Fic: In Memory
Title: In Memory
Author: Rissa
Pairing: Pasupata+Nataraja
Warnings: Omg they're kids! None! Worksafe.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 8,730 (these things are never short and easy for me)
Summary: Pasupata remembers.
Notes: I am totes too lazy to log out of this account. And there are better icons here.
A late birthday present for fencer_x. The idea came and then it just... kept coming, and coming!
Everything that might be confusing in italics is just a wikipedia search away :)
The moon is out but Pasupata shouldn’t know that. The window in his room faces southeast and he’s watched a hundred sunrises and seen a dozen different shapes of the moon come over the horizon. Sometimes, more often then and less so now, he’ll pretend that he really can’t see it, fantasize for a time what it might be like for the truly blind. To not know the depths of color or the pale shine of the moon, to not see the blazing glory of the sun’s true might and only the warmth it touches to the skin. It’s given him an acute sympathy for those so unfortunate as to have lost their sight, but understanding is something that he never wishes to achieve. He could never give up this gift from God shy of abandoning his life in the process, because to live permanently in the darkness when he has been given so much in the light is a fate worse than any other imaginable.
His rooms are well sized but not opulent, courtesy of his friendship with the Prince and his own purported inability to make judgments on color and furniture. Indeed, most of the pieces have been gifts or were selected specifically with only the original selector’s personal tastes in mind, and this has given his décor a decidedly irregular feel. There are crimson sheets on his bed, gold tassels on the pillow cases, and sheer window drapes and sitting pillows in shades of satin pink and peridot and fuchsia, no rhyme or reason between them and yet so clearly a well-calculated metaphor of his two closest friends. The furniture is minimal - a stool, one bronze tub for bathing, a porcelain basin, his pallet and a bureau. There had been a mirror once upon a time, but Nataraja and Shiva had argued so vehemently over whether it was a necessity (Nataraja against, Shiva for, but for reasons he could not disclose), that in the end Pasupata had sent the item away with little regret.
It is not a soldier’s room (though he is a member of the guard) and it is not a nobleman’s room (though he carries the title in name). His family’s wealth was consumed in the same fire that took their lives, and Pasupata had been too young and inexperienced at the time to do anything but let his father’s assets be seized by greedy relatives or fall to ruin. He is a penniless noble supported only by the generosity of his friends and the kindness of a raja’s hospitality, yet he’s happier with the life he leads now than any he might have been granted as a youngest son with few prospects and an almost non-existent inheritance.
Pasupata’s entire upbringing had been geared toward one thing - to prepare him for a disappointing future. Too blue blooded to enter an honest trade, too low on the pecking tree to be responsible for the family industry, and too insignificant to bear notice but pretty enough to hope for a marriage with a large dowry to supplement his father’s enormous wealth. He lived as an expense on his father’s books and was treated as one that gained little return. Pasupata’s memories aren’t of cruelty or unhappiness, only of loneliness and the way a child tries to understand abandonment and the need for attention from parents that have three other children to devote their time to. To be given every material need and desire is one thing, but to be given those in lieu of love is entirely another. And that bruise, so clearly remembered, makes Pasupata whisper a silent thanks to the moonlit heavens and thank God for sending him a savior disguised as a thief in the night.
Pasupata remembers:
He was fighting with his sister, again, and when the screaming reached its peak it quickly devolved into the kind of tantrum that Pasupata had been throwing for as long as he could remember when things did not go his way. No one ever thought highly of him and he was always scolded severely in the aftermath, but it did usually have the effect of getting him what he wanted, which in his mind was worth at least a week’s worth of good behavior afterwards.
The tantrum was one of his best to date and Pasupata not only took out a table but that evening’s preparations for dinner, leaving the mosaic floor tiles of the kitchen looking beautifully chaotic with a meal meant to feed six deposited all over the surface. When it was all over and he stood defiantly before his father with tears streaming down his face, it became the first time in memory he was not given his way. He was reprimanded by his mother, lashed soundly by his father, and ordered to remain alone in the kitchen until it was returned to the state it had been in before he’d destroyed it in his anger.
He did nothing immediately, of course. Still too raw with rage, too upset that he’d not been given his way, he railed and pounded at the locked door and kicked the pots and bowls so that they broke and made the mess even worse. By then the floor was slick with vegetables and sauces and meat ruined beyond repair for consumption, and when he slipped and fell on a patch of oil he merely laid there and cried up at the ceiling, cursing God for his sore buttocks and the unfairness of his punishment.
By the time the embers in the kitchen fireplace began to die, Pasupata had come to the realization that no one was going to answer his calls. The hour was late enough that most of his family had probably retired for the night, and the servants were even less inclined to listen to him when he was being shunned by his family. They only acted by example and were more frustrating for him to deal with than other members of the household, so far down the ladder as he was. There was no hope of having the door unlocked and being released before morning.
He eventually dragged himself out of the mess of crushed tomatoes and soggy nan and used the light of the dying fire to trudge the distance across the kitchen to the pantry where the dry goods were stored. His clothes were a mess and smelled like ginger and cinnamon, but Pasupata didn’t care for anything but sulking and licking his wounded pride. He found a comfortable looking pile of grain sacks, settled atop them, and was asleep within minutes.
It was much later when he was awoken by a sound - not the door to the kitchen being unlocked from the outside, but someone moving around and cursing as they slipped and tripped over the cool and congealed mess of dinner still on the floor. It was a high voice, young, and Pasupata knew immediately it was not a member of his household come there in the night to sneak a meal or give him his freedom. His concealment in the pantry gave him only a limited view of the kitchen beyond, but it was enough to make out the shape of someone moving around, and then soon the sounds of someone eating with the tiny, grateful moans of a person who had not tasted food in many days.
Pasupata could have jumped out then. He could have yelled and brought the entire house running to catch this thief pilfering their kitchen. He could have been rewarded by his father, praised by his sisters for protecting them, and shown gratitude by the servants for not having their wages garnished. He could have made a noise, enough to scare the kid back out into the night and save him from having his hand cut off by the guard if he was ever caught. He could have gotten up and confronted him, done anything but lie there and let this street rat get fat off eating his family’s food.
But in the end he did nothing.
The kid, and Pasupata really didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl, ate for awhile longer, gradually slowing and letting out a few belches of contentment and giggling softly at their own impudence. When it seemed like they were done eating they began searching the kitchen, slowly walking the perimeter and coming closer to Pasupata’s hiding place in the pantry. Pasupata was tired enough that closing his eyes and feigning sleep took little effort, and it was a few minutes later that he heard a soft gasp and the sound of someone stumbling in surprise somewhere off to his right. Pasupata knew that he had to look no better than a servant in his filthy garb, a kitchen boy forced to sleep in the closet, and the thief seemed to realize this too as they quietly edged themselves around Pasupata’s pile of grain sacks.
