The Heartless Divine

by Varsha Ravi

  Suri considered asking a couple of the shop owners for advice about the boy—he certainly looked Enesmati—but figured the information would get back to her grandmother soon enough, and then it would be an interrogation and a lecture on letting bloody strangers in after dark.

  In the afternoons, she had classes at the university. It had been her mother’s alma mater, and sometimes she would find herself tracing foreign buildings and worn footpaths, wondering if her mother had walked the same ones. Recently, though, all that warmth and pain had faded, and she found herself tuning out lecture after lecture, caught in the memory of that night. Meanwhile, Dai doodled small black blossoms on her wrist, and Aza scrawled song lyrics in the back of her notebook, both of them bickering over which twin was oldest, and who would pay for dinner.

  After classes, she either went straight home—uneventful, as the boy usually only woke up for small intervals that consisted of making the necessary preparations to go back to sleep later on—or walked over to Beanzz, the coffee shop where she worked, a small, hooded place that always smelled of potpourri and cigarette smoke.

  Suri was at Beanzzz when she started feeling the chest pains. At first, they didn’t really bother her—they were sharp, shooting pains that faded for moments at a time. She was taking a pair of cappuccinos over to a couple beside the window when the pain swelled jaggedly. She lurched to the side, managing to put down the coffee on a nearby table before forcing herself down into a seat. Agony ripped through her, taking away her capacity to breathe, to speak. She distantly registered her coworker handing off the platter to the couple staring over at her.

  Tarak knelt beside her and placed his hand over hers. Concern twisted his expression. “Should I call your grandmother? The police?”

  She almost said yes, if only to stop the pain—to give it a reason. But something told her that neither choice would do those things, so she simply shook her head, tried to even her breathing. “It’s fine. I’m fine now. I think I’ll just have to leave early.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, of course. I’ll let Rick know what happened.”

  Outside, cold, icy rain had begun to come down. It could only be described as sleet in early September. Another abnormality in a week of strange terror.

  Suri hadn’t even brought a coat—the forecast had assured a clear, sunny day, and she’d had no reason to assume it would be anything otherwise—so she hunched her shoulders and set off in the direction of the sharp, dragging pain.

  By the time she found him, the pain had evened out to a faded, sleet-numb ache. Tolson Park was on the residential outskirts of Lyne, where the apartments met old shopfronts and houses built decades ago. It was a small enough park, dotted with oak trees and centered around a limp artificial lake, but the empty horizon made it look larger than life. It was damp and cold, and right now it looked decidedly pathetic. It was empty of all the usual dogwalkers and small children, empty save for a few families of ducks and the boy.

  He was crouched beside the ring of trees that surrounded the lake, leaning unsteadily against the bark of an old oak.

  When Suri finally spoke, her voice was pitched high, a little hysterical from anger. “What are you doing?”

  The boy glanced up, unsurprised to see her. Rain streaked his cheeks like tears, tracing the curve of his faint smile. He held up his fist, revealing cupped breadcrumbs. “Feeding the ducks.”

  She gestured wildly at the sleet, at the cold. She couldn’t fully parse her own anger, but figured it had to do with his absolute lack of it, his flippant amusement in the face of inevitable hypothermia. “You could die.”

  “Really can’t,” he said blithely, but he was more rainwater than flesh at this point, so his words didn’t hold much weight. Suri tilted her head up, partly in exasperation and partly to look away—he was holding her gaze with an odd, inscrutable intensity.

  Finally, she exhaled. “Why are you even out here? And don’t say you came to feed the ducks.”

  He cocked his head, the amusement dissipating from his expression. “Suri, you came because of the pain. Right?” When she nodded hesitantly, he tossed the handful of breadcrumbs to the side—the ducks leapt toward them—and cleanly ripped his shirt off, revealing rain-damp skin and blood leaking from cuts like broken glass.

  She knelt beside him, drawn by the strange magic of the blood. The boy simply continued to watch her, still as she lifted a hand and traced the three black marks on his skin. A single cut ringed every tattoo, dripping thin, clear, golden liquid down his chest.

