Priya, holding her bamboo walking stick and wearing a cloth tied across her eyes, came down to stand beside her.
“The river came back,” Asha said. “Higher and stronger than before. Your ghost gave it back.”
“Yes.” Priya nodded. “I suppose she just needed a little time to adjust to being alone. Or maybe she was just surprised when I left. Maybe I should have said good-bye. But in any case, I think she’s at peace now, truly.”
“Good for her.” Asha stuck a ginger sliver in the corner of her mouth and patted Jagdish on the head. “So what will you do now? Stay here in the village?”
“No. I’ve just learned that dragons exist and that trees have souls. I want to see what other wonders are running loose in the world.” Priya smiled. “Where will you go?”
“West, I think.”
“West sounds very nice. I’m ready to leave whenever you are.”
Asha raised an eyebrow at the little nun with her thick black hair full of soft white blossoms. “Well, all right. But no chanting.”
Chapter 2
The Fever Mist
1
The bamboo forest stretched on and on in every direction, the trees growing so close and thick that Asha couldn’t see more than a few paces from the path. A hundred dark shades of emerald and jade painted the walls of the forest on every side, each segmented trunk and stalk leaning at its own unique angle as though too ancient and tired to stand up straight. The dead brown trees still stood as they had in life, leaning gently on their green neighbors as though unwilling to accept that death had already claimed them.
“It feels like walking through a long hallway,” Priya said. The nun swept the path ahead of her with her slender bamboo rod. The only scent in the forest came from the lotus blossoms on Priya’s head. Her saffron robe was faded, her woven sandals were powdered with dust, and the cloth covering her eyes was frayed. “The trees are so close they feel like walls.”
Asha chewed on the sliver of ginger in the corner of her mouth, listening.
Nothing.
There was nothing out there. No birds overhead, no deer moving through the trees, not even crickets hidden in the underbrush. There was no underbrush. Every spare inch of earth was riddled with bamboo roots and stalks. The forest was not merely silent, it was empty. Even now in the first month of spring, it was empty.
“I’ve been through here before,” Asha said. “I remember it being thick like this, but not so quiet. Something’s changed.”
“Is the forest dying? Have all the animals moved on?”
“Maybe.” Asha knelt down and touched the thin dusty soil of the path. She scratched at the ground and found a hard, dry root just beneath the surface. “But I don’t think so. Do you smell that?”
“I can only smell the lotuses,” said the nun. “What does it smell like to you?”
Asha moved farther up the trail and stared toward the north. All she could see was the dense wall of bamboo, and all she could hear was the forest standing perfectly still, but now, beyond and beneath the aroma of the lotus blossoms she could smell something dry and dead. Something charred. Something burnt. And as she tilted her head back, Asha saw the tops of the trees obscured by a thin white haze that shimmered faintly. In the silence, a soft hum tickled her right ear.
Aether. Lots of aether.
Asha sniffed again. “It smells a little like smoke.”
“A forest fire?”
“No. If there was a fire, I would hear it. This is something older. Much older.”
In the deep stillness, a single rustle of animal life appeared at the bottom of the trail. The little ball of brown fur stood up and bobbed its head.
“Jagdish.” Priya smiled and held out her hand, and the little mongoose darted up the path into her palm and onto her shoulder, huddling in the warm mass of dark hair and lotus vines around the nun’s neck.
“He was supposed to be my friend, you know.” Asha smiled. “You’re lucky I’m good at sharing.”
“You’re terrible at sharing.”
“Are you saying that I take too much?”
“No. That you take too little.”
“Hm.” Asha squinted down the path, straining to hear. “There might be something or someone down there. But it’s still a long way off.”
They continued down the path, their sandals padding softly on the earth. Through the slender bamboo leaves overhead, bright white clouds drifted across the deep blue sky. A chill hung in the morning air.
It was early in the afternoon when the trees began to thin out near the foot of a high ridge. Tall green grass swayed along the edges of the path and soon Asha could hear a handful of crickets chirping softly off to her left. A few moments later, she heard the trickle of water falling on stone. At the bottom of the path a large flat rock had been placed over a narrow stream and across this small bridge stood a house.
It was a very old house, built of the native bamboo and thatched in dried bamboo leaves. One corner of the house was supported by thick bamboo poles to hold the floor level where the ground sloped away, and the entire mass of dark brown walls leaned slightly to the south. Beyond the house Asha could see the forest thinning away, and in that grassy field there was a poorly tended garden half-ringed in stones and half-fenced in bamboo rods.
Asha glanced to the north, to the edge of the forest at the bottom of the meadow and saw the white mist drifting out of the trees where it dissolved and vanished in the sunlight.
“Can you hear him in there?” Priya smiled. “I can. My ears are almost as good as yours.”
Asha glanced at the old house. “When you say him, do you mean the father or the son?”
Priya pouted. “You’re cheating.”
“I’m not cheating. I just have an unfair advantage.”
“That’s an interesting perspective you have.”
“It’s not a perspective. It’s reality,” Asha said. “Are you hungry? Let’s introduce ourselves.”
