“You need to kiss me. Just like you did before.”
“Um, no. That’s not a good idea.”
“Why? Are you afraid I’ll hurt you?”
I snorted. “No. It’s just not the way a brother should act.”
Ana scowled. “You are not my brother.”
“No, I’m not. But if he were here, he would agree with me. It’s a bad idea.”
“Why are you proving difficult? I simply wish to test my theory. All I ask is a simple kiss. You did not object to it before.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing before.” I’d raised my voice and even to my ears I sounded a bit hysterical and nervous. “Look,” I said, trying to figure out a way to avoid doing what she asked, “What are you trying to accomplish here?”
Ana put her hands on her hips, and the part of my brain I was trying to turn off sent me the idea that I could easily do as she asked by grabbing her around the waist and tugging her toward me. I told that part of my brain to shut up and frowned at her.
“That tree,” she said, pointing to the tree behind us while keeping her flinty green eyes trained on me, “was created by us, by our kissing this morning.”
I openly scoffed. “That’s…that’s not possible, Ana.”
“Is it not? The roots go all the way back to the Grove of Dreams. There is a direct link. I can feel it.”
“And you learned all this from a leaf?”
She blew out an impatient breath. “See for yourself,” she said, placing my hands on top of the leaf. “Can you feel it?”
Quickly, I snatched my hand away. I felt it, all right. The quivering leaf trembled like Ana’s limbs had when I stroked them.
Ana went on, “The tiny green veins of the leaf pound against my palm like your heartbeat did against my hand. The roots tickle my toes, asking for more nourishment. The creaks of the branches are wistful. The wind teases me with the memory. I am the goddess of growing things as well. This is my realm. It makes sense that the land responds to me in this manner.” With each statement, she inched closer.
I swallowed and tried to think of a way to reject what she was saying. “So…you’re saying you just want to test this theory. Just a simple kiss and you’ll know.”
Arching a delicate brow, Ana answered, “Yes. I will know.”
Sucking in a lip, I said, “Okay then.” I let out a breath like a man going to the guillotine and placed my hands on her shoulders, barely touching her with my fingertips. “Then let’s do it.”
She frowned and said, “Open your thoughts to the sapling behind you. See if you can sense it as I do.”
Leaning forward, I hesitated long enough to see Ana close her eyes and lift her mouth closer. I pressed my mouth against hers as chastely as I could and then pulled back. I couldn’t help but notice her body shuddered.
She slapped my arm. “What was that?” she demanded.
“A kiss. Just like you asked.”
Pacing as she considered, Ana mumbled, “That was nothing like the kisses you gave me before.”
“No, but that’s all I’m willing to do right now.”
“Kishan—” she began.
My old name lit a fire in me. I yelled, “I told you not to call me that!”
“How about if I call you buffoon, you thick-headed tiger?”
Behind us the little tree shook, and now that I was paying attention, I felt it responding to us. The small leaves curled up on the branches and the color dulled.
“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…”
“I will not be a flower that wilts on the stem, unnoticed and shrinking. Yes. I have been razed by a storm. I have been crushed by a man’s bootheel. What is weak and vulnerable in me has been exposed and then tossed aside like so much rubbish. But I am alive still. This broken girl has sprung back. I have turned my face to the sun and taken nourishment from it. Do you not see? I, too, long for human contact. I want to be touched and loved by one who treats me with kindness and caring. I will accept nothing less, Sohan. Not when I’ve seen what is possible.”
I looked from her intense and pleading eyes to the four beings standing behind her. My hands itched to tear them all to shreds. Then I looked at her and my heart ached. Ana had become important to me, but if being with them would make her happy, then who was I to stand in her way? The man squeezed her arm lightly and she didn’t even flinch like she had when I touched her. My mouth in a tight line, I said, “Fine, Anamika. If they are what you want, I’ll leave you to them. Come and find me when you’re ready to leave.”
Turning on my heel, I tore out the back of the house, and, finding a familiar set of stairs, I bounded up, changing into my tiger form on the way. I roared out my frustration as I ascended the tree, only stopping when I found a little hollowed-out corner. It was fortunate I spotted it at all since I’d barely been able to see without the light that surrounded Ana’s body naturally. Crawling inside, I put my head on my paws and closed my eyes, trying to ignore the disparate feelings coursing through me.
I must have slept deeply because Ana came upon me without me knowing. “Have you stemmed your volatile emotions yet? Are you ready to wake, Sohan?”
Rising abruptly, I bumped my head on the roof of my little cave. Shaking my head, I hopped out and changed back into human form.
