CHAPTER TWENTY
The Present
The sun was not visible—the dark clouds of Dali’s making prevented it being so—but even so, the villagers were aware that it had already set behind the mountains at the far end of the desert. They gathered once more around Banjeet’s charpoy. Everyone waited impatiently, eagerly, desperately, to hear Rahul’s plan—if he had finally come up with one, that was. Some villagers—especially the relatives of the man the pishachas had abducted—sat in distress, lost in horrifying thoughts of his death.
“I’ll need—”
“We’ll die. We’ll die,” sobbed a man who was sitting on the ground, his elbow on the edge of the charpoy and his head in his palm. He looked up at Rahul, tears streaming down his cheeks, his face bearing the fake smile of the mentally weak. “You, you, you,” h
