Chapter 18 #2
The hill descended into a lightly forested valley sheltered by the surrounding slopes.
The Adrija village sat at the base of it, framed by tidy fields of turmeric and other crops.
Thirty houses lined the single dirt road.
The buildings were simple, with a single story and a thatched roof, but their craftsmanship was apparent in the elegant carvings around the door frames and the painted murals on some of the walls.
Flowering bushes in hues of gold and crimson brightened the landscape. Jasmine vines twined up the pillars that supported covered front porches, while bushy neem trees provided oases of shade.
A weathered post stood in one of the fields beside the village. The wooden column was roughly twice Ellie’s height, the top half bifurcated into a pair of tapering points like the horns of a cow. The monument felt vaguely ritual, piquing Ellie’s anthropological interests.
Jignesh split off with the horses, leading them away for rest and food, while Vanika led Ellie and her companions into the village.
Women watched curiously as they passed. Silver rings thickly decorated their ears and noses, while tattoos ornamented their cheekbones, chins, and foreheads in geometric arrangements of dots and lines.
Vanika stopped at a larger house shaded by another fragrant neem and dashed inside.
A quick burst of Kuvi reached Ellie’s ears before the girl popped back out onto the covered porch alongside a diminutive woman with age-silvered hair.
The older lady regarded Ellie and the others with an expression of mild surprise on her tattooed features.
“Attubu?hi, evasi Bates Sahib, Mallory Memsahib, Tyrrell Memsahib, Fairfax Sahib. Oh—and Kalb.” Vanika punctuated her last introduction by scrubbing the dog’s ears.
He soaked up the attention with panting adoration.
“This is my grandmother, Nirjara. Everyone here respects her because she’s the kuttakaru. ”
“Kuttakaru?” Ellie echoed the unfamiliar word.
“It means she speaks with the gods and the dead,” Vanika replied.
“Like a priest, you mean?” Ellie pressed curiously.
“Do your priests actually speak to the gods?” Vanika retorted with an air of challenge.
“Not usually,” Ellie admitted.
Vanika smirked. “Then they are not like my grandmother.”
A group of children raced up to the house in a hurried mass. One of the oldest among them, a boy of around ten, grabbed Vanika’s arm and tugged, rattling off a quick stream of chatter as he pointed toward the hills, imparting some childishly exciting news.
“Hao, wai!” Vanika answered quickly.
She hopped down from the porch, calling back over her shoulder. “You can all wait here! My attubu?hi will take care of you until my cousin arrives.”
Constance regarded the child with mingled humor and irritation. “And where are you going?”
“Nowhere important!” Vanika asserted unconvincingly, then bolted off, trailed by a wave of other children.
Nirjara smiled warmly, motioning them to the stools scattered about her porch. “Aas, bas e-thi,” she offered in careful Odia.
Ellie dropped onto one of the low seats, a thousand questions burning on the tip of her tongue—not that she could ask any of them. It appeared that any conversation with the older woman faced a substantial language barrier, and their translator had just skipped away into the village.
Neil sat down beside Ellie. Adam crossed to the end of the porch, leaning against the pillar as he studied the village.
Kalb flopped down by Ellie’s feet, huffing a tired breath over her boots.
Constance poked her head into the house. “This is splendid!”
Their hostess took out a set of small cups, filling them from a jar by her feet.
“Thank you,” Neil said as he accepted one. He took a sip and immediately coughed.
The vessels were full of some sort of alcohol. Ellie had been able to tell that with a sniff. It burned at her nose like Adam’s occasional pours of whiskey.
The smoky, floral scent tickled strangely at the back of her mind.
Constance smirked at Neil and then tossed back a stiff slug of the liquor with no apparent impact.
Nirjara made an encouraging gesture at Ellie, nodding at her cup. Not wanting to offend her host, Ellie lifted it to her mouth.
Flowers danced over her tongue with a tantalizing burn… and the world around her snapped away, replaced by somewhere else.
A circle of women laughed under the full moon, dressed in embroidered robes accented with jade and gold. A white stone pyramid rose in the distance, painted silver by the night through the dancing leaves of the ceiba trees.
