The Mountain Goddess

by Shelley Elizabeth Schanfield

  “Rohit!” Angulimala called. Dhara and Rohit sprang apart.

  “Ah, I see,” the outlaw said when she reached the steps. “You’ve taken a fancy to our princess.”

  “You don’t see,” Rohit said. “It’s just that we have something in common.”

  “Oh?” Her smile made Dhara queasy. “What’s that?”

  “We’re the only sane people here,” he replied.

  Angulimala’s nostrils flared. Her hand went to her knife. Then she smiled.

  He left without a word. Dhara watched him go, impressed at his boldness and relieved, despite the uneasiness that permeated her, to think he might be an ally in this place.

  Angulimala spent the next several days with Dhara, treating her like the Mala of old had, testing her on her form in the asanas, alternately praising her and handing out brutal criticism. She began a series of teachings that would enable Dhara to understand every human tongue and the languages of all animals. Dhara was happy and began to relax. Her senses and intuition seemed stable and she felt nothing but positive energy from Angulimala. Curious though she was about Rohit’s past, she didn’t seek him out. She was too enthralled to have her guru back.

  Dhara made no attempt to contact Nalaka and Siddhartha; she was certain they would guess where she had gone. Ignoring her own common sense, she told herself they wouldn’t worry, and that she would wait until she had decided how long to stay before she opened her mind to them. Perhaps when she returned she would have useful information about the outlaws’ camps, numbers, and practices that she could share at council.

  One night, after she’d been at the camp about a week, she awoke from a dream in which she was summoned before King Suddhodana’s war council. When she arrived at the council chamber, two guards threw her at Suddhodana’s feet. “Traitor,” the king said. “I’ll have your head.”

  She awoke in a sweat. The dream was so clear, so real, down to the feel of the cool stone floor against her skin as she lay prostrate, that she could only think it was a premonition. The fact was that when she returned she would face serious consequences. She felt she had gone mad. She didn’t understand how she could have left Kapilavastu without thinking that it would appear as a complete betrayal to the court. It was as if all reason had deserted her, that she was not in command of her own thoughts.

  It was Angulimala who commanded her, who had seized the reins of her senses. Angulimala did not have control all the time, Dhara felt, but when she did, Dhara did not recognize that her thoughts were not her own. She needed help. It was time to contact Siddhartha and Nalaka.

  In her bed nearby, Angulimala breathed steadily. She was asleep. This was the time to touch Siddhartha’s consciousness. As soon as she tried, he was there.

  Tell us where the outlaw camp is. Then we will come get you.

  Before she could respond, the connection was severed. Dhara tried frantically to connect with Siddhartha, then with Nalaka, but it was no use. The ether was impenetrable.

  She would slip away, find a place where she could change form and fly away. As soon as the thought arose, she became aware that Angulimala’s steady breathing had ceased.

  For the rest of the night, Dhara lay awake, in terror of her own mind.

  The next morning, the camp was full of rumors about a band of mercenaries heading toward the main encampment. Angulimala had called a council, and Dhara was seemingly forgotten.

  She knew at once where she must go. “It has some magic protecting it,” Rohit had said.

  He was seated in front of the round hut in lotus pose. “I’ve been waiting for you,” Rohit said. “Let’s go inside.”

  The hut was hardly larger than the deer skin that covered its dirt floor. There was a low bed and a few pegs on which hung an extra robe, a bow and quiver, and a sword belt with a short blade in a leather scabbard. A walking stick leaned against the doorframe. It was like a sage’s hermitage. They sat down.

  As soon as she entered the hut, Dhara felt a burden lift. “I forgot what you said, that I should be alert every moment. Or I didn’t forget, but Angulimala was controlling me. I lost myself in her teachings.”

  “I wondered why you came here, and that’s the answer. Hopefully something good will come of the things she’s been teaching you. They are yours, if you can break free of her.”

  There was an awkward pause. “What shall I do?”

