“Meet the Maha first,” he said. “And then I will tell you everything you want to know.”
Rahima
The sky was very black, the stars bright as small moons, when the Amrithi woman approached Rahima’s hut. Rahima saw her first through the shutters, when the woman was still in the distance, striding across the sand. In the nighttime wind, her hair was a black flame, flying loose behind her. At first Rahima mistook her for a daiva. She thought perhaps one of the ancient ones had crawled out of myth and come for her, and she prayed to the Gods for mercy. But as the woman drew closer, Rahima’s fear abated.
The woman was flesh, dark-skinned and graceful. She moved across the sand with the ease of someone raised in the desert. But her clothing was strange—more Chand than Ambhan or Amrithi or Irin—and she was moving her hands in an odd, sweeping motion as she walked. In response, the sand was rippling behind her, erasing her footsteps entirely.
Rahima stepped carefully out of her hut. She squatted down on the ground by the door, clasped her hands, and waited.
The Amrithi woman stopped. She lowered her hands at her sides and looked about, from Rahima, to the husks of ruined huts around them, then back to Rahima again. She was close enough for Rahima to see her face, which was hollowed with exhaustion.
“There used to be a village here,” the woman said. Her voice was hoarse.
“The trade routes changed,” Rahima said. “Ambhans stopped coming. Everyone left.”
“I remember a water well,” the woman said. “And a storehouse, full of rice and grain. A clan used to pass through here …”
The woman wavered on her feet.
“I have gold,” the woman said. “Or blood, if you prefer.”
Rahima stood up.
“Come inside,” Rahima said. “I’ve got water. Food. A place to sleep.”
The Amrithi woman followed her in. She sat on the floor at Rahima’s direction, and waited as Rahima poured her some water into a cup and gave her a little food to dull the edge of her hunger. Rahima placed a lantern on the floor between them.
As the Amrithi woman ate, Rahima watched her. The woman was not young, but not old either. Rahima was at least two decades her senior. Old enough to be her mother. If the woman remembered the storehouse and the visiting clans, she must have visited the old village years before its demise. Only Rahima’s house had survived the passing years and unkind storms, thanks to her diligent maintenance.
“Your kind haven’t been here for a long time,” Rahima said. “The last Amrithi I saw … why, it was a girl and her grandmother. We traded food and blood. That was three years ago.”
The vial of blood was still buried beneath Rahima’s door, to keep the daiva at bay. The grandmother had warned her it would lose its power after a month at most. But Rahima had seen no Amrithi since. What could she do but keep the blood close and pray for her own safety?
“Ah,” the woman said. She understood. “You’d like more blood then.”
“It used to be easier to keep the daiva away,” said Rahima. “A clan would come here before every storm. They never wanted much. Food, mostly. Medicine sometimes. We never had to worry. But those days are gone now.”
The woman said nothing. But there was something inviting about her silence.
“I haven’t had company in a long time,” Rahima said, half in apology for how she would not, could not, stop speaking. “My son, the last time he visited, he told me to come to his village. But I told him no, this is my place.”
She told the Amrithi about her son, and his wife and child. She told her about the heyday of the village, before the trade routes had changed and the road had been swallowed back up by the desert, leaving Rahima’s village to wither and die. She spoke about her life here, alone in what remained. She spoke until her mouth was dry, then poured herself a cup of water to clear her throat.
The Amrithi woman was watching her.
“There’s something you want to say to me,” the Amrithi woman said. “Isn’t there?”
“My village betrayed the Amrithi,” Rahima blurted out. “That is why the village died. We were cursed. The daiva are punishing us.”
It was a relief to say so. She had carried the weight of that guilt for so long.
“My husband was the one who told the mystics about the clan,” Rahima said. She ladled water into the Amrithi woman’s now-empty cup with a trembling hand. Drops splattered on the floor. “They came to our village and offered gold for information. My husband told them about an Amrithi boy who could make the storms move for him. We saw the boy do it once. The mystics gave my husband gold. After that, we never saw the boy again. Soon your people stopped coming here at all.”
The woman sipped the water and said nothing.
“The trade routes changed,” Rahima said, pressing on. “My husband sickened and passed. My son said we should take our gold to one of the bigger villages. But I said I would die here, and he left. I thought … maybe if I stay here alone, if I suffer without my family day in and day out, and pray to the Gods for mercy, the daiva will be less angry. They will forgive us. The villagers would come back again.”
The woman said nothing. Her silence no longer seemed so inviting. Rahima reached for her hand and clasped it.
