by Zuni Chopra
All at once he winced terribly and let out something akin to a growl. Turning to the fireplace, I saw that melted snow was continuing to drip serenely from the chimney, and the rush of steam sizzling within the smoke had collided with his burnt surface.
I stared too long.
Without warning, he lunged.
Acting on pure instinct, I flung myself towards the wall, as though I were a corpse already, without any thought as to where or how I would land. Had it not been for the carpet, who rose up to catch me in the soft, interlaced weaves of her cloth, I would surely have cracked something against the floor.
The sudden ferocity of his attack alarmed me. Every nerve cell in my body was screaming instructions at my frozen brain.
When I turned to face him again, I found him leering at me from beside a smouldering crater he’d made in the wall. Again he struck, but I was ready and waiting, and I dodged him once more. A small flicker of triumph swept across my pumping heart, and it felt lighter than it had in a while. I was winning!
Then I heard him burst into a cackling roar of pleasure, and my heart sank immediately. Once more, I saw him push himself out of a crater he’d hewn from the wall. The wood had splintered horribly, and it began to go a darker brown than I’d ever seen it, a dying tree unable to reach the soil.
He was destroying the house.
My house.
And for every blow I dodged, it would suffer.
I did not move, yet he sensed that I had understood. A deep chasm carved into his face began to twist itself so that the ends curved upwards. He surveyed me as a cruel army general would survey his deadened enemy, weak and wounded before the might of his guns, waiting patiently to be blasted into nightmarish nothingness.
Out of nowhere, a spark of light catapulted towards Kruhen Chay like a firework. The log sizzled against the surface of his distorted form, and he let out a fierce cry that tore through the air like a million shards of broken glass, cutting through my skin. Slowly, his yells melted into a slippery hiss of anger.
But before either of us had time to fully recover, the fireplace launched another flaming log into the room. Kruhen Chay smacked it away from him, spitting furious insults, and it collided heavily with the fireplace’s aged marble.
Rage curled his fingers into menacing claws. You think your pathetic attempts will hinder me? I who have earned my power every step of the way!
‘What do you mean “earned your power”?’ I replied bitterly. I felt my resolve beginning to grow again. ‘You’ve brought nothing but misery to people, and I’m putting an end to it.’
With irritation, he turned a deeper black than ever, so that the only way I could keep track of him was by looking for that which I could not see.
Silly, impertinent girl. I have been here longer than your filthy race can fathom. I’ll put an end to your chatter soon enough.
And he rose above the ground, readying himself for the attack.
I felt like a taut balloon, filled with too much air too quickly, on the verge of bursting from the pressure.
Just before I popped, my eyes latched desperately on to the twinkling glint of gold. My heart, pumping so adamantly and furiously a second before, seemed to have choked and stuttered to a stop. Because something was shimmering behind him, a myriad of delicate, glittering colours, precious uncut jewels glowing in the growing darkness. I couldn’t look away. And, at that moment, I realized I had to reach them.
Without knowing what they meant, or what they were, or why they had appeared so suddenly in the dark, my mind trained on them, blocking out all else, and refused to relent to any reason.
I began, one thread of the carpet at a time, to move closer.
‘So you weren’t always this awe-inspiring?’ I pressed, doing my best to distract him, stuttering from the effort to produce coherent speech. If I could just keep him talking . . .
Of course not. I was shadow.
‘You were a shadow?’
Not a shadow, you fool. I was shadow. All shadows. And I despised it.
‘Really? Why? That sounds like an interesting job!’
He seemed to swell with displeasure, his mouth twisted in seething anger.
It wasn’t a job! It was punishment. I could not exist without another, without a living being. I was dependent on . . . light.
The darkness rippled, as though he had shuddered.
Getting nearer . . . but mustn’t move too quickly . . . I was pressing forward, keeping my distance from master and servant alike . . .
But it mattered not, you see. Perhaps once, I needed light to exist. But now, I engulf this very light, I destroy it. You’re just like the rest of your kind. So sure they were, when they brought in that flame, of their lovely bright future.
