The Mountain Goddess

by Shelley Elizabeth Schanfield

“Good. A little smile.” Ghosha finished tending the wounds. “And who but each other did we have in this wild place?” the shaman’s wife continued. “Koli women are bold and hard-working, but not bright. Few men ever appreciate intelligence in a woman. Old Anjana was an exception, and my Garuda, too.” She picked up the bowl of gruel. “Here, take a mouthful.”

  Sakhi took the bowl with shaking hands and sipped. “What powers did old Yasodhara have?” What powers did her granddaughter Dhara have, was the unspoken question. As she wiped her chin, Sakhi’s heart beat a little faster, thinking of her disembodied vision in the burning house.

  “More, child,” the shaman’s wife said. Sakhi took another mouthful. “Yasodhara had the gift of foresight.” Ghosha picked up a strip of cloth and began to wind it around Sakhi’s ankle. “She did well to have Anjana for a husband. He was a good, brave man. He used to tease Yasodhara in front of everyone about how inbred the Sakyan royal line was. He said it’s what gave her such a temper. ‘The Gautama family all turn out to be demons or sages,’ he used to say, ‘and you, who are half my being, are a little of both.’ You would think she would have exploded, but it always made her laugh and forget her anger.”

  Ghosha wound the bandage in silence as Sakhi’s thoughts whirled. It felt very grown-up to be told tales that were only whispered about. “But what about Atimaya? And her sisters? Do they have gifts, too?” And what about Dhara?

  The shaman’s wife continued bandaging as she talked, and the pressure on Sakhi’s ankle grew uncomfortable, but she didn’t interrupt. “Prajapati, she was the oldest. She had Yasodhara’s intelligence. Maya, she had beauty. That’s what caught the Sakyan king’s eye. He saw her gathering herbs in the Lumbini Grove, and the love god’s arrows pierced them both at once. Poor Dandapani, it broke his heart.”

  Sakhi forgot her ankle completely. “Dandapani was in love with Atimaya’s sister?”

  “Oh, yes. But Yasodhara preferred her daughter marrying King Suddhodana, who was her nephew. Because of the bloodlines, you know. Because of the prophecy. I think Yasodhara saw that Maya would give birth to a great prince. They gave Atimaya to Dandapani. Those two never liked each other. Atimaya loved—”

  Ghosha stopped suddenly.

  “Loved who?” Sakhi asked, breathless.

  “Ah, one who left the village before you were born.” Ghosha busied herself with bandages for a moment. “Poor Maya,” she sighed.

  “Why ‘poor Maya’?”

  “She died a week after giving birth to the little prince. Sad for Siddhartha, no matter that the court astrologers said the baby would rule the world or conquer death. Atimaya likes to say it’s all nonsense. She was always jealous of Maya and Prajapati, marrying a king. But who knows?”

  There were footsteps down the hall. Atimaya poked her head in. “How was the gruel, my dear Sakhi?”

  Ghosha and Sakhi gave each other guilty looks. “She’s had a few bites.”

  “And now it’s cold. Well, if you expect something warm, you’ll have to wait until the next meal, child. You should have told her to eat while you bandaged, Ghosha. Too late now. Karna’s wife is looking for you. A child has whooping cough.”

  “Hmmph.” Ghosha gathered up the little pots of salves and herbs, arranging them on a low table near the bed.

  “Sakhi, would you like a visitor?” Atimaya said with false brightness.

  “A visitor?”

  “Your rescuer. The merchant Bhallika. He has been quite eager to see you.”

  “Me?” Sakhi smiled wide for the first time since the fire. “He wants to see me?”

  “Yes, hard to believe.” She gave a harsh laugh.

  Sakhi flushed. Ghosha’s eyes narrowed.

  “I’ll fetch him.” She whirled and stormed out before Sakhi could say yes, yes, she wanted a visitor, especially that one.

  Sakhi curled up in a little ball after they left. She was comforted, knowing that Dandapani would take care of her. Her mind spun with all Ghosha had said about powers and prophecies and princes. What powers did her heart’s sister possess? What was Mala teaching her up on the mountain?

  And Bhallika. Atimaya would have her roving eye on him. Dandapani would pretend he didn’t see, as always. Maybe he took lovers, too, but who in the village would catch his eye?

