Chapter 5: Chitrakoot Ki Raat (Night in Chitrakoot)

The two groups met at the river.

Not the grand rivers — not the Narmada or the Chambal or the rivers that the poets wrote about and that the maps named in large script. A tributary. A nameless tributary that threaded through the Chitrakoot hills like a vein through a body, the water shallow enough to wade and deep enough to fill a waterskin and clear enough, in the moonlight, to reflect the faces of the people standing on either bank.

On the south bank: Leela, Omi, and Mata Ashwini. Three days into their journey from Haritpur. Three days of forest paths and dry riverbeds and the particular exhaustion of people who had never traveled more than a day's walk from home and who were now learning that the world beyond the forest was larger and emptier and less green than anything they had imagined.

On the north bank: the Natraj caravan. Three wagons. Fourteen people. Two oxen who had been coaxed off the Kachcha road and onto the even kachcha-er tracks that wound through the Chitrakoot hills. Amba in the lead wagon, Devraj beside her, and Ritu — Ritu in the back, holding the letter she couldn't read, feeling the Shakti in her palms like a second heartbeat.

The meeting was — accidental. Or the meeting was — destined. Depending on which version of the story you subscribed to, and in the Saptarishi Kingdoms, the versions were as numerous as the kingdoms themselves: seven kingdoms, seven versions, seven ways of understanding why two groups of fugitives arrived at the same river on the same night in the same hills.

Omi saw the wagons first. His response was: the bow. The bow off the shoulder, the arrow nocked, the body positioned between the wagons and Leela, the particular protective stance of a young man whose entire identity was organized around the principle of: Leela first. Always Leela first. The rest of the world second, or third, or not at all.

"Wait." Mata's hand on his arm. The hand that was seventy-two years old and that was still strong enough to lower a bow. "Those are Nat wagons."

"How do you know?"

"The paint. The script on the side. Natraj Natak Mandali. They're performers."

"Performers or Rakshak disguised as performers."

"Rakshak don't travel with oxen. Rakshak travel with horses. And Rakshak don't paint their wagons in three colours and write their troupe name in Devanagari. Those are Nats."

Across the river, the same calculation was happening in reverse. Amba had seen the three figures on the south bank — two young, one old, the silhouettes visible in the moonlight that the Chitrakoot sky provided with the particular generosity of a sky that was unobstructed by buildings or trees, the open-sky moonlight that made every shape visible and every shadow deep.

"Vanvasi," Amba said. The identification was instant — the clothes (forest-dyed, the greens and browns that Vanvasi people wore, the particular camouflage of a people who lived inside the landscape rather than on top of it), the bow (Vanvasi weapons, the sal-wood bows that forest-dwellers carried the way city people carried walking sticks: casually, constantly, the weapon as extension of the arm).

"Threat?" Lakku asked. He was beside her. The eldest son's position: beside the mother, the first line of defence, the particular Nat-family hierarchy that said the son protects the mother who protects the troupe.

"No. Vanvasi don't threaten. Vanvasi hide. If they're standing on the other bank in plain sight, they're as scared as we are."

Amba climbed down from the wagon. Walked to the river's edge. The walking was — deliberate. The walk of a woman who was making herself visible, making herself approachable, the walk that said: I am not armed, I am not hiding, I am a woman walking to a river, and the walking is the invitation.

Mata Ashwini walked to the other bank. Two old women, on opposite sides of a river, in moonlight, in the Chitrakoot hills, each representing a people that the other people had been taught to distrust — the Nats and the Vanvasi, the two outcaste groups who occupied the bottom of the seven kingdoms' hierarchy and who had been kept separate by the particular strategy of all hierarchies: keep the oppressed fighting each other so they never fight you.

"Rakshak?" Amba asked. The single word. The single question that every fugitive asked every stranger in the months of the purge.

"Sweeping from the south," Mata said. "Three days behind us."

