by Andrea Ring
Alarm bells ring in her head, and she knows she’s miss-stepped.
“My apologies,” she says, bowing her head. “My name is Nilaruna.”
I have to catch my breath. “The first light of dawn.”
She nods. “My family calls me Nili.”
“I am not your family.”
She nods again.
“Welcome, Go-Between. I am Maja, Hermit and Protector of the village of Dabani.”
Nilaruna laughs.
“Am I amusing you?” I ask her.
“I thought my job was to protect you,” she says.
“Your job is to assist me. There is a difference.”
“If you live like a hermit in this cave, how can you protect anyone?”
“I can leave any time I choose,” I say. “I choose not to.”
“And if Dabani needs your help?” she asks. “What will you choose then?”
“To do my duty.”
Nilaruna walks five paces straight into the blackness.
“Stop,” I say.
She takes two more steps before obeying. “I vowed to end this farce, Maja. Nishta was my friend.”
Ah. The last Go-Between. I didn’t know her well. Nishta fell into the rapids on the way to her third visit here, and I was in her mind the entire time. I spoke to her. I comforted her. I tried to tell her how to climb out, but she was too paralyzed by fear to move. I wept for her, a girl too young and innocent to die.
“I am sorry for your loss,” I say.
“She fell into the rapids. Did you know that?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you save her?”
I clench my jaw and it pops loudly.
“Your duty is not to question,” I say.
“Your duty is to protect!” she screams.
I stand and lean against the back wall of the cave. “We are at an impasse, then.”
“Impasse? Is that what you call it? Twenty-two girls in my lifetime. Twenty-two Go-Betweens. We’re supposed to last fifty moons.”
Nilaruna pulls a knife from the pockets of her trousers and clenches the hilt tight in her fist.
“What have you been doing to them?” She takes two more steps toward me.
“You do not understand of what you speak. Put down the knife,” I say.
“I understand you are old,” she whispers. “I understand that if you couldn’t protect the Go-Betweens, perhaps you cannot protect yourself. And besides, given the odds, I understand my fate.”
“I would never harm you,” I say.
“Did you say the same to Nishta?”
And Nilaruna lunges for me.
***
The new Go-Between cannot see me, but she has surprisingly honed instincts. Her knife is two paces from my face before I stop her with a flick of my wrist.
“Stop,” I whisper.
She stops, muscles quivering from her adrenaline high.
“Drop the knife.”
The knife falls from her grasp and clatters on the stone floor.
“Sit.”
Nilaruna’s knees buckle, and she falls in a heap to the floor.
I lean forward and study her.
She has a boyish figure swathed in loose-fitting linen trousers and a billowy pullover tunic. Manly clothes. Poking from beneath her trousers are her small dirty feet, heavily calloused and marred by cuts and scrapes, including one deep puncture wound on the heel of the left. Her fingernails are blunt, worn down by manual labor. She is obviously not accustomed to servants, and this seems to be the most attractive thing about her. Until I notice her eyes.
They are difficult to see, given her face. The left side of her face is melted, as though it were made of candle wax. Her left brow hangs low over her eyelid, the scar tissue almost completely covering her eye. Her left cheek looks like the bark of a pine tree. The left corner of her mouth sags down in a permanent pout. Dear heavens, what pain she must have endured!
But my gaze easily slips over the scar tissue and lingers back on her right eye. Her jade green eye. In the dark, the pupil has dilated wide, making the green that much more vivid. The green captivates me. It’s like I’m looking in a mirror, though I haven’t seen my own reflection for centuries. My eyes are the same shade. Or were, once.
“I’m going to heal you,” I say, “but I must release you from my thrall to do so. Will you remain still?”
I slip back into her mind.
He can do magic! Holy heavens, no one ever mentioned that. I can’t stop him. This is it. I’m dead.
“I ask again, will you remain still if I release you?”
Nilaruna nods once, and I release her.
Her breath rushes out in one long sigh, and she wraps her arms around her middle.
“You have nothing to fear,” I say. “Your feet are a mess. Stretch them out in front of you and I will heal them.”
She complies. If he starts to hurt me, I can kick him.
I chuckle softly, and Nilaruna stiffens, but she doesn’t move.
I want to touch her, this brave, unsightly little creature, and comfort her in a way I haven’t comforted another in centuries. But it is too soon, and I will not play my hand so early. So I gather the magic in my mind and release it from afar. When the warm energy swirls around her feet and starts to heal, I can hear Nilaruna sigh in her mind.
Ahhh. Sweet gods. He’s really doing it. But why would he heal me? Why? He only wants me dead.
“You have endured enough pain for a lifetime,” I say. The healing finishes and I draw the magic back into me. “Tell me how you sustained such injuries.”
“Crossing the Swifty and climbing a mountain barefoot wasn’t such a great idea.”
I smile in the dark. “I meant the injuries to your face.”
“How can you see them?” she says, panicked. “It’s black in here.”
“My eyes have long-since adjusted,” I say.
Her forehead crumples under the pain of this statement. I thought he wouldn’t be able to see. One of my reasons for coming is gone. “Do not pity me,” she says.
