Poison's Cage

by Breeana Shields

  I burrow my voice into the Nagaraja’s mind. Leave him alone.

  Deven grabs me around the waist and tries to force me to move, but I push him away. I have to help Mani.

  You will serve me.

  I know I need to hold on to my own thoughts. But they’re like water—slippery and impossible to control.

  Pledge your loyalty to me, Marinda. It’s the only option.

  The Nagaraja’s gaze falls on my face like a flame. His eyes swallow me.

  Yes, I tell him. I take a step forward.

  My mind floods with the Nagaraja’s approval. He stretches toward the sky. Large yellow drops of venom fall from his fangs as his mouth opens wide.

  But his thoughts waver and he swivels, looking at something behind me. Our connection breaks. Awareness rushes over me like a cold gust of wind. Deven is scooping Mani into his arms. He starts to run and the Nagaraja roars in frustration.

  The ground trembles.

  Panic chokes the breath from my lungs. “Deven!” I shout, sprinting toward him. He looks over his shoulder, one moment of hesitation that’s just long enough to lose his footing. The Nagaraja crashes into him from behind. Mani flies from his arms as Deven slams to the ground.

  Watching them is like drowning just under the surface of the water. Like being able to see the shimmering light just above me, but knowing I might run out of air before I can get there. Something inside me fractures. I’m going to lose them both. Deven clambers to his feet, but he’s too late. The Nagaraja is already going for Mani.

  My blood spikes with fire. I race toward my brother, flinging myself on top of him and curling my body around his. Above us, the Snake King unhinges his jaw. He’s going to devour us.

  “That’s enough.”

  I turn to see who spoke. Vara—the widow who took care of me and Iyla when we first arrived in the Widows’ Village—stands with her hands on her hips. The snake turns toward her, mouth agape. He rears back as if surprised. I want to shout at her, to tell her to save herself while she can, but Mani’s trembling body, his small, soft sobs, make the words stick in my throat. I can’t risk drawing the Snake King’s attention back to us.

  Deven runs toward me and Mani and pulls us into his arms. We sit together in a huddle.

  “Stop,” Vara says. “Be gone from this place.”

  The Nagaraja lets out a hiss that chills my blood. He whips his head toward the three of us, his tongue flicking from his mouth to taste the air. Mani squeezes his eyes closed and clings to me.

  My mind scrambles for a way to keep the Nagaraja out of my head. Jasu. Help me. She reaches for me without hesitation. She shows me Deven’s thoughts, colored red with panic. She shows me Mani’s terror. The other snakes join in, and my mind is filled with the thoughts of the people I love. The agony pulsing through my chest feels like it might break me in half, but at least I know I’m me.

  And then a voice, powerful and razor sharp, silences every thought but one.

  Come to me, Marinda. There is no pain here. No suffering.

  My thoughts are washed clean of worry and fear. I stand. A yank on my arm nearly pulls me back down, but I resist.

  No pain. No suffering.

  A vision of Vara crowds into my mind, and I shake my head, confused. The Nagaraja’s grip on me has slipped. Jasu. She’s still trying earnestly to help me. Now she must be grasping for any mind within her reach. But the real Vara never looked like this, fierce and ready for battle. Jasu’s thoughts are getting muddled.

  Marinda. My worries vanish again, and the relief is like a drug.

  Distantly I remember that I’m supposed to be resisting something. But it’s like trying to wake from a dream—hovering on the cusp of two realities, but not fully present in either. I push through the gauzy film around my thoughts, and the Nagaraja’s grip on me falters.

  Jasu’s mind is frantic. She gives me one vision after another to try to keep me tethered to reality, but they’ve stopped making sense. Vara stands behind the Snake King. The air around her vibrates, and then in one fluid movement her body is gone in a burst of blue and green and feathers.

  Garuda.

  I suck in a sharp breath.

  I can’t tell if the bird is real or not until the Snake King swivels to face her. He strikes, but she’s too fast for him. She soars above his head. She’s so big she blots out the setting sun.