"From the north too. Checkpoints on the Rajpath."

The exchange was — the exchange was everything. The exchange was: we are both running. We are both hunted. We are both here.

"Cross," Amba said. "Camp with us. The Rakshak check for single groups, not combined ones. A Nat caravan with Vanvasi passengers is — unusual enough to be confusing. And confusion is our ally."

*

The camp was made in the flat ground between the river and the hill. The Natraj wagons formed a half-circle — the traditional Nat camping formation, the wagons serving as walls, the half-circle creating an interior space that was both sheltered and defensible, the architectural wisdom of a people who had been camping for centuries and who had, in those centuries, optimised the geometry of temporary shelter.

Fire. Lakku built it — the particular fire-building of a Nat man, the fire that was not just heat but performance space, the fire positioned centrally so that its light reached every corner of the camp and so that anyone performing around it would be visible from all angles. Tonight, the fire was not for performing. The fire was for cooking and for warmth and for the particular social function that fire serves in all human gatherings: the fire as the point around which strangers become not-strangers.

Leela sat on the south side of the fire. Omi beside her (of course), the bow across his knees, the posture of a man who was participating in the social gathering but who was not, by any measure, relaxing. Mata was beside them, on a log that Lakku had rolled into position, the log serving as seating that was approximately the right height for a seventy-two-year-old woman whose knees did not appreciate the ground.

The Natraj troupe was on the north side. Amba and Devraj. Lakku and Noor (Noor reclined against a wagon wheel, the pregnancy making every surface a potential bed). The cousins. The children. And Ritu — Ritu, who was sitting at the fire's edge, the particular position of a person who was present but not centred, the edge-sitting that said: I am watching.

The chai was made. Amba's chai — because even in flight, even in the Chitrakoot hills, even with Rakshak three days behind, Amba made her chai with the particular precision that was her art. The water boiled. The ginger crushed (Amba's ginger-crushing was — Ritu noticed for the first time — musical. The thump of the spoon-back on the ginger, the rhythm that was not random but intentional, the crushing that was percussion). The cardamom cracked. The tea leaves measured. The milk added. The chai poured into steel tumblers and offered — offered to the Vanvasi guests with the particular formality of a woman who understood that chai was not just a drink but a contract: I offer you this, you accept this, the offering and the accepting are the bond.

Mata took the tumbler. Tasted. "Good chai."

"Good chai is the minimum," Amba said. "Everything above good is the art."

"You sound like a healer."

"I sound like a Nat. Nats and healers are the same profession. We both keep people alive. We just use different tools."

The almost-laugh — from both sides. The almost-laugh that bridged the fire, that crossed the invisible line between the north side and the south side, the line that was not drawn on the ground but that existed in the cultural memory of two peoples who had been taught that the other people were different and that different was dangerous and that dangerous was: don't sit together, don't share chai, don't share fire.

The line was being erased. By chai. By fire. By the particular alchemy of shared danger that transforms strangers into allies faster than any other force.

Ritu felt it first.

Not the social warmth — the other warmth. The Shakti warmth. The warmth in her palms that said: there is Shakti here. Not mine. Someone else's.

She looked across the fire. At the Vanvasi girl. The girl who was — seventeen, maybe? Short silver-white hair (unusual, striking, the kind of hair that was either a genetic gift or a Shakti marker, the hair that said: this person is not ordinary). Hands that were — Ritu looked at the hands. The hands were wrapped around the chai tumbler. The fingers were — green. Faintly. At the tips. The particular green that was not dirt and not dye but something else, something that Ritu's palms recognised the way a musician's ear recognises a note: that's Shakti. Different from mine. But Shakti.

Leela felt it at the same moment.

The girl across the fire — the Nat girl, the one in the emerald lehenga that was now dusty from three days of Kachcha roads — the girl was radiating. Not heat, not light. Something else. A frequency. The particular vibration that Leela's Vanaspati Shakti could detect the way a plant detects sunlight: not with eyes but with the whole body, the whole being oriented toward the source.

