Ashok found her with her palm against a great tree that was split through the trunk by a fleshy wound. She didn’t want to look at him.
“What did you do to him?” Bhumika asked. “Ashok, what did you do to Rukh?”
“He’s still alive?”
“Yes, he’s still alive.” She turned. “Were you trying to kill him?”
Ashok said nothing, nothing, and Bhumika wanted to scream. But she did not. It wasn’t her way. She drew her strength around her and looked at him—simply looked at the strangely distant, lost expression on his face. The way the earth had grown new things at his feet—flowers, buds—grasping him with green hands.
“The brother I remember was often cruel,” Bhumika said levelly. “Often a fool.”
“I was never a fool.” He sounded offended.
“Often,” Bhumika repeated, stressing the word with all the anger in her, even as she felt a rush of thankfulness that he was still in there—still sharp, still difficult, still unwilling to bend to her over even the smallest things. “But he never destroyed needlessly. He always convinced himself there was need for the cruelty he inflicted. He excused himself. So what is your excuse, Ashok? What were you trying to do?”
“I was not trying to hurt him,” Ashok said distantly. “I gave him a gift.”
“What gift?”
“Ask him what he knows,” said Ashok. “I gave him wisdom.”
“He’s achild.”
“The yaksa have always understood the value of children,” Ashok replied, and Bhumika did not flinch. Did not think of her daughter. He did not even seem to realize the barb had landed. He was still talking, all swift, stumbling words. “They hollow everything,” Ashok said. “They hollow the world. The trees, the plants, the people. They don’t know what they’re doing, Bhumika. They’re ripping everything apart—changing everything—so that they may survive and win.”
“What are they?” Not the spirits she’d worshipped, surely. Not this. “Ashok. What are you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He sounded bewildered. She had never heard him sound like that, and it made her stomach lurch.You are not my brother. This is not my brother.
“You are my brother,” she said firmly. “You are. But what else?” Her hands tightened on his arms. “You must tell me. They have Ahiranya. They have Padma as hostage and they want Priya. Or want todosomething to Priya. I know they do. So for her sake, if not Padma’s, if not my own—”
“I am a mask.” His voice was desperate. “I am a mask. I am not Ashok at all, even if I believe I am. Even if I wish to be.”
She tried to find her equilibrium. Her control. She did not want to feel like the girl she’d once been, beholden to her elders, small and obedient to the will of others. She resented the change in her circumstances wholly. She could barely breathe through it.
“This can’t go on,” she said. And her voice was thin, but carried in it all her conviction. “Ashok, if you are yourself—even a shadow of what you once were—will you truly harm your own for no purpose, not even the glorious future you once hungered for? Will you allow the rot to take Ahiranya wholly?”
“Bhumika.”
It was not Ashok who spoke.
She whirled.
“He can’t help you,” said the yaksa who looked like Chandni. Today, she was wearing Chandni’s mien only lightly. Her skin was the pearl of shell. “But we are yours, as you are ours, Elder Bhumika. If you have questions or fears, let me ease them.”
Breathe in. Out. Bhumika forced herself not to flinch—to lower her gaze in respect and speak.
“I have been foolish,” said Bhumika. “I should never have distrusted you. But it is… frightening, to face what you worship. You must forgive your temple daughter’s weakness.”
Chandni’s silence was almost a threat.
“Tell me, daughter,” she said eventually, “what you fear.”
“The rot,” Bhumika said. Wishing her voice were not so weak. Wishing it would not waver. “It grows worse. Our people will die.”
“We are trying to make a future,” said the yaksa, her eyes glowing bright. “We gave up so much to be here. Why then, shouldn’t we reshape the world? Make room for ourselves, make it in our image? We are flesh and flower alike. Why shouldn’t you be, too?”
Those words could not have struck Bhumika harder than they did here, in what had once been her husband’s prized orchard.
