I wrote Powerful Pirates when I was eleven years old, over one summer — my first real story, and one I was very proud of at the time.

The version you're about to read isn't exactly what I wrote back then. The plot is the same. The characters are the same — Ramesh, Nagesh, Chetan, Bhanu Teja, and Siddhu are still exactly who they always were, chasing the same treasure across the same islands. But I've changed how some of it is told. The eleven-year-old who wrote the original wasn't afraid to let his pirates fight hard, and some of that fighting was rougher than I'd want a young reader to sit with today. So I softened it — not to change the adventure, but to make sure the adventure is the only thing you have to carry with you when the book is done.

Everything else, I tried to leave alone. The jokes are still there. The cleverness is still there. So is the one loss in this story that's meant to stay with you — because even a children's book, I think, should be allowed to let you feel something real.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did writing it, all those years ago.

— Nagesh

Somewhere around the year 1737, home for Ramesh was Malikipuram, a trading town some twenty kilometers inland from the harbour at Antarvedi, on the Godavari coast — south of the French trading post at Yanam, and a good way further north of the English one at Machilipatnam. It was not an important place to anyone who did not live there. But on the morning this story begins, home was weeks behind him, and every one of those weeks was starting to feel like one too many.

Ramesh had four best friends. Their names were Nagesh, Chetan, Bhanu Teja, and Siddhu. And they had a small ship, presently anchored off one of the scattered islands that lay far out in the belt where the Bay of Bengal opened onto open ocean — islands so numerous and so poorly mapped that the French, the English, and the pirates who preyed on both rarely agreed on what to call any single one of them. This particular harbour, for instance, was Fort Béatrice on a French chart, Ravensmoor on an English one, and simply "the bottle-neck" to anyone who sailed under a black flag instead. Ramesh's crew, who answered to none of those three, mostly just called it the island with the good price on dried mango.

They had been out here closing that very trade for weeks now — island to island, deal to deal, the kind of slow, patient business a small crew did for a merchant back home who couldn't easily make the trip himself. The work paid well precisely because so few honest traders were willing to sail this far into waters that legitimate cargo and outright piracy both called home. But the work was also, by now, thoroughly finished, and every one of the five of them wanted nothing more than to turn the ship around and not stop until Malikipuram came back into view.

One morning, they carried the last crates of dried mango down to a small dock to sell — mango Nagesh's father had arranged to trade under his French permit, the final piece of business standing between them and the long sail home.

"Quick job," Ramesh said. "We drop off the crates, get paid, and go home."

"You said that last time," Nagesh said. "Last time, we got chased by a man with three swords."

"This time is different," Ramesh said.

"You said that too," Nagesh said.

Chetan looked at the three men waiting on the dock to buy the crates. "Those men have a lot of knives," he said. "That is a strange amount of knives for buying mango."

"Traders carry knives," Ramesh said. "It is normal."

Siddhu was not listening. He was climbing the ship's ropes instead. "I can see the whole harbour from up here!" he shouted down.

"Well done, Siddhu," said Chetan.

The three men paid for the crates and left without saying a word. Bhanu Teja watched them go. He did not say anything, but he did not stop watching either.

Then it was time to get back on the ship. Siddhu was not looking where he stepped. His foot hit a loose plank, and he fell. He landed on an old glass bottle. It broke, and a piece of glass cut his hand.

"Ow!" Siddhu said. "The deck attacked me!"

"The deck did not attack you," Ramesh said, tying a bandage around the cut. "You fell on it."

While Ramesh wrapped the bandage — not very well — Nagesh picked up the broken pieces of the bottle. He went quiet. That was strange for Nagesh, because Nagesh liked to talk.

"Ramesh," he said. "Look."

Inside the bottle had been a rolled-up map. It had an old wax seal shaped like two crossed anchors. At the top, in faded writing, were the words:

For the poor. Not for the greedy.

Nagesh's face went pale. "I know that seal," he said. "I have heard legends about it. A man named Lan Santiago hid a treasure a long time ago. He did not want bad people to find it. So he threw the only map into the sea. Everyone thought it was gone forever."

"Then how," Ramesh said slowly, "did it end up in our ship?"

"We bought this ship eight months ago," Chetan said. "We never asked where the old owner got it."

Before anyone could think about that any longer, a much bigger ship came around the point behind them. Bhanu Teja looked at the three men now climbing aboard it.

"Those were not traders," he said. "That is the Sky Gang. We just sold mango to pirates."

"Go! Go!" Ramesh shouted, stuffing the map into his shirt.

Chetan hauled the wheel around. Too slow. A crack — the whole ship shuddered — and water came through the side in a cold, roaring wall.

"Into the water! Now!" Ramesh yelled.

His heart was slamming before his feet even left the deck. Then the sea hit him — cold, loud, everywhere at once — and he kicked hard, lungs burning, salt stinging his eyes, another shot screaming past somewhere behind him and gone. He came up gasping. The pirates fired a few more shots, but missed. Soon the boys were just five heads bobbing in the ocean, swimming toward an island they hoped was really there.

"Does anyone still have the map?" Nagesh gasped, between strokes.

"I have it," Ramesh gasped back. He was holding it so tightly his hand had gone white. "Not losing it now."

They swam for a long time. Arms burning. Legs like stone. One by one, they crawled onto a beach and lay still, chests heaving, sand in their mouths. Ramesh checked the map was still in his hand. Then everything went dark.

(To be continued...)

While the boys lay unconscious on the beach, something else was happening, far out on the water.

The Sky Gang had the map now — or thought they did — and their leaders had already started arguing about it before their ship had even finished turning around.

"The treasure should be shared four ways," said D.N. Butch, the eldest of the four brothers who led the gang. "Me, my brothers, and our closest men."

"No," said his brother Yellow Sun Ron. "All of it is mine. I said so first."

"You said a lot of things first," Butch snapped. "That doesn't make them true."

The other two brothers, Saon and Moon Toon, had their own opinions too, and soon all four were shouting at once, each one certain he alone deserved the biggest share. Around them, fifteen crew members watched their leaders argue and said nothing, which was its own kind of message.

Watching from a corner, still tied up from earlier, was the very man they were arguing about — Lan Santiago.

"Your own men won't trust you now, Butch," Santiago said quietly. "You just told everyone you'd only share with your brothers. Why would a crew of fifteen stay loyal to a leader who's already decided they get the smallest piece?"

Butch turned on him. "Nobody asked the prisoner."

