Chapter 37: Priya

PRIYA

She was under the water for minutes, or hours, or centuries. She did not know.

The water coursed through her. It swept through her lungs. Through her blood. It wasn’t cold or sweet. It was like fire, eating through her flesh and her marrow, relentless. I’m dying, she thought, at first wildly, and then calmly, as her fear was carried away along with everything else inside her. She felt as if she had been scoured clean. As if she were one of the coconuts she’d longed to place on a shrine, once. Split, her insides, bruised and flowering, scraped away.

Images slipped from her mind’s eye as swiftly as they arrived: great carved faces of wood turning toward her, eaten by flame that poured from their own mouths. Bodies splitting, three rivers of waters pouring from their insides, which were empty, open to the void. Voices clamored in her ears, but she couldn’t understand them. She kicked her feet and moved her arms, rising up or diving deeper. She couldn’t orient herself. She needed to breathe. She needed to get out.

There was a drumbeat of silence.

In the places inside her soul and her bones that had been hollowed—magic poured in.

She saw the sangam beneath her. Saw the whole world. She felt the forest of Ahiranya—every tree, every crop, every creeping vine, the insects that burrowed through the soil. She felt her kin. Bhumika, there in her rose palace. Ashok, deep in the forest, walking on earth rich with bones. And she felt other souls. Other kin. In the forest, others who were like her moved and breathed and lived.

She wasn’t as alone as she’d believed for so long.

She gasped out—surprised, or laughing, or spasmodically seeking air, she didn’t know—and the water rushed in deeper and vaster, swallowing her as she swallowed it in turn.

There was nothing, after that. Not for a long time.

Later. Later.

Her head broke the surface of the water and she was breathing cold air, gasping, her lungs aching.

She’d survived. She was twice-born.

She couldn’t feel anything beneath her feet, as she kicked to keep herself afloat. There was just water, fathomless underneath her body. Around her the water flickered, as if dappled by sunlight through leaves. But there were no trees and no roots this deep beneath the ground. Above her was only the dark cavern of the Hirana.

She swam to the edge of the water and dragged herself up onto the cold earth. Her clothes were soaking, heavy. Her hair was a weight of water. She wrung it out a little. Her insides still sang and burned but she was cold.

She couldn’t remember exactly what had passed when she’d stepped beneath the waters. Already the memories were beginning to slip away from her like sand. But she knew what she felt now: power, dripping from every inch of her. Power bursting like flowers beneath the closed lids of her eyes, when she squeezed them shut and let out a ragged, joyful laugh. When she opened her eyes once more, she saw that small buds had unfurled from the surface of the soil beneath her knees. She curled her fingers around one. It was warm.

She released a slow breath, feeling magic pour through her with shocking, glorious ease. The ground trembled, a little. Then its surface burst, and there were buds all around her, roots and leaves rising from the maw of chill soil.

Priya started to laugh again. She couldn’t help it. She was twice-born, she’d found the waters, she was strong. She felt invincible. She felt as if she could turn around right now and dive back beneath the water, take on all the power of the thrice-born.

But no. That had never been done. For a reason, surely? She didn’t know. She knew nothing. But it didn’t matter what she knew or didn’t. She had this. A gift, living inside her.

She remembered that some of the children who rose from the water had died… later. But if that was to be her fate, it wasn’t something to think of now. Through the invincible glow of power she could feel Ashok rattling in her skull, calling for her, furious.

He wanted what she now had. And she knew—with the bone-deep assurance of a woman who’d felt his fist around her heart—that she could not give it to him.

She made her way up, up, up. And when she rose to the Hirana’s surface, she turned back and looked at the entrance to the deathless waters. She leaned forward. Touched her fingers to the stone. With the same bleeding, lacerating power, she drew the rock together. Sealed the way shut.

Ashok would not be able to find it without her now.

She crossed the Hirana: the empty corridors, the triveni. The air was cold and soft, the ground strangely warm—as if the Hirana came alive, sang, at her presence, at a twice-born crossing its surface.

The corridor to Malini’s room was quiet. She pushed open the door softly, expecting to find Malini as she’d left her, sleeping on the charpoy. Instead Malini was sitting up, clutching her cheek. Even between her fingers, Priya could see the dark shadow of a bruise.

She felt a movement behind her, from the corner by the door. There was suddenly something sharp beneath her chin. She felt something hot. The wetness, not of water, but of blood, as Pramila’s hand trembled around the blade.