On the Banks of the River of Heaven

by Richard Parks

“I said ‘consequences,’ friend Otter. Whether it turns out to be a punishment or a reward is not up to me.”

  The Lord of Heaven reached down into the river and swirled the water with one finger, and in that swirling a figure took shape. One long and lithe with dark brown fur and darker eyes.

  “Her name is Kawauso-hime,” the Lord of Heaven said.

  It was just a name, but with the speaking of that one word Otter finally understood fully and completely why Kaiboshi waited by the river on the seventh day of the seventh month, why the River God and the Rain God were currently lashing at each other both over and under the mountain. He understood why what Kaiboshi and Asago-hime shared was so dangerous, and why he, like them, would never, ever, give it up.

  “Do I belong to her or does she to me?” Otter asked, though he didn’t really care which. He just wanted to understand.

  The Lord of Heaven shrugged. “Both. Neither. That’s something you’ll have to work out for yourselves,” he said.

  After the Lord of Heaven was gone, Kawauso-hime looked at Otter with mischief in her eyes. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I’m Otter,” said Otter when he could find his voice again. “Do . . . do you like to chase fish?”

  “It’s one thing I like to do,” Kawauso-hime said, showing her fine white teeth. “We’ll start with that.”

  And, in flash of fur and a splash of the Celestial River, they were off.

  The Finer Points of Destruction

  Jack Kimble was alone in his apartment early Friday evening when the Hindu Goddess of Destruction manifested inside his ancient tv. The tv was, not surprisingly, destroyed.

  Jack rolled off the couch and onto the floor, covering his head with his arms at the first shower of sparks. Considering the age of the tv and the general tone of his recent luck, the explosion wasn’t much of a surprise. It was only after the clatter and tinkle of flying glass finally subsided that Jack looked up and got to the surprising part.

  Kali Ma crouched in the small opening of his tv cabinet, her taloned feet resting on a mess of smoking wires and broken glass like the of a fallen enemy. Her skin was blacker than obsidian, her red eyes large and terrible. She was naked except for a necklace of miniature skulls that Jack thought must surely be plastic until one of them clicked its yellowed teeth at him. Jack had an impression of immense size, even though she barely had to crouch to fit into the space formerly occupied by the now pitiful remnants of his tv.

  Jack, a Southern Baptist when he needed to fill in the blank marked “Religion” on a form, didn’t claim to be an authority on Hindu cosmology, but he had at least heard of Kali, and he knew this was that same goddess because she announced it to him.

  “I am Kali Ma,” she said with a voice like rusty knives being sharpened. “Called Endless Night, Wife of Lord Shiva and Goddess of Destruction. Mortal, who are you?”

  Jack heard a croaking sound, and finally realized that he was making it. Once he knew that, it was a little easier to try to arrange the croaks into something resembling words.

  “Jack . . . Jack Kimble. Ummm. Pleased to meet you?”

  “Of course,” Kali said, as if there had never been any doubt of that. She stepped down from the smoking remnants of the tv and onto the ugly green carpet. She peered down at Jack, still cowering in front of the threadbare sofa.

  “You may rise now,” Kali said.

  Jack wasn’t so sure he could, but his knees, while wobbly, didn’t quite buckle as he got to his feet using the arm of the couch for support. He thought of all the usual things a person might be expected to think at a time like this. That he was dreaming. That it wasn’t really happening. That he was hallucinating. Then his bare foot encountered one of the sharper pieces of debris from his former television.

  “Owww!!”

  Jack sat back down on the couch again and carefully examined his left foot. A bright sliver of glass protruded from beneath his big toe. He carefully teased it out and then used his handkerchief to stop the bleeding. When he looked up again, Kali was still there, standing with her own bare feet on broken glass. Jack wasn’t sure, but he thought that she was scowling. With her face it was hard to tell.

  “On your feet, mortal. It’s improper to sit in the presence of divinity,” she said.

  Jack noticed where Kali was standing. “Doesn’t that hurt your feet?” he asked before he thought better of it.