There was some more shuffling, the sound of a few bottles and containers being moved, and then Pasupata heard the kid let out a soft sound of glee, as if they’d found what they were searching for. As they left the pantry Pasupata chanced lifting open one eye and caught the image of a slim back receding from his sight, narrow shoulders but a lean and lanky frame, wide hands gripping what looked like nothing more than an empty cloth bag, and the faint outline of shorn hair spiking up in several directions. It was a boy then, and Pasupata watched from his hidden corner as the kid went about gathering up more of the food into his makeshift sack, moving quickly and with an unnatural stealthiness that Pasupata would have been hard pressed to hear had he not already known that the thief was in the room.
Then he seemed to pause, as if listening to a sound that even Pasupata couldn’t hear, head cocked and body still. Pasupata could see that the bag in his hand was stuffed to overflowing with food, far more than a single boy needed to eat on his own. In a rare moment of empathy, Pasupata wondered what might have driven this kid, no older than he, to risk breaking into his home just to eat the meal that Pasupata had so thoroughly destroyed with his temper earlier. The feeling of sympathy was unusual for him, given that he’d never had to want for food or any material comfort in his nine years of living. Then the boy vanished from his sight, moving in the opposite direction from the kitchen door and… disappeared.
Pasupata waited for several minutes, sure that the boy would come back into view at some point. But there was no sound, no movement and no breathing, not even the soft whisper of fabric that he’d been able to hear when the boy was moving around earlier. Pasupata knew that the only other exit beside the door were two very small, narrow windows high up on the wall for letting out the kitchen smoke. If he’d actually managed to escape that way, then he deserved the chance to live a bit longer for having such fearless dexterity.
It was still nighttime when Pasupata awoke again, but this time for a far more alarming reason than someone breaking into his kitchen. There was smoke all around him, thick and bitter, and he coughed and gasped as he sat up and scrambled to slide off his makeshift bed. What feeble light had been in the room from the banked embers of the kitchen fire were gone entirely, and Pasupata stumbled blind through the smoke, coughing and wheezing and feeling the sting of the ash in his eyes and burning down his lungs. By pure luck he managed to find the wall, and with halting steps followed it around the room, tripping with every wracking cough over the very same mess he had so stubbornly refused to clean up earlier.
He knew he’d found the door by the change in texture under his fingers, and he felt around for the handle with desperation and panic rising high in his throat. Except that he pulled back with a surprised yelp when his fingers encountered the hot metal of the latch, and then he started yelling, the smoke scorching his throat and making his voice crack.
“Help! Please! Is anyone there? Someone help me, please!”
Pasupata pounded on the kitchen door and the wood was unusually warm under his hands. He beat against it repeatedly and called for help over and over.
“Someone! Anyone please, let me out of here!”
The smoke was getting thicker and it was getting harder to breathe. His eyes were streaming tears from the sting of the fumes, and every cough seemed to make his chest rattle painfully. It hurt to breathe and speaking was becoming more difficult, but still he shouted.
“Father please! Help me! Someone! Please!”
“Hey!”
That was not his voice, but someone else speaking. They weren’t near him, even though he could hear it clearly. Pasupata coughed and looked futilely around the smoke filled room.
“Who’s there?”
“Up here!” the voice beckoned.
“I can’t see you!” Pasupata cried, stumbling away from the door. His coughing was getting worse and his lightheadedness was making it hard to keep his balance.
“Follow the sound of my voice! Come to the window. Just come closer, I can pull you up. Over here!”
With only a small voice helping Pasupata to traverse the width of the kitchen it was inevitable that he would bump into the sharp edge of a table. He let out a pain-filled cry, which only made his coughing worse.
“Hey what’s wrong! Where are you? Just come over here, under the window.”
“I can’t find you,” Pasupata moaned. His self-pity made tears spill fresh from his eyes. “Please, I- I can’t see anything!”
“What are you-”
And that’s when the door to the kitchen blew open off its hinges, the force of the blast and sudden heat forcing Pasupata to the ground. The kitchen became awash with hazy orange light as the blaze swiftly moved from the hallway into the room, making quick meals of the wooden caskets by the door and their stores of oil and wine. Pasupata scrambled to move away, but the barrels were consumed and the subsequent explosions of flame and hot oil and alcohol sent him rolling across the floor. He screamed, and could just barely hear another voice shouting above him.
Pasupata must have blacked out, he certainly felt light-headed enough for it, when he felt himself being lifted awkwardly by two skinny arms.
“Come on, come on,” a voice said next to him, the same voice that had been shouting from above. “You gotta wake up, you gotta- shit!”
There were more sounds, the groan of timber and the roar of flames, and the arms around him shook with the strain of keeping him upright. “Oh God you’re on fire, just… ow ow! Dammit!”
Pasupata felt a hand swatting his shoulder repeatedly. Then he was being manhandled even more roughly, and the voice was letting out short gasps of pain as he felt his arms being moved and twisted out of his outer coat. Pasupata’s eyes opened, but only for a moment, and the sight of his kitchen in flames, great walls of them reaching from the floor to the ceiling, sent him into a sudden panic that drew a string of raspy, shuddering coughs from his lungs.
“Oh good, you’re awake. Come on! I know you can’t see me but just, put your arms, yes like this,” the stranger said, the face Pasupata hadn’t even laid eyes on yet. The boy wrapped Pasupata’s arms around his neck and turned to pick him up so he was riding piggyback. “Just hold onto me tight. I’m going to have to carry us both out of here.”
Pasupata could only cough, and moan, and cry, but he held on as tight as he dared as he felt himself moved. And then the odd feeling of upward motion, as the boy in front of him grunted and his shoulders shook under Pasupata’s arms as he struggled to carry them both to safety.
It seemed to take a lifetime, and Pasupata could feel the heat of the flames on his back, so hot it felt like it was burning through his clothing and searing his skin. But he held on and prayed to God to let him live, that he would never throw another tantrum again, that he would never call his sisters names or disrespect his father again, he would be good and obedient and perfect if only God would keep him from dying…
The next thing Pasupata knew he was falling, a sudden drop that made him cry out in surprise, but when he hit the ground the sting was not of flames but of cool soil and the harsh scratch of branches from the bushes that sat under the smoke windows of their kitchen. There was another weight pressing into his side, a warm body that felt almost as sharp and boney as the twigs digging into his back, and Pasupata reached for it blindly, seeking a hand or skin or something to go with the panting, sharp breathing he could hear next to him that mirrored his own.
“Thank you,” he gasped, still coughing weakly. Thank you, God.
Pasupata remembers:
He passed out for a time shortly after being rescued from his burning home. Pasupata only has a hazy memory of seeing flames shooting toward the heavens, a bright smudge against the dark night sky, of hearing voices and screams as neighbors rushed from their homes, and then… nothing.
He did not awake but he did become aware at some point, drawn from unconsciousness by two voices speaking nearby, one young and boyishly discourteous and one feminine and dry with old age.
“Sit still or I will take this arm from its socket, you impatient wretch.”
“But it hurts! Ow!”
“A burn always does. You’re lucky this only got your arm and not you’re whole body.”
“Only cause his stupid jacket caught on fire- ow! I had to take it off him.”
“And? Who is he?”
