“Think,” Thala said. “There has to be someone you know, someone we can speak to.”
“Mala said something about a cartogapher. She said it was my responsibility to warn someone.”
“That’s a good place to start.”
But my mind was already trying to untangle what had just occurred. “How could we have trusted Sikander?” I whispered. “We were fools. We greeted him with a parade, acrobatics shows, music, and dancing. And he planned on attacking all along.”
“You didn’t trust him. Why would you? Sikander is full of tricks,” Thala said offhandedly, stopping before a vendor selling sandals made of braided leather and pieces of linen. She selected some linen and two pairs of sandals and then bargained with the vendor in simple Shalingarsh. Once she was done, she nodded to me, and I handed him the coin the woman in the orange sari had given me, along with some of the silver in my satchel. He barely took note of us as he placed the shoes, the linen, and some coins in my hand.
Thala collected the fabric from me and then led me to the fountain at the center of the square.
I quickly removed the scarf and glanced at my reflection in the pool of water before me. I could barely recognize my tear-streaked and muddy face. My clothes were filthy from crawling through the Temple, drenched in sweat. My throat was parched.
But Thala was right, I was alive, and some instinct had propelled me to stay that way, despite myself.
Thala lowered a wooden pail into the water, and when she brought it up, I was startled at how clean and refreshing it looked. We drank it thirstily, cupping our hands and trying to take in as much as we could, before she refilled the skin and dampened the cloth she had purchased from the vendor. Then she sat on the ground before me, wiping my feet clean. I looked down at them and gasped. I hadn’t even noticed till now how badly cut up they were or how much they ached. I watched as Thala carefully cleaned my wounds, remembering how I had done the same for her when she first arrived at the palace. It made me feel humbled, cared for.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
She didn’t respond. “You risk infection,” she said. “We’ll have to get you some herbs for those cuts.” Her tunic was torn, and I noticed again the curlicued tattoo on her shoulder, whorls of black ink. I pushed back her sleeve.
“What is it?”
She looked around before she pulled her shirt over her shoulder to show me. “The Tree of Life. It’s an old symbol, from the time of the Diviners. I’m a descendant of the Diviners.”
I nodded. “So are the Sybillines.”
She looked up at me, a drunken smile across her face that made me nervous. She was a survivor, and I admired this in her, but there was also something unpredictable about her reactions. She was gruff one moment, then lucid, then it seemed as though the chamak had overtaken her mind, making her eyes cloudy, a loose smile across her lips. “My people wear the mark of the Tree of Life when we choose to commit ourselves fully to the Gift. I chose that life when I was nine.”
“Why a tree?”
“Because the Diviners derived their power from the Earth, and trees were considered the wisest living things on the planet once upon a time. The Parable of the Land of Trees is a famous tale where I come from. But it’s told all over the world.”
“Does it still exist—the Land of Trees?”
“That I don’t know. But it did once. In the time of the vetalas and the Diviners. They had their conflicts, but they ultimately felt the same way about the forests, the oceans, the land. That’s why they were able to coexist on the Earth for so long.”
“You know about the vetalas?”
“Everyone knows about the vetalas,” Thala said. “In Macedon, they’re called the Tithons. In the east, they’re the Xians. They used to dominate the Earth, but they’ve been edged out, hunted down by men like Sikander.”
“Do you know what happened to the vetalas and the Diviners?”
Thala shrugged as though she could barely care. “What always happens. A fight that made them forget all the things they had in common, and all their gifts. That’s why they went extinct.”
It made me think of Thala’s gift. “How long have you had visions?”
“My whole life.”
“So you knew all of this would happen.”
“It is written. I told Sikander it would happen.” She shook her head. “That if he decided to attack, you would escape. He knew that if he forced you to marry him, it would give him legitimacy, but that wasn’t meant to happen. He didn’t like my answers, but I cannot lie—those with the Gift, we’re not capable of lies. From time to time, I would try to evade his questions, trick him. But sometimes I would get caught and be punished,” she quietly said, and I looked at the burns and cuts on her arms, understanding that these injuries were what she was referring to.
The thought of what Sikander’s men must have done to her sickened me. And then I considered what they might have done to me. “Is there . . . anything I could have done to stop it from happening?”
Thala thought for a moment. “Some things are fixed, others are changeable. You can’t change what’s fixed or fix what’s changeable. That’s what my mother always said.”
“But you warned me about it. Wasn’t it so that I could actually do something about it?”
“I wanted to earn your trust . . . so you would free me. I needed you to understand that I . . . have value.”
I looked away, uncertain of how I felt. I reminded myself she had no choice. She wasn’t capable of lies, and the fear of being physically hurt loomed over her every day. I couldn’t even imagine what her life had been like for all those years.
I looked around the square, wondering what Shalingar would become if Sikander ruled. Instead of the sound of Shalingarsh in the cafés surrounding us, would everyone one day be forced to speak Macedon? Would people keep slaves? Would women have no option but to stay indoors while men roamed the streets without a care in the world? Would there be dowries, discrimination toward the tribes in the west? And what would happen to the Sybillines? Would he manage to find them? To take them prisoner?
