“People forget the hill’s name,” Kannan said. “They forget the way to ask it for what it keeps.”
He pointed to the stones. “A place keeps odds and ends. A thing that remembers for people who cannot.”
That evening she met her mother on the courtyard steps. They did not speak at first. The rain had polished the world clean. Riya took off the pendant and offered it to her mother. “For keeping,” she said. Her mother’s hands trembled as she accepted it, as if a long-standing debt had finally been acknowledged and folded into something softer.