Chapter 46: Priya

PRIYA

A bed. A green bed. A bed of water. She was beneath a swirling river, and it was overgrown with lotus flowers, their roots snarled around her wrists and her throat.

She twisted and turned within them, disturbed by the fact that the liquid around her wasn’t cold but hot. She had a distant memory that it had been painful once, a scalding heat, but now it moved around her with the same warmth and sluggish consistency as blood.

She reached for her own throat, untangling the roots, rising to the water’s surface. She was in the sangam, or something that looked very like the sangam, with winding rivers, and stars racing in skeins and knots upon the water. But the water was deep, deep, and overfull of flowering blooms—lilies and other strange, curling flowers she had no names for.

She shouldn’t have been here. She had been somewhere else, only moments before. Hadn’t she? Malini holding her up. She remembered that. Malini holding her, and her voice, commanding Priya to remain with her, to stay, please—

Sapling. Look.

She looked again at the water she’d risen from. Through the dark, she saw a body.

Her own face lay beneath the sediment. Her own hair, a loose cloud of black fronds. Those were her own eyes, closed as if in sleep. From her chest bloomed a great lotus, bursting through exposed ribs. From her eyes streamed marigold petals, flecked gold and carnelian, seeping from beneath the closed lids.

Not a reflection. She knew it wasn’t that. And if she hadn’t been sure, she saw beneath it, in the slow shifting gray of the water’s bed, a dozen more tangled figures, held by lotus roots, their hair coiling in water, their bodies half root and half flesh, beautiful and strange.

The body that was so like her own, that lay above the rest, was moving. The mouth opened and within it was a flower that unfurled in thorns, virulent blue and black, its heart a cosmos.

She gave a gasp and shifted back in the water, trying to swim, to turn—but the ropes of those great lotus roots held her.

The body was rising from the water. Its eyes opened. Gold-petaled. Crimson as blood.

It waded toward her. Touched fingers to her jaw. Its fingers were warm as sacred wood. Its smile was red. It wasn’t her. Couldn’t be her.

It stroked her cheek.

“Look at you,” it said, in a voice that wasn’t her own. “You’re so new. And yet so hollow.”

“What are you?” Priya whispered.

“Don’t you recognize what you worship?” her reflection asked. It smiled.

Priya flinched—a full-body flinch of surprise—and the yaksa laughed. The water was blood hot, the yaksa’s form carved wood and flesh, its eyes a bloody bloom.

“You’ve cut out your heart to meet me,” it said. “Won’t you ask me a boon?”

Priya said nothing. She couldn’t. She was silenced by awe and wonder. And the yaksa only shook its head, black petals falling from its shoulders, and kept on smiling.

“I want to go back,” Priya said finally. “Please.”

The yaksa nodded. Its fingers drew back—but not before one fingernail sharpened, fine as a needle, and drew a line of blood from her cheek. It held a hand that was like her own to its face. Touched her blood to its lips.

“Oh, sapling,” whispered the creature. “We’ll meet again, you and I. One way or another.”

And the creature reached for Priya and kissed her, square on the mouth.

For a moment, she saw the whole world.

She saw the ocean roiling at the edges of Parijatdvipa’s great subcontinent. She saw the mountains capped with snow at the border of Dwarali. She saw Dwarali’s Lal Qila, a fort that stood on the edge of the known world. She saw Parijat, and the imperial mahal in Harsinghar, surrounded by flowers.

She saw the rot. She saw it everywhere, everywhere. And she saw it grow, and change; saw it was not rot at all, but a flowering, a blooming; saw a dozen creatures with river water seeping from their fingers and carnations for eyes lift themselves from the world’s soil, and breathe—

She woke, not with a gasp or a start, but slowly. As if she’d only been dreaming. As if she had not been in the sangam at all. She lay on a sleep mat on the floor of a house that was squat and cool, smelling sweetly of damp. Malini sat next to her, on her knees.

She flung herself over Priya, embracing her.

What…?

“What is this place you’ve led us to?” Malini asked, voice dangerously low. “The woman won’t let me leave this room. And the man—”

Malini went abruptly silent. Priya felt her pull back, her face calm again, her eyes demurely lowered.

And there, behind her, was Elder Chandni.

Priya’s heart gave a sharp thud.

She’d felt the presence of a sibling, or so she’d thought. Someone like family, a sharp needle-thorn in the tangle of the forest. She had not expected this.

Childhood. Chandni at her writing desk. Chandni’s hand in her hair.

The feast. The blood. The fire.

Chandni stepped farther into the hut, into its semidarkness. But Priya could see her. Her face, with its angular cheekbones, and hair that had gone fully gray, bound back in a bun low at her neck. She had new wrinkles, and a way of walking that spoke of pain.

“Your companion brought you here,” said Chandni. Her voice was soft. It took a moment for Priya to realize she was speaking in classical Ahiranyi, excluding an uncomprehending Malini from the conversation. “She said you asked to be brought to this place.”

Priya swallowed. Her throat was dry. She felt a little like she was still trapped in some terrible fever dream.

