Chapter 12: Bandhan (Bonds)

The days in Rajnagar developed a double rhythm: the training rhythm and the living rhythm, the two running in parallel like the banks of a river, the training being the current and the living being the earth through which the current cut.

The training rhythm was: morning at the Academy. Guru Markandeya's circular chamber. The stone floor. The dome with its constellation paintings. The exercises that were genuinely useful (Ritu was learning — learning to open portals of specific sizes, to hold them for specific durations, to direct them toward specific locations) and that were also genuinely funneled (every exercise pointed, eventually, at the Mahadwar's seal, the way every road in the Vasishtha Rajya pointed, eventually, at Rajnagar). Ritu trained with the awareness of a person who was using the tool without trusting the toolmaker, the particular discipline of learning from a teacher whose motives you understood and whose understanding freed you to take the knowledge and discard the agenda.

Leela attended every session. This was Ritu's condition — non-negotiable, presented to Guru Markandeya with the particular firmness that Ritu had inherited from Amba (the firmness that was not negotiation but declaration, the declaration that said: this is how it is, and the how-it-is is final). Leela's presence served two purposes: the Shakti purpose (Leela's Vanaspati Shakti provided a grounding influence, the green-energy that anchored Ritu's gold-energy when the portal-work became intense, the healer's hand preventing the performer's overreach) and the witness purpose (Leela watched Guru Markandeya with the healer's eye, the eye that detected the wrong note, the eye that saw the hunger beneath the teaching and that reported the seeing to Ritu after every session).

Karan was — different. Since the confession in the dharamshala courtyard, since the tearing of the form, Karan was different the way a person is different after removing a mask: lighter, more visible, the face that had been hidden now available for reading. He still attended the training — he was still Guru Markandeya's apprentice, the relationship not formally broken, the break being internal rather than institutional — but his attending was now split: half student, half guard. He watched his master the way Leela watched. Two pairs of eyes on the old man. The watching that was itself a form of control: I see you. I see your hunger. The seeing is my power.

The living rhythm was: everything else.

The Natraj troupe had found its feet in Rajnagar. This was what Nat troupes did — they found feet. Wherever they went, however hostile the terrain, the troupe adapted, the adapting being the core skill that centuries of traveling had produced, the skill that said: the place changes, we change with it, the changing is the surviving.

Amba found work. Not performance work — Nat performances in Rajnagar were illegal, the capital's entertainment laws restricting public performances to licensed troupes and the licensing being available only to settled troupes, not traveling ones, the particular bureaucratic discrimination that kept Nat art visible in the countryside and invisible in the city. But Amba found other work: seamstress work, Noor's skill deployed at a tailor's shop in the lower city (the tailor being a man who didn't ask questions and who paid in coin and who appreciated Noor's embroidery, the embroidery that Noor produced at a speed that suggested supernatural assistance but that was, in fact, merely the natural result of a woman who had been sewing since she was seven).

Lakku found work at the docks — the river docks, the Vasishtha Rajya's inland waterway that ran through Rajnagar's lower city, the docks where men loaded and unloaded cargo and where the work was physical and the payment was daily and the questions were: can you lift this? (Yes, Lakku could lift anything. Lakku's body was the performer's body, trained for decades to move and carry and balance, the body that was designed for the stage and that functioned equally well on the docks.) Devraj joined him. Father and son, loading cargo, the particular dignity of men who had been performers their entire lives and who were now manual labourers and who performed the labour with the same commitment they brought to the stage, the commitment that said: whatever the role, perform it fully.

Mata set up a healing station. In the dharamshala's courtyard — the jasmine-scented courtyard that became, within three days of Mata's occupation, a clinic. The clinic was unofficial, unlicensed, the particular healthcare that existed in the spaces between institutional medicine and institutional neglect, the healthcare that served the people who could not afford the Academy-trained physicians and who could not access the temple healers and who were, therefore, left to the particular mercy of the market: the charlatan herbal-sellers and the fortune-tellers and the practitioners whose qualifications were imagination and whose medicine was hope.

Mata's medicine was not hope. Mata's medicine was: actual medicine. The Vanvasi herbal knowledge that was five hundred years old and that worked and that the Academy classified as "unregulated" and that Mata classified as "the only thing standing between these people and death."

Leela assisted. In the afternoons, after the morning training at the Academy, Leela worked beside Mata in the courtyard clinic. The work was — healing. The actual healing, the thing that Leela had been training for her entire life, the thing that the flight from Haritpur had interrupted and that the city had resumed in a different form. In the forest, Leela healed plants and the occasional villager. In the city, Leela healed — everyone. The dharamshala's residents, the dock workers, the street children, the particular population of urban poor who lived in the space between survival and catastrophe and for whom a cut that went septic or a fever that lasted too long was the difference between working and not-working and not-working was the difference between eating and not-eating.

Leela's Vanaspati Shakti proved — useful. Not in the flashy way, not in the portal-opening, door-shimmering way that Ritu's Shakti worked. In the quiet way. Leela could grow aloe in her palm — literally, the plant sprouting from a seed held in her hand, the green glow facilitating the growth, the aloe-leaf ready to apply to a burn within minutes instead of weeks. She could produce fresh tulsi for fever-tea — the Krishna tulsi, the dark variety, stronger, the leaves appearing between her fingers like a card trick but real, the plant responding to the Shakti's asking.

She wore gloves now. Guru Markandeya's advice, reluctantly taken, the advice being: the Rakshak in Rajnagar will spot the green cuticles. The gloves were cotton — Noor-made, embroidered (Noor could not help the embroidering, the embroidery being Noor's particular expression of affection, the needle and thread doing what the words sometimes could not), the gloves serving the dual purpose of hiding the Shakti-green and protecting the hands during the healing work.

