Chapter 3: Leela Ka Jungle (Leela's Forest)

The forest near Chitrakoot was the kind of forest that existed in two versions simultaneously: the version that the maps showed (a green patch, labelled "Vanvasi Settlement Area," the bureaucratic designation that reduced a living, breathing, root-tangled, canopy-thick, animal-populated ecosystem to a coloured splotch on parchment) and the version that Leela knew, which was the real version, the version that smelled of wet earth and neem bark and the particular fungal sweetness of decomposing leaves, the version that sounded like cicadas and bulbuls and the distant percussion of a woodpecker who had been attacking the same sal tree since before Leela was born and who showed no signs of stopping.

Leela was seventeen, and she had never left the forest.

This was not unusual for Vanvasi girls — the forest-dwelling people lived in the forest, the living being total and the forest being sufficient. Leela's village — unnamed on the maps but called Haritpur by its forty-three residents, the name meaning "green place," which was both accurate and redundant, since everything in the forest was green and everything green was the forest — had everything a person needed: water (the stream that ran through the village's centre, clear in winter, muddy in monsoon, entirely absent in the worst of summer), food (the gardens that the Vanvasi women cultivated between the trees, the particular agriculture of a people who farmed not by clearing the forest but by collaborating with it, the plants growing between the roots, the crops climbing the trunks, the farming that was partnership rather than conquest), and community (forty-three people who knew each other's ailments, appetites, and arguments with the comprehensive intimacy that only very small communities achieve).

Leela's particular contribution to Haritpur was: growing things.

Not in the ordinary way. In the Shakti way. The Vanaspati Shakti — the Plant-Power, the ability to persuade a seed to germinate faster, a root to dig deeper, a vine to climb higher, the particular communion between a human hand and a green thing that was, in the Vanvasi tradition, the oldest form of Shakti, older than the court mages' flashy conjuring, older than the Rajvidya Academy's sanctioned spells, the Shakti that came from the earth and that returned to the earth and that required, from its wielder, not power but patience.

Leela's Shakti was modest. She could coax a tulsi plant from seed to flower in three days instead of three weeks. She could convince a reluctant vine to climb a trellis that it had been ignoring. She could grow a bandage's worth of aloe in the time it took Mata Ashwini to boil water. These were small Shaktis — the Shaktis of a healer-in-training, not the Shaktis of a warrior or a court mage or a Door-Keeper (though Leela did not know about Door-Keepers, because Door-Keepers were a thing from the Seventh Kingdom, and the Seventh Kingdom was a thing from history, and history was a thing that the High Throne had worked very hard to erase).

"The ashwagandha is not cooperating," Leela announced to the garden. The garden did not respond, because gardens do not respond to announcements, but the announcing was part of Leela's process — the talking-to-plants that was both Vanaspati practice and personal habit, the talking that Leela had been doing since she could speak, the talking that Mata Ashwini said was "the healer's way of introducing herself to the patient."

The ashwagandha — the plant, not the person (though Mata Ashwini's name also meant ashwagandha, the naming being the Vanvasi tradition of naming children after the plant that bloomed on their birth-day) — was refusing to fruit. The roots were healthy. The leaves were abundant. But the berries — the orange berries that were the plant's medicinal purpose, the berries that Leela needed for Mata's joint-pain tincture — were absent.

"You have everything you need," Leela told the plant. Her hands hovered over the leaves — not touching, hovering, the particular distance that Vanaspati Shakti required: close enough to feel the plant's energy, far enough to not impose. "Sunlight. Water. Soil that I personally composted. What more do you want?"

She pushed — gently. Not a physical push. A Shakti push. The particular channeling of energy from her palms into the plant's system, the energy that was not hers but the earth's, the energy that she borrowed and directed and that the plant received or refused depending on the plant's own assessment of whether the energy was welcome.

The ashwagandha considered. (Plants consider — Leela was certain of this. Not in the human way, not with words and logic, but in the plant way, with the slow, chemical deliberation of an organism that operates on a timeline measured in seasons rather than seconds.)

A berry appeared. Small. Green. Not yet orange. But present.

"Thank you," Leela said. "Was that so difficult?"

"Talking to your patients again?" The voice came from behind the neem tree — the massive neem tree that served as Haritpur's unofficial meeting point, the tree that was, by village consensus, approximately four hundred years old and that had, in its four centuries, seen everything that had happened in the forest and had responded to none of it, the tree's particular philosophy being: I am here. Things happen around me. I do not participate.

Omi emerged from behind the neem. Omkar Vanvasi — Omi to everyone, Omkar to his mother when she was angry (which was frequently, Omi being the kind of boy whose relationship with his mother was defined by her oscillation between exasperation and adoration, the oscillation occurring approximately every seven minutes). Eighteen. Tall — taller than any Vanvasi boy had a right to be, the height coming from his father's side (his father being a man who had been gone for four years on a military campaign and whose absence was the central fact of Omi's life, the absence that he managed by being present for everyone else, the compensation that psychologists would have identified as displacement and that Omi identified as: duty).

