“No!” I cut him off. “Please, we cannot tell anyone. You heard what Prasad said. If you tell anyone, Manthara will have to leave.” I couldn’t stomach the thought.
“You shouldn’t need your nurse anymore, Kaikeyi. We’re twelve, almost adults.” Yudhajit scoffed. He had only recently become taller than me. I hated his new height and the way he could look down upon me now, but I hated even more that he was right. Still, I would not give up Manthara.
“Please?” I asked.
He held my gaze for a moment, then sighed and nodded. “Perhaps we can pray to the gods to change Father’s mind,” he said.
I shook my head at him. “The gods cannot force someone to change their mind. You know how Father is. He has made this decision, and it will be final.”
Yudhajit’s shoulders slumped. “I suppose.”
We stood there together in silence for several moments more, until I yawned, the energy that had pushed me out of bed and through the halls finally draining out of me. Yudhajit caught my yawn, and we both grinned at each other.
Even so, when I went back into my room and climbed into bed, sleep evaded me. I stared up at the ceiling, wondering what gods my family might have displeased to have such misfortune.
CHAPTER TWO
THE NEXT MORNING, I woke with the realization that I had not tried everything to bring my mother back. I had prayed to the important gods, to the ones I knew, but she always told me I had more to learn. She had showed me the cellar full of scrolls, and what better place than that to find a minor god? Perhaps one less busy answering the prayers of others would find time for me. They might not change my father’s decision, but perhaps the gods could spirit her to me in secret. Or alter her face so my father could not recognize her. I had heard of such things in stories, at least.
I had no obligations that morning, and so I set out alone for the cellar, located in a far corner of the palace. The golden light of the morning sun filtering in through the small windows did little to make the narrow corridors feel less unwelcoming. The palace was laid out in a tight, intricate maze, and without my mother to guide me, I got lost twice on the way to the library. The wooden door embedded in the floor was heavier than I remembered without my mother’s help, but eventually I heaved it open, then stood on my toes to fumble a torch from the wall so I could set off down the steps.
Immediately, the earthy scent of the room filled my nose. I breathed deeply, remembering how not so long ago, my mother had explained to me where I could find whatever I might want to read.
“Here, Kaikeyi, there are old stories,” she said. “And here are histories of old kings. On this shelf are scrolls of prayers and rituals, and there some older religious texts. They are not much good to read, but if you want to, you may. Anything in this room is yours to know.”
At the time, I had barely paid attention to her, opening and closing scrolls like a young child at a feast, unable to believe the sight that lay before me. She simply laughed and let me explore until I settled on a geography of Kekaya and its surrounding lands. I picked it simply because I knew Yudhajit was currently studying the same geography and I wished to impress him—but my mother did not care to know such information.
She picked a scroll of her own and beckoned me over to a corner. We sat and read together for some time, and although I quickly regretted the boring treatise I had picked, I basked in the closeness to my mother.
I picked my way through painstaking details about the swirling waters of the Chandrabagha River at the northern border of Kekaya, which sprang from the high peaks of the Indra Mountains, where stone pierced the clouds, and ran until it met the gentler waves of the tumbling Sarasvati River. That river marked the southeastern border of Kekaya and was the holiest place in the kingdom. I recalled few other lessons from that scroll, but I still held within me the memory of the steady presence of my mother, the feeling that we shared something.
Now I tried to remember her explanations, walking among the shelves until I found one devoted to prayers and rituals. I could tell after only a few minutes that these would not help me—they contained nothing I didn’t already know. So, I moved on to the older scrolls.
The first one I opened referenced a goddess I had never heard of. The second was a prayer to a god whose name I could not decipher. This was what I needed. I grabbed as many as I could fit under one arm and then clambered back up the stairs, closing the door with a thud and returning the torch. I crept back to my rooms, hoping to avoid attention, for I did not want to answer any questions about why I had taken these scrolls or who had shown me where to find them.
I spent all day reading. I learned about the goddess of elephants, a lesser known avatar of Lord Ganesh, and sent a fervent prayer to her, although I did not expect she could help me much. I prayed to the god of travelers, Lord Pushana, thinking this more apt, for he was one of many brothers, overshadowed by Lord Surya, whose fiery red chariot pulled the sun through the sky, and Lord Indra, who wielded a five-pronged spear of thunderbolts and ruled the gods. If anyone might be sympathetic to my plight, surely it would be him.
There were other scrolls too, about which penances would help someone obtain boons from the gods. Except these were no use, as they all required the gods to answer in the first place.
Finally, I gently unfurled a scroll that was so thin and worn it seemed to have been written over one hundred years ago. Its edges were frayed, and the patterns of the language hard to decipher. I turned my attention to the neat rows of text and tried to remember my tutors’ lessons as I used my finger to trace each word.
About halfway through, I realized this text made no mention at all of gods. It was simply a meditation exercise.
I threw it aside, frustrated. After a moment, I pulled a small box of sweets from under my bed and ate one, then another and another. Slowly my anger dissipated, the sugar softening the hard knot within me. I licked my fingers clean.
Calmer, I reread the title of the scroll: “Summoning the Power of the Gods by Concentration Alone.” Perhaps it was a meditation ritual that would bring general godly attention? I laid the paper down in front of me and performed each of the steps in turn: I slowed my breath, fixed my gaze at a point one hand’s length from my solar plexus, concentrated my energy, and—
I must have mistranslated, for the next step, to my best estimation, read, “Let your gaze slip into the Binding Plane. If you have trouble locating such a place, seek out the threads that connect you and use the words of focus given below.”
This sounded like nonsense. But still, I had nothing else to try. I committed them to memory.
My breathing slowed and I stared ahead of me, focusing as hard as I could, then recited the syllables.
Nothing happened.
I tried again, and again. Nothing. The scroll provided no further insight, for the last few lines merely stated that this art was impossible to master by all but a select few.