Peter was confused. The relative development in the area made it seem like there would be at least a small group of people living here, but Peter didn’t see anyone else. He scratched his head, then asked, “Where’s everyone else?”
Nikhil simply looked down at him, with a somber expression on his face. “Come inside,” he said, as he slid open the door to the closest hut, and motioned for Peter to enter.
Peter walked in. The hut had only one room, large to Peter, but a relatively small living space for Nikhil, he figured, only being about fifty feet wide and forty feet long. It was sparsely furnished, with only a twenty-foot long bed on one wall and a twelve-foot long desk and matching chair on the other. The bed was made of bamboo poles, with a mattress that looked like dozens of seat cushions sown together. The chair looked to be carved out of solid wood; it had a very rough quality to it, though it looked sturdy enough to support Nikhil’s massive frame. The desk was the most interesting to Peter, as it appeared to be made from sheet metal folded enough to approximate the shape. Peter couldn’t see what was on top of the desk, as it stood higher than his plane of vision.
Nikhil and Kalima followed behind Peter. Kalima went over to an empty side of the hut and lied down, her face looking at Peter with a fierce, but noble, look. Nikhil sat his spear and blow gun on the desk, and sat down on the bed. He sighed, running his hands through his hair.
“Would you like to sit up here on the bed, or on the desk...?” Nikhil asked, his voice trailing off.
“Um,” Peter said, “I guess the desk will be fine.”
“Is it okay if pick you up then?” Nikhil said as he crouched down.
“Yeah, sure,” Peter said, hesitantly. Though he was beginning to feel comfortable around this giant boy, he still was uneasy about the size difference.
But Nikhil was very careful, gently picking Peter up by the arms and slowly moving him over to the desk, where he sat him down. The feeling of getting picked up by another person triggered a nostalgic memory in Peter’s head of when he was a little kid, and his father would pick him up and carry him on his shoulders. It brought a smile to Peter’s face, if only for a moment.
Peter felt the metal of the desk beneath his feet as he sat down on the edge. It was smooth to the touch, if a little warped, from being forced into a desk shape, he presumed. As he sat down, Nikhil sat back down on the bed. Even with Peter’s advantage of being on the higher surface of the desk, he still had to look up to talk to Nikhil.
“So...” Nikhil said, “I suppose you want to know how this all happened.”
“Well,” Peter said, shrugging, “that would be helpful.”
“Okay,” Nikhil said. “Bear with me here. It all starts about fifteen years ago. I was a normal boy then, only about five feet tall, and was a student at a school in Delhi. It was one of the wealthiest schools in the city; all the rich people sent their kids there. I played on the cricket team, and we had just won the regional championship and were going to compete in the big national tournament in Bombay. Do you understand me so far?”
“I think so,” Peter responded, “though I’m a little confused on how this could be fifteen years ago, but I’m sure you’ll explain that. By the way, Bombay’s now called Mumbai.”
“I see,” Nikhil said, nodding. “Well, our school had chartered a flight, and, in short, we ran into a very intense storm, not unlike the one you had trouble with last night. Our plane crashed into a field a few kilometers east of here,” he said, pointing. “The pilot, our coaches and parents, all the adults on the flight were severely injured, and either had already died in the crash or would do so soon. But, amazingly, all twelve of the boys on the team survived with hardly a scratch.
“The first few days were chaotic; it seemed like each boy had a different idea of what to do. We eventually all followed Harjeet, who was the oldest among us, nearly 15, and the team leader. He split us up into two groups, one that would search for shelter, and the other that would try to rescue what we could from the wreckage. I was on the team searching for shelter, and a few miles away from the crash, we found a cave that would work for shelter. It’s only about a kilometer from here.
“So we all moved to the cave. The other group of boys tried to salvage the radio from the plane, but they could never get it to pick up or transmit a signal; there seemed to be a large interference coming from somewhere. We settled in, having enough food for about a week. But after the first four or five days, we noticed that we were all changing. All of us were developing muscle at a rapid rate, and began to grow in height. It started slow at first: a few inches here, ten pounds of muscle there, but by the end of the second week, we had grown into becoming, well, what I am now.”
“Wow,” Peter said, “so there were eleven other boys as big as you?”
“Actually,” Nikhil said, “most of the others were bigger. We all seemed to be affected differently; one boy, Kumar, who was the youngest on the team at twelve years old, ended up being the biggest among us all, at thirty feet tall with muscles like a body builder. Another, my close friend Shariq, only grew to be about twelve feet tall and stayed relatively skinny. But all of us were changed, and we loved it.”
“Amazing,” Peter said. “Do you know why?”
“Well, after realizing that the plant and wildlife in the area were also much bigger than normal, we guessed it had something to do with some force in the area. We didn’t discover exactly why until we explored the cave further, and we found something amazing.”
“What is it?” Peter asked.
“I...I can’t really explain it,” Nikhil said, shaking his head. “It’s something you’ll have to see for yourself. I’ll take you there tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Peter said. Though he really wanted to know more about what was in the cave, he trusted Nikhil to show him when the time was right. “There’s one thing you haven’t told me though. Where are all your friends now?”
Nikhil’s shoulder’s slumped, and he dropped his face. After a short silence, he looked up, with a sad expression on his face, and told Peter what had happened:
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