The Library of Fates

by Aditi Khorana

  “What if Sikander finds this?”

  Kalyani laughed. “Sikander might find these caves, but he’ll never learn of this operation. It’ll continue long after we’re gone, but it’ll be hidden from him. He can’t see it. Neither can your friend. But you can see it, can’t you?

  I nodded, unable to take my eyes off the rock face.

  “You see, there’s a reason you came here. A reason that was hidden from you. We were told that when Maya returns, we could leave.”

  “Leave the caves?”

  “Leave the Earth.”

  I balked, remembering Thala’s words the day before. “How will you do that?”

  “Makara is the gateway to all places. He’ll take us wherever we’re supposed to go next.”

  I looked back at her, dumbfounded.

  “You don’t remember any of it, do you? The past, that other life? The Land of Trees, the Keeper of the Library?”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t feel any more like my life than anyone else’s.”

  Kalyani nodded. “We believe that there’s a reason our minds forget the past. Do you know why we came here? Why we needed to be far from the rest of the world? Secluded, as you called it?”

  I shook my head again.

  “We came here to hone our abilities. We came because we knew how to speak to the Earth, to the sky, to the mountains, the desert, the rain. But our leader, Maya, was far more skilled at communicating with the Earth than anyone who has ever lived. We carried on practicing her gift, keeping it alive, like a language that could go extinct at any moment. It took a village of people to do that. Do you know anyone outside of the Janaka Caves who knows how to do that—how to speak with the Earth?” She looked at me pointedly.

  All of a sudden, I was afraid of what Kalyani was saying. I thought about our experience in the desert. Of the silver tree in the forest that had somehow let down its shield when I had asked for its help. She wanted me to admit that I had such powers. That I had abilities.

  But if I was so powerful, why hadn’t I been able to save my father? Why couldn’t I have conjured up a storm that destroyed all of Sikander’s army? Why couldn’t I have willed the ocean to swallow up the men who had invaded the palace? If I had true powers, there was so much I should have been able to do, I should have done already.

  She must have read my mind, because she turned to me then and said, “We forget our past in order to begin again. And there are things we must lose in order for us to gain anything.”

  “So you’re saying that I had to lose my father?”

  She shook her head, compassion in her eyes. “All I’m saying is that we had to give up certain earthly pleasures in order to preserve what we thought was important. We lost the forest of our beloved trees. We lost Maya because she was mortal. We lost our connection to the rest of the world. We had to forget our past in order to preserve the language of speaking with the Earth. But now that you’re here, we can go. And you can teach others what you know.”

  But I couldn’t shake my fear. “What if everyone is wrong about me? If I’m so powerful, why am I so afraid?”

  “Fear is actually the strongest evidence of our powers, the threshold we need to cross in order to reclaim them. All I know is that it’s time for you to reclaim your powers, and it’s time for us to begin a new adventure.”

  “I don’t even understand where you’ll go,” I said to her.

  Kalyani jerked her chin toward the wall before me. I followed her gaze. It was a mural of a starry sky. I could see purple galaxies, silver constellations twisting in whorls.

  All around the cave, the Sybillines looked out into that magnificent vault of blue and cheered as though they had anticipated this moment their whole lives.

  “Where is that?”

  She shook her head and smiled. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re not afraid?”

  Kalyani shook her head. “I’ve had a lot of time to untangle my own fears.”

  “I wish I were like you,” I told her. “I’m afraid of everything.”

  “Kalyani?” a frantic voice called out for her as Tamas ran up the ledge. “We have a problem. I took my eyes off her for just a second and now she’s—”

  Before he even finished speaking, I felt a cold stab of panic in my lungs as I ran out of the cave and down the spiral path, looking for Thala, the conversation we had the night before replaying itself in my ears. She had expressed her fear to me, and I had done nothing about it.

  She was lying next to the lagoon, her vacant eyes looking up at the sky.

  “Thala?” I cried, shaking her.

  “Step aside, please.” Kalyani was already behind me, blending a mixture of herbs into a small mortar made of lava.

  “Will she be all right?” I asked.

  Kalyani’s face didn’t give anything away as she glanced down at the concoction in her hands.

  Thala closed her eyes. She opened them, and they were a dark burgundy, so bright that I stumbled backward, startled at the sight of them.

  “I wanted to know how to get to the Library,” Thala said.

  “She’s hallucinating,” Kalyani said, and placed a spoonful of herbs in Thala’s mouth.

  “The Keeper, Amrita—I know who it is,” Thala whispered. “He’s here. In this cave . . .”

  Thala’s eyes closed, and this time she didn’t open them again.

  Twenty-Nine

  TAMAS WATCHED ME, concern on his face. “She’ll be fine. She just needs to rest. Kalyani’s seen situations like this before. The herbs should help. Once she’s better—”

  “Once she’s better, we have to leave here,” I said to him, and he nodded.

  “Only, I don’t think you can come with us to where we’re going,” he responded. “It’s not a part of your journey.”

  “I know,” I whispered. Leaving with the Sybillines, wherever they were going, would just be running away.

