Page 70 of Her Soul for a Crown

The tunnels curved endlessly as Premala lead the patchwork army to the one and only blessed painting owned by the Kattadiya. She stopped in front of an old wooden door etched with stars. Why it was hidden away, Anula could only guess.

“So you’re a thief after all,” she said, thinking back to when she’d suspected the girl of sneaking into the concubine estate to pilfer.

“No!” Premala waved her off. “This painting was gifted to us, not the kingdom. We would never.”

“It was only a jest.”

“You’re not as funny as you think.”

“And you’re not as timid.”

Her entire body flushed. “Good. A guruthuma shouldn’t be.”

A throat cleared. Bithul looked pointedly at the door. “We haven’t much time.”

Premala nodded, placed a hand on the wood, and pushed.

Flickering candlelight illuminated the tiny office, casting shadows on the pillows and one low table, where papers filled with drawings were spread—drawings of Hashini and other women, perhaps other past guruthumas.

Hanging above it was a large canvas in which a young woman stood in the center of a dark cave, a lone fire revealing the absence of tunnels.

Her eyes were closed, her chin tilted up to the Divinity of Luck touching her between the eyes, heavenslight sparking where finger and forehead met.

“Thilini,” Anula breathed.

“Yes,” Premala agreed, awestruck. Each of the Kattadiya touched their heads, in reverence or remembrance, before Premala bowed to Fate. “After you, Your Greatness.”

Fate wasted no time with explanations. They strode forward, placed their hand on the canvas, and stepped through. The rest followed, one by one.

A soft breeze played with the tendrils of Anula’s curls.

The heat of the fire warmed her cheeks, and as she walked across the expanse toward the end of the canvas, she caught a glimmer in Thilini’s eye.

The first guruthuma’s lips spread in a smile as she dipped her head in greeting.

As though she knew, even then, that they would one day meet.

Anula nodded back, and for once, the unknowing nature of the cosmos didn’t feel unstable but pliable, filled with unending possibilities.

“We need a plan for when we arrive,” Bithul said, pulling her back to the moment.

Anula refocused. If they did this right, she’d have her whole life to explore that thought. “Take your men to the inner city. Stop them as best you can. I’ll try to work quickly.”

“What about us?” Premala asked.

“Save the people. Put out the fires. Do whatever you can to disrupt Polonnaruwa’s destruction.”

“What work are you trying to do quickly?” Bithul asked, though the purse of his lips and crease in his brow told her that he knew exactly what she had planned. With or without a necklace.

“I have a bone to pick with the prince,” Anula said, his image surfacing. Though no sky turned red, her vision shimmered with it, her eyes wide open.

“Perhaps I should accompany you.”

A wave of tension crashed from behind them. Anula flicked a glance at the guards listening in, at their terse faces and the need in their gazes.

“A commander should be with his men, don’t you think?” she asked.

Bithul turned. His men caught his eye and held him firm.

Surprised, a flush sizzled up his neck. They didn’t need to say the words.

Bithul had always been their choice. He nodded curtly in acceptance, standing taller.

It wasn’t until Fate had led them outside of the fire’s flickering flames and into the dark corners of the painting that Bithul spoke again.

“Are you all right, without knowing their…fate?” His voice was low, soft. It pinched at Anula.

“As all right as a pig being swallowed headfirst by a rock python, but I can’t dwell on it.

I did what I could, and now I’ll do it again for others.

” The words rang true in her heart, echoed in the empty cavern of her soul.

This was what she must do. After, she could search for him, as a seeker to a relic.

If that’s what she chose. Her path wasn’t marked out by the Divinities or anyone else.

She was free to decide, free to choose what was most important.

The way the Yakkas had been in their last moments. The way Anuradhapura was about to be.

But she already knew that’s exactly what she would do. She chose him.

“Fate was right.” Bithul regarded her. “You are changed.”

A smile lifted her lips. It didn’t reach her eyes, but one day, perhaps it would. Only the cosmos knew.

“Pardon me, my raeji—my—um, commander.” Shahan pushed through, stumbled in front of them, and saluted.

“I was thinking of our strategy. If we split off in more than one contingent, we widen our reach, but that lowers the number of fighters in each. I’m not sure such small groups can accomplish much of anything. ”

“The size doesn’t always matter.” Bithul shook his head.

Anula scoffed. “I know an estate full of concubines that will tell you differently.”

“For prayer’s sake!” Premala swatted at her. “We’re in a blessed painting. Clearly you haven’t changed that much.”

Anula smirked as darkness suddenly consumed them, the black-and-gray veneer of the cave walls ending their walk.

Fate nodded to Prophet Revantha. Hurriedly, the young man stepped forth, swiped a hand across the false wall, as if brushing away dust, yet instead of smearing the paint, the color completely vanished. A round silver lock appeared.

The prophet lifted the pendant from around his neck and pressed it into the lock’s grooves.

The rubies snicked into place. He turned it to the left until it clicked.

He spun it quickly to the right and back to the left.

A ticking sounded, and a network of iron rose up along the length of the painting, spindly round pieces twirling, connecting, and interlocking, until they disappeared into the blackened sky.

Light outlined a door. The prophet bowed to Fate and returned to his position. The banished Divinity regarded the small army. “Stay close, keep your hands to yourself, and follow only me.”

They opened the door, and all stepped through.

***

The cosmos didn’t feel like any surface she had treaded on. Not marble or stone or fur or grass.

Anula half expected to fall and catch, like entering a painting. But under her feet, the cosmos felt like the cool waves of a bathing pool if her soles never touched the floor.

As they glided through the everything and nothing, stars blinked, there and gone. Colors stretched in a rainbow swirled above and below, and it rolled in the far-off distance like the hills leading to the Mihintale and Ritigala Mountains.

