Prem Singh made them wait a full three days before he was finally willing to guide them properly to the edge of the Laughing Forest — three long days that he insisted, somewhat mysteriously, on calling “preparation,” though in practice this mostly seemed to consist of watching Vihaan and Aanya bicker good-naturedly over who should carry which supplies, and Prem Singh occasionally shaking his head at their apparent lack of proper seriousness.
“Salt,” the old man said finally, on the morning of the third day, pressing several small cloth pouches firmly into each of their hands.
“Not for any kind of protection, mind you — whatever the old wives around here like to claim, the forest itself doesn’t particularly care one way or another about salt.
This is purely for marking your own path as you go.
Drop a small pinch roughly every fifty steps.
If you ever find yourselves no longer recognizing the trees immediately surrounding you, follow the salt trail carefully back the way you came — never rely on memory alone to guide you back.” “Why not memory specifically?” Aanya asked, turning the small pouch over curiously in her hands.
“Because memory,” Prem Singh said gravely, “happens to be precisely the very first thing that forest reliably consumes.” He offered them one final, serious warning before finally leading them toward the actual tree line — a warning he deliberately repeated twice, slowly and carefully, making absolutely certain it properly registered with both of them.
“Whatever specific thing you personally carry into that forest — grief, guilt, unresolved longing — you will inevitably meet it there, wearing an entirely familiar face.
It will sound exactly like someone you deeply love.
It will say precisely what that particular person would genuinely say to you.
The only thing it fundamentally cannot do is know something that person never actually told you themselves, in real life.
Test it directly, whenever you’re genuinely unsure.
It will always fail that specific test.
But you absolutely must ask the correct question before it manages to convince you not to.” Vihaan thought immediately, unbidden, of his grandfather’s characteristic silences at the temple.
Aanya thought, just as involuntarily, of a promise she’d apparently made to someone once, though she found she couldn’t quite properly recall the exact circumstances of making it.
Neither of them spoke as they finally stepped past the first line of ancient pines, and the ordinary, comforting sounds of the mountain — birdsong, gentle wind, distant temple bells — fell away behind them almost instantly, as though some invisible door had quietly swung shut.