Page 64 of The Surviving Sky
The horror of what he was admitting sank into him, but he couldn’t stop.
“You’re asking me to balance known impossibilities,” he whispered, “but I’m struggling to balance even my simplest identities.”
His chest heaved up and down. He was aware of how he had laid himself bare for Bharavi, given her all the ammunition she needed to excise him and leave him to be worse than Manav. His entire body trembled in terror and release.
When Bharavi touched his shoulder, Iravan flinched like she had struck him.
Bharavi didn’t say a word. She stroked his back in gentle, soothing rhythms, over and over again like he was a child.
They sat together on the terrace in the falling dusk, letting the silence grow between them.
21
AHILYA
Dawn broke outside the window, carrying the scent of cool air through cracks in the wood frame. Inside the library alcove, Ahilya bent over one of Iravan’s books, brushing sleep from her eyes, fighting to focus on the minuscule words.
The books were old, likely some of the oldest in the architects’ records. The paper was hard bark, with each word etched onto it through some ancient carving tool. Dark ink still glistened as though it had only just been calligraphed. How had they done that? There was some mixture of resin in the ink to retain its substance, but architects no longer used those methods, not with sungineering tools so easily available.
Ahilya rubbed her face tiredly. Her mind was wandering. She had spent the last three nights poring over these books. With the end of Iravan’s investigation looming, there was no telling how long the records would remain in her possession. One way or another, the result of the investigation would decide Iravan’s fate, and with it her own. If he were demoted, Ahilya and Dhruv’s nomination would be forgotten, their very professions in peril. If he was not, the two still needed to present their theories, and Ahilya, more than Dhruv, had to make up for lost resources.
She turned over a heavy page, squinting in the dim light of the phosphorescence. A large sketch covered the center leaf of the book, inks of various colors glittering over the bark. Ahilya drew back, her eyes narrowing in thought.
The drawing depicted the jungle during alull—yetthis was no ordinary jungle rebirthing itself. Instead, it flourished and thickened, with lush trees rising and impenetrable bushes curling in all directions. Every now and then, a clearing grew between thetrees—earlyashrams with tiny stick-figure people within them.
Ahilya’s eyes absorbed the image, for a moment seeing it for only its beauty. The picture was like frozen trajection. In the image, Ahilya could very nearly see movement itself, a herd of rhinos crossing a river, a pack of hyenas scavenging deer, carrion birds leaping for the kill, and leopards lolling in the mud. Other images emerged under the tracing of her fingers: a giant tiger-yaksha creeping toward an ashram, barely visible in the foliage; a lone elephant-yaksha as tall as the tree it uprooted; a massive falcon-yaksha circling the skies.
This picture was proof of an era when earthrages had been few and far in between. An era when there must hardly have been rages atall—instead,mere quakes and tremors, barely different from a lull, allowing for ashram life in the jungle. Yet knowing that, what had Ahilya really learned?
Everyone in the cities knew that life had originated in the jungle, that flight had been a necessary invention, a miracle brought about by the architects to save humankind from the ever-increasing earthrages.
Certainly, the picture showed scores of jungle creatures alongside yakshas, but that was likely creative license. Ahilya had always considered the yakshas to haveevolvedfrom the jungle creatures; the similarities were far too many to ignore. But evolution took generations,lifetimes. It was a slow maturation where the yakshas would have been in their early form instead of this representation that showed them fully grown alongside their immediate ancestors. Valuable though the book was, it answered nothing. How had the yakshas survived? How many were there now? How were they related to their now-extinct ancestors? How long did they live? Iravan had helped her, but she was no closer to resolving any of the questions she had set out to.
Her husband had come home every night for the last three nights ever since the incident at the Academy, bearing more records from the architects’ archives. They’d discussed the investigation and her nomination, yet Iravan had scrubbed his face with his hand last evening and stopped theorizing to blurt out an apology.
“Ahilya—”he’d said abruptly. “Ourfight—Ishouldn’t have walked away. I shouldn’t havestayedaway.I…I’ve lost sight of who I want to be.”
Ahilya had been so shocked, she hadn’t replied. She had known this already; there was almost no need for the explanation. They’d sat in silence while phosphorescence sparkled around them and firemint flourished, its scent intoxicating.
Iravan had finally looked up from staring at his unsteady hands. He’d kissed her knuckles and bid her complete her thesis quickly, then returned once again to the sanctum.
Ahilya could almost feel his lips on her hand now. Her trembling fingers brushed over the page. She leaned forward, forcing herself to banish the image of him and study the picture instead. Her eyes focused on the early ashrams. Vines curled around trees, with giant fences cordoning the ashrams away from the jungle proper. She studied the postures of the stick-people as they went about their lives, backs turned to the jungle.
There was something here, in the manner in which the artist had depicted theashrams.…
According to the book, architects had been forbidden from entering the jungle. It had been because of the yakshas, but the creatures had barely been mentioned, all information about them condensed into one telling passage. Ahilya had read it so many times, she knew it by heart.
Deathlike, the yakshas’ consciousness is unbreachable; unnatural creatures who must be avoided. Trajection is unviable; destruction, inevitable. Never would an architect remain themselves; desire overwrought. The jungle remains forever treacherous. For greater a consciousness, greater the danger;and in Ahilya’s head, the text merged with Iravan’s voice.I don’t detect consciousness in this creature. That’s impossible, you know. It means that the yaksha doesn’t exist. That it isn’t alive.
She drew back, staring outside the window.
Dawn had converted into a rainy day, drops of water plinking against the glass window. The alcove transformed, more heat-bearing plants appearing, and outside, children in their wet-cloaks had arrived to shriek and jump in pools of mud.
Ahilya watched them unseeingly, her fingers tap-tapping against the bark book. In her mind, she was back in the jungle, sketching the wolf-yaksha’s fangs, drawing the large eyes of the gorilla-yaksha, tying the new tracker around the elephant-yaksha.
The text was typical of an architect record that went little beyond trajection and its uses, but Iravan had been unnerved on coming face-to-face with the elephant-yaksha. His fear had clearly mirrored the very fear that poured through these pages. Was there a deeper reason the architects had feared the yakshas? Had the creatures been once hunted, sought after and destroyed?
The senseless injunction in the book, the calculated indifference to the jungle, Iravan’s reaction, all of it was linked somehow to a hidden truth. Ahilya could feel it in her gut. The yakshas had been erased almost as thoroughly as the non-architects. Yet knowing this, she was no closer to the council seat than she had been before. There was nothing in these texts about ahabitat—theone thing that counted, theonlything that counted, which would indicate survival in the jungle.