  Bhallika had saved Sakhi’s life.

  “You can’t have him, Atimaya. No one but me can.” Sakhi defied the empty room. In a distant room a shutter slammed, and she almost jumped out of her skin. “He is mine,” she whispered, and pulled the covers over her head.

  The desert sage

  Through the scorched desert air, the little red-necked falcon plunged from a stark blue sky into some dry scrub. A rustle and squeak, and she emerged with a rodent in her talons.

  Greetings, Krasnaya, ruler of the raptors, Nalaka said as the falcon tore at her prey. She turned a fierce yellow eye on the yogi, her beak dripping with blood and fur, but did not respond to his sly jibe. Compared to her cousins the hawks and eagles, she was small, but they did not hunt in this harsh landscape, so she liked to think she ruled here. This she had told him when they first met three years ago. Although it was clear to him that here the sun and wind ruled by their overwhelming presence and water by its marked absence, and every living thing existed at their mercy, he hadn’t argued the point.

  We are going to have visitors, he added as she went back to her meal. Earlier, when Nalaka emerged from his cave for his dawn meditations, tiny dark specks had appeared against the red sun swimming up over the eastern horizon. The specks grew slowly larger as the day passed. Now, Nalaka shaded his eyes from the afternoon’s blazing sun. Double-humped camels could mean either traders from Parsee returning home or Arya merchants on their way west. Either way, he was looking forward to news from the wide world.

  Krasnaya, busy with her meal of desert rat, did not reply. In companionable silence they sat, she under the dried shrub’s meager shade, he on his rock. As shelter from the brutal sun, he had tied a ragged cotton robe between two cracked, bleached branches of the petrified tree next to his meditation rock.

  When he first came to his hermitage, Nalaka had divined the tree’s age by laying a hand on its dead trunk and closing his eyes to see into its past. One hundred generations ago a river ran past this place, watering a shady grove and the fields surrounding a village that was nestled against the hill. Sometimes from that distant past came children’s laughter, a goat bleating, mothers calling.

  Fifty generations ago, the river went underground somewhere far upstream and winds from the western desert blew sand over the fields. People abandoned the place, except now and then a holy one would come to live in the cave atop the hill, as Nalaka did now. An eternal spring, fed by that river that ran far beneath the golden sands and brought the coldest, purest water from King Himalaya’s distant heights, bubbled over the rocks and onto a lush green little island in the ocean of sand.

  Sometimes from the future came bolts of light and heat that he could only think were divine weapons exploding with incalculable force, screams of some enormous, swift predators that flew through the ether on silver wings almost as fast as he could transport himself by means of a yogi’s power, and a rat-a-tat-tat like nothing he could describe. Perhaps it was Lord Shiva’s feet swiftly dancing the final dance that would destroy the universe.

  Nalaka shifted on the hard rock. The present was a white-hot sun in a cloudless blue sky beating down on golden dunes and the barren, low mountains rising in the distance, beyond which lay the great city Taxila. They’ll be at the oasis before the sun sets.

  You’ll have human conversation. The red-necked falcon had finished her meal. She spoke directly to his mind.

  “Sometimes, my friend,” he said aloud, “I need to talk to my own kind, if only to make sure my voice won’t stop in my throat after a long silence.” The last person he’d seen was Mala, who had promised to
return with Dhara as soon as she thought her pupil was ready. Nalaka had mixed feelings about that.

  You are a strange kind of solitary seeker. Krasnaya flew up and alighted on a gnarled, pale grey branch. I cannot recall that your predecessor showed any desire to ever see another human. When caravans stopped, the hermit Valkya hid in the cave until they were gone. Nalaka knew this wasn’t true. As if Krasnaya knew it too, she dropped the subject and began to preen, raising one talon as she dipped her red head to scrape shredded animal flesh from it with her curved beak.

  Nalaka hadn’t planned for such a lonely hermitage. When Asita sent him west, the old yogi had said there were hermits’ caves not far from Taxila. He instructed Nalaka to find a vacant one. “You’ve grown a bit lazy,” Asita had said. “You’ll need to sharpen those debating skills with the rishis living there. You’ll need them when you arrive at the Sakyan court. The most learned Brahmins and sages from all the Sixteen Clans go there to show off their knowledge. You must hold your own among them.”