  “We must find a way to get you out of here. I have an idea, but I don’t want to tell you just yet. Angulimala may wrest it from you.”

  Dhara felt tears coming on. “This is the first time I’ve felt like myself since I got here, the first time I can really think. I need to decide how to face Siddhartha and Nalaka and the king’s council when I return.”

  “Nalaka and Siddhartha will understand and be your allies. Don’t worry about the king’s council just now; it will use energy that you will need to escape. It’s good for you to stay in the hut and recover some of that energy.”

  “I want to stay here.” Dhara smiled ruefully. “You said we had a lot to tell each other. I can tell you about when I met Harischandra. Then you could tell me your story. He is your father, isn’t he?”

  He nodded, and she told him how she and Mala went to the cremation grounds, and what Harischandra had told her about losing his kingdom, his wife, and his son, and how Bhallika later told him that Saibya had become a follower of Mahavira Jain, and that Rohit had likely been killed by bandits who attacked Bhallika’s caravan. Rohit listened without expression.

  “Everything he said is true,” he said when she was done. “Up to when the bandits attacked. I wasn’t killed, or even kidnapped. I ran away with them. You see, when I saw everything that Vishvamitra was doing to Father, and how Father didn’t fight but only kept giving in and giving in, I was tormented. As we traveled with the merchant’s caravan, I thought more and more about it, and became ashamed.”

  “You know your father regards Vishvamitra as a great teacher,” Dhara said.

  Rohit snorted. “I’ll bet he said something about learning true detachment.”

  Dhara nodded. “Yes. He said Vishvamitra had taught him he had to uproot all his anger against his enemies and his desire to be with his loved ones, so that he could achieve moksha.”

  “Where does that leave those who love him?”

  Dhara couldn’t answer this. “Tell me what happened to you next.”

  “I saw the bandits as bolder and stronger than my kingly father. I slipped away from my mother and followed the bandits into the forest and asked to join them. They were harsh men, and made me a virtual slave. I regretted my choice, but I didn’t know how I could escape or where I could go. But even though I was so young, I’d begun my training in the warrior’s arts. A man who did things to me I don’t like to remember came one time too many to indulge his filthy lust, and instead of giving in as my father had, I wrested his knife away and killed him. I knew that the others might kill me to avenge him, but I was so desperate I didn’t care. To my surprise, the leader said I was tougher than I looked and might be some use to their band. I hated them, but stayed until I knew enough about a bandit’s trade to strike out on my own. In a few years I had my own gang of three men. That’s when I met Mala.”

  “All that time your father thought you were dead,” Dhara said. “You could leave Mala and go to him. He would be overjoyed to see you.”

  Rohit nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve often wondered, if he were still alive and I found him, what I would do. I’ve tried to forgive him, but never quite succeeded.”

  “How did you meet Mala?”

  “You know her story.”

  “Bits and pieces. Harischandra told me she was living at the cremation grounds with her lover and child.”

  “Yes. Her lover was a high-born Sakyan doing a penance there. I don’t know why exactly they were attacked, but a couple roughnecks left her lover as
good as dead and stole her daughter. My man Lanka and I scared the attackers off, and we took her with us to our camp. Eventually, she became one of us. She and I were lovers for a time. Then she became our leader, and everything changed.”

  “She led your gang?”

  Rohit got up and walked to the hut’s doorway. “From the moment she joined me and my men, she was a better leader than I. Even then, it was clear she had supernatural gifts.” He came back to the deer skin and sat down. “Those gifts corrupted her. I stayed with her, though, even though she took other lovers.”

  “Do you still love her?”

  “I loved the Mala I knew. And you? Do you still love her?”

  “The same,” Dhara said. “I once thought that if I came here, I would help Angulimala turn back into my guru Mala.”

  Rohit shook his head, smiling. “I’ve been trying to do that since she returned to the army. Even though I know it’s futile.”

  Dhara felt tears rising again. “Nalaka told me that I couldn’t save her, that she must save herself.”

