As the king touched the torch to the pyres, Rajesh and Chitra started to chant the prayer for the dead. “Om asatoma sadgamaya, tamasoma jyotir gamaya, mrityom amritam gamaya. Om lead us from ignorance to knowledge, from darkness into light, from death to immortality, Om.”
Sakhi and Tilo stood with their arms around each other’s waists before the pyre of Tilo’s husband and child, watching the flames take the dead to await the next rebirth in Indra’s heavenly city.
As the fires roared, the acrid smell of burning flesh filled Sakhi’s nose and floating ash stung her eyes. A gust of wind blew a cloud of smoke in her direction, and Sakhi let go of Tilo to wipe her eyes with a corner of her antariya. When the smoke cleared, Tilo was stepping onto the pyre.
Sakhi shrieked “Tilo!” and took a step after her, but the searing heat stopped her. The faces around the flames were horrified, but no one could help her. Sakhi’s heart burst.
It was unbearable. The red antariya was in flames. Tilo was on her knees, writhing, her mouth open in a silent scream.
Then, suddenly, an arrow pierced her heart. Tilo fell across the burning corpses of Prem and the baby and was still.
Her muscles glistening with sweat—blood?—and her matted hair wild in a gust of wind, the yogi Mala stood next to Sakhi, lowering her bow.
“The shock has been too much for her, Ghosha-ji,” Mitu said.
Sakhi was sitting on the bed in Dhara’s old room, wrapped in the green shawl Atimaya had put around her shoulders two days ago, before the battle, before the night in the ravine. Where was Atimaya now? It didn’t seem possible that so much and so many had been lost so quickly.
Mitu was holding Sakhi, stroking her hair. Her younger boy sprawled next to her, watching with big, half-frightened eyes. Sakhi didn’t remember how she got to the hall from the pyre. Ghosha had given her a sleeping potion, but sleep wouldn’t come. A brazier was brought in to brace against the cold, and the window was covered with a blanket that trapped in the heat and smoke. The memory of the fire in her parents’ house terrified her, but Sakhi needed the warmth. Her heart was cold as the dead. It chilled her from the inside out.
Then Mala appeared at the door.
“Namaste, Mala-ji,” Mitu said. Mitu’s son took his fingers out of his mouth and stared up at the yogi.
Sakhi stared at Mala with the same awe as he did. She was bigger than life. Her presence filled the room. Her hair fell in tangles over her naked torso, and she had drawn three stripes of white ash across her forehead. She unslung her bow and quiver and leaned them against the door.
“Brave Sakhi,” Mala said. Her eyes were deep, grave. “Forgive me. I didn’t want your friend to suffer.”
“It… it was for the best… ” Sakhi’s eyes filled with tears all over again. “You spared her a horrible death.”
Mala bowed her head.
“What have you done with my little Yasodhara?” Ghosha said, eying her.
Mala seemed to shrink a little and become human under the midwife’s gaze. “Dhara is safe in Varanasi.” The yogi’s brow furrowed slightly. “Though I cannot sense her there at the moment.”
“How? Did—did you go through the air? Like when she came to visit me?” Sakhi said. All of a sudden, Mala seemed to her like a mother who had arranged a pleasure outing for her child. It calmed her a little. “You can sense her? Can she sense you? Talk to you? From here?”
Mitu raised her eyebrows. Ghosha was smiling. “I knew she had the gift.”
Mala came over to the bed and sat. Charisma as strong as King Suddhodana’s surrounded her. There was no resisting it. The yogi had a natural musky smell about her, though not the king’s sharp, fresh, perfumed scent. For all her ferocity, and even remembering that just a few hours ago she ended Tilo’s agony, the warmth Sakhi felt from her was maternal. Her frozen heart began to thaw; painful but a relief.
Mala took one of Sakhi’s hands in both of hers. “We flew to Varanasi as eagles.”
“Eagles?” Sakhi gaped in disbelief while wiping tears from her eyes.
“The girl knows how to change into an animal already,” Ghosha said, folding her arms over her chest and nodding.
Mala glanced at Ghosha. “Dhara is gifted, but not yet ready to wholly take herself—body, clothing, weapons—from one place to another. I have no doubt she will learn. But we will not talk about that now. Sakhi, you should go to Kapilavastu with the king.”