  “I am the Goddess of Destruction,” Kali said calmly. “How can anything related to my sphere of influence harm me? Now get up before I get angry.”

  Jack didn’t know the answer to that. He barely understood that it was a question. He did understand that a creature calling herself Kali was standing in his living room, and whatever else he might do, he did not want to make her angry. He got back up off the couch, being more careful where he put his feet this time.

  “That’s better. So. I suppose you’re wondering why I am here?” the goddess asked.

  Jack hadn’t quite gotten to that part, to tell the truth, but he realized that, indeed, that very question had been next on his agenda.

  “Yes Ma’am,” he said, as politely as he could.

  “You may address me as ‘Kali,’ ” she said. “I’m looking for my husband. As I already mentioned, his name is Shiva. Have you seen him?”

  “No one’s been here except me for some time now,” Jack said. Which was the simple, painful truth. “May I ask why you think he’d be here?”

  “Because this is the place he will be, if not at this moment,” Kali said, as if the answer should have been obvious. “If he’s not here now, then I’ll come back again and again until he is.”

  “Uh, excuse—”

  Jack wasn’t even sure what he was about to say, but whatever it was quickly became moot. Kali vanished in another shower of sparks, leaving Jack alone again with the wreckage of his television. He pinched himself, just for the sake of argument, but it wasn’t really necessary. His toe still hurt from the glass and had started to bleed again. He went looking for some antibiotic ointment and a band-aid and then, because the glass was still a danger, he cleaned up the wreckage. First he put on some shoes, then picked up the larger pieces, none of which was really that large. There was nothing of the tv left that was too big for the trash can. When he was done, he sat back on his ratty old couch and stared at the place where his television had been.

  Figures . . . If a goddess was going to appear to me, it would be someone like Kali. Why couldn’t it have been Venus? Goddess of Love and Beauty? That’d be worth a dead tv.

  It was the first coherent thought Jack had managed to put together since Kali had left, and it was a complaint. Jack was a little ashamed of himself but couldn’t say why. After all, a real, living goddess had manifested in his den. How often did something like that happen? Yet he didn’t feel especially honored, or much of anything else. Numbly, Jack stared at the empty place where his tv had been for a little longer. Then, because he couldn’t think of anything else to do, he put on a jacket and went outside.

  The jacket proved to be a good idea. There was a little nip in the air. Fall was always late coming as far south as Medias, but now, near the end of October, it had finally put in an appearance. Jack put his hands in his pockets and walked, not paying a great deal of attention to direction. There were other people about on the sidewalks near downtown: young couples, a skinny old man walking his dachshund. Jack noticed several people in running gear and realized he was near Municipal Park. For want of a better plan, he decided to go that way.

  There was a young man sitting on a park bench beneath one of the old oak trees. He was glowing as if being consumed from the inside out by a blue fire. That was the first thing Jack noticed, but the second thing he noticed was that no one else was paying the glowing man the least bit of attention. The old man walking his dachshund allowed the dog to lead him up the sidewalk beside the bench without even breaking stride. A young couple walking past were too busy looking at each other, Jack assumed, but that d
idn’t explain why none of the other people taking advantage of the waning daylight in Municipal Park were paying the man any attention at all.

  Jack paid attention. The man appeared about thirty and wore a yellow nylon track suit. He was, by Jack’s estimation, of Indian or Pakistani descent and quite good looking. Closer, Jack could see that the glow was not just a blue fire as he’d thought earlier, but a rippling weave of deep indigo and sky blue, and all shades in between. Every now and then it rose in little flame-like tongues behind the man as if creating a backdrop.

  The glowing man watched Jack approaching, and when Jack was no more than ten steps away he smiled. “So. You’re the one,” he said. His voice sounded more Oxford English to Jack’s ear than Indian.

  Jack blinked. “Beg pardon?”

  The man just went on as if he hadn’t heard. “Which one was it, by the way? Tara? Shodashi?”

  Jack finally understood. “Kali.”

  The man frowned. “Ouch. Bad luck, that. Still, it could have been Matangi. You got off lucky, by comparison.”