*

And then: the performance.

It happened because of Omi. Omi, who was — bored. Bored was a dangerous state for Omi, the boredom of a forest-archer who had been transplanted into a city and whose primary skill (archery) was forbidden and whose primary purpose (protecting Leela) was being fulfilled by walls and doors rather than by arrows and bows. Omi bored was Omi restless. Omi restless was Omi prowling the lower city's streets, the bow (wrapped, hidden, but present, always present) on his back, the prowling covering ground with the efficiency of a man who was mapping terrain, the forest-boy's instinct applied to urban geography.

Omi found the underground performance. In the lower city — a cellar beneath a defunct merchant's warehouse, the cellar that had been converted, by persons unknown, into a performance space. The space was — illegal. Nat performances were illegal in Rajnagar. But the illegality produced, as illegality always produces, the underground: the hidden performances, the cellar shows, the particular art that survives prohibition by going beneath it.

"There's a show tonight," Omi told Ritu. In the dharamshala. His voice was — excited. The excitement that Omi rarely showed, the excitement being, for Omi, an emotion that he kept wrapped and hidden like the bow, the emotion that appeared only when the stimulus was strong enough to penetrate the wrapping. "A Nat troupe. Not from Rajnagar — from the Vasishtha countryside. They're performing Rani Kasturi."

Ritu's response was — immediate. Physical. The performer's response to the performance's name: the blood quickening, the hands warm (the particular warmth that was both the performer's adrenaline and the Shakti's stirring, the two responses now indistinguishable), the body saying: yes. Yes to the stage. Yes to the performing. The thing that she had been denied since the Chitrakoot dawn. The thing that defined her.

They went. Ritu, Leela, Omi, Karan. The four who had become — the unit. The particular subset of the larger group that operated as a team, the team being: the Door-Keeper, the Healer, the Archer, and the Mage. The characters in a story that none of them had auditioned for and that all of them were performing.

The cellar was — full. Fifty people, perhaps sixty, packed into a space designed for twenty, the audience sitting on crates and standing against walls and the particular physical intimacy of an underground show where the audience and the performers shared the same air and the sharing was the art. The performers were — another Nat troupe. Smaller than the Natrajs. Five members. The costumes were — patched. The props were — minimal. The performance was — real.

Ritu watched Rani Kasturi performed by another troupe and the watching was — the watching was education. Not the education that Guru Markandeya provided, not the Shakti-education. The performance education. The education that said: this is what we do, this is who we are, this is the art that the High Throne has banned and that the banning has not killed because the art is older than the throne and the art is in the blood and the blood does not obey laws.

The performer playing Rani Kasturi was — good. Not great. Not Ritu. But good. The girl (fifteen, maybe sixteen, the age that Ritu had been at Haldipura) spoke the lines with conviction and the conviction carried the performance even when the technique faltered. And when the girl spoke the line — "I am the door between what was and what will be" — Ritu felt the Shakti stir.

Not the dangerous stir. Not the explosion-stir. The gentle stir. The collaborative stir. The asking stir — the Shakti responding to the performance the way a plant responds to rain, the response being: this is my element. This is where I live. The performance is the Shakti's home.

Ritu understood something that she had not understood before. The Dwar Shakti was not separate from the performing. The Dwar Shakti was born from the performing. The Saptam Rajya — the Seventh Kingdom — had been a kingdom of performers. The Door-Power had evolved from the performance-power, the ability to become someone else, to open the self to another story, to be the door between what was and what will be. The performing and the portal-opening were the same thing. The same Shakti. The same gift.

After the show — in the street above the cellar, the midnight street of Rajnagar's lower city, the street that smelled of jasmine and sewage and the particular nighttime chemistry of a city that did not sleep — Karan taught Ritu to meditate standing up. Not the sitting meditation, not the Academy standard. The standing meditation — the performer's meditation, the meditation that happened in the body's motion rather than the body's stillness.

"Juggle," Karan said. He had brought the river-stones — the three smooth stones from the Chitrakoot stream, the stones that he still could not keep in the air for more than two cycles but that he carried anyway, the carrying being the commitment to the learning.

Ritu juggled. Three stones. In the lamplight. The stones catching the yellow of the oil-lamp that hung outside the warehouse, the light making the stones seem to glow — or was it the light? Was it the Shakti? The stones in the air, the hands moving, the pattern that was muscle-memory and that was also, she now felt, Shakti-memory: the awareness of multiple objects in multiple positions, the awareness that was juggling and that was portaling and that was performing and that was all the same thing.

"Now open a portal while juggling," Karan said.

"That's impossible."

"If you can keep three stones in the air, you can keep three spells going at once. Your words. Prove them."

Ritu juggled. And asked. The asking was — split. Part of her attention on the stones (the physical, the muscle, the hands) and part on the Shakti (the gold, the warmth, the door). The splitting was — difficult. But the difficulty was the difficulty of a new skill being learned, not the difficulty of an impossible thing being attempted. The splitting was possible.

A shimmer. Small. To her left. A portal — chapati-sized — opened while the stones continued their arc. Through the portal: the dharamshala courtyard. She could see Mata's clinic. She could see the jasmine bush. She could see, through the portal, the place that was home-for-now while her hands kept three stones in the air.

"There," Karan said. The smile — not the almost-smile. The real smile. The smile that said: you did it. The two things at once. The performing and the portaling. The same thing.

Leela was watching. Omi was beside her. They were standing in the lamplight, the four of them, in a midnight street in a capital city that wanted them gone, and the standing was — the standing was the image that would stay. The image that was the unit. The team. The Nat and the Vanvasi and the Mage and the Door-Keeper, standing in lamplight, the stones in the air and the portal open and the night around them and the danger around the night and the danger not mattering because the standing-together was the strength and the strength was enough.