He was carrying a bow. The bow was — beautiful. Not the beauty of decoration but the beauty of function, the particular beauty of an object that has been designed for a single purpose and that fulfils that purpose with the minimum of material and the maximum of precision. The bow was sal wood, the wood that the Vanvasi preferred for its flexibility and its willingness to curve without breaking, the wood that was the forest's gift to the archer.

"I'm not talking to my patients," Leela said. "I'm negotiating with my patients. There's a difference."

"The difference is that negotiation implies the other party has a choice."

"Plants have choices. Plants choose to grow or not grow. Plants choose to fruit or not fruit. The ashwagandha chose to fruit because I asked nicely."

"You threatened it."

"I persuaded it. Persuasion is not threat."

"Your persuasion involves Shakti. Shakti-backed persuasion is — that's just threat with extra steps."

The argument was — the argument was their default mode. Leela and Omi argued the way other people breathed: constantly, unconsciously, the arguing being the particular communication style of two people who had known each other since the cradle and whose familiarity had produced not comfort but friction, the comfortable friction of two surfaces that were shaped for each other and that expressed the shaping through the rubbing.

Omi sat on the neem root. The sitting was — Leela noticed it, the way she noticed all things about Omi (the noticing being involuntary, the involuntary being the thing she would never admit) — the sitting was tired. Not the tiredness of physical exertion but the tiredness of a mind that had been working on a problem.

"The gongs sounded," he said.

Leela's hands went still over the ashwagandha. The gongs — the warning gongs, the gongs that the Vanvasi villages used to communicate danger across the forest, the particular system of sound that carried from village to village through the trees, the sound moving faster than a runner and more reliably than a messenger, the gongs that said: something is coming.

"When?"

"This morning. Before dawn. From the south villages. Padmpur first, then Ashokvan, then Nilgirisettlement. The pattern is — the pattern is a sweep. They're sweeping north."

"They."

"Rakshak. The High Throne's soldiers. They're doing another purge. Wild magic users. They're checking villages. Checking hands. Checking—" He stopped. Looked at her hands. The hands that were hovering over the ashwagandha. The hands that were, even now, faintly green at the fingertips — the particular mark of Vanaspati Shakti, the green that appeared when the channeling was active, the green that was as visible to anyone looking as a lit torch in a dark room.

"Your hands," he said.

Leela pulled her hands away from the plant. The green faded. But the fading was — the fading took time. The fading was not instant. The fading was the particular slow-dim of a Shakti that had been used frequently and that left residue, the residue that the Rakshak had been trained to detect.

"Mata," Leela said. "I need to tell Mata."

Mata Ashwini was in the hut. The hut that was — the village's healing centre, the place where Mata made her tinctures and poultices and the particular herbal preparations that the Vanvasi had been making for centuries and that the High Throne classified as "unregulated magical practice" and that Mata classified as "medicine, you bureaucratic imbeciles."

Mata Ashwini was seventy-two. She was not Leela's grandmother by blood — she was Leela's grandmother by the Vanvasi tradition of assigning elder-care relationships based on proximity and aptitude rather than genetics, the particular kinship system that said: this child shows healing talent, therefore the healer raises her. Mata had raised Leela since Leela's mother died (Leela was six, the dying was fever, the fever was the particular forest-fever that the Vanvasi endured every monsoon and that took, on average, one villager per season, the particular arithmetic of forest living that was brutal in its consistency).

"Mata." Leela entered the hut. The hut smelled of — everything. The particular olfactory assault of a healer's workspace: dried neem leaves (bitter, the bitterness that kills parasites and that makes tea undrinkable), turmeric paste (warm, golden, the smell that stained fingers and cured inflammation), ashwagandha root (earthy, the underground smell of a plant that keeps its power in its roots), and the particular base-note of woodsmoke that permeated everything in the forest, the smoke being the Vanvasi's constant companion, the smoke that cooked the food and warmed the nights and drove away the insects and that was, in its perpetual presence, the smell of home.

Mata was grinding. The grinding was — rhythmic. The stone mortar and stone pestle, the particular percussion of a healer preparing medicine, the sound that Leela had heard every day of her life and that was, like the woodpecker's attack on the sal tree, both background and essential.

"The gongs," Mata said. Without looking up. Because Mata heard everything — the gongs, the birds, the change in Leela's breathing when she entered the hut, the particular auditory intelligence of a woman who had survived seventy-two years in a forest by listening.

"Rakshak. Sweeping north."

"How far?"

"Nilgiri Settlement this morning. That's — twenty kilometres south. At their pace—"

"Two days. Maybe less if they have horses." Mata put down the pestle. Looked at Leela. The look was — the look of a woman who had survived three purges and who knew what the purges meant and who was calculating, with the particular mathematics of a survivor, the probability of surviving a fourth. "We leave."

"Leave Haritpur?"

"Leave the forest. The Rakshak know the southern villages. They'll learn the paths. The forest won't protect us this time."