‘Fire,’ I whispered to myself. ‘And that means you owed them, didn’t it?’
He gave a feral snarl.
I went on, louder, ‘For helping you to exist even at night? For letting you exist at all?’
I owe nothing!
The floor reverberated with the sudden force of his wrath, and I jerked back a step, feeling a sharp point like a shark’s tooth under my bare feet. I looked down and saw small nails jutting out of each crevice in the wood. Parts of the floor had cracked and risen higher than the rest, the planks beneath me a suddenly stormy sea.
Without the blaze, I was nothing, and they controlled this . . . fire.
I was inching closer . . . but my frustration increased with every step; I needed him to move so that I could see past him . . .
His voice grew malicious and sinister, dangerously silky.
And yet, with the flames, they brought in a new realm of shadow, and I grew . . . I am a human’s worst fear! I am built up of their misery and suffering, that which they will never overcome. I lord over them. I have taken everything from them as I will take now from you!
I saw it then. The split second in which he rose over me had been enough. I had seen it, and then I was sure. The crest was glowing. Mr Bhukhari, who was leaning heavily against the side of the fireplace, his eyes closed from the effort of staying alive himself, hadn’t noticed anything.
And yet it was clear to me. The crest was made of precious stones that glittered and danced in the flame of the roaring fire. The swans were indeed a delicate pink, and spread their wings lovingly around the third, misty-grey swan against a royal purple. The light shimmered across them, and when it caught a particular tilt on the crest, I noticed that the three swans joined together in the shape of a palm.
I felt as though I, too, was glowing from the inside, as though a searing, red-hot iron had lit up the core of my soul. ‘You won’t!’ I burst out at Kruhen Chay. ‘You never have and never will be able to defeat those in whom our magic is strong!’
I thought fleetingly of Altaf, goofy, carefree and spontaneous. How foolish I’d thought him when we first met.
A malicious, warped, sickeningly mocking voice slid its coils around me and pulled me back to the present.
Like your father?
I opened my mouth to retaliate, but my brain was lagging behind, and I could think of nothing to say.
He was so strong he didn’t even need to wait till he was of age, did he? Ah, it is always so simple. He thought he was destined to be a king, and let me lurk in the corners of his feeble mind till I drove him mad, taking such pleasure in revealing him to be not even a mere peasant.
I swallowed hard, struggling against the knot of grief in my windpipe.
‘He was the first, and the last. He was wrong.’
Kruhen Chay gaped at me in amusement, so stunned was he by my words. His reaction to what I had hoped was a war cry gave me a nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach, as though he’d just shrunk me down to the carpet.
It must be entertaining to have such a lively imagination. I have slain every other useless Guardian who dared to face me, you pathetic child. What makes you think you, not even yet Guardian, will be any different?
‘Because he
was wrong,’ I repeated.
It dawned on me then, slowly, magnificently.
He was wrong.
You cannot rid the world—or yourself—of darkness. You cannot fight it as you would any other enemy. It will always exist, and it will always confront you; that is the price we pay for being human. And that, I realized, was why not a single Guardian had ever survived. They threw themselves against the darkness like a drowning man upon the rocks; eventually, they broke.
But you cannot oppose the darkness by making yourself an obstacle to it. There was only one way, I saw, to combat the darkness—to go through it.
Kruhen Chay lunged at me, finally sick of my babbling, with a furious snarl. But I didn’t turn away. Before he could change course, I took a deliberately large step forward. When I felt my front toes brush merrily against the carpet, I sucked in one last deep breath before jumping straight at the oncoming darkness, forcing myself to think of the fireplace beyond.
And then I was flying.
And then I was misery . . . I was the cries of lost children, sobbing for their home. I was the sound of bullets striking the sky, ripping it to pieces. I was the whistling of a hundred faded bits of blood-red string, sinking against the wall of an empty mosque. I was the bitter, stale air of Kashmir, longing for the wind. I was the desperate clanging of an empty well, a dull and hollow block of stone. I was the paradise lost.