"You're arguing loudly enough that everyone's hearing it anyway," Santiago said. "I'm only saying what your own men are already thinking."

Butch went quiet. Then he laughed, but not happily.

"He's right," he said, to his brothers rather than to Santiago. "Fifteen of us, splitting one treasure — that's a thin share for everyone, even if we win. But four smaller crews, each hunting on our own? Whoever finds it first keeps far more, with far fewer mouths to feed."

Yellow Sun Ron thought about that. It was, annoyingly, a better plan than simply taking everything for himself and hoping nobody minded. "Fine," he said. "Four gangs, then. Whoever finds the map first keeps whatever they can carry."

Nobody argued with that. Within the hour, the Sky Gang had split into four smaller gangs, and far off, the Colour Pirates — who had their own four brothers and their own argument — did exactly the same thing. Fifteen pirates on each side became eight competing gangs in total, all hunting the very same map, all now working against each other as much as against anyone else.

In the chaos, the guard watching Santiago forgot to watch him at all. Santiago slipped free, ran for the nearest boat, and was halfway to open water before anyone noticed he was gone. They caught him anyway — cannon fire found his little boat and blew it apart. He went into the sea and did not wake up again until his own current, more forgiving than the men chasing him, carried him onto a quiet beach.

It happened, by more luck than anyone deserved, to be the very same beach where five boys lay sleeping.

None of them woke, and none of them ever knew, until Santiago told them himself, just how close the whole argument had come to leaving him at the bottom of the sea instead.

(To be continued...)

Ramesh woke up with sand in his mouth. The map was still in his fist.

"Well done," said a voice. It was not one of his friends.

A thin man stood over him. He had no map, no boat. But he had a heartbeat.

"You're dead," Ramesh said. It is not a polite thing to say to someone who just saved your life. But Ramesh had had a hard day.

"I get that a lot," the man said. "I am Lan Santiago." He said it the English way, clipped and quick, the way a man says a name he's used to spelling for people who don't share his tongue.

One by one, the others stirred awake, and one by one they said almost exactly what Ramesh had said, until Santiago had heard "you're dead" four separate times in under a minute.

"I promise you," he said, "I've had this conversation before, and it gets easier for me every time. I'm not sure it gets easier for whoever's saying it."

Once everyone was properly awake, Santiago told his story — the argument among the pirates, the eight gangs it made, his escape, the cannon fire, the swim that brought him here. Nobody interrupted, though Siddhu came close several times.

"That explains why it found us out here, of all places," Chetan said. "This far past where either flag flies for certain, I suppose nothing that gets lost ever really has anywhere else to end up."

"That's exactly it," Santiago said. "I sailed these waters myself, years ago, under an English flag, before I ever heard of this treasure. The French keep their peace at Yanam. The English keep theirs at Machilipatnam. Between the two of them, everything closer to shore is watched, taxed, and accounted for. But out here, among islands so many and so poorly charted that French maps, English maps, and whatever pirates scrawl on the back of a stolen one rarely agree on a single name — out here, honest cargo and pirate gangs share the same waters, the same currents, sometimes the very same islands a season apart. Whatever else the French and the English disagree about, they agree on this much: a pirate is everyone's enemy out here, never just one flag's. That's where a fortune like this one ends up hidden. That's where gangs like these actually live."

"How much further does it go, then?" Siddhu asked, with the particular brightness of a boy who had just heard the word adventure without anyone having said it.

"Further than you've come already, most likely," Santiago said. "Weeks more, if the wind is kind. Longer, if it isn't."

"Which is you," Santiago said, once he'd finished, looking at the map still in Ramesh's hand.

"Which is us," Ramesh said. "You wanted this treasure for the poor. That has not changed, whether you're here to see it or not."

"You could give the map to me," Santiago said. "Then this would not be your problem anymore. You could go back to whatever ordinary life you were living before a bottle decided to complicate it."

Ramesh thought about that for exactly as long as it took to answer.

"I could," he said. "But then I would not get to see how it ends. And I think, by now, I'd rather know."

Santiago looked at him for a moment, deciding whether to trust him.

"Then we'd better get moving," he said. "The gangs hunting this map won't wait politely while we talk about it."

(To be continued...)

"There is someone I want on our side," Ramesh said. "My friend Sathwick. He lives on the next island."

"Why him?" Chetan asked.

"Because Sathwick always turns up right when things are about to go wrong," Ramesh said. "Better to have him with us than find that out the hard way."

Sathwick's island was a short sail away. It was a small fishing village, more boats than houses. Sathwick came running down the dock before they had even tied up the ship. He had seen Santiago's face from far away and already guessed the rest.

"You are supposed to be dead," Sathwick said, staring at Santiago.

"I get that a lot," Santiago said.

Ramesh had barely started telling the story before Sathwick was already pulling on his boots.

"Say no more," Sathwick said. "I am coming."

"You have not even heard the dangerous part yet."

"I have known you since we were six years old, Ramesh. There is always a dangerous part. I stopped minding a long time ago."

He packed fast — rope, a knife, and a whole sack of dried figs that nobody asked about but everyone was glad of later.

They set off together, six of them now, and before long a ship came toward them, flying a blue flag.

"Give us the map, boy," shouted the pirate at the front. He had to be Glue. "Or—"

"Or you will do something bad, yes, we guessed that part," Ramesh called back. "Can we skip ahead?"

Glue did not like being interrupted. He ordered his men to fire the cannon.

But Bhanu Teja had spent the walk quietly picking up a large rock, and while nobody was looking, he had already jammed it into the cannon's mouth. There was a heartbeat of silence — a fuse hissing, sparking, everyone frozen — then a deafening BOOM, and instead of a cannonball tearing across the water, the whole cannon burst apart in a cloud of smoke and splinters. Glue, Loe, and a third pirate went flying backward into the water, unarmed, shaking, ears ringing.

"Your own cannon just tried to kill you," Ramesh said. "That is not a good sign for the rest of your day."

Glue looked at his broken cannon. He looked at his two soaked friends. None of them reached for a sword.

"Pirates don't surrender," Glue said, though he did not sound sure of it.

"No," Ramesh agreed. "So we won't ask you to. We'll just tie you up instead, and leave you right here for the harbour guard to find."

Chetan tied the knots — tight enough to hold, loose enough not to hurt — and they left the three of them sitting against a rock, ready for whoever came looking.

(To be continued...)

Yoho Island was beautiful, just like Santiago had said. It was also dangerous, just like he had also said. Both things turned out to be true.

