The Heartless Divine

by Varsha Ravi

  There was a beat of silence. Surprisingly enough, Kiran was the one who spoke first. “You don’t have to.”

  Ellis glanced up, wary and intrigued, and they all followed, looking toward him expectantly. Back-tracking a little, he simplified, “Nobody expects you to be okay with this. It’s a horrible thing that’s happened to you and your family, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies. But all you can do for now is continue searching.”

  The boy forced a smile, pale but appreciative. It was a nice enough sentiment, sympathetic and encouraging, and there was a certain measure of genuine warmth in Kiran’s voice. But he had reacted to the entire situation—to Ellis showing up in tears, to him confessing the situation, to the rest of their friends showing up and effectively occupying the apartment—with a startling lack of surprise, a faint dispassion.

  It wasn’t the sort of thing she could confront him about—she was running on little sleep herself and she was prone to overthinking, fixating on small details and creating webs and webs of theories from them, and there was no time to ask even if she mustered the courage. But he picked up a stack of posters and straightened them, a nervous tick, and her gaze caught on the movement unintentionally.

  “How about we go out and put up posters?” Aza suggested in the midst of a new, pervasive silence. Four cups of tea sat untouched on the table. “Ellis can stay here and rest.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t need to rest—”

  “Yeah, you do,” Suri cut in, relieved to be of some use. “I’ll get out a spare blanket and some pillows. You can take the couch while we’re out.” Holding his gaze stubbornly, she added, “Refusing to take care of yourself isn’t going to bring her back.”

  Ellis flinched, setting his gaze on the wall behind the television stand. “Later. I’ll rest after we finish putting up posters.”

  “Later?”

  “As long as you sleep afterward,” Dai interrupted, shooting a nervous glance at Suri. Ever the pacifist. “Promise to sleep afterward.”

  “I promise,” he gritted out, toneless and inflamed with helplessness. “Happy?”

  The question went unanswered; Kiran passed out stacks of posters and they readied themselves wordlessly. Then they went out into the city, pouring onto the streets single-file, like ducklings or small children.

  Bound by a lack of a proper plan, they wandered uncertainly toward the center of the city. Eventually, Miya spoke up, told them all firmly to meet back in an hour. Her eyes shifted from side to side, waiting for someone to come up with a better plan. They didn’t; the group fragmented and dissipated, and Suri clutched her sheaf of posters like a lifeline.

  More often than not, she lost herself down familiar streets. She would continue down a path stubbornly and find that she’d been walking in a circle. It was as if the city had turned its back on her, as if she was lost in a phantasmagoria of the world she had known. The wrong side of a mirror, all rippling, reflective darkness.

  The city swarmed. There was a method to the madness, sure, a rhythm Suri knew well. But this new, strange city, the uneven, malicious reflection of it, spun to a harder, coarser beat, and it swallowed her whole.

  I’m losing my mind, she thought, nearly walking straight into a streetlight. She held up a hand just to see that it existed, afraid it would flicker and disappear. It touched the pole, felt cold, frosted steel, and the sensation rocked through her. A reminder of her own mortality. This is real. I’m real.

  Suri thought of Ellis’s stories of Annabel then, as the city twisted around her, amorphous and chaotic. She was losing time—to something. Somehow. She would look at me and I swear, there was no recognition. Of me, of anything. Bruises, he’d burst out, shocked by the fact that he’d forgotten and horrified by the memory of it. She would show up, middle of the night, with bruised wrists and cuts on her collarbones. No explanation, no words. I tried to keep her from leaving once, and she just snuck out ten minutes later. No one listened, and she never—never answered any questions. Not ever.

  She dropped her hand from the pole, rolling up her sleeve to examine her wrists. No bruises. At least she wasn’t entirely gone.

  Fear thudded through her. Tell anda, she thought, begged. Tell the others. Tell Kiran. Tell somebody.

  But she couldn’t. It wasn’t as if she could prove there was any connection between what she was feeling—faint shivers and strange thoughts—and Annabel’s disappearance. It was all pure conjecture, like everything had become these days. Smoke and mirrors, dreams and nightmares and the darkness that pooled in the absence of both.

