“Ahem ahem” silenced the librarian with her usual thick tone as the room was disturbed by the noise of dragging chairs. Maya shuffled her books and quickly grabbed her bag and her keys as the bell rang. A quick out pass sign and the next moment she was running in the corridors, her jacket flying as her left arm held it strong within its hold and her feet rushing and sliding on the marble corridor. Small children were peaking from the classroom windows and giggling.
“I am so sorry! A book occupied my mind” she erupted as the class door flung open. All the eyes were on her, the teacher annoyingly eyeing her from under her big blue glasses. She gestured Maya to come in and take her seat and continued teaching.
“Are we still on this chapter” irked Maya to the boy sitting right in front of her. The boy gestured her to not disturb him. An eye roll and Maya immersed herself in the book again. Though she had read thousands of books all her life, this captured her mind like never before. It was just another romance novel, the same story, the same twist and the same ending. But something about it was disturbing her mind. She had stared at the same page for hours but couldn’t read her own mind. The teacher did not stop and interrupt Maya, she knew that though Maya wasn’t attentive, no one could drag her out of a book if she is immersed in it.
Page no 43, and still the same strangeness. It was just an ordinary book but it wasn’t. 20 minutes later, Maya gave up. She shut the book and put it away in her bag. She was sleepy but opened up her mind to receive the words of the teacher. She was dictating the lines of Zoe Silas’ poem- the words of the worlds.
“words are mystery,
words capture history,
words of the worlds, words in the words”
The teacher cleared her throat as she mispronounced the last sentence. “words of the worlds, words in the worlds” she continued. Maya took a deep breath as her mind repeated the mistaken sentence. “words in the words”. Her heart raced. She grabbed the book titled “just another life” and opened up a random page. Here it was. The answer.
The book had the answers sealed in its words. Maya removed her glasses and bent low to take a closer look. A few words on the pages weren’t printed. They were handwritten. Merged with the printed words, these couldn’t have been noticed. The same font, the same boldness and the same spacing but the writer forgot to capture the same ink. It was nearly the same, nearly impossible for anyone to decipher. Maya turned to the last page of her notebook. She struggled to find an empty space within the doodling. Excitedly, she turned to page 1 of the novel and moved her pencil along the lines to spot the word that stood out than the rest.
“Someday” was the word. She wrote it onto the blank space and turned to the next page. After an hour had passed, Maya had at last turned to the last page and scribbled the word. With a huge sigh, she closed the novel and with a faint smile of accomplishment, read out the words together in her mind. She was petrified as she whispered the words. It was a message. A message for her.
“Someday you would read this. May a, we have been waiting for you since ages. Something awaits you. Danger and love. But remember, even if your mind and soul pulls you towards it, you must resist. For if you don’t, you would have to take another birth to kill it. Your soul would drag you towards it, your mind would tend to forget this warning but you must remember.
You are reading this not for the first time. You have read it before in your past life and failed to resist. If you had resisted, you would have liberated yourself from the curse which lures upon you in this life. And if you don’t resist it this time, you would bond another life of yours into the curse. Remember to remember this. Love. Danger. Forgive.
Do not let love conquer over”