Ashok snorted. “Call it what you like,” he said.
“I will not know what I have to mourn,” she said. “Not for a long time. Perhaps forever. What greater gift can I ask for?”
And then, undoing all her own work, she turned her head away from her brother who was not her brother, and covered her face with her hands. And wept.
She heard the sound of footsteps. Jeevan’s voice, as he said, “A moment. Just a moment—”
“A moment, Ashok,” Bhumika agreed, voice choked. “Then I’ll be ready.”
More footsteps. She felt it, as Jeevan kneeled before her.
“My lady,” he said. She did not answer. “Bhumika,” he murmured. “He’s gone.”
She looked at him through her fingers. His hand was held out, palm upraised. She forced the tears to stop—breathed through the simple grief that had overwhelmed her—and placed her hand against his own.
“Whatever you cannot mourn, I will mourn for you,” Jeevan said quietly. “And when your work is done, I will bring you back. I vow, as long as I’m living, it will be done.”
She stared at him: his severe face that concealed the gentleness that resided inside him, his straight back, and his steady gaze. Her breath caught for a moment as she looked into his eyes. She believed he believed it, and she was glad of that. That he could hope for her, even when she could not.
She leaned forward. Pressed her mouth to his.
It was the softest touch of her lips to his own. She felt the warmth of his breath; the sudden clench of his hand around her own, holding her as if he were afraid she would vanish if he let go. But he kissed her in return gently, with a tenderness that made her heart ache for what could have been, and what never would be.
She drew back.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Whatever ephemeral thing had grown between them deserved better than the kiss she had given him, kneeling in the dirt, on the verge of losing herself. But Jeevan only touched his thumb to her cheek, brushing away her tears. Then he released her hand. He stood, and stepped back, and turned his face away to stare into the woods, his face in shadow.
“Ashok,” Bhumika said. Her throat dry.
She thought, perhaps, she’d feel embarrassed. But when her brother appeared and she looked at him there was no expression on his face. Nothing human, really, left in his eyes at all, to make her feel shame.
“Are you ready now?” Ashok asked.
No. No. This was madness.
“Yes,” she said, and held out her hands.
He kneeled with her. He took her hands in his own.
She entered the sangam, not with the slow ease she always had, breath by measured breath, but with the awful suddenness of a blow to the skull, or a body being dragged under a river’s inexorable weight. She was in her skin, and then in the space of a breath she was not.
Stars above her head, skeins and threads of them tangling and bursting light. The rivers winding around her. And as before, she could not feel Ashok. Could not see him or touch him.
That made sense, of course. She understood now.
He was not Ashok. He only wore his skin, his dreams, the dust of his memories. Only masqueraded as him. He was a yaksa—old and strange, and misled by her brother’s heart.
And she had placed her life in his hands.
Beneath her, in the water, flowers bloomed up, rising through dark liquid to curl against her, where the shadow of her body met the water. A ring of yellow at her waist. Marigolds, the color of fire. Oleander, a piercing yellow, a warning and welcome, a poison.
Hands settled on her shoulders.
“Don’t look.” A voice from behind her. Not her brother’s entirely, but something layered. Two echoes twining. “Don’t look, Bhumika. I don’t know what you’ll see.”
“I won’t,” she said. She looked down. There was no true sun here, no true light, and yet she felt as if she could see their shared reflection in the water. Her own form, haloed by something profuse in leaves, with the steady strength of an old tree grown twisted, made strange by ill winds. “How do we begin?”
