Page 138 of The Surviving Sky
The yaksha’s wings grew with the passage of time, pain in its flight. It soared above Iravan’s past, above the other men and women he had been; it soared in an endless infinite loop,until—grownmonstrous—itflapped right above the image of Iravan himself as he stood in what could only be Nakshar’s temple, staring after Ahilya as she left for her expedition.
She turned to her husband slowly, a chill in her heart. “What does this mean?”
Iravan touched the falcon-yaksha in the rock, tears in his eyes. “The Resonance. It was a call. A call I had been too blind to see, tofeel. The falcon has been trajecting for years, for centuries, ever since it formed, ever sinceIformed. And in its trajection, it releasedan…an undying residue, a constantraga…theResonance.”
“Nakshar’s Constant,” Ahilya said, understanding. “A raga that doesn’t dissipate. That releases each time an architect trajects, unique to the architect.”
“Yes,” Iravan said. “A unique call. A unique shade of blue. Nakshar’s Constant, Resonance, the Raga of Awakening. Call it what you will, but it is the same. Each architect releases it every time they traject, and it’s a call to a yaksha,theiryaksha. And each yaksha releases it as well, except we have always been too afraid to hear our yaksha’s call.”
Ahilya’s heart thudded in her chest. “Iravan, Nakshar’s Constant emerges out ofarchitects—notout ofyakshas—”
“They’re architects too, Ahilya. You saw those carvings on the wall. The jungle creatures morphed into yakshas the same time as human beings snapped to become architects. Trajection must have developed in both species at the same time.”
“But—”
“This is why no one else could sense the Resonance. It was a unique call, emitted by the falcon forme. And I ignored it. I ignored it for so many lifetimes.” Iravan bowed his head, great breaths heaving his body.
Ahilya placed a hand on his back, her heart sinking in an unnamed terror. “Why would the yakshas and the architects be connected this way? You’re suggesting a relationship of lifetimes. Even if there had been a time when architects and yakshas had been symbiotic, that relationship wouldn’t last across such a period of destruction. Not between a particular human and yaksha. That would indicate a much deeper correlation, somethingbeyondour wildest theories.”
Iravan’s shoulders shuddered. The light of trajection on his skin sparked brighter in anger. “Thereisa deeper correlation, and we knew it. The earlyarchitects—whoeverIwas backthen—Askavetraand Mohini and theothers—they—I—knewit. It’s why interaction with the yakshas was onceforbidden—andso the jungle itself was forbidden. Eventually, we forgot about the yakshas altogether. All records were erased, along with records of the rebel groups.”
Ahilya’s stomach clenched. “Why forbid this knowledge of the yakshas? Why take the risk of flight simply to avoid the yakshas, when survival was at stake?”
“Because it wastheirsurvival that was at stake,” he said angrily.“Theirway of life. Their trajection. Trajection itself was never meant to be. It was a mistaken resource. It was a false step in the dark.”
“Iravan—trajectiondeveloped as a defense against theearthrages—”
Blue unfurled like an angry flame deep within his black eyes. “You saw these cave pictures, Ahilya. That little girl was spinning complex mazes that even a Senior Architect doesn’t have the capability for now. A small group of architects once embedded a core tree with permissions, and now we need whole Discs of Maze Architects just to fly an ashram. We aren’t capable of that kind of trajection because trajection hasn’t just been getting harder for the last few months; it hasalways been getting harder, since its inception. We always assumed we lost a few tricks, but the truth is that within trajection lives the seed of its own decay.”
Ahilya’s heart hammered in her throat. She could sense it, the moment of inevitable painful understanding, imminent upon them.
“If we weren’t meant to be trajectors,” she asked, “then why did we develop the ability? Why did we evolve to have it?”
“There can only be one reason,” Iravan said, his hand curling into a fist. “We evolved to have trajection so we may findEcstasy. Just like the yakshas naturally did. They never trajected,Ahilya—theyalwayssupertrajected. Trajection was meant to be a path toward Ecstasy. That little girl wesaw—Iwas her, but because I never reached Ecstasy, trajection became harder through all my lifetimes, like pressure building. I guarantee that every architect who has felt trajection getting harder ignored Ecstasy in their own past lives. And the ones who found Ecstasyfinally—well,we excised them, didn’t we?”
Ahilya stared at him, unable to speak. The horror of what he was saying sank into her. Tears filled her eyes.
Iravan slammed his fist against the wall. “This is why, no matter what we try, architects have always been in danger of Ecstasy. That’s why the rules of trajection are so arbitrary. Because Ecstasy was always our final destination. Ecstasy was meant to be our true state. But we excised ourselves when we got too close.”
Ahilya’s mind reeled. All the architects that had ever been excised, all those lives that had beensacrificed—
She saw Maiya again, sitting on her chair, drool dripping down her mouth.
She saw Bharavi, strangled by the spiralweed.
And she saw Iravan, begging her to take him back, promising to be whoever she wanted him to be.
Her voice trembled when she spoke. “Ecstasy is unbridled power. Why would the architects deny themselves that power by limiting themselves? Especially if they knew all this?”
“Because Ecstasy changes you,” Iravan said, staring at the wall. “Bharavi tried to tell me. She said she would destroy everything we’d built; she said there would be no going back. Perhaps she landed the ashram because she meant to unite with her own yaksha. She asked me what I’d lost, and she meant myyaksha—perhapsshe had been hoping for me to say it. She told me to follow my own moral intuition, and she was right. When you climb the path to clarity,everythingbecomesclear—includingyour greatest shame.”
The glowing light of Ecstasy reached his eyes, like fire igniting. He stood there, his shoulders heaving, tears falling down his face. Ahilya stroked his back, tears trickling down her face as well. She wished she had never left the copse with its glimmering dust.
“What knowledge could be so terrible,” she whispered, “that architects would choose excision over it? That they would deny themselves the true power of Ecstasy? Deny themselves a deeper connection with their own yaksha?”
Iravan engulfed her hand in his once again, the heat from him envelopingher—
“Let’s find out,” he said grimly, and trajected.