  “Matangi . . . ?”

  The man sighed then. “Sorry, I should have realized you’re not of our Perspective. Matangi is a goddess of decay. She tends to make things go to rot and ruin.”

  “Am I addressing Lord Shiva?”

  “That is correct. You are?”

  “Jack. Jack Kimble.” It was the second time that day Jack had introduced himself to a god. He was feeling a little dizzy.

  Shiva apparently noticed, and slid over on the bench. “Sit until you’re feeling better. It’s not exactly proper, but I’m not as big on ceremony as some.”

  “Th—thank you.” Jack took a firm grip on the armrest and lowered himself to the bench. It was several long moments before his head stopped spinning.

  “How . . . how did you know I had met another deity?” Jack asked finally.

  Shiva shrugged. “For that matter, why did you happen to come to the park today? You think that was coincidence? As for knowing, you obviously spotted my Divine Aura. That made you either a holy man or someone recently in contact with divinity. Since I know all of my wife is looking for me I guessed the latter rather than the former. No offense.”

  Jack felt his head spinning again. “None taken. Ummm, all of your wife? Did you mean to say all of your wives? You mentioned other goddesses besides Kali.”

  Shiva shuddered delicately. “Please. I have one wife only, and her name is Parvati. Or Shakti, or Devi, or something else depending on who you ask. However, she has ten aspects that I know of, and Kali the Destroyer is one of those aspects. Kali appeared, but it could just as easily have been any one of the other nine. Have a row with Parvati and you’re having a row with all of her, so to speak. So. Kali was looking for me, yes?”

  “She said that you would be where she was, sooner or later. I think she meant my apartment.”

  “Thanks for the warning. I will simply avoid your apartment, and that’s it for Kali. Now if I can just avoid the other nine I’ll be all right for a while yet.”

  “But . . . she’s going to come back!”

  “Oh, count on it,” Shiva said, and then he disappeared as swiftly as Kali herself.

  Kali did come back three days later, only this time she manifested in Jack and Cindi’s wedding picture. It was the only picture of them together Jack had kept after the breakup, but now it was nothing but broken wood and shreds of paper and jagged glass.

  “You’ve seen him, haven’t you?” Kali said.

  Jack nodded as he stared glumly down at the remnants of the picture. He started to pick up the pieces. “Yes. He was in the park. I’m sure you can find him there.”

  “I’m sure I can’t,” Kali said primly. “I thought I already explained about that.”

  “But he was there! He’s never been here. What’s more, he told me that he never intends to come here!”

  Kali shrugged. “What he intends does not matter. It’s what he will do that concerns me, and I tell you that he will come here. It may take ten years or ten thousand, but he will bring his physical incarnate self to this spot.”

  Ten years?

  The thought of ten years of repeated visits by the Hindu Goddess of Destruction was horrible enough, but just about as much as Jack could get his head around. Ten thousand years might as well have been a billion, so far as he could tell, but ten years? That was a time frame he could understand.

  “Until next time, then—”

  “Wait!” Jack found himself shouting before he even realized that he was going to.

  Kali glared at him, but she did not disappear. “Why should I?”

  “Please, I have a question—Is it really necessary that you destroy something of mine every time you appear?”

  “Goddess of Destruction. Manifesting on the physical plane,” Kali said slowly and carefully, as if talking to someone mentally slow.

  “But if this keeps up, pretty soon I’ll have nothing left!”

  The goddess shrugged. “It’s not like you have so much now.”

  Jack was a little offended but had to admit that Kali wasn’t wrong. His apartment wasn’t so much spartan as bare. Aside from the couch and the now-empty tv cabinet, there was a rickety dinette table with one chair in the kitchen area, one bed and a half-empty closet in the bedroom. The bathroom had no more than the bare essentials. It wasn’t really that he was so bad off as all that; his medical leave plan wasn’t generous but it was adequate. The real problem was that, after the divorce, he hadn’t been able to muster enough enthusiasm to care about his surroundings very much.

  “That may be true but I did have some . . . attachment to that picture.”

