“You are not very patient.”
Kamala harrumphed and snuffled my hair, sending showers of something wet and stinking down my neck. I suppressed a groan. I wanted to sink into a frothing hot bath and collapse into pillows bursting with feathery down. Instead, I had Kamala’s increasingly bony spine to look forward to.
“Are the Dharma Raja’s representatives still there?”
“Yes, yes, but they are restless as trees in a storm.”
“What do you think it means?”
“They are waiting. They are salivating. Their spittle drops into the ground, fat as newborn babies, heavy as the sighs of lovelorn boys … oh, how it mocks me.”
The smoke rose and formed inky coronets atop the parapets of the harem. Shouting voices converged, thick as the smoke itself, until it became a collective fug of surprise. Night had draped herself languorously over the courtyards I had once roamed. No stars gleamed above. No moon watched my treason. I waited for Gauri, my breath held for the moment to see her once more … and then I did.
She was riding toward me on a horse the color of rain-drenched tree trunks. All the guards had fled their watch for the palace gates and had rushed to fetch pails of water to extinguish the fire. There was no one guarding the iron gates, but still I had waited. I wanted to see her go. Besides, I had something that belonged to her.
Gauri’s face was shining by the time she pulled up to the gates. I clambered onto Kamala’s back and together we dashed into the bramble of forests. As we ran, the moon striped us silver. Damp leaves kissed our skin and we wore crowns of starry dust motes. Beside Gauri, magic thrummed in my veins and I believed, after so long, that perhaps we really could be the things we dreamed of—dancing bears or twin sea dragons with tails made for ensnaring oceans. But now I knew that it wasn’t the magic of past stories that made me feel this way. It was the same thing I recognized in Naraka but could not name. Love. Impossible love.
When we stopped running, Gauri heaved, eyes squinting on the fire that was beginning to die down, leaving nothing but smoke. She turned to me and her lips were pursed.
“The fire has been smothered. Why did you bother waiting? You have done your duty.”
I jerked my head toward the smoke unfurling into the skies. “Any casualties?”
“Nothing but a couple silks, I imagine,” said Gauri. “Mother Dhina constructed her fire quite cleverly. And painlessly. But while I am indebted to her, I imagine that it is you that I have to thank.”
I smiled. “No need.”
“I need to know why you did it.”
“I already told you.”
“No, you didn’t,” she said, this time her voice soft. “I recognized your necklace the moment you came into the city walls. My sister had given it to me before she disappeared, no doubt taken by some foolish king.”
Her eyes were hard and glassy with unrestrained tears. “Do you know what happened to her? Did she send you here to look after me?”
I couldn’t hide my hurt when I looked Gauri in the face.
She hadn’t recognized me.
My own sister had no idea who I was, even after she saw the necklace around my neck. My words to Mother Dhina rang true. I was a dead girl walking. I was a ghost making peace with the places I once haunted.
I took the necklace off, letting my fingers graze its small seed pearls just once before I handed it to Gauri.
“I saw her once, in a faraway land that no horse or boat can reach, but that all will find,” I said, my voice thick.
“How was she?” asked Gauri.
This time, tears were sliding down her face, shining against the helmet she wore.
A part of me wanted to grab Gauri by her shoulders and shake her into remembering me. But that would’ve done nothing. And so, as I had done so many years ago, I told her a story. I glossed over the grotesque and emphasized the beautiful. I created details where there were none, things pulled out from my imagination, things as I may have imagined them myself at some point or another.
In the end, I did whatever I could to stave off her nightmares.
“She is happy. She fell in love and ran away, but she misses you very much. Her husband is a kind man with a large smile, who treats her as an equal and never shares his bed with anyone but her.”
Gauri laughed, more tears falling from her eyes.
“I passed through her land not too long ago, and she asked me to bring this to you and tell you this: in the Night Bazaar, trees bear fruit of edible gems and the naga women enviously stare at one another’s scales. She told me to tell that she loves you, thinks of you often and will always be proud of you. She asks that you stay safe. Always.”
Gauri pressed the necklace to her lips before tying it securely around her neck. She checked the straps of her horse before smiling at me.
“Thank you, sadhvi. I wish you well on your journey. If you see her again, please tell her that I love her and that I think of her often. Tell her that I will come back alive. For her.”
Tears blistered in my eyes, but I would not cry. I had done what I came here to do and for that I was happy. Kamala pawed the ground. There was no time to share my stories with Gauri or explain all that had happened since the last time we met. “And thank you for everything you have done for us today,” said Gauri. “I have every intention to return alive, and when I do, I will make sure people will remember you and sing your praises. Tell me how I can reward you. Where can I find you?”
I smiled. “Don’t you remember? We can always find each other in our same constellation. The Solitary Star.”
Gauri’s gaze widened, glittering with the promise of tears. I dug my heels into Kamala’s side and as we leapt into the forest, I looked back only once, to see Gauri grinning and waving, just as a veil of trees stole her from view.
24
THE LADY OF THE FOREST
Arrow-sharp tree limbs cut the path ahead of us. Darkness draped across polished jet trees and shadows shivered into existence—slow as a turning head. Only daubs of moonlight marked where the trees stopped and the sky began.
We moved quickly over the hills and scrubland. I kept my face close to Kamala’s back, taking comfort in her heavy breaths and the muscles of her flanks gaining thickness and life with each passing step. Now that Bharata was behind us, my thoughts lurked once more like monsters. I kept thinking of Amar, and a pain more real than all the scrapes along my body clawed into my skin, sinking nails deep as years.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him next to me, his hands in my hair, his lips against mine. But each time they opened, all I saw was dark. I had no idea where he was, what he was doing. My last glimpse of him remained seared into me, until my thoughts were clouded with his eyes dulling in pain and unlocking all those memories buried deep within me.
The world I had known now loomed sunless and lurid. Trees were dying. People were wilting. Cities were crumbling. And I knew that this downward spiral had something to do with the ruined balance of the Otherworld. I had to get there. Even if it turned out that everything I did would be as useful as pitting a broken leaf against a buffet of wind, I had to try.
Kamala slowed to a trot before a copse of trees that crouched over foul-smelling warrens. A hundred mushrooms pale as bodies bloomed out, teeming over the roots of trees so that at first everything seemed blanketed in flesh.
“This is where the Dharma Raja’s representatives are?”
Kamala pawed the ground, “Yes, oh yes. Can you not feel them, maybe-queen?”
“No.”