A whistle sounded to the right. Every head craned to see, as if a Divinity might call down to them. But it was only a boy, waving enthusiastically.

“Come this way!” he called. “You can reach Galnewa.” He pointed behind him, where the darkness of the cosmos was suddenly streaked green and blue and brown. The image of a paddy field coming into view.

“Galnewa?” a man behind Anula asked. “That’s my home!” He glanced at her, at Fate, then stepped out of line. “I’m sorry, but I must know my family is safe.”

“No,” Fate said, but the man ran to the boy, and as their hands entwined, the painting winked out. And so did they.

A chill shivered down Anula’s back. “Where’d he go?”

“Wherever the cosmos wants to take him,” Fate said.

“How comforting.”

“You don’t know?” Premala asked, swiveling to her Kattadiya, counting silently.

“Why should I?” Fate countered. “Am I the cosmos?”

A terse silence passed down the line, each person tucking their hands at their sides.

“Are the lost ever found?” Bithul asked, as though Fate would answer.

“If the Heavens and Earth know not their location,” they said, “yet the cosmos does, are they truly lost?”

“Do they know where they are?” Anula asked.

“Is the knowing so important, if it be good?”

“ Is it good?” she pressed.

“Why would it not be? It created all.” Fate turned, cutting off the conversation and continuing through the cosmos.

It was not only a boy whose form the cosmos took, calling out or speaking to them.

Animals of every shape and size did, too.

Cats rubbed against their legs. A school of fish followed them.

Plants grew and died and grew again beneath their feet.

A sense of awe and warning in every caress.

A challenge to trust, to surrender. A promise to take them far away, to be good, in its own way.

Anula’s fingers twitched. Perhaps a flower or a whale or a tree could take her to Reeri, or at least tell her of his end.

The line paused, and she stared at the pink nelum growing around her ankle.

Perhaps if she asked nicely, she could say goodbye to him, too.

If the cosmos was truly good, it would want that for her, wouldn’t it?

Bending her knees, Anula reached down, but a flash of color stopped her.

It was a painting and the blurred edges of a wall.

Though she couldn’t see the entire room in which it was hung, it was clear enough to know that it was inside a stupa.

Two more paintings appeared by its side, looking in on other rooms.

“Our walk ends.” Fate regarded them once more. “Who goes first?”

Together they decided on Premala and her Kattadiya.

The women emerged into a half burning stupa, linking arms and escaping before it crumpled to dust and ash. Offerings became mere memories. They raced to the center of the city, the clank of the water tank beckoning them forth.

Next went Bithul and his men, out of a painting of war-seasoned commanders, only to land in the halls of the administration building with strangled ministers at their feet. They sneaked to the doors and burst into the inner city. Three contingents parsed off, Bithul’s heading for the palace stairs.

Last, Anula stepped from the painting, fingers plugging her ears as the contents of the blessed gift climaxed.

Fate had smirked when she gave Anula the signal that it was her turn. Apparently, the portrait of Raja Mahakuli Mahatissa’s harem was the only one available. She hadn’t dared search the faces to find her own from last year. She wasn’t that girl anymore.

Anula landed in a ransacked bedchamber—the raja’s ransacked bedchamber. A voice broke around a song, not inside her head but within her bones. Anula shivered, stepping lightly over the glass and stone littering the floor. Vases and mirrors lay shattered, pillows and divans and paintings shredded.

Usurpers didn’t tend to plunder their newly acquired palaces, unless they didn’t intend to rule from there, or they planned to burn it and rebuild—or just burn it to send a message. Anula’s skin crawled.

“Help!” A cry sounded.

Anula bolted toward it, thinking of maids and servants and guards who might have been caught in the middle of the chaos. She flung sheets in the air and found not a maid but a gift.

“Cursed blessings.”

“Help!” the blessed gift raejina cried. The headboard was cracked in two. A chasm of air hung between the raejina’s and raja’s outstretched hands, unable to breach the edge of the wood.

The image sank in Anula’s heart, filling the space of her soul. “Hold on.”

She pushed the two pieces as closely together as she could.

It would have to be enough for now. She was there for a different purpose.

Anula swept a hand under the bed, grabbed the hidden treasure beneath, and flipped Uncle Manoj’s journal to the final page.

The one where he’d scrawled, Skin-to-skin contact without self-poisoning?

The recipe was quick and easy, the delivery merely a sultry surprise. It didn’t matter that she no longer had her necklace. There was no need for a remedy.

***

Dark clouds roiled over the palace, heat sticking Anula’s sari to every curve of her body as she flew through the halls. Past room after room, doors unhinged, and gifts stolen or shattered. Flames flickered in the windows, her eyes latching to each as she passed, hope lodged in her throat.

The flood came first, soaking the ground with water from the irrigation reservoirs, the waves rising from soldiers’ feet to ankles, and drowned out the flames.

The banners of Polonnaruwa dropped next.

Soldiers fell in great numbers, as a swell of guards and ministers and concubines and wives gathered in fight.

Bithul was in the last window, climbing the palace stairs.

His sword aimed for a man in a feathered helmet, like the one Commander Dilshan used to wear.

But Bithul was not stealthy; the Polonnaruwan commander watched his advance, settled on the higher ground, and arced his own sword.

Bithul ducked, rolled across the lower stair, and swiped at the commander’s ankles.

With a scream, he plunged to his knees, then his hands. Bithul stood and swung once more, ending his command.

Pride swelled within Anula. They were doing it.

They were ending the Age of Usurpers, taking back what was theirs, and declaring a new start, a new Age, a new beginning, together.

She skidded to a halt in front of a set of carved wooden doors inset with silver and brass ornamentation. Now it was her turn.

For poison could stop many hearts.

But Anula yearned for just one.