Chapter 68: Bhumika

BHUMIKA

They didn’t call it a coronation, but that was exactly what it was.

There was a throne room for the regent, half-burned and ransacked, in the mahal. Soon, they would have to make use of it. But they were Ahiranyi. So they went first to the triveni. To its plinth. There were only two of them there, thrice-born upon the Hirana. But behind them were the new once-borns who had been rebels and had been Ashok’s. At their back rose the servants of the mahal. This was a portentous day, and everyone wanted to be present.

Some of the servants had asked to follow their footsteps. To enter the waters, now that they had seen the change it had wrought in the surviving rebels, in Bhumika and Priya. But Bhumika had refused.

“Not yet,” she said. “The waters demand a price. Let the ones of us who must go survive it first and learn its strength. And then we’ll see.”

They had waited a single night. Waited, and no one had sickened and died. Maybe fever would come for them and kill them. But Bhumika had hope.

She carried Padma against her chest, bound to her in a sling of cloth. One of the men had tried to argue with her, saying the Hirana was no place for a child. But Bhumika had raised an eyebrow and said, “Is there anywhere safer in Ahiranya than at the side of a thrice-born?” And he had fallen silent.

Priya’s face was drawn, her eyes red. She had not mentioned Ashok since his death in the waters, but Bhumika knew she thought of him constantly.

“Come,” said Bhumika. Held out a hand. “We go together.”

Priya took it.

Once, long ago, a new elder would be initiated in fine clothes—robes of silk, their hair a loose river perfumed with oil, jewels and gold upon their throats and wrists. There would have been hymns sung, and offerings made to the yaksa. Pilgrims, risen to the Hirana, would have been given flowers and fruit and vials of deathless water, bound with ribbons of silver.

This rising was performed with ramshackle reverence.

They crossed the triveni.

Bhumika rose, with due gravity, to the zenith of the plinth. Priya rose with her. They stood, the two of them, beneath an opening that let in the sky, and looked at one another.

Kritika crossed the room. Bowed her head.

“Elders,” she said. “It’s time.”

In her hands, on a bed of cloth, lay a crown mask.

Priya reached down. Touched it, bare-fingered.

“It doesn’t burn,” she murmured.

Good, thought Bhumika, with some relief, as Priya lifted the crown mask and held it. She met Bhumika’s eyes.

They had spoken of this before rising. Spoken of how the elders had always been led by one of their own—the strongest, the wisest, the oldest of them. They were only two now. Only two.

But Bhumika would not underestimate herself again.

She gave Priya a nod. Drew the sling, gently, to shroud Padma’s face, as Priya nodded in return, a slight twist of grief to her lips.

“You were always meant to rule,” Priya said. And she placed the mask upon Bhumika’s face.

It should have burned her. Should have shorn away her skin. But she was thrice-born, blessed soul-deep with the power of the waters, and she felt the strength of it fill her like a glowing light—bright and powerful and beautiful.

They held hands with one another. And in that moment, they were in the sangam and on the triveni at the same time. Bhumika could feel all Ahiranya gleaming inside her, every river and pool of water, every root of every tree. She could see Priya in the sangam, a thing not of shadow now, but of bark and leaf and winding flowers, dark as night.

“Ready?” Bhumika asked. Her voice was a rasp.

“Yes.” Priya’s voice was full of determination—and wonder. “I am.”

They breathed in. Out.

And felt everything.

They felt Ahiranya, from end to end. They felt the forest, the branches of those great trees, the green sentience of the soil, the power of venomous crop, of leaf, of vine.

They reached farther than they ever had, and knew that if any army invaded Ahiranya they could splinter it upon their thorns.

Their hands separated, but the knowledge and the power remained between them still, in the waters that fed both of their strengths.

“Bhumika, Elder of Ahiranya,” said a voice. Another. A song of voices. An exultation.

“Priya, Elder of Ahiranya.”

“Elders. Elders of Ahiranya!”

Bhumika removed the crown mask from her face and realized she was weeping. And smiling. And that Priya’s face was a reflection of her own.