The Heartless Divine

by Varsha Ravi

  The

  Heartless

  Divine

  Varsha Ravi

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Varsha Ravi

  www.varsharavi.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  ISBN 978-1-70349-390-0

  November 2019

  First Edition

  But your anger touched them,

  Brought them terror,

  Left their beauty in ruins,

  bodies consumed by Death.

  — Patirruppattu 13,

  (Translated by A.K. Ramanujan)

  1

  Lyne

  Suri opened the door to a boy bleeding out on the pockmarked concrete, her dollar-store welcome mat crushed under him. He turned his face up—gold eyes glowing in the darkness—and shifted, struggling to find purchase on the blood-slick floor.

  She had never believed in gods, even when she probably should’ve, and yet, faced with this, she thought, Maybe this is a sign. Maybe—for once—I’m on the right track.

  There was a soft sound of contempt from below, and then the boy drew himself upward, swaying. A black coat, damp with rainwater, was draped loosely over his shoulders. He was bare underneath, flashes of warm brown skin visible under the blood. It streaked him from collarbone to ankle; drops touched the edges of his jaw and danced through the ends of his hair.

  Abruptly, he stilled. The blood continued to splash against the floor, but the rhythm of the drops had become at once dissonant and hard-edged. One arm reached out for support and found it on the very edge of the stairwell.

  He glanced up, and she knew people like him were the reason why her grandmother painted runes on the outside of her shop in wood ash, the reason why she had installed three locks on Suri’s front door when she had moved out.

  The boy’s irises were the color of gold coins, molten and overwarm. His face was fine-boned and lovely, though oddly austere in the way of sepia photographs. In the dead of night, he looked to Suri like a bloody shred of some unfinished fairy tale.

  Distantly, she could sense the fear and confusion she should’ve felt, the winding, plaintive urge to shut the door in his face and dial Miya. And yet, she also felt a whispering sense of truth—the kind that makes itself known only when everything else has gone to sleep.

  Suri fidgeted with her sweatshirt and thought about how to arrange her words. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re bleeding. Am I supposed to know you? Do you know what happened to my family? Finally, she managed, “Are you okay?”

  He held her gaze with the kind of careful blankness that warned of well-hidden venom, a cottonmouth that had stretched into something human-shaped. Though she was sure there was more to him than just clear, amber-eyed disregard, it was impossible to discern the depth of what lay beyond—the identity of it.

  The boy stared, swaying again before stumbling forward and into her arms. Soft, labored breaths warmed the side of her neck as his arms hung loosely around hers.

  Blood wet her skin—there was so much of it, nearly unbearable in the awe-damp silence.

  Outside, a police siren wailed. She looked down at the form in her arms—bloody, warm, and slight. Slight in the way of a thin, sharp knife; slight in the way of a blossom in the first days of spring.

  You could just leave him in the street, a voice whispered, still haunted by the empty glow of his eyes. But it was late, and he was bleeding to death, and she had not been raised to be malicious, only wary. It wasn’t as if his venom was pointed at her.

  And, there was always a chance he knew something about what had happened that night—a night like this one, born of blood and death and fire. He certainly held enough impossibility in his bones for the notion to be worth considering.

  Suri heaved another sigh and retreated into the cramped apartment with him in tow. She pulled an arm free and dragged a throw blanket from the couch and toward the puddle in the hallway. Pinpricks of red shone through, turning the faded gray fabric a deep crimson.

  The boy shuddered when she laid him down on the sofa; a brief, contained spasm. He curled into himself, fists pressed into his blood-slicked chest. He had been so still when conscious. A ragged sound escaped the corner of his mouth as she pulled his hands from his skin.

  The first aid box, she thought, staring at the lukewarm blood on her hands. Then the boy exhaled brokenly, and she left to find bandages and rubbing alcohol.

  Suri wasn’t entirely sure what she expected to see when she peeled off the black coat he wore. More blood. A deep, gushing cut to his abdomen—a bullet wound, perhaps.

  There was nothing.

  Nothing visible, at the very least. She wiped off the blood; even through the terry cloth, she could feel the thick, blistering warmth of his skin. It was a miracle he hadn’t died from fever alone.

  The blood came away, revealing a thin, warped scar over his heart. Beneath it were the vestiges of another set of interlocking cuts, slotting together to create a star.

  Tight around the scars, locked in thick, concentric bands, were three dark circles. They looked like tattoos, each one constructed out of a different set of tangled runes. They shone under the blood, glossy and uninterrupted save for flashes of brown skin in between the rune lines.

  Still, there was no entry wound in sight. The blood had stopped coming, and for a moment, she wondered if it had ever really come from him. Nausea hollowed her. Had the young girl known she was tending to a wolf? Had she cared?

  Suri shut her eyes and scolded herself. It didn’t matter whether he was a boy or a wolf or a ghost. Even if he wasn’t bleeding, he was still feverish. She brushed her hand against his forehead as she set a damp towel on it and winced from the abrupt, angry heat.

