“You must tell us what Ahiranya is like now,” he went on. “Dear one. Our daughter. When we last walked, the city and the trees were one.”
“And the forest was so much larger,” Chandni said. She watched Bhumika’s every move, the softness of her look marred by the way her eyes refused to blink. Bhumika could only think of the eyes of beads on dolls sewn for children: lidless, unfeeling. Theideaof eyes, more than eyes themselves.
“You do not understand how pleasing the world is,” Sendhil said, with the kind of smile she had never seen on his face in life. “How good it is to be back.”
Bhumika swallowed, and forced her expression to remain blank.
“Come. Let me show you the Hirana,” she said.
She told herself she would think of it as an opportunity. Agift. The yaksa had come back, after all. Come back, they had promised her, to restore Ahiranya’s glory. “To fill the Hirana with our kind,” Chandni had said. “And the mahal, and the forest. To make the world new and sweet for our people, and ourselves.” Her flat eyes had shone, hard and brilliant. “Isn’t that joyous, daughter?”
Joyous. Yes.
But the disquiet in her belly wouldn’t settle.
The yaksa had come back wearing the faces of dead children and the people who had burned them. A cruel thing, in truth.
Why those faces? Why come wearing mortal faces at all, when the effigies in the Hirana were more flower than human, their faces root and earth and thorn, not blood or flesh? What did they want? What was newness to a yaksa—what was sweet?
In her study, Bhumika watched Kritika pace. Her own limbs felt numb. It was all she could do to sit straight and tall, and feign calm.
“We must send messages across Ahiranya,” Kritika was saying enthusiastically. “We must tell everyone—ah, the miracle of it! To think that we will live in the Age of Flowers returned…”
“The new worshippers won’t leave,” Bhumika said.
“Let them stay,” said Kritika. She was too full of energy to remain still. She still wore her mourning whites but there was a glow in her face, a light that Bhumika had not realized Ashok’s death had snuffed out. “They have ample reason to be here. Let them be glad.”
At the door, hand on his sword, Jeevan made no comment on this. He was looking into the distance, expression fixed.
“It’s not safe to constantly have strangers surrounding us,” Bhumika said evenly.
“You think anyone can harm us now that Ashok has returned? Now that the yaksa are here?” Kritika shook her head. “No, no. We’re safe.”
Bhumika searched for words. A court, she could manipulate. With promises and bargains, she could manage highborn, merchants, even the mask-keepers. What she could not do was manage the world they had fallen into.
She’d learn. But that would take time.
“We should not simply trust,” Bhumika managed to say.
“You want us to distrust the yaksa? Our own spirits? Our country’s soul?”
“No,” Bhumika said swiftly. “But you know as well as I, Kritika, that the desires and goals of the yaksa are notmortalthings,” she stressed. “The Birch Bark Mantras guide me in this, as they should guide you. Our protection may not be what matters most to them. We must continue to defend ourselves. To rule ourselves.”
“Those things matter to Ashok,” Kritika said sharply. She turned away from Bhumika, blinking tears from her eyes, dabbing them away with the edge of her pallu. When she turned back, her expression had grown more severe, more like the canny and driven rebel Bhumika had originally known. “He has returned to us with the yaksa. If they did not love us and grieve with us, would they have brought him back?”
Perhaps Kritika was right. Bhumika lowered her head.
Thought of Nandi, breaking the earth.Learn respect.
“Some things don’t need to be questioned,” Kritika went on hotly. “Some things are miracles and must be treated as such. I will not disbelieve the yaksa. I will not turn from them. I will follow them. We willallfollow them. Do you disagree, Elder Bhumika?”
Kritika was almost vibrating with tension.
All this time spent building bonds with the mask-keepers—all the careful maneuvering, and it had come to this—a potentially impassable rift over an impossible event.
“As an elder, how could I turn from the spirits I serve?” Bhumika said gently. “How could I not be grateful to have my brother with me once more?”
It was not agreement. But Kritika nodded regardless.