  A teenager sprinted down the sidewalk, pushing people from side to side—a mother with a child in her arms listed to the side, an accidental shift that knocked a burly man carrying crates of produce into her—Suri reached out, desperate and unsteady, fingers slipping against damp brick, and tripped over a crack on the sidewalk, tumbling into a side street that led out to a crowded avenue that usually cut across the northern side of the city. It wasn’t her area to patrol, and she took a seat on the asphalt. The faint burn of pain and exertion and the cold of the winter air negated one another. She inhaled and exhaled slowly and let the feeling come back into her limbs.

  Distantly, she registered warmth.

  It was familiar, not in the way of small flames and stovetops and hearths. Familiar like her heart was familiar, familiar like sensation itself.

  She had been wrong—the side street didn’t lead out into the avenue she had thought it did. It led out onto a smaller back road that looped around a park, enclosed with a tall, imposing fence that kids liked to practice jumping over. A ripped down jacket was hooked on a prong, feathers falling like snow.

  The error didn’t surprise her in the slightest. She knew the city, but this wasn’t her city.

  A voice cut through the air, low and familiar, and Suri flattened herself against the brick at the edge of the alleyway. Carefully, she turned to peek into the street, ducking her head so the shadows removed her from vision. She was shaking so hard she could feel it in her bones, nails cutting into the meat of her palms, the pain of it extraneous. Was this what fear felt like? She couldn’t remember. It was a nightmare she had lived through so many times it had disappeared from her heart entirely, leaving behind only ghosts and muscle memory.

  “…you hurt?” the whisper came again, rising enough to be audible. But it was only from the natural lilt of the voice; she couldn’t understand the conversation from where she stood. Suri shifted closer.

  Kiran, she thought, and it was shaped like relief. How dangerous solace was. Thoughtlessly, she moved to step into the light, holding herself back with some combination of anxiety and innate self-preservation.

  The street was empty save for them—Kiran stood with his back to her, wrapped in the heavy black coat. It hung on his shoulders, overlarge and fluttering in the faint winter breeze, rendering him little more than a warp in reality.

  A girl stood across from him, in leggings and a T-shirt so faded she couldn’t make out the logo stained on the grayish fabric. Her shoulders were hunched, frame curled inward and strained with the pensive fear of a child and the empty daze of senility. Her complexion was the same as Ellis’s—dark as wood, as soil—but her eyes were a faded blue, like rainwater. There was a cloudiness in them Suri could detect even from far away, a puddle frozen over.

  The girl, Annabel, did not respond to Kiran’s first question, simply stared up at him for a moment. Then, she lunged forward and tried to cut his throat.

  Suri’s breath caught, but it was buried by the crisp, precise sound of metal cutting through the fog. Kiran regarded her, expression hidden by the angle, arms loose at his sides. He had only taken a single step back.

  The knife sagged in Annabel’s hand, arm crooked at a strange, unnatural angle. She looked like a marionette, strings hung and ready. The winter sunlight made her skin look glossy and strange, waxy with pallor.

  Still, she did not speak. Kiran moved forward and plucked the knife from
her outstretched hand, tucking it into his coat pocket. He took her hand in his, examining it closely before letting go, pushing slightly so it fell back to her side. It was something of an interrogation, of an autopsy undone.

  “Annabel,” he said softly, the name strange and foreign-sounding in his mouth. “Where are you?”

  Suri blinked in surprise at the question, at the remoteness with which it had been delivered. But the girl didn’t reply, didn’t even move. It was difficult to fathom that this was the same person who had tried to kill him earlier—she didn’t look capable of conversation, much less murder.

  Kiran exhaled, a deliberate, displeased sound. Grasping her chin loosely, he turned her face from side to side, a detached kind of scrutiny defining the movements. Her chest felt cold with the sight of it, with his strange disdain.

