The moment my foot touched the gray floor, lanterns sprung up along the dark halls. Their light was as silvery as moonshine, but cast no shadows. They were only beacons in a haze, like thousands of unblinking eyes. My breath came in ragged heaves, and the straight walk forward felt like an uphill battle. My muscles ached and my head was dizzy, but I pushed through. Eventually, the floor ended, melting into a steep cliff with soft sloping sides of ash. The smell made me nauseated. I could taste funerary ash on my tongue and quickly clasped the end of the sari to my nose. Once more, lanterns lit my way along the edge of the cliff. All along the walls, sheaves of parchment covered in Gupta’s neat handwriting fluttered in the windless air. I leaned closer and saw that they were the records of the dead. They stretched in infinite directions.
The sides of the cliff revealed jagged steps leading to the edge of a strange body of water. Sounds bubbled from below. Human ones. Goose bumps erupted along my arms. With one hand touching the craggy slopes, I descended into the depths of Naraka. At the base of the cliffs, a silver pool lapped at the stone. Something about the pool kept teasing my mind, as if there was some reason why I should know about it. From where I stood, the pale moon-bright water looked like a mirror. I leaned over the water’s edge and what twisted in its reflection sent me reeling back—
Spectral bodies writhed beneath, turned over and over by invisible mechanics. In its waters, luminous souls were being sheathed with new skins and new identities. Something in the water fitted a silvery lion pelt over transparent shapes; affixed tusks to a humanoid snout; braceleted a dancer’s ghungroo bells around the ghost of an ankle. This was the reincarnation pool. The place for remaking souls.
I stumbled backward, flailing a hand behind me until it hit rock. Something seared my skin and I turned, eyes widening as the wall of rock shimmered and revealed a thousand rooms sprawled behind it—some filled with ice, others with flame. At first I thought the rooms were empty, but then I saw the souls toiling in the flickering light. Some were digging holes, sweat glittering thickly on their necks. Others hung suspended by chains, their groans echoing in their cells. I knew why they were there. Before passing to the next life, the soul must atone for sins of the past life.
I walked past the sea of cells, relief flooding me each time I didn’t recognize someone.
“Mayavati?” called a voice.
I halted in my tracks. Turning to the sound, a cry escaped my lips—the Raja. My father walked toward me, pressing his palms against the wall of glass separating us. Instead of his familiar kurta, he wore armor, his worn battle helmet tucked beneath his arm. Chain mail peeled off his body, revealing a dark gash near his rib cage.
“No,” I whispered.
I stretched out my hand, but retracted it suddenly and wrapped my arms around myself. The last time I saw him, he wanted me dead. Anger should have welled in my heart. But all I could see was a man wearing the wounds of his death day. A man who had once left me gifts of poetry and knew my name when he could barely recall his number of offspring. A man with regret printed on his features.
I tried to control my breathing, but it came in unsteady halts. His chain mail glinted as he moved toward me, throwing his wounds in stark relief. In Bharata, modesty would demand that I cover my head, avert my eyes and wait for him to speak. But death left no room for formality.
“Were you in pain?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
The Raja shrugged and I winced as the gash on his collarbones widened.
“It was fast,” he said, looking away from me.
I knew he was lying, but didn’t press him. For the first time, I noticed that the lines of worry from his face were gone. He was calm, even in this glass dungeon. And he smiled at me, a smile filled with unguarded relief, even joy, to see me once more.
He cleared his throat. “My accommodations are not nearly as grand as the palace. But it is better than most. A sin of selfishness demands a penance of introspection, not labor.”
I nodded numbly.
“You look well,” he said, tilting his head to one side. “I am glad you escaped before they descended on us.”
His eyes shone with tears and I wished there was no glass to separate us. I wanted to press my forehead against the lattice of his armor, tell him I forgave him. But he guessed all that I wished to say because he shook his head with a sad smile.
“We lost the war?” I ventured.
The Raja paused. “Bharata won the war. But I am the one who lost. I led people to death. I allowed my halls to be swallowed by fire. But Bharata survived.”
He leaned against a wall of mirror, rubbing his temples. His hair had grayed considerably since the wedding. How was that possible? Had time tricked me as well? And then another wrenching thought went through me. The lack of mirrors in Akaran that showed the viewer. There was a puddle beside my feet, no larger than a palmful of water. But I recognized myself. Perhaps a little lovelier, a little more regal. But still seventeen.
“How long did the war last?” I asked, my voice hoarse.
The Raja blinked at me.
“It was ten years ago,” he said slowly. “Surely you’ve seen your countrymen in these halls?”
I suddenly felt dizzy. Ten years had passed since I was in Bharata? When Amar asked me to wait until the full moon, he had spoken of a matter of days, not years. Fresh fury poured through my veins. I hated him.
If I’d seen Bharata’s citizens, could I have saved them? I looked up to see the Raja considering me from the wall of his cell. “I never saw them,” I said quietly.
He was silent for a moment. “At first I thought you were your mother, come to free me from my hell. Like an angel. You take after her, though you are as young as I remember.”
I stared at my ash-covered feet, and the hair that fell in a mussed braid by my side. I thought of Bharata’s dead walking past my bedroom while I slept. I thought of Vikram weeping for his dead mother while I kissed the Dharma Raja in a winter room. I was no angel.
“Who rules in your stead?”
“The yuvuraja, Skanda,” said the Raja, thoughtfully tugging on his beard. Death had not relieved him of all his habits. I almost smiled to see the familiar gesture. “I hope he remembers all I have said. Sometimes I expect to see him across my cell. And I do not know if he will be young as I remember him, or old because time has passed and I am here.” He looked at the ground. “Do not pity me, daughter. Everyone comes here. Some merely stay longer than others.”
We stared at each other through the glass. I could feel his eyes searching me, trying to match up the memory of when he had last seen me to the person who stood before him now.
“Partnered with Death itself,” he said, repeating a part of my horoscope. A harsh laugh escaped him. “I understand now.” The Raja moved away from his mirror wall, his eyes twinkling as he bowed low.
The gesture was wrong. My cheeks flared with heat.
“No,” I said, “please don’t do that.”
Pressing my palms against the glass, I willed it away, and slowly, it became thinner and thinner until it disappeared. The Raja, still bent in a bow, looked up in surprise as I walked into his cell. I lifted him up by the shoulders, not letting myself flinch when my fingers brushed against the blood on his armor.
“You do not need to bow to me, Father.”
The Raja smiled. “Your forgiveness makes my hell easier to bear.”
This conversation, this air of ease unshackled from courtly posturing, struck me. It was so natural. We might have even been close in another lifetime.
“I do not know how you became a princess of Bharata,” he said. “Who knows how our last lives slip into the ones we live in now. I will never know those memories. And perhaps that is for the best.”
A lump rose in my throat. I will never know those memories. The tree behind the chained door … it had so many memories. All of which, I was convinced, belonged to me. Nritti’s image flashed in my head, bright as a flame. I didn’t know her from this life, but I must have known her from before.
My father must have seen a look cross over my face because he stepped away from me. “You do not belong here, daughter. Go. Be who you will be. Do not waste your life mourning the dead.”
I nodded tightly, my throat thick with so many things left unsaid. “I will not forget you, Father.”
He smiled. “That pleases me. A memory is a fine legacy to leave behind.”
*