She had no idea what volatile emotions I was feeling right then. I had no idea how long I’d been asleep. How long Ana had stayed with the sirens. Just the thought of those men putting their hands on her, kissing her, holding her was like a vice around my chest. How could she kiss me like she did before and then turn to them without so much as an explanation? It didn’t make sense.
“Are you not going to speak to me?” she asked as we made our way forward.
“I see no reason to.”
“Ah, you are upset.”
“No. You can do what you want with who you want. It’s not my concern.”
“Oh? Then if it is not concern I see on your face, what darkens your mood?”
I shrugged. “I just want to get this over with.”
“I, too, want to get this over with.”
“Then, by all means, let’s go.”
She sighed and shook her head, and I followed her through the inner maze of the tree to a wide cavern that seemed vaguely familiar. When I spoke, my voice echoed in the space that, with the glow of the goddess brightening the outer rim, looked like a steep, tiered basin pockmarked with tall, petrified peaks. Each peak was connected to the next with bridges made of interlaced roots.
“Is this the bat cave?” I asked.
“I believe it is a good place for it.”
“It doesn’t look right. Kelsey and I had to scramble on hands and knees to get here and the bridges weren’t here. I had to leap from place to place to rescue her. It was some sort of test the bats made me go through.”
“Ha,” Ana barked a laugh. “Sounds like something you deserve.”
“I deserve? I’m not the one who—” The wood around us shifted and one of the bridges twisted and fell.
“I’d be careful if I were you,” Ana said, clicking her tongue. “You’re likely to collapse the entire area.”
She made her way to a bridge and started up. Grudgingly, I shut my mouth, fearful that anything I said would cause us to fall. We were hard to kill but I didn’t want to risk anything unnecessarily. Ana paused, her hand on a vine that sprouted green beneath her fingers.
“What is it?” I asked.
“A memory,” she answered, looking back with a sad sort of smile. “This root bridge, like all the others here, was created earlier. This one grew when you twined your fingers in my hair.”
She moved ahead and I stood there immobile, thinking about what she’d just said. Even when I went on, I was still processing it when she pointed to something else. “Do you see the way the tree bends just there?” she asked. “That was when—”
“Yeah, I get the picture,” I said, cutting her off. The way the tree curved around itself at the top gave the very clear image of two lovers entwined. “Why don’t you warn me when you come upon the section created when you embraced your sirens, so I can give it a wide berth,” I said.
Ana paused. I heard her voice carry to me softly. “There is no such place,” she said.
I lowered my head and refused to look at my surroundings anymore, telling myself it didn’t matter whether she meant nothing had happened between her and the sirens or if the phenomenon only occurred between the two of us. When I got to the top, she opened a doorway in the tree that led directly out onto one of the
large branches. She lifted her arms and laughed as hundreds of small, screeching bats entered the cavern. Their sounds merged with her voice until it sounded like all the bats were laughing along with her.
Their hard, beady eyes flashed in the dim light. With the power of the amulet, she gifted them like she had the snake. They grew before my eyes and were granted with the power to speak. After leaving them with her instructions, we departed.
“Why did the cave look so different?” I asked.
“Perhaps you will irritate me again on this journey and the beauty of the tree will further deteriorate.”
“Very funny. No, I’m serious, Ana.”
She turned and shrugged. “Maybe it’s because you and Kelsey will not be visiting this place for a century.”
“We’re that far back in the timeline?”
“Things die, Sohan. Time turns everything to dust. Even tigers,” she said, poking my chest.
I didn’t like how flippant she was about it. The idea that I could die didn’t bother me so much, but her? I’d never thought of the goddess Durga as being mortal. I made a mental note to ask Kadam about it. Not that he was likely to tell me anything.
Ana’s foot slid off a branch and I grabbed her hand. Unfortunately, the dew on the branch caused me to slip too, and as we toppled over the side, I pulled her close to me and wrapped my arms around her, turning to protect her from hitting the branches. The wind raced past us, lifting our hair as we tumbled. But then we were no longer tumbling. Ana’s arms were laced around my neck and we were floating up higher and higher.
She snuggled against me, resting her head against my shoulder, and almost without thinking, I stroked her long hair. We said nothing, not out loud and not in our minds. We’d been closed off to each other since that morning, and I had no idea how I could breach the silence. The two of us arrived at the top too soon for me to figure out what I should do next. It only took her a few moments to create the Stymphalian birds and place the Divine Scarf beneath one of their ginormous eggs. Next, Ana whispered the words that would grant Ren and me the ability to be men for twelve hours a day the moment the scarf was recovered by Kelsey and my former self.
Tiger's Dream (Tiger's Curse Book 5) Page 45