Four gangs lived in these waters. All of them were brothers once, all from one crew called the Colour Pirates, before greed split them apart. The Blue Gang was already beaten. That left three: the Red Gang, led by Red Pirate Bob. The Pink Gang, led by Pink Pirate Slink. And the Violet Gang, led by a pirate everyone just called White.

Red Pirate Bob's ship found them first.

"Ramesh!" Bob shouted across the water. "Come to steal what's mine?"

"It was never yours," Ramesh shouted back.

Bob had two men with him, called Lunytune and Kalen. Ramesh turned to his own crew.

"Nagesh, you fight Lunytune. Chetan, you fight Kalen. Bhanu, stay close to Chetan. I will fight Bob myself."

"Why split us up like that?" Sathwick asked.

"A lion never fights a whole herd at once," Ramesh said. "It waits until the herd scatters. Then it beats one animal at a time. If we fight them all together, they outnumber us everywhere. If we each fight one man, nobody outnumbers anybody."

It worked just like he said. Steel met steel in three places at once — clang, clang, clang — boots skidding in the sand. Nagesh beat Lunytune fast, blade flashing twice before Lunytune's sword even finished falling. Kalen knocked Chetan down and jumped at Ramesh's back — but Bhanu Teja, watching for exactly that, threw his own sword first and knocked Kalen's blade away a hand's width from Ramesh's spine. A moment later, Ramesh spun, ducked under Bob's swing, and beat his sword out of his hand with a crack that echoed off the rocks.

"Yield," Ramesh said.

Bob did not yield. He ran into the trees instead. Nobody chased him. But Lunytune and Kalen were not so lucky. Chetan tied their wrists to a fallen log with rope from their own ship.

Watching from a distance was Pink Pirate Slink, his brother Tink, and two more of their gang, called Pink and Ink.

"Well?" Tink asked. "Are we just going to sit here?"

"No," Slink said. "Land the ship. I will handle Ramesh myself."

They landed on the island. Ramesh split his team up the same way. Nagesh against Slink. Chetan against Ink. Bhanu against Pink. Ramesh against Tink. Pink and Ink were beaten fast, tied, and left with the others. Slink and Tink saw they were losing, and threw down their swords.

"We surrender," Slink said.

"Real pirates don't surrender," Ramesh said. "But I will believe beaten. Sit down. We will tie you like the rest."

They sat, hands raised. It looked so much like giving up that Ramesh turned away to check on the others — which everyone agreed later was the one mistake he made all day.

The moment his back was turned, steel flashed. Slink and Tink were already moving, swords whipping up from the sand where they'd never really let go of them. But Siddhu had been watching from the trees the whole time, every muscle ready, and he was already in the air before either blade could fall. Two quick strikes — clang, clang — and both swords spun away into the grass before anyone else even had time to shout.

"They said they surrendered," Siddhu said, chest heaving. "Then they tried anyway."

"That is exactly why we do not believe a pirate's word," Ramesh said. "Tie them properly this time. Rope holds better than promises."

Last came the Violet Gang — White, and four more with him: Plight, Night, Kite, and Site. Ramesh matched them up the same careful way. White against Ramesh. Plight against Nagesh. Night against Chetan. Kite against Bhanu. Site against Sathwick, fighting with them for the first time.

Swords rang out across the sand, fast and loud, five fights at once — grunts, footsteps, the hiss of blades sliding past each other by a hand's width. It went fast. Five against five, each pair matched fair. In a few minutes, all five were beaten, tied, and sitting in a long row with the rest — nine pirates in total, waiting for whoever came looking next.

"You beat the whole Colour Pirate Gang," Santiago said, watching. "All of it."

"Not by fighting them together," Ramesh said. "By making sure I never had to."

(To be continued...)

They finally let themselves rest. They thought the worst of the day was over.

It was not.

While they sat catching their breath, two people stepped out of the trees. Sathwick and Bhanu Teja, who had been left to keep watch while the others fought. Behind them walked four brothers — the leaders of the Sky Gang. D.N. Butch. Yellow Sun Ron. Saon. Moon Toon.

"They paid you," Ramesh said. It was not a question.

"They offered," Sathwick said, not meeting his eyes. "And I was tired of never getting a real share of anything."

"And me," Bhanu Teja said quietly. "I was tired of never being asked."

"You could have asked," Ramesh said. "I would have given you a share for nothing."

Butch laughed. "Sentiment. Take them," he told two of his crew, "and get them to the ship. The rest of you, with me."

They dragged Sathwick and Bhanu Teja toward the trees. Ramesh did not wait to think about it. He went straight at Butch, sword out, blood pounding in his ears, and the whole beach exploded into fighting a second time in one day.

It went their way at first. Nagesh cornered Saon and beat him fast, blade ringing against blade. Chetan and Santiago together pushed Moon Toon back into the water until he dropped his sword with a splash. Ramesh knocked Butch's sword away and had him on his knees, breathing hard.

That left Yellow Sun Ron. He saw his brothers beaten. He saw his prisoners nearly at the ship. He stopped fighting fair. He waited until Ramesh turned to check on Chetan, then came at him with everything he had, sword raised high, feet silent in the sand — one strike meant to end it.

Santiago saw it half a second before anyone else. There was no time to shout a warning. There was only time to move. He stepped between the blade and Ramesh.

"Santiago!" Ramesh shouted. It was too late.

Ramesh turned and struck Ron's sword arm aside. This time he did not stop at yield. Ron went down and stayed down, tied up with the rest before he could try anything else. But nobody was looking at Ron anymore. They were kneeling around Santiago, in the sand, where he had gone very still.

Nobody moved for a long moment. The whole beach had gone quiet. Even the water seemed quieter.

"Ramesh," Santiago said. His voice had gone thin.

"Don't talk," Ramesh said. "Save it. We'll get you—"

"Listen to me." Santiago's hand found Ramesh's wrist. It was weak, but it held on. "The treasure. Half of it is yours. Yasmin's. The poor. Whoever needs it. But yours to give. Don't argue with me about it now."

"I won't take it," Ramesh started.

"Don't refuse it," Santiago said. "Promise me. That treasure belongs to no one else the way it belongs to you now."

"I promise," Ramesh said. There was nothing else left to say.

"Good." Santiago's eyes had already drifted somewhere far past the beach. "I have to go now, Ramesh."

He did not open his eyes again.

Nobody said anything for a long time. Siddhu sat down hard in the sand. Chetan put a hand on Nagesh's shoulder and left it there. Even the tied-up pirates, waiting along the log, had gone still and silent, watching.

