Page 11 of Her Soul for a Crown
Kama leaned against a wall, took a long, slow bite of her food. “Coconut milk is my favorite part of curry. Do you think I could bathe in it?”
“Kama—”
“I shall give it a try. Surely someone is desperate enough for love to pour me a river’s worth.”
As one of the sisters of the Yakkas of Love, Kama’s powers resided over the heart. With nothing left for the mind, Calu had once jested. Reeri’s impatience boiled. “Answer my question, please.”
Kama licked her fingers clean and dropped the empty bowl to the ground. It skittered and knocked over a candle. “Have not their offerings been strengthening you? Or have you been too enthralled with your dreams to take note?”
“What do you mean?”
She cocked her head. “The shackle loosens with each bargain.”
“Mine does not.”
She glanced at the floor of offerings. “When was the last time you tested it?”
In truth, he did not know. After so many failed attempts, he had taken to brooding about it instead.
Kama’s gaze brightened. “Go ahead, do it. That is what you were dreaming about, was it not? Being outside. Eating curry. Living life with the one with whom your soul communes.”
Her velvet voice, made for completing bargains of the heart, picked at the thread of his desire and tugged. Reeri did not fight it. As he had done countless times, he reached inside himself and grasped the invisible line attached to his navel, hope blooming. This time, he found his fetter lax.
“There you go,” Kama cooed. She stepped lightly over to him. “Take hold of your dreams, Reeri. Come and commune.” She bent down and brushed a delicate finger across the spot she had pinched. Then, with a peal of laughter, she danced out of the shrine. Arms raised to the Heavens, she said, “The flashier your craft, the faster they will pray!”
Reeri’s cheek burned.
It burned with the hottest desire.
***
Flashy was not Reeri’s forte.
But he knew within the depths of his being that he was not meant to be alone. It was written on his heart. Alongside each name in his clan and the nameless soul he might one day find.
He began with boils. The kind that was puss filled and contagious. He moved on to rashes, reaching up spines and covering necks. The bursting organs were no one’s favorite. They could not watch their enemy suffer.
No, the humans craved blood bubbling to the surface, choking their enemies’ throats and flooding out of their mouths. They thirsted for rivers to spout from noses, streams to burst from orifices.
Reeri complied.
Quickly, half the island prayed for his wrath. The other half cowered and begged for protection, not against the natural illnesses spreading through the land, nor against the other Yakkas’ crafts—they prayed for protection against his own hand. That it would not crash upon their houses, their bodies, their loved ones.
Blood flowed across the island as if it were the Malvathu River, and the binding loosened. He ate curry in the market, rode elephants into the bush, climbed trees around the shrines. In time,he even ran. Jungle cats and blue magpies at his heels, sand sifting betwixt his toes, he ran to the ocean and back, finding each of the Yakka’s shrines. Calu Cumara Dewatawa, Maha Sohon, Anjenam Dewi, Wewulun, Baddracali, Bodrima, Gopolu, Bhooto Sanni, Morottoo, Bahirawa, the Riddhi, six sisters of the Yakkas of Love, and a hundred more, each held fast within their wooden walls.
Kama leaned against her doorway, poking the eye of a long-dead fish. “You are their favorite now.”
“Have they lost their appetite for desire?” he asked.
“Who can think of love when they are consumed with death?”
The realization crept through Reeri like vines. The offerings had bought him freedom at the expense of the freedom of all others.
The thought sat sourly in his chest.
He snapped to his nearest shrine; a man lay prostrate before him with a large bowl of aromatic red Suwandel rice. “Great Blood Yakka, hear my prayer. Please heal my wife from the stomach disease cursed upon her. I offer my entire harvest of rice.”
“No,” Reeri said, an idea forming.
