“I have. Though my hands do ache.” A rueful laugh. “I’ve been copying poems all morning.”
Amina had survived, when a dozen other scribes and maidservants had been murdered for crimes against the empire. Now, she was a scribe herself, hair tonsured, fingers ink-stained.
“I would love to see them,” Bhumika replied. “Though perhaps not today.” She stepped deeper into the library; the dim interior was pleasant, after the heat of the day. “I need to see your collection of ancient texts.”
“Of course,” Amina said, without batting an eye. “Let me guide you.”
There were few ancient tomes of faith left in Ahiranya. The Birch Bark Mantras had survived largely by word of mouth and memory. And what had once been carefully preserved on the Hirana, etched into stone and stored on inked leaf scrolls, had been burned along with Bhumika’s temple siblings. But here, carefully wrapped and stored away, were texts of worship and theory and philosophy, salvaged from shops and hiding places in the oldest households and sages’ personal collections. Some had even been preserved, to Bhumika’s surprise, by priests of the mothers.
“Jeevan,” Amina said, once Bhumika was settled at a table, surrounded by scrolls and books so fragile they near seemed to decay from contact with the air. “If you want to say hello to the others, they’ll be glad to see you.”
Jeevan inclined his head in mute thanks, and Amina departed.
“You’ve been here without me?” Bhumika asked, surprised.
If she had not known Jeevan so well, she would have missed how his jaw twitched a little, at that. He was embarrassed.
“I am not a scholar,” he said.
“I meant no judgment,” Bhumika said honestly. “My apologies, Jeevan.”
“No need, my lady.” He swallowed, then said, “I like tales. Like hearing them. The scribes like sharing them.”
“You are allowed to have interests,” she said quietly. “And you are allowed to have friends.” She looked down at the scroll before her. The writing was archaic; the ink blurred into smears by years of humidity. Reading through all of this would be painstaking work. “You may go and see them, if you like,” she said. “I’ll spare you this.”
Jeevan was briefly quiet. Then he came to kneel at the table across from her. “No, my lady,” he said. “I’ll stay and help.”
They worked silently for a long time. Long enough that the sun’s rays slanted and dimmed, as the afternoon settled in.
“There is one scribe,” he said, “who has collected tales for children. He told me once about a mongoose and a snake that I willnotbe reciting to Padma.” He frowned, so disapproving that it made her want to laugh. “But there are other, kinder stories.”
“I am sure Padma would love to hear tales from you,” Bhumika said. Jeevan turned to look at her, startled, and she smiled, the first true smile she’d worn in what felt like weeks. He blinked at her. “She may even like the tale of the mongoose and snake. Fables for children are often horrific, I’ve found,” Bhumika added, as she opened another book. “And children never see the horror in them as we do.”
“Lady Bhumika,” Jeevan said.
“Mm?”
“What do you hope to find here?”
She reached for a new tome. Opened it.
“Any information about the yaksa I can use to understand them, and to protect our own interests,” she said. “But truthfully, I expect I will find nothing. Sometimes it is necessary to act and plan, simply to know you’re still capable of it,” she said. “To assure yourself you are still fighting, even if your circumstances do not alter.”
She opened a new scroll. Paused.
An image was laid out before her.
The shape of a body, run through with roots. It was not a yaksa. Or at least, she was fairly sure it was not. It looked far too human; a mortal bound to something grander than itself—bound by roots old and deep, stretching gold and green and red through it and beyond it, drifting into deeper waters.
Something was teasing at the corners of her memory. Something she had seen—something she hadknown.
If my elders lived, she thought, running her thumb over the hues of paint, disquiet thrumming in her blood,what would they tell me about this image? What knowledge died with them that could save me now?
She took the scroll with her when they departed.
That evening something touched her mind in the sangam. A call. A song.
It beckoned her, and she walked across the corridor on legs that did not obey her. That carried her from her own room to the nursery where her child slept. As if she had heard Padma cry. But she had not. There was only silence, and the susurration of leaves, and a tug beneath Bhumika’s breastbone, winding, winding.
