She pulled the blade free. The skin closed behind it.
It was hot against her palm. She gasped raggedly, hands shaking around the blade.
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” said Priya. “Nothing.”
“Do you think,” Sima called out, in the dark, “that the battle’s been won or lost?”
Priya’s hands were sticky with sap. She pressed the thorn blade into the knot of her chunni against her hip. A clumsy movement, made clumsier by the dark.
“I don’t know. But there’s only one way for us to find out.”
She opened the soil. Clasped Sima’s hand and dragged them all free, back into the light.
BHUMIKA
They went into the forest. Deep, dark trees enfolded them. The branches seemed to turn to meet her. The undergrowth rustled at her feet. Above her, the leaves were dark as lacquer, the light bleeding through them.
The last thing she had done before leaving the mahal was write a letter.
Priya,
Perhaps you’re dead and gone, and I have done you the cruelty of not mourning you. But I think you live. I hope you live. And though I also hope you will never return here, I know that if you are alive, you will.
When you do, I hope you can forgive me for leaving you behind.
The bower of bones waited for them. Above them, bound into the trees with ribbons of yellow and red, the bones clicked against one another. But the bower was otherwise silent, without even the chirp of birdsong.
Ashok waited for her, standing among a riot of oleander blossoms that seemed to grow from nowhere—that twined through his hair, and wound at his feet.
“Why here?” Bhumika asked.
“It’s a space for travel,” he said. “From here, you can go far.”
The bower was both the entrance to a path carved long ago by yaksa hands, and a grave where rot-riven animals came to die. Cursed and strange, it did feel like a fitting place for Bhumika to leave her life behind. She raised her head and stared at the bleached bones hung above them, warning the unwary that they had come to a place where no sensible person should.
“What shall I do now?” she asked.
“Kneel,” Ashok said. “And then we can begin.”
Jeevan was silent, as Bhumika kneeled on the ground. She looked up at his face. His gaze was heavy, full of grief and unspoken things she did not want to contemplate. Not now.
“Don’t fear for me,” she said softly. “Jeevan.”
He said nothing. Only looked at her in return.
“You think I am being self-sacrificing,” Bhumika went on, straightening where she sat, so that her spine was a tall, unbroken column, her shoulders unbowed. A noble enough look, she hoped, from the outside. She did not want Jeevan to fear for her. She did not want to fear for herself.
“Youarebeing self-sacrificing,” said Ashok. “That’s what the magic demands of you.”
Jeevan lowered his eyes.
“No. Sacrifice would be remaining here and trying to carve out a measure of safety for our people. My people,” she corrected. Because whatever Ashok was, he was no longer one of her own, no longer mortal and frightened, struggling against immortal strength vast enough to crush them with the faintest breath, the vaguest desire. “Sacrifice would be doing so day in, day out, even with the sure knowledge of my inevitable failure.
“The Parijatdvipans think they know what it means to sacrifice,” she went on. “Grand gestures of self-destruction, they think. They glorify it. But it’s not so. The slow way, fighting even when you know it may have no worth… that is sacrifice.” She thought of all her people in the mahal. And thought of Padma, laughing, Bhumika’s heart clutched in her perfect, tiny fists. Felt her heart turn and break, as she said, “And this? This is freedom. This is escape.”
This was a foolish chance.