Sakhi heard the words, but they made no sense. “Kapilavastu,” she said.
“I have arranged it with Suddhodana,” Mala continued. “He will take you under his protection. In return, your brother Nalaka and I will search for Siddhartha and his charioteer.”
“Brother?” Sakhi felt faint.
“Yes. Your brother. Yesterday, after I left Dhara, I went to Taxila, where your brother and I searched for the prince. It was difficult, because Nalaka had never met him and I met him only once, so neither of us knew him well enough to sense him. But Nalaka managed to touch Siddhartha’s mind briefly and learned he is in Varanasi.”
“With Dhara?”
“Possibly. Then he lost connection with Siddhartha, and I can’t find Dhara. We fear there is some power that is trying to mask his presence. I go to help Nalaka.”
“My brother,” Sakhi said, light-headed. “But where has he been all these years?”
“You will ask him yourself in Kapilavastu.”
Sakhi clutched Mala’s hand. “In Kapilavastu. But Mala, what has Nalaka to do with Prince Siddhartha?”
“Nalaka has powers greater than mine. He will be Siddhartha’s tutor. As Dhara is gifted with powers of the mind, so is the prince.”
Ghosha grunted. “Whose gifts are greater, Mala?”
“That remains to be seen.”
“You know everything?” Sakhi asked, awed. “You speak to each other? You see everything?”
“We speak to each other across great distances. Nalaka is more able to communicate that way. We don’t know everything, but we see more than most. But you must sleep now, Sakhi. You won’t leave for at least a few days. Rest a bit, then you can pack some of Atimaya’s things—”
“Atimaya! Could you speak to her this way? Find out where she is?”
Mala shook her head. “There’s no time and it would be too difficult. She hates me. She has enough of her own power to close her mind to mine. That is, if she still lives—”
The yogi stopped in mid sentence. She cocked her head as if listening to a far-off voice. Her eyes lost focus for a moment. She frowned. “No!”
“What is it, Mala-ji?” Sakhi asked.
“I must go,” she said, rising to her feet. With one stride she was at the door and slinging her bow and quiver over her shoulder. “Never fear, Sakhi. You will see Dhara in Kapilavastu.”
An explosion or a clap of thunder filled the room. For a brief second, a fierce wind buffeted Sakhi. She shut her eyes and raised a hand to protect her face from whirling dust. Then as suddenly as it sprang up, the whirlwind ceased. When she looked again, Mala was gone.
The debate
When she woke on the second day, it took Dhara a moment to get her bearings. Blackened remnants of pyres covered the treeless flats of the cremation grounds. The sun was a red ball in the east. The heat was already suffocating. Grit and ash filled her dry mouth. She sat up on her sleeping mat. Harischandra was watching her.
“Did you sleep well?”
She nodded.
“Here. Wear this.” He handed her a clean antariya of unbleached linen. “Today, we’re off to the Deer Park.”
“The Deer Park?”
“Where the wise gather to debate. When we return, Mala will no doubt be here with good news.”
Dhara didn’t believe him, but her mood lightened as they headed toward the river. Sakhi’s father and Mala had told her stories about these debates. Most of
the time, the stories bored her, but to actually see such arguments unfold intrigued her.
When they reached the riverbank, Harischandra waded into the reeds up to his chest and reappeared dragging a small basket boat by a short hemp rope. “In you go,” he said, pulling the coracle into the shallows and holding it steady.
She’d never ridden in a boat. The cool air over the river, the lap of the current against its sides, and the splash of Harischandra’s paddle enchanted her. Ahead, the city’s white buildings reflected the red morning sun. If they weren’t right before her eyes, she wouldn’t have believed such huge structures could exist. Soon she would be there in Lord Shiva’s Shining City, where every pleasure was to be had and every stain on one’s karma washed away in Ganga’s waters, and where death meant liberation from the wheel of birth, death, and rebirth.
They pulled the coracle onto a sandy bank near some fishing vessels.
“Harischandra, friend,” an old man called. He was wrinkled and brown, and his head was wrapped in a white cloth. He sat near a boat with a pile of knotted hemp on his lap, next to an old woman as wrinkled and dark as he, with thinning grey hair gathered at the nape of her neck. “Look, wife, it is the chandala.”
