Chapter Fourteen
It’s been too long since he’s seen her. Too long since he let himself be soothed by the sounds of her oceans and comforted by the soft curve of her crescent smile.
The memory of flames, of cornflower eyes burning with forgiveness, is crushing.
He knows, before he even says the words, that the news will break her heart.
MUMBAI, INDIA
It’s a month-long journey from Delhi to Mumbai on foot. It would be faster to travel by train, but the rupees they have remaining feel ominously light in their pockets. Better to brave a longer journey than to risk being stranded.
In an effort to conserve their funds and spare their feet, they slip some rupees into the hands of merchants in exchange for allowing them to ride in their boats and carts. They travel south down the Yamuna River, the current in their favor.
Raj, the merchant guiding them down the river, has agreed to take them as far as Etawah, where he will unload his wares.
She’s grateful that Khiran’s weak stomach seems to be behaving itself on the calm waters.
He sits beside her amongst the crates of silks, their shoulders brushing as they look out over the water.
People bathe along its banks, purifying themselves in the holy waters—freeing themselves from the fears of death.
They pass an older man paddling a coracle, the circular basket frame weighed down with sacks of rice and grains.
His beard shines white against his sun drenched skin.
A monument rises in the distance, pale stone gleaming in the afternoon light.
Anna recognizes it almost immediately from pictures she’s seen and the articles she’s read.
“Are the stories true?” she asks, nodding toward the Taj Mahal. “That he built it for his late wife?”
“Favorite,” Khiran corrects, his gaze sliding to hers. “She was his favorite wife, but one of many.”
“It’s beautiful.”
He hesitates, weighing his words as he follows her gaze.
“It is hard for me to see beauty in many of man’s wonders,” he admits, voice haunted by memories.
“I was there when it was built. I saw the lives its foundation was built on. It only stands because a great many suffered. The same with so many of man’s marvels—the pyramids in Egypt, the Great Wall in China, the Colosseum in Rome. ”
He shakes his head. “You see a marvel, but I still see the blood those stones were baptized in.”
Anna’s gaze lingers on the pale towers, tracing the curve of its arabesque domes.
She slips her hand into his, lacing their fingers.
“Maybe it’s both,” she murmurs. He looks at her, his dark brows furrowed.
The smile she offers is somber, heavy with the weight of all the ghosts that haunt his eyes. “A marvel and a grave.”
Anna’s not sure what kind of surprise she expected when they reached Mumbai, but it’s certainly not this.
They don’t linger in the city, don’t find lodgings.
Khiran leads them straight to the ocean.
When the sand begins to sink beneath their steps, they remove their shoes, carrying them at their sides.
They walk for hours, Khiran’s eyes flitting over the landscape and lingering on every stranger they see.
It’s only when the sand turns rocky and they find themselves entirely alone that he pauses.
He issues one final surveying look, assuring himself that they don’t have an audience, before Khiran hands her his shoes. “Hold these for me?”
She nods, still baffled, as he turns his back to her and walks into the ocean. Anna watches the waves lap at his ankles, his knees, his hips. Deeper and deeper he goes until the tide rises to his chest. His hands rest, open and floating on the surface as if feeling for something spiritual.
Anna feels the trembling beginnings of concern. “Khiran?”
He turns his face toward her, grin teasing the corners of his mouth. “Don’t worry. It will only take a moment.”
“As comforting as that is, what are you doing?”
“Calling on an old favor.” It’s the only answer he gives before the rest of him slips below the surface, disappearing from her sight.
She waits, her eyes lingering on the spot she last saw him. The ocean is calm, but it does nothing to ease the frantic beating of her heart when a minute passes, then two, and he has yet to emerge.
The waves stutter. Shift.
Instead of crashing on the shore, the tide recedes until she sees Khiran’s dark head.
The sea parts around him, a wall of water on each side.
Seawater drips from his hair as he plucks a piece of seaweed from his shoulder, lips thinning in irritation, before he flicks it away. The wall of water devours it eagerly.
“Come,” he says. “Kaia’s waiting for us.”
Kaia, the woman who once stepped from the depths of a river when he was a boy instead of a god. The one Eira once called friend.
