“Stop!” she said, raising a hand and fingering a leaf. The dying foliage detached and fell to the ground, dropping at her feet. “Now do you see what you have done?” she yelled, pushing me away from the tree. “You killed it!”
“I killed it?” I said, slapping a hand on my chest. “Whose big idea was it to kiss in the first place? I’d say you’re the one who killed it.”
Both of us froze when we heard the groan of a heavy branch overhead. “Shh,” Ana said, grabbing my hand and squeezing my fingers. “We have to stop fighting. We might destroy the great tree otherwise.”
“If I admit you’re right, can we just drop this and finish our work?”
Ana gave me a long look and then nodded.
As we walked to the giant trunk, I thought about what she’d said. Is it possible that the land responds to her? Absolutely. What I didn’t get was how kissing her could create a giant tree.
Standing at the base, she closed her eyes and murmured, “Fanindra, I have need of you.” Ana twirled her hand in the air and touched the amulet that hung around her neck. Light shimmered around her hand, and a moment later, Fanindra was there, her golden head lifted to the goddess.
“I need your assistance,” she said, and pressed her hand to the ground. Fanindra hissed and then lifted her upper body, opening her hood. She swayed back and forth hypnotically. Soon a green snake slid out from the grass and touched his nose to hers.
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s a bit too small. Like I said, the snake was giant.”
“Why do men have so little patience?” Ana asked Fanindra. “They cannot perceive what lies right beneath their noses.” The golden snake twisted her head as if considering me and stuck out her tongue. Leaning down, Ana stroked the green snake’s scaly head. “How would you like to do a favor for your goddess?” she asked.
After waiting a beat and cocking her head as if listening to an answer I never heard, Ana worked her magic. She channeled a few different abilities using the kamandal for healing and Fanindra as well as the earth and air portions of the amulet. Twisting them all together in a new, unique way, she imbued the snake with her gift.
Before my eyes, the snake grew and gained the power not only to camouflage himself but to speak. Ana gave him instructions, and he bowed his head to her before disappearing around the side of the tree. His body made a peculiar kind of sliding noise, and it took several minutes before the end of his tail finally vanished.
“I hope he remembers everything,” Ana said.
“Why wouldn’t he?”
She shrugged. “He is rather simple-minded. Fanindra says she will help him though.”
Straightening, Ana made a door in the tree, and just as she had with Shangri-La, she lit the inside of the tree with her power, remaking and refashioning it far beyond what I could see. “Come, Sohan,” she said. “Fanindra, you may return to Kelsey if you wish or accompany us for a time.” The snake answered by wrapping around Ana’s arm.
Enclosing us in her bubble, Ana lifted us into the air, remaking the wood inside the tree into steps and hollowing out places inside where we could ascend. It only took a moment to create the house of gourds. When we came to the house of sirens, she fashioned the place easily enough, the dark wood ceiling stretched high above us, but didn’t know where to find sirens.
A trickle of water ran down the inside of the trunk and Ana let the water pool on her fingers. “My teacher, I mean, Kadam once told me that sirens were mermaids, a sort of half fish, half mortal who live beneath the sea.”
“In some stories, they are.”
“Perhaps, like the Kappa demons sprung from tears, these creatures come of their own accord.”
“What are you saying?”
Anamika didn’t answer. Instead, she opened her palm and whispered something I couldn’t hear. The trident materialized in her hand. Touching the tip of it to the stream of water and closing her eyes, she whispered a summons.
At first, there were no signs that her call was understood, and I was about to approach her to discuss other options, but then she lifted a finger and pressed it to her lips. “Do you hear them?” she asked.
I shook my head.
She cocked hers and smiled. “You may show yourselves.”
A grayish fog streamed from knotholes in the wood and grew, forming into human shapes. When they materialized, they bowed to the goddess. I recognized them immediately as the sirens that trapped me and Kelsey. As one of the handsome young men bowed over Ana’s hand and pressed his lips to her skin, my own grew hot.
“Move away from her,” I said, pushing my hand against his bare chest and shoving. He simply smiled at me and then I felt a woman’s hand on my arm. I threw her hand away. “I don’t think so,” I said.
“Now, Sohan,” Ana said, “You are being impolite to our guests.”
“Guests? Really?” I hissed. “Do you know what they are? What they can do?”
“Of course.” She walked over to a young man and he offered his elbow. A chair materialized and he bade her to sit and relax. The girls gave me a wide berth as I glowered at them and strode over to Ana, where she sat lounging on the chair. One of the young men had removed her boots and was massaging her feet. “Ah, that feels nice,” she said. “I think your massage even rivals my tiger’s.”
“Ana,” I said, my voice sounding sulky and petulant. “I insist we leave here at once. You don’t know how dangerous these creatures are.”
“Dangerous?” she laughed. “They are about as dangerous as a robe spun of silk.”
I folded my arms. “A silk robe can be dangerous if worn by the right person.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I assure you, they mean no harm. They are outcasts from their realm. They are clouds without water. To receive love and give love gives them purpose. It fills them.” One of the men knelt at her side and rested his head in her lap. She stroked his hair and it lit an unquenchable flame in my gut to see it. Almost fondly, she toyed with his hair as she said, “They have drifted for millennia like clouds pushed about by the wind. I have allowed them to take shape. I give them purpose.”
“You know they literally love people to death.”
Ana had never, ever been as physically comfortable around me as she was behaving around them.
Sensing the change in her mood, they backed away and helped her stand. “Is that so wrong?” she argued. “Even when the ones they love turn old and gray, they love them with all the energy of their souls.”
“They cloud minds. Confuse people. Manipulate their emotions. Titillate their senses. They’ve even managed to seduce you within the span of a few seconds.”
“No,” Ana insisted. “They give the lonely what they want. Fill the emptiness in their hearts. I will admit there is a certain dulling of inhibition, but they do not take away freedom of choice.”
“And what if their victims want to experience that connection with other people? With someone special?”
“You know nothing of what it means to be a victim.” She spat her words with trenchant cuts. “There are many people in this world who never find someone special. True, the affection they shower ends with the death of their chosen vessel. In fact, they cease to remember them after they are gone, but at least those people have experienced touch and kindness and companionship. There are many who die with less.”
Distraught, the four sirens circled behind her and laid sympathetic hands on her shoulders.
“Ana,” I said slowly, “I didn’t mean…”