Page 128 of The Surviving Sky
That realization took him aback.
***
The puzzle was exquisite in its simplicity.
It shimmered and settled; no puzzle, after all, just a simple route.
He moved in the manner of taking a step, except it was not true movement, only a memory of an unconscious habit. Still, the path glittered and took shape. He stood at the base of a mountain; its peak, his destination.
Iravan stepped forward, and plungedinto—
***
Nidhirv bolted awake, stifling a scream. Next to him, his husband rumbled, still in deep sleep. Nothing except an earthrage couldwake—thename eluded him for a heart-stoppingsecond—Vishwam.
His husband’s name was Vishwam. They had married only yesterday. Tomorrow, Nidhirv would take his place with the others of his ilk. He wouldbecomeone of them, an architect. They had timed it perfectly, the moment of birth, when the fetus Karinita was carrying would be ripe for consciousness. Nidhirv had visited her yesterday for the first time, spoken to her and assured her of success. He had sounded confident, but awake now, he could feel his own nervousness. This was to be his first time. The ceremony could not go wrong, not for Karinita, nor for him.
He rearranged the covers he had pulled off his husband and arose from their cot. Nidhirv stepped on light feet and left their mudbrick cottage. Night cloaked the jungle. No one was about the ashram except for sentinel architects. He rubbed his cold arms and stopped as he saw his skin. It hadbeen…darkerthan this, hadn’t it? He had been taller, too. Vishwam had warned him the ceremony could be disorienting, but the ceremony hadn’t truly begun.
Nervous, Nidhirv walked toward the edge of his little ashram, where a waist-high hedge gently nudged the jungle away. He peered into the darkness. The sounds washed over him, trees rustling, cicadas chirping. Some of his tension receded. The jungle could always calm him. He and Vishwam would go into the foliage tomorrow after the ceremony. They would spend a few nights in meditation and in love. They would wander the jungle, keeping away from the wild creatures, but perhaps they would see a yaksha, a being to be revered and admired, a being to learn from. The thought of it warmed Nidhirv. A smile tugged on his lips.
When the earthrage came a few hourslater—hisfirst earthrage as a participatingarchitect—Nidhirvclasped Vishwam’s hand. Along with the other architects, the two men merged their beings with the cosmos. Identical blue-green tattoos grew on their skin in the shape of a spiral. Plants grew, covering the ashram in a dome. The jungle roared in agony and trees whiplashed beyond the ashram. Nidhirv’s hand shook as he glimpsed beyond the vision, beyond the melody, where the separation sounded like ascream—
The scream of birth, Vishwam had said,a scream essential to life, but Nidhirv choked as the ceremony continued. A few minutes later, when the jungle came to rest and the earthrage ended, the fetus Karinita was carrying bore consciousness. They had done it. They had brought about birth.
Nidhirv would always remember that first time. The memory of the scream stayed with him through the years, through age and the colors of life, through the darkness when Vishwam died, and through the light of initiating architects for their own ceremonies.
When death finally came to Nidhirv, he lay on a cot, surrounded by his sons and daughters. They were unrelated by blood, buthisnonetheless, for he was an architect and they were too. His family drifted in and out of his filmy gaze, and Nidhirv wished he could see the sky; he had never truly seen it; the jungle covered everything. He breathed deeply and saw, from behind a gaze that seemed so familiar, a vision of flight. Nidhirv exhaled his last breath; he thought his last thought.There, friend. I will find you—
***
And through the dim haze of a latent current reality, floated avoice…
a familiar voice calling out aword…aname
hisname.
Iravan.
He turned and saw a woman, beautiful and in pain, blood trickling down her forehead, vines holding her down. Behind her, the architects of Nakshar fell to their knees, thorns and spikes stabbing through them. Blood trickled down the woman’s face, and vines grew around her neck, strangling her. Her hand reached toward him, and in her eyes he saw
endless love
Iravan lifted his own hand, took a faltering step. A shadowfell—
***
And he was back again within the maze of his own consciousness, staring up at the mountain that was his destination. He glanced behind and the base seemed leagues away. With that one step, he had climbed so high. He stepped forwardand—
***
Askavetra parted the leaves, using her hands.
In a corner of her mind, she knew what she was doing was wrong. To be an architect meant to choose life and the ashram, to choose family and society and material bonds. It was the oldest wisdom. Yet here she was, out in the jungle, in a blatant betrayal of their code. All architects were told to keep away from the yakshas, yet she was deep in the jungle, inches away from the tiger-yaksha.
She approached carefully, and the tiger-yaksha watched her, its striped tail swinging lazily behind it. Askavetra reached as close as she dared and then waited.
Even though the elders had forbidden interaction with the yakshas, she had always felt a companionship with the creatures. Her own mother had once told her stories of architects who had been abducted by the creatures and had never returned. But those were only stories, right?