“I did.”

“And yet I don’t think you knew you would see me. Did you?” Chandni’s eyes tracked every movement of Priya’s face—every tic and twitch of muscle in her body.

Priya wished she had Malini’s ability to leach all feeling out of her own expression, but she didn’t. Still, she wouldn’t flinch. Not here. She stared at Chandni unblinking until her eyes burned as fiercely as the thing knotted in her chest that she had no name for.

“I sensed someone like me was here,” said Priya. “But no. I didn’t expect—you.”

“Did you think me dead?”

I hoped you were, thought Priya. But in the next beat, she knew it wasn’t true. However, neither answer was going to help her or leave Malini unscathed.

“All the temple council are dead, elders and children alike. Or should be,” Priya said.

You killed us. You should have had the decency to die with us.

“Some of us chose to die with the children,” said Chandni. “And some of us chose this.”

This. Priya looked around. Mold upon the wooden walls. The scuttle and worm of insects through boards decayed and speckled with damp. The drip of a broken roof.

Malini was watching her with hooded eyes, apparently indifferent. But Priya knew better.

“It isn’t much of an exile,” Priya managed to say. “You’re still in Ahiranya.”

“Not exile,” Chandni said. Still soft. So soft. She took a step closer, and Priya realized it was not gentleness as she’d first supposed, but the lulling voice one uses with a feral animal. To calm it, before the leash or the slaughter. “We still had work to do. Or thought we did.”

“Who else is here?”

“Just Sendhil, now. The rest are gone. But he won’t harm you.”

Chandni leaned down, with difficulty. She placed a hand on Priya’s forehead. Priya did not move. Only stared back at her.

“How did you save me? I thought the waters had me.”

“I didn’t,” said Chandni. “You survived on your own, Priya, just as the children taken to the sickroom at the temple did. Or did not.”

They looked at one another, distrustful, distorted reflections in the half light.

“Your fever is gone.” Chandni lowered her hand. “That’s good. You’ll live, then.”

“If I’d known it was you, I would never have come,” Priya said. “I would have expected you to kill me the moment you laid eyes on me.”

“I should not have let you live, Priya,” said Chandni. “Not—then. And not now. I should have killed you when your companion brought you here. That’s true enough.”

“So why didn’t you?” Priya asked, suddenly angry—so angry that she could feel now that she was shaking and hadn’t even realized it. “I could hardly have stopped you.”

“When you’re better, we’ll talk.”

Chandni began to rise and Priya gripped her by the shoulder. She did not hold tight. She didn’t need to. Chandni’s bones were sharp points beneath her hand, fragile as shell.

“I’m well now,” Priya said in Zaban—the common tongue flowing so much more easily from her lips. “I’m well now. And now, we’ll talk.”

I am the stronger one, Priya thought, holding Chandni’s gaze fixedly. I am not a child anymore. And you will give me answers.

“Well, then,” said Chandni, now in careful Zaban. “If you’re healthy, get up. Follow me outside, and we’ll talk. Alone.”

Chandni didn’t do her the kindness of looking away as she struggled to her feet. Malini stood with her, hands clasped neatly before her. She didn’t follow as Priya and Chandni made their way out of the room, though Priya could feel the weight of her gaze.

Priya ached. Every part of her. The great strength she’d possessed right after rising from the deathless waters was gone, leaving her completely drained. But at least she was no longer feverish or dying. She felt mostly like herself. And her self was furious and tired, flayed bare. She didn’t know if it wanted to strangle Chandni or weep over her.

“This way,” Chandni said. Using the wall for support, she guided Priya toward the back of the hut. Sendhil sat by the edge of the hut, a hood drawn low over his head. He looked to be sleeping, but Priya was sure he was not. You didn’t sleep when a child you’d tried to murder returned to your home full grown.

“How have you lived, since the temple council fell?” Chandni asked.

“Fell,” repeated Priya. “That doesn’t really capture what happened.”

Chandni was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Never mind.”

Some of the softness seemed to leave her then. In its place were slightly bowed shoulders, a sudden lowering of her head. She looked defeated.

“What is worship called, in the oldest Ahiranyi texts?” Chandni asked eventually.

“I don’t know,” said Priya.

“I taught you, once.”

“I don’t remember.”

Chandni turned to look at her. In the daylight, her face was pinched and creased, almost brittle.

“The hollowing,” Chandni told her. “It is called the hollowing.”

She looked away from Priya then, making her laborious, slow way around the building’s perimeter. “We believed we understood it. Hollowing, to scrape you clean of weakness. Hollowing, to make you a vessel for truth and knowledge. Hollowing for purity.” A pause. “Then your siblings entered the deathless waters and returned with strangers living behind their eyes. And we understood that we were wrong. Whatever returned wore their skins. But it was not them. And then the rot began. Whatever lies in you—whatever returned within them—was the mother of the rot. A blight. We had to end it before it ended the world. The emperor feared you and wanted you dead. We wanted the rot to end. We thought it was right.”

Priya thought of her siblings. Little Nandi. Sanjana. Her voice shook when she spoke. “We were just children.”

