This post was originally published on here
Author Sarita Mandanna.
The clock downstairs was striking seven when Arya awoke. He lay in bed, sleepily listening to the chimes echo through the house.
He had a vague sense of another sound, something else that had woken him.
He’d slept restlessly, his dreams a jumbled mess. He was being chased by a spaceship that turned into a talking wheelchair, that snapped at him with rusted teeth, while click clack, click clack, scientists in white coats worked away all around him.
There it was again! The sound that had woken him. Fully awake now, Arya sat up, listening intently.
A soft scratching, from inside the old cupboard.
A rustling, and then a click, as if something had slid into place.
Rats? Was it rats? But rats wouldn’t make that clicking sound?
A burst of radio static crackled from the cupboard, nearly making him jump out of his skin.
“Hello?” a muffled voice said anxiously. “Hello? Arya?”
Muffled or not, Arya recognised the voice.
“Can you hear me? Arya? Are you awake?” Thatha continued, as Arya warily unlatched the cupboard.
After the weird events of yesterday, he wouldn’t have been surprised to find Thatha crouched inside.
He wasn’t, of course.
On the floor of the cupboard, among the mess of clothes and books that Amma had asked Arya twice to organise, lay a walkie-talkie.
What the heck? Arya knew it hadn’t been there last night.
Static crackled from it again. Arya picked it up. “Hello?” he said guardedly.
“Oh good, you’re awake.” Thatha paused, waiting for a reply. “It’s Thatha,” he offered helpfully.
“What do you want?”
“I … I’d like to apologise. I behaved terribly when you visited last afternoon. I didn’t take my medication, you see. I’d sent the nurse to buy batteries and…”
“How did this even get here?”
“The walkie-talkie, you mean? Through the false bottom. There’s a false bottom in the cupboard, didn’t you know? Your Appa never told you about it?”
A false bottom? How had he not noticed it before?
There it was, a neat rectangle in the wooden bottom of the cupboard. With a faint scratching sound, it pulled down and then backwards, revealing a small opening. Arya found himself looking at a dark passage behind the cupboard.
The walkie-talkie crackled again. “It’s a retractable shelf… well, there’s two of them that join together,” Thatha explained. “I had the whole thing built years ago. It goes from the top of the cupboard in my room to the bottom of the one in yours, through a hollow column in the wall.”
Arya realised that the top of the cupboard in Thatha’s room overextended the actual shelves.
Just like the bottom of the cupboard in his room jutted out beyond the shelves above it. This excess panelling was really a single, connected system that could be moved up or down.
“You can operate it from your end too,” Thatha explained. “Feel along the door of the cupboard.”
Sure enough, there it was, a small lever, protruding slightly from the carved panel on the door. The whole thing was brilliant.
“The lever is stiff,” Arya said, trying his best to sound cool, as if he encountered secret trapdoor-shelves every day.
“It still works,” Thatha pointed out.
“It’s unsafe,” Arya countered. “Someone could fall through the hole.”
“The opening’s too small for that. Maybe a child could fit in, but it’d be tight. And it’s built to be sturdy, like a chair-lift. Although…” Was that a hint of laughter in Thatha’s voice? “A pair of underwear came down this morning when I operated the shelf. Along with four t-shirts and a pair of socks.”
“Yeah, uh…I need to clean up,” Arya muttered, embarrassed.
“Your appa was the same, you know. So untidy. Clothes, books falling down here all the time.”
“Appa used it? This messenger shelf system thing?”
“All the time. I designed it for him. That’s how we’d pass messages and books and things back and forth. In the afternoons, everyone in the house would be asleep except the two of us. We’d use the walkie-talkies, and these shelves.”
Arya’s fingers tightened around the walkie-talkie in his hand.
“This room I’m in…Appa stayed here?”
Thatha sounded surprised. “That was his bedroom. I thought you knew.”
Arya said nothing.
“I’m very sorry, Arya,” Thatha said quietly.
Arya knew that this time, Thatha was talking about Appa.
Appa slept here, in this room. Stared up at this very ceiling, spoke into this walkie-talkie, made a mess of his clothes in exactly this cupboard…
“He never once mentioned you, did you know that?” Arya burst out defiantly. “Never said anything about this old house, or sleepy old Thumba, or…or…any dumb old vimana.”
“I see,” Thatha said.
He sighed. “I’ll send back your clothes,” he said defeatedly. “Your things that fell into my room … I’ll send them on the shelf again, or with the nurse, perhaps.” Arya heard him press a lever, and the opening in the wall started to close as the shelves moved back into place.
“No, wait!” Arya said. “I mean, my clothes are just going to get even more messed up if you do that and … So listen, I saw some weird stuff online last night, and – I’ll just come downstairs to you, it’s easier.”
Excerpted with permission from Secret Among the Stars, Sarita Mandanna, Aleph Book Company.
