“Drink,” he urged, bending to offer her a water flask. She took it. “It’s clean. Safer. You’ll feel better for it.”
She took it from him and noticed his hands: those strong, scarred, callused fingers, so much larger than her own; the paler strip of skin just beneath the sleeve of his tunic, untouched by the sun. She noted each small detail, grounding herself into her own body.
She lifted the water to her mouth and looked up at him.
His face was still lowered to her, which allowed her to look at her leisure. His face. The hard angles of it, the bristle of hair at his jaw, not quite a full beard, but something more unkempt and unshaven, as if he were used to a neatness that he had set aside. Had he been clean-shaven when their journey began? She could not remember.
“We will not travel any farther today,” he said. “Let me prepare some food. You must rest.”
He walked a little away from her. Then he crouched down and lowered his pack, and began to prepare a fire.
She rose from the water—her skirt uncomfortably soaked—and settled herself in the shade of a nearby tree. She was glad he had not cajoled her out of the water. He had allowed her the space to feel the great and awful thing she had felt.
She did not know how to cook, or at least, her hands did not know it. She and Jeevan had figured that out early, with only minimal disaster. But it occurred to her, as she crouched and watched, that perhaps she could teach her hands if she wanted to.
They ate. Potted achaar, roti. Then he began to pack everything away, blotting out the fire with dust and his boot.
“Wait,” she said. He stopped.
“Is something wrong?” His forehead furrowed; his eyes fixed on her. She stood and walked toward him.
“Would you be honest with me?” she asked.
“I have always been honest with you,” he replied.
“Tell me why I matter to you,” Bhumika said. “Tell me why you travel with me.”
He was silent for a long moment. He tilted his face away from her own, concealing his expression.
“I should not have asked,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She turned, preparing to continue their journey.
Another pause, and then his footsteps began to echo her own.
“Once,” he said, his voice low behind her, “you won my loyalty. You saved my life. You gave it purpose.”
“Is that why you protect me?” she asked.
A pause. A heartbeat of silence, as his footsteps stilled. Then began again. “Yes,” he said.
At least now she knew what it sounded like when he lied.
“There is a wound in me,” she said. “You know this, I expect. But I find I am constantly reaching, in my nature, for something…” Her hands twitched at her sides. Her chest was aching. Grief. That was what she had been feeling. “Something I left behind,” she finished.
He was abruptly by her side. She realized, as he hovered beside her, not quite touching her and deliberately not looking at her, that there were tears in her eyes.
She wiped them away with her knuckles. He offered her cloth—clean bandaging fished from that bottomless pack of his. “Thank you,” she murmured, a little stiffly. Daubed her eyes again.
“You do not have to feel pain,” he said gruffly. She looked at him; through the blur of her tears, his stern face was softened. “I promised long ago that I would carry your grief for you. So lay it in my hands.”
So I do have something to grieve for, then, she thought.
“Thank you,” she said to him. She crumpled the bandage small in her hands. Such a small thing, a phrase of thanks. It did not encompass the tender thing in her chest—this grateful, wounded beat of her heart that knew him, relied upon him, as the parched soil relied on the balm of rain. “Thank you, Jeevan,” she said again.
Alor lay ahead of them. With determination, she forced herself to stop crying and began moving again. Her knowledge thrummed with every footstep. Around her, between the trees, her ghostly watchers moved with her, and Jeevan’s footsteps matched her own, solid and trustworthy.
PRIYA
Deep breath in. Out.
