‘Told under the Linden Tree’ by Renée Sarojini Saklikar

Our story starts in a valley beneath the icefields of an ancient mountain, snow cap metres deep, stable for aeons, and now shrinking epoch to decade, decade to year, year to month, centimetre or inch — either way, a winter regime of snow-drought, dry as dust. 

One night, in a small shack, we huddled close, hands to a tin drum filled with the dying embers of coal and timber, remnants of the Before-Time. We shared stories and each story emitted a sonar-pulse reverberating upward to our thinning atmosphere. We knew somehow, someway, Bramah the Locksmith would hear us. 

“Come, Bramah,” we chanted in our circle. “Help us find the Portal of the Four Seasons,” where once we knew temperate and not extreme. 

“Bramah, bring your pick and your drill,” we knew to add, for at the gate of the portal, the Vault of the Lost: in its chambers, a hundred thousand names of all the plants and animals, extinct. We’d saved what seeds we could. 

An icy north wind rattled the walls of our shack, a shutter banged loose. Our story, paused. Was there another sound, perhaps a knock on wood? When we opened the door, there stood on the threshold three seed savers, arrived from foreign lands, cloaks bedraggled, burlap pouches covered against the snow.

“Crust, mantle, core,” they whispered.

“To the bellows and for the warmth,” we replied, our gaze intent on their expectant faces.

Of course, we offered what we could: dry naan bread and stale water from our well, the water table low as it had ever been. Together, we sat with the strangers.