The Library of Fates(59)

“Peaceful, isn’t it?” I heard a voice behind me.

I turned. It was Kalyani. I hesitated for a moment, trying to decide whether to tell her that I didn’t know how to be at peace, that I didn’t know how to be myself anymore. Still, I swallowed my words, grateful for the Sybillines’ hospitality. “It’s beautiful. Like nothing I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe how secluded it is.”

Kalyani sat down next to me. She moved like a young person, with grace and strength, fluidity in her limbs. “Secluded, yes. But we really have no need for interaction with the outside world. We’re entirely self-sufficient. We build our own things, grow our own food.”

“And you mine your own chamak too.” I watched as a group of people collected the chamak from the walls and the floor of the caves, using comb-like tools to gather it, scrape it off the rock, and deposit it into bowls. “What is it, exactly? Chamak?”

“Some people here believe that it is what’s left over from Makara’s dreams. Perhaps the grit from his eyes? Me, personally, I don’t know what it is,” she said. “Anyway, after it goes through the ascetics, it eventually ends up in the hands of a few merchants who are taxed on it by the throne of the kingdom that we happen to be residing within.”

“Shalingar,” I said. “But how do you transport it out of here?”

Kalyani pointed to the flock of white birds nesting by Saaras. The birds were of different sizes, some even larger than Saaras, but many smaller. There must have been hundreds of them. A man was carefully attaching and removing tiny sacks from their feet. Some of the birds sprang up into the air, flying out of the top of the volcano.

“Mostly bar-headed geese. They’re small and sleek. They can fly at altitudes no other bird can. They’ve been trained to fly south, toward the forest where the monks take the chamak, feed them, and send them back to us with things we need.”

“Things you need?” I asked.

Kalyani shrugged. “We have no need for money. Or material things. Although sometimes they send us seeds so we can grow fruits.”

“In exchange for chamak?” I raised an eyebrow. It baffled me that the most valuable substance in the world—a material that Sikander had been willing to kill for—was being traded for seeds.

“Everyone has their own currency. Here, chamak is abundant. We harvest it during the day, and the next morning, the entire rockface is covered with it again.”

“And outside these caves, it’s liable to start wars,” I said to her before I remembered what Arjun had said in his letter. “I . . . can’t return home. My kingdom has been overthrown. I don’t know where to go now.”

“Let me show you something,” Kalyani said, getting up.

I followed her up the swirl of the rocks, and we passed by people going about their own business in their cave homes. I don’t know what I had expected of the Sybillines, exactly, but these people appeared to be no different from us.

A handful of them continued to harvest chamak, but most of the others were simply enjoying themselves, playing a game that resembled marbles but with pebbles made of volcanic lava, painting mandalas across the base of the volcano, or simply sitting by the lagoon near Thala, talking. Some fed birds while others hung wet fabric from clotheslines outside their caves or washed dishes in the waterfall.

“It’s lovely here,” I said. “I don’t understand why anyone would want to leave.”

“But people do leave. In fact, every moon, people leave. They wait for Makara to sleep, and off they go. Mostly the young. They want to be a part of the larger world. There’s only one condition—they’re free to leave, but they can never come back. My own children left. They must have children of their own now,” she said wistfully.

“You’ve never left this place then?” I asked.

“No one you see here ever has. We’re protectors of the Janaka Caves, of a way of life; it’s one of our primary duties in this world.”

We arrived at a cave that was so high up that looking down at the bowl made me dizzy. “I know you’ve been questioning who you are,” Kalyani said as she guided me into the cave. “This might help you understand.”

We emerged inside what appeared to be a shrine. A statue of Maya stood before me. I gasped, still struck by the resemblance. But what left me speechless were the murals around Maya. They moved and changed. There was Ananta, shrouded in mist, rain falling over Chanakya Lake. And the tall buildings and arenas of Macedon that appeared to reach the sky. There was the sun rising over the east and setting in the west.

“We’re not just protectors of the caves,” Kalyani said. “Makara might create and destroy the world. But who do you think sustains it?” she said.

My head whipped around to look at her. “So you . . . sustain it? Not Makara?”

“This is how the Earth speaks with us,” she told me. She touched the mural of Ananta, and slowly, the rain stopped, and the sun peeked out from behind the clouds. “It’s what we’ve been doing for years.” She touched another wall where snow was falling over a landscape. All of a sudden, the snow halted.

“Come outside with me,” she said.

We stepped outside the cave, and the sight before me left me speechless. Across the surface of the caves, the chamak moved and glistened into images of the outside world. There were projections of children being born, couples falling in love, elderly men and women on canes, crossing streets, children laughing, enemies fighting.