Bhrigu encircled her with one arm and laid a hand on her head. He stroked the thick, unbound waves of her hair. His touch, unaccustomed and so gentle, only made her cry harder, though warmth and calm flowed through her.
“There, child,” he said when she had quieted, “that’s better. Come, sit with me.”
Her sniffles ceased and her eyes dried. An offer of simple companionship was rare from Bhrigu. He drew her to the low wooden bench just next to the door, and they sat, their backs against the little house’s weathered cedar planks, enjoying the last warmth of the sun as a brisk afternoon breeze chased little clouds across a sky the color of lapis.
“So.” Her father crossed his arms over his chest. “Tell me what’s between you and Dhara.”
The words tumbled out. “It’s the yogi. Mala scared me!” Sakhi shuddered, remembering those burning eyes. “But Dhara thought she was wonderful. Ever since Mala left, Dhara’s been moody and avoids me. She says she wants to learn yoga. She wants to be like the ancient heroes and be a warrior and a sage. I don’t see how she can do either, much less both!” Sakhi took a breath. Against her will, she looked toward the mountain goddess’s heights. Clouds scudded past the peak. The hairs on Sakhi’s neck prickled a little, as though Mala could see her from all the way up there. She looked at her hands. “I dreamed Dhara went to the cave and didn’t come back.”
Bhrigu rubbed his shaven chin. “Kolis do not go to that place unless asked by the sage who occupies it.” Bhrigu paused a moment, then tilted Sakhi’s chin up and studied her face. “You will be thirteen soon. In a year or two, we shall have to start looking for a husband in the lowlands.”
There was no Brahmin boy in the village for her to marry. She didn’t want to think about leaving Dhavalagiri. She wanted to sit here forever with her father looking at her like that.
After a time, they raised their faces to watch an eagle soar far above, its wings tinted gold by the sun’s rays.
A gust of cold wind swirled around them. “The weather will soon change,” Bhrigu said. “The snows will make the path impassable except to the hunters. Dhara may not be as wise and sensible as my daughter, but I predict she will stay away from the heights.”
Sakhi’s blood thrummed in her veins. Father thought she was wise and sensible. She wanted to laugh and cry all at once, and remained quiet to savor her happiness until another gust rattled a loose shutter and made her shiver. “Dhara says that long ago, hermits died up there.”
Bhrigu squinted up at the immense peak. “The legends say that some disappeared without leaving a trace, but that doesn’t mean they died up there.”
“Then where did they go?”
“No one knows.” Bhrigu crossed his arms over his chest. “They practice Lord Shiva’s yoga.”
Sakhi’s ears pricked up. Her father never sacrificed to the god Shiva, and she had always wondered if somehow he disapproved of worshipping the Lord of Yoga, as he disapproved of some of the Devi’s rites. “And they make sacrifices to him to gain special powers?” she asked.
“Shiva does not require rituals. As for offerings, his followers offer the self-knowledge they gain through practicing his disciplines. Mastery of yoga awakens great mental abilities, including the ability to transport oneself from place to place or warm oneself with spiritual heat.”
So that was it. That night around the fire the yogi had been almost naked—it had made Sakhi blush—but she never once shivered in the cold night air.
“You know,” Bhrigu continued, “Dhara’s grandfather, the old chief, once told me he watched Asita meditate in front of the cave in a howling blizzard, wearing only his dhoti. The cold did not disturb his concentration.”
Sakhi had been very young when the wiry sage lived up in the cave. Still, she remembered the way he would suddenly appear in the village like magic. A few times when he came to a Koli festival, he made a prediction of what would happen in a week or a month, and then it did, exactly as he said.
“You liked Asita, didn’t you? Even though he worshipped Shiva.”
“Yes. There are all kinds of yogis, just as there are all kinds of priests. He was a true holy man.”
She waited for Bhrigu to say something about Mala, but his silence answered her question. “Did Asita have other powers, too?”
He looked up at the peak again. “He could fly. He could see many of his lives. He told me he could join with the minds of others, though he felt this practice was unwise. He also understood the animals’ languages and knew how to become an animal himself. To attain such powers demands discipline, austerity, and an endless quest for inner truth. The path has many dangers.”
“But discipline and austerity are good things. How can they be dangerous?”
“Few possess these qualities in sufficient quantity to travel the whole path. For those who do, the danger is that they exhaust themselves on the journey, so when they come into their newfound powers they cannot control them, or worse, are seduced by them and use them to control others.” Her father looked down at her. “Asita once told me that in reality, it is more difficult to root hatred and greed out of one’s own heart than to control another’s mind. Do you understand?”
Only dimly, but Sakhi would rather die than admit it. She nodded.
“My wise child,” he said. “Let me teach you a hymn you’ve never heard before.”
“What hymn?”
“The Creation Hymn.”
Usually he would tell her something about the verses he was teaching her, but this time he began to chant with no explanation. When he sang at the altar, his beautiful voice, warm and melodious, rang out over the trees, beyond the mountain goddess’s white peak, up to Indra’s celestial city, but here and now he chanted the verses very softly, directly to her.