"He only knew us for two days," Nagesh said softly. "Two days, and he died keeping one of us alive."

"That's not nothing," Ramesh said. His voice did not sound like his own. "That's the opposite of nothing."

Out on the water, the Sky Gang's ship was already pulling away, carrying Sathwick and Bhanu Teja with it. By the time anyone thought to look, it was too far out to catch.

"I'm angry," Ramesh finally told Nagesh, "that I'm still going to forgive them, the moment I get the chance. I don't even know how to carry two feelings this big at the same time."

(To be continued...)

They did not bury Santiago that night, because there was no body to bury. Near the very end, he had asked to be left where the sea could reach him. They did that first, before anything else, and nobody talked much while they did it.

It was grief, as much as anything, that got them moving again by morning. Sitting still meant thinking. Thinking meant picturing Sathwick and Bhanu Teja still in Sky Gang hands.

They caught up to the Sky Gang's ship two nights later, anchored by a small rocky island with no name.

"Here's the plan," Ramesh whispered. "It is not charge in shouting."

"That's new," Chetan said.

"I'm growing as a person."

Siddhu, who had already proven he could climb anything, went up the anchor chain in the dark. Two guards had been left to watch the prisoners — a pair the Sky Gang called Coop and Zoop, more interested in a card game than in watching anyone. Siddhu slipped past them without either one looking up once.

Forty minutes later, he came back down with Sathwick on one side and Bhanu Teja on the other, and all three slid into the water without a torch turning their way.

"You didn't have to come back for me," Bhanu Teja said finally, once they were clear.

"No," Ramesh agreed. "I didn't. You're still Bhanu Teja, even on the day you did something stupid."

They pressed on, following the map, deeper into the forest of the next island. It was slow going — through trees, along streams, past ponds — and by evening everyone was tired enough to build a fire and stop arguing about it.

"We are still four boys, Ramesh," Nagesh said quietly, once the others had gone quiet around the flames. "Whatever Santiago meant to say to us, he's not here to say it now."

Ramesh looked at the fire a long moment before answering. "Then we finish it for him."

It was Surya who found them the next morning — broad-shouldered, calm-eyed, out of the trees with a long branch, just as the ground beneath Siddhu's feet gave way with a wet, sucking pull. He was in it to his knees before he even yelled, arms flailing, the mud gripping tighter with every kick.

"Steady now," Surya said, more to himself than to them, hauling hard on the branch, muscles straining, boots dug into the firmer ground behind him — until, with one last pull and a loud shlorp, Siddhu came free, gasping, caked in mud to the waist.

"You're Santiago's friends," he said, once they were safe. "I saw you fighting for him on Yoho. My name is Surya."

"Was," Ramesh said quietly. "We were his friends."

Something in Surya's face changed. "I'm sorry," he said. "Santiago saved my life once, a long time ago. When he asked me to guard something for him, I didn't need a second reason to say yes."

He led them to a cave. It was less shining and more simply huge than Ramesh had pictured — chest after chest, stacked and waiting.

"Half for the poor," Ramesh said quietly. "That's what he wanted."

(To be continued...)

"You'll come with us, Surya?" Ramesh asked.

"Of course," Surya said.

They loaded the treasure onto the ship, and Surya climbed aboard with the rest.

"What do we do with it all?" Siddhu asked, once they were sailing.

"Your sister Yasmin keeps a home for children who have nobody," Ramesh said. "We give it there. What do you think?"

"It's your call, Ramesh," Siddhu said. "But I think that's exactly right."

"There's more," Surya said, digging near the bottom of the chest. "Santiago told me three more maps were hidden inside. Should we look?"

They found them — three smaller, rolled maps, tucked beneath the coins.

"Berald," Ramesh read, "where Santiago was born."

"Stockdove," Nagesh said, "where he grew up."

"And Herald," Chetan said slowly. "That's Sathwick's island."

"Then we'll find our way to all three," Ramesh said, "same as the rest."

They had barely agreed on it when two more ships appeared, closing fast.

"Cameroon!" one of them shouted — Red Pirate Bob's son, still furious about his father's defeat at Yoho.

"And Boon," Surya added, nodding at the second ship. "Yellow Sun Ron's."

Both had brought friends — James and Daniel — and all four came aboard at once in a rush of boots on wood, swords out and flashing in the sun.

"Attack," Ramesh said simply.

It didn't take long. Steel clashed on every side of the deck at once — Ramesh met Cameroon's blade with a ringing crack, Nagesh drove Boon back step by step, and Siddhu, Chetan, and Surya boxed James and Daniel into a corner with barely room to swing.

"Run home nicely," Ramesh told Cameroon, "or you'll be joining your father's friends by that log."

"I don't know how to run," Cameroon said.

"You're about to learn."

Ramesh beat the sword from his hand and chased him back to his own ship. Cameroon had no choice but to escape in a small boat, shouting back over his shoulder that he wasn't finished.

"Siddhu," Ramesh said, once the water had gone quiet again. "Cameroon's ship is yours now."

"Mine?" Siddhu's mouth fell open.

"Surya, take Boon's."

"Are you sure?" Surya asked.

"We've been acting like pirates ourselves, taking ships this way," Ramesh admitted. "But I think, just this once, it's fair."

Surya asked where they were all from, and Ramesh told him — Andhra, East Godavari district — and for the first time since Santiago had died, it felt like they were finally heading somewhere that mattered.

"Let's go home," Ramesh said. "Chalo, India."

(To be continued...)

Antarvedi, back then, was mostly forest. A small temple stood at its edge, half-hidden by trees, easy to miss if you weren't looking for it. The Narasimhaswamy who lived inside it was older than anyone could say, and the temple itself was small enough that all six of them fit inside it at once, with room to spare.

They went there first, because Ramesh insisted, and because after everything the beach at Yoho had taken from them, it felt wrong to arrive home and not stop, even briefly, somewhere quiet.

From Antarvedi, it was another walk of some twenty kilometers inland to reach Malikipuram itself — the trading town where Ramesh's family and Prasanth Kumar's business were both rooted, and where Yasmin kept her home for children with nowhere else to go. Nobody minded the walk. After weeks at sea, solid ground that didn't move was its own small pleasure, however far it stretched.

Then they carried what they'd promised to Yasmin's home.

Yasmin took one look at the crates coming up her steps and put her hands on her hips.

"Let me guess," she said. "This was Ramesh's idea."