There was a pause, the sound of ripping fabric filling the silence. Then another hiss of pain. “I dunno. I think he’s a servant. He was sleeping in the kitchen, the first time I… when I picked up some food earlier.”
“Only you in your idiocy would think it’s a good idea to break into a nobleman’s kitchen.”
“But I wasn’t caught!”
“It wasn’t you who started the fire, was it?”
“No,” the voice protested, somewhat mulishly. “They had really nice gardens. I just… I just wanted to sit awhile in one of the trees and pretend. I think I fell asleep, cause when I woke up I heard someone yelling, and I saw the house was already on fire. Oh no… I think I left the food back there. Hashid’s going to kill me.”
“A life’s worth more than a sack of food,” the older woman said. She sounded proud, if somewhat resigned by Pasupata’s savior’s actions.
“Do you think he’ll be okay?” the boy asked quietly.
“The smoke in his lungs will keep him sleeping for awhile. He suffered no more than small burns, unlike you. He’s breathing on his own, and that alone is a blessing.”
“Good. I just… I’d hate for him to die on me after I saved his life. He… he sounded so scared. I think he’s blind.”
“Is that so?”
“He kept saying he couldn’t see,” the boy confided in an undertone. “He had to follow the sound of my voice, but then he got knocked out by a barrel and I had to jump down to get him.”
“Hmm,” the woman mused. “Nataraja, I don’t think this is just some servant boy you’ve rescued. See, look at the cut of his clothing. The quality of the fabric. It’s difficult to tell, as filthy as it is, but this is not the clothing a servant would wear. He must be a member of the nobleman’s family. Perhaps one of his sons.”
“Then what was he doing in the kitchen!” the boy, Nataraja, protested.
“His blindness might make his family ashamed of him. They wouldn’t want a weak son to be common knowledge in their society.”
“That’s… that’s so stupid.”
“We’re not meant to understand the ways of the kshatriyas,” the woman chastised. “And stop scratching at those wraps!”
“But they itch!”
The woman grumbled and huffed. “Then they will not heal, and you will be even more ugly. Leave them alone.”
“Pushy old woman,” Nataraja said sourly.
“So? What are you planning to do with him?”
“Do? Wait until he wakes up, see if he’s okay… I guess.”
“And then?”
“What are you getting at? What else am I supposed to do?”
“Have a thought in that chicken head of yours for once. What if you’re wrong, and he isn’t blind and he saw you stealing food tonight? He’s a nobleman’s son, he could blame you for the fire. You’re best leaving this place, Nataraja. Go far away, go where no one might have seen you two leaving the house. They will want someone to blame for this, and that person will be you.”
There was a long silence, one that even Pasupata in his incapacitation felt somewhere deep down. There was some shuffling, a hint of movement near his shoulder, a shifting of air that told him someone had come to settle close to him.
“Nataraja, you must leave. I will watch over him. I will tell him a story and he will be none the wiser.”
“No,” the boy said. His voice was stubborn and much closer. “No, I’m not leaving him.”
There may have been protests. They may have continued to argue but their voices had begun to fade, and Pasupata felt himself drifting, pulled somewhere away from the pain in his lungs and the feeling of dirt and ash on his skin and in his hair. I didn’t see anything, he thought, I didn’t see him take anything, and it was his last thought for a long time.
Pasupata remembers:
He woke up coughing, mouth dry and throat burning and both of his lungs trying to crawl their way out of his chest.
“Water,” he gasped, and a simple bone cup came into view and was pressed to his lips as he was helped to sit up. The water was metallic but cool, and he drank gratefully.
And then Pasupata remembered: he was blind now.
“Who’s there?” he asked, and the way his voice shook took no pretending.
“Um… I’m Nataraja,” said the voice belonging to the arm behind his shoulders. Pasupata turned in his direction, letting his eyes come to rest somewhere over the boy’s shoulder. He could see only the edge of a face, dark skin and a trace of ash still smudged high across his cheek. His hair was a mess, the same spiky, unruly fluff that he had seen in the embers of a dying fireplace. He smelled like bitter soot and soil and whatever paste the old woman had smeared all over his bandaged arm (the one holding the cup in front of his face), and Nataraja wrinkled his nose at the unpleasant smell.
Nataraja saw this and let out an embarrassed cough. “Sorry, it’s just… the bandages… oh you can’t see them, can you?”
Pasupata shook his head, pushing himself to sit upright fully. He was in something little better than a lean-to, with thin boards lashed together to make the walls, no windows and only a door that seemed to be barely hanging on its frame and held closed by a knotted rope. There was early morning sunlight coming through the cracks in the wood, enough to push away the darkness and form small shadows on the floor. The ground was bare dirt but he was laying on a pile of what felt like at least a few thin rugs, and he smoothed his hands down the rough bur, letting his eyes unfocus as he attempted to process the sensation as a blind person might.
“Where am I, Nataraja?” he asked.
“Old lady Shirumi’s place. She’s the only one ‘round here that knows how to treat cuts and burns, so I brought you here. I said I’d ste- er, that is, I’d give her something in return for lettin us stay here and checkin up on you. How are you feeling?”
“My chest hurts,” Pasupata said honestly. “What happened?”
“You don’t remember?” Nataraja asked. The arm around his back disappeared and Nataraja leaned away with the cup to fill it with more water from a nearby rain bucket.
“There was smoke…” Pasupata said, picking his words carefully. His head hurt and it was difficult to think when all he wanted to do was cough. The cup was brought back to his mouth and he took a long sip. “It was hot and… I couldn’t open the door. I heard a voice, calling to me. Someone saved me.”
“That was me,” Nataraja said, sounding proud. “I, uh- I was walking by your house and I saw the flames. I ran to the garden and then I heard you shouting for help. You’d almost made it to the window but then you got knocked out so I had to jump in an’ get you. Lucky I had some rope with me so we could get back out, or we woulda been barbeque.”
“Thank you,” Pasupata said sincerely. Nataraja’s story was a half-lie, but Pasupata had lied plenty of times in his life to get out of being in trouble with his parents. He could understand. “Did my family… was there anyone else? Did you see anyone else?”
“Um…” Nataraja grew quiet, and Pasupata turned fully to look at the boy next to him. His eyes were downcast and there was a pinched look of consternation on his face, but it gave Pasupata the opportunity to look at him unseen. He had a long face, thin from hunger and a much harder life than Pasupata had ever had. There was an older looking, fist shaped bruise on his left shoulder, and his hair was an unruly mess of locks that couldn’t seem to decide which direction they wanted to point in. His forehead was wide, his nose narrow, and he looked close to, if not the same age as Pasupata.
“Nataraja?” Pasupata asked quietly, looking away. He could feel his throat clenching and tears prickling in his eyes the longer Nataraja’s silence went on.
“I didn’t see anyone, but… maybe they’re okay? I just… it’s just, I heard some of the townsfolk talking. They said… they said they didn’t think anyone survived. I guess they don’t know about you yet, huh? Heh. Oh, crap, are you crying? I’m sorry, that was your family. I’m so sorry. Okay? Hey, hey.”
