Page 68 of Her Soul for a Crown

Anula’s heart stuttered.

Where the red mehendhi marking had once flowed intricately across her arms, where it had once flayed and torn and streamed with her blood, it now receded. Fading to brown and amber, it disappeared into open wounds.

No sting, no pain. As though it were mere ink.

Her lip trembled.

The Great Sword clattered to the floor and blinked out of existence.

Wind blew out of the black seam that had swallowed the Yakkas and their lord, kicking up Anula’s hair and sari, jangling her earrings and bangles.

It drowned the cries of those waking from Wessamony’s curse, stifled the sound of stone walls shaking apart, and swallowed the screams that opened the mouths of guards and ministers.

A thin finger of darkness curled out of the seam, slithering through the room like a snake in the brush, and plucked Bithul up by his heels.

It tipped him over, stripped him of leathers and weapons, picked at the wounds Hashini had etched on his ankles, and flayed them open until only blood and bone whirled on the wind.

“Keep going.” Fate’s voice boomed as they landed before her.

Anula startled. The finger of darkness stretched around the room, unmaking victim after victim. But she had already acted. What more could she do?

A simple bone blade —Prophet Ayaan’s voice surfaced— imbued with Fate’s power, able to cut off the Hand of Death.

Cursed blessings.

The stories of old told of a time when the people of Anuradhapura had turned on one another.

A time when they’d protected themselves instead of their village, when the idea of immortality had become tangible.

Anula had witnessed a version of it in the first blessed painting she had experienced.

How could she have forgotten? The relic hadn’t been made to kill Heavenly beings.

It had been forged for humanity. To cut the Hand of Death.

The Hand that held Bithul.

That had taken Reeri.

Kama. Calu. Sohon.

Anula gripped the relic tight and prayed, for the first time, with true faith. “Great Divinity of Fate, hear my prayer. Allow me to cut off the Hand of Death and save the lives stolen tonight!”

The blade warmed beneath her hand. Winds ceased. Sounds silenced. And the bodies left in the amphitheater paused, immobile.

Only Fate and Anula seemed able to move. Slowly stepping to Anula’s side, the cosmos sparkling in their eyes, Fate said, “Let us begin.”

The rocks stirred first, lifting into the air and fitting back into the walls and ceiling and stairs, like a peg to a hole.

Dirt dissolved, the air cleared, and like stars winking alive in the falling night, they came—men, women, and children burst into the room the exact way they had left.

Courtiers, Kattadiya, and, finally, Bithul.

Upside-down and motionless, flesh and blood knit themselves back together. Anula stared at the white specter standing at his side. A chill swept through her bones.

It was not a shadow, not the dark wisps of Reeri’s banished form, nor was it bright and shining, a star or a sun.

Its form pulsed to no drumbeat. Its color everything and nothing and one.

A smile broke on one side, with no teeth or fangs gleaming.

There was only a hole where a mouth should be, black as night, and from it emerged a pristine bone from which fingers, long and thin and innumerable, grew.

They stretched until they touched Bithul’s ankles.

“Is that…?” Anula couldn’t find the words.

“Death.” Fate found them instead. “Death and its Hand.”

Anula’s fingers flew to her throat, only to slip against bare skin. A shiver racked her spine.

“It will not linger long,” Fate said, “afore it moves to the next.”

It was a command, as much as a warning.

Tightening her hold on the Bone Blade, Anula stepped forward, only to find her feet never touched the ground.

Her soles lilted on the air, her sari softly swirling, a hushed song catching the edge.

Heavensong. It filled her, invigorated her, and the relic began to glow.

Anula squared her shoulders. As she closed the distance between her and Death, its light grew tenfold.

A sizzle sounded. Smoke twirled on bone-white fingertips. Death’s Hand flinched and drew away from her and the pure light she carried, away from the blessing.

“Now!” Fate urged.

Anula raised the blade high and brought it down quick.

The Bone Blade, made not of ivory but bones sacrificed willingly, cut through the Hand of Death like a knife through a mango. Swift and clean.

One by one, the fingers fell.

The mangled hand curled back.

Bithul flipped right side up, body unmarred and intact. He slowly blinked awake.

The white specter winked out, only to appear by another’s side, new fingers finding their next victim.

“Go.” Fate nodded.

Anula followed the specter. Cut once, twice.

Every time Death moved, its Hand regrew and reached for another.

But Anula moved, too, persistent in her purpose.

Fingers fell, eroded, turned to dust and ash.

People flickered slowly back to life. Minister, maid, concubine, Kattadiya.

It didn’t matter; Anula worked for them all.

When the last human was rescued, the seam grew darker, screeched along with the heavensong, and out it spat the Yakkas.

Kama. Calu. Sohon.

Reeri.

Anula’s heart quivered.

The hole in Death’s form widened into a lopsided grin. The Hand flew out and multiplied. Not its fingers, as it had before, but another hand grew from the first, another set of fingers reaching. And another. And another. Death aimed for all four Yakkas at once.