  Deven grabs both my hand and Mani’s and drags us to our feet. “Run,” he says. And we do. We race toward the path that leads out of the Widows’ Village, but Mani’s legs are too short to keep pace. Deven gathers him up midstride and presses forward. Behind us I can hear the rustle of giant feathers. The hiss of the Snake King. The shriek of Garuda either attacking the Nagaraja or distracting him, I can’t tell which.

  I throw a glance over my shoulder.

  “Don’t,” Deven says. “Keep going.”

  “We’ll never escape,” I tell him. “There’s nowhere to go.” But I don’t slow down.

  Deven’s breathing is ragged. Mani’s arms and legs are wrapped so tightly around his neck that they cut off his air supply. But Deven doesn’t slow down either. We’re nearly to the trail that leads out of the valley when my desire to run is abruptly snuffed out like a candle in a stiff breeze. I turn.

  “No,” Deven says. “Marinda, please, no.”

  The Nagaraja’s eyes meet mine. Aren’t you tired of feeling powerless?

  Yes.

  I take a step toward him. Two steps. Three.

  Another mind—a tiny, trembling one—pokes at the edge of my thoughts. It’s a pinprick of light that breaks through the darkness. I stop walking. Jasu pulls my attention upward. Garuda hovers above us, her wings flapping against an orange sky.

  The Nagaraja roars in frustration. You will serve me.

  “Do something!” Deven shouts, and I’m not sure if he’s talking to me or the bird. His fingers circle my wrist and he pulls me toward him. He shifts Mani with his other arm. “We need to move, Marinda, please.”

  I can feel myself being drawn toward the Nagaraja like a shell caught in the tide. I try to resist, but the weight of his mind is too much.

  Your loyalty or your death. Choose.

  I can’t hold on much longer. I manage to pull my gaze away long enough to see Garuda tuck her wings to her sides and dive toward the earth. My heart gives a leap of hope. If she attacks the Nagaraja, we might have a chance to escape.

  But when I glance at the giant bird again, she’s not diving toward the Snake King.

  She’s aiming for us.

  One moment I’m pledging my loyalty to the Nagaraja, and the next I’m soaring through the sky in a cage made of bone.

  I used to have dreams like this as a little girl—gliding through the air, the world blurring and tilting beneath me, until I woke with a sharp sting of disappointment. But this doesn’t feel the same. My stomach lurches and my eyes burn. It’s all wrong for dreaming. Something feathers across my hand, drawing my gaze sideways. Deven caught in a cage of his own. He holds Mani with one arm and reaches across the space between us with the other, his fingers barely grazing mine.

  “Is this real?” I ask, but the wind snatches my words away.

  I try to make sense of what happened back in the Widows’ Village, but my mind is still swathed in a confused fog. I remember Balavan circling me, threats shooting from his lips like arrows. I remember trying to remain calm. Trying to find any exposed weakness, any way to kill him before he killed Mani.

  And then it seemed…for just a moment it seemed like Balavan transformed into the Nagaraja. But that can’t be right. Maybe he summoned the Snake King. And once the Nagaraja was there, I lost all sense of reality. Because there are other things that don’t make sense. Like my vision of Garuda.

  My mind has finally splintered. Maybe the Nagaraja has killed me after all, and these are the last delusions of the dying. Yet…the cage does look suspiciously like the foot of a bird. And the sharp edge digging into the small of my back could
be a talon. I squeeze my eyes closed.

  If we really are in the clutches of Garuda, does that mean she saved us from the Snake King? Or did she win us in the battle only to kill us herself?

  We slow down, and my stomach flips as the ground rises to meet us. Just before we touch down, the cages spring open, and the three of us tumble onto the grass and roll to a stop.

  Mani scrambles for me and flings himself into my arms. His eyes are streaming, and I’m not sure if his tears are from the wind or if he’s crying. I pick him up and he buries his face in my shoulder. Deven laces his hand through mine, and together we turn.

  A bird the size of a house stands just a few steps away. Her body is sapphire blue with emerald-tipped wings. Her head tilts to one side as she studies us. I’ve barely taken her in when her body starts to shimmer and shrink. And before I know what’s happened, she’s transformed into a woman. My chest gets tight.

