The Heartless Divine

by Varsha Ravi

  It was not white noise; it was a complete lack of sound. As if he had entered another world, identical to their own save for the fact that sensation had long since disappeared. He could not feel his hands; he could not feel his own heart.

  Viro walked up to the bed where they had lain his body. It was sparsely decorated, as he had always had it, with a single blanket and pillow. Stretched out upon the mattress, eyes fluttered shut as if he were only asleep, only unconscious, was Tarak.

  He held out a hand to touch him—it was trembling so much it hurt to hold it up, hurt to move it, hurt to think—and brushed it against his cheek. Thinking back on it, he would wonder why he did that. He was so clearly dead—his skin held an odd, unnatural pallor, lips parted in a rigid facsimile of his familiar, strained smile. And yet, he reached out and held him.

  His skin was cold to the touch, stiff under his fingers. The tactile knowledge of it was something stronger than words, stronger than logic. It found that tiny, insignificant drop of hope, and set it aflame.

  22

  Lyne

  A wish, and nothing but a wish. That was the way her birthday began to seem as time flew past them, cracking open to reveal the hoarfrost of early winter. It felt like a dream, an old memory Suri recalled every now and then.

  Kiran had changed again. Was it even possible to know someone like him, secrets tilted inward like the petals to some infinite, half-bloomed rose? There was no way to know. She dreamt of what lay at the pistil sometimes, and it was too saccharine for her to understand that they were nightmares until after, heaving on the bathroom tile. The stigma was always empty bullets and lullabies, always.

  There was a jagged intensity to him now, but it held none of the blithe cheer that had laced his actions when he had first appeared. Languor was a distant, foreign notion—she hadn’t seen him still in weeks. If he wasn’t gardening, then he was in the kitchen, dicing vegetables and eating them raw. He had developed an alarming habit of cracking his knuckles incessantly, either for the sensation or the sound of it. It was the uneven, precipitous vigilance of a prey animal, deer in headlights, roadkill in motion.

  When he toyed with the hilt of the kitchen knife, point up, eyes dull with familiarity, and she held out a hand to tentatively brush his shoulder, he might look at her with a measure of bemusement before glancing down at himself with surprise. She had always suspected that there was a kind of dissonance in his heart, but she hadn’t thought he’d stick around long enough that she would have to watch it split him apart.

  At night, he disappeared. Not for long, not forever. But she noticed regardless, the strain in her chest loosening and tightening like a cord between them. The innermost seal had been thread-thin for days now; this was something entirely separate, and she didn’t dare put it to words.

  Part of her—a small, foolish part that asked gods to tell her stories so they did not have to play at sleep—was convinced this was something that would pass, even as the rest warned her to stand back. Candle fire was always warm when first lit, after all. It never burned at first.

  And so she decided to rope him into a holiday movie marathon the weekend after exams finished. Usually, she spent the first days of the winter break hanging out with the others or helping her grandmother restock the shop and deliver packages. But her grandmother had assured her she was fine on her own, Ellis had gone off the grid, Miya was at the beach with her aunt, Aza and Dai were at a family reunion, and even if any of them had asked, she wasn’t sure if she would’ve agreed to leave the apartment.

  If she was being entirely honest with herself, she was more concerned by Kiran’s unease than she felt comfortable letting on. On more than one occasion, he had hopped over the wrought-iron edge of the balcony and stood on the inch-wide cement ledge, shoulders tense, staring down at streets silver and flashing with life with a distant scrutiny, a watery disdain.

  When she proposed the movie marathon idea to him, stretched across the couch and toying with the television remote, he simply arched his eyebrows. He was standing on the back of the armchair, a lightbulb tucked into the crook of his elbow. His toes were loosely curled into the upholstery, unimpressed by the fall.

  “Why?” he asked, terse, twisting in the lightbulb and jumping down soundlessly. Crossing the room in two steps, he threw open the curtains, saturating the room in sunlight. It seared and seared and Suri looked away, flipping through channels on the television.

