Kritika had arrived at some point during the digging. Her sari was mourning white, her face drawn with grief. She looked at Bhumika. After a moment she joined in. She knew the cadence, the words.
The bodies were lowered with care and reverence. The earth was piled back over them. Ganam wiped a hand over his forehead, leaving a streak of mud behind. Then he raised his head and looked at Bhumika once more. Around him, the other mask-keepers did the same.
There were probably things a temple elder should say in such a situation. But she could not remember how her elders had grieved whenever Bhumika’s siblings had drowned or died poisoned by the deathless waters.Hadthey grieved? Death had always been such an inevitability—and proof of weakness and failure. A temple child who died had been undeserving. A temple child lost, perhaps, did not deserve to be mourned.
“You can pray too, if you wish,” Bhumika offered gently.
Ganam looked at the other mask-keepers, silent communication passing between them.
“It doesn’t seem our place,” he said.
“You will be elders too, soon enough,” Bhumika said. “People will look for you to pray and worship with them.” She gestured her head lightly at the graves, covered now with soil. “They would be glad, I think. To be sung to by you. All of you.”
Their voices wavered together, rising as the sun rose in the sky.
Khalida had prepared the bathing room for her without being asked, which was a relief. And Padma was covered in a layer of mysterious grime, so Bhumika took her into the bathing chamber with her.
She managed to lull Padma into stillness with the careful distraction of a story about a magical deer and oiled Padma’s short curls; softened them to buttery coils as she made the noises of the various animals to keep her daughter entertained, then ran water over Padma’s hair, careful to avoid her eyes.
“Now,” she said, lifting Padma up. “This is what you were looking forward to, isn’t it?”
She held Padma in the basin of water. Padma beamed at her.
Bhumika thought of the way water could consume you and change you and kill you—and how quietly, sweetly healing it was to hold her daughter up in a small basin and watch her splash at it with utter delight. It made Bhumika smile, in turn.
Padma slammed a hand into the water and drenched Bhumika’s lowered face. For half a second, Bhumika could only blink and splutter. And then quite suddenly she was laughing, and Padma was laughing back—her little joyful mirror, always marveling at her own chaos.
It was only once Padma was dry and drowsing on Bhumika’s bed that Bhumika realized her headache had returned. Bathing, pouring warm water over her limbs, had eased the pain briefly. Not long enough. She rubbed her fingers against her temples, sighing. Before she could even consider whether she wanted to try tulsi again—or something rather more effective—Khalida entered.
“My lady,” Khalida said. “You need to dress.” She offered Bhumika a pale salwar kameez, waiting until Bhumika was dressed before continuing. “I’ve arranged your meal. I…” Khalida stopped, mouth still open. She was looking at the window.
Bhumika had a sudden sense of… shifting. As if her headache had tightened like a noose and twisted the world with it. Dizzying, as if she had passed through deep waters and risen to sunlight, but the water had gathered in her lungs. Her ears were ringing.
With some effort, she followed Khalida’s frozen gaze.
The flowers at the window had curled. Moved. The edges of the vines had sharpened, knife-like. The blooms had deepened to a riotous, bloody red.
It took her a moment longer to realize that the conch of warning had been sounded.
She snatched Padma up and strode from her chambers with Khalida at her side. Down, down the corridors. Out into the courtyard, by the watchtower on the walls.
“My la—elder!” The soldier was one of Jeevan’s old recruits, and he stumbled between one form of address and the other. “There are—dozens, maybe hundreds of people, calling themselves pilgrims. Outside.”
“There are always pilgrims,” Bhumika said, firm but calm. “Explain.”
“Not for you,” he bit out. “They are—they’re following something—someone. They are—”
The gates flew open.
No hands had forced them. No hands should have been capable of such an act. And Bhumika felt the strangeness again. Something new, choking her from within. Something coming.
Leaves. Leaves, everywhere. They were not growing through the walls—they were roiling, rising and tumbling as if caught in a great wind, pouring through the open gates, filling the air. She raised a hand to protect Padma’s face but did not allow herself the same kindness. She looked through the tumult.
There were pilgrims indeed. A whole swathe of them, standing beyond the mahal’s walls, visible only in glimpses between the green swirling before them and around them: an eye here, a length of hair there. A shoulder, an arm, a faceless torso. One figure stepped in front of the rest, walking slowly, steadily, toward the mahal.
Bhumika should, perhaps, have told her soldiers to prepare for a fight. Told them to gather their weapons, to form a perimeter. But those were not enemies in front of her. Not warriors. And whatever this was, it was a thing driven by magic and not men. Magic that she felt in her bones.
The figure was before her. The leaves parted and fell gently.