  This close, he was still fever-warm, the cold sleet sliding down his skin uselessly. His voice was low and quick, nearly secretive. “I meant to leave today. Don’t ask why, it’s no longer important. I’m thankful for your help, but I could not stay forever. Regardless, I started walking around in this city of yours—” he nodded toward the gray skies, the metal and rain. “And I only made it as far as here, the edge of this tree. Then the pain started, and the cuts began to bleed, and it did not cease nor slow, not until you got here.”

  She looked up at him, but there was no trace of humor in his expression. Beside them, the ducks had finished eating the breadcrumbs, and then they had gone, leaving them alone in this glittering rain-soaked world, where blood ran gold and escape was impossible without agony.

  Suri sat back on her heels. “I’m taking you to see my grandmother.”

  Surprisingly, he didn’t immediately protest. Then his mouth twisted, a ghost of irony flickering on his face. “Is she a doctor?”

  “No,” she said, pulling herself to her feet and extending a hand. “She’s a seer. And she’s probably the only person in the city who knows how to get your memories back.”

  The boy pulled the dress shirt back on and followed Suri silently through the streets. They made an odd pair, her shivering and pulling her soggy sweater closer to her chest, and him soaked yet untouched by the cold.

  The few times she did look over, he was still studying her face, examining it with a strange intensity. As if questioning why, out of everyone in the city, they’d gotten stuck together. She couldn’t help but feel the same, and yet—a small part of her didn’t mind, still wondering if this was a sign he was connected to their deaths in some strange way.

  By the time they made it to the shop, it was already nearly seven, and the sign hanging on the door had been turned around, the colorful, crooked letters of an eight-year-old spelling out CLOSED. Suri peered through the rain-streaked glass and saw a flicker of light in the corner. Halfway through the knock, a series of five rhythmic sequences she’d worked out with her grandmother when she was eleven, the door swung open.

  Rana Gayathri was old as stone, and built just as sturdily. She was a few inches shorter than Suri, with a coil of silver-gray hair tied up in a braided bun and almond-brown skin lined with age and warmth. Usually. Right now, she was glaring up at Suri, her arms folded over her embroidered tunic. Then her gaze slid sideways to the boy. He’d been catching raindrops in the palm of his hand, observing the splash and the mist of them, but at the movement, he glanced up and waved cheerily at her grandmother. Her expression darkened, and she glared at Suri again before nodding toward the shop. “You’d better come in.”

  They followed her in, dripping on the wet hardwood as she painstakingly lit the candles that sat on every surface. After lighting the last one—a carved, black candle Suri had gotten her for her seventy-fifth birthday a few months prior—she blew out the match and left it on the table next to the shadowed, bead-strung archway that led into the back room. She then turned the full force of her disapproval on both of them, which meant she was turning it on Suri—the boy wasn’t paying attention as he sat fingering the soft, serrated leaves of a holy basil sapling beside the sleet-frosted window.

  “You,” she said, jerking her head toward him. The boy glanced up, pointing delicately at himself. She scowled. “Yes, you. Why are you around my granddaughter?”

  “You know each other?” Suri asked uneasily.

&
nbsp; The boy spoke before she could, gently stroking the plant. “I’d reckon she can tell what I am, judging from the runes on the walls.”

  What he was, as if it was something strange. As if he wasn’t human.

  Her grandmother refused to look away, but her mouth twitched in a frown. “What do you go by, down here?”

  A crooked smile split his face. “Call me Kiran.”

  “He showed up at my door the other night,” Suri cut in, spreading her hands in explanation. She suspected the two of them would either get along rather well or loathe each other, and things weren’t looking good so far. “Bloody. Half-dead, burning up with fever.”

  “And you let him in?”

  “He was dying, anda,” she emphasized. “I couldn’t just leave him.”

  “You should’ve,” she said, sharp with horror. She glared over at him. “You should’ve told her to leave you.”

  “I lost consciousness,” he said. “Also, I’ve lost my memory, so I’m unsure why I was at her door in the first place. And on top of that—” he pulled the lapel of his shirt to the side, and even in the dim firelight, the three bleeding tattoos stood out in stark relief. “There are these.”