And Pasupata was crying openly now, because he hadn’t once thought that his father and mother and brother and sisters hadn’t managed to get away from the fire. They’d locked him in the kitchen and forgotten about him, and he’d wanted to find them and be angry at them for it, but they were supposed to be okay. They weren’t supposed to be gone for good where he couldn’t tell them how mean they’d been and that he had promised to be good from now on. Nataraja’s arms had gone back around his shoulders, holding him so that he was leaning against the slimmer boy’s scrawny chest, and they both smelled horrible like burned hair and skin and soot and it made Pasupata cry even harder.
“I asked God to save me,” he confessed, hiccupping. “I didn’t ask him to save them too. What if… because I didn’t…”
“Don’t even think that,” Nataraja said, fierce and near Pasupata’s ear. “Bad stuff happens and there are fires and people die, people die in the streets every day. You gotta… you just gotta be glad God listened to you. Maybe you’re special, maybe you’re meant to live. God seemed to think so.”
“He sent you to save me,” Pasupata whispered. He couldn’t be bothered to wipe his tears away, and then ran freely down his cheeks and tasted salty and bitter where they slid over his lips.
Nataraja said nothing and only continued to hold him, making small sounds of comfort in his throat like Pasupata wasn’t the first scared kid he’d had to rock through waves of grief and sadness. He just let Pasupata cry hard until his throat was so thick he didn’t think he could speak and his chest felt all dried up like an empty husk, and he held him even after Pasupata had stopped crying and could only sniff and use his dirty sleeve to wipe the drippings from his nose.
It was a long moment before Nataraja spoke softly. “Hey, what’s your name?”
“Pasupata,” he answered. “I’m… I don’t have anyone, anymore. I’m alone.”
The hands holding him tightened. “You’re not alone, Pasupata. I’ll look after you. It’s okay, you don’t have to be alone.”
Pasupata didn’t cry again, but the big empty hole in his chest didn’t feel much better, either.
Pasupata remembers:
They were forced to live on the streets after old lady Shirumi cleared them out of her hut that morning. Nataraja didn’t leave his side and they walked together with clasped hands as he led them through the twisting lower streets toward the cleaner, well-tended district of the nobility. The faint smoke still coming from the smoldering remains of Pasupata’s house was visible even from a distance, but he didn’t remark on it, nor look upon it with trepidation the way Nataraja was. But that didn’t stop him from feeling nervous on the inside.
There was very little left of the house when they arrived, and they were not the only onlookers to have come from all parts of the city to see the destruction. The houses on either side had also suffered some damage, scorched siding and roofing material burned away at the edges; plants all around had died in the blaze and the neighbors’ gardens were covered with filthy black grime that made the air smell unpleasant. Someone had tried to tie a rope around the lot but that wasn’t stopping most of the onlookers, and there were people stepping through the ruins, picking up random items, looking for objects of value among the rubble. Pasupata looked on, feeling his anger rise and bile trying to crawl up his throat. It took a willpower he’d never had to exert before to keep his temper in check.
“What’s happening?” he asked Nataraja tightly.
Nataraja made a face, as though he found the task of relaying this information unpleasant. “Um… it looks like it’s all gone. I’m sorry. It’s just… all burned and stuff. There’s a wall in the back still standing, or a part of it, but it’s all burned up on the inside too. That could be the… well, no, it’s hard to tell. Do you… did you want to go in? We could look around, see if we can find anything that belongs to you?”
Pasupata tipped his head to the side. He didn’t particularly like the thought of stumbling across the charred ruins, not if his family was still somewhere in there. He shivered. “Why can I hear voices? Are there people here?”
Nataraja was silent for a moment, and Pasupata turned so that his face sat just out of his direct line of sight. Pasupata couldn’t help wondering how much of the truth would be freely given to him, if Nataraja would tell him the ugly truth of people digging through the remains of his life, or of his own neighbors looking on from their balconies at the black smear of his former home with little but distaste on their faces. How much of this foul world would Nataraja allow him to see?
“There’s people here,” Nataraja said at last. “Not too many. Some of them are just walking by and looking. They’re probably wondering what happened. You’ve got some neighbors sitting on their comfortable chairs looking like they can’t be bothered to lift a finger, and some people,” and here Nataraja suddenly raised his voice. “Some people have no respect for the dead!”
His outburst caused a few heads to turn, namely among those who were picking through the rubble. Most of them turned back to what they were doing, but a few were chastised enough to look sheepish and slink away back through the crowd.
“Bunch of vultures,” Nataraja sneered, then seemed to deflate. “Sorry. That’s just… I shouldn’t be mad, but it’s your family’s house and you can’t even see what they’re doing.”
“It’s alright,” Pasupata said, his anger gone for the moment. He squeezed the hand clasping his. “You said it’s all gone anyway. I have to… I have to move on I guess.”
“What are you going to do?” Nataraja asked, and even he sounded a bit worried.
“I thought you weren’t going to leave me,” Pasupata said, something irrational and tight taking hold in his chest.
Nataraja sighed. “I told you, I’m not going anywhere, but you gotta find someone, Pasupata. Don’t you have rich relatives or something? You don’t know my life, you can’t live on the streets like me. You’re too good for that. God didn’t save you just so you could become a dalit. You’re not meant for that. You shouldn’t even be… if you knew what I…”
Pasupata abruptly turned to walk away, forcing Nataraja to be dragged along with him, who let out a surprised gasp at the move and then quickly caught up to place himself slightly in the lead. Pasupata was almost tempted to reveal everything right then, because it wasn’t fair that you couldn’t walk away angry if you weren’t even supposed to see where you were going.
“Is that what you are then? Do you think you’re untouchable,” he nearly spat the word, and he corrected the grip on his hand to lace their similarly dirty fingers together. “I don’t care what you are. I’m the same as you now. I’ll live on the streets if I have to.”
“No no no no,” Nataraja protested rapidly. He took them off the main road down a narrow alley between two houses, the sudden shade making the air much cooler. There were leafy green plants hanging over the walls of the homes’ back gardens and they perfumed the air with something much sweeter than the charred cinders they’d left behind.
“What do you mean ‘no’?”
“I mean it like ‘no!’.”
“Well I don’t like your ‘no’!”
“It’s ‘no’ for a good reason!”
Nataraja dropped Pasupata’s hand and stalked away a few steps. At a loss, Pasupata let his hands hang by his sides. It was hard not to consciously watch Nataraja and the twisted emotions crossing his face, because Pasupata was a little angry but mostly he was curious what had brought on the other boy’s vehement protests. Nataraja crossed his arms and spun around a few times on his heel, his bandaged forearm held slightly out in front. He even glanced back at Pasupata once or twice and frowned each time, and it was making Pasupata nervous.
“Nataraja,” he implored, lifting his fingers to grasp at the empty air.