  She lingered on the movie marathon, contemplating the beginning of the first movie; three young sisters spoke to their parents in frustrated tones as they explained why their vacation had been canceled last minute. “Why not? I thought you liked human movies.”

  He stared through her, still for just a moment—a glitch, nothing more. Then he moved to pull a dog-eared copy of an old paperback off the top of the bookshelf, brushing off dust with his index finger. It gathered and puffed into the stagnant, dead air of the apartment. “How long is it?”

  Flicking through the television guide, she made a show of checking until the next normal program—a rerun of an old gameshow at three in the morning. “Eighteen hours?”

  “Eighteen hours,” he repeated, dry. He shrugged, a jagged, violent movement, blowing on bruised knuckles. “Why not?”

  Why not? Their friendship was ridiculously incidental. Suri wondered how her autumn would’ve turned out if she had slept through the knock on her door that night, and he slotted himself into the gaps on the couch, leaning back against the opposite arm. She watched as he made an admirable effort to keep himself still. She figured it was half out of an attempt at respect and half out of pride, a puerile challenge with himself.

  He lasted all the way through the first movie, gaze glassy and disinterested as the children danced through a winter wonderland, peppermint staining their tongues. The second began, and he exhaled slowly before taking out a thick silver coin and passing it over his knuckles, soundless and flickering.

  She shifted, and it slipped out of his fingers, brushing her ankle on the way down. On screen, the family’s holiday dinner had been ruined by their golden retriever. Chastened, the dog pouted at them over spilled mashed potatoes.

  “Sorry,” he said abruptly, retrieving the coin. “I just—”

  “Can’t sit still?” she cut in wryly without looking away from the screen.

  Kiran watched her for a second, as if trying to discern whether it was a joke or not. She wasn’t entirely sure herself. Finally, he frowned—it cut across his face. “Is it that obvious?”

  Laughter burst out of her, unbidden. She couldn’t tell him the truth—that he dripped tension like gasoline, that he moved as if he meant to rend—so instead, she said, “You need to unwind.”

  He gazed at her, faintly disdainful and unappreciative of having his own words thrown back at him. “And this—” he gestured toward the screen; the golden retriever was on a journey to find himself, paws deep in gray snow— “Is going to help me?”

  “What will?” she pressed, and there was a note of true curiosity in it. It felt too much like desperation for her taste. “Are you demeaning Dusky and his quest?”

  His dark hair was bound with a Dai hand-me-down—a banana clip with a smile drawn on it. A piece came loose and hung in his face, a thin stream of smoke. He did not smile, but his expression was shaped like he meant to. “I would never. I just don’t know that the sugar and spice collection is going to help all that much.”

  “Exactly,” Suri said, reaching forward and taking the coin from his fingers as he poised it to fly upward. He made a noise of irritation, anger without appetite, but did not take it back. “You don’t know. It might. Try.”

  It was an imperative; resigned, he leaned back, and they watched the rest of the movie in near silence. She laughed enough for the both of them, suppressed, embarrassing giggles she only allowed him to hear because they’d already slipped out accidentally in the past. There was no salvaging her reputation, not with him.

  Dinner time came and went
. His stare drilled into the side of her head, insistent and pleading. She relented, and he pulled himself off the couch to go fiddle with things in the kitchen. Moments later, there was the distinctive sound of metal whistling amiably through the air.

  A little over half an hour later—on screen, a teenage girl, splotchy faced with the weight of her own emotions, confessed to her crush as the first snow fell—he reappeared with two plates of some stir-fried dish with sliced poultry and vegetables. The first bite burned her tongue, but she kept eating. It tasted like cloves and winter.

  Despite his initial protests, Kiran had grudgingly relaxed. She doubted he would’ve admitted to it if she had asked, but she knew him as well as a heart could know a knife without bleeding out, savage and bacchanalian. There were small things—his shoulders were not so sharp; sometimes he might exhale and it would not rattle unevenly. Contentment still flickered on the horizon, a mirage of an oasis in a suffocating desert. At the very least, he didn’t look like he was being held at gunpoint anymore. Small victories.

