She tried to sleep after that, but it was hard. Every time she slept she woke soon after with a jolt, worry bitter on her tongue, and her heart hammering in her chest. She had only one sister left. Only one. When dawn came she felt as wrung out as a damp cloth. But she rose to her feet. Reached again into the sangam and found—again—nothing.
Kritika had gathered a group of mask-keepers she felt were suitable to pass through the deathless waters. She had insisted there was no point in wasting time—“In truth, they should have completed the ritual during the festival of the dark of the moon,” Kritika had said archly. “I remember how things once were, elder.” And Bhumika had not argued. She had spent yesterday afternoon giving instructions for flowers and fruits to be carried up to the Hirana, and for the pilgrims to be dispersed. They would be barred from the temple until this was done.
Then, more discreetly, she had located an empty of plot of land in the orchard. Those who did not survive the journey would need a suitable burial, after all.
If there was one thing Bhumika took little joy in, but understood the necessity of, it was ritual. She remembered passing through the deathless waters as a girl. The dread and determination that had filled her. The white tunic she’d worn, and the way she had brushed her own hair until it shone, and prayed with her siblings around her until the moment their elders came for them, and took them to the waters.
She had not known if she was preparing for her funeral or her rise. But she had promised herself she would not die, and held that promise close as she’d lowered herself into the water. Once, twice, thrice.
Now, she tried to cobble together something resembling the ritual of her youth. The mask-keepers were told to bathe and dress in their plainest clothes. Then, as dusk fell, they met her upon the Hirana.
A shrine room had been especially prepared. There was a plate of silver resting beneath the dozens of effigies of the yaksa. Now, she instructed the mask-keepers to lay their offerings there: coconuts hewn open, thick with flowers. Fresh fruit. A handful of polished coins. They prayed together in one cramped shrine, the scent of incense coiling through the air.
As a child, Bhumika had prayed because it was a task woven into her life as a temple daughter, as essential as breathing or eating or sleeping. Now, she prayed because it was what was expected from her as the High Elder. But she could not deny that there was comfort in the act—the familiarity of the movements and the words, the smell of sandalwood incense and the cold dark beneath her eyelids as she closed her eyes and bowed her head. It brought her childhood close. Enclosed her in smallness.
And there was her magic now, of course: the living, breathing hum of the Hirana beneath her, responding to the waters in her blood. The pulse of all Ahiranya’s green, pressing its seeking fingers on her skull. Once, she had prayed and felt as if the words were a plea to nothing and no one, unheard. But now she reached for the green and felt it reach back. Even if the yaksa did not hear her, the green did.
Let some of them survive this, at least, she prayed.Let them live.
The Hirana had its own will, and always responded best to Priya. But Priya was not here, so it was Bhumika who listened to the Hirana—the way its surface altered beneath her feet, the ripple and shudder of stone guiding her to a new gap in the ground. A new staircase leading them down to the deathless waters.
She watched the mask-keepers slip into the still depths, and very carefully did not think of her brother.
There were three mask-keepers who died. Four who lived, in the end.
The three were buried in the orchard before dawn, in the milk-gray light that preceded true daylight. The mask-keepers had told her they wanted to dig the graves themselves—with our own hands, to honor the dead, they had said—but Bhumika joined them regardless, dressed in her plainest clothes, her hair bound back into a knot. She brought Billu and Rukh with her.
Ganam was ankle deep in soil when they arrived. He looked up at her. His face was shiny with sweat. If there were tears mingled in with it, she did him the kindness of not noting it.
“Elder Bhumika,” he said. “You’re not needed for this. We’re strong enough to get the work done.”
She did not point out to him that she could turn the earth over with a single breath, without lifting a hand. That would have been cruel, and her intent today was to put cruelty aside. The bodies lay near, swathed in cloth. Someone had placed flowers on them, at the throat, the stomach, the feet.
“It would be an honor to assist you,” she said, and waited. After a moment he nodded, and offered her a shovel.
“I… if I could help,” Rukh said tentatively, his voice thin. “I was. I was a rebel once.”
“I thought I’d also lend a hand,” Billu added, as if Bhumika had not sought him out. Had not said,You have strength. They’ll be grateful for it.
“No need,” said Ganam.
Billu grunted. Said, “I know you’d do the same for any of us.”
It was well done. Ganam’s guarded gaze softened.
“It’s not up to me who helps or doesn’t,” Ganam said gruffly.
It was hard work, turning up the soil. She had never done it before with hands alone, her magic set aside. Her last living blood relative, her beloved uncle, had died by fire. Her husband had been cremated, in keeping with the customs of his own people. And Ashok had drowned in the deathless waters. His body had never returned to the surface. Sometimes she dreamt of it still, deep under the weight of the waters, chained by fronds of leaf and root, blue in the glowing half dark, cold under her reaching fingertips. But she had never truly touched it. Never covered it with cloth or flowers, or wept over it, or laid it in a grave.
Now, she dug relentlessly, no magic behind the heave of her arms. By the time the hole was deep enough, she’d sweated through her clothes. She could hear Rukh and Billu still working behind her, breath huffing out of them. They had moved on to their second grave.
When they were done, the mask-keepers began to lower the bodies into the earth. For a moment, Bhumika caught her breath. She listened to the muffled sobs from the watching, the heavy breaths from the ones carrying their friends.
Then she began to sing a prayer.
Her voice came out of her clearer and stronger than she had expected it to. Steady. Some of the mask-keepers looked at her, recognition dawning in their eyes.
Although the Ahiranyi language had long been suppressed by the empire, although their tales and their books had been erased and forbidden, the mask-keepers knew their Birch Bark Mantras. They knew the shape of prayers for the dead.
