Lakshmana and I walked slowly. With every step, my burns throbbed, and my head pounded.
“Ma?” Lakshmana asked. “Would you like me to carry you?” I shook my head, and he seemed to understand. “I am sure she will be happy to see you, after so long a time.”
“Yes,” I said, for I could not manage more words.
A man stepped forward from the gatehouse, dressed in a stiffly pressed white tunic. My mother had done well for herself. “What is your business?”
“I am here to see Kekaya,” I said, groping blindly for the mix of haughty and kind that usually served me so well. I failed utterly, my words slurring together as though I had imbibed too much wine.
“Minister Kekaya,” he corrected, turning up his nose. “Many people come to see her. Her time is both precious and limited.”
I snorted before I could stop myself. “Well, that’s nothing new,” I muttered under my breath.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m her daughter,” I said, enunciating more clearly.
The man looked me up and down. “That you are not.”
“Excuse me?”
“You are most certainly not Devi Meena.” He looked past me. “Ah, Minister, my apologies.”
I turned in a jerky movement. There before me was my mother.
It reminded me of entering the Binding Plane, a veil of age overlaying a face I recognized well. Her hair had grayed and thinned slightly, but her uplifted chin and steely eyes had not changed.
She was dressed ornately, in a style unfamiliar to me, with a robe of deep blue, richly embroidered with silver flowers, elegantly draped over her white and silver silk sari. I felt like a child again, scruffy, unimpressive, intimidated by her cool grace. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, and only a pitiful croak came out.
“This woman came here asking to see you, Minister. She claimed she was your daughter. I was about to send her away.” My mother lifted a hand, a gesture so familiar to me that my throat ached. The man stopped talking at once.
“Kaikeyi?” she whispered. I pressed my lips together and managed a shaky bob of the head.
Her face crumpled, and in that moment, she was transformed from the mother I had known into the mother I had wished for. She looked confused, bereft, loving. I used to pray she would show any one of those emotions to me, and now I had all of them and I simply wanted to cry. She reached toward me with weathered hands and I flinched away. The world spun, arms caught me, and that was the last thing I knew.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
MY BONES ACHED. I blinked against heavy eyelids to find an unfamiliar room. But my hands and throat felt pleasantly cool.
“Kaikeyi? Kaikeyi! You’re awake.” And there was my mother again, looking over me as I lay in bed. I had to choke back a wild laugh at this wonder.
“How long?” I asked instead. It no longer hurt to talk.
“A full day has passed.”
“And you… have been here?”
I watched my mother’s face flit through several emotions as though she was picking a story, and I entered the Binding Plane. A slender chain of purple connected us. “I just sent your son away to bathe,” she said truthfully. “A healer has attended to your burns, and they are much better already. Lakshmana explained how you came to have them. We have gotten very skilled at treating such injuries here.”
I had so many questions. “How did you recognize me?”
My mother’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “You are my daughter.”
“You barely looked at me as a child. How can you recognize me as an adult?” I asked. I hated that my voice sounded young, a petulant whine.
“I have seen a painting of you,” she said, leaning forward to brush my hair from my face. “I know I was not a good mother to you and your brothers. I was unhappy at court, and you deserved better. But it broke my heart when I realized I would never see you again.”
There was a lump in my throat, blocking my words. And anyway, what was there to say? She had done what she had done, and neither of us could go back.
Her expression fell slightly at my silence, but her fingers continued to card through my hair. “I am very happy to see you,” she said. “But I know you did not simply come to visit. Would you like to tell me why you are here?”
The question was a relief, allowing me to push aside emotion in favor of business. “I am here to speak to the governor of Janasthana,” I improvised. “Our traders have complained of various harassments, and we wished to come to an agreement about dealing with those threats. I volunteered.”