"It was everyone's idea," Ramesh said, going a little red. "I just said it first."

"That's exactly what an idea is, isn't it," Yasmin said, not quite smiling. "Somebody says it first."

They told her everything — the map, the pirates, Santiago. She listened without interrupting, the way people do when a story is too big to argue with, and when it was over she was quiet for a long moment before she spoke again.

"You came all this way," she said slowly, "just to give this to these children?"

"We came because we said we would," Siddhu said. "It's not really about the home. It's about the promise."

"Those don't have to be different things," Yasmin said.

Half of what they'd found went in that day. If Yasmin cried a little while counting it, nobody mentioned it.

"We still have three more maps," Ramesh told her, before they left. "We're not finished yet."

"Then don't let me keep you," Yasmin said. "Just come back in one piece. All of you, this time."

They promised they would. It was not, as it turned out, a promise they could fully keep.

(To be continued...)

"Ready, Siddhu?" Ramesh asked, back at the harbour.

"Ready," Siddhu said. "I've been looking after these ships this whole time, you know."

"Sure you have."

Three maps still waited to be followed — Berald, Stockdove, and Herald — and Subbu, the one man who might know exactly where, lived further out than any of them had sailed yet, past the scattered islands they already knew, toward the western reaches of that same lawless belt. It meant leaving Malikipuram behind a second time, with no clearer idea than before of how long they'd be gone.

They set off that afternoon, and by night a real storm had found them — wind screaming through the rigging, rain hammering sideways so thick nobody could see past the bow, the ship lurching hard beneath their feet.

"Any island nearby?" Ramesh called to Nagesh, shouting over the wind.

"Small one, off to the right!" Nagesh shouted back.

They made for it, all three ships together, sails cracking like whips, spray stinging their eyes, and reached the shore just as the worst of the storm broke over them.

"Shelter," Nagesh said, breathing hard. "Let's find some."

That was when Cameroon's voice came out of the dark.

"Even people about to die want shelter?"

Ramesh turned. "Cameroon. Show yourself."

Cameroon stepped out with five men behind him.

"Please," Ramesh said, before Cameroon could even finish a sentence. "No long speeches. Let's skip straight to whatever you were planning."

"You're in an awful hurry to die," Cameroon said.

"It won't be us dying," Nagesh said. "It'll be your own gang, same as always."

Cameroon opened his mouth to make a speech anyway — "This is my army—" — and Ramesh cut him off again.

"Cameroon. No dialogues. Just fight, if you're going to."

"Fine," Cameroon said.

Ramesh moved so fast that Cameroon barely saw him coming — one strike, then another, blade a blur in the dark and the rain. One by one, Cameroon's own men threw down their swords with a clatter rather than keep fighting — until only Cameroon himself was left standing, breathing hard.

"Go," Ramesh told him. "Leave, and don't come back tonight."

"You won't let me go, will you, Ramesh?"

"Go," Ramesh said again.

Cameroon backed away slowly, his men following. At the treeline, he turned.

"I'm not staying," he said. "But I'm not finished either. Not until I've beaten you, Ramesh."

Then he was gone, and the storm was the only thing left shouting.

They built a shelter on the island that night and said very little about what had almost happened.

(To be continued...)

Morning came clear and bright, which felt almost rude after the night before.

Siddhu, in a much better mood than anyone else, wandered off "to enjoy the view." Everyone understood that to mean to find something to fall over.

He found it almost right away. An old bottle, half-buried in the sand.

"Not again," Nagesh said.

Siddhu smashed it anyway.

The air folded like a curtain. A Genie unfolded out of the wreckage — twice as tall as anyone on the beach, with far too many teeth.

"Free," it said. "After all these years. And you are the ones who freed me."

"Any wishes going spare?" Siddhu asked, delighted.

The Genie laughed, and there was nothing warm in it. "Nobody came for a thousand years. Around year six hundred, I decided whoever finally broke my bottle would pay for every one of them. You may choose how you die. I am, whatever else I am, fair."

Ramesh's eyes did the thing they did right before an idea arrived.

"We choose to die by our own hand," he said slowly. "No one else may kill us."

"Agreed," the Genie said.

"And no fear," Nagesh added, catching on. "We must go calm and willing."

"Fine."

"And no pain," Chetan said. "Nothing that might make the choice for us instead of us choosing it."

"Fine."

"And," Bhanu Teja finished, "it has to really be our choice. Not talked into it. Not tricked into it. Freely."

The Genie opened its mouth. Closed it. Opened it again, and said nothing at all.

"I don't know how to do that," it admitted, sitting down right there in the sand.

"No," Ramesh said. "I didn't think you would."

"You have strength of arm," the Genie muttered. "I could have matched that. You have something else."

"Strength of thinking," Nagesh said. "It is rather our whole business."

"We don't want a servant," Ramesh said. "We want you free, properly, this time. Just free."

The Genie looked at him a long moment. "Nobody has ever asked me for nothing before." It laughed again, warmer this time. "Free doesn't have to mean gone, though. If you ever truly need me — not command me, only call — I'll come. Being free just means I'd be choosing to."

Breakfast appeared on the sand, far more than five boys could eat, before the Genie folded itself back into the morning air.

"That," Chetan said, "went better than the cannon."

(To be continued...)

Four quiet days followed. It took the whole first one for anyone to believe the quiet was real.

"I keep waiting for something," Siddhu admitted, flat on the deck, watching a sky that refused to do anything alarming.

"That's probably not healthy," Chetan said.

"No," Siddhu agreed. "But it's worked so far."

One evening they camped on a stretch of coast for no better reason than that it looked pleasant. Sathwick's dried figs were still holding out. The Genie turned up uninvited, just to see how they were getting on, and stayed for a fish it hadn't earned.

"You could just come whenever you liked," Bhanu Teja pointed out. "You don't have to pretend it's an accident every time."

"I like pretending," the Genie said. "Being free is more fun when nobody's watching too closely."

Nobody said Santiago's name that night. But when the fire dipped low, it was Ramesh who quietly built it back up, the exact way Santiago used to — same careful hands, same order of adding the wood. Nagesh noticed. Neither of them said anything about it.

It was the ninth night after that when Cameroon came back, and this time he didn't bother with a speech.

Fire took the edge of their camp before anyone woke — a sudden crackle, orange light licking up the canvas, smoke thick in the air. Surya had taken the last watch, sitting a little apart from the dying flames, which was exactly why he was the first one found. A hand clamped over his mouth. A blade cold against his back. Dragged to the treeline before he could even call out.