Anna tentatively steps forward, heart in her throat and pulse drumming in her ears with such volume that it drowns out the tide. There are few things Anna fears anymore—she has lived through burning pyres and bombs of war and walked away unscathed.
The thought of drowning terrifies her.
A fire will eventually burn out and a dropped bomb only goes off once, but the sea…
the sea is endless. If these walls of water crash around her, if the current sweeps her away, there is no limit to how many deaths she will suffer.
A never ending cycle of choking, her body fooled into gasping for air even when she sees nothing but water. It’s the worst torture she can imagine.
When Khiran had left her on that island so many years ago, she thought she might lose herself in the fight between starving and drowning.
Sometimes she thinks the only thing that kept her from giving up and going into the ocean was the fear that he might never be able to find her at the bottom of it.
Being that she never learned how to swim, drowning was as good as guaranteed. It was safer to stay and starve.
Warily, she eyes the wall of water as it rises the farther in she walks. When it grows taller than her head, she hesitates.
Gently, Khiran folds his hand over hers, easing it away from where she has it tucked to her chest. “Don’t be afraid.
Once we go a little deeper, the path to shore will be swallowed back up by the ocean, as will the open sky above us.
It can be an unnerving experience, but I promise there is nothing to fear. ”
Nodding numbly, Anna squeezes his hand with more force than needed, and allows him to lead her deeper.
As he had warned, the path behind her is slowly washed away with a gentle sweeping of the tide.
Anna’s surprised by how gentle it is. She had expected it to be crashing, a show of power.
Instead, it’s like tucking a child into bed, the smooth sweeping of a blanket being pulled up to a little one’s chin.
Then the water spills over their heads, an invisible ceiling holding it up, and Anna has to close her eyes and stop. Khiran, ever patient, waits for her to collect herself.
Finally, when she feels she can breathe without the risk of hyperventilating, she reopens her eyes.
It’s darker now that there’s no unobstructed view of the sky.
When she looks up, she can still make out the distorted light of the sun bathing her face in rippled sunlight.
A school of fish darts over their head, casting dappled shadows.
She releases her breath, but it barely touches the tightness in her chest.
Khiran reaches for her hand, lacing their fingers. “It can feel overwhelming.”
Swallowing, she confesses, “I don’t think I’ve ever felt claustrophobic like this.”
“I understand.” He squeezes her hand. Right now, it feels like he might be the only thing tethering her to the ocean floor and keeping her from being swept away. “Would it help to close your eyes? I could guide you.”
Anna thinks it over before shaking her head. “No. I think—I think that might be worse, honestly. Let’s just walk. Maybe moving will help. Just, please don’t ask me how I’m doing,” she says, because she knows without a doubt that her answer will only serve to remind her of how very not fine she is.
“As you wish.” Gently, he pulls on their connected hands, subtly guiding her into taking those first few steps.
She only manages three before the wall of water shifts, wicking away from the path ahead of them, but to Anna the movement feels like a warning that all of it will come crashing down.
“Breathe, Anna.”
She is, isn’t she? Her heart is hammering against her ribs with enough strength that her entire chest feels like it rattles with every beat.
No, he’s right. There’s no air in her lungs.
She takes a breath. Holds it. Forces it out.
Again. Again. Again. But the panic isn’t receding.
It’s rising up and over her head, the strength of it sweeping her away, crashing down on her until—
“Look at me.”
She does. Because it’s a command. Commands are easier to follow than the twisting, dark thoughts screaming at her to run, hold her breath, dig her hands into the ocean floor so she can claw her way back to shore.
Khiran’s eyes look darker here in the deep, the blue and green drowned by shadows, but they’re calm. Controlled. Anna seizes it with the same desperation as she does his offered hands. It is only feeling the steadiness of his touch in her white-knuckled grasp that makes her realize she’s trembling.
He takes a step backward. Over his shoulder, the water ripples. “Don’t look behind me,” he scolds, his grip on her sliding up her palms until his fingers snare her wrist.
Anna likes it. The hold he has on her feels stronger, less likely for her to be ripped away from him. She mimics the motion. He’s sure to sport bruises and the imprints of her fingernails later, but she can’t bring herself to loosen her grip.
“Look only at me. Do you understand?”
Tightly, she nods, forcing the breath in and out of her lungs and pinning her gaze to his.