  Nalaka hadn’t asked when he would at last arrive at the famous court, knowing that Asita wouldn’t answer. He had tried using his foresight to learn more about how he would become Prince Siddhartha’s tutor, but though his temporal vision was much greater now, he also better understood its limits. He could not always follow the very threads he most wished to see on time’s loom.

  The foothills near Taxila were honeycombed with caves, and Nalaka found too many other yogis and rishis, the truly holy as well as frauds and charlatans. He spent almost two years there before he learned of his present hermitage.

  It was a passing merchant of the Pancala clan who told him about it. “A spectacular place. There’s an oasis there,” the merchant had said as they sat next to each other waiting for a great debate between a hard-bitten ascetic and a plump rishi who exemplified the materialist philosophy of sensual enjoyment. “I always spend two days watering the animals there, and refreshing my own soul at the cave. Old Valkya-ji was there for countless years, and many times he blessed me and looked into the future to see what fruit my karma was going to bear. And he was always right. But this trip,” he said with a sigh, “I found his cave empty. Not an old begging bowl or walking staff, not his bones, not even a shred of cloth left by the lion who probably ate him.” Intrigued, Nalaka asked the merchant to take him to the oasis when he returned to the west, and here he had remained since.

  “Well, Krasnaya my friend, I need to prepare for my visitors. And by the way, you didn’t understand Valkya-ji,” Nalaka said to her.

  Humans are far too concerned about understanding and not enough about being. The only understanding any living thing needs is to eat when hungry and sleep when tired, and use the six senses to know when predator or prey approaches.

  Nalaka laughed. “I bow to your wisdom, fierce and beautiful Krasnaya. Nevertheless, Valkya spoke to me from the past. ‘Obey one rule, young man,’ he said to me. ‘Receive whoever comes with generosity and send them away in peace.’”

  Another thing you humans are too concerned about. Past and future. Pay attention to the present. The falcon fixed her yellow eyes on him for a moment.

  You are right, by the way, she said, changing the subject. They’ll be here before sunset. Your eyesight is almost as good as mine.

  “I’m honored you think so.” In truth he possessed vision that far exceeded hers, for he could see vast temporal distances as well as physical ones, and this vision had improved steadily during his desert solitude.

  I shall leave you to your preparations. Her powerful wings flapped as she took off from the branch, then again, once, twice to send her soaring. She circled over her head, dipped her wing in salute, and rose till she became a dark speck that soon disappeared altogether.

  Nalaka began his breathing exercises, and they occupied him until sunset, when the caravan arrived. He watched as the camels’ young attendants, their robes flapping in the rising wind, hobbled the beasts and watered them, then composed himself to greet the boys as they clambered up the boulders to pay their respects to the solitary hermit.

  Legs crossed in the lotus pose, back straight, Nalaka sat under the ragged awning and feasted his eyes. A rare shower had swept by yesterday. In its wake, riotous flowers popped up all over the rocky hill. So did sand fleas and large flies, but these were a minor annoyance to endure for such brilliant patches of red, blue, and purple against the golden sand.

  Namaste, Nalaka greeted Caracal, who picked his way up the hill on padded paws that seemed too big for his compact feline body.

  On reaching the awning, the desert cat arched his back and rubbed his head against Nalaka’s shoulder, purring and flicking flies with his black-tipped ears, not bothering to return the salute.

  “I’m glad to see you, too,” Nalaka said aloud.

  Namaste. Caracal sat on his haunches. He was about the size of a dog, and they were eye to eye. Even in the shade, the animal’s pupils were just little slits in his greenish eyes. Will your friend come today? The cat lifted a paw and began grooming.

  Perhaps. He scratched behind Caracal’s ears and stroked the cat’s smooth, light brown fur, thinking about how excited yet concerned Mala was about her pupil. How quickly Dhara was learning, how extraordinary her abilities, but how undisciplined and thoughtless. Mala said she would bring the girl to meet him. The idea made him uneasy. This girl was Atimaya’s daughter. He had put Atimaya out of his mind years ago, and he didn’t like the feelings her name roused in him.

