Page 53 of The Enduring Universe
She knew where she was, but for a confused instant she could not remember her name. The absurd realization came to her slowly, as if she could see it approaching but could not make sense of it.
From far away, she heard the sounds of people she had never met. It bothered her, but she could not immediately tell why. Whatdid it matter that she didn’t know those sounds? She couldn’t know everybody, after all. That was not humanly possible.
Except I do know them, she thought.I know them, because Iamthem.
The events under the vriksh came rushing to her. The impaling, the pain, and Iravan’s rescue of her.
She bolted upright, her body trembling, but someone reached out to steady her. “Slow down,” the nurse said. “You need to slow down.”
Her breath still came out too fast, her chest rising and falling too rapidly. She was wearing one of the infirmary’s gowns. How long had she been here?
Wildly, she looked around at her private chamber. It was bare except for the cot she was on, and the nurse who had just spoken. The only light came from the window, and for some reason she knew the chamber had been kept dim because she had asked for it to be so. This is where she lived now. Not in Nakshar, not in an airborne ashram, but here in the jungle, within a medical ward. She pressed a hand to the base of her neck where the tightness had settled, but as she touched the knot it flared, so she dropped her hand and closed her eyes.
One, two, three breaths went by—until her vision adjusted. She opened her eyes again, and the image of the branches across her fingers receded. She saw her dark skin. She stared at the contours of her hand, at the moon-shaped nails.
I am… I am a person, she thought, and a hysterical sound escaped her at how foolish that thought was, yet how necessary.
She looked up at the nurse to see if she was laughing too, but other shapes caught her eyes, hovering behind the nurse. Three people stood waiting by the door. Not Dhruv. Not Naila. And certainly not Iravan, though she could remember the taste of hislips from the half-dream—no, these were councilors of Irshar. Of her ashram.
With those names, more information poured into her brain, like waking from a particularly consuming sleep. She adjusted her pillows carefully.
“What happened?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
“Do you know who you are?” the nurse replied quietly.
The light of clarity was pouring into her more rapidly. Ahilya raised her eyes to the nurse. Kamala, that was the healer’s name. The urgency had passed; that’s why Kamala was asking this question now.
“Yes,” she answered. Her voice came as a croak. “I am Ahilya. I am a complete being. I am not alone.”
The litany came naturally to her, an expected and learned response to this question.
For a long moment, Kamala watched her, not believing her reply. Ahilya barely believed her own words too.
An eerie sense came over her. She saw herself from behind Kamala’s eyes, but she also saw a memory—Kamala with Oam. Oam wore a nurse’s scrubs, but his braided curls were tied in a knot. They were chatting to each other in Nakshar’s infirmary. Kamala smiled—teasing Oam, asking him why he would go into the jungle on an expedition with this older woman. Jealousy streaks in my eyes, that he would choose her.
Ahilya let the vision drop. Her heart raced as the other woman simply nodded and retreated, and Ahilya forced herself to take three deep breaths like she had been trained to. Slowly, gaining control over herself, she tracked the councilors as they watched the nurse leave and entered her personal ward.
Chaiyya and Basav drew closer to one side of her cot, pulling chairs alongside her. On the other side, Airav stopped hiswheelchair, his gaze sad, the same expression he had each time he visited. Ahilya tried to school her expression, not wanting to answer inane questions about her health, but the effort was too much. It was all she could do to raise her eyebrows in the obvious question:What happened?
Chaiyya gave her a long look, sighed, then shook her head. “You’ve been unconscious for five days,” she said quietly. “Your vitals were strong, yet you refused to wake. Do you remember anything?”
“Five days,” she rasped, swallowing. “Where is Eskayra?”
“She left this morning,” Chaiyya said. “She did not want to, but the new city site needed her. She will be back tonight.”
Ahilya shook her head. “I—I don’t understand. We were speaking to each other. We were in the council chambers…” Her eyes widened, and her hands shook. Events returned to her, of running through Irshar, of skidding to a stop in the council chambers, and then in her Etherium, being impaled by the thorns in the forest. Ahilya looked at her hands, expecting to find twigs instead of her fingers, sap instead of blood in her veins. “It was the vriksh, wasn’t it? I remember its call to me. Wha-what happened? Did I—” Her voice came out cracked. “Did I hurt anybody? My sister—is she all right? I remember the ground shaking.”
They had all clearly discussed the phenomenon in the last five days, and Ahilya saw Basav’s repressed terror and anger in the pinch of his mouth. She wondered if he would say anything or let her question hang. Ahilya got the impression that he was trying hard to be civil.
“You didn’t hurt anyone,” he said, his voice clipped. “And the citizens, including your sister, are fine. Whatever happened did not impact them for now. But what you did… The vriksh…”
The others did not speak into his silence, and Ahilya shrank under their scrutiny.
“The vriksh was an anomaly to begin with,” Basav said. “Even before you used it to anchor the cosmic creatures within the planet. It was the amalgamation of all the fifty core trees of the Conclave, created during a time of great upheaval. Core trees have always been sentient, this much has been apparent to us architects—but the vriksh is more powerful than any single core tree. It, as you said, called to you. It was behind what occurred.”
“Why?” Ahilya asked. There was something chilling in the way Basav had spoken, like he was trying to hide something horrible behind his academic explanation.
“Tell me,” Basav replied. “Do you see the cosmic creatures now?”