  Her grandmother didn’t speak for a moment, and when Suri glanced back at her, her expression was set with an odd, foreign dread. Outside, sleet lashed against the windows, a thudding, arrhythmic beat. Finally, she shook her head in an exasperated kind of resignation and then jerked her head toward the back room. “Come with me.” Suri stepped forward, but her grandmother shook her head. “Not you, him. The godling.”

  The boy—Kiran—raised his eyebrows, but followed her nonetheless. The beaded curtain shimmered and shook behind them, leaving Suri in the shop alone. Godling, she’d said, and he hadn’t flinched, hadn’t looked surprised. Suri felt a little sick to her stomach; she’d asked the gods for a sign, and they’d left one on her doorstep, gift-wrapped in ichor and foreign blood.

  They returned a good half-hour later, after Suri had gotten antsy and swept the entire place clean and reorganized the bookshelf alphabetically. She’d changed into old pajamas, and straightened the blanket around her shoulders when she saw her grandmother’s expression. She fixed Suri with a sharp glance, but she didn’t look angry. Mostly, she still looked a little discomfited, a little unsteadied.

  “What is it?” Suri asked. The god had wandered back to the holy basil plant. “Is he okay?”

  Her grandmother heaved a faintly frustrated sigh, and joined her at the table where she did the majority of her readings. The tablecloth was dark blue, dotted with silvery-white constellations that shone in the firelight. “Long story short, no. You really should not have let him in, muru.”

  Suri bristled. “He wouldn’t have been okay either way. At least he’s no longer bleeding outside of someone’s apartment. What happened to him?”

  Kiran turned from the plant, the shirt open on his shoulders. He pointed first to the outer circle on his skin, then to the middle one, then finally to the center ring. “Your anda recognizes them.”

  “Sankhili,” she said distastefully. “Chains, seals. It’s dark magic, bad magic. Someone must have marked him a while ago. The first one binds his memory, the second his power, the third his soul. It’s meant to tether him to you.”

  Suri frowned. “I don’t have them, though.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t need to. Your friend here, only with that kind of magic could they fully restrain him. Since you are human, his tether works to bind you, as well. They will fade, but it will take time. Until then, he will have to stay.”

  Only with that kind of magic. Not only did magic exist, it existed in slender, scarred boys who looked to be her age. She glanced back at him, disbelieving. “So he’s a god? Of what?”

  “Oh, don’t tell her, Rana,” he said pleasantly, smiling over at her. Since when was he on a first name basis with her grandmother? “I want to hear what she guesses.”

  “Cruel,” she scolded, but she didn’t look too angry with him. Suri felt a little like her life was imploding around her—she had tied up a god and held him at knifepoint and now her grandmother was seconds from adopting him, and no one would tell her what he was a god of, and gods were real and magic was real, and—

  “Suri,” her grandmother said steadily. “Since he’s tethered to you, he’ll have to stay with you for the time being, no matter how much I dislike it. Is that okay with you? If it isn’t, I’m fully prepared to let you two move back into the attic back here—”

  Except the attic was the size of a cupboard, and Suri’s old room had been renovated into a meditation room, and no matter how much Suri’s head felt like a watermelon, this was reality. And reality meant that, practically, he had to stay with her. She drew in a long breath. “No, no, it’s fine. He can stay with me. For how long?”

  “As long as it takes for the innermost sankhili to fully break,” Kiran cut in, nearly apologetic. “The rest I can do without, but that one will take the longest, I think. The bright side is that as it fades, we’ll be able to go further and further from one another without as much pain.” He offered them both a grin, candlelight lining the sharp planes of his face. “Don’t worry too much, Rana. I’ll play by the rules, keep an eye on her.”

  “You’d better,” she said firmly, but it was more out of habit than out of true threat. In the firelight, she looked aged beyond words, concerned in a way Suri had never seen her.

  “I’ll be fine,” Suri repeated, reaching out a hand and putting it over hers. She looked unconvinced, but simply sighed and looked away.

  “Your friend will be working at the shop to pay for his board,” she added, nodding around her. “Even soul-bound, he’ll be able to help out with a few of the chores you usually do.”