2
Asha had only just knocked at the door when a man thrust his head out and pressed his finger to his lips. He slipped out, closed the door behind him, and herded the ladies away from the house. He was short and slender, with a thin beard on his wasted cheeks and wide darting eyes. He spoke softly, “Yes? Hello? Yes?”
“I’m Asha and this is Priya. We’re just passing through, but this is the first house we’ve seen in quite a while and we thought we might rest here, if it’s not an inconvenience.”
The man shoved his hand into the unkempt mass of wavy black hair on his head and stared at them with a pained expression. “I’m sorry. Of course, I’d like to let you rest here, but my son is very sick.”
“Sick?” Asha squinted at the house. She could hear the boy’s heart racing, a faint but quick patter in the hollow of her right ear. “He has a fever?”
“How did you know? Are you a doctor?” He looked at Priya, peering at the bright flowers in her long dark hair. “You’re dressed as a nun.”
“Yes. Nuns often do that.” The blind woman nodded. “And you are?”
“Chandra.” He glanced back at the house. “My son, Naveen, he was fine, just fine. But then one morning, he complained that the sun was too bright. He stood by the window, rubbing his eyes and squinting for a while, but then he went out and I thought he was fine. But the next morning it was worse, not better. He needed to shade his eyes with his hand all day and he stayed in the shadows of the trees. On the third day, he couldn’t go outside at all, and on the fourth day he draped his shirt over his head to cover his eyes, even inside the house.”
“Do his eyes look different?” Asha asked. “Lighter or darker? Bloodshot?”
“No, they look the same.” Chandra tugged at the short whiskers on his chin. “But that was just the beginning. Soon after, I found him curled up in the corner with his hands over his ears. He whispered that I was being too noisy. I couldn’t even speak without making him shake with pain. I had to lay blankets on the floor to muffle the creaks i
n the wood and silence my footsteps.”
“And the fever?”
“I don’t know. It started in the night. Sweating, shaking. He was delirious. At first I thought he was dreaming, but the things he was saying were so strange. Sometimes he sounded like an old man complaining about his wife, and sometimes like a baby babbling nonsense.” The man rubbed his eyes. “I can barely get him to eat or drink anything. He’s gotten so thin.”
“How long has he been like this?”
“I’m not sure. Five, maybe six weeks.”
“Weeks!” Priya grabbed the man’s arm with her groping, uncertain hand. “Why did you wait so long? Why haven’t you taken him to a doctor?”
Chandra shook his head. “I don’t know any doctors.”
“It’s all right, Priya. As long as the boy’s still alive, then there may be something I can do for him,” Asha said. “Wait here. I’ll take a look at him.”
The man nodded. “Please, be very quiet, doctor.”
“I will.” Asha went up to the door. “But I’m not a doctor.”
She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. The single room of the house was pitch black. Mud and grass had been pressed into the narrow cracks between the boards in the walls, but a few slender spears of sunlight crossed the room just inside the door. She stood and waited until her eyes adjusted.
The boy lay on a pile of blankets wearing only a thin cloth across his hips and another across his face. His bony chest fluttered up and down, his ribs shaking with the pounding of his heart. Asha could barely see him, but she could hear his whole body shivering. She knelt beside him and listened to him mutter and gasp.
“…should have been there for…didn’t you come to tell us…died in my arms…”
Asha frowned. “Who died?”
“Agh!” Naveen curled up into a ball and rolled onto his side with his hands pressed to his ears.
Asha nodded and chewed on her ginger for a moment. She pulled her bag off her shoulder and searched inside with her fingertips among the heavier things down at the bottom. The two rods had slipped down below everything else, and she pulled them out as quietly as she could. With one in each hand, she pressed the cool metal bars to the sides of the boy’s face. Instantly, his whole body relaxed. His breathing slowed and the murmuring stopped, but his heart still pounded against his chest.
After a moment, Naveen rolled onto his back and she moved with him, still holding the rods to the sides of his head. He opened his eyes, and although all she could see were two pinpricks of reflected light, she knew he was looking at her. She smiled. “Hello, Naveen.”
He smiled back. “Hello.”
“Your father says you’ve been very sick for a long time.”
He nodded. “I feel better. Am I all better now?”
“No, not yet. But I’m working on it. Can you tell me what you were doing before you got sick? Did you eat any strange plants? Or a frog? Or a mushroom?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Maybe you touched something. Some black moss on a stone, a sharp red thorn, or a gray vine with blue flowers?”
“No.”
“Did you meet any strangers on the road?”
“No.”
“Come on, kid, help me out here. Did you go anywhere special? Into a cave, maybe?”
“No. But I did go to the old village.”
“What old village?” Asha asked.
“The one at the bottom of the valley. It’s only an hour’s walk away.”
“Were you visiting your friends or running an errand for your father?”
“No one lives there,” he said. “It’s all gone now. Just some rocks where the houses were. The forest is starting to grow over it. It’ll be gone soon, father says.”
She frowned. “Do you go there often?”
“Sure, in the summer.”
“What about six weeks ago?”
“No, it’s been too cold. But I did go down to the stream once looking for frogs. Sometimes they get frozen under the ice.”
“And were you near the old village?”
