And for a single span of a heartbeat, a blink of an eye, she knew Mani Ara as she knew herself.
“Our children sleep in the earth,” said Priya. She raised her head. She filled her voice with determination. “I need to wake them up. One, and two, and then I need to return to you and become whole.”
Mani Ara smiled.
“Yes, sapling,” she said. “Just so.”
Maybe love and grief were light and shadow, and Priya a sundial. That must have been so, because the first thing she did when she returned to her skin was seek out Arahli Ara. He was alone, thankfully.
“Will Mani Ara wear my skin?” Priya asked. “Will she take it from me? Does she lie when she says we’llshare?”
His body went—still. She hadn’t known how much the yaksa moved—how their leaves swayed and vines rustled—until they stopped.
“Your skin is your own,” he said. “You live inside it.”
“You knew then,” Priya said dully. She wanted to look at his face. Read his expression. But what use would that be, when he only wore something like a face? Could she read the leaves gilding his skull—the inky waters of his eyes? Was there language in them, just like there was in a smile, a tight jaw, a crinkled eye?
He was not Ashok. He was not hers to read.
“Do not think she does it lightly. It was a sacrifice to make us part of this world,” he told her. “A… I cannot describe it. Your mortal tongue has no words.” A pause. “A wrenching,” he said finally. “We were creatures of stars. Then we were not. It was enough, until we burned. When we were dirt and wood. Unable to die and unable to truly live.
“We become more human because it is a sacrifice. It is one that allows us to survive, even after what the mothers’ fire did to us. It allows us to come back. But it hurts us, Priya,” he said. “It hurts her to become you, as it hurts you to become her. But she does itso she may walk the soil and lead us. So we may all survive and bring your Age of Flowers again.”
“The way you wear the skins of my temple siblings—”
“We are not as old as her, or as powerful.” A strange tight smile, drawing his mouth, and joyless. “Our burden is lighter.”
“You told me you’re not my brother,” she managed to say.
“He is like a limb I have lost,” he said. “I feel him, even though he is not there. His absence is language. Maybe I grieve him.”
One vessel. An image—a memory—ran through her, bled its color behind her eyes. That ever-changing body Mani Ara had shown her. The way the world had shifted already. Rot making it flesh and green, and humans the same, and all of it full of magic.
The yaksa were shaping the world for them, as best as they could.
“You will live, Priya,” Arahli Ara said. “You will live with her. As all the green sings and moves, so you will sing and move.”
The world would become forests of rot. People of green. The yaksa would be flesh and green, and they would rule it all. Only the most blessed people, and the chosen, would be allowed to continue to live with the rot inside them. The rest would die, cut through with flowers. It wouldn’t be a world that belonged to humanity anymore.
The world Priya had known would end.
And Priya wouldn’t be here to see it. Priya would be a hollow shell, a carapace of meat for Mani Ara to wear, to bloom within, to rule from. Arahli could say she would live, but that didn’t make it true. She’d felt what it was like when she really, truly let Mani Ara in. The yaksa’s magic and memories were overwhelming.
Mani Ara wouldn’t love the people she loved. Mani Ara wouldn’t care about the Ahiranyi. She wouldn’t protect the temple children. She wouldn’t tell Padma nonsense stories until she slept.
She would let Ahiranya die, as surely as Parijatdvipa would. Because Ahiranya was not the glory of the Age of Flowers, or worshipping the yaksa, or the magic of the deathless waters, or templeelders standing on the triveni under a blanket of stars. Ahiranya was its people. It was the life they’d cobbled together and the culture they had built after the yaksa had first died. It was the love they had for one another. It was Ashok’s ruthless determination, and Bhumika’s steadfast cunning, and Sima’s practical kindness. It was scraps of the Birch Bark Mantras, and the crush of people in the market, and family, and the love and duty that bound them.
It wasn’t anything a yaksa could understand.
She couldn’t let the yaksa win. But she couldn’t let them lose, either. Both roads led to the obliteration of the Ahiranyi.
There had to be a third way. And if there wasn’t, she was going tomakeone.
She nodded, and breathed, and reminded herself she was still human. For however long she had, she was still that. And that meant there was still hope.
“Priya,” Arahli Ara said softly. “What will you do now?”
“What Mani Ara has willed,” Priya said. “It’s time for me to seek her children out once more.”