Anula’s breath stalled. She couldn’t cut them all at the same time.

One bone stretched to Reeri’s chest, lit the contours of his shadow, writhing as though locked in a cage of flame.

Another cut across the room to catch Kama under her chin.

Anula glanced at the relic and back at the specter, panic setting her hand and heart tremoring.

Nothing in the stories of old spoke of this.

She looked to Fate, but the Divinity was quiet.

Was she supposed to choose who to save? Would she be able to turn back time again, save another Yakka, over and over until they were all safe? If not, how was she to cut them all at once?

Then it dawned on her: She wasn’t. She couldn’t. Because she was looking , not seeing . If she shifted her perspective, there was more to the specter than fingers and hands. And therein lay the answer.

Anula spun, arced the blade and cut through not the Hand but the Wrist of Death.

One, two, three hundred fingers fell at once. The black hole receded into a small circle, a silent scream on Death’s lips, rage strobing like a dying star.

Bang!

The seam imploded; darkness and light funneled fast, sucking the Yakkas back—Kama, Calu, Sohon.

“No!” Anula grasped Reeri’s arm, but she slipped right through.

Tall and sharp and devastatingly handsome, Reeri’s shadow blinked.

Saffron eyes caught her. Held her.

And disappeared into the cosmos.

“Wait!” Anula raced after, only for Fate to lock her in their arms. She struggled against them. “Let me go.”

“You cannot follow.”

“Watch me.” She lunged out of their grasp, reaching for the swirling seam. Her hand disappeared into the darkness, scraping her skin.

Fate yanked her back. Anula’s hand pulsed back into existence, throbbing as if she’d stuck it in fire. “If you follow, you shall not return. Blade or no.”

Anula stilled. The knowing settled deep, and an emptiness echoed, where once there had been a tether. Cold air prickled her arms, where once there had been a marking. “Will they return?”

“All shall be revealed when time remains. Have you finished, or are there more to save?”

Anula glared. Had she saved the Yakkas or not? “I’m not saving Wessamony.”

“I never said that you must.”

“Then who?” Anula glanced at the Bone Blade, at the seam, at Fate. Hope sparked. “How far back can I go?”

***

Two Kattadiya had died, torn apart by each other’s nails while under Wessamony’s curse. Anula cut the Hand of Death for each of them.

Once the silent, unmoving battle between cursed and uncursed was finished, and every life brought back, Anula’s gaze landed on Hashini, half dead. She didn’t stop.

Instead, she made her way to the first pit, now the only pit, as the room had pieced itself back together.

A slight young woman lifted out, her head stitching back together, beautiful tresses framing a delicate face.

The specter of Death appeared, Hand outstretched.

Anula lifted the Bone Blade and attacked.

Premala’s eyes flickered to life, and Anula pulled her into a tight embrace.

It was complete. The entire cave was restored.

Only the Yakkas were missing.

Sandani took her place, holding Premala as Anula flipped the blade over in her hand, the song’s chorus unbroken. What she could do for the kingdom with this relic. Who she could save…

“Will it work only in here?”

Fate smiled, sad and knowing. “You cannot go back that far.”

Anula ignored the pity. “I can’t or the relic can’t?”

“There is much the cosmos may do and much it may hold. We know not its limits.” Fate turned to the seam’s swirling mixture.

Anula bristled at another nonanswer but peered within, too. The colors circled faster, deepened and darkened, lightened and spread. The lines of a face emerged. Then a second. And a third.

Anula’s breath caught.

Thaththa, Amma, and Auntie Nirma gazed back, backlit and sparkling with stardust.

“A gift,” Fate said, “from the cosmos.”

Anula’s vision blurred. “Can I pull them out?”

“No.” Fate gently took Anula’s hands and placed them an inch from the seam’s edge. “Though they be gone, their touch reaches far.”

Her family stretched their hands across the dark expanse, broke through the lip of the seam, and wrapped around hers.

It was like a kiss, spreading warmth from the soles of her feet to the tip of her head, and suddenly, she felt it.

Good-night kisses and cold-morning cuddles, races along paddy fields, laughter at sunset and dancing under stars, bedtime stories and dreaming out loud… Home cracked her open.

Tears caught on her lashes. They streamed down her family’s faces.

There was so much she wanted to say. How they were forever on her mind, how her heart stung when the sun rose and they were not there, how it ached when it set. How she woke in the night and cried until there was nothing left. How she would give anything for them to stay.

“I love you,” she whispered.

Their tears glistened as they squeezed her tighter. A tingling welling from fingertip to toe. Thawing and melting her heart.

We love you, too. Anula didn’t need to hear the words to feel them, to know them, for their peace to settle over her, a gentle hug that never let go.

And then they were gone.

The seam closed with a wink, and Fate gently pulled her back. “It is complete.”