  The evening was falling over us, a quilt of purple light illuminating the rose-colored mountains, the ancient honeycomb caves. The lagoon became a mirror for the sky, and around the edges of that mirror, the Sybillines sat on plush red cushions and golden carpets, lanterns lighting up their warm faces. Across the walls of the caves, images of the outside world flashed and disappeared like fireworks.

  The Sybillines watched these images as they ate, laughing with those who laughed, crying when people in the images cried. But the caves buzzed with a kind of electric anticipation of the future. They were joyous, excited about the next leg of their journey. And yet none of them really knew where they were going. Neither did we.

  I scanned the cave, wondering if Thala was right. Was the Keeper of the Library really here?

  “You look as though you’re unraveling a mystery,” Tamas said to me.

  I hesitated. “Thala took the chamak in order to help us, to help me,” I said, feeling ashamed. “She wanted to find a way to get us to our next destination.”

  “Where did she want to go?” Tamas asked, taking a bite of his flatbread.

  I watched him carefully. “To the Library of All Things.” I took a deep breath, inspecting him for any signs that he was the Keeper.

  But Tamas continued to eat his flatbread without a pause. “Why there?”

  “She believes that we’re meant to go there. I promised her that we would find it.” I looked at Thala, sleeping on a cot beside a small fire, two Sybillines watching over her.

  “You promised her?” I could hear the incredulity in his tone.

  “She’s desperate to change the past. And, in many ways, so am I.”

  “Is it because you have a . . . thing with the Keeper?” He grinned at me.

  I rolled my eyes. It’s definitely not him. Someone who waits centuries for his beloved to return wouldn’t make light of it.

  “But entering the Library,
” he added, “that’s . . . impossible.”

  I turned to him sharply. “But Thala said she saw us, or me, in the Library.”

  Tamas looked confused. “The Library exists in another dimension from our world. There’s no way for humans to access it.”

  “But vetalas can get in . . .”

  Tamas nodded. “Because in order to go to the Library, you can’t be living or dead. They leave behind their human bodies so they can get inside.”

  I thought for a moment. “But even if we can’t get in, there’s a way to convince the Keeper—”

  Tamas shook his head forcefully. “To change the past? Change people’s fates? He’d never do that.”

  After all the time I’d spent resisting the idea of the Library, I now found I couldn’t accept what he was saying. “How do you know?”

  “Because it’s the Keeper’s duty to guard the Library from humans. Humans are always tempted to break the rules. They do as they wish. Vetalas are different—they’re . . . proper, fair. Even if he loves you, he’s quite an ethical person. I doubt he’d be willing to—”

  “Wait,” I interrupted him. It was my turn to be incredulous. “You act like you know him.”

  Tamas sighed. “I know he’s ethical because he could have easily gone into the Library and changed your fate. That way, he wouldn’t have had to wait hundreds of years for your return. Can you even imagine what it’s like to wait for someone that long?”

  I thought about how tortured I was over Arjun, and we had only been apart a few days.

  And yet thinking of Arjun in that moment made me feel oddly disloyal toward this vetala who had been waiting centuries for Maya’s return. I had to remind myself that in my own mind, I wasn’t Maya. I was Amrita. I didn’t know this vetala. I didn’t owe him my loyalty and affection.

  Tamas was still speaking. “Besides, whenever we’ve gotten a note from him in the past—”

  “You’ve received notes from him?”

  “Of course!” he exclaimed, gesturing to the birds. “My ancestors gave him the key to the caves. The key that you have in your possession,” he said, gesturing to the dagger that was secured on my waist. “He has never used it, but he writes to us with details of his expeditions, his pilgrimages.”

  “So you’ve been communicating with him all this time?”

  Tamas laughed as though I was playing some sort of trick on him. “It’s his bird that delivered a dispatch for you.”

  I was silent as my eyes scanned the mountain for Saaras. “Saaras, you mean? The bird that Varun sent?”

  “So you have met him,” Tamas exclaimed.

  Tiny electric spikes made their way up my spine. I could tell from Tamas’s face that he understood I hadn’t known.

  And then he said the words that stunned me. “Devi,” he said, taking my hand in his, “Varun is the Keeper of the Library of All Things.”

  My hands began to tremble, and my mind couldn’t make sense of what Tamas was saying. All I could do was shake my head, tears spilling from my eyes.

  “It’s all right . . . ,” Tamas said, touching my arm. “I thought you knew.”

  My head was spinning, and yet still, somehow, my eyes landed on him. He was standing on the far side of the lagoon in a dark corner, away from the cluster of Sybillines watching images flash and disappear across the walls of the cave. I got up as though in a trance, Tamas calling after me.

  From across the bowl, Saaras flapped his wings.

  And as he did, a familiar recognition crystallized within me.

  With every step, I understood—I knew something in my bones that hadn’t quite risen to the place of my consciousness.

  He flapped his wings again, and I darted around the Sybillines, my bare feet on the cold rock in order to get to him.

  Saaras was standing apart from the other birds, and I knew why.

  He wasn’t one of them.