“How can I not feel pain for what you have been through?” I ask.
She sits up straight. “You are Maja, Hermit and Protector, unmoved by human suffering.”
“Says who?”
“Then why didn’t you save Nishta?”
I sigh my own sigh and raise my eyes to the ceiling. Such a simple question. Such a difficult question.
“So your training begins, Nilaruna,” I say. “Repeat the ritual words, and I will answer your question.”
She eyes the back of the cave from where my voice drifts, and her gaze seems to find mine, even in the black. “If you promise to answer my questions, truthfully, I will speak them.”
“I do.”
She nods to herself and shakily climbs to her feet. “I, Nilaruna, Go-Between for Maja and the village of Dabani, swear to perform my duties as Maja wills. I swear my fealty to Maja. Everything I have is his, every thought is for his safety and protection. I will confide in no one but him, until it is time to pass my knowledge along to the next Go-Between. Dabani will be safe. I will it so.”
“I will it so,” I murmur.
Nilaruna half smiles. “I cannot kill you now.”
“Not unless you want the gods to intervene.”
“But what if you try to kill me?”
“You are my link to the village, my purpose for existing. I would no sooner harm you than kill myself. Why do you not believe this is so?”
“Nishta,” she whispers. And then her voice grows stronger. “And the twenty-one before her.”
I conjure a sitting cushion with my magic and place it on the floor next to her.
“Sit down, two paces to your right.”
Nilaruna sidesteps, and her foot catches the edge of the cushion. She lowers herself onto it.
“I did know when Nishta fell into the rapids,” I say. “I did not know her well — we’d only met two times, and we did not have a strong conn
ection. She was frightened of me, frightened of the trip up the mountain, frightened of what I might ask her to do.”
“So you let her drown,” Nilaruna says, her voice a knife through my heart.
“No. Who she was has nothing to do with that. I entered her mind and tried to help her. I told her what to do, what rock to grab onto, how to shimmy out of her skirt lest it drag her down. She would not respond to me.”
“You entered her mind?”
“Yes.”
“But…can you enter mine, as well?”
I hesitate for a heartbeat. “Yes.”
“So why couldn’t she hear you?”
“She heard me,” I say. “She was too overcome with fear to respond.”
Nilaruna pushes to her knees on the cushion. “But you are the Protector. You should have gone to her.”
“I could not.”
“Why not?”
This is a secret I do not usually reveal until training is close to complete — a couple of moons away from now, at least. But nothing about this Go-Between is proceeding as usual.
“The spell that allows me to remain Dabani’s protector also forces me to remain on this side of the Swifty. I can only cross it if Dabani is in danger.”
“But what of her people? Surely danger to the village includes danger to its people.”
“I wish it were so,” I say.
“So you…did not wish Nishta harm?” Nilaruna holds her breath as she waits for my answer.
“Never.”
She grows silent, and I slip back into her mind.
So Maja is not responsible. If he’s telling me the truth, though I think he is. I can usually tell when someone’s lying, and he’s not lying. But then…I tried to kill him!
Nilaruna starts to shake with the remembrance of her deeds.
“I understand why you thought I was to blame for Nishta’s death,” I say. “The tales of what I am capable of have obviously grown over the cycles. Once upon a time, a Go-Between’s death would not have been attributed to me.”
“There are no tales,” she says.
I cock my head. “What do you mean by that?”
“Exactly what I said. Think about it — Dabani’s only link to you is the Go-Betweens. The ritual words claim that I must pass on my knowledge of you to the next Go-Between, but that hasn’t been done in almost twenty cycles.”
“Why not?” I demand. “Every Go-Between has sworn it!”
“But…I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?”
Nilaruna growls in frustration. “Twenty-two Go-Betweens in nineteen cycles. Most of them didn’t last a full cycle. You had to know this.”
“Of course I knew this. I’m not blind. I know when a new Go-Between arrives. I simply thought…”
I sense her eyes on me again.
“What did you think happened to all of them?” Nilaruna asks me gently.
I shrug helplessly in the dark. “Marriage…or family hardship…the only two reasons a Go-Between can end her duties.”
“You forgot the most important reason,” she whispers in the dark. “Death.”
***
Twenty-two Go-Betweens have died in my service.
Twenty-two young girls have lost their lives serving me.
It cannot be.
“How do you know this?” I ask.
“It is well-known,” she says. “High Priest Sanji keeps records. He makes us memorize all he learns.”
“Tell me.”
Nilaruna sits back down on the cushion and stretches out her legs.
“There isn’t much to tell. We take the oath not to confide in anyone, so there is very little known about our interactions with you.”
“Then what did he have you memorize?” I say.
She grimaces. “Their names. How they died.”
“Tell me,” I repeat.
Nilaruna leans back on her arms. “Ruth was the first to be released from service by death.”
“Ruthie,” I whisper. “She loved a boy. I assumed they married. How?”
She nods. “They were engaged. Happy, by all accounts. On the eve of her thirtieth visit to you, the two quarreled. No one knows what it was about. He pushed her down a flight of stairs and broke her neck.”
