He began his tale.
8
Kolabati scrutinized her brother closely as he spoke, watching for lies. His voice was clear and cool, his expression calm with just a hint of guilt, like a husband confessing a minor dalliance with another woman.
“I felt lost after you left India. It was as if I had lost my other arm. Despite all my followers clustered around me, I spent much time alone—too much time, you might say. I began to review my life and all I had done and not done with it. Despite my growing influence, I felt unworthy of the trust so many were placing in me. What had I truly accomplished except to filthy my karma to the level of the lowest caste? I confess that for a time I wallowed in self-pity. Finally I decided to journey back to Bharangpur, to the hills there. To the Temple ruins that was nowof our parents and our heritage.”
He paused and looked directly at her. “The foundation is still there, you know. The ashes of the rest are gone, washed into the sand or blown away, but the stone foundation remains, and the rakoshi caves beneath are intact. The hills are still uninhabited. Despite all the crowding at home, people still avoid those hills. I stayed there for days in an effort to renew myself. I prayed, I fasted, I wandered the caves… yet nothing happened. I felt as empty and as worthless as before.
“And then I found it!”
Kolabati saw a light begin to glow in her brother’s eyes, growing steadily, as if someone were stoking a fire within his brain.
“A male egg, intact, just beneath the surface of the sand in a tiny alcove in the caves! At first I did not know what to make of it, or what to do with it. Then it struck me: I was being given a second chance. There before me lay the means to accomplish all that I should have with my life, the means to cleanse my karma and make it worthy of one of my caste. I saw it then as my destiny. I was to start a nest of rakoshi and use them to fulfill the vow.”
A male egg. Kusum continued to talk about how he manipulated the foreign service and managed to have himself assigned to the London embassy. Kolabati barely heard him. A male egg… she remembered hunting through the ruins of the Temple and the caves beneath as a child, searching everywhere for a male egg. In their youth they both had felt it their duty to start a new nest and they had desperately wanted a male egg.
“After I established myself at the embassy,” Kusum was saying, “I searched for Captain Westphalen’s descendants. I learned that there were only four of his bloodline left. They were not a prolific family and a number of them were killed off in the World Wars. To my dismay, I learned that only one, Richard Westphalen, was still in Britain. The other three were in America. But that did not deter me. I hatched the eggs, mated them, and started the nest. I have since disposed of three of the four Westphalens. There is only one left.”
Kolabati was relieved to hear that only one remained— perhaps she could prevail upon Kusum to give it up.
“Aren’t three lives enough? Innocent lives, Kusum?”
“The vow, Bati,” he said as if intoning the name of a deity. “The vrata. They carry the blood of that murderer, defiler, and thief in their veins. And that blood must be wiped from the face of the earth.”
“I can’t let you, Kusum. It’s wrong!”
“It’s right!” He leapt to his feet. “There’s never been anything so right!”
“No!”
“Yes!” He came toward her, his eyes bright. “You should see them, Bati! So beautiful! So willing! Please come with me and look at them! You’ll know then that it was the will of Kali!”
A refusal rose immediately to Kolabati’s lips, yet did not pass them. The thought of seeing a nest of rakoshi here in America repulsed and fascinated her at the same time. Kusum must have sensed her uncertainty, for he pressed on:
“They are our birthright! Our heritage! You can’t turn your back on them—or on your past!”
Kolabati wavered. After all, she did wear the necklace. And she was one of the last two remaining Keepers. In a way she owed it to herself and her family to at least go and see them.
“All right,” she said slowly. “I’ll come see them with you. But only once.”
“Wonderful!” Kusum seemed elated. “It will be like going back in time. You’ll see!”
“But that won’t change my mind about killing innocent people. You must promise me that will stop.”
“We’ll discuss it,” Kusum said, leading her toward the door. “And I want to tell you about my other plans for the rakoshi—plans that do not involve what you call ’innocent’ lives.”
“What?” She didn’t like the sound of that.
“I’ll tell you after you’ve seen them.”
Kusum was silent during the cab ride to the docks while Kolabati tried her best to appear as if she knew exactly where they were going. After the cab dropped them off, they walked through the dark until they were standing before a small freighter. Kusum led her around to the starboard side.
“If it were daylight you could see the name across the stern: Ajit-Rupobati—in Vedic!”
She heard a click from where his hand rested in his jacket pocket. With a whir and a hum, the gangplank began to lower toward them. Dread and anticipation grew as she climbed to the deck. The moon was high and bright, illuminating the surface of the deck with a pale light made all the more stark by the depths of the shadows it cast.
He stopped at the aft end of the second hatch and knelt by a belowdecks entry port.
“They’re in the hold below,” he said as he pulled up the hatch.
Rakoshi-stench poured out of the opening. Kolabati turned her head away. How could Kusum stand it? He didn’t even seem to notice the odor as he slid his feet into the port.
“Come,” he said.
She followed. There was a short ladder down to a square platform nestled into a corner high over the empty hold. Kusum hit a switch and the platform began to descend with a jerk. Startled, Kolabati grabbed Kusum’s arm.
“Where are we going?”
“Down just a little way.” He pointed below with his bearded chin. “Look.”
Kolabati squinted into the shadows, futilely at first. Then she saw their eyes. A garbled murmur arose from below. Kolabati realized that until this instant, despite all the evidence, all that Jack had told her, she had not truly believed there could be rakoshi in New York. Yet here they were.
She shouldn’t have been afraid—she was a Keeper—yet she was terrified. The closer the platform sank to the floor of the hold, the greater her fear. Her mouth grew dry as her heart pounded against the wall of her chest.
“Stop it, Kusum!”
“Don’t worry. They can’t see us.”
Kolabati knew that, but it gave her no comfort.
“Stop it now! Take me back up!”
Kusum hit another button. The descent stopped. He looked at her strangely, then started the platform back up. Kolabati sagged against him, relieved to be moving away from the rakoshi but knowing she had deeply disappointed her brother.
It couldn’t be helped. She had changed. She was no longer the recently orphaned little girl who had looked up to her older brother as the nearest thing to a god on earth, who had planned with him to find a way to bring the rakoshi back, and through them restore the ruined temple to its former glory. That little girl was gone forever. She had ventured into the world and found that life could be good outside India. She wanted to stay there.