Ramesh only woke because he'd got up for water. Smoke stung his eyes, heat pressed against his face, and he was pulling the others out from under the burning canvas with his bare hands before he'd even fully understood what was happening. By the time he could breathe again, Cameroon was waiting with ten men, Surya held in front of him, hurt and unable to stand.

"No dialogues," Cameroon said. "Only action."

He'd learned that line from them, which somehow made it worse.

It was a hard fight — outnumbered, half-asleep, fire still crackling and spreading behind them, smoke burning their throats, swords ringing out in the dark — until Ramesh finally beat the sword from Cameroon's hand with a strike that jarred all the way up his own arm, and had him on his knees in the sand.

"It's over," Ramesh said. "Let Surya go, same as your father did at Yoho."

Cameroon smiled instead of yielding, which should have told Ramesh something.

"There's a mark," he said, "that finishes its work if I lose. I set it the moment I lit that fire, in case tonight went badly for me. It already has."

He spoke words none of them understood, and the air behind him split open.

(To be continued...)

For a moment, nobody moved at all. Even Cameroon's own men, still on the ground where they'd fallen, stared up at the thing towering over them.

What came through the split air was ten times the size of a Genie, with claws like ships' anchors and a face built for nothing but ending arguments.

"A Giant," Nagesh said. "Of course there is."

"Cameroon," Ramesh said carefully, not taking his eyes off it. "What did you just do?"

Cameroon, on the ground, managed a weak laugh. "A backup plan," he said. "In case I lost."

Ramesh called out into the night — not a command, just a call — and his own Genie arrived within seconds, mid-yawn, already furious at whoever had interrupted its evening.

"I was listening in," it said, looking at the Giant like it did not like what it saw. "This had better be worth it."

The Giant looked the Genie up and down. It did not look worried. "You're small," it said.

"You're loud," the Genie answered. "Let's see which of those matters more."

Behind them, Ramesh kept his sword trained on Cameroon and his men, though none of them looked in any condition to try anything. "Nobody moves," Ramesh said. "Not while that's happening."

Nobody argued.

The two towering shapes crashed together — a boom like thunder, ground shaking under everyone's feet — blade meeting blade for two long hours, sparks flying with every strike, while the fire from the camp burned itself down to embers behind them and everyone else stood too afraid to look away. Twice the Genie seemed close to winning. Twice the Giant found something more to give.

"It doesn't tire," Chetan said, watching closely. "Look — it's been struck a dozen times and it's still moving the same as it did at the start."

Finally, the Genie landed a blow that should have ended it — a clean strike, straight through.

It didn't. The wound closed almost as fast as it opened, skin knitting back together before anyone could even react.

"That's not possible," Nagesh said.

"It's healing," Surya said weakly, from where he lay. "Look — it keeps touching that stone at its collar, every time it's hurt."

"Then we don't need to beat the Giant," Ramesh said, watching closely now. "We need to beat the stone."

(To be continued...)

Easier said than done. The stone sat high on the Giant's collar, out of reach of anything but the Giant's own hand — or something small enough, and fast enough, to climb up without being noticed in the middle of a sword fight.

"Siddhu," Ramesh said. "You're the only one of us who's ever climbed anything faster than he could think about it. Go."

"That's either a compliment or an insult," Siddhu said. "I'll figure out which one later."

While the Genie kept the Giant's attention with blow after blow, Siddhu went up its arm the same way he'd gone up every rigging and rope on this whole journey — fast, careless, and somehow never quite falling. Twice the Giant nearly shook him loose without even noticing he was there. He reached the collar just as the Giant turned its head, and wrenched the stone free before it even knew what had happened.

The Giant staggered. It swayed. Then it fell down and was gone, like smoke in the wind.

Cameroon, watching his last card vanish, didn't run. He sat down in the sand, all the fight gone out of him, and put his head in his hands.

"You could have let it finish us," Ramesh said, lowering his sword. "Why give up now?"

"Because I lit that fire myself," Cameroon said, not looking up, "and Surya could have died in it. I would have let him, just to prove something to my father that I'm not even sure is true anymore. That's not who I meant to become, back when this still sounded like glory instead of shame."

Nobody said anything for a moment. It was Surya, still weak, who spoke first.

"Then don't be that person anymore," he said. "You already stopped, just now. That's usually how it starts."

Ramesh held out a hand and helped Cameroon up.

They stayed two full days after that, tending Surya's wound properly this time. Cameroon stayed too, mending rope nobody had asked him to mend, until nobody quite remembered treating him as an enemy anymore. By the second morning, even Siddhu had stopped watching him out of the corner of his eye.

"Where to now?" Cameroon asked, on the second evening.

"Stockdove," Surya said, back on his feet. "There's a man there who might know where the rest of the treasure is."

"And if he doesn't want to help?"

"Then we'll have to be persuasive," Ramesh said, "and hope that's close enough."

(To be continued...)

Word of the Giant travelled faster than anyone expected. Two days later, an army was waiting on a beach directly in their path — a hundred men, led by Stephen, son of Moon Toon, one of the four brothers Ramesh had already beaten once at Yoho.

"You underestimated us," Stephen called out. "This is what the Sky Gang was always really capable of."

"Strength doesn't live in numbers," Ramesh answered. "It lives in the body that carries it."

"Brave words," Stephen said, "for someone about to see exactly how many numbers we brought."

He smiled and pointed to a second army waiting on the far side of the beach — another hundred men, led by his friend Anthony, who was holding something Ramesh recognised at once. The iron box he'd sealed the Giant inside and thrown into the sea, weeks ago.

"You thought that was finished," Anthony said.

"I was hoping," Ramesh admitted.

"Hope," Anthony said, "is a poor sort of weapon."

Anthony opened the box anyway. The Giant came out again, exactly as dangerous as before, as if the sea had done nothing but keep it waiting.

"That's too many," Chetan said, counting out loud. "Two hundred men and a Giant. For six of us."

"Five of us and a Genie," Siddhu corrected.

"That barely helps the math, Siddhu."

"It helps my confidence, which is nearly the same thing."

Ramesh looked at the two armies, at the Giant, at his own small crew standing behind him, and felt something settle in his chest that was not quite fear and not quite calm, but somewhere close to both.

"Nagesh," he said quietly. "I think we're going to need a plan bigger than one sword."

(To be continued...)

Nagesh was already thinking. "Siddhu, get to the ship. Aim the cannon, wait for my word." Under his breath, to the Genie, he added, "Dig a pit between us and them, where they can't see it. Make it look like Siddhu and Chetan are still standing here."