  As I approached him and stood before him, he flapped his wings one last time, and he was no longer Saaras. He was a person.

  “Varun.” I said his name, and he smiled back at me, his eyes fixed on mine.

  I shivered in the breeze.

  He reached for me tentatively, touching my arm, leaving behind a shiver of goose bumps. He opened his mouth, but I could tell from his face that he was overwhelmed, as though he had been waiting for this moment a long time.

  Forever.

  Or what must have felt like forever: so many lifetimes. And now here we were, face to face in the white glow of the moonlight.

  I felt shy and awestruck and moved, all at once.

  There was only one thing I could think to ask him.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Thirty

  VARUN WATCHED ME with his blue eyes, his full lips pressed into a concerned line. “I wanted you to find everything out for yourself,” he finally said. “I didn’t want to . . . influence your choices. And I wanted you to learn about your abilities. You made it here all on your own . . .”

  He waited me out before he reached for my hand, pulling me down beside him. We sat, facing each other, and I felt as though time had ceased to exist. All that remained were his fingers against my wrist, the sound of my heart beating in my ears. I took in his eyes, his familiar face. So familiar, and now I understood the reason.

  “You still could have told me,” I whispered.

  “Would you have believed me?” he asked with urgency in his tone, as though he had longed to tell me everything on the trail to Mount Moutza. It must have been difficult for him, waiting, keeping it all to himself. And I understood then that there was so much he ached to share with me but couldn’t.

  I considered his words.

  He was right.

  I wouldn’t have believed him. He had waited for the right moment to reveal himself to me, and it was now. I had needed to make the pilgrimage to the top of Mount Moutza, to see the statue of Maya. To observe the way Maya’s devotees reacted in the temple. It was necessary for me to feel as though my old life was gone, to learn that I could speak to the sand and the wind. Finding the Sybillines, discovering the Janaka Caves for myself, was all a part of my journey.

  Varun watched me carefully before he spoke again. “Vetalas are . . . no different than humans,” he continued. “We want to influence those around us. We could change the fate of everyone on this planet. But we don’t. We have great respect for human will. I have great respect for your will,” he said, gently. I could tell that he was trying to gauge my feelings for him, that he was nervous and hopeful all at once.

  I thought about the day that I had met him, the day he had told me the story of Maya the Diviner and her beloved. I never would have thought that he was sharing our story with me. Our story. It was strange to think we had a past that I couldn’t remember.

  For a long while, I couldn’t speak. I turned to look at the Sybillines enjoying their dinner on earthenware plates, flatbread crisped and burnt at the edges after being cooked in a stone stove, juicy figs, and stewed pears. Tamas met my eyes from across the lagoon and put his hand up in the air, as though checking to make sure I was all right. I simply nodded at him, realizing that the Sybillines weren’t thrown off by anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps this was because their entire existence was out of the ordinary; they believed in magic, and it was all around them.

  Varun reached for my hands, and I felt an electric charge in his touch.

  “You’re cold as ice,” he whispered, and I shyly took him in: his long, dark lashes, the cut of his jaw, his broad shoulders.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Thala stir awake on her cot. I realized that this was what she had been trying to tell me before she passed out.

  “We don’t have a lot of time,” Varun whispered urgently.

  I turned my gaze back to him, trying to refocus on all that I now knew, and all that
lay ahead.

  “The doorway will soon open, and the Sybillines will leave. You’ll have to go as well—and it’s up to you where that should be.” His eyes bore into mine, his grip on my hands fierce. It was a challenge, and I would have to rise to it—only I had no idea how.

  “Will you come with us?” I asked.

  Varun shook his head. “Not this time. But I’ll find you,” he assured me, and I realized that I didn’t want to leave him.

  I could tell from the way he was watching me that he didn’t want me to leave either. Even though we were together in this moment, it was temporary. The wait wasn’t over for him.

  “There’s still more to your journey,” he said wistfully. “And it’s too important for me to get in your way. But you can ask me anything you want. I’ll help in any way I can.”

  I remembered the last time someone had said this to me. Ask me anything you want about your mother, my father had told me, and I was dumbstruck, my mind a jumble of words.

  This time, I knew what I wanted to ask.

  “Why does Sikander hate my family so much?”

  Varun stroked the back of my hand with his thumb, and I felt a wave of desire to be even closer to him. “Because hate and love are so tightly wound that they sometimes coalesce into one. He once loved your father, and your mother too, so fiercely that the cauldron of his poisonous mind turned that instinct to hate.”

  “Did you ever . . . hate me?” I asked. I wanted to understand how he felt all those years spent waiting for my return.

  He hesitated, a small smile crossing his lips as he considered the past. “I was angry for a long time. Devastated. But now you’re here. It was worth the wait. Just sitting here with you is worth the wait.”

  I smiled at him, and he went on.

  “There’s a reason we each have our own fate. Our own gifts, our own burdens. My fate was to wait for you. But sometimes fates can be altered.”

  I nodded slowly before I turned to look at Thala again. How would she fare in the long run? If she didn’t change her fate, she would spend her whole life struggling, addicted to a substance that poisoned her body.