A priestess clapped for attention with an indulgent smile.
The clay cup at her lips. The burn against her throat—honey and fire, petals and sunlight.
“Stone Flower Water,” Ellie blurted out loud, clutching the cup between her hands.
She wasn’t under the moon. She sat on the porch in the heart of the Adrija village.
Constance cast her a curious look. Neil didn’t seem to have noticed, engrossed in trying a more tentative sip of the liquor.
Adam set a gentle hand on her shoulder, glancing down at her with a flicker of understanding. The touch was an anchor linking her more solidly to the hot Indian afternoon—and not a place a thousand miles away and centuries in the past.
Ellie was afraid to take another sip. She glanced at Vanika’s kuttakaru grandmother to try to discern how that might be received and was surprised to find the woman watching her with a look that felt oddly knowing.
Nirjara turned away to raise a hand in greeting to someone coming down the road.
While their hostess’s attention was diverted, Adam plucked Ellie’s cup from her hand, swapping it with his own—which he had already drained.
Ellie flashed him a grateful smile.
In answer to Nirjara’s wave, a young man hopped onto the porch. He did not look very happy to be there.
The fellow was objectively dashing, with wavy black hair and the build of a natural athlete under his loose cotton shirt and casual trousers. He appeared to be a few years shy of Ellie’s own age but carried himself with a straight-backed air of natural authority.
Constance frankly assessed the newcomer.
“Guests from the maharaja, is it?” the young man summarized tersely. “I’m Subhas Kōnja. Mind if I ask why you’ve come?”
Nirjara scolded him. “We’ima, Na’tya.”
“Hao, Attubu?hi,” Subhas replied with a note of exasperation. He sat down on one of the stools. “My grandmother has requested that I hear you out,” he reported obediently—if not particularly enthusiastically.
“Your English is excellent,” Constance commented. “Are there many people here who speak it?”
“No,” Subhas returned shortly. “I’m at Ravenshaw, the university in Cuttack.”
Nirjara tsked lightly, her eyes sparking with humor.
Subhas suppressed a sigh. “I am there studying law on a scholarship program funded by His Highness the Maharaja of Nandapur, for which I am eternally and deeply obliged to him,” he rattled off with a clear note of sarcasm.
Constance’s brow arched.
“What?” Subhas pushed back, challenging. “Am I supposed to celebrate that the means of determining who has the opportunity to better themselves lies with an unelected hereditary ruler who grows fat on the tax revenues of the working people?”
“We’re hoping to find a guide into the forest,” Adam cut in tactfully.
“Why?” Subhas demanded flatly.
“Familiar with a guy by the name of Borthwick?”
Subhas’s expression darkened with recognition. “I know who he is.”
Ellie recalled the information that Mr. Chowdhury had shared about the Criminal Tribes Act. A firebrand law student from a place like Ranyapali likely knew far more than she did about the impact of such laws—and what a man like Borthwick could do with them.
“He’s headed this way,” Adam explained. “Looking to get his hands on a historical curiosity he believes is hidden somewhere in your woods.”
Subhas’s eyes flashed with defiance. “Best of luck to him finding it.”
Ellie’s temper flared. “Join the Lord of the Dance on the ridge that points to the dawn of the longest day,” she recited tersely.
Subhas’s mouth tightened.
“I take it something about that description sounds familiar?” Adam drawled.
“Borthwick has the clues as well,” Ellie pointed out.
The look Subhas fixed on them was impressively intimidating for a man barely over twenty. “And the General Superintendent of the Thuggee and Dacoity Department is following these directions to what, exactly?”
Ellie answered a bit more uneasily. “A surviving invocation of the Brahmastra.”
Subhas crossed his arms. “You are aware that you’re talking about a load of mythological nonsense.”
“Ina vestenju,” Nirjara ordered.
Subhas translated for her, rattling off a stream of Kuvi. Nirjara eyed the four of them thoughtfully as she responded.
The younger man’s mouth firmed unhappily at her words.
“What’d she say?” Adam prompted.
“That I have spent too much time at the university and too long away from the forest.” Subhas paced to the end of the porch, staring out at the thick clouds that loomed over the village.
