Page 151 of Her Soul for a Crown
“The size doesn’t always matter.” Bithul shook his head.
Anula scoffed. “I know an estate full of concubines that will tell you differently.”
“For prayer’s sake!” Premala swatted at her. “We’re in a blessed painting. Clearly you haven’t changed that much.”
Anula smirked as darkness suddenly consumed them, the black-and-gray veneer of the cave walls ending their walk. Fate nodded to Prophet Revantha. Hurriedly, the young man stepped forth, swiped a hand across the false wall, as if brushing away dust, yet instead of smearing the paint, the color completely vanished. A round silver lock appeared.
The prophet lifted the pendant from around his neck and pressed it into the lock’s grooves. The rubies snicked into place. He turned it to the left until it clicked. He spun it quickly to the right and back to the left. A ticking sounded, and a network of iron rose up along the length of the painting, spindly round pieces twirling, connecting, and interlocking, until they disappeared into the blackened sky.
Light outlined a door. The prophet bowed to Fate and returned to his position. The banished Divinity regarded the small army. “Stay close, keep your hands to yourself, and follow only me.”
They opened the door, and all stepped through.
***
The cosmos didn’t feel like any surface she had treaded on. Not marble or stone or fur or grass.
Anula half expected to fall and catch, like entering a painting. But under her feet, the cosmos felt like the cool waves of a bathing pool if her soles never touched the floor.
As they glided through the everything and nothing, stars blinked, there and gone. Colors stretched in a rainbow swirled above and below, and it rolled in the far-off distance like the hills leading to the Mihintale and Ritigala Mountains.
A whistle sounded to the right. Every head craned to see, as if a Divinity might call down to them. But it was only a boy, waving enthusiastically.
“Come this way!” he called. “You can reach Galnewa.” He pointed behind him, where the darkness of the cosmos was suddenly streaked green and blue and brown. The image of a paddy field coming into view.
“Galnewa?” a man behind Anula asked. “That’s my home!” He glanced at her, at Fate, then stepped out of line. “I’m sorry, but I must know my family is safe.”
“No,” Fate said, but the man ran to the boy, and as their hands entwined, the painting winked out. And so did they.
A chill shivered down Anula’s back. “Where’d he go?”
“Wherever the cosmos wants to take him,” Fate said.
“How comforting.”
“You don’t know?” Premala asked, swiveling to her Kattadiya, counting silently.
“Why should I?” Fate countered. “Am I the cosmos?”
A terse silence passed down the line, each person tucking their hands at their sides.
“Are the lost ever found?” Bithul asked, as though Fate would answer.
“If the Heavens and Earth know not their location,” they said, “yet the cosmos does, are they truly lost?”
“Dotheyknow where they are?” Anula asked.
“Is the knowing so important, if it be good?”
“Isit good?” she pressed.
“Why would it not be? It created all.” Fate turned, cutting off the conversation and continuing through the cosmos.
It was not only a boy whose form the cosmos took, calling out or speaking to them. Animals of every shape and size did, too. Cats rubbed against their legs. A school of fish followed them. Plants grew and died and grew again beneath their feet. A sense of awe and warning in every caress. A challenge to trust, to surrender. A promise to take them far away, to be good, in its own way.
Anula’s fingers twitched. Perhaps a flower or a whale or a tree could take her to Reeri, or at least tell her of his end. The line paused, and she stared at the pink nelum growing around her ankle. Perhaps if she asked nicely, she could say goodbye to him, too. If the cosmos was truly good, it would want that for her, wouldn’t it?
Bending her knees, Anula reached down, but a flash of color stopped her. It was a painting and the blurred edges of a wall. Though she couldn’t see the entire room in which it was hung, it was clear enough to know that it was inside a stupa. Two more paintings appeared by its side, looking in on other rooms.
