OPU HAD BEEN nursing a secret for the past few days. He hadn’t taken anyone into his confidence, not even his sister, for the secret had been too momentous to share. He had discovered it one afternoon a few days ago while surreptitiously exploring his father’s wooden lockbox of books.

It had been an afternoon just like this one—golden and hot. The shadows of the trees were dense, short, and piled around the trunk; they hadn’t yet begun to elongate and thin out along the east or the west. Taking advantage of his father’s absence, Opu had slipped into the room that held Horihor’s locked book box. Shutting the door behind him, he had pulled out the box and had been flipping through the books eagerly, looking for stories and pages with pictures. One of the books was called Shorbo Dorshon Shongroho: A Collection of All Philosophies. The book was clearly ancient: the thick, once-white marble-paper pages were turning brown, and there were large spots of discolouration on the cover. When he had opened it, silverfish had scurried out in all directions.

Opu had always had a soft spot for mysterious old books. He had lifted this one to his nose and inhaled deeply. He didn’t understand what ‘collection of philosophies’ meant, but the smell of the old book enchanted him. It made him think of his father, who was so often gone from home.

He had stuffed the other books back into the box and hidden this one under his pillow.

It was in this book that he had discovered the secret. It was astonishing and frankly difficult to credit—yet there it was, printed on a proper sheet of book paper, in a real book. While describing the many qualities of quicksilver, the author said that if one filled vulture eggs with quicksilver and left them in the sun for a few days, then the eggs acquired the ability of letting humans fly. All a human had to do to fly was to hold the egg inside his mouth.

At first, Opu couldn’t believe his eyes. So he read that bit again . . . and again. Then he hid the book inside his own broken-lidded book box and wondered at this amazing secret.

‘Do you know where the vultures’ nest is, Didi?’ he asked his sister.

His sister had no idea. So he asked the neighbourhood boys. Shotu, Neelu, Kinu, Potol, Nyara—he asked everyone. Some of them said that the closest tree that housed vultures was the tallest one at the other end of the northern fields. Opu was all for hunting that tree down, but his mother told him off for roaming about all afternoon under the blazing sun. To placate her, he had to stay home after lunch and pretend to take a nap. But the moment he was alone, he took the book out of his box and read those lines over and over again. How could people not know of this simple way to