  “Yet no longer to the woman whose image was holding yours? Spare me, Jack Kimble. If the picture was more important than the person it deserves to be destroyed.”

  “It’s not like that!”

  Kali raised one fierce eyebrow. “Indeed? Then where is she?”

  “Look, things just didn’t work out for my wife and me. Sometimes everything you can do isn’t nearly enough. Some people can’t be together.”

  In Jack’s years as a marriage counselor he’d come to know the truth of that, but he never thought he’d be applying that bit of hard-won wisdom to himself and Cindi. Then again, he’d never thought that all the horrible things that had happened in his life recently would happen.

  “If destiny was as guilty of even half the crimes you humans lay on the poor thing, even I would not have destruction enough to punish it,” Kali said drily.

  Jack sighed. “Even so, if I understand you correctly, once you’ve destroyed everything, you’ll no longer be able to manifest here anyway.”

  Kali’s gaze narrowed. “Perhaps. What’s your point?”

  “My point is that it might be to our mutual advantage to find an alternative.”

  “There is no alternative. Shiva will come when it is time, and not before. If I knew exactly when that was,” here Kali looked just a tad wistful, “then I would come to meet him then and limit the destruction of your material possessions, such as they are.”

  “Thanks for the thought, anyway,” Jack said. “It was very kind of you.”

  “No, it wasn’t. I am Kali!”

  To make her point, just before Kali made her exit she destroyed the California Pottery bud vase Jack had inherited from his mother. Once more, Jack was left to pick up the pieces.

  Jack found himself back in the park with Shiva the next evening, as he rather suspected he would be. Despite everything that had happened over the last year, Jack knew that his instincts were good . . . most of the time.

  Shiva shook his head, and the blue flames surrounding him danced as if they’d been fanned. “Well, of course she destroyed your pot! You’re lucky she didn’t bring down the entire building on your head.”

  “For giving her a compliment?”

  “For Kali, praising her kindness is not a compliment. Now, if it had been Tara,” and here Shiva sighed, “what a sweetheart.�
� He paused then and went on, thoughtfully. “As, too, is Kali. In her way.”

  “That’s a side of Kali I’m not seeing,” Jack said, but then he seized on something else Shiva had said. “Would you meet with one of the other goddesses, if I could find them? Tara, perhaps?”

  Shiva shuddered. “Certainly not; I’m avoiding all of them. Besides, you do not find the Mahavidyas, at least not the way you’re thinking of searching. In this particular instance they find you. The same way they’re trying to find me.”

  “Since you brought up the Mahavidyas, I meant to ask you something. I’ve been doing some research—”

  “Time to kill, I see. What is it you do, anyway?”

  “I’m . . . retired,” Jack said.

  “It’s not wise to lie to a god,” Shiva said. “Or, for that matter, to yourself.”

  Jack turned a little pink. “All right, then. I’m on paid medical leave . . . probably permanently. I used to be a counselor.”

  “What sort of counselor?”

  Jack hesitated. “A marriage counselor.”

  Shiva smiled a faint smile. “Oh, I do love a proper irony. Were you any good?”

  “I used to think so,” Jack said honestly, “until I lost a pair of clients, and then my own marriage crumbled. Up until then my track record was pretty decent.”

  “You lost them? How?”

  Jack didn’t know why he was telling Shiva any of this. Not only was he a god but Jack didn’t even know him that well. Still, as a former counselor he understood the value of a good listener, and Shiva seemed to be very good at listening. Jack wondered if, perhaps, the deity known as Lord Shiva did a lot of listening. “It was . . . a murder/suicide. The husband shot his wife and then himself. I’m afraid I lost my way after that. Cindi left me soon after. I can’t say that I blame her. I’m a loser.”

  “Why? How were you to know that this man’s anger was a mask for something greater?”

  “It was my job to know,” Jack said simply.

  “Then you made a mistake,” Shiva said reasonably. “Humans do that. You’re human.”

  “Look, thanks for trying to make me feel better—” Jack began, but Shiva cut him off.