  “Vara?”

  It really is her. Jasu’s thoughts weren’t as jumbled as I suspected. But Vara? She brought me and Iyla warm loaves of naan and taught us how to plant brinjal seeds. And if she’s Garuda…my mouth goes dry. Balavan is the Nagaraja. My mind wasn’t playing tricks on me. A wave of nausea rolls over me. It was one thing to work with the Naga to try to bring the Snake King down, but to think that I’ve been sharing a home with the Nagaraja himself. That I’ve broken bread with the creature that tried to kill my brother. I press a hand to my stomach.

  “I’m sorry I frightened you,” Vara says, smoothing her palms over her brown sari as if she’s worried the flight has left her clothing wrinkled. “But I was rather out of options.”

  My mouth can’t work fast enough to form all of the questions that pool on my tongue. “What…how…”

  “Come inside,” she says, “and we’ll talk.”

  I take in my surroundings. We’re on the top of a mountain, and just behind Vara is a small house, oddly shaped and roughly hewn from individual pieces of wood. It looks very much like a bird’s nest. Deven and I exchange a glance, but there’s really no choice but to follow her.

  The interior of the cottage is bigger than I expected, though still smaller than all of the homes in the village. A rustic wooden table is nestled in a tiny kitchen off to the left. On the other side of the room is a seating area with a sofa and several soft chairs. Brightly colored rugs are scattered over the uneven floor.

  Vara opens a cupboard and pulls out a copper kettle. “Would anyone care for some tea?” she asks, as if we’ve just dropped in for a visit. As if she didn’t just transform into a giant bird and carry us here.

  Mani is the first to answer. “Yes, please,” he says, squirming out of my arms. A flash of surprise goes through me. Maybe he feels like the offer of a warm beverage is the only normal thing that’s happened in hours. Maybe it makes him feel as if the world is starting to make sense again. I wish I could say the same.

  The three of us take a seat in the kitchen and wait while Vara fills the kettle with water and puts it over the heat. She hums as she works, and the sound is out of place alongside my frantic pulse. Deven reaches for my hand under the table, and the pressure of his fingers curled around mine makes me feel like I can breathe again. It’s then that I realize I’m feeling not only my own fear but Mani’s and Deven’s too. Miraculously, my satchel is still slung across my body. Relief washes over me as I slip my fingers inside and count five small heads.

  I reach out with my mind to comfort them, and I find their thoughts as frightened and hectic as my own. Poor babies. It’s okay, I tell them. You’re safe now.

  “I imagine you have questions,” Vara says a few minutes later as she settles in the chair directly across from me and slides a tray filled with cups of steaming ginger tea between us.

  Deven is the first to speak. “The Raksaka are human?” Once he says it out loud—the question that’s been haunting me for the past several minutes, the question that seemed too unreal even to consider—a chill crawls down my neck.

  “Yes,” Vara says. “We are.”

  Mani’s eyes go wide and he sucks in a sharp breath.

  “Oh, monkey—”

  “I’m thirsty,” Mani interrupts, taking a cup from the tray. He’s trembling so much that tea sloshes onto the table, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He plunks a handful of sugar cubes into the hot liquid and stirs as if watching the crystals melt is the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.

  I put a hand on his shoulder and he glances up at me. His expression is exactly the same one I’ve seen on his face a dozen times—fear masked by a grim determination to be brave. It’s the look he used to get every time Gopal turned up with a breathing treatment, every time I had to leave him in Gita’s care to do a job. My heart aches for all the ways I’ve failed to protect him.

  I turn back toward Vara. “How is that possible?” I ask. “For the Raksaka to be human?”

  “It should never have been possible for us to be anything other than human,” she says. “But I suppose you wouldn’t have any way of knowing that. The histories have been lost.” She flinches at her own words. “No, that’s not true. We destroyed them. We didn’t want future generations to know the horrible things we’d done.”

  Deven lets go of my hand. His palms fall flat against the table. “I think you’d better start at the beginning,” he says.