  “Well,” he murmured, “They’ve done quite the number on you. I wonder if the phrase ‘permanent damage’ ever occurred to whoever did this.” He sighed then, saturated with pity and an eerie regret. “I suppose you won’t tell me, even if I ask who.”

  Annabel was silent. Then, her face moved—jaw crackling in motion, eyes blinking slowly. An automaton given direction and intention.

  She said, “You have to die.”

  The god laughed unpleasantly. “Would that it were so easy. Did they ruin you to kill me? That’s a terrible waste. I would expect this is something separate.”

  The words rolled over the girl. There was something vague and lifeless about her gaze, milky with disregard. Finally, she repeated, “You have to die.”

  This time, he didn’t make an attempt at conversation. He brought up his free hand to her temple, tapping it lightly with the pad of his index finger.

  Day after day, Suri found herself mystified by the simplest displays of magic. And yet, all Kiran’s thoughtless fires and strange charms paled in comparison to this. They were circus tricks—bunnies and hats, flaming hoops and aerial dances. This was power, and it didn’t care to play at pretenses. It was brutal and wild and even from a distance, she could feel the cruel intensity of it. There was no malice in it, but that didn’t matter. Natural disasters didn’t care to kill—it didn’t mean that they were benevolent.

  Threads of ink danced under the surface of the girl’s skin, swirling madly. He pulled his fingers away, and the threads came away. They glittered in the harsh, too-bright sunlight, and he touched each one, considering.

  Clucking softly, he drew one out, glittering silver and blue, and blew on it. It caught fire and shattered. Dark magic, bad magic. “That’s the worst of it, I think. You won’t be at risk for further deterioration, at the very least.”

  There was a beat of silence as the air shone with the shards of mortality. He touched a few other strands of energy, altering them slightly. Black to white, black to gold, but they always returned to the smooth, opalescent sable. She still could not see his expression.

  Eventually, he spoke, quiet and hard. “I wish I could do more for you. I really do.” Kiran moved his index finger in a circle, counterclockwise, and the threads twisted around it, settling briefly. Then he pressed it back to her temple, and said calmly, “You’ve lost your memory of the past three months. Even if anyone asks, you cannot remember anything. Getting home safely is your only priority. Is that clear?”

  Annabel nodded, and it was still the movement of a machine, slow and grinding, but there was a certain element of understanding to it. As if she were defrosting, slowly, ice cracking and melting under the surety of flame.

  “Run along, now,” he said, nudging her slightly. Her brow furrowed faintly, and then she turned and walked down the street carefully, as though every movement required conscious thought. She did not turn back, not once.

  It was only after she had disappeared from view that Suri remembered to breathe. An exhale wracked her, and she thought Kiran might’ve flinched. But he did not move, did not waver.

  Relief, she thought. The girl had tried to kill him, that was obvious enough. But she had never feared for him. She was relieved, because she had been afraid for Annabel. Afraid that he would hurt her, somehow, with that strange, coarse magic.

  Suri felt hot with shame. He hadn’t tried to hurt her—he’d helped her, broken whatever was binding her, wiped her memory of horrors unspoken. But still, she could not forget the impassive evenness of his voice. He had pitied her, perhaps, but whatever he had seen in her soul had not shaken him. It was little more than an unfortunate development.

  She was being unfair to him, and she knew it. But she could not help but feel as though the figure in the street, still swallowed by dark fabric and the faint smell of smoke, was someone she did not know very well. Someone who did not want to be known. And as much as she was afraid, she was carved from curiosity just then. It felt far more dangerous than power.

  By the time Kiran finally turned to leave the side street, she was already gone.

  Suri wandered aimlessly throughout the city, wasting time until the hour was up. The intense malice of before had disappeared somewhat, and the streets remained familiar, her heartbeat steady. As steady as it could be, considering the circumstances.

  She bought a candied apple, speckled with pecans and powdered sugar, and ate it at the edge of the shopping center. Children laughed and ran by, bound with colorful, knitted garments and bright smiles. She felt distant from it all, the uneven bite of sweet, cooked sugar and sour apple dulling on her tongue. It all tasted like ashes, overwrought and surreal.

