When I found it, I chased it. I didn’t know how long I ran. I ran until there were no more animal sounds. No more scents. This was death: the absence of all. I was still a beast when we finally reached the Undead Grotto. But my claws had receded. An antler had snapped off sometime earlier. The effects of the demon fruit were fading fast.
I shrugged off thevetalaand Vikram like an itchy cloak. They tumbled to the ground. Thevetalalet out a stream of curses, but Vikram only stood and straightened his tunic. Whatever brief understanding we’d shared before I turned had disappeared. Once more, his eyes sparked as sly as a fox’s.
“Since you can’t respond yet and since you have no claws left, I will take this moment to remind you that you thought eating the demon fruit would be a bad idea. It was not. To which I say—” He drew a deep breath. “—I told you so.”
“Fool,” muttered thevetala.
I snarled and with one last burst of strength, swiped my paw behind Vikram’s knees and sent him tumbling. He gasped.
“I will,” he wheezed, rolling onto his stomach, “take your silence as a form of agreement.”
Vikram sat on the ground, tugging one dark curl around his ear. Even with dirt smudged across his ears and nose, he looked regal. His long legs were crossed in front of him, and he reclined against the rock outcropping as if the earth had put it there just for him.
I turned to the Undead Grotto, which was a desert-like basin between two cliffs. Bone white trees rose from the uneven ground like spindly fingers. Lichen and greasy-looking flowers splashed over vermillion rocks. The moon was nowhere to be found. Even looking at the place made my fur stand on end. The Grotto was a place not quite out of myth. Scouts had sometimes returned to Bharata carrying tales about the place. How the wind taunted members of the scouting party. Those who wandered into that land refused to leave or were never found. Even those forcibly brought back were never the same. That much was clear from the landscape alone. Piles of abandoned armor. Even some weaponry. I padded through the refuse, pawing aside the rusted bits until I found a blunt knife. It was better than nothing. I picked it up in my mouth, carrying it back to Vikram and thevetala.
Vikram kept his gaze on the Grotto. “How much longer until the demon fruit stops working?”
“She is already turning.” Thevetalahuffed. “Don’t look so disappointed. I know what you’re trying to do, tall fox. You think the Grotto is a place you can fight through with the help of some demon fruit. But it’s not about fighting. It’s aboutseeing,” said thevetala.“Alaka has two doors before it opens its golden ones: the Grotto and the Crossroads.”
I remembered the rhyme from the ruby:Alaka is past the place where memories devour and the held-breath place to put an end to cowards.Which one would the Grotto be?
A cold wind shuddered through me. I felt my mind unspooling, my body shrinking. Those powerful demoness muscles were now draped onto a smaller set of shoulders, a thinner set of bones. The world dimmed and receded.
Oh,I thought, at the same time I heard my voice rasp:
“Oh.”
And then:
“Oh no.”
The only thing that had stayed on my skin since the moment I turned was Maya’s necklace and my sandals. My tunic hung off me in strips. At this moment, Vikram was pretending that there was a spot of great interest just beyond my shoulder. Thevetalahad squeaked and drawn up his tattered wings over his face.
“Give me your jacket,” I demanded.
Vikram—who was now pretending that his life depended on looking at the spot right beyond my shoulder—grumbled, “When you ask so kindly, you’re impossible to resist.”
He threw the jacket to me. Shrugging out of my tunic, I kept my eyes trained on his face. Gratefulness flooded through me. Most men wouldn’t have thought twice about looking. Some would have pressed it further than a look. To so many men in Bharata, your body wasn’t yours. It infuriated me. But the one time I tried to do anything about it, I only hurt someone. Once, I had a soldier whipped for what he tried to do after cornering a serving girl. Luckily, Arjun had gotten there in time to pull the man off and let the girl escape.
The whole time he was whipped, the soldier had screamed in defense: “The Raja Skanda doesn’t care!”
“Do I look like my brother?” I had sneered.
That day, I felt proud. As if I could protect people. Skanda found out what I said and had the girl brought to his chambers that night. I only found out the next morning, when the girl stopped me on my way to the barracks. Her eyes glistened with tears: “Spare me your mercy next time, Princess.”
It haunted me thinking about how many people I had harmed just for trying to protect them. For one moment, I squeezed my eyes shut. Then I tightened the jacket.
“How’s the view?” I asked, turning.
Vikram blinked, not looking at me. “Excellent. Best I’ve ever had.”
“Good for you, Vikram. Because it might be your last.”
I picked up the blunt dagger and walked past him to where thevetalahummed and drew circles and stars into the dirt.
“Keep your word, creature. Get us to Alaka.”
“There now,” said thevetala,crawling toward us. “Did I not say that it is a matter of perspective? And am I not an honorable corpse thing? Lean close. Lean close. I shall tell you things.”