  Vara sighs and her gaze gets far away. “Thousands of years ago the four of us were Sundari’s most skilled warriors—gifted, yes, but nothing more. We helped stop an invasion from a neighboring kingdom, and as a way of honoring us, the Raja who was in power at the time named us the Raksaka—the four protectors of Sundari.”

  She takes a cup of tea and stirs it absently, as if she’s forgotten we’re here. I don’t dare say anything to break the spell.

  “It felt good,” she says finally. “We had the love and adulation of the people. They trusted us to protect them and we did.” She sets her spoon on the edge of her saucer. “It was partially the Raja’s fault too. He turned us into living legends. He exaggerated the stories of our skill—if the people believed that the four of us were an unbeatable weapon, it would keep them in line. And it would dissuade other kingdoms from attacking Sundari.

  “And then we started to age. Our followers could see that we wouldn’t be around forever, that the kingdom would one day be vulnerable again. A handful stepped forward and offered up one of their ten lives so that we could live for another generation.”

  My breath catches in my throat. “Did you accept the offer?”

  Vara meets my gaze, and the lines in her forehead seem to deepen. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

  “But…that’s terrible.” To use people’s fear to take from them their most precious asset—one of their lives—it’s unconscionable.

  “It gets worse.” Vara’s gaze drops to her tea, and several seconds pass before she starts speaking again. “Our followers suggested that we’d be doing a service to our kingdom if we took all the remaining lives of truly evil people—those who had committed unforgivable crimes. After all, we’d use the lives more nobly than they would. We’d use them to protect Sundari, while the criminals would likely make the same choices in a new life that they’d made in their current one.”

  Deven’s hands curl into fists. “But if you took every life, they would be denied a second chance. Their souls would cease to exist.” The silence grows heavy in the room. “Please tell me you didn’t do it.”

  Vara presses her lips together. “We did. That and so much worse. Eventually the dungeons were empty. There were no more truly evil people in Sundari—none that got caught, anyway. Losing all ten lives was a forceful deterrent. But, sadly, we had grown power hungry. We started taking any lives we could get, evil or not.”

  The information curdles in my stomach. All this time I thought that finding Garuda was the answer. I took the tattoo on Deven’s shoulder, and the fact that the Naga wanted the Pakshi dead, as an endorsement. But just because she
’s the Snake King’s enemy doesn’t mean she isn’t as evil as he is.

  “But how did you get to be a bird?” Mani asks.

  The question breaks the tension and we all laugh. I put my arm around Mani’s waist and pull him close. He leans his head on my shoulder.

  Vara smiles and directs her answer toward Mani. “Humans have ten lives, but did you know that higher animals, like birds and crocodiles and tigers, have unlimited lives?”

  He shakes his head. “I didn’t know that. So Smudge will be able to come back?” My throat aches at the hope in Mani’s voice.

  “Smudge was our cat,” I tell Vara softly. The one Gopal killed to teach me a lesson.

  Vara lays a hand on Mani’s wrist. “She probably already has. Perhaps she’ll find you again.”

  He gives her a tremulous smile. “Really?”

  “Animals often try to replicate the life that made them the happiest. Your Smudge may find you yet.”

  Mani sighs happily, his original question forgotten.

  “You know, monkey, maybe it’s time for you to get some rest,” I say. He’s probably heard enough disturbing information for one evening. I turn toward Vara. “Is there a place he could lie down?”

  “I have a bedroom just down the hall,” she says, but Mani is already shaking his head.

  “I don’t want to be alone.”

  I bite my lip. I also don’t want him hearing the rest of our conversation. “How about if you lie on the sofa right over there? You’ll still be in the same room, but you can rest.”

  He shrugs. “I guess.”

  As I settle Mani on the sofa and pull a blanket up to his chin, a knot lodges in my chest. I wish I could curl up beside him, close my eyes and forget all my troubles. But I can’t. I press a kiss on the top of his head and join the others in the kitchen. It’s going to be a long night.

  My tea has grown cold.

  But I curl my fingers around the cup anyway and I keep sipping, just to give my hands something to do. Darkness has enveloped the cottage. Outside the window, stars scatter across the inky sky.