  She played with the idea of asking what had made him so agitated in the first place, but she doubted he would give a straight answer. Even when he was feeling cheerful, even when the question was an impersonal one, it was rare that he tossed out explicit, clear information. Even now.

  Suri asked anyway. Impulse control was not her strong suit. He regarded her over his empty plate—bluish light from the television turned the streaks of oil and spice greasy and murky looking. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” she repeated, raising her eyebrows.

  “I don’t remember,” he clarified, leaning to the side to place his plate on the coffee table. He rubbed at his eyes, distorting the shape of them momentarily. “I couldn’t explain it if I tried. It’s—” he broke off, snapping his fingers as if he’d reached an epiphany. “Have you seen the dark?”

  “Yes?” she said, cautious and bemused. “When I turn off the lights?”

  Kiran shook his head. “Not that kind—real darkness. I would’ve thought you might’ve seen it. It’s in caves, sometimes.”

  She had—her grandmother had taken her to Enesmat when she was five, for some kind of religious rite she had little knowledge of and even less interest in performing. On the way to the temple, they had passed by a chasm. It had looked like a god had clawed through the soil and stone and emptied it out. She still remembered the pure, ink-deep blackness. The darkness, yawning.

  “I’ve seen it,” she amended abruptly. He didn’t question the validity of her knowledge.

  “Imagine stepping into it,” he said, his voice going low and smooth as it did when he told stories. His hands rose and took hers, overwarm to the touch. There was a ritualism to this, an intimate, unspoken sanctity. “Passing over your skin, feeling you, knowing you. Malice given form and talons.”

  Suri shivered, the low, hollow timbre of his voice scraping over her skin. “And?”

  “I remember it,” he whispered, and it was a little like a confession. “It is all I can remember, and you will ask what I remember it from, and the truth of it is that I don’t know. It’s all the sensation of it, only the sensation of it. I can’t feel anything else.”

  I can’t feel anything else. Shadows crawled over her heart, but her hands felt safe, tethered. She said, “That sounds terrifying.”

  The corners of his mouth turned up, too quick for it to be practiced, in the first smile of the day. The first smile of the week—the first smile in gods knew how long. Surprise and pride warred in her, edged by a chastising cynicism. As if it had to be said, he affirmed, “It isn’t pleasant. But you were right. This is helping a little, I think.”

  The words made her happier than they had any right to. “I told you. Movie magic.”

  He tilted his head in a question before blinking. “Oh, yes. The movies are helpful, too.”

  She didn’t know what he meant by that, but before she could ask, he took her plate and reached for his and went to wash them. The end credits continued, ceaseless, and the introduction to the next movie played. Carols echoed in her head; she’d hear them for weeks.

  By the time he’d returned, the movie was well underway. It reminded her a little of that corny classic they’d watched with the others months ago, the couple who’d met as children and died as adults and loved each other the entire time. This one took the idea a little further—it spoke of a pair of soulmates, destined for one another from birth, who didn’t meet until they were in their twenties. There were a hundred near-misses, of course, brief non-meetings where they slid past each other, unaware. But once they did, it was love at first sight, bittersweet and syrupy with the heft of fate.

  Kiran watched it with the same mild interest as he did all the others, cheek pushed into his fist. She nearly couldn’t bear his apathy, his clean lack of scorn. She couldn’t, actually. “Doesn’t it amuse you?”

  “What?” he glanced over at her, caught off guard. “Why would it?”

  She gestured toward the screen—the characters gazed into each other’s eyes, rain soaking cloth to their skins. Reality bent around them, sheltering them from obstacles and from what she assumed could only be hypothermia. “True love. Soulmates. The entire franchise of marketable romance. I thought gods would find it stupid, or… I don’t know. Hopeless? Since there’s no such thing.”