“Matsya,” Harischandra called. “Matsyani, namaste.”
The old man rose and walked toward them. The woman remained seated, her hands working on the hemp knots, but she lifted her face and smiled. “What brings you to the city? And who is this lovely girl?”
“A young seeker. We’re going to the Deer Park.”
“The Jain Bhadda Kundalakesa will debate Valmiki today, and they say she is as wise as any living sage, man or woman.”
“A Jain.” Harischandra looked thoughtful. “I heard a rumor once that the Jains took care of my wife. Perhaps this Bhadda knows of her. Will you come with us?”
“Fight those crowds, just to hear Brahmins debate obscure points of ritual doctrine? Or to see matted-haired rishis levitate and do other tricks to impress the ignorant?” Matsyani looked amused. “We hear Mother Ganga’s whispering day and night, and her wisdom is enough for us. But we’ll watch your boat, and perhaps when you return we’ll have an extra fish or two that you can take back to the cremation grounds for a meal.”
As they made their way through the city, Dhara, who had fought a demon, joined with the mind of a tigress, and turned into an eagle, was overwhelmed. White-robed priests, noblemen and their wives dressed like peacocks and courtesans weighed down with gold and jewels, noisy pilgrims in fine silks or rags and peasants carrying foodstuffs to market walked together. Here and there a naked, emaciated yogi seated on kusha grass with his back against the wall of a gated mansion would stretch out his bowl for alms, and everywhere maimed beggar children called out from the gutters for coins or food. Heavily armed soldiers in Kosalan black and red sauntered down the street, their hands on the hilts of their swords, leering at pockmarked women with smudged eyes and red-stained lips who stood in the doorways of ramshackle inns. From every streetcorner, gods and goddesses watched from their shrines, their images draped in garlands of red, gold, white, and blue flowers. All around, the heavy scents of jasmine, roses, and sandalwood fought with the unspeakable stench of too many people. Dhara could not imagine why they would want to live so close together.
She was fascinated by the way the women dressed. Koli women were not overly modest, but in the cool mountain air most wore antariyas wrapped around their torsos as well as around their legs or as long skirts, and padded jackets in the winter. Here Dhara had dressed modestly, covering her breasts. Most of the women here––whether scurrying along on foot in rags, or dressed in cloth-of-gold and carried on open litters piled with fat cushions––wore only a brightly patterned antariya wrapped about the legs and tied at the waist. Over their breasts some wore a flimsy, almost transparent shawl that hid nothing.
The crowd carried them toward the park on the river where holy wanderers from the lowland kingdoms gave their teachings. Rishis and yogis who dwelt in the Deer Park, Kashi’s sacred grove; scholars and sages from far beyond the lands between Himalaya’s kingdom and Ganga’s waters; all came there to debate each other and Varanasi’s famously learned Brahmins. As they drew closer, the street narrowed. The mass of people compressed until Dhara and Harischandra were jostled and squeezed.
“Hold my hand,” Harischandra said in her ear. “We must stay together.”
She reached for him, but the press wrenched them apart. In the crush she could not catch her breath to cry out or turn to find him. She drifted, trapped by the multitude. To her horror she felt unseen hands exploring her body. Someone seized her from behind, rubbing hard against her. Instinctively, she aimed an elbow at his gut, but there was no room for the blow to have any power. She tried to turn and face him so she could ram the palm of her hand against his nostrils, a trick of empty-hand fighting to push his nose into his brain the way her father and Jagai had taught her.
She succeeded only in exciting him. He grasped a breast in one calloused hand, digging painful fingernails into her flesh. He slid the other hand down her stomach and between her legs and let out a low laugh. His sour breath burned her cheek. In her rising panic, her fighting skills and mental powers deserted her.
“I know what you want,” he growled in her ear.
She gasped. “Har—” she tried to scream, but he clapped a grimy hand over her mouth and began to paw at her.
The crowd swayed a bit. For a moment, her attacker’s grip loosened. To her left was a woman in widow’s white, her eyes closed and mouthing a prayer, oblivious to everything. Dhara couldn’t twist to see who was on her right. The man ahead of her turned around. For an instant, hope sprang up, but he gave her a wicked grin, revealing nearly toothless gums with a few teeth stained dark brown.
