Chandni’s fingers had carded gently through her hair.
“Not many children are born on the Hirana,” she’d said. “It’s no surprise that she shares a special bond with the temple.”
“Children shouldn’t be born here,” Sendhil had said, and there had been something in his tone that had made Elder Chandni still.
“As you say,” Chandni had murmured, drawing the covers over Priya.
She hadn’t mentioned it again. And it didn’t matter anymore. Priya squeezed her eyes tight shut. Raised a trembling hand from Ashok’s shoulder, and pointed the way. He swore an oath—of fear or thanks, she didn’t know—and followed her guidance.
The entrance was set into the floor of an unlit corridor. Ashok skidded to a stop. Still holding her, he jumped into the darkness, stumbling a little down the first step, then the second. Priya opened her eyes then, and watched as he used his twice-born gifts and touched his fingers to the aperture above them.
The way closed, and they were in darkness.
They made their way down. Down to the heart of the Hirana, the yolk in the egg.
They reached ground. Even through the closed lids of her eyes, she could see and feel the press of the luminous water. The tug of it, more stars than river.
“Don’t look, Priya,” he whispered. So she didn’t. She pressed her head against his shoulder, hard enough that she could feel the firm pressure of cloth against her eyes, sticky with her own tears and his sweat. She could smell smoke, still. “Don’t look. Just show me the way.”
“The way where?”
“Out of here,” he said. His voice trembled, faintly. He smelled of copper. “You know the Hirana better than anyone. And it knows you.”
The distant drip of water. Luminous blue light, all around them, seeping under her eyelids. He wasn’t wrong. Sometimes the Hirana felt like another limb to her. He carried her near the water’s edge, seeking a way through. She pointed the way. Tunnels. There were tunnels after.
“I can’t touch the water,” she gasped, “I can’t, I can’t. What if I die?”
“Hush,” he whispered. “Hush. I won’t drop you.”
He tucked her face beneath his chin. He was holding her up, even though his arms trembled, even though he was sweating and she could hear him crying.
“We’re going to be fine,” he said, muffled and shaky. “Just fine.”
They opened the way together, in the end. Reshaped the stone and emerged free and alone, on the green surrounding the Hirana.
Above them the pyre still burned.
“Don’t look,” Ashok repeated. And though he should have been too weak to pick her up again, she heard him inhale and do it anyway. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, and didn’t try to be strong. And for once he did not ask her to be.
It took two days for the leaves on Priya’s skirt to die.
Years. Years she and Ashok had spent on the streets, hungry and mosquito-bitten, stealing food and begging for it when there was none to steal. He’d beaten other men a few times, taking their coin. He’d made allies out of bad men, and men like Gautam, who could be bound by fear and favors and debts unpaid. But as he’d grown sicker, his gifts had seemed to fade too. And Priya’s gifts had always been small. They’d grown smaller, beyond the Hirana, along with her grasp on her own memories.
Chandni had seen something in her. But that had been in another life.
Now, Priya stood on the plinth, the rain in her eyes, and heaved such deep, sobbing breaths that her lungs ached with them.
She’d found the way through. That night. She was the one who’d saved Ashok, and he had saved her.
He saved me. I saved him.
She realized she was crying. She dashed her eyes with the backs of her hands, furious with herself for weeping like a little girl. No matter how old she grew, family it seemed still had the power to hurt her.
They had saved each other. He’d left her for Bhumika to raise, because he’d loved her. He’d hurt her because he loved her.
Love. As if love excused anything. As if the knowledge that he was cruel and vicious and willing to harm her made her heart ache any less.
She stepped down from the plinth. The cloth of her sari blouse clung to her skin. Her hair was dripping. Her footprints, as she crossed the triveni and walked out into a corridor leading to the kitchens, were damp, the stone beneath them shimmering with movement, as if it walked with her.
There was no void in her any longer. Whatever she was—weapon, monster, cursed or gifted—she was whole. Beneath her the Hirana was warm. An extension of her.