  He held her gaze for a few beats, the line of his mouth curving downward, thoughtful. Then he plucked the remote control from where it rested between her thigh and the back of the couch and paused the movie, sliding off wordlessly and disappearing into the hallway.

  After a few minutes, he returned with two skeins of red yarn and a knife. The knife made sense—she thought he might want to get buried with a knife, if gods ever got buried. The yarn was something of a mystery. He sat down in his old spot, pulling his knees up and folding his legs and gesturing for her to do the same. She shunted her legs to the side and leaned forward, interested despite herself.

  His gaze was sharp, assessing. “Why do you think there’s no such thing? As soulmates, true love. Whatever you want to call it.”

  It wasn’t what she expected him to ask, and she drew back. Tilting her head in consideration, she said, “Intuitively, I think it’s silly. Looking at it this way, though—you said that reincarnation’s a thing, right?”

  “I said that a long time ago,” he replied, faintly surprised.

  “I know.” The words came slowly, as if she were pulling them into life through amber. They flopped around in her mouth, damp from the trip and waiting. “If it’s a thing—if none of us are ever really dead for that long—”

  “You can be,” he supplied, expression oddly shadowed. “You can choose not to reincarnate. It happens; souls tire.”

  Suri held his gaze, and it felt a little like an act of violence. “When they do, though. How can true love be real if everything depends on who you meet and when you meet them and if you happen to reincarnate at the same time as someone you think you might be able to love? How can soulmates be a real thing? It seems a little ridiculous.”

  “It does seem that way,” he agreed, and she knew he was about to disprove her, but he wasn’t sly and terrible about it. A smile flickered on and off his face. “The real answer is a little hard to believe, if I’m being honest. Oddly, fate is a romantic.”

  He leaned forward and unwound the skeins, gently teasing out two strands the length of his forearm. Kiran held them up, one after another. “This is person A, and this is person B. Do you want to name them?”

  “Jane,” she said, after a pause. “And Richard.”

  “Okay, Jane and Richard,” he worried his bottom lip absently, drawing out more thread. “The yarn represents their lifelines in the river of rebirth. Souls are black, reflective like glass, but this is as close as I can get.”

  Kiran pulled the threads close to one another so that they touched at a single, tangential point. There was a precision to his movements, a careful rhythm. “So, Jane and Richard
are soulmates. I’m going to borrow your terminology, because I don’t have a better word for it in a language you’re familiar with. They’re soulmates, which isn’t always romantic, but in their case, it is. And they fall deeply in love, it’s all very beautiful and film-worthy. Following along?”

  She nodded, and he glanced up and smiled at her, quick as a blink, before twisting the threads around each other so they were intertwined. He handed one of the ends to her, took the other and pulled, gesturing for her to do the same. The connection only tightened. When he spoke, he was markedly closer than he’d been before. “If you try to split them, it doesn’t work—they’re bound by heart, by soul. And it begins here—” he took the other end from her now, and braided them around one another, a rope of red yarn, “And it does not end, not ever. Death has no bearing on the soul.”

  He removed his knife and soundlessly cut through the rope, slashing through the intertwined threads in the middle of the braid. He held them up, angling the twisted threads so she could see them. Red wool fuzz drifted down his wrist. “A single death is just that one cut. The threads keep touching, their souls are still twined—that is fate’s business, something different entirely.”

  He spoke of those lofty notions—death, fate—as if he knew them intimately, close friends he had gone to tea with. Suri wondered absently if he resented either of them.

  “So,” he continued, a smile coloring his voice, “Soulmates are a thing. And they work around the issue you mentioned—of meeting someone in the right lifetime, at the right time—because of it. Their souls are intertwined, which means they more often than not reincarnate into the same lifetime, with similar ages—or age gaps—from when they first met.” Kiran dropped the threads, running a hand through his hair. “I’ve heard it said that this means they inherit the same issues from their past selves. But I don’t know the validity of it; I’ve never seen it happen, not up close.”