Now my final bit of hope bleeds away as Mani and I stare at the CLOSED sign dangling in the window of the bookshop. I hoped that Japa would be able to tell me where to find Deven, where he lives. But the darkened windows feel like a bad omen. “Japa never closes the shop,” I tell Mani. The worry in my stomach rears up and strikes with sharp fangs. What if he’s by Deven’s bedside? Or worse, at his graveside? But Mani’s not paying attention to me. His gaze is fixed on a boy not much older than himself sitting in a booth across the street. A sign hangs above his head that says WISDOM FOR SALE. PRICES VARY.
“He’s on the wrong street,” I say. “That kind of foolishness only works in the market.”
Mani looks up at me like I’ve offended him. “Maybe he can help us,” he says. His expression is so earnest. He wants to find Deven as much as I do, but throwing away money will do us no good.
I soften my tone. “I don’t think so, monkey. You can’t buy wisdom.”
“Of course you can,” he says. He motions toward the shop. “What about books?”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
I put my arm around his shoulders. “Well, for one thing, most books aren’t written by ten-year-olds.”
Mani glares at me and moves so that my arm falls away from him. “Children aren’t stupid,” he says.
“That’s not what I meant…,” but I don’t get to finish because he turns his back on me and marches across the street toward the booth.
“Mani!” I call, but he doesn’t turn and so I hurry to follow him. I catch up just as he’s dropping a handful of coins into the boy’s palm. The boy counts the money before he places it in a leather pouch fastened to his waist. He looks up at the sky and taps a quill against his cheek. His fingertips are stained with black ink and there’s a dark smudge across his cheek. I open my mouth to speak, but Mani gives me a look so withering that I snap my jaw shut. The boy drops his gaze and levels both Mani and me with a long stare. Then he nods once like he’s satisfied with his assessment of us. He dips his quill in the inkpot beside him and scribbles on a piece of parchment. His tongue pokes out of the side of his mouth as he writes, and it makes him look even younger. He sets the quill down and blows on the ink. Mani is bouncing on his toes, and his hands are laced together in front of him like he’s restraining himself from snatching the wisdom from the boy’s fingers. Finally the boy rolls the parchment into a loose cylinder and hands it to Mani.
We walk a few steps away before Mani unfurls it. As he reads, his brow furrows and he chews on his bottom lip. He hands me the parchment. Written in a script that belies the boy’s age is this: Suspicion is the only defense against betrayal. My blood runs cold. I whirl to face Mani.
“What did you tell that boy?”
His face is twisted in confusion. “What?”
“Before I came up behind you, what did you say to him?”
“Nothing,” Mani says. “I just said I wanted to buy some wisdom.”
“Why would he write this?” I shake the parchment in front of Mani’s face. He takes a step back and I realize I’m scaring him. I pull in a deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, hugging him to my side. “It doesn’t matter.” But the words on the page have rattled me, and I walk back to the stall where the boy is still sitting, a look of absolute calm on his face.
“We want our money back,” I tell him. The boy studies me for a moment before responding, his eyes roaming over my face as if searching for something.
“Certainly,” he says finally. “But you will need to return what you’ve purchased.”
I toss the parchment at him and it drifts to a stop near his inkpot. He glances at it but doesn’t pick it up. “That isn’t what I sold you.”
“Yes,” I say through a clenched jaw, “it is.”
“Did you read it?”
“Of course I read it.”
“Do you remember what it said?”
“Yes.”
“Then you still possess the wisdom. If you can return that, then I will happily give you a refund.”
“You know I can’t do that,” I say.
He picks up the parchment and holds it out to me. “Then I’m afraid I can’t return your money.” The hairs on the back of my neck prickle to life. This child talks as if he is a hundred years old. It’s just a trick, I remind myself. I have seen it dozens of times at the market. Fortune-tellers, snake charmers, palm readers, each of them playing on the things that all of us have in common—love, loss, heartbreak. Their proclamations are so generalized that they seem personalized. But they are all charlatans who lie for money, and this boy is no different. Still, as I walk back to Mani, I can’t help wondering: Am I the betrayer or am I the betrayed?
Mani takes my hand and we don’t say anything as we leave Gali Street and cross into the wooded area nearby. We walk under the shade of the devil trees until we get to a small pond occupied by dozens of swans. Mani snatches the parchment from my fingers and drops it into the water. And we watch as the ink bleeds away, leaving just a blank page without any wisdom at all.