“I don’t know anything about astras—but I know about the British using any excuse they can muster in order to scout our territory for natural resources to exploit. Lumber. Tin. Coal.”
He turned to face them with his arms crossed over his chest. “Why you?”
Adam met Ellie’s look, and a shiver of uncomfortable understanding passed between them before he answered. “Borthwick’s traveling with some old friends of ours. We’ve got some idea what we’re walking into.”
“You have no idea what you’re walking into,” Subhas cut back. “This is the Jā?a K?a’ni in the monsoon season. You’d be lucky if you weren’t swept away in a landslide.”
“Jā?a K?a’ni?” Neil echoed.
Subhas glared at him. “The Forest of Tigers.”
Ellie raised her chin with an air of challenge. “What about Dandakaranya?”
Nirjara gave a throaty laugh at the sound of the name.
Subhas shrugged. “That’s what the Odias call it. They think Rama passed through here.”
“Are you not a Hindu yourself?” Constance pressed.
Subhas scoffed as though at a mild insult. “No.”
He was quiet for a moment. Ellie could see the quick gears of his mind whirring. He straightened as he reached his conclusion. “We’ll take care of it.”
Neil shifted uncomfortably. Constance frowned.
Ellie felt a quick pulse of fear. “We want to help.”
Subhas assessed them frankly. Ellie and Constance were quickly dismissed. He hitched slightly on the sword at Neil’s back before taking in the rest of Neil and looking unimpressed.
He halted a breath longer on Adam, eyes moving from the machete at his belt to the breadth of his shoulders before his expression closed. “I fail to see what help you would be.”
“We have done this sort of thing before,” Ellie pushed back.
“Not here, you haven’t.”
Ellie climbed to her feet to face him. “We know the people you’re dealing with.”
Subhas glared back at her. “I know Borthwick. And Borthwick’s the one that matters.”
“But…” Ellie began.
Subhas stepped closer, something dangerous coming into his expression that belied his cultured accent and relative youth. “It’s my forest.”
He turned to leave.
Ellie scrambled for a way to call him back. She wanted to find an argument that would convince Subhas to let them help—but she couldn’t. It was his forest, after all.
Constance had no such qualms. She shot to her feet, hands braced on her hips. “Oh no, you don’t! You aren’t pushing us out of this so easily.”
“And what are you going to do? Scold Borthwick into submission?” Subhas stubbornly retorted.
A cold fury slipped over Constance’s features.
Subhas moved to the steps. “We’re done here.”
He stopped as a dagger embedded itself into the post beside his head.
His grandmother chuckled with wheezing amusement.
Subhas turned with slow disbelief.
Constance plucked a second blade from her trouser pocket—which she had apparently cut open in order to more easily access her garters. “You were saying?” she prompted sweetly.
Subhas’s eyes blazed, leaving Ellie with no doubt that he had plenty indeed to say on the subject, once the shock of having a dagger thrown at him by a scion of the local royal household had worn off.
He didn’t get the chance, as a familiar nine-year-old boy sprinted up to the porch, spilling out a monologue with breathless urgency.
Ellie understood only a single word of it—one that sent a chill shivering over her arms.
Vanika.
Adam’s focus sharpened. “What happened?”
Subhas translated as the boy kept talking. “The children took Vanika to see a party of soldiers they found marching on the edge of the Adrija lands.”
Ellie’s stomach sank with sudden worry. “Soldiers?”
Subhas barked a rebuke at the boy, clearly unhappy that this was the first he was hearing of the intruders.
“Ninge, Abbaya!” the boy pleaded apologetically.
“What about Vanika?” Adam demanded.
Subhas met his demand with a coiled fury. “Do you honestly care?”
Adam’s jaw firmed stubbornly. “She’s a good kid.”
Subhas measured the reply and begrudgingly accepted it. He returned his attention to the boy.
The child rattled off the rest of his account, and Subhas’s mouth tightened into a tense line. “He says Vanika went to talk to the soldiers, then sent the other children back with a message.”
“What message?” Ellie pressed.
Subhas’s dark eyes snapped with threat—and worry. “That she found Borthwick… and has the situation under control.”
“Hell,” Adam cursed feelingly.