  Once all that was left was the core, she tossed it into a nearby waste bin, licking her fingers before they froze over.

  She was the first person to show up at the agreed-upon meeting place. It was an old-fashioned stone fountain, still running smoothly in the cold. Coins sparkled and shifted under the weight of rippling water. Suri considered making a wish, but figured she’d likely used all hers up for the time being.

  Quickly enough, the rest of her friends trickled in, empty with suppressed disappointment. Kiran perched on a low pillar, expression smooth and inscrutable. Ellis showed up last, mouth sharp with hopelessness.

  They all went around, sharing what they’d found—nothing, for the most part. When it came to her, Suri lifted her shoulders in a shrug. The lie tasted sour in her mouth even as she spoke. “I put up the posters, but I didn’t—didn’t see her.”

  He would explain, she was sure. She didn’t have to say what she’d seen, because it was inexplicable and terrifying and he would cut it into easily digestible chunks the others would fully understand, and everything would be okay.

  Dai finished speaking and nodded at Kiran, the next person in the circle. He shook his head lightly, eyes hooded and distant. “I didn’t find anything.”

  Ellis deflated visibly. His phone buzzed—he fished it out of his pocket, slow with dread, and nearly dropped it. He shut his eyes, speechless. “They said she just came home. She’s not talking that much, but—she is talking. A little. And—” he cut off, disoriented and hopeful. “I’m going to go home. Sorry for—” he waved a hand.

  “Don’t apologize,” Miya replied, savage, and the corners of his eyes crinkled with something akin to fondness.

  After he was gone, there were a few moments of awkward silence—there was no easy way to navigate the aftermath of a tragedy like this, so easily shattered and so strangely put back together. Eventually, they all said goodbye and returned home, promising to meet up soon. To hang out, to talk, to pretend at a state of security.

  Once they’d passed the corner, Suri turned to Kiran. She knew what she wanted to ask—why didn’t you tell him? She knew it, and she opened her mouth, expectant. Nothing came out.

  He glanced over at her, sharp-eyed and waiting. But she couldn’t ask the question, no matter how much the curiosity ate her. Anger bit through her—and why should she? Why did she have to ask? Why couldn’t he explain of his own volition?

  Because she could justify his silence with Ellis; there was no way to explain what he had done wi
thout explaining who he was, and that had never been an option.

  But it was more than that—his expression was impenetrable, that old, empty venom coloring his eyes. Questions threatened to burn through her, jagged with desire. They had always been like this, in a way. One unattainable, unknowable in distinct, dangerous ways, the other consumed by questions shaped like bullets, like graves. They only existed by way of spilt secrets.

  She couldn’t know whether he had noticed her presence in the alley. She couldn’t know whether he resented her for it, whether he scorned her curiosity or disregarded it. She couldn’t know anything, not unless he told her.

  Suri waited for him to explain. But he never did, and she could never bring herself to ask.

  Kiran wanted to tell Suri things, and it terrified him.

  He pondered on this while he waited for the tub to fill, sitting cross-legged in the slowly rising water. The bathtub, ironically, was the only place he felt safe.

  There was something soothing about the knowledge that he could not hurt anybody under the weight of the water. He didn’t have to worry about his traitorous heart, about bones carved from malice and ash. The cold water rendered him powerless, mortal.

  While waiting, he ran his fingers through the water, tracking the smooth ripples, the way the liquid resisted and broke against his touch. And he thought of his fear, disassembled it and examined all the operative parts.

  The girl, Annabel, had saddened him, which surprised him for entirely different reasons. It had been a long time since he had felt pity; he had long since hardened himself to the cruelty of humanity—to pity one was to pity all of them. But it had been clear enough that whoever had hurt Annabel had not been human, not entirely. Her memories had been mangled and broken, her sense of self dipped into graceless malice and frozen solid. And it had been done artlessly—it was the work of an impostor or a sadist, someone who only knew enough divinity to hurt.