Nataraja immediately looked guilty and stepped forward to seize Pasupata’s fingers. He clasped their hands together again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you there. I was right here the whole time. It’s just that… you don’t understand what it’s like out there. There’s this guy… his name’s Hashid. He’s like my boss. He’s just a gang leader really, but he tells everyone what to do, and if you don’t listen to him… you wind up dead, or worse. I just know he’d take one look at you and he’d take you away and you can’t even imagine the kind of stuff he’ll make you do. Usually he only takes girls but I’ve seen him take boys too, boys like you. That’s what ‘no’ means, Pasupata. I’m not gonna let him do that to you. I’m not gonna let anyone take you, and people are gonna try if you live on the streets. They can sense weakness half a kos away and you’re already blind and, and…”
Nataraja trailed off, looking slightly devastated by this confession. But he was staring at Pasupata straight on, and Pasupata was left letting his gaze trail over the boy’s nose and the walls of the narrow lane. “What do you mean, ‘boys like me’?”
“Pretty boys,” Nataraja scoffed, but there was a strange flush spreading over his cheeks. “Except you’re not very nice looking right now. You’re all dirty and your hair’s all burned off in the back, so… maybe nobody’ll want you anyway.”
Nataraja grinned wide, and Pasupata couldn’t let that slide, even if he was fighting back a smile of his own. He lifted his free hand and punched Nataraja square in the upper arm, which got him a gasp of surprise from the other boy.
“Ow! That was a lucky shot!”
Pasupata grinned. “I may be blind, but I’m not helpless. You better remember that.”
“I will if you throw punches like that,” Nataraja grumbled, rotating his shoulder.
Pasupata tipped his head up and let his eyes close briefly. For a moment he wondered what it might be like if he was truly blind. The sound of the birds chirping in the gardens, the noise of the people passing by on the street behind them, the warm breeze coming between the houses to touch his skin and ruffle his singed hair, all sensations amplified by the loss of his sight. It was a dark and kind of scary place, but Nataraja’s hand was still holding onto his and even with his eyes closed he could still feel him there, a warm presence counterpointed by his steady breathing. He didn’t want to lose this, his first and only gift from God, and Nataraja would never stay if he knew that Pasupata had seen him the night before. If he knew that Pasupata knew the truth why he’d been at his house in the first place. Nataraja would never understand that he had been a gift, sent to save Pasupata’s life. More than ever, Pasupata understood this now, and he had no intention of letting them separate.
Pasupata sighed aloud. “I’m hungry!”
Nataraja seemed to start. “Oh! Yeah? We should get cleaned up too… you really stink.”
Pasupata snorted. “You smell too. You smell worse. I can smell you all the way over here.”
“You’re just smelling you,” Nataraja teased, grinning. He tugged on their hands and led Pasupata out of the alley and back onto the street. “You smell worse than rotting food.”
“No, you smell worse. You smell like that piss the old lady rubbed on your arm.”
“Oh yeah? Well you smell… you smell like a baboon!”
“You smell like pig’s feet!”
“You smell worse than the Ganges!”
They both broke into laughter. “It does smell really bad,” Pasupata agreed.
“Too bad. That’s where we’re going. Can’t afford to go to a bath house. You okay with that?”
Pasupata shrugged, even if inside he was squirming at the thought. Bathing in the Ganges? “Other people do it, so it can’t be that bad. Right?”
Nataraja only grinned, probably not remembering that Pasupata couldn’t see him, but in the end it didn’t matter. Pasupata was looking down at their joined hands with a smile on his face anyway.
Pasupata remembers:
The Ganges wasn’t as horrible as he’d feared. Or maybe he was so grateful to finally wash away the ash and the grime that the dark tint of the water could be forgiven. There were lots of other people in the river anyway, people of all walks of life and in varying states of undress, swimming or bathing or simply squatting in the water, content to let the current push against them and feel the might of the holy river swirling around them.
Nataraja had been oddly patient and attentive to Pasupata since they’d made it to the water’s edge, not once letting go of his hand. In fact his grip was the tightest between them, as if he was afraid that Pasupata might be swept away downstream if he didn’t hold on to him. In reality the current here was barely strong enough to take a grown man off his feet, and the muddy bottom extended for many dand away from the shore, which meant that this section of the river had people swimming in it from all directions.
They stripped down to their under clothes and left their pile of dirty things on the shore before going in together, and the day was warm enough that Pasupata didn’t mind the air on his naked skin. With their torsos bare the differences in their skin color had been especially obvious, but Pasupata was forced to keep the observation to himself. He wasn’t supposed to be able to see just how pale and diminished he looked compared to Nataraja’s bronzed, lean physique, and though Nataraja had looked his way enough times to have noticed as well, the other boy said nothing.
They scrubbed their skin and dunked their heads under the water until the soot and burned hair came loose and washed away, and Nataraja cupped water in his hand and used it to clean Pasupata’s face of the more stubborn streaks he had missed. Nataraja was rather comical in his efforts to keep his bandaged arm out of the water, and Pasupata couldn’t resist splashing him a little just to hear the boy squawk indignantly. He wasn’t supposed to know where he was aiming, anyway.
Nataraja eventually led them out of the water, collected their clothes (which were hardly worth keeping in their current state, Pasupata thought), and walked them the short distance over to one of the lower ghats. There were lots of families perched on this one, spread out on simple blankets or with poles driven into the dirt to erect simple coverings to shield them from the sun. They were clearly lower-middle class citizens, with simple clothing and no traces of jewels or precious metal on their throats or fingers, but the individual pavilions dotted the hillside with an astounding array of colors, like hundreds of gull wings flapping in the early afternoon air.
“Wait here,” Nataraja told him, helping Pasupata to sit in an empty space of packed sand between two large families. “I’ll be right back, I promise.”
Pasupata didn’t mind being left alone since it gave him the opportunity to look around openly. The leveled terrace was wide and only one platform away from the river below them, where even more people were seated and standing, walking to and fro from the river and onto the banks. Farther away, thick smoke rose from a ghat set higher up the hill, the familiar white ash of funeral pyres clouding the air. There were small boats farther out on the river where the waters were deeper and moved more swiftly, their white and tan sails crowding so close together that it was little wonder they didn’t all crash together and sink their ships. Pasupata could just make out the slow moving bodies of a herd of cattle meandering into the water on the opposite side of the river, and even at the great distance the sound of their bells could be heard on the wind, clanging and discordant.
Pasupata spotted Nataraja returning a short time later, the bundle of clothing still stuck under his bandaged arm, though he had thrown his vest back on to perhaps retain some semblance of modesty. When the boy was closer he placed a hand on Pasupata’s shoulder before moving to sit beside him.
“Hey. You didn’t even twitch. I thought I’d scare you.”
Pasupata smiled benignly toward the river. “Being blind enhances the other senses.”
“Huh. So you like, heard me coming? Don’t say you smelled me cause I just took a bath, same as you.”
Pasupata chuckled. “Did you find some food?”
“Yeah,” Nataraja said. He glanced around once, somewhat guiltily Pasupata thought, before he unwrapped his bundle to reveal a few leaf wrapped skewers and several large triangles of roti . It was extremely simple, but to Pasupata’s empty stomach it smelled like heaven.
“It smells great!”
Nataraja grinned. “It’s chicken skewers. Just don’t ask me where I got them.”