  “Yes. That’s right. It’s true for all those who are lost. We can be with them on that road to salvation, but we can’t travel it for them. If they refuse to even begin that journey, well, it might just be foolish to stay with them.”

  “She did walk that road to salvation for a time. I walked it with her, as her student. She never told me how she came to practice yoga.”

  “A long and winding tale. In short, she met Asita as a girl. I knew him because he had a hermitage next to my gang’s camp. Her attackers injured her badly, and when she came to our camp I went to Asita. He was known as a healer. So they renewed their acquaintance. Later, when she’d turned utterly ruthless, I convinced her to go to the old yogi and seek help.”

  “You convinced her then. Couldn’t you convince her now?”

  “Asita’s gone. You saw him achieve moksha.”

  “What did you do when you left her with Asita?”

  “I went to find my own guru. I sat at the feet of many. Not a single one could help her; of that I’m sure.”

  Dhara thought about the yogis and rishis who had debated at Suddhodana’s court. “I don’t either. But why do you stay?”

  “I’ve been thinking about leaving for some time. Perhaps it was karma that kept me here until you came, so I could help you escape.”

  After her visit to Rohit’s hut, Dhara used some of the techniques Nalaka had taught her to shield her mind. Though it was dangerous to wander the camp, at night she hid in the shadows using tricks Siddhartha had taught her and Angulimala was improving upon. She eavesdropped on foreign mercenaries and tried to decipher the jumble of languages they spoke in an effort to find out what Angulimala had planned for her.

  One night as Dhara was prowling about, she heard two mercenaries talking about how the outlaw queen planned to harness her special powers for her own ends. “They say she will be able to wield the weapons of the gods, just like Durga,” one of the men said.

  “I wonder if Angulimala can truly control her,” another replied. “The girl has Gautama blood. They all go crazy, sooner or later.”

  “Who is crazier?” the first one said. “The princess or our leader?”

  Wield the gods’ own weapons. It was more bitter than sweet to remember how she used to play the warrior goddess while Sakhi handed her Indra’s thunderbolts to hurl at imaginary enemies. They had been so young and innocent and happy. Dhara felt more like a helpless child than a goddess now.

  The very next day, a special captive was brought to the camp, and everyone’s attention—including Angulimala’s—was focused on her.

  A Kosalan girl, a Brahmin’s daughter of about fifteen, was captured with one of the caravans that had been recently taken by the outlaws. When she arrived with her captors, she was lovely if frightened, clad with virginal modesty in an antariya of pale green silk, bedecked with an armful of delicate gold bangles, dangling coral and gold earrings, a thin collar, and a small emerald at her nostril. The captive had caught sight of Dhara that day and gave her a hopeful glance. Dhara was overwhelmed with pity, fear, and the shame of knowing she couldn’t do anything to help her.

  Within a day, they’d discovered who she was. Prince Virudha himself sent an envoy with a ransom offer for his priest Yajna’s daughter. “Yajna’s daughter,” Angulimala had said, putting a finger under the girl’s chin and lifting her face. “A Brahmin’s daughter and a virgin. A good offering for the Mother, wouldn’t you say, Lila?”

  The next day, the envoy’s head was returned to Prince Virudha.

  Scarred bandits and cold-eyed mercenaries massed along the short, rutted street that divided the encampment. Many more outlaws gathered in the surrounding dense forest, perching in the trees for a good view of the rite or gathering in front of their tents and shacks, listening for the priestess to begin the chant.

  The girl’s eyes, swollen from crying, were dull and glazed. The potion Lila administered to quiet her had taken effect, or maybe she had exhausted all her tears. Her screams and weeping had penetrated every corner of the encampment all night. Dhara couldn’t help wondering if it was really part of the ritual that any man who wanted her could pay the priestess and take her. She was an innocent, after all.