“No,” I whisper.
She nods again.
“But the boy…he was a gentle farmer’s son. Never spoke a harsh word to her. How can that be?”
“My mother says we all have a dark side,” Nilaruna says. “Padma was next, released from service when her father slit her throat.”
“What?!”
“He claimed to catch her in the hay with one of the warrior caste.”
“Never!” I say.
“Arpita was strangled in her sleep. They never caught who did it. Kalima—”
“Stop.”
“—took a fever, and died three days later with a strange rash across her chest.”
“Stop!”
Nilaruna freezes in place as my magic hits her. I release her just as quickly.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Truly. But no more.”
She ducks her head and takes a deep breath. “I am the one who should apologize. I’m reciting a list in my head, of people who meant nothing to me, but you knew them. You knew them all.”
“Yes.”
“It sounds as though you cared for them.”
“Many of them,” I say. “Most. All, even. Nishta I knew the least, but I still mourn her. I have missed the others, but I did not realize I should have been mourning them as well.”
We lapse into a weighted silence. I want to enter Nilaruna’s mind again, but I fear the images there.
“Can I ask you another question?” she says.
“Of course.”
“If you could enter their minds, why did you not know what happened to them?”
“There is a boundary, the far side of the Swifty. My powers do not cross it.”
“So once I’m across, you will not know my thoughts?” she asks.
I smile. “No.”
She blows out a breath. “Good.”
We both laugh, and our mood lightens a bit.
“So what’s next?” she asks.
I un-hunch my shoulders and sit up straight. “I train you. Beginning with protocol and the courtesies.”
Nilaruna snorts again.
“I think we can dispense with that,” she says. “I tried to kill you. We’re past all the niceties.”
“Are we truly?” I say.
She ducks her head, and her hair covers the left side of her face. A practiced gesture.
“I’m sorry for the way I’ve behaved, Maja. I seem…I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I volunteered for this position moons before Nishta’s death. It meant something important to me. And when Nishta died…a murderous seed was planted in my chest, and it grew so large that my heart withered. I didn’t care about my duty. I didn’t care about you, or Dabani. I only wanted revenge.”
“She was your friend?” I ask.
Nilaruna nods. “Not my best friend. She was much younger than I am, and I am not allowed…knowing I would one day replace her, my father and the high priest allowed a few visits. So, yes. We became friends.”
“She had a tender spirit,” I say.
“Too tender,” she says. “She hated the climb up here. She was terrified of the Swifty. And she thought you hated her.”
“What? Why?”
Nilaruna shrugs. “She wasn’t supposed to speak of it, of course, but I bullied her. She said that you were stiff and formal and not good at conversation.”
“Probably true,” I say. “But I don’t recall us ever trying to have a conversation.”
“She was traditional. Never spoke to a man unless spoken to first. I don’t think she’d ever been alone with a man before you.”
I frown at that. Poor Nishta.
“You were obviously not raised the same way.”
She laughs long and loud, and swipes her eyes.
“Do not let my father hear you say that. He’d skin me alive.”
“So you have an independent spirit,” I say. “The best trait for a Go-Between.”
“Truly?” she asks, hope filling her eyes as she raises them in my direction.
“Truly. So tell me. Why did you volunteer to become the Go-Between?”
Nilaruna shifts on the cushion, leaning forward and curling her legs underneath her. “Why does anyone volunteer? To help the village, of course.”
I narrow my eyes at her, though she cannot see me. “There is no need to lie to me. I can read your thoughts.”
She stiffens. “Then you already know.”
“I said I can, but I haven’t taken your thoughts on this. I’m asking you to share them with me.”
“Not yet,” she whispers.
I enter her mind.
I trust him now, but not with this. I don’t trust anyone with this. Someday, maybe, but it’s too soon. I can’t…
“Your secrets are safe with me,” I say. “I have no one to tell them to.”
“But you would know,” she says simply.
I sigh, but silently. “Enough. We need not speak of such intimate things as secrets on our first meeting. You have already given me an immeasurable gift.”
She lifts her head. “I have?”
“Yes. You have treated me as a human being, not as a god on high. I value that more than I can express.”
“Well, I’ve spoken with a god before, and I didn’t see much point in deference then, either.”
“That is rare,” I say, scratching my chest thoughtfully. “Which one?”
“Shiva.”
I gasp. “The destroyer? You don’t do anything by halves, do you?”
Nilaruna shrugs. “He destroyed, I yelled, he remade me. Not that exciting.”
Except that the hands she wrings in her lap tremble violently, belying her words.
“Tell me more about Nishta,” I say, trying to direct her thoughts elsewhere. “Why did she volunteer for this position?”
She blows out a loud breath. “Her father had begun to arrange her marriage to Vrishin, one of the merchant lords. Nishta panicked and volunteered for Go-Between instead.”
“But service does not prevent marriage,” I say.
Nilaruna turns her face from me. “We all knew the pattern, Maja,” she says. “Nishta knew what was coming.”
***
I stand up and pace along the back wall of the cave.