“Only if you give me one right now.” Pasupata held out his hand, deliberately reaching high and almost level with Nataraja’s face, which made the other boy laugh. He lowered Pasupata’s fingers and placed one of the skewer ends into it, wrapping the digits securely around the stick.
“There. Eat up, your majesty.”
They ate quickly and in silence, and Pasupata almost wished he wasn’t so hungry so he could enjoy the meal more. The chicken was bathed in lemon juice and still warm, and he had a suspicious feeling some vendor’s cart along the riverbank was now mysteriously short a few tender sticks of meat. The bread was cold and crunchy but had a hint of ghee slathered across the top crust, and it too tasted like the most delicious thing Pasupata had ever eaten. Nataraja seemed to notice how hungry Pasupata was as well, and he passed over half his portion of the roti without batting an eye, something Pasupata could hardly call him on when he wasn’t supposed to be able to see the act of generosity.
Eventually the food ran out and Pasupata sat with his legs folded up, full and surprisingly content considering that he’d lost his home and his family all in one night not even a full day earlier. His belly was full, his skin was clean, and God had sent him a champion to protect and save him in his worst hour. Now he had to figure out a way to repay that kindness in turn.
“Do you have parents, Nataraja?” he asked. He let his gaze stay unfocused, taking in the panorama of the river without really seeing it. “You haven’t once said anything about them, if there’s anyone at home, worrying about you.”
“Not really…” Nataraja said, sounding uncomfortable. He cleared his throat. “There’s no one, not really. I never met my dad. My mom died a few years ago. After that, just been on my own.”
“That’s really sad,” Pasupata said sincerely.
“Not like it could get any better. Or any worse. Except dead, I guess. Nah it’s okay, I know how to take care of myself. I’m taking care of you just fine, aren’t I?”
Pasupata smiled. “Yes. But, what if… I’ve been thinking. About my relatives, like you said. I think I know one of them that might help us.”
“Yea? You got a rich uncle or something? That’d be nice.”
Pasupata lowered his legs and looked to the side, turning his gaze on Nataraja’s mouth. “You have to promise you’ll come with me, Nataraja. No matter where I go, you can’t leave me. Do you promise?”
“Sure, yeah, I mean,” and here Nataraja swallowed visibly, “I told you, right? I’m not going anywhere. You’d walk into a wall without me here.”
Pasupata nodded, accepting the oath for what it was. “My father always said if the family was in trouble, real trouble, there was one place we could turn to. But it had to be really serious, worse than anything else in the world. And I think… I think it’ll be okay if I make contact with them. I only met them once a few years ago, but I remember they were nice. They were kind to me even though I was younger and… kind of a brat. They told us their doors were open if we were ever in need, and I think they’ll help us now.”
“So who is it?” Nataraja asked curiously.
“The Maharaja and his younger brother.”
“What! You’re related to royalty?” Nataraja hissed loudly. His mouth was hanging open and he was leaning away, perhaps unconsciously, but it made Pasupata reach out and snag the boy’s arm to keep him from bolting any farther.
“Just, very distantly,” he corrected in an undertone. “The rajas are like, my second or third cousins or something. I don’t know. My father always said we were related, but he never told me how. It’s why we got to visit them at the palace once a few years ago.”
“The Maharaja,” Nataraja breathed, still sounding rather stunned by the whole revelation.
“The raja, Shiva, he’s only a few years older than me. He was nice to me even though I was… I didn’t have the best manners. If we talk to him, I know he’ll help us. Nataraja, you have to help me. You promised.”
“Pasupata…” Nataraja began. It sounded like the start of a protest, and Pasupata squeezed the arm under his hand tightly in warning.
“Nataraja, you promised. You said you wouldn’t leave me.” Pasupata felt his face crumple and he tipped forward, pressing his forehead against the other boy’s sun-warmed shoulder. “I don’t think I can do this without you. Please.”
Pasupata felt the other boy tense under his touch, but he didn’t pull away and he said nothing for a long moment. And very suddenly, very earnestly, Pasupata wanted him to come with him to the palace more than anything. He wanted it so badly that he knew that he would have done anything to make it come true, that he would have prayed to God and wished away his sight for good if it meant keeping Nataraja with him. He truly couldn’t do this alone, and in that moment he believed it with every fiber of his being.
“Okay,” Nataraja said, so quietly that Pasupata might have missed it if his ear hadn’t been so close. Nataraja’s bandaged hand came around and covered Pasupata’s, loosening his grip slightly so his nails were no longer digging into the soft skin. “Yeah. I’m not going anywhere. We’ll go together, okay?”
Pasupata nodded and took a deep breath, blinking away the tears that had gathered prematurely in his eyes. “Thank you.”
They sat in silence a while longer, the afternoon waning around them and the sounds of the people ebbing and moving with the flow of the timeless river. The boats on the waterfront had moved far downstream and were being replaced by more coming from the west, and sometime in the interim the herd of cattle Pasupata had spotted earlier had been joined by another group, their wet backs glistening in the sun as they splashed and rolled around in the muddy banks on the opposite side of the river.
It was Nataraja who spoke first. “So, how are we supposed to get in touch with your cousins anyway? I don’t think they’d let us just walk up to the palace…”
Pasupata frowned, because Nataraja was completely right. His father had always handled all of those important types of visits in the past. “Do you know how to compose a letter?”
Nataraja made a choking sound. “I can’t write! Why would I know how to write?”
“Well you can read at least, right?”
“A little,” Nataraja admitted, grumbling. “How’s that going to help us?”
“I’m going to write the letter,” Pasupata began, speaking over Nataraja’s protests of ‘but you’re blind!’, “I’m going to write the letter, and then you’ll have to make sure it’s delivered to the right place and read the reply when we get it. Okay?”
“This sounds bad. Like the blind leading the blind.”
Pasupata laughed. “I think we’ll be okay. I think everything’s going to work out okay.”
Because Pasupata had been given a second chance at life, and God had brought them together for a reason. There was nothing more he needed to know or believe in. As long as they were together, they were going to be okay.
Pasupata remembers.
Author: Rissa
Pairing: Pasupata+Nataraja
Warnings: Omg they're kids! None! Worksafe.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 8,730 (these things are never short and easy for me)
Summary: Pasupata remembers.
Notes: I am totes too lazy to log out of this account. And there are better icons here.
A late birthday present for fencer_x. The idea came and then it just... kept coming, and coming!
Everything that might be confusing in italics is just a wikipedia search away :)
The moon is out but Pasupata shouldn’t know that. The window in his room faces southeast and he’s watched a hundred sunrises and seen a dozen different shapes of the moon come over the horizon. Sometimes, more often then and less so now, he’ll pretend that he really can’t see it, fantasize for a time what it might be like for the truly blind. To not know the depths of color or the pale shine of the moon, to not see the blazing glory of the sun’s true might and only the warmth it touches to the skin. It’s given him an acute sympathy for those so unfortunate as to have lost their sight, but understanding is something that he never wishes to achieve. He could never give up this gift from God shy of abandoning his life in the process, because to live permanently in the darkness when he has been given so much in the light is a fate worse than any other imaginable.