He shrugged. “I guess so. I couldn’t see very much that day. The fog was too thick.”
3
Asha used the boy’s discarded belt to tie the two iron rods to the sides of his head, but she still made him promise to hold the rods with his hands and to remain on his bed. Then she stood and went back outside, leaving the door standing wide open. Chandra leapt forward to close it, but she stopped him and nodded back at the figure on the bed.
“He’s so quiet. The light doesn’t hurt his eyes?” The man clamped his hand over his mouth, and then slowly removed it. “And he can hear again? You cured him?”
“No, I just gave him something for the pain. Iron can conduct all sorts of harmful things away from the body, temporarily at least. But I’m not sure what’s going on here. Whatever it is, his heart is still racing and his life is still very much in danger.” Asha led the man away from the house. “Priya, why don’t you and Jagdish say hello to him? I think he’d like the company. Just keep him quiet and calm.”
The nun nodded and found her way inside with the aid of her bamboo stick.
“Naveen told me he goes to play in the old village at the bottom of the valley.”
Chandra frowned. “I’ve told him not to go there.”
“Why not?”
The man blinked. “Because he shouldn’t. It’s not safe there.”
“Why? What happened to the village?”
Chandra exhaled. “Two years ago it was attacked by Persian soldiers.”
“Persians? Here?”
“It wasn’t an army. Just a dozen men or so. I’ve heard there was a battle somewhere far to the west in Rajasthan. Maybe these men were survivors or deserters who didn’t, or couldn’t, return home,” he said. “They found the village, killed everyone, took what they wanted, and moved on.”
“Did they burn the village?”
“They tried to. I saw the smoke myself. But the fire didn’t last. Most of the village was still standing when I went down to see for myself.” He swallowed. “I buried the people in their homes as best I could.”
Asha sighed. “I’m sorry. You were lucky that you and your son survived. Why didn’t you live in the village?”
“I did. I mean, I was born there. But there are weeds and grasses there that make my eyes itch and my head hurt so I moved up here to this old place when I married Naveen’s mother. It was hard, being alone up here, but at least I could breathe in my own home.”
“Allergies, huh?” Asha dug into her bag and pulled out two slender brown sticks. “If they ever flare up again, try burning this. The smoke should help.”
“Thank you.” He took them. “But what about my son? Can you help him?”
“I’m going to try, but first I need something from you.”
“What?”
“The truth about the village. I can hear your heart pounding and the breath shaking in your lungs. I know you’re lying, or at least holding something back,” she said. “What is it?”
He took a step back. “How could you possibly hear my heart and my lungs?”
Asha swept the hair from the side of her face to reveal her right ear and the man gasped.
“Are those scales?”
She dropped her hair and nodded. “Dragon scales. It’s a side effect of the venom, just like being able to hear the blood in your veins, or in your son’s, or in the lizard near your left foot.”
The man looked down and jumped away as a soft rustling in the grass darted away toward the stream. He looked her in the eye. “You’re cursed!”
“In more ways than one.” Asha raised an eyebrow. “And I’m still waiting to hear about the village.”
Slowly, he nodded. “All right, I’ll tell you everything. But you have to promise not to tell Naveen.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s about his mother.”
“What about her?”
/> “How she died.” Chandra covered his eyes. “It’s my fault that she’s dead. It’s my fault that they’re all dead.” After a moment, he looked up though he avoided her eyes and he said, “My wife hated living here, so far from her family and friends. She was lonely, and sometimes scared being so close to the road like this. She was terrified of being robbed for some reason, even though we had nothing worth stealing. She pestered me for years to move back to the village. I don’t think she believed me that the grasses made me sick. Either that or she thought a man shouldn’t let such a thing force him out of his home. I refused to move, so she left and she took Naveen with her. He was still very small then. As he grew older, he started to come out here to help me with the house and garden. We hunted birds together, back when there were birds to hunt. Even when he was small, he was a good hunter. Sharp eyes and sharp ears. And he can be very quiet when he wants to.
“One day while we were in the forest, I found a man peeing on a rock. His clothes were ragged and filthy, but he had a sword on his belt and a helmet on his head. The soldier saw me before I could run, but I waved Naveen back and he hid in the trees behind me,” Chandra said. “At first I thought the soldier was going to kill me where I stood. He spoke Persian. I had no idea what he was saying, but I recognized the sound of the language from travelers I had met on the road. He came toward me, his hand on his sword. But then he spoke in Hindi, though not very well. He wanted to know if there were people nearby. He wanted food and water.”
“What did you say to him?”
Chandra shrugged, his eyes dull and lifeless. “I was going to say no, but then I thought of how terrified my wife would be at the sight of this man wandering through her precious little village. I thought it might change her mind, and that she and Naveen would come back home to me. So I said yes. I pointed the soldier toward the village and he nodded, but he went off in the wrong direction. So I stayed with Naveen in the trees to wait and be sure that he was gone before we went home. And then he returned, leading a whole troop back through the woods toward the village. We watched them go past. I didn’t know what to do. I told myself that it would be all right. They just wanted food and then they would be on their way. They didn’t kill me, after all. So I took Naveen home and waited.”
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