And then I was nothing at all.
And then I was light.
The slam of my bones against frost-cold marble brought me back to the present. I felt my jaw shudder from the impact, waited as many seconds as I dared, and forced myself to stand. Kruhen Chay was writhing like a startled lizard, his back to me, hissing and scraping his nails against the centre of his deformed body. Without sparing either him or his then screeching accomplice another glance, I pressed my filthy hand to the crest. I was so weak and wobbly I could barely move. I hadn’t expected it to be enough. But something from deep within the crest had caught my wrist like a magnet, and was pulling me closer every moment.
The crest locked around my palm, cracks in the brick surrounding cool marble closing up as it shimmered, and suddenly I could feel something moving beneath my fingers. It was smooth, delicate and utterly beautiful. Despite the knowledge in my heart that this fight was not nearly over, my muscles unwound and relaxed beneath my skin.
The warmth of the magic began to move past my fingers, over my wrist, a velvet glove.
With a sudden surge, I felt it gush through all of me at once, as though each of my cells was swelling and bursting and forming anew. I would have screamed, but it coated my vocal cords like syrup, shining out from within me so that I could feel rays of light gleaming out from my body.
I collapsed beside the fireplace. Yet I was no longer shivering. I simply lay there like a forgotten rag doll in the wreckage of a fire, with nowhere to go and nothing to go to and no way to get there if I did.
I rose to my feet.
Something light and powerful was surging through my heart.
My body seemed no longer to need encouragement or even instructions.
I was ready.
No, snarled Kruhen Chay, his voice no longer an omnipresent siren’s call but the shattered, feeble whining of a bratty child.
You . . . you . . .
He turned savagely on Mr Bhukhari, as though noticing him for the first time. With a brutal slice, he cut through the darkened flesh on his victim’s ear. It did not bleed red but oozed a thick, black sludge that dripped down the side of his face and joined Kruhen Chay once more, shattering their connection at last.
Mr Bhukhari took a single step back, as though trying to escape from his own body. He dropped to his knees, form contorted. A guttural wail tore from him as he shrunk before me, suffocating darkness flooding out of him. His hair began to recede and turned a foggy, miserable grey.
‘Traitor!’ he roared, sinking into himself as he clutched at his mutilated face. ‘I did what you asked! I brought you the house!’
And you are no longer of use to me, finished Kruhen Chay, not even looking at his former ally. I’m amazed you didn’t foresee this. As if I’d waste my time helping your people form a nation once I had all I needed from you. Like a fool you let me use your body, helped me acquire a powerful form! Further proof of how impossibly incompetent and overconfident humans are. So much so, in fact, that while I took your body, you refused to allow me access to your mind. If you had, it might perhaps have saved your worthless life.
He paused, as though unsure whether it was worth his time to continue. When he spoke again, his voice hummed with malicious pleasure.
Of course, your unwillingness didn’t stop me.
‘What?’ gasped Mr Bhukhari, barely able to form words, eyes wide and watery from the smoke, his limbs going limp against him.
You think I’d allow a human to make my decisions for me? I have had control over your mind since the moment I entered you, fool. I played along with your little game; I kept you conscious, let you believe you were in charge. You were far less trouble that way. But they were my triumphs, every one of them, all of them weakening my ancient foe. Bombing the police station, armies pouring funds into shrapnel, using this force to keep control and firing to kill, regardless of whom the bullet struck, this violent bitterness against your nation that spreads like contagion . . . Did you ever, even for a second, truly believe that you had the power to keep me out?
In my mind’s eye, I saw an inflamed, red eyeball, staring without seeing, contorted in pain, bits of metal sinking slowly into its flickering iris. I saw a hailstone of rocks showering from the sun. And I realized that we were far more tainted by the darkness than any of us anywhere knew, above all, the man writhing on the carpet before me.