His rooms are well sized but not opulent, courtesy of his friendship with the Prince and his own purported inability to make judgments on color and furniture. Indeed, most of the pieces have been gifts or were selected specifically with only the original selector’s personal tastes in mind, and this has given his décor a decidedly irregular feel. There are crimson sheets on his bed, gold tassels on the pillow cases, and sheer window drapes and sitting pillows in shades of satin pink and peridot and fuchsia, no rhyme or reason between them and yet so clearly a well-calculated metaphor of his two closest friends. The furniture is minimal - a stool, one bronze tub for bathing, a porcelain basin, his pallet and a bureau. There had been a mirror once upon a time, but Nataraja and Shiva had argued so vehemently over whether it was a necessity (Nataraja against, Shiva for, but for reasons he could not disclose), that in the end Pasupata had sent the item away with little regret.
It is not a soldier’s room (though he is a member of the guard) and it is not a nobleman’s room (though he carries the title in name). His family’s wealth was consumed in the same fire that took their lives, and Pasupata had been too young and inexperienced at the time to do anything but let his father’s assets be seized by greedy relatives or fall to ruin. He is a penniless noble supported only by the generosity of his friends and the kindness of a raja’s hospitality, yet he’s happier with the life he leads now than any he might have been granted as a youngest son with few prospects and an almost non-existent inheritance.
Pasupata’s entire upbringing had been geared toward one thing - to prepare him for a disappointing future. Too blue blooded to enter an honest trade, too low on the pecking tree to be responsible for the family industry, and too insignificant to bear notice but pretty enough to hope for a marriage with a large dowry to supplement his father’s enormous wealth. He lived as an expense on his father’s books and was treated as one that gained little return. Pasupata’s memories aren’t of cruelty or unhappiness, only of loneliness and the way a child tries to understand abandonment and the need for attention from parents that have three other children to devote their time to. To be given every material need and desire is one thing, but to be given those in lieu of love is entirely another. And that bruise, so clearly remembered, makes Pasupata whisper a silent thanks to the moonlit heavens and thank God for sending him a savior disguised as a thief in the night.
Pasupata remembers:
He was fighting with his sister, again, and when the screaming reached its peak it quickly devolved into the kind of tantrum that Pasupata had been throwing for as long as he could remember when things did not go his way. No one ever thought highly of him and he was always scolded severely in the aftermath, but it did usually have the effect of getting him what he wanted, which in his mind was worth at least a week’s worth of good behavior afterwards.
The tantrum was one of his best to date and Pasupata not only took out a table but that evening’s preparations for dinner, leaving the mosaic floor tiles of the kitchen looking beautifully chaotic with a meal meant to feed six deposited all over the surface. When it was all over and he stood defiantly before his father with tears streaming down his face, it became the first time in memory he was not given his way. He was reprimanded by his mother, lashed soundly by his father, and ordered to remain alone in the kitchen until it was returned to the state it had been in before he’d destroyed it in his anger.
He did nothing immediately, of course. Still too raw with rage, too upset that he’d not been given his way, he railed and pounded at the locked door and kicked the pots and bowls so that they broke and made the mess even worse. By then the floor was slick with vegetables and sauces and meat ruined beyond repair for consumption, and when he slipped and fell on a patch of oil he merely laid there and cried up at the ceiling, cursing God for his sore buttocks and the unfairness of his punishment.
By the time the embers in the kitchen fireplace began to die, Pasupata had come to the realization that no one was going to answer his calls. The hour was late enough that most of his family had probably retired for the night, and the servants were even less inclined to listen to him when he was being shunned by his family. They only acted by example and were more frustrating for him to deal with than other members of the household, so far down the ladder as he was. There was no hope of having the door unlocked and being released before morning.
He eventually dragged himself out of the mess of crushed tomatoes and soggy nan and used the light of the dying fire to trudge the distance across the kitchen to the pantry where the dry goods were stored. His clothes were a mess and smelled like ginger and cinnamon, but Pasupata didn’t care for anything but sulking and licking his wounded pride. He found a comfortable looking pile of grain sacks, settled atop them, and was asleep within minutes.
It was much later when he was awoken by a sound - not the door to the kitchen being unlocked from the outside, but someone moving around and cursing as they slipped and tripped over the cool and congealed mess of dinner still on the floor. It was a high voice, young, and Pasupata knew immediately it was not a member of his household come there in the night to sneak a meal or give him his freedom. His concealment in the pantry gave him only a limited view of the kitchen beyond, but it was enough to make out the shape of someone moving around, and then soon the sounds of someone eating with the tiny, grateful moans of a person who had not tasted food in many days.
Pasupata could have jumped out then. He could have yelled and brought the entire house running to catch this thief pilfering their kitchen. He could have been rewarded by his father, praised by his sisters for protecting them, and shown gratitude by the servants for not having their wages garnished. He could have made a noise, enough to scare the kid back out into the night and save him from having his hand cut off by the guard if he was ever caught. He could have gotten up and confronted him, done anything but lie there and let this street rat get fat off eating his family’s food.
But in the end he did nothing.
The kid, and Pasupata really didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl, ate for awhile longer, gradually slowing and letting out a few belches of contentment and giggling softly at their own impudence. When it seemed like they were done eating they began searching the kitchen, slowly walking the perimeter and coming closer to Pasupata’s hiding place in the pantry. Pasupata was tired enough that closing his eyes and feigning sleep took little effort, and it was a few minutes later that he heard a soft gasp and the sound of someone stumbling in surprise somewhere off to his right. Pasupata knew that he had to look no better than a servant in his filthy garb, a kitchen boy forced to sleep in the closet, and the thief seemed to realize this too as they quietly edged themselves around Pasupata’s pile of grain sacks.
There was some more shuffling, the sound of a few bottles and containers being moved, and then Pasupata heard the kid let out a soft sound of glee, as if they’d found what they were searching for. As they left the pantry Pasupata chanced lifting open one eye and caught the image of a slim back receding from his sight, narrow shoulders but a lean and lanky frame, wide hands gripping what looked like nothing more than an empty cloth bag, and the faint outline of shorn hair spiking up in several directions. It was a boy then, and Pasupata watched from his hidden corner as the kid went about gathering up more of the food into his makeshift sack, moving quickly and with an unnatural stealthiness that Pasupata would have been hard pressed to hear had he not already known that the thief was in the room.
Then he seemed to pause, as if listening to a sound that even Pasupata couldn’t hear, head cocked and body still. Pasupata could see that the bag in his hand was stuffed to overflowing with food, far more than a single boy needed to eat on his own. In a rare moment of empathy, Pasupata wondered what might have driven this kid, no older than he, to risk breaking into his home just to eat the meal that Pasupata had so thoroughly destroyed with his temper earlier. The feeling of sympathy was unusual for him, given that he’d never had to want for food or any material comfort in his nine years of living. Then the boy vanished from his sight, moving in the opposite direction from the kitchen door and… disappeared.
