But the sound of love—the sound of Vikram’s voice, the laughter straining at the seams of his words—was a found thing.
Like the way back home.
“Vikram?” she called again.
He did not answer, but the echo of his voice remained. Gauri ran past a set of open rooms before she found him. In each one, she glimpsed that which she might have had. In one, he tossed a child in the air. A boy with dark eyes like hers and a slow smile like his. In the next, they reclined against cushions. The light moved overthem slowly and Gauri saw gray in their hair. In the room before she saw him, she glimpsed an unfamiliar elderly couple staring out a window. The kingdom they looked upon was vast, and the sunrise moved over it reverently, touching it with gentle light as if in awe that such a place existed. The couple held hands.
In the last room sat Vikram.
The bedroom looked much the same as their own with a single difference:
Gauri was already in it. She looked as old as Mother Dhina in this vision. Gray in her hair. Her veins raised. Her arms cradling an older Vikram on his deathbed. Age had wrought its ravage, but they were not so old that their own shadows should peel off them and wander elsewhere. Around the walls stood people with blurred faces. Family not yet made.
At the center of it all hovered a blue flame, wispy and quivering. His last breath. Here, for the taking.
Gauri stopped. For long moments, she could not bring herself to move. The grief of this place ripped through her. This was the truth. She would always lose him.
The only difference was the timing.
She walked closer, hearing herself speak. She sounded so old, and yet not old enough that she might follow him soon after. This was her grief: to be left behind.
“I told you not to go without me,” she scolded.
“See, that was your mistake,” teased Vikram, rasping. “You know I hate following orders. Even yours, my beastly queen.”
His hand rose to her face and cupped her lined cheeks. With effort, he spoke:
“To possess even a single line in the legend of you is the greatest wish I could have made.”
He did not speak again.
The image froze, hovering here, and therein lay her choice. As if through a filter of centuries, Gauri heard the messenger of Death’s voice:
“You may find that you do not care to bring back your bridegroom’s last breath after all.You can always turn around.”
Such grief. Such bleakness as to lay waste to her soul. Past the image she saw so many empty days, more full of shadow than light. The drawn-out impatience of those who feel their life lingers on out of spite.
The messenger of Death had not doubted her ability to bring back Vikram. She had doubted her bravery. Who wanted that pain? There was pain regardless, but at least, if she walked away, she would never have to know the pain of loving someone so completely that the loss of him was an open wound upon her soul. She would never give herself entirely to that enthrallment, the seeds of which she already felt burrowing into her. She could love him more than she did now, and it might as well destroy her. But then she remembered his name at her throat, his hands in her hair, his shadow beside hers. Aasha had said that she would need to be brave to bring him back. But this was bravery new to Gauri. This was the bravery required to love the fleeting.
The bravery to hold loss in your heart and love anyway. The bravery to let go at the end.
And she knew, even as she reached for the flame of his last breath, that loving him would be the bravest thing she had ever done.
INHALE
The horse was not there when Gauri emerged from the wintry palace.
In truth, she had not truly expected to see it anyway, though she wished that she could have thanked it once more. Instead, the same staircase that she had descended now appeared before her. The image of what she had seen melted away, replaced with an infinite stretch of silvery brume. The mist coiled around her feet. An invitation. But Gauri grabbed hold of the staircase rail, and step by step, she pulled herself from hell.
When she emerged, she was standing once more inside the bedroom. Theyamadutasat in her bed, and looked up at Gauri with her face. It seemed as if all time and no time had passed. An eon and a blink, as the horse would say.
“This is what I do not understand of mortals,”said the messenger of Death.“You suffer so greatly for a smile. Why?”
In the room next to this one, she heard the rustle of sheets. A cough. And then, an irritated groan, like someone who had been shaken too soon from sleep. She knew those sounds. She smiled, even as her heart broke a little. She smiled, and the memory of the Gate of Grief receded to a faint kernel of knowing.
“I suppose it depends on who does the smiling.”
TOMORROW
