"Elias?!"
Laura's voice plucked him out of his reverie. He turned to her and blinked twice.
"Did you hear what I've just said?"
"Sorry, aunt. I was just..."
"Daydreaming again?" she cut in. "You've been doing that a lot lately."
"I'm sorry, " he apologized.
"I'm sorry too," said she as the driver, Mr. Reyansh, changed gears. They were on the backseat of a Corolla Sedan taxi, heading towards the airport. "I just want you to feel well again, safe..."
"I do," he said, smiling without conviction.
They fell silent as the taxi navigated the complicated road system of Mumbai.
"Why isn't the Professor with us?" Elias asked after a while.
"He had a conference to attend in Varanasi. He'll meet us back in Zurich next week. Why? Eager to go back to school?"
He shook his head, smiling for real this time. "But I like learning all the languages."
"Dr. Donne tells me you're very good at it!"
"I think I am," he replied blushing and looked out the window. Still a stranger to being complimented.
"Did he tell you what he found out at the temple last week?" she asked.
"No."
"He came back with some interesting stories about the people of Agādha. Beings that came from the sky and talked to the villagers, taught them how to grow crops, and even took a few of them on their spaceships from time to time."
A few drops of rain splashed on the car's roof.
"Strong candidates for our astronauts, don't you think?" she prompted.
Elias turned his gaze back to the window without saying a word.
She gently placed her hand on her nephew's unruly mane and caressed it. "Sorry if it scared you. They're just folktales, you know... the kind Dr. Donne likes to collect."
"It didn't scare me. I don't think they came from the sky, though."
"What makes you say that?" she inquired as Mr. Reyansh hit the brakes, avoiding a collision with a yellow Maruti Suzuki by inches.
"It's just a hunch. They might have been here all along... with us"
"Have you been thinking much about the astronauts?" she asked, worried about the intensity with which he professed the words.
"Since the day you showed me to them," he replied, adjusting his seat belt.
Two weeks had passed since the police found him lying unconscious almost three kilometers away from the spot they had been visiting in the Kanker District. He hadn't said a word about it since, except to state officially that he remembered nothing. The police concluded that he had gotten lost or tried to run away, which earned her a few days of bureaucratic hell to prove she was his legal guardian.
The car slowed to a halt. They had reached an intersection where traffic gridlocked all exits. Mr. Reyansh turned the engine off and asked again what time their flight was.
She assured him they had plenty of time and focused back on the boy beside her, the only relative she had left in the world.
"What else do you remember about that day... besides de astronauts?"
"I was there with you. Then I walked and... got lost. A policeman found me."
"You know you can trust me, right? I'm not mad at you and nothing you say about this subject will ever make me mad at you. It wasn't your fault."
He nodded. A tear streamed down his cheek and landed on his lap.
Guilt washed over her.
"Here, let's make a pact of friendship," she said in an attempt to change his mood. "Give me your hands."
Elias did as she instructed. They were facing one another now, at least as much as the seat belt allowed. Outside, the rain blurred cars, motorcycles, and rickshaws into a shapeless unity.
Their hands touched and Laura was transported to a poorly lit underground chamber, filled with a claustrophobic silence. Elias was there. His presence cut through the darkness and hit her like a sunbeam.
Her heartbeat sped up. She had never read a place just by touching someone else before.
Heavily, as if walking in a low-gravity zone, he groped along the walls, trying to find a way out of that oppressing void. She then felt another presence in the chamber. Rainclouds surrounded her nephew, making him float.
She called out his name, causing a few pairs of lidless eyes to look at her. As soon as she realized that those weren't clouds at all, she let out a scream.
"Aunt Laura!"
Elias grabbed her arm, trying to get her attention. She seemed to be in a trance of some kind.
Mr. Reyansh was looking at them through the rearview mirror. "Are you ok, miss?" he asked.
"I'm good," she lied, desperate for fresh air. She considered rolling down the window, but the heavy rain soon made her reconsider.
The other vehicles had begun to move. Mr. Reyansh tried to ignite the engine, without success. Two cars maneuvered around them.
She closed her eyes and slowed down her breathing, trying to process what she had seen without alarming Elias or the driver again.
Questions exploded in every corner of her mind just like fireworks on New Year's Eve, hurried and loud.
When the Corolla finally roared back to life, the windshield wipers started battling miniature waterfalls formed by the pouring rain.
"I'm sorry, El," she managed to say a few blocks on.
"What for?"
"For bringing you here, for forcing you to spend your summer roaming through a never-ending list of museums, for..." her voice broke. "We'll be home soon, never to return. I promise."
She knew all too well physical distance wasn't enough to erase the consequences of what he had lived through but hoped against all odds that it would.
"I don't mind visiting museums. This place... it grew on me," he said while leaning his head on her shoulder and yawned.
She held his hand while he slept, silently asking for her sister's forgiveness.
For the rest of the ride, she wasn't quite able to follow her nephew's lead into oblivion but kept her eyes closed nonetheless, allowing the flow of her memories and the soothing sonata of rain and traffic to escort her down her very own rabbit hole.