  They worked out the logistics of the agreement for a little bit longer, and as the sun went down outside, the sleet left with it. Before they left, Suri’s grandmother reached out and picked up the holy basil sapling Kiran had been examining and handed it to him. He raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

  “For good luck,” she explained. “You seem to like it, and it seems to like you, too. Take care of it for me.”

  They made their way back to her apartment in the damp fluorescent night, his arms wrapped around the sapling and his shirt still inexplicably open. Still, he didn’t seem cold.

  “You’re really a god,” she said, but it came out like a question.

  He glanced sideways at her, golden eyes glittering in the dark. It was eerier when the sun went down, the jagged glow of them so starkly inhuman. His easy warmth in the shop had disappeared, leaving his expression utterly unreadable. Eventually, he simply said, “Yes.”

  “Like the statues in the temples,” she continued, unable to stop. “Like the drawings on the talismans. An Enesmati god.”

  He nodded, surprisingly indulgent, and her breath caught. “Which one are you?”

  Suri had never bothered to learn her gods—even growing up with a seer, she hadn’t found it relevant. She was a born atheist, a cynic from the moment of her family’s death. The notion of gods, of immortal, kindly beings meant to guide and protect them, hadn’t ever sat well with her. But now that she was confronted with one, she tried to scrounge up what little knowledge she could recall.

  There was a goddess of the sky, and one of the earth, and one of the ocean, and beyond that she could remember nothing. Kiran didn’t look interested in answering, either, but finally, he said lightly, “The hot one.”

  She made a rude gesture, a kneejerk reaction that she immediately regretted. What if he smote her? Did gods still smite people?

  Instead, his mouth curved in a faint smile, and he held out his free hand. “I truly feel bad for inconveniencing you and your grandmother, so I will give you a hint—it does not define me, but it may lend a little bit of context.”

  A ball of fire sparked to life in his palm, trembling and gold. She leaned close enough that it was warm against her cheeks, unbearably bri
ght, and watched it burn, watched it breathe. It was real, true fire, borne from oxygen and divinity. It was impossible. It should have been impossible.

  “God of fire,” she said, when she’d meant to say, what the hell?

  He shook his head, curling his fingers and extinguishing the flame. “Close, but not quite. Fire is something I have control over, but it is not who I am. Call me cruel, but I’d still like to see you guess.”

  Without the fire, without the sunlight, he seemed carved from shadow and smoke. It made a little sense that he was a god—he was beautiful and young, but he did not look youthful. There was a sense of divinity in his gaze, a faint chill.

  They turned onto another street and walked down the pavement to the front of Suri’s apartment complex. “Who would want to hurt you?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Why would someone bind you?” she asked, following him up the stairs. “The sankhili, I mean. Who would want to get rid of your power?” And why would they bind you to me?

  Kiran tapped his temple. “An old enemy, I’d suppose. Clearly, I can’t remember who, but they must have marked me before my last death.”

  “Your last death?” she asked, struggling to hold his gaze as she pulled her keys out of her soaked book bag. “I thought gods didn’t die.”

  “We do, same as humans,” he affirmed, waiting for her to unlock the door and then ducking into the warm, dry apartment. “It’s a little harder to kill us, though. And you all have a little more freedom in when and how often and whether you want to reincarnate; for us, it’s usually more about how long we have until we’re needed in the mortal world. Currently,” he said, nodding down at himself, “I’m probably on sick leave.”

  The phrasing made her smile a little, and so did the sentiment, the idea that one day her family would return and have a chance at a kinder, more peaceful life than the one they’d left. She looked away, then jerked her head toward the sliding doors. “Come with me. You can put the plant out there.”

  So he followed her out onto the balcony, the waning moon casting the piteous garden in a milky glow. His expression was oddly grave, drawn and pale. He knelt beside the jasmine flowers and set the sapling down beside him before taking a blossom between his index finger and thumb. He held it with an odd gentleness, enraptured, before glancing up at her. As if by explanation, he said, “I used to have a garden a little like this. Is this yours?”