"Where do we go?"

"Rajnagar. The capital."

The capital. Leela had never been to a city. Leela had never been to a town. Leela had been to the market at the forest's edge, once, when she was twelve, and the market had contained approximately fifty people and Leela had found the fifty people overwhelming and had retreated to the tree-line and had waited there until Mata finished trading herbs for salt and cloth and the particular necessities that the forest provided everything except.

"The capital has — the capital is where the High Throne is. The capital is where the Rakshak come from. You want to go to the place they come from?"

"The capital is also where they don't look. The Rakshak look in the villages. The Rakshak look in the forests. The Rakshak do not look in their own backyard. The capital has a million people. A million people is the best hiding place in the seven kingdoms."

"Mata, I can't—"

"You can. You will. We leave at dusk. Pack your healing kit. Pack light. The journey is six days on foot."

"On foot?"

"Unless you've grown a horse since yesterday."

Omi was at the hut's entrance. He had followed — of course he had followed, Omi's defining characteristic being that he was always where Leela was, the being-where-Leela-was being his full-time occupation, the occupation that he performed with the dedication that some men gave to their professions and that Omi gave to the particular task of existing in Leela's proximity.

"I'm coming," he said.

"You were not invited," Mata said.

"I'm self-inviting. The self-invitation is final."

"Your mother—"

"My mother will understand. My mother sent me to tell you about the gongs. My mother said: go with Mata and Leela. Protect them."

"I don't need protection," Leela said.

"Everyone needs protection. Even people who can grow ashwagandha berries through negotiation."

"That was persuasion."

"That was Shakti. And Shakti is what the Rakshak are hunting. And I have a bow and I know how to use it and the using is my contribution and the contribution is not negotiable."

Mata looked at Omi. The look was the look of a seventy-two-year-old woman assessing an eighteen-year-old boy, the assessment being: is he useful? Is he reliable? Will he fold under pressure? The assessment took approximately two seconds, because Mata Ashwini assessed people the way she assessed herbs: quickly, accurately, with the confidence of a lifetime of practice.

"You carry the water," Mata said.

"Done."

"And the food."

"Done."

"And you don't argue with me."

"I argue with everyone."

"You don't argue with me."

"I — fine. I don't argue with you."

"Good. We leave at dusk. Leela, pack your kit. Omi, fill the waterskins. I need to prepare medicines for the village — they'll need supplies after we go."

Leela packed. The healing kit — the leather pouch that Mata had given her on her fourteenth birthday, the pouch that contained the essentials: dried neem, turmeric, bandages (cotton, hand-woven, the Vanvasi weaving that was tighter and stronger than any mill-cloth), her healer's guide (a hand-copied manuscript that Mata had written over thirty years, the knowledge of three generations of Vanvasi healers compressed into forty pages of cramped Devanagari), and the seeds. Always the seeds. The seeds that were the Vanaspati Shakti wielder's most powerful tool — not because the seeds were magical but because the seeds were potential, the potential that the Shakti activated, the sleeping life that the healer's hands woke.

She packed clothes — sturdy leggings, a tunic that Mata had insisted on buying at the market (expensive, the expense justified by Mata's assertion that "if we must flee, we flee in clothes that do not tear at the first thorn"), boots that she had never worn (forest-dwellers walked barefoot, the feet knowing the ground the way the hands knew the plants, but Mata had bought the boots anyway, the buying being the preparation that Mata had been making for years, the preparation for the day when the gongs sounded and the leaving became necessary).

She looked at the hut. Her hut. The hut where she had lived since she was six, the hut that contained her bed (a raised platform, the mosquito net, the particular sleeping arrangement of forest-dwellers who had learned that sleeping close to the ground was an invitation to every crawling thing in the forest), her shelf (three books — the healer's guide, a collection of Vanvasi folk tales, and a manual on poisons that Mata had given her with the instruction: "Know the poisons so you can cure them, not so you can use them"), and the leaf collage on the wall.

The leaf collage. Omi had made it. Last autumn. He had gathered leaves — the biggest in back, the smallest in front, all the scarlet and apricot shades of the forest's October transformation — and had arranged them and had used some small, modest Shakti that he would never admit to having (Omi's Shakti was tiny, barely a whisper, just enough to keep leaves from browning, just enough to preserve colour) to keep them from fading.

The collage was beautiful. The collage was also evidence — evidence that Omi cared, evidence that the caring was specific, evidence that the specificity was: Leela. The collage said what Omi's words never said, because Omi's words were arguments and deflections and the particular verbal fencing that was his way of not-saying the thing that the collage said.

Leela left the collage on the wall. You can't carry everything.

At dusk, they left. Mata, Leela, Omi. Three people walking out of a forest that had been home for generations, walking south to go north, taking the river-path that avoided the main tracks, the path that the Vanvasi used when they didn't want to be found.

The forest closed behind them. The neem tree watched them go. The ashwagandha, in the garden, bore its single green berry.

The berry would be orange by the time they returned.

If they returned.