Ahead of her stood a giant construction of smoke. The smell of char stung her nose. The smoke swallowed up the frosted bodies once arching above them. This was the Gate of Grief. It was not wrought iron at all, but plumes of smoke that perhaps dreamed of being stone, for they looked hardy and cruel even as she could see straight through it to a land that was little more than scraps of shadow layered one upon the other.
“Steamed tears,” said Kamala. “Very good building blocks. Nice tensile strength. But don’t walk through it with your tongue out. Far too salty.”
A gate of steamed tears?
Unlike the other gate, people walked in…
But not many walked out.
Save for one.
The owner of the scream.
Gauri was not the only one to see him. As one, every person turned and faced him. The man was older than Gauri, but not so old that his face bore any proof. His hair was disheveled. His robes marked him as a tradesman of some kind. Behind him walked a beautiful woman who was clearly dead. Wisps of smoke curled off her hair, teased by an invisible wind so that it looked as if she smoldered. Her skin was iridescent like a pearl’s nacre. She held the man by the wrist, and tears coursed down her face. Hermangalsutra,that which marked her as a married woman, had broken in death and now dangled off her neck.
“Turn around,” she pleaded. “Please, my love.”
And in her voice, Gauri recognized the owner of the scream.
But not once did the man look at her.
“Why can everyone see him?” asked Gauri softly.
Kamala’s ears flicked. “He is one who finds himself here quite… often. Every day he finds his way to the Underworld, and tries to bring his wife back to the land of the living.”
There was a noticeable recoil from the people. They leaned out, giving the man and his wife a wide berth. Even Gauri found herself leaning to one side, eager for Kamala to get on with it and take her to the Gate of Grief.
Maybe it was cruel of her. Perhaps she should have been more impressed by the feat he’d accomplished. But in his face, it looked as if the price was far too steep. His own wife knew it.
“I can never stay past dawn and yet you drag me back,” she wept.
Gauri wanted to shut her ears, but she couldn’t, and she was forced to listen. The woman sounded desperate.
“Don’t you love me?”
“You know I do,” the man bit out gruffly, and still he marched forward, dragging his wife back toward the land of the living.
“Then why won’t you turn around?” she asked, pleading. “Why won’t you let me go?” Softer, this time, she said: “Only one of us can be a ghost.”
He let out his breath. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“Am I lost simply because I am not by your side? Do you think if you drag me from hell that you have won?”
“Stop it,” he said, trying to shake his hand loose from hers. But she did not let go.
“You do this every day,” she said. “Every day when you wake up, you break yourself to bring me back. And even then, it is not a resurrection. It is a replacement.”
“No, it’s not,” he said.
“Every night you will drag me up and every dawn I will have to leave.”
“If I do this enough times, you won’t have to go back.”
She fell silent. The man’s grief was a palpable thing, and Gauri bent over in her seat, feeling for all the world as if every wound she had ever suffered had opened up at once. She was not alone. Through her skin, she could feel Kamala’s dark heart race. At either side of her, those who wandered through this limbo crumpled and sank to their knees.
The dead wife shrieked:
“You will always wake up alone. And one day, you will raise your hands to engrave your grief on your wrists and you will find that they are gnarled with age, and there is so little blood left in you that you might as well wait to join me,” she said hoarsely. “And you will realize that time has tugged a blanket before your eyes. You will realize that you have squandered autumns and starved your eyes of stars. And you will hate me.”
