Chapter 19 Bhumika
BHUMIKA
The yaksa let her bow at their feet. They watched her hands shake, and the mask-keepers weep.
Padma stared up at them, eyes wide, her hands fisted into Bhumika’s sleeves—and that, only that, made her rise to her feet.
“Khalida,” she said, voice hoarse. Strange in her own throat. “Take Padma. Khalida.”
Khalida finally broke free from the trance that had taken her.
Fumbled, and then carefully took Padma into her arms. And Bhumika stood tall, and bowed—the deep, standing bow she had once seen her temple elders use for effigies of the yaksa.
She straightened and said, “Your High Elder welcomes you, yaksa.” A susurration ran through the crowd of worshippers; they swayed, almost, with her words.
She understood it. She could feel the enormity of this moment, too.
As if a myth had taken her up, and she could only allow it to carry her.
“Your High Elder welcomes you to Ahiranya. To your land and your people.” She bowed again, and said, “I find myself—lost. Without words. Please.” She raised her head again. “Guide me.”
“Take us through the mahal,” said Sendhil.
“Then take us to the Hirana,” Chandni said, more gently. “We desire to see everything. To know our temple, our people. Our home.”
“Yaksa,” Bhumika said, bowing her head again, for lack of any idea what to do. “Please. Follow me.”
The worshippers surged forward. But Nandi, the smallest of them, turned. “No farther,” he said sweetly. And the earth seized and roiled, and with a cry the worshippers stumbled back.
“Learn respect,” he said. And then, with a child’s skipping footsteps, he followed.
One foot in front of the other. Face calm. That was all she could do for herself. No one else had followed. The yaksa only seemed to want her. They circled her like carrion birds, surrounding her, urging her forward.
A rustle of noise, and in the blink of an eye, the yaksa with Sanjana’s face was walking by her side.
“Yaksa,” Bhumika said again. What else could she say? “I…”
“Call me Sanjana if it’s easier,” the yaksa said, smiling sweetly. “And call her Chandni, and call him Sendhil. And Nandi of course. You have not forgotten him, have you?”
“No,” said Bhumika. “I have not.”
Tinkling laughter.
“None of us mind those names.”
“I should address you with respect, yaksa,” Bhumika said, eyes lowered. “And my… you are not my temple sister.”
“No,” Sanjana-who-was-not-Sanjana said merrily, as if the thought of it amused her. “This is just flesh, temple daughter. Just that.” She tapped her own jaw lightly. “Peel it away and there’s still power beneath it.”
Sanjana leaned into her.
“You carve masks of wood. The wood of our bones,” she breathed. “You wear us as your crowns. It seemed fitting that we do the same.”
“I am sorry,” Bhumika said, grappling for solid ground. “Sorry, if my actions have caused offense. If the masks—”
“Ah, no. No.” The yaksa shook her head. “No offense between us, daughter. None at all.” And then she was darting away again. Behind her, the marble of the corridor had cracked—splitting open for the flowers that followed her, beautiful violet blooms with deep yellow hearts.
It was like a dream. A great and terrible dream.
Bhumika turned to Ashok, who watched her still.
“And what should I call you?” Bhumika said softly.
Ashok returned her look.
“My name,” he said. “What else?”
He certainly looked human. His face was the same. His body. The expression he wore as he looked at her was all Ashok—tinged with judgment, his mouth slightly curled, his eyebrows low. But he held himself with a stiffness that made her own skin itch with unease.
“I am not a yaksa,” he said. “I am… just me, Bhumika. Returned.”
“No temple child truly dies,” said the yaksa with Sendhil’s face; with his earthen hands and budding things rising through his throat. “We carry you with us. We hold you inside us, as you hold us within you in turn.
“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. The idea of 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.
A gift. 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 not mortal things,” 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 will all follow 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.
“Of course,” she said. And smiled, her eyes damp again. “Elder Bhumika,” she continued. “We have so much to celebrate and be glad for. Ahiranya is finally changing for the better, as we always dreamt. What a blessing it is to witness it.”
“Jeevan,” Bhumika said, when Kritika had left.
Her voice was like paper—dry and thin. “Stay with me. I need your help. I need you to discreetly summon a close few to this room.” She closed her eyes.
Whom could she trust? She considered it.
Name after name, each one weighed against what she knew of their loyalties.
Their willingness to bend to her, and no other force.
“Billu,” she said. “Rukh.” She named a few others—soldiers whom she knew Jeevan trusted. Khalida, she omitted. She was with Padma now, and Bhumika would speak to her later, in the privacy of the nursery. And then, after a moment, she said, “Ganam. Bring Ganam too.”
“Lady Bhumika,” he said. “Are you sure?”
“I am.”
When they arrived, she bid Jeevan to shut the door behind them. “Thank you for coming. And listening.” She paused for a moment, then said, “I know I am naturally cautious. But to venerate the yaksa as they deserve I believe we must be… careful. To cause no offense. To treat them well.”
“Everyone’s elated the yaksa are back. And that Ashok’s back too,” Ganam added, watching her intently. “I don’t think anyone is worried about offending them.”
“Then everyone forgets their Birch Back Mantras,” said Bhumika. “And all the things the yaksa are capable of. We are beloved to them, but we are also… very mortal. And they are not.”
“I don’t think Ashok’s Ashok,” Rukh said tentatively. He was crouched near the door. His expression was very serious, brow furrowed. Hands tight on his knees. “I… I used to watch Ashok a lot. When I was.” He shrugged. “You know.”
A lackey for the rebels. A sick child, with no else to rely on. “Go on,” Bhumika said.
“Ashok was always very—confident, you know? Sure of himself. Arrogant.”
“A leader needs to be arrogant,” Ganam said.
Rukh shrugged again, as if to say it was none of his business what leaders were meant to be. “All I know is that he doesn’t stand like Ashok does. Doesn’t speak like him. It’s like…” Rukh struggled for a moment, then said. “It’s like he’s got Ashok’s face. But there’s something else under it.”
A chill ran through Bhumika.
“All I ask,” she said calmly, “is that if you can watch them, and see what they do—you do so. And I will be happy to listen to anything you learn. So that I may ensure we all serve them well.”
After they left, Jeevan remained. He stood at the corner of the room, a silent comfort, as she wrestled with all her childhood griefs and shapeless fears. Finally, as the sky grew darker, he said softly, “You should rest, my lady.”
She nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. I will.”
In the morning, she thought. In the morning I will send another message to Priya. I’ll warn her not to come back. I’ll beg her if I must.
It would be pointless, of course. Priya would come if Priya wanted to come. Bhumika hadn’t yet found a way to stop Priya from following the strange, fierce tides of her own whims and her own heart. But if Priya was not safe, as Bhumika feared…
She reached into the sangam again. Reached and found nothing, and returned to her own skin. She would go to her room. Try and sleep. Everything else would wait until morning.
In the morning, Bhumika woke to the sound of screaming. She scrambled out of her bed, raced across her chambers to the door, and found Khalida clutching Padma, the both of them crying, terrified.
There was a body on the ground. A rider, in Ahiranyi colors. Pale flowers were sprouting through his skin. His cut throat was a garland of ashoka blossoms and oleander, empty of blood.
The rider she’d sent to Priya. The single rider Jeevan had spared.
She did not need to see a yaksa to understand the message she had been sent. She took Khalida by the shoulder and crushed her and Padma against her own chest. As if she could protect them from this. As if she had any power in this strange new world at all.
Priya was beyond her reach now.