  She was naked except for the fine gold collar. Long, tangled dark hair fell over her shoulders and half-hid her face. She swayed and stumbled as Angulimala and Lila led her to the ancient tree whose roots she would soon water with her blood. The tree looked as old as the Mother herself, soaring above the forest around it, its half-dead, leafless upper limbs clawing at the darkening sky, while the huge red sun sank behind it.

  Dhara couldn’t tear her eyes from the girl, who stared unseeing at the ground with those swollen eyes. She was painted a hideous mishmash of white, yellow, and black, and had streaks of red running down her legs and arms from her last brutal night. The victim’s swaying had grown worse. Dhara gave a little prayer that the drug would release the girl before the rite’s final bloody act. “They ties her hands and loops her arms over a limb so as her toes is off the ground,” one of Angulimala’s greasy-haired lieutenants had told Dhara with a grin. “Then they’ll slit her from cunt to that golden collar.” A travesty of the sweet custom of offering holy water from Ganga’s river to a tree inhabited by some forest nymph, of draping garlands of flowers over its branches to adorn its hidden spirit.

  Dhara hadn’t been much older than Yajna’s daughter when she chose yoga’s path. Now she was clammy with fear and her eyes smarted with tears. The horror, nausea, and fascination she’d felt as a child whenever she witnessed the sacrifice of a ram on Indra’s altar were mild compared to this.

  Under Mala’s tutelage, she had learned tat tvam asi, You are that, you are everything. Dhara didn’t even know the girl’s name.

  You are that girl, Dhara.

  She spun around. “Rohit!”

  “Shhh. I’m sorry I frightened you.”

  “What did you say?”

  He wrinkled his brow. “Nothing.”

  It wasn’t Rohit who had spoken. It was something within Dhara that spoke, something that Mala and Rani had awakened in her, back on Dhavalagiri. She hugged him in anguish.

  “You must be strong,” he whispered, patting her back.

  “Why are they doing this to that poor girl?” Dhara said, releasing him.

  “It’s a terrible evil. But something good can come of it.”

  “What possible good?”

  The priestess had begun chanting an unfamiliar hymn. Some joined in.

  “Your escape,” Rohit whispered. “Come with me.”

  “Where?” she exclaimed.

  Rohit put a finger to his lips, but the chanting had grown louder and drowned out her voice.

  Dhara sidled closer to him. “She knows where I am every instant.”

  “Lila is helping
us. The Nagas have their own magic. The priestess says Angulimala has gone too far, sacrificing this girl. She’s an innocent.”

  “Why doesn’t Lila stop her then?”

  “For us. She is making sure that Angulimala is fully distracted, so you can escape.”

  “If she catches us, she’ll kill you for helping me.”

  “Whatever happens, the Nagas will guide you to safety. If she catches me, it will have been worth it, to free you and thwart her.”

  A shout rose from the outlaws. The girl staggered as Angulimala tied her hands in front of her, then threw the end of the long rope over a limb and began to pull. The mob pressed forward toward the sacred tree. All attention was fixed there. A dark aura pulsed around the outlaw queen as she raised her sword.

  “But how? Angulimala has stolen my powers. I can’t send myself through the ether or turn into an eagle.”

  “You can walk.” Rohit said in an urgent whisper. He pulled her toward the footpath. “Come. Before it’s too late.”

  “Must leave you here,” Heshu said. “Follow that way.” The Naga warrior pointed into the trees. It was still dark and shadowy, and Dhara squinted, trying to see.

  “What did he say?” Rohit asked.

  “He says to follow the path over there.” She nodded in the direction Heshu was pointing.

  “Where? I don’t see it,” Rohit said in exasperation. “We’ve been walking for two days. We should have reached the Terai long ago. I still think we could have been followed.” He had objected when their Naga escort led them north, deep into the forest. They were loyal to the priestess, and he didn’t quite trust her or them, though it was she who had approached him with an offer to help Dhara escape.

  “Only Nagas know this way,” said Heshu. “No one has followed.” He pointed again. “Terai there.”