Vanished by Sheela Chari

were…comparing it to someone else’s.”
    â€œMaybe she wanted to know if you have Veronica’s veena.”
    â€œBut that’s impossible,” Neela said. “There’s no way her veena could survive a train crash…could it?”
    â€œUnless she didn’t have it with her that day,” Pavi countered.
    Neela heard typing on the other end. “What are you doing?”
    â€œWyvern looks so familiar,” Pavi mused out loud. Then she said, “Try this link.”
    Neela clicked to the page Pavi sent. “It’s a kind of dragon,” she said.
    â€œMy cousin has this video game with wyverns in it. I’ve seen the cover, and it has the word on the back. I didn’t remember it until now.”
    Neela looked more closely. “Pavi! Look how many feet the dragon has.”
    The dragon, done in black and white, was lean and serpentlike, its body arched so the scaly underside showed, and its wings spread out like curtains. It stood on two clawed feet, and its face was sharp, triangular, and birdlike, with a pointed tongue curling from its mouth. Next to the drawing, the caption read, “Wyverns are common in medieval art, and are depicted both as a symbol of vengeance and as a sign of valor, strength, and protection.”
    â€œThe dragons in the church and Lynne’s notebook are all wyverns,” Neela said excitedly. “And this veena player has the same last name.”
    â€œYour grandmother’s veena. It must be a wyvern, too,” Pavi said.
    â€œSo what’s the connection?”
    â€œIsn’t it obvious?” Pavi said. “This woman’s name is Wyvern. She buys a veena with a wyvern on it. Bingo. You have your connection.”
    â€œWhat about my grandmother? What about Lynne, Hal, and Mary’s embroidery?” And the curse, she thought to herself.
    â€œMaybe they’re not involved.”
    â€œOf course they’re involved!” Neela exclaimed.
    â€œOkay, maybe they are. We just need to figure out a few more things.”
    Neela sighed. “What’s the point? Even if we do, I still won’t get the veena back.”
    â€œNeela, you can’t give up now. You have a lot more clues than you did before.”
    â€œSure. It’s just…” Neela hesitated. “What did you think of Sudha Auntie’s story?”
    â€œThe vanishing veena? Eh. One of her usual kooky stories.”
    â€œBut do you think it could be…true?”
    Pavi blew her air out in a puff. “Sudha Auntie is a mental case. You can’t believe for one instant any of that stuff she spins.”
    â€œYeah,” Neela said, unsure.
    After they hung up, Neela felt out of sorts. She was frustrated with how difficult the mystery was, despite what she had figured out so far. Did Lalitha Patti’s veena once belong to Parvati? Did it belong to Veronica Wyvern as well? How had the veena passed from so many hands, from Parvati, to Veronica, to her grandmother? And survived a train wreck in the middle? And what about the blond photographer who seemed to know about a Guru original in Boston? Neela couldn’t even begin to figure out where the photographer fit in all of this.
    On top of that, Neela was struck with a sudden yearning for…what? Whenever she felt confused and unsettled, she knew the best remedy was to practice. It didn’t matter what, so long as she was playing something, anything , to block out the noise inside her brain.
    She brought out the student veena and set it down on the floor of the living room, where she normally practiced. After months of playing on her grandmother’s veena, the student veena felt strange and awkward, like a chunk of wood with strings attached to it, and a piece of duct tape wrapped around the bottom.
    She paused to look at the peg box, which had a simple dragon head, just like the ones on all the other veenas Neela had ever seen. But to her, the dragon head