  Also, he was jealous. Mala had a student; he did not. As much as he liked his solitary desert life, he was eager to meet his own pupil. Asita had promised Nalaka he would be the most influential among Prince Siddhartha’s many and excellent preceptors.

  This promise provided plenty of opportunities for Nalaka to struggle with his ego, an essential step on the path. He was also struggling with impatience, as Nalaka did not know when and how he would go to Kapilavastu. So a bit of the old resentment and rivalry that existed between him and Mala under Asita’s tutelage troubled him.

  I fear I am disturbing your meditations. Caracal gave him a pointed look.

  No, no. I welcome your company. Nalaka was amused that the cat, who saw nothing wrong with his own rudeness, was so sensitive to any perceived slight.

  Though he wasn’t in the wrong, Nalaka began preparing an apology, but before he got very far, sand rose in a whirlwind that became a cloud of sparkling atoms and Mala burst forth, hair wild and loins wrapped in deerskin. And with her, a slender girl, nearly invisible in the desert glare, clothed in an opalescent antariya.

  Dhara. She wafted next to Mala. “Namaste, Nalaka-ji,” Dhara said, breathless. She gave a quick bob of her head, grinning and clearly proud that she had journeyed through the ether. It was indeed an extraordinary accomplishment so early in her training. Yet she was not solidly present as Mala was, a sign that she had not fully mastered the power to travel down a corridor of space-time. Nalaka suppressed a frown.

  Mala settled firmly on a rock facing Nalaka under the awning’s shade and smiled. “Well, friend.” Nalaka had to smile back. It was good to see her.

  A sudden breeze tugged at Dhara’s semi-opaque form. If Mala’s aura had not anchored her, the breeze would have swept her away as it blew past, taking loose twigs and leaves with it into the desert, and she would have become a hungry ghost, wandering the worlds forever searching for her material form. The girl was dangerously unconcerned about this—or else didn’t know what could happen. She tossed her spectral hair, crossed her legs in the air, and sat floating just above the ground.

  “Namaste, Yasodhara,” he said. He could see that pleased Dhara, who was named for her spirited grandmother. The formidable woman had terrified Nalaka as a child.

  He spoke directly to Mala’s mind. You know how dangerous this is. If she’d lost her way in space-time, if something had gone wrong, if the wind had caught her and torn her fro
m you, it would have meant death to the body she left behind, and her jivatman haunting who knows which world in this universe.

  Dhara looked from Mala to Nalaka, alert and intent.

  I was careful, Mala responded. It was an easy journey, and I knew there was no danger here.

  But what dangers does her body face back in that cave?

  None. Rani guards her.

  “Truly, Nalaka-ji, there is no danger,” Dhara said.

  Nalaka grunted in surprise. So you can read thoughts.

  She nodded, wide eyed, as astonished as he was.

  When did you start this? Mala waved a finger at her.

  Dhara struggled to reply to their minds. She had not mastered the technique, though, and it proved beyond her. “I didn’t mean to hear. It just happened! Believe me, Mala-ji,” she said aloud.

  Dhara was using powers without her guru’s guidance. It gave Nalaka pause. An impulsive nature. Like Atimaya.

  Perhaps she understands me, too, Caracal added with a bored yawn.

  Dhara looked at Caracal in wonder. “Did you speak to me?”

  Rude child. Caracal turned his head. She only now acknowledges me.

  “What did he say?” Dhara looked at Nalaka.

  “He said you should have greeted him formally,” Nalaka said with an ironic smile. Caracal did not always extend the courtesy he expected to receive.

  “Oh! Namaste.” Dhara turned eagerly to the cat, who lowered his body and curled against Nalaka’s leg, ignoring her. “Namaste… what’s his name?”

  “Caracal. Come, my friend,” he said to the cat.

  I was here all along, right next to you. Caracal put his ears back. She said nothing.

  She’s young. Mala came to her pupil’s defense. She just traveled hundreds of miles in mere moments, difficult even for experienced practitioners.

  I heard no greeting from you, either. The cat switched his ears back and forth, sending the feathered fur at their tips bobbing. He put his head on his front paws and closed his eyes.