“A nice young one, eh, Prakash?” he said to her captor.
Prakash grunted. “Shut up, Dilip. Over there.”
Dilip looked to the right. The two accomplices pressed against the tightly packed bodies and began to ease her Dhara sideways toward an alley. Now, when she wanted the crowd to hold fast, it gave way as if by magic to let the three of them pass.
It was now or never. She swallowed her disgust at the filthy fingers that still covered her mouth and bit down on them as hard as she could.
“Hey!” Prakash pulled his hand away.
Dhara tasted dirt and blood. She spat. “Help,” she gasped. She took a deep breath and felt the strength of the goddess, and her voice rang out. “Help!”
Just then a cheer rose from the crowd. “Valmiki! Valmiki!”
Everyone rushed away toward a litter on which a Brahmin sat wrapped in white robes and garlanded with marigolds, extending his hand in blessings. In seconds, Dhara was alone with her attackers, the alley just a few steps away.
The toothless Dilip turned to aim a fist at Dhara. She raised her free arm to ward off the blow and winced in anticipation.
The blow never came.
“Off!”
Dhara opened her eyes. A youth in a bright white dhoti stood over Dilip, who lay prone, opening and closing his mouth like a landed fish.
Prakash reacted instantly. As he grabbed her around the waist and lifted her under one powerful arm, he reached into his sash with his free hand and pulled a knife out of its sheath. Then the youth turned his eyes on her captor, who froze as if mesmerized.
His eyes were green and gold and amber all at once, and set deep in a beautiful face with high cheekbones and a wide brow framed by long, loose dark curls. Time stopped. The shouts of “Valmiki!” grew more distant.
Someone struck Prakash from behind, and he staggered and fell, sending Dhara sprawling on the street.
“Well done, Chandaka,” the youth said to a tall young man with a shock of dark hair falling over his dark eyes. He gripped a walking staff with both hands.
Dilip struggled to his feet and backed a
way, staring at the one called Chandaka, then stumbled off without a backward glance at his unconscious comrade. The crowd’s last stragglers disappeared around a corner. The three of them were alone.
The dark youth grinned down at Dhara and held out a hand. She took it, shaking with fear and anger at her helplessness. Still, she was relieved to be rescued. He pulled her up. She gazed from one to the other. They looked like young gods.
“Can you speak, or are you one of those rishikis that take vows of silence?” Chandaka asked. Dhara crossed her arms to hide her trembling. She gulped air and imagined slapping that insolent grin from his face.
“Are you all right?” The amber-eyed youth’s voice was low and calm. He brushed her hair from her cheek. Her skin tingled. She forgot the other one, caught by this youth’s lilting voice. “You must be frightened.”
“It’s stupid for a girl to wander around alone in this mob,” Chandaka said. He let his eyes move over her body again. “Wait! Have I seen you before?”
There was that grin. Dhara gritted her teeth. “I am a warrior’s daughter. I can defend myself.”
“Well, I’m sorry we interfered.”
“Let her be, Chandaka,” the other youth said. He laid a palm on her arm, and his warmth seeped into her. “Just ignore him.”
“Ignore me? Who knocked out those two who were attacking her? She should be grateful.”
Before Dhara could respond, Harischandra came running. “Dhara. There you are!” He stopped short when he saw the youths. Then he stepped up to the dark eyed one. “Is it—no, it can’t be—is it Chandaka?”
Chandaka’s eyes widened. “Harischandra!” he cried.
“Not so loud!” Harischandra looked over his shoulder. “My boy, how long has it been? Eight years since you left with Addha’s household?”
“And you are still the chandala?” Chandaka said in amazement.
Harischandra nodded. “Still unrecognized.”
“How do you know Chandaka?” Siddhartha said.
“I met Chandaka when he was a boy at the great courtesan Addhakashi’s house,” Harischandra said, throwing an arm around Chandaka’s shoulders. “But who are you?” He turned to Siddhartha and the smile froze on his face. “I should have guessed who your companion would be.” He removed the arm from Chandaka’s shoulders. “You should not be here.”
The Mountain Goddess Page 24