Mr Bhukhari let out a bellow of pain, of fear, of emptiness, betrayed by the devil inside himself. For all but a second, his gaze caught mine, brimming with tortured sadness. And not even the most skilled cryptographer could have deciphered all that swirled within the sunken depths of his eyes. Then he collapsed against the ground, so near death that his body seemed to have begun its decay already, his sagging skin turning to festered flesh against his charred skull, and Kruhen Chay kicked him uncaringly aside.
The darkness willed me to drown in his burnt, rotting face, willed me to choke from the smoke surrounding his figure, nearly lured me within the reach of his subtly glinting claws.
But I would never do that again.
I had seen him for what he really was—a shadow.
And I was no longer afraid of the dark.
I stood firmly before the fireplace, blocking his escape route, and felt the magic thrumming in my bones, waiting eagerly for the charge. The flames glowed brighter behind me.
Suddenly, with a fleeting glance at me, he burst out of the living room, trailing putrid smoke, hell-bent on destroying all he could of the house—his hated enemy that yet battled against his rise to power and dominance. I knew what he was after, what he had always been after: the removal of his final obstacle. For then he would sink deep within the once fertile earth, poison every tree, let every flower rot, hack at every hilltop, mar every sunrise and fester within every decaying heart. He would fuse with Kashmir itself, the land and my people surrendering to him and his suffocating, cruel darkness, fire and blood ruling as his fellows. And he would be indestructible. Without hesitation, I chased after him, so quickly it seemed I was plummeting from all that I had been to all that I was then.
The banister bore the long scratches of his claws, and the bedroom door hung by a single, fractured hinge, bent over like a forgotten lover, a vine of hope preventing her from leaving a silent grave.
I came expecting cries of pain, yells of fury and the wreckage of loss. What I heard instead were whoops of encouragement and bangs of celebration.
Kruhen Chay had become tangled in squirming bed sheets, and the portraits were, of course, the ones making all the noise. As I watched, the Mughal warrior launched his gleam
ing, unused spear out of his frame and straight at Kruhen Chay. It soared through the air, a miracle of creation, and landed squarely on target, covering Kruhen Chay with a splatter of white and grey paint. His look of incredulity nearly made me smile; he had clearly not expected the house to put up such a fight.
‘Excellent work!’ came the tinkling voice of the empress. ‘I could have shot it better myself, of course, but . . .’
‘Dear,’ the emperor was muttering, ‘I’m the ruler, I think I’m supposed to give the orders . . .’
‘Please just stop arguing, whatever else you do!’ came the noise of the normally quiet mantri, who was in the process of scribbling so furiously on the scroll in front of him that he had ink on his glasses. ‘I’m trying to copy down the court proceedings, and I’ll muddle it up with you yelling like that.’
In a wave of untamed brutality, Kruhen Chay struck at the bed sheet with a jagged claw. The sound of ripping fabric propelled me forward, and, feeling every element within the house bind itself to me, I focused upon a single spot beneath me, launching a nail from the cracking floor into his eye. With a bellow, he released the ravaged bed sheet, who sunk, defeated, to the floor. As he clutched his face, I saw his edges grow light and blurred.
He went for the portraits next, his aim on the back wall, snarling at the Kashmiri seated furthest left; the one who had first trapped him in his steaming prison. His claws began to cut through the faded bronze frame like butter, sawing at wood shavings and twisted bits of metal, melting them as he went—and instantaneously they shuddered to a halt, just before they reached the painting itself. Spluttering, he turned to see me, my arms trembling with the strain of holding him back, the rush of power flooding through me directed straight at his struggling limbs.
Beginning to sweat (which I hardly ever do), but smiling still, I launched him out of the bedroom in one swift move. He tumbled like a misshapen cricket ball down the hallway and into the library.
The Pandit seemed completely unperturbed by these proceedings and sat nonchalantly in his damaged frame. Smoothing his single bunched up tuft of hair, where the paint had smudged slightly as it melted from the heat of the darkness, he took the opportunity to begin narrating the nature of consciousness to anyone who would listen.