Pasupata waited for several minutes, sure that the boy would come back into view at some point. But there was no sound, no movement and no breathing, not even the soft whisper of fabric that he’d been able to hear when the boy was moving around earlier. Pasupata knew that the only other exit beside the door were two very small, narrow windows high up on the wall for letting out the kitchen smoke. If he’d actually managed to escape that way, then he deserved the chance to live a bit longer for having such fearless dexterity.
It was still nighttime when Pasupata awoke again, but this time for a far more alarming reason than someone breaking into his kitchen. There was smoke all around him, thick and bitter, and he coughed and gasped as he sat up and scrambled to slide off his makeshift bed. What feeble light had been in the room from the banked embers of the kitchen fire were gone entirely, and Pasupata stumbled blind through the smoke, coughing and wheezing and feeling the sting of the ash in his eyes and burning down his lungs. By pure luck he managed to find the wall, and with halting steps followed it around the room, tripping with every wracking cough over the very same mess he had so stubbornly refused to clean up earlier.
He knew he’d found the door by the change in texture under his fingers, and he felt around for the handle with desperation and panic rising high in his throat. Except that he pulled back with a surprised yelp when his fingers encountered the hot metal of the latch, and then he started yelling, the smoke scorching his throat and making his voice crack.
“Help! Please! Is anyone there? Someone help me, please!”
Pasupata pounded on the kitchen door and the wood was unusually warm under his hands. He beat against it repeatedly and called for help over and over.
“Someone! Anyone please, let me out of here!”
The smoke was getting thicker and it was getting harder to breathe. His eyes were streaming tears from the sting of the fumes, and every cough seemed to make his chest rattle painfully. It hurt to breathe and speaking was becoming more difficult, but still he shouted.
“Father please! Help me! Someone! Please!”
“Hey!”
That was not his voice, but someone else speaking. They weren’t near him, even though he could hear it clearly. Pasupata coughed and looked futilely around the smoke filled room.
“Who’s there?”
“Up here!” the voice beckoned.
“I can’t see you!” Pasupata cried, stumbling away from the door. His coughing was getting worse and his lightheadedness was making it hard to keep his balance.
“Follow the sound of my voice! Come to the window. Just come closer, I can pull you up. Over here!”
With only a small voice helping Pasupata to traverse the width of the kitchen it was inevitable that he would bump into the sharp edge of a table. He let out a pain-filled cry, which only made his coughing worse.
“Hey what’s wrong! Where are you? Just come over here, under the window.”
“I can’t find you,” Pasupata moaned. His self-pity made tears spill fresh from his eyes. “Please, I- I can’t see anything!”
“What are you-”
And that’s when the door to the kitchen blew open off its hinges, the force of the blast and sudden heat forcing Pasupata to the ground. The kitchen became awash with hazy orange light as the blaze swiftly moved from the hallway into the room, making quick meals of the wooden caskets by the door and their stores of oil and wine. Pasupata scrambled to move away, but the barrels were consumed and the subsequent explosions of flame and hot oil and alcohol sent him rolling across the floor. He screamed, and could just barely hear another voice shouting above him.
Pasupata must have blacked out, he certainly felt light-headed enough for it, when he felt himself being lifted awkwardly by two skinny arms.
“Come on, come on,” a voice said next to him, the same voice that had been shouting from above. “You gotta wake up, you gotta- shit!”
There were more sounds, the groan of timber and the roar of flames, and the arms around him shook with the strain of keeping him upright. “Oh God you’re on fire, just… ow ow! Dammit!”
Pasupata felt a hand swatting his shoulder repeatedly. Then he was being manhandled even more roughly, and the voice was letting out short gasps of pain as he felt his arms being moved and twisted out of his outer coat. Pasupata’s eyes opened, but only for a moment, and the sight of his kitchen in flames, great walls of them reaching from the floor to the ceiling, sent him into a sudden panic that drew a string of raspy, shuddering coughs from his lungs.
“Oh good, you’re awake. Come on! I know you can’t see me but just, put your arms, yes like this,” the stranger said, the face Pasupata hadn’t even laid eyes on yet. The boy wrapped Pasupata’s arms around his neck and turned to pick him up so he was riding piggyback. “Just hold onto me tight. I’m going to have to carry us both out of here.”
Pasupata could only cough, and moan, and cry, but he held on as tight as he dared as he felt himself moved. And then the odd feeling of upward motion, as the boy in front of him grunted and his shoulders shook under Pasupata’s arms as he struggled to carry them both to safety.
It seemed to take a lifetime, and Pasupata could feel the heat of the flames on his back, so hot it felt like it was burning through his clothing and searing his skin. But he held on and prayed to God to let him live, that he would never throw another tantrum again, that he would never call his sisters names or disrespect his father again, he would be good and obedient and perfect if only God would keep him from dying…
The next thing Pasupata knew he was falling, a sudden drop that made him cry out in surprise, but when he hit the ground the sting was not of flames but of cool soil and the harsh scratch of branches from the bushes that sat under the smoke windows of their kitchen. There was another weight pressing into his side, a warm body that felt almost as sharp and boney as the twigs digging into his back, and Pasupata reached for it blindly, seeking a hand or skin or something to go with the panting, sharp breathing he could hear next to him that mirrored his own.
“Thank you,” he gasped, still coughing weakly. Thank you, God.
Pasupata remembers:
He passed out for a time shortly after being rescued from his burning home. Pasupata only has a hazy memory of seeing flames shooting toward the heavens, a bright smudge against the dark night sky, of hearing voices and screams as neighbors rushed from their homes, and then… nothing.
He did not awake but he did become aware at some point, drawn from unconsciousness by two voices speaking nearby, one young and boyishly discourteous and one feminine and dry with old age.
“Sit still or I will take this arm from its socket, you impatient wretch.”
“But it hurts! Ow!”
“A burn always does. You’re lucky this only got your arm and not you’re whole body.”
“Only cause his stupid jacket caught on fire- ow! I had to take it off him.”
“And? Who is he?”
There was a pause, the sound of ripping fabric filling the silence. Then another hiss of pain. “I dunno. I think he’s a servant. He was sleeping in the kitchen, the first time I… when I picked up some food earlier.”
“Only you in your idiocy would think it’s a good idea to break into a nobleman’s kitchen.”
“But I wasn’t caught!”
“It wasn’t you who started the fire, was it?”
“No,” the voice protested, somewhat mulishly. “They had really nice gardens. I just… I just wanted to sit awhile in one of the trees and pretend. I think I fell asleep, cause when I woke up I heard someone yelling, and I saw the house was already on fire. Oh no… I think I left the food back there. Hashid’s going to kill me.”
“A life’s worth more than a sack of food,” the older woman said. She sounded proud, if somewhat resigned by Pasupata’s savior’s actions.
“Do you think he’ll be okay?” the boy asked quietly.
“The smoke in his lungs will keep him sleeping for awhile. He suffered no more than small burns, unlike you. He’s breathing on his own, and that alone is a blessing.”
“Good. I just… I’d hate for him to die on