"That's a great deal to ask of one pit," the Genie said.

"I have faith in you."

"Flattery," the Genie muttered, and got to work anyway.

The pit appeared exactly where Nagesh wanted it, wide and deep and completely invisible under a thin covering of sand and leaves. Beside Nagesh, two shapes that looked exactly like Siddhu and Chetan stood watching the enemy approach, arms crossed, doing an excellent impression of boys with nothing to worry about.

"Charge!" Anthony ordered, and his men obeyed.

Half of them marched straight into the hidden pit with a sudden chorus of shouts and thuds, before anyone noticed the two "boys" beside Nagesh were only tricks of the light. There was a great deal of scrambling and yelling from underground, and a lot less bravery from the men still standing above it.

"Clever," Anthony admitted, though he didn't sound pleased about it, and sent the rest of his soldiers forward instead, more carefully this time, watching the ground as they came.

Siddhu, watching from the real ship exactly as told, fired the cannon the moment they were close enough — a flash, a roar, smoke rolling across the beach — and the charge broke apart before it ever reached Ramesh at all. Anthony himself, caught in the open with no soldiers left near him, was disarmed and tied before he'd even decided which way to run.

"One army down," Nagesh said, allowing himself a small breath. "One and a Giant to go."

"You say that like it's the easy half," Chetan said.

"I say it because it's the only half left. That's not the same as easy."

Bhanu Teja was already checking the ropes on Anthony's wrists a second time, the way he'd learned to since Slink and Tink's fake surrender back at Yoho. "No mistakes this round," he said. "We've been fooled by a loose knot before."

What was left of Stephen's men came at Ramesh, Nagesh, and Surya together, while the Genie split itself into a hundred smaller shapes to hold off the two Giants Anthony's magic had somehow made out of one.

(To be continued...)

It was the hardest fighting of the whole trip. Swords everywhere, shouting everywhere, the ground shaking under stamping feet, the Genie's hundred small shapes darting between two Giants too big and too slow to catch any of them properly.

Surya fought beside Ramesh the whole time, quiet as always, steady in a way that made the boys around him fight a little steadier too.

Chetan could not just watch from the ship. He left it to help, blood pounding in his ears — and took a real wound for it — a blade across the arm, sharp and burning, that dropped him to his knees with a gasp.

"Chetan!" Nagesh shouted, already running.

The Genie broke away just long enough to heal the cut and carry him back to safety before returning to the fight.

"I told you to stay on the ship," Nagesh said, checking him over, hands not quite steady.

"I know," Chetan said. "I'm glad I didn't."

"You could be dead."

"I could be. I'm not. Let's argue about it later, when there's less fighting to distract us."

It was Siddhu, glancing up between swings, who finally noticed the old man watching quietly from the rise above the beach — not fighting, not running, just watching. Something in Ramesh went very quiet when he saw it too.

"Nagesh," he said. "Can we stop? Right now, this exact moment. Could this be the shore?"

Nagesh looked around at the fighting still going on all sides of them. "We haven't harmed anyone who didn't try to harm us first," he said carefully. "But I understand why you're asking."

"It's a river," Ramesh said, half to himself. "Once you're in it, you don't get to stop swimming halfway across. You go until you reach the other side, or you go under. I keep asking myself if I could stop. I don't think I can. Not yet."

Nagesh didn't answer right away. When he did, his voice was quieter than usual. "Then let's get you to the other side, Ramesh. That's all any of us can do for you right now."

There was no time to answer that properly. Stephen's men closed in again — this time with a Magician at their side, robes stitched with symbols nobody could read.

(To be continued...)

A single spell from the Magician folded the Genie neatly into a bottle before anyone could stop it.

"Not again," Siddhu said, and then, louder, toward the bottle: "Genie! Same trick as last time!"

"Good idea, Siddhu," the Genie called out from inside the glass, and got to work — splitting itself into shapes small enough to slip the seal, one gap at a time, reassembling free on the other side before the Magician even noticed his prisoner had escaped him twice now with the same idea.

"I have them occasionally," Siddhu said, not quite hiding how pleased he was with himself.

The Magician stared at the empty bottle in his hand for a long moment, as if it might explain itself. It didn't.

What followed wasn't really a battle anymore. Just tired men discovering, one small group at a time, that they'd signed up for a war already lost. The Magician, seeing his own trick undone, slipped away into the trees rather than test his luck further. Stephen alone kept coming, long after his own army had given up around him.

"Stop," Ramesh told him. "It's finished, Stephen. Look around."

"A soldier who stops," Stephen said, still swinging, "goes home with nothing to show for it."

"A soldier who keeps fighting a war his own men already walked away from," Ramesh said, catching his blade with a jarring clang and holding it firm, "goes home with less than that."

Stephen looked at his scattered soldiers, several of them quietly setting down their swords when they thought no one was watching, and something in his shoulders finally gave. He didn't say he surrendered — pirates, Ramesh had learned by now, rarely meant it when they did. He simply stopped, and let his sword be taken, and stood still while Chetan tied his wrists the same way he'd tied every pirate that week.

"You'll be tied up here for whoever comes looking, same as the rest," Ramesh told him. "What happens after that isn't mine to decide."

Nobody cheered. It didn't feel like the kind of ending that wanted cheering.

"The biggest battle in Ramesh's whole ridiculous history," Nagesh said, looking out at a beach gone suddenly, enormously quiet, "and we won it with a hidden pit, a hundred tiny Genies, and Siddhu hiding in a gap in a bottle. Twice."

"Nobody has to believe it," Ramesh said. "We were there."

They gathered what strength they had left and made camp right there on the beach, too tired to sail another mile that night.

(To be continued...)

Stockdove Island was as pleasant as everywhere else had been terrifying, which felt a little strange after the week they'd had.

Siddhu found the man they were looking for by shouting his name until a wiry, sun-browned man wandered out of a fishing hut, looking put-upon.

"Subrahmanyam," the man confirmed. "Subbu, if you're going to keep yelling it. Well now — who are you lot?"

"Friends of Santiago's," Ramesh said. "We're looking for the last three treasures. Surya said you'd know where to look."

"Well now," Subbu said again, studying them a long moment — six travel-worn boys, a former enemy standing a little apart, an old sailor favoring one side. "Plenty of people have asked me that. Every one of them wanted it for themselves. Why should you be different?"