Their eyes met. Across the fire. Through the smoke. The meeting was — recognition. Not the recognition of familiarity (they had never met). The recognition of kind. The recognition that said: you have it too. The thing that makes us hunted. The thing that makes us run. You have it too.

Ritu stood. Walked around the fire. Sat next to Leela. The sitting-next-to was — Omi tensed, the bow shifting on his knees, the protective instinct firing. But Leela put her hand on Omi's arm (the same gesture that Mata had used, the hand-on-arm that said: stand down) and Omi stood down, reluctantly, the reluctance visible in every muscle.

"Your hands glow gold," Leela said. Quietly. So that only Ritu and Omi could hear.

"Your fingers are green," Ritu said. Just as quietly.

"Vanaspati Shakti. I grow things."

"Dwar Shakti. I — open things."

"Open things."

"Doors. In the air. I don't — I don't know how. It started three days ago."

"Three days ago." Leela processed this. The processing was visible — the eyes moving, the particular calculation of a healer who was assessing a patient and who was computing: the symptoms, the timeline, the severity. "The purge started five days ago. The Rakshak are hunting wild Shakti users. And your Shakti just woke up."

"Is that — connected?"

"Everything is connected. The earth knows when it's being threatened. The Shakti is part of the earth. When the Rakshak threaten the earth's Shakti users, the earth wakes more Shakti users. It's — it's like the forest. When you cut down trees, the remaining trees grow faster. The forest compensates. The Shakti compensates."

"That sounds like—"

"That sounds like Mata. She taught me. She says the Shakti is not personal. The Shakti is ecological. The Shakti belongs to the land, and the land lends it to the people who need it, and the lending is not permanent but purposeful."

Ritu looked at her own hands. The hands that opened doors. "My birth mother had this Shakti."

"Your birth mother?"

"I was adopted. I was found on a road. In a basket. With a letter I can't read."

"A letter in what script?"

"Old Prakrit."

Leela's eyes changed. The change was — Ritu read it as a performer reads an audience's response: the shift from curiosity to something deeper, something that was not fear but was adjacent to fear, the particular emotion of a person who has just heard information that connects to information they already have and the connection is significant.

"Old Prakrit is the language of the Saptam Rajya," Leela said.

"The Saptam Rajya."

"The Seventh Kingdom. The lost kingdom. The kingdom that the High Throne destroyed — sixteen years ago."

Sixteen years. The number that was Ritu's age. The number that was the baby in the basket. The number that connected the destruction and the finding, the burning and the beginning.

"I'm from the Seventh Kingdom," Ritu said. The sentence was — the sentence was the first time she had said it. The first time the words had existed outside her mind. The words felt — they felt like the Dwar Shakti felt: like something opening. Like a door.

"If you're from the Seventh Kingdom," Leela said, "then you're not just a Shakti user. You're the Shakti user. The Dwar Shakti was the Saptam Rajya's power. The Door-Power. The power that the High Throne destroyed the kingdom to eliminate."

"The High Throne thinks it succeeded."

"And you're the proof that it didn't."

The fire crackled. The chai cooled. The two groups — Nat and Vanvasi, performer and healer, the north side and the south side — sat around the same fire and drank the same chai and the fire did what fire does: it made the different sides the same side.

Amba watched from across the fire. Devraj watched. Mata watched. The elders watching the young ones finding each other, the watching that was both hope and terror — hope because the finding was necessary, terror because the finding was dangerous, the found being the hunted, the hunted being more dangerous in groups because groups were easier to see.

But the finding was done. Ritu and Leela had found each other. And the finding was — the finding was the beginning of something that neither group had anticipated and that both groups needed: the alliance. The performer and the healer. The door and the garden. The gold glow and the green fingers.

The alliance that the Rakshak were too late to prevent.