Then there was not being or non-being.
There was no realm of air, no sky beyond it, no seeing.
There was no death, nor immortality.
No divider of day and night, no duality.
The All, breathless, breathed, then the great force
Of warmth and light gave birth to the First One.
Who can say what happened? Who truly knows?
Whence the world was born and whither it goes?
The gods are later than its creation, its spark and flame.
Who knows then from where the First One came?
The First One, the first origin of this creation,
Whether the One formed it all or did not,
The One whose eye watches this world in highest heaven,
The One truly knows it. Or perhaps knows it not.
When he finished, he said nothing about its meaning, or which ritual required it, or how best to remember it, but simply said, “Now, the first line.” He sang it and waited for her to repeat it. While the sun dipped below the trees and its rays colored the mountain goddess bright pink, they went through the hymn, line by line. They only had time to go through it once, not nearly enough for Sakhi to commit it to memory, before her mother appeared at the door, yawning.
“Sakhi! Where were you? You should have built a fire long ago. We can’t eat cold dal!”
Late that night, Sakhi woke. The fire in the iron brazier had gone out. Her father’s breathing nearby was deep and even. Next to him, her mother snored softly.
The sky was visible through the smoke hole. Behind the blazing stars, darkness loomed. Sakhi had the sense it was pulling her up through the roof, past the stars, where she would be lost in the infinite heavens.
She squeezed her eyes shut and snuggled down into her blankets, trembling. “Stop being silly,” she whispered to herself. “You can’t fall up.” But even with her eyes closed, the soaring blackness tugged at her. She curled into herself, squeezed her eyes tighter and searched her memory for a prayer, a mantra, a snatch of a hymn, anything to calm her racing mind.
The
words of the Creation Hymn came to her.
Though she had only heard them once they came to her.
She chanted them softly, perfectly, repeating them until finally she sighed the last lines and fell asleep.
Mala
Two human skulls guarded the cave entrance from ledges in the rock, one on either side of the opening, just as Asita had described. Every day Mala gave them a silent bow as she passed. Their empty sockets stared out across a heart-stopping vista, down from the jagged, snow-covered shoulders of Dhavalagiri, the mountain goddess, over a ridge that hid the village that bore her name, on to the foothills and then to the forests and plains along Ganga’s river. There below, fifteen of the Sixteen Clans plowed their fields, raised their cattle, bore their children, crowned their kings.
The rough, proud, mountain-dwelling Kolis were the sixteenth clan. They still followed many of the traditional ways, Asita told her, and were the only Aryas that still elected their chief. This suited Mala. She was tired of kings, who either wanted to kill her or to conquer her in bed.
The Kolis had chosen their chief well, by the look of him. Dandapani was virile, handsome, and confident. A powerful energy passed between him and Mala as soon as they laid eyes on each other. She thought of straddling him naked.
No. She was here for solitude, hardship, discipline. On the other hand, Asita once said that sex did have a place in a spiritual practice if approached with the right motivation. Like so many things her guru had not explained, he had not specified what the right motivation entailed. Perhaps she could explore the idea with Dandapani.
Mala shook her head. Clearing her mind of lust was always a challenge. She gave a rueful smile to a black-striped squirrel watching from a short distance away then headed for the flat rock where she sat every morning and afternoon in meditation. She covered it with a newly cured hide; some unseen hunter had left a deer carcass for her soon after she arrived, making his offering without disturbing her. Asita told her the Kolis understood that a sage needed solitude.
“Hunters will leave meat now and then,” he had said, “or bring a sack of barley before the worst snows keep them away. The others won’t come unless asked, but they will welcome you to the village if you go on feast days. A few of them leave offerings at an old shrine—no, no virgins or enemy warriors. They pray to the Mother, though they call her the Devi like good Aryas, and bring useful things, like a basket filled with food, perhaps a quiver of arrows, or a shawl wrapped around the stone image. Until your tapas gets hot enough, you’ll need one of those shawls for the winter.”
The afternoon sun had warmed the rock, and the heat penetrated the hide. It gave a momentary pleasure as Mala settled into the lotus position, one foot on each thigh, back straight, head floating on top of her spine. She relaxed the muscles of her face, let her eyelids droop, and dropped her chin to her chest. Her breathing slowed. With her inner eye, she followed her breath through her body, watching the nerve channels pulse with prana, the energy that infused all life.
Her mind cleared. A bright circle rose behind her closed lids. She focused and held it. It was the antidote to the darkness that had gripped her for so long. As this inner light grew, her consciousness expanded. The life force within vibrated along with the world outside her skin, little by little erasing the boundary between the two.
Her daughter’s face rose in her mind’s eye, and her heart twisted. She almost whimpered with longing. The bright circle disappeared.
She pushed Kirsa’s image away. Asita! She called silently for her guru.
You must sever all attachments, Asita responded from the ether. Then true peace will become possible.
She began again. Slow the breath, follow its flow. Her nerves hummed. The circle rose again. The outer and inner worlds began to merge, and the pain in her heart receded.
