“Yes.”
“Good. I’m going to look.”
“But—”
“Take the lantern.” She handed their shared light to Meena, who grasped it with trembling fingers. “I won’t be long.”
Just like Priya had once known how to peel skin from bone, she’d known how to climb the Hirana. That was what the temple children had done, after all: led pilgrims seeking the blessings of the yaksa spirits up the Hirana’s surface; guided the pilgrims up to the temple elders, who were the yaksa’s chosen. There had been no rope then. Pilgrimage was a journey, after all, both spiritual and physical. It had a cost. Some faltered or failed. Some fell. The yaksa demanded strength from their worshippers, just as they had demanded it from their temple council.
Only the worthy could rise.
Priya had been worthy once.
Without the lantern in her hand, it was easier to move swiftly. She held the rope only loosely, darting up the Hirana as fast as she could. She and Meena had fallen behind the other maidservants—Meena’s nervousness had slowed them both down—but Priya soon reached the point where the others stood, huddled so close their feet were almost touching.
The maidservant nearest to Priya was leaning out precariously, a hand twisting the guiding rope, the other holding her lantern as far out into the dark as she could.
In its light, Priya could see Sima.
Sima was trapped to the left of the guiding rope, slightly farther down the Hirana’s surface: She must have tripped, slipping, her body sliding treacherously down the wet rock. Her arms were outstretched, every muscle in them defined. She had her fingers hooked into one of the fissures in the stone, knuckles white with the strain of holding her body up. The rest of her was invisible.
She’d fallen into a rift carved into the rock, a cleverly concealed gap hollowed out between a series of statues, shaped to follow the natural fall of shadow. From most angles, it would have been invisible. But now that Sima was caught in it, the trap was hard to miss. It held her like a mouth, toothless and grasping.
Priya had no idea how deep the rift was, but the thought of Sima losing her grip—of Sima being killed by the tumble that followed, or worse, being trapped alive down in the dark where no one could reach her—made Priya’s stomach clench with nausea.
The leaning maidservant was yanked back by a rough hand.
“Don’t lean out,” Gauri, the head maidservant, said angrily. “I can’t have you falling too. You,” she shouted to a woman farther up, gesturing at her with her stick, “go and fetch a guard from the doors. Tell them a girl’s slipped. Hurry!”
The woman began to climb. But she was too slow, on the wet ground, with the lamp and the rope in her hands. Too slow.
Sima was panting hard, the whites of her eyes visible in the flickering lantern-lit dark.
“I can’t hold on,” Sima wheezed.
“You can and you will,” Gauri said. “You’re a strong girl. Don’t let go now.”
But Sima was frightened, and her hands were surely as raw as Priya’s, the stone glassy under her fingers. She would not be able to hold on until help came.
Priya looked down at the ground. At the stone, carved to resemble vines and leaves, melding with the green sprouting up through its cracked surface.
She’d known the Hirana once, and it had known her.
It knew her still.
She hadn’t been sure the first night she’d climbed, when all she’d been able to concentrate on had been making her way up to the top without losing her nerve. But she was sure now. As she stood and forced herself to breathe—as the lanterns shook, and Sima’s fingers slid the tiniest bit from their handhold—she felt the pulse of the wet stone beneath her feet, slithering as if the vines on its surface moved to cradle her. She had a feeling that if she pressed her ear to the Hirana she’d hear the stone heave, like the vertebrae of a great, sleeping beast.
She could step out. Let that spine carry her. All it would take was a leap of faith.
I shouldn’t, Priya thought distantly. Spirits, I really shouldn’t.
But this was Sima. Her friend.
She kneeled down. The yellow lantern light threw shadows over her bare feet. The stone beneath her was black, its surface fissured like a cracked egg, leaking lichen and moss from the yolk. She touched her fingertips to the green; felt the warmth of it beneath the rainwater.
“Ground protect me,” she murmured. Then she stood once more and stepped away from the guiding rope, out to the left and into the darkness.
She heard shocked cries above her—heard Gauri yell her name—but Priya did not lift her head. She kept on moving. Slow, careful, cursing herself in her head.