it’s anything like one hundred and fifty years ago then it’ll be for a fortnight at most—but we don’t have time to discuss the particulars. Everyone needs to go, for the sake of not getting struck or killed. It’s a miracle the first three didn’t hit anyone.”

“What are you talking about? Where would everyone even go? You can’t just tell people to leave, people who have lived here all their lives,” said Anwara.

“Not permanently,” said Sheuli quickly, realizing how strange she must have sounded. She grabbed the seat in front of her and leant forwards, looking directly at her brother-in-law. “When your grandmother told you about what happened before, it came at a time of poor crop yield, right?”

Titu Bhai looked at her bemused. “She didn’t really mention it.”

“But it’s true, people have said there hasn’t been a drought as bad as the current one since that same time. Ordinary rain didn’t revive the crops, but this meteor shower revitalized the land. It was quite literally a shower of good fortune. The land will become fertile once more and everyone’s luck will change, but not before some weeks of bombardment. The houses won’t be safe either.”

The silence that followed was too loud. Sheuli wanted to shake everyone in the vehicle by the shoulders. Even Pallu seemed skeptical.

Then, the automobile screeched to a halt. Rao spun the wheel sharply as he turned the car around in the narrow country lane.

“What are you doing?” said Pallu.

“We’re going to the station,” said Rao, a steely resolve in his normally thin voice.

“For God’s sake, not now! Ammu is injured, she needs to get treatment!”

“And if we don’t alert the authorities, more people will be injured or killed. We should listen to what Dr. Majumdar is saying. And besides, without me, no one will believe you.”

︎

Forty-eight hours later, after another two impacts had crashed in the valley, an evacuation effort was well underway. Sheuli sat with her sister at a wooden stall by the roadside of the only checkpoint from the valley to the city. With the help of her friends, Anwara had laid out several cups of cha for the passengers of the over-packed vehicles that now stood at a standstill as officers checked various papers for each family. The men handed out the cups to grateful drivers and distraught mothers while Pallu explained the reason for the evacuation to several bewildered children, pointing at “his khala, that clever lady over there.”

Sheuli sat with her sister as Anwara rested her injured leg on an empty chair and watched as the group of colorful ladies surrounded her sister in fast and incomprehensible chatter. Sheuli wondered if Manik Gazi, an astronomer hidden in the footnotes of an obscure science, had known about the message on the meteorites. She left Anwara to the gossip of her friends and approached Rao who stood a few steps away from his colleagues.

“So then, Officer Rao, what made you sympathetic to my appeal?”

He shrugged as he sipped his steaming cha. “I guess I realized there were more important things to worry about.”

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