Some time later, a rush of cold wind brought her back to ordinary consciousness. She raised her head with her eyes still closed, then opened them slowly, exhaled deeply. It was difficult for her meditation to reach the deepest absorption a yogi sought, the one where the divine self within reached out for the higher Self, atman, the source of all bliss. She rarely achieved the intense concentration that Asita’s teaching led to. Too often, she lost it in memories of her violent outlaw life, but she had made progress.
“Homage to Lord Shiva!” she called aloud. “Homage to Dhavalagiri!” She needed to hear human speech now and then, up here where only animals and wind spoke. “Svaha! Thank you, Great God and mountain goddess. I offer all my achievements, all my victories to you.” The black squirrel eyed her from a pile of stones near her meditation rock. She could see its irises narrow in fear when she turned her attention on it. Only a few short weeks, and her vision was already keener than any eagle’s.
Sharper than mine? A shadow flitted over the rock. The eagle who had befriended Mala almost as soon as she arrived swooped down and landed on a gnarled fallen cedar nearby.
Namaste. Mala gave a silent bow over joined palms. Forgive me. I had no wish to offend, but I can see very far. Look, down there. That spot of white. The priest is sitting with his daughter outside his house. I can see the warp and weft of his robe.
His daughter is a fine weaver. The eagle blinked its golden eyes. But to see that is not so keen. A hunter might see as much. Why not look through my eyes? Then you’ll know you do not see so far.
It is an honor. Mala had joined her mind with only one other animal, the white tigress Rani that she had known since the great cat was a cub. She was flattered that on such brief acquaintance, the eagle would allow her to join his.
The honor is mine. Asita sent word that you were one of his finest pupils.
Mala bowed at the compliment. She stared into his eyes, sought the pulsing nerves of his body, let her energy run along them until his senses became hers. His wings beat. As they rose, her still form receded. Queasy giddiness rolled through her. She sensed the eagle’s amusement as he gave two powerful flaps of his wings and caught a thermal. They soared and dove toward the forests and plains.
Far away, boats were plying Ganga’s waters. Mala caught her breath. Though they would only be a little speck in the sky to the world below, the silver scales of a fish caught in a net became visible to her as if she were in the boat with the fisherman. On the great trade road that ran along the river, a caravan of oxcarts trudged eastward loaded with goods from Parsee and Graeco, fabled lands beyond the western desert. She could see the knots in the hemp ropes that tied them.
What do you say? Is your vision the sharper, or mine?
Indeed, it is yours.
They soared high above the broad river and the dusty road. The view below fascinated her. She could see each leaf in the forest and the whiskers of a frightened hare hopping across the road. She was so absorbed that when Varanasi’s white mansions came into view they took her by surprise.
No! She could not shut the eagle’s eyes to the Shining City, where she had known her greatest happiness and worst suffering. Not there. Please.
Without a word, he dipped a wing and turned back toward Dhavalagiri’s distant peak. He was swift, and they were soon circling over the village.
With his eyes and ears, Mala saw each flower on a woman’s embroidered robe and heard the laughter of the grubby children playing in front of her hut. She saw the sweat dripping down the flanks of the short mountain ponies that Dandapani and his warriors led toward the stable as they returned from patrol, and heard their low whinnies. She saw Dhara’s rosy cheeks as the chief’s daughter came running from the direction of the shaman’s hut, her warrior’s braid flapping against her back. “Father!” the girl sang out breathlessly.
She is wild, that one. The eagle floated on a thermal. She has the mixed Koli and royal Sakyan blood, blood that goes back to the celestial sage Gautama, the same blood as the prophesied prince. She could be extraordinary. Can she be taught?
This
question had lingered in Mala’s mind since she met Dhara three weeks before, the night she told the tale of the prophecy to the clan. The girl’s aura had great force, yet she was unaware of her latent gifts. Her parents saw it, though. It was plain the mother was jealous and hindered Dhara, but her father was encouraging her.
When Dhara’s eyes fixed on Mala, they were full of adoring fascination. She could be more than a mother to the girl, much more. She could be her guru.
But she must be careful. Only if she wants me to, and only when she’s ready. They circled back up to the rock where Mala’s physical body sat motionless. Thank you for the teaching. Namaste.
Namaste. The eagle soared away.
The sun was long past its zenith; its rays were losing their warmth. The smoke of cook fires began to rise from the village. Mala headed back to the cave.
Part I
THREE YEARS LATER, BEFORE THE SNOWS
Make-believe
“I wonder what those two Malla boys would have looked like naked,” Dhara said.
Sakhi flushed in the dark and giggled. “You should have asked to see what dangles between their legs before they left.”
“Tsk. Such talk from a modest Brahmin girl.” Dhara stifled a laugh and burrowed closer under the heap of blankets and deerskins.
Sakhi smiled to herself. They had piled them together to make their bed as if they were still children, not young women going on sixteen. They played the old game of make-believe in which the skins were the back of a tigress they rode, like the warrior goddess who slew the demon all the other gods had failed to defeat. Of course, Dhara was the goddess and Sakhi her companion who tagged along to hand her magical weapons to slay the monster.
The Mountain Goddess Page 3