“What does the Lord say about the sunset, Walter?”
At 5:42 pm on a salty Monday evening, Walter decided that he was going to run away.
He’d had the idea during the Civilizing and Social Education class. Master Frey had asked him, “Walter, what does the Lord say about thieving?” Walter hadn’t replied the first time – he still wasn’t used to people calling him that.
“Walter, what does the Lord say about thieving?”
Walter started. “I didn’t thieve, Master Frey.”
“I didn’t say you did. But what does the Lord say about it?”
Walter tugged at his tie and glanced out of the window. The sinking sun had cast a pink glow over the sky. Master Frey followed his gaze.
“What does the Lord say about the sunset, Walter?”
Walter knew about the sunset. When he was younger, his mother would hum lightly in Shorezi every evening, just as the sun dipped below the horizon. She was bidding goodbye to the sun, she said. Walter remembered the tune, but not the words.
“It’s the Allura,” he whispered.
Master Frey, dressed in his usual red robes and ceremonial armlets, took a deep breath. “Out of the class, Walter. Out.” Walter stood up quietly, gathered his notebooks and walked towards the door. It wasn’t the first time. As he closed the door behind him, he heard Master Frey saying, “The Lord says that magic is the refuge of fools and charlatans. If you ever hope to civilize yourselves, get this into your sub-caste heads: The Allura, boys, is a lie.”
But Master Frey was wrong, and Walter knew it. His mother had been performing the Allura since she was ten, and his grandmother had helped and healed thousands of Shorezi with it. They knew of her far and wide – some decades ago, even the Ineshis had begged for her help. And now, here was a Ineshi telling him that the Allura did not exist. He was wrong. Walter saw the Allura everywhere. He saw it in the sun, and the birds, and the stars. He saw it in the laughter of Rachi and Liyaf and Donnan, with whom he shared a room at the mission dormitory. He’d heard it in his mother’s cries when they’d taken him away. He saw it in himself.
He had to go back.
There was only one way. He’d have to leave the dormitory, run across the lawns and to the pier. Then he’d have to hide in the boat that left for the Island every night and came back in the morning with the slaves, spoils and stolen children of a single-sided war.
It was a death trap.
There’s no way, Walter told himself as he trudged up the stairs. The older boys had tried everything. There was no way to leave. The doors were locked; the rooms towered several floors above the ground. They were only trying to protect the children, they said. Protection from what? Walter wondered. Harm? His mother? The Shorezi? Or was it all just the same thing?
By the time he got to his room, Walter had given up. He looked out of the window. If he stood with a shoulder pressed against the wall and a foot on Liyaf’s bed, he could even see the glittering lights of the port, and beyond that, the shadow of the Island. He propped up the window, and the salt hit him squarely in the face. He closed his eyes, and for a brief moment, he was on the beach, collecting mussels for mother’s dinner.
He knew exactly what he had to do.
He glanced at the clock. It was 6 pm. In another five minutes, Master Frey would be up with his old stick, as usual. Five canings for blasphemy. Walter was running out of time.
He heaved open the window and stood on Liyaf’s bed. Grabbing the curtain pole, he placed his bare right foot on the sill, and then his left. He ducked underneath the glass, and suddenly, he was outside. He looked up, and a star twinkled.
The door opened. Walter closed his eyes and hummed.
Who knows what Master Frey thought in that moment when Walter’s feet left the ledge? With a cry, he ran to the window as fast his robes would let him. He looked down, but there was a vast nothingness. Grey night on black lawns. Nothing. No one.
He looked up at the sky, trembling. And there, in the warm glow of the north star, he saw a little boy returning home.
By Supriya Kamath
Student from New York University Abu Dhabi
