Free Garden of Dreams by Melissa Siebert Page A

Ravi’s the loudest. ‘Save us, most bountiful Ganesh, save us!’
    Eli flung open the door and Ravi rushed forward like a bat out of a cave and dug his small claws into him. The two young girls, waifs of twelve at most, seemed glued together.
    ‘Shanti, come!’ Ravi turned and tugged at the smaller girl, shaven-headed and scrawny, like a ferret – she could have been his sister. ‘Deevyah!’ The larger girl, rounder and hacking away beneath a cascade of styled dark curls, stepped forward.
    ‘We try that window over there,’ Sanjana said, breathless, pointing down the blackening hallway. ‘Stairs no good now.’
    Flames advanced from both directions like an army manoeuvre, invisible soldiers blasting them with giant fire-throwers, face-melting heat. Sanjana led the way over to the window. ‘Now jump, Eli, first you,’ and she pushed him towards the edge.
    ‘How far down is it?’
    ‘Not far. Falling into rubbish, you don’t worry.’
    ‘Don’t worry?’ Eli was peering out the window and could see the maw of a large container, full of smelly stuff.
    ‘Try be brave. Do it. Now!’
    He jumped, feeling as though he were falling through a ring of fire. But he landed softly, slimily, on some old banana and mango peels, cabbage leaves or something. One, two, three, four more bodies fell into the garbage with him, screeching and crying, Ravi more than the rest of them put together.
    On the street the five of them backed off from the flaming kotha, holding hands now to stave off all the people running past them in both directions, like players in a mad game. The whole block was burning, not just Lakshmi’s place. The flames leapt higher into the inky sky, setting all of G.B. Road in motion, with no sign or sound of fire trucks to the rescue. Just people yelling and screaming and keening for bodies lost in the fire.
    ‘Now what?’ Eli said, looking at big-eyed Ravi, Shanti and Deevyah, and then at stoic Sanjana at the end of the chain. All smudged and gasping for breath.
    ‘Ojal’s. All I can think.’
    ‘Not the police?’
    ‘You stupid?’ Sanjana had dropped hands and was charging in front now, down the road, shoving people out of the way with her elbows. People with faces and clothes smeared black, running wild-eyed like a cattle stampede. ‘Police bring us right back to kotha, or put us in jail, me and girls,’ she shouted. ‘Nepalis not meant to be here.’
    He remembered the cops he’d seen in the hallways and sliding intogirls’ rooms. Even weird Ojal seemed safer than going to the police. At least she was who she said she was.
    As they swerved and dodged down the street, through the crazy throngs, Eli holding up the rear and the young ones in-between, he considered his options. Here he was, charging down a street on fire with a gang of young prostitutes, heading towards a house full of eunuchs, no phone, so no way of reaching his parents, couldn’t go to the cops. He pushed and shoved along with the rest of them and hoped he was as black as they were now, that the smoke had disguised him. He felt covered in blackness – his hands were black and his pathan had turned a sludgy colour. As he ran he realised he was still barefoot, and his black feet, slicked with a bit of banana from the garbage dump, were carrying him somewhere way beyond imagining.
    Ojal’s kotha was close, ten minutes, Sanjana said, still running. When they got there the ‘girls’, the hijras in their gauzy pyjamas, were standing on the front steps of the old blue house, craning to see what was burning, chattering, gesticulating, making horror faces. Ojal was not with them, but Sanjana recognised someone.
    ‘Auntie Jasu, we are lost!’ she said, stopping the troop of kids in front of the steps. ‘Everything go in fire.’
    A short, chunky person came down the steps towards them, much less like a girl than the others. She had long dark sideburns and a sparse moustache. A kind, open face, though, and solid arms reaching out