Page 127 of The Surviving Sky
Finally, she staggered back with a voiceless cry, head pounding, silent tears trickling down her cheeks. There was nothing she could do. He was gone.
He was gone.
Her mind went numb. An eerie calmness took her over. Her tears stopped abruptly. Ahilya crawled over to Iravan. She cradled his head in her lap and stroked his cheek again and again. It was over. It was over. She had come here for nothing. They had lost each other before they had begun.
She sat there, engulfed in shock so great that her hand kept stroking his warm cheek. There was nothing to do, nowhere togo—
His cheek. It was warm.
Ahilya’s eyes flew open. She stared at Iravan still cradled on her lap, his chest unmoving, his body not appearing to breathe. Her hands ran over his arms, fingers, his neck and chest. He was warm all over. How?
The next few heartbeats were the worst of Ahilya’s life. She stared at Iravan, afraid to blink, afraid to move, afraid to think.
After what seemed like eons, she saw his chest rise.
The movement lasted an eternity.
He stilled again.
She watched, rubbing her eyes, another eternity.
And his chest fell.
He was breathing, but
s l o w l y.
Each breath lasted a lifetime.
He was asleep.
He wasalive.
All her strength drained out of her with this realization. Ahilya settled Iravan back to the grass, the way he had been. She removed a roll of linen from the mess of her things. Then, covering himself and her, Ahilya adjusted herself on the ground and began a vigil over her husband.
42
IRAVAN
Behind him, Nakshar disintegrated into storm and chaos. “Stay here,” Iravan snarled at Ahilya. He sprinted across Nakshar’s terrace toward the falcon-yaksha. His vision had expanded into two as soon as he had touched the Resonance and entered the Deepness. He saw the monstrous bird in front of him, its gigantic silvery wings cutting out the sky.
Overlapping the second vision, however, past the blackness of the Deepness, Iravanwasthe bird.
He saw from behind its eyes, saw himself running, and all of the creature’s relief and outrage poured into him like a crashing storm.
He slid to a stop in front of the bird, held up his hands, and gathered the energy of Ecstatic trajection to him like an inhalation. The falcon yarped, the bizarre patterns in its eyesbright—
Beyond the Deepness, Iravan and the yaksha mirrored each other, rippling within silver-molten mercury. The reality of Nakshar’s terrace muted to a faint buzz in the background.
And for the first time, Iravan saw his own consciousness.
***
He was in a maze; he knew that instantly.
***
Hewasthe maze.