“They’re going to come looking for you,” Thala said. “Sikander’s strategy is that he hunts down every member of a royal family, killing them one by one. He takes the women as his consorts. Then he instates his own satraps to administer his rule.”
“I don’t know anyone who would agree to report to Sikander.”
“Someone will,” she said. “Someone always does.”
“Can you see whom it might be?”
“I can’t see everything,” she said. “Only what I’m meant to see. And sometimes it changes.” Thala continued, “Sikander and his men—they don’t understand anything about visions, about magic. Reading the future is like reading nature; the patterns of the rain and the sun and the wind. It moves and recedes. But they want to know everything about the future. And that isn’t possible. Even the vetalas couldn’t tell you that, and they’re the most knowledgeable beings who ever walked the Earth.”
“I could use the help of a vetala now,” I whispered. “Or my father . . . I wish my father were here with me now.”
“I told you. You can undo what happened.”
I turned to her. “Sounds like magic.”
She hesitated before turning to me. “Have you ever heard of the Library of All Things?”
I shook my head, but a line of goose bumps crept over my arms. “A library?”
She lowered her voice. “It’s a place my aunts told me about,” she said. “We have a tale about it in Macedon. Every person who has ever walked the Earth has a book that tells the story of their life. These books are kept in the Library of All Things. There’s a Keeper of the Library—a vetala—and if you find him and ask him permission, he’ll allow you entry into the Library. But only for a short period of time. It’s where I plan on going next, so I can un
do my own past. All we have to do is find the Keeper of the Library, urge him to give us entry, and once he does, you can find your father’s book, tear out the pages where your father was killed, and then—”
I stood up, startled and angry. “Are you crazy?” I asked her.
Thala shook her head at me, confused.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. You expect me to find some magical library guarded by some creature who doesn’t exist and that’s the way I can have my father back?”
“Well, what did you think? That it was going to be easy?” she asked, her voice gruff again.
I balked at Thala, baffled, furious. I opened my mouth to say something, but just then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a familiar face—sharp features, hazel eyes. Walking the town square in plainclothes was Nico, flanked by a handful of Sikander’s men.
Terror flashed across Thala’s face. She grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the well, her hands trembling.
“If we don’t get out of here now, it’ll be even more impossible.”
Thirteen
“WHERE DO WE GO?” I glanced to my left and then to my right. The town square was busy, but there was no place to hide.
Just then, Nico’s eyes met mine. I shuddered. He pointed at us, a salacious grin spreading across his face. I was wearing a scarf across my face and so was Thala, but we stood out, from the dirt and grit on our clothes. He turned and yelled something to his men.
We didn’t wait to hear what it was. We were already barreling across the square, heads turning to glance our way.
“The alley where we came from!” Thala yelled.
“No! It’s completely empty.” I turned to her. “We need to find a crowd.” I thought for a moment. “Follow the monks!” I pointed to the clusters of men and women in orange robes making their way through the narrow lanes of Ananta. There was a pattern in their collective movements, a procession. They were on a pilgrimage, and their destination was a small shrine on the top of a hill.
“Let’s go!” Thala cried.
We pushed past the monks as we ran up the narrow and winding cobblestone streets that led up the hill. In the distance, I could see an ornate white building with a turquoise and silver minaret. I remembered seeing it from my window at the palace.
I grabbed Thala’s hand, my feet moving as though they were separate from my body.
We ran as fast as we could, weaving between packed bodies, darting around wayward neem trees growing vertically up the terrain, clinging onto structures as though for dear life. We dodged street vendors pushing carts full of tomatoes and peppers and limes through the narrow streets.
It had never occurred to me when I looked out my window that this precarious promontory was a miniature city itself, lined with colorful homes that dotted the steep hillside like multicolored blocks tumbling off one another, pink and ochre, pale blue and sea green. Lone palm or banana trees grew from tiny squares of earth, wrapping themselves around the vibrant structures and ornate metal grills that muzzled doors and windows. Small children played with toys or dolls on the front stoops of their homes, stopping to glance up at us as we pushed our way past them.
I turned to look back. Nico and his men were behind us, shoving people in their path to get to us.
“Faster!” I urged Thala. “They’re close!”
“Every path on this hill seems to lead to the shrine. We need to lose them, or they’ll eventually get to us.”
She was right.
I took it all in, frantically searching for a place to hide. Now we were only about a hundred paces from the temple. On either side of the cobblestone path, in between the homes, vendors sold garlands of brilliantly ochroid marigolds, clay figurines of the gods. A mithai vendor was frying gold and scarlet rings of syrupy jalebi in a massive iron pot, bubbles of heat sputtering across the surface of the glistening slick. Even in my terrorized state, just the smell of it made my mouth water, and I realized that I hadn’t eaten since yesterday.
We mounted a flight of stairs and turned around the bend.
“Hey! Careful, you!” yelled the vendor of a spice store as Thala almost knocked over a pyramid of glass vessels. I looked at the rows and rows of shelves, lined with jars of fragrant spices—cinnamon sticks and crimson chili, canary-colored turmeric, grassy coriander.
