Free Garden of Dreams by Melissa Siebert

It was Ravi, ten, the one boy in the kotha who serviced men. Eli felt sorry for him: the poor kid lived his worst nightmare. But he also thought Ravi was a jerk, a snoop, a tattletale.
    ‘What is going on in this place?’ Ravi asked, twisting one bare foot around his other ankle.
    ‘I am trying to tell the fortunes of these two,’ Ojal said, ‘but they won’t have it.’
    ‘Yes, I will, Ojal-ji!’ Sanjana nearly shouted, jumping up from her chair and leaning with her hands on the table. ‘Please, please tell me I have something to wait for in future, tell me what you see!’
    ‘Poor girl,’ said Ojal, rising, pushing in her chair and sweeping across to the window. ‘Another day.’
    At the window Ojal seemed lost to them, drifting away. ‘Ravi, buzz off,’ she said abruptly, levelling him with her gaze. ‘You’ve got a mister waiting in the red room, I saw him come in. A copper, in fact …’
    ‘A cop?’ asked Eli, in disbelief.
    Ojal smiled, and Ravi left the room backwards, like a little cuckoo going back into the clock.
    Fingering the bright pink curtains, Ojal met their eyes. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘these ghastly things would take to a match brilliantly.’
    Eli looked at Sanjana, solemn now, couldn’t read her. He wasn’t sure she’d understood, if she’d ever considered taking things into her own hands and changing her fate, not waiting for some silly fortune-teller – this strange she-man – to tell her some story about a future over which she had no control.
    ‘There’s so much grease in this place,’ Ojal said, making for the door with her plastic bag, sagging now, ‘and you know how grease burns …’
    ‘Ojal —’ Eli wanted to detain her, ask her what she meant.
    ‘But I’m sure you’ve thought of that.’ The last of her was her brilliant blue sari trailing through the door like the tail of a peacock, or maybe more like a firebird, that strange creature he’d seen in a video once, breathing fire to that Russian’s music, when he was a child.
    Whenever that was.



Chapter 13
    He woke up choking. Whirls of black smoke came toward him, bad spirits bent on destruction. He heard screams but couldn’t identify them, man-girl-boy screams, and saw bright orange flames ferociously licking the roof outside, against a dark sky. Eli knew he had to get down, beneath the smoke, and make for the door. He prayed it hadn’t been locked again. The wooden floor was roasting, and the door singed his hand when he tested it, but it opened. He had to go through. For weeks he’d wondered if he’d landed in hell; now he knew he’d arrived.
    He made it into the hallway, smoky and dark, but the flames were still at a distance, devouring the main staircase. Crouching low, Eli scrambled down the hall towards the back stairs, going sideways-forwards like a crab, barely seeing. A hot-footed dance, like walking on coals.
    Where was everyone? He could still hear screams, moans, like souls doomed to the underworld, but couldn’t tell where they were coming from. Fumbling through the thickening darkness he passed Auntie Lakshmi’s door, closed, smoke seeping in through the bottom crack. Maybe she hadn’t woken up.
Let her choke to death
, he thought –
burn the witch
.
    ‘Eli!’ They collided before they could see each other. It was Sanjana: he caught a whiff of her jasmine scent through the smoke. She took him by the hand, leading him towards the back staircase.
    ‘What the hell, Sanjana? Where are the others?’
    ‘Shanti and Deevyah waiting in downstairs toilet. And Ravi. That’s it.’
    ‘Lakshmi? Anand? The other girls?’
    ‘Gone, wayfargone, not coming back.’
    ‘Dead?’
    ‘You must run or burn!’ Sanjana shouted at him as she rushed down the stairs, caught in a paroxysm of coughing, as he was.
    He ran after her as if the stairs were about to disappear.
    The door of the second-floor bathroom was being attacked from inside, fists banging along with high little voices shrieking,