“The thrice-born were young elders, ready to join our circle. Not children anymore. And the rest…” An exhalation. Priya was not sure if it was a sigh or a pained breath as Chandni stopped and steadied herself. “Children who can change the shape of mountains and compel root and leaf—they are not children anymore. They are something that only looks like a child. We had a duty, Priya.”

“Then why did you save my life?” Priya asked. “If we were monsters that needed destroying, for the sake of your duty, why did you try to spare me?”

“Sometimes we do foolish things,” Chandni said, sorrow in her voice. “It doesn’t matter any longer. That time is long gone. You need only understand this, even if you do not forgive it: We sought to stop the rot from growing and spreading. We were afraid of what would become of the world. And we came here to seek a way to protect our Ahiranya. To destroy the rot that remained. And to—mourn.” Her voice cracked a little. “Now. For your own sake—step carefully. Follow my lead.”

Behind the hut where Sendhil and Chandni lived lay an empty glade. Perhaps it had once been used to grow vegetables or keep animals, but now its ground was untouched by human hands, covered in a whirling knot of grasses with the slithering thickness of hair. At the center of the glade was one single tree. In the ground around it were stakes, pieces of wood, hammered deep into the soil.

“You may look at the tree,” said Chandni. “Inspect it as is needful, but don’t cross the perimeter of sacred wood.”

It was a great mangrove-like thing, that tree, with a wizened trunk and drooping branches laden with small leaves, as pale as pearls. Priya walked toward it, the heat of sacred wood a pulsing heartbeat before her.

“What is this?” Priya said. “What…?”

She’d been wrong to think the trunk was simply wizened. Here, close now, she could see the rot of it: the pink of wounded flesh between the striations of wood, the breathy pulse of the roots, loose-limbed against the soil.

The faces.

Saroj. Bojal. Not all the elders. But enough of them.

Priya felt the bile rise in her throat.

“It began soon after we arrived here. The first began to sicken and die. As he died, the tree changed. Stole his soul, I think. Then the second. The third. Now only Sendhil and I remain. Waiting.” Her voice was terribly calm. “Whatever curse lay in you and your fellow children… well, it lay in us too, it seems. Although it manifests as you see.”

“Their bodies?”

“Burned. But it doesn’t matter. The rot has us. A curse beyond death, I think.” Priya heard Chandni step closer and thought for the first time that there was an almost wooden creak to her movements; that her skin had not simply looked pinched but fissured like bark, in the light.

Priya stared not at Chandni but at the tree before her. The rot of it. The justice of it.

“You’re wrong, to think we were a symptom of the rot. We’re the cure. I’m sure of it.” She tilted her head until she was staring at canopy-slashed sky, blinking back unwanted tears. “I’ve been told the thrice-born could control it. Maybe banish it.”

“Who told you?”

“Was it true? Could they control it?”

“They could,” Chandni said, after a pause. “Yes.”

“You were fools,” Priya said, choking on her grief, her anger. All of the children had deserved better than the death they’d had. She thought of Sanjana’s smile, Nandi’s gentle eyes, and was crushed with the weight of how hollow they hadn’t been—how hollow the world was without them. “We were the answer all along, and you discarded us. Destroyed us.”

“Perhaps,” Chandni said heavily.

“There’s no ‘perhaps,’” Priya said thickly. “Was it worth it, then, murdering my brothers and sisters? For a belief?”

Priya turned. Chandni was looking at the tree. Perhaps she was thinking of the other lost elders, who had been like kin to her. Perhaps she thought of the children they had murdered.

“It was the choice we made,” Chandni said finally. “We believed you were monsters. You believe you are not. We did what we thought was right, and you may now condemn us for it. But it changes nothing.”

“Why am I still alive?”

“You were born on the Hirana,” Chandni said, resigned. “Not simply temple raised but temple born. You know that.”

“I do. But born or reared, we were all taken from our birth families and given a new family, old bonds severed,” Priya said. “That was the price of rising to the status of a temple elder, wasn’t it? Give up blood family. Choose a family of brothers and sisters in service. And my family burned upon the Hirana.” She thought of Chandni’s hand upon her hair as she slept. She thought of what it meant to be temple born when all the other children were adopted into service. She knew what it meant, what was unsaid between them. And it didn’t matter. “If I had blood family, that’s what I would tell them.”

“Ah,” said Chandni. “Then I suppose I saved you for sentimentality. For a dream I should have put aside. I told you it was foolish.”

“It was.”

Chandni’s smile was sad.

“Exactly right,” she said. As if she’d known it would come to this in the end: Priya standing before a tree that was not entirely tree alone, its roots swelled with the blood and flesh of the dead.

“Some things are inevitable,” Chandni said. “The tides. The sunrise. Perhaps despite our best efforts, the rot is inevitable too. And you are inevitable.” She looked, once more, at the tree. “I am too old and tired to do more. So this is my answer, Priya: I allow you to live now because I cannot stop the tide.” Chandni shook her head. “Now, if you’re well, you should go.”