Tears burned behind my eyes. Cursed impulse. Foolish decisions. I kicked ash and bone into the puddle, scattering my reflection before I turned once more to the bleak landscape. There was no one attending the fires. Family members or loved ones who had lit the pyres had since left.
There had to be communes forsadhvis. Places where people would allow them to enter their homes. I remembered from the archives in Bharata that they were at once revered as much as they were repulsed. No one would break bread with asadhvi. But no one would turn her away either. It was best to throw money at her feet, bow and run away before she could ask for more.
Mother Dhina’s needling comments flickered in my head. “Sadhvishold communes with ghostlybhuts, whisper to snakes and make their beds on funerary ash. Perhapsyoushould join them, Maya.”
I grimaced. She had been right.
Still, how would I get to Naraka? How would I find my way back to the Otherworld?
I was still turning over Amar’s words, trying to find some sliver of reason when the darkness rustled. Something tall and bestial rose on unsteady legs, unfolding itself from the shadows and pools of flame where a dead body had charred into something nearly unrecognizable. My heart thudded in my chest. Whatwasthat? I had nothing to defend myself. No weapon on hand except for the blunt end of my mother’s necklace and I knew that would do nothing.
A painfully thin horse emerged. It looked like it had one hoof on death’s doorstep. Although, given where I stood, maybe it did. Its bones jutted out of translucent skin and a dark bulge that could only be the animal’s heart quivered between spindly legs. The horse turned its skeletal face toward me, snorting to remove the gray wisps of hair from its face. A pearly sheen coated its milky eyes.
“What are you?” asked the horse. Her voice was rasping, shadowy, like corrugated steel dragged across marble. “You can see me, can’t you, falsesadhvi? Oh, your fear is a thing so lovely. Like a salt wheel. I could lick it if you gave me the chance. I am all out of sustenance, as you can see.”
I’d never heard a voice so cold. My knees buckled. The horse jolted her head to the charring body beside her.
“He dreamed of barley his whole life and yet he worked in rice paddies. Strange are the ways of humans. But I am more interested in you. Not human. You don’t smell of sweat and reek of lust. But you are not Otherworldly either.”
The horse cocked her head to one side, a quizzical motion. And then she smiled, revealing bloodstained teeth. I suppressed a shudder. “I don’t think I’ve ever eaten anything like you. Such a delectable morsel. May I take a bite? Just one… or maybe two…”
“No,” I said firmly, digging my heels into the ground and crossing my arms.
“Oh, look at that,” said the horse. “Feisty too. I bet you taste like spice and cinnamon. I bet you taste like heartbreak. Young things always do.”
Something caught in my throat and the horse laughed and it was a terrible thing, like blood sluicing between broken teeth.
“Oh, I am good, I am good. I want to play again. May I guess again? You are heartbroken. You are broken, broken. Which is to say, you are likeme.Where is your tail, falsesadhvi? Where is your soul? Do you feed off of them too? Where are your hooves?”
The horse trotted forward, snuffling at me. I could smell rot and blood on her breath, and bit back the urge to gag.
“I’m not like you at all,” I said, stepping back. I hesitated, trying to look straight into the dead horse’s eyes. “I’m… I’m the Rani of Naraka. At least, I was.”
The horse stared. Blinked. And then laughed. She laughed so hard she fell to her side, snorting and neighing, casting up clouds of dust and ash so that I had to cover my mouth with my arm.
“I am!”
“And I am a beautiful stallion,” said the horse through laughs.
I wasn’t a liar. I remembered, like a soft breath against my neck, that real feeling of power. Like the world was something pulpy and easily pushed aside, something I could sift through… something I couldchange. And the more I heard the horse’s laughter, the more fury growled to life inside me.
“Iam,” I shouted, this time with so much force that thunder clapped in the sky and lightning seamed across the gloaming earth like a broken eggshell veined with light.
The horse stopped laughing, jerking its head to the sky.
“Do it again,” she said.
But that flash of power was gone.
“I—I can’t,” I said lamely.
“What are you doing here then, oh great queen?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why are you dressed like the living dead?”
“I don’t know.”