“Sorry!” I cried as we turned under an ivy-covered archway into a quaint café where men and women ate rice out of small clay bowls. They all glanced up at us as we ran past.
And then I felt someone grabbing for my sleeve. I turned to see Nico’s eyes fixed on mine, his face inches away. I quickly yanked my arm back, ripping the fabric of my blouse. Nico lost his balance and tripped, stumbling into a table before him. The crowd at the restaurant scattered.
“Get them!” he yelled at his men, and Thala and I raced up the narrow streets, Nico’s men on our tail.
“Where do we go?” Thala cried, and I heard the hushed desperation in her voice.
There were five of them and only two of us, and they were getting closer and closer.
I gasped. Before us was a logjam of bodies. The movement up the hill had stalled, and there was no place we could go.
Nico’s men were right behind us, shoving bodies out of their way, gaining on us. My heart raced with terror; my mind was blank.
All I could think was that perhaps this is where the story of my escape from Sikander would end. Maybe this was where we would be caught, both of us thrown into boxes and carted back to Macedon.
And yet, some stalwart part of me refused to accept our capture. Some sense of justice within me screamed in rage at the idea of being married off to the man who had killed my father and Mala, plundered the palace, invaded my home, taken my beloved Arjun prisoner.
And Thala. I couldn’t let her be taken into Sikander’s custody again.
My eyes met those of a small boy playing with a toy horse in a tiny square patch of grass next to us. Thala noticed him too. She crouched down beside him.
“Hello. My name is Thala. My friend and I . . . we need a place to hide. Could you help us?” she asked him, an urgency in her voice that made him shrink away from her. But she continued to plead. “It would just be for a minute. We could . . . hide in your house,” she said, gesturing to his front door.
But the boy shook his head. “My mama doesn’t like me to play with strangers.”
“We’re not strangers.” Thala forced a smile at him. “We’re friends. Can’t you just let us in . . . for a moment?” She continued to beg him as I reached into my satchel and pulled out the dagger Mala had given me. It fit perfectly into my hand. I could see Nico approaching now, and I knew that I would have to kill him or be killed myself. All I knew was that I’d rather die than be Sikander’s slave. I’d rather kill.
I turned to look at the boy, realizing that he would have to witness me stab someone. He was watching me carefully, and I realized that my scarf had loosened and that my face was exposed. I tried to cover myself back up but wondered if there was even any use.
Just then, the boy smiled and stood up, opening the door to his home, nodding at me.
Thala and I glanced at each other, and we bounded through the door.
“Thank you!” I yelled at him. I reached into my bag to pull out a handful of coins, but he shook his head, refusing my money.
“It is my duty, Devi,” he said, quietly closing the door behind him.
I stood before him, stunned by his kindness, wondering at his calling me Devi, but Thala grabbed my hand before I had a chance to say anything more. We ran through the small house till we arrived on the other side. A back doorway led us to another cobblestone lane on the far side of the slope. It was quieter here, almost as though we had arrived in another land. I turned to look back at the boy just as we rounded the corner, and he was still standing there, frozen, watching us with a loo
k of wonder across his face.
“Come on, we have to keep moving,” Thala insisted. “We’re safe for now, but we have to come up with a plan.”
“Okay. I just need a minute to breathe,” I said, carefully tucking the dagger back into my satchel and closing my eyes.
When I opened them, Thala was looking straight ahead, pointing to something, silently laughing.
“What is it?” I followed her gaze.
She was pointing to a tiny storefront, barely discernible. I might have easily walked by without noticing it, as a handful of people quietly wandering the hilltop did.
In the front was a small sign: “Meena Amba, Cartographer.”
“The cartographer Mala was talking about . . . do you think that could be it?”
“Doesn’t hurt to ask.” Thala shrugged.
We dodged through the front door, slamming it shut behind us, both of us hiding behind a bookshelf. I glanced out the window as Nico’s men hastily ran by.
I sat down next to her, a wave of relief washing over me, grateful that we were out of harm’s way, if even for a moment.
“Can I help you?” a sharp voice asked, snapping me back into attention.
Fourteen
I LOOKED AROUND THE SMALL, well-appointed room. The walls were made of wood, and timber beams ran across the ceiling. Carved into the mahogany walls were shelves filled with large leatherbound books. It took me a second to realize that we were inside a tree, branches poking out of the walls to hold up lanterns lending an orange glow to the dim space.
Every surface was covered with maps—blue maps and brown maps and green maps. Maps tumbling off tables and mounted on walls, falling out of half-opened trunks, loose rolls of maps lined up against the door, stacks of atlases, and every type of globe I had ever seen. There were glass orbs, spheroids made of wood, black and blue marbles of the constellations in the sky. I was mesmerized by it, this room brimming with order and topography: a chamber of answers.
“We’re not open to the public today.” Her voice was sharp, and she wore fitted black trousers and black leather boots. Her shirt, too, was tailored like a man’s shirt. Her dark hair was tied neatly into a bun, and she had a face that radiated intelligence. It was hard to tell how old she was, but there was an air of sophistication about her that made me stand up straight.
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