"Because half of everything we've found already went to Yasmin's home for children with nowhere else to go," Ramesh said. "We're not finishing this to keep it. We're finishing it because we said we would."

Subbu turned to Cameroon, standing a little apart from the rest. "You don't look like you belong with this crowd."

"I didn't," Cameroon said. "I'm working on it."

"Working on it," Subbu repeated, as if turning the phrase over. "That's an honest answer. Most people give me a better one and mean it less."

That answer settled it more than anything Ramesh had said. "Well now," Subbu said, quieter this time. "Santiago. I haven't heard that name in years. He and I grew up on this stretch of sand, burying each other's toys and calling it treasure, long before he had real reason to. Come on, then. There's a spot near this hut he never let me forget, and it's about time somebody dug it up."

Subbu's own dune remembered exactly where a boy had once buried something and never come back for it. The first chest came up within the hour. He stood over it a long moment, one hand flat against the lid, like he needed to be sure it was really there.

"Forty years," he said finally. "Forty years he was gone, and it waited right here the whole time. So did I, as it happens."

Berald, a day later, was hot and overgrown, and worth every bit of it — a second chest, heavy enough to leave everyone's arms aching in a new way.

Herald came last, and it was Sathwick who went quiet this time, staring at the third chest coming free of the sand not fifty paces from his own front door.

"It was here the whole time," he said slowly. "I used to fish exactly here."

"Feeling foolish?" Siddhu asked, not unkindly.

"Feeling," Sathwick said, "like Santiago had a strange sense of humour, and I was the joke."

"That's the last of it," Ramesh said, looking at four chests lined up on the deck. "Santiago's whole fortune, found."

"Half of it's still not decided where it's going," Subbu pointed out.

"Half of it," Ramesh said, "is going exactly where he wanted it to. We just have to get it there."

"Home," Siddhu said, already halfway to the sail ropes. "I want a bed that isn't sand."

(To be continued...)

Antarvedi looked exactly the way home is supposed to look after a long time away.

"I'd forgotten the ground doesn't move," Ramesh said, standing on the shore.

They went to the temple first. Then, chests in tow, they made the long walk inland to Malikipuram — for the second time now, though this time there was far more to give, and far more people carrying it.

They went to find Yasmin first, before anything else.

"I'll give half my share," Ramesh said.

"So will I," said Nagesh.

"A quarter from me," Chetan said.

"And me," Surya added.

Subbu, who had never met Yasmin and had no real reason to care, cleared his throat anyway. "I'll give a tenth of mine."

"You don't have to," Ramesh said.

"I know," Subbu said. "I'm doing it anyway."

Yasmin looked at the pile of coins, and then at the strange, road-worn crowd who'd brought it — one more face than she remembered from before.

"You came back," she said.

"We said we would," Siddhu said.

That evening, at the trading house in Malikipuram where all of this had started with a crate of dried mango, they finally faced the conversation Ramesh had been dreading more than any pirate, any Genie, any Giant — with Nagesh's father, Prasanth Kumar, who held the local permit for trade with the French at Yanam, and who had signed his own name to every crate the five of them had ever carried down to the harbour at Antarvedi.

"So," said Prasanth. "Tell me everything."

They tried. It came out in the wrong order, and it contradicted itself twice. There was so much of it — pirates, betrayal, a rescue by moonlight, a treasure cave, a friend they had lost and would not get back, a Genie who had briefly wanted them all dead before staying for dinner instead, a Giant undone by a stone at its throat, a hundred-man army talked into laying down its swords, and an enemy who had stopped being one.

"There's a great deal of danger in this story," Prasanth said, "and not much thinking your way around it. Why didn't you simply avoid half of it?"

Ramesh thought about that seriously.

"It's like a river, Sir," he said. "Once you're in it, you can't just stop swimming. In the middle of it, I asked myself if I could stop. I didn't think I could. But I kept choosing not to go under. I think that's the part that matters most."

Prasanth was quiet a moment before he answered. "Choosing not to go under matters, Ramesh — I won't say it doesn't. But hear this too: however big or small a fight is, winning it is never the good part. I've spent my whole working life keeping the peace between men who'd rather shout than sign a fair agreement — the French, the English, the merchants who resent both of them — and I've learned that half the time, the cleverer thing is not to fight at all. Find the way around, the way you did with that Genie, or the way Cameroon found in the end, once someone finally let him. You didn't come home because you were the strongest ones out there. You came home because none of you let go of each other, and because luck was kinder to you than you had any right to expect. Remember which of those three actually saved you, the next time you think a sword is the answer."

Nagesh looked faintly stung, in the way of someone who'd expected praise and been handed a lesson instead. "That's a lot to take in after a summer like this one, Sir."

"That's rather more than I expected a boss to say," Ramesh added, still turning it over.

"That's because," Nagesh said, "he isn't just our boss. He's my father."

Prasanth allowed himself the smallest possible smile. "I've known where my son was every day of this," he said. "Knowing didn't make it easier to hear."

Prasanth looked at all of them — muddy, richer than when they'd left, and all present and accounted for, including one who hadn't started the journey with them at all.

"Sathwick. Surya. Subbu." He paused on Cameroon a moment longer. "And you. There's work here for any of you who want it."

"Even me?" Cameroon asked.

"Especially you," Prasanth said. "The ones who change their mind halfway through are usually worth more than the ones who never had to."

He turned to the five who'd started it all. "And you're going back to your actual jobs. No pirates. No Genies. No Giants. Understood?"

"Understood," they said together, in the exact tone of boys who fully intended to keep that promise right up until the next unusual bottle washed ashore.

That night, after everyone else had gone to bed, Ramesh stayed a while longer by the harbour, looking out at the water. He thought about a man he had known for only two days, who had died making sure those two days weren't wasted. Some friendships don't need very long to become real. Sometimes just one moment is enough.

"Steady now," he said quietly, to nobody, and found that it helped, just like it always helped Surya.

Then he went inside, because there was supper waiting, and because — for once, and for a good long while after — nothing at all was chasing him home.

Two hundred years later, give or take, a girl lay half-asleep on her father's arm, listening to the very end of a story he always told a little differently each time.

"And did they really give all of it away?" she asked, eyes already closing. "Every coin?"

"Every coin they promised," her father said. "That's what your grandmother always said, anyway — she's the one who told it to me, the very same way, when I was smaller than you."

"Was Ramesh real?"

"Somebody was," he said. "Maybe not exactly like this. But somebody was."

She was asleep before he finished the sentence, the way children always are at the good part.

THE END