  His breaths had begun to even out. The area around the faded scar was an angry orange gold; it held a soft, burnished glow where she’d expected to see the warmth of a fading bruise.

  She sat back on her heels and stared at him. The boy clearly wasn’t from here, but what defined here was still debatable. The smart choice would’ve been to go to the police and drop him on the steps like a bag of potatoes, even though she had never trusted the Lyne Police Department and probably never would. The smarter choice would’ve been to go to her grandmother, but it had been only a week since the academic year had started and Suri wasn’t sure if she wanted to be subjected to a set of disappointed lectures this early on into her newfound freedom. It certainly wasn’t life or death, not anymore. She comforted herself with the knowledge that the boy was no longer dying.

  The kitchen clock flashed a fluorescent reminder that it was nearing four. She dragged herself to her feet, wiping bloodstained hands on her pajama pants. You should’ve left him, she thought sullenly. Even if he ended up proving useful, she couldn’t help but think that he would likely be more trouble than he was worth.

  Suri tilted her head up to the ceiling and scanned the cracking plaster. If any of the gods are listening, she thought, please add this to my cosmic karma credit.

  She tossed the soiled throw in the trash and cleaned the hallway, falling asleep a little before dawn. Curled on the carpet at the foot of the sofa, she was so close to the boy that she could hear his rough, ragged breathing
between nightmares. Above, the gods listened, and they mourned.

  Kiran woke with a knife to his neck, held with enough pressure that it had begun to draw blood. It trembled against his skin, the edge shifting from side to side. He thought absentmindedly that whoever was holding it had very little experience with knives.

  Pain yawned through his body as feeling came back into his limbs. Thin, searing blood pooled at the crook of his throat but nowhere else—he’d been cleaned. And tied up. He snapped his wrists in their bonds once briefly, to test the integrity of them. His heart sank. He’d have to get the knife away from his throat before he could wriggle out of these. Perhaps if he were stronger, it would have been a simple matter of pressure and flame. But he wasn’t—he reckoned that was how he’d gotten restrained in the first place.

  He shifted, and felt the knife digging into his skin as his captor made a sharp sound of surprise.

  “Could you take off the blindfold now?” he asked evenly, voice catching on the last word.

  “What?” It was a girl, maybe his age. Fear had cut away at her consonants and pressed her vowels up against them.

  “The blindfold,” he repeated, a rasp more than anything. He didn’t see why she’d taken the time to clean off all his blood if she’d meant to cut him again.

  “Oh,” she said. The pressure of the knife eased, the cotton falling to his collarbone. Blood began to dampen it.

  “Thanks,” he exhaled, and flicked his eyes up. The room was dimly lit, strewn with haphazard piles of dog-eared novels and cleanly highlighted papers. To his right was a compact table and a kitchenette, neatly slid between the door and a hallway that led away into darkness. To his left lay a sliding glass door, and the city beyond.

  His captor was seated on the couch in front of him, hands folded anxiously in her lap. Dark circles ringed light brown eyes, and dried blood spattered her sweatshirt and pajama pants. They had cartoon clouds on them, bright white with curved black mouths.

  When she spoke, it took a few seconds for him to realize her words were directed toward him.

  “Who are you?”

  He drew in a long breath, but before he could respond, she’d clenched her hands into fists and added, “Where are you from? Why are you here? Did you know my parents? Do you know what happened to them? Why was there so much blood?”

  The last word hung in the air, echoing. The questions held an imperative edge to them, him the genie, this odd, foreign world his lamp. He coughed a laugh and tilted his head down, indicating his neck. “I’m not sure the past tense is necessary.”

  The girl scowled and grudgingly slid off the couch. Her hair was cut in a choppy, dark bob, and strands fell away from her face when she stood. In the faint lamplight, her features were barely discernible but achingly familiar. A thoughtless, painful familiarity, recognition written into every line of his heart.

  I know you, he thought. But his memory was a simple blackness, and he wasn’t hopeful about what he’d find if he tried to look in.

  She bent toward him hesitantly, unknotting the blindfold and dabbing it against the shallow cut on his throat before tossing it on the table. His coat was neatly folded beside it; he saw it and felt cold with relief. Glancing down at himself, he found a loose T-shirt, with the words Splashy Splashy Water Park! lettered across it in bright blue.

  A human, taking the time to tend to him. Even if they somehow knew each other—unlikely in this lifetime, considering her questions—it was unsettling. It had been a very long time since someone had thought to take care of him.

  The girl was back on the couch, tilted forward with a trembling kind of anticipation, all fear and daring and mortal curiosity. Her kitchen knife lay abandoned beside her. It was ichor-slick, but she hadn’t seemed to notice the blood’s pallor. Shock had most likely rendered that irrelevant.

  “So,” she started, clearing her throat. A faint ache rolled through him, flames reigniting in his veins. Slowly, though. Too slowly for it to be natural. “Who are you?”

  Who are you? he thought. Someone old, someone sad. His memory was a gaping chasm, negative space nudged into something that held form. He remembered what he was, but he doubted she would believe him. Kiran lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “I don’t know.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t know?”

  Kiran nodded. “I don’t remember anything, besides my name. Nor how I ended up in your apartment, so I apologize if I did anything untoward.”

  The girl’s mouth twisted in something that resembled scorn. “Were you drunk?”

  “I don’t drink,” he informed her. At least not mortal liquor. “And I haven’t touched alcohol in years. You would have smelled it when you cleaned me up.” It was an odd kind of lie—he had not touched alcohol in years because he had not been here in years.

  Her expression softened imperceptibly. “Then you must have amnesia.” She hesitated a moment, and then asked, “You don’t remember anything?”

  “Just my name,” he said. “Not much else. Why?”

  “Nothing,” she said, faintly miserable in a way that betrayed that it was, in fact, something. Despite himself, he felt a pang of remorse. She turned away, hair shadowing her face. “Why me, though? Why this apartment? It’s up five flights of stairs.”

  “If I remember, I’ll be sure to let you know,” he replied. Already, details were beginning to return—dry, useless things, like his age and the color of the sky the day he’d last died. “May I leave now?”

  She snorted in derision. “You were bleeding out in my hallway last night with what should have been a fatal fever, and now you’re saying you have amnesia. I’m taking you to the hospital to see a doctor.”

  “What?” he said, mildly alarmed. “No. No need for a hospital. Wouldn’t mind getting out of the ropes, though.”

  She ignored him. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t take you to the hospital right now.”

  My blood is the color and consistency of champagne. I have been running a fever for the past seventeen hundred years. He opened his eyes; she was still staring at him, inexorable. He nodded at the coat. “I don’t have money on me. I won’t be able to pay for it.”

  “Family?”

  Kiran shook his head, and she pursed her lips.

  “I’ll pay for you, then.”

  Nausea was thick and heavy in his stomach. Some people, he thought, were just too nice. Kindness got you nowhere in life—at the end of the day, everyone ended up in the earth all the same, whether it was a knife to the front or a knife to the back. And out of all those in the world, mortal and immortal and everything in between, it was ironic that she was being kind to him. Wrong god, he wanted to tell her. Instead, he leaned back against the chair. The grain was rough against his skin where the shirt slipped down. “What’s your name?”

  Her brows drew together. “Suri.”

  Once again, he felt that odd clench in his heart, phantom pains that traced fault lines. “Suri, I’m thankful that you didn’t just let me die in your corridor last night. I really am. And I’m sorry that I can’t be of more help. But I won’t go to the hospital—I can’t pay, and I don’t want you to.” He forced a smile, but he wasn’t good at those, so he could not be entirely sure of its strength. “Besides, I’m sure my memory will return soon enough. And then you would have wasted your money for nothing.”

  Instead of answering, she rose. As she began to undo the knots tying his wrists together, she said, “Then you can stay here. I can take the couch, and you can take the bed.”

  The rope fell from his fingers, and he turned around in the chair to meet her gaze. This close, she smelled like blood and citrus blossoms. Her expression was pinched in a way he recognized from people he could not remember—there was no winning this conversation. He’d just have to stay for a few days, and leave when she wasn’t around to notice.

  Kiran pointed at himself and said, “Sofa.”

  The skin around her eyes creased in a way that belied the hard set of her m
outh. “Fine. It smells like blood, anyway.”

  Suri crossed to stand on the other side of the couch. She hung a patchwork blanket over the edge, and turned to him, patting it. “You should get some rest. Give your brain time to restart.”

  “What time is it?” he asked, yawning. Sleep sounded like the best idea he’d heard since he’d been reborn—already, his limbs were leaden, his eyelids heavy. And yet, a faint sense of discomfort followed.

  “Two in the afternoon,” she said, switching off a lamp beside the kitchenette. “Sleep well.”

  Kiran stayed in Suri’s apartment for two days and two nights. On the third morning, he woke up with the memories of his mortal life. And then, he left.

  The boy was a ghost in the house. For the most part, he seemed content to sleep through the days, his coat draped over him on the couch. If Suri put food in front of him, he ate it—if not, he never asked. It had been two days since he’d first woken, and she still didn’t know his name.

  Two days, and she was still no closer to understanding him.

  Part of her wanted to just chalk his appearance up to coincidence—say he was just some hedonistic foreigner who’d lost himself on a trip and his memory in the process. Everything about that strange, unsettling night was explainable if she took it apart for long enough—he could’ve gotten in a fight, he could’ve been wearing contacts, he could’ve hit his head. He could’ve been a fugitive, for all of his discomfort with hospitals, but she suspected he was just a runaway.

  But, for the most part, she didn’t have time to think about him. Her grandmother had allowed her to move out on the sole condition that she continued to help out with the shop. Running errands didn’t mean she forgot about him, though—her gaze would catch on the golden statuettes of gods that the Enesmati grocery mart’s employees lined up along the edge of the counter, and her thoughts would inevitably flit back to those feverish eyes.