Page 42 of The Legend of Meneka
I glance at him. “Will you finish the Initiation Ceremony?”
He shakes his head. “It is no longer necessary. I will allow anyone who wishes to stay and train to become a sage.”
My brows rise at that. “I thought the ceremony was a matter of great tradition. That as a sage you must weed out those who are impure.”
Kaushika shrugs, though the movement looks wooden. “Everyone here has proved their intent already with their actions,” he says. “They could have left when the hermitage was attacked. Instead, they chose to stay and help. They have built wards, strengthening the hermitageover and over again. Even now, they are patrolling the forest, looking for possible enemies, all without my say-so. They are devoted, not just to Shiva but to what we do here. Their devotion is undisputed.” He glances at me, and his gaze softens. “As is yours.”
My mission fills my throat, coating my mouth with the bitter taste of betrayal. I had my chance to end Kaushika and I didn’t take it. What does that mean for me now?
“And the other sages?” I ask, to distract myself from my growing anxiety. “They will countenance this break from tradition?”
“The other sages …” Kaushika sighs and presses his eyes with the heels of both palms. He looks so vulnerable that I want to peel his hands back, kiss his eyes, comfort him, but I still my body with effort. He sighs deeply. “The other sages are older and far more traditional than I have ever been. They think of me as a rebel, and I have tried to keep to their demands to prove that I am pure of heart. Yet after what occurred yesterday …” He shakes his head and meets my eyes. “You were right. I did endanger these people, and I have a duty of care. What is one more transgression against tradition? The Mahasabha was called by the sages so that I may present my students and convince them that I can be trusted to teach wisdom to those who seek it. Yet in reality, the Mahasabha is a political gathering, and they are more concerned with something else.”
I hold my breath. “And what is that?”
Kaushika turns to me, and I understand his look. It is here, the secret he would tell me that would destroy him. I can feel it hovering on his lips, wanting to be uttered. A slow kind of horror skims through my blood. I dare not move.
He holds the moment, studying it. I see the point of decision, a shift in the set of his muscles. I know he is going to tell me, and my body freezes. I can neither look away, nor embrace this knowledge I have sought, trapped here in this moment that will inevitably decide my path.
“You asked me before where I sent the halahala,” he says quietly. “Where I go when I leave the hermitage.”
I nod and say nothing.
“I have—Icreated—a meadow. A place that I go to in order to meditate.” Kaushika’s words are careful. Slow. “It is a powerful place, Meneka. Years of my meditation have consecrated it beyond any other in this realm. When I meditate there, my power grows tenfold. What would take me years of tapasya, I am able to do in a few hours.”
My mind churns with this. I remember what I overheard by the pond a few weeks ago.A crime against nature, Sage Agastya called it. Why? Because of the way it rips into the air, the energy it must take? Even Indra cannot simply open a gateway to any place he wishes. Even he must rely on the winds of Amaravati.
Oblivious to the chaos in me, Kaushika sighs again. “The sages at the Mahasabha disapprove of a place this powerful, and of the manner in which I have consecrated it. Yet if I had not, what would have happened to the halahala? We would all of us have been poisoned, every creature burned away from the very cycle of birth and rebirth—not by breaking it and embracing true reality but by never having existed in the first place. Even the sages themselves would have been destroyed by its spread.”
I shiver, thinking of how close we all came to destruction. I cannot comprehend it. The power that Kaushika exhibited. The fact that he did it with me.
“Will the poison be safe there?” I ask.
“For now,” he replies, though there is frustration in his voice. “But it cannot stay there forever. I have tried to summon Shiva again, but the Lord has not replied. Perhaps he does not believe the sincerity of my intention, but surely he must hear me. Surely he must see who is behind this.”
I stare at Kaushika. “I know what you must think, but it cannot be Indra. It simply cannot.”
His voice is gentle, and his fingers flicker toward mine lightly as though to give me comfort without touching me. “I am sorry,” he says softly. “A betrayal like this is hard to accept. I understand that. Believe me.”
“No, you do not understand.” My voice grows frantic, and I have to take a deep breath to control it. “How can it be Indra, Kaushika?How?I know you despise him for what he did at Thumri and to your own kingdom. He is a deva, and he has behaved irresponsibly, but this? This is unconscionable. Indra could not, not even if drunk on soma.”
“Meneka—”
“He is ahero,” I say, my voice breaking. My desperation spills out rapidly in a half sob. “Do you not remember he saved all of humanity from endless famine and released the waters of the world back into the mortal realm tens of thousands of years ago? That story is still sung in my kingdom. Without him, the dragon-demon Vritra would have destroyed it all. Nothing would have survived. Indra was the only one brave enough to fight the demon. Even you pray to the essence that is Indra. Even you acknowledge his power.”
My breath is heavy, filled with silent tears. Kaushika frowns, and I ache for him to see reason in my words. I need him to understand, toagree, because if he does not, if Indra truly did send the halahala, I would never be able to live with this knowledge. If the lord is capable of this monstrosity, what else has he done? What else haveIdone, in blindly obeying his orders? I am clinging to my last hope, to Indra’s innocence in this heinous crime despite the many mistakes he might have made. I cannot allow Kaushika to strip away my faith in Indra; in my heart, I cannot even allowIndrato do so. Who am I if not a creature of heaven? Even at my most despairing, I have alwaysthought to return to his swarga. Am I to live the rest of my life in the knowledge that I have been an agent ofevil?
Kaushika is still frowning. For a suspended moment he does not say anything, and his gaze flits to the stars, visible in the evening, contemplating Indra and swarga. Weighing my words. Listening.
I know what I am saying is suspicious. If he has ever thought me to be an apsara, I am simply confirming it with my protests. Yet he has already told me so much about himself. Should I not push my advantage? I cannot bear it, to hear such blasphemies from his mouth. I cannot bear what this means for me and forhim.
If he truly believes all these things about Indra, he will justify any action against my lord. He would kill me now if he knew who I was, and he has probably already killed my apsara sisters without mercy. That thought has never left my mind, since the very beginning of this mission, but in this moment, I know that I have built excuses past it, hoping for it not to be true. This man I have come to understand, even come to like to a certain extent, I cannot reconcile with the sage who would kill apsaras in cold blood. In the twisted corridors of my mind, the two thoughts seem connected. If Kaushika can believe in Indra’s innocence with the halahala, he will not hurt me. He will not have hurt my kin.
I know there is no logic behind this—whatever Kaushika and Indra have done, I cannot change the past, yet I cannot bear for either of them to have committed such horrors, not even in the pursuit of their beliefs. Not even if they thought they were justified. I simply know that if any of this is true, it tells me more about myself than about them, because of how I understand them, and sympathize with them. Has this mission ruined me to such an extent already, so stealthily and invisibly, that I am lost to my own good sense? I try to breathe past the thick obstruction in my throat.
“If not Indra,” Kaushika says slowly, “then who? You say yourkingdom worships him. Then do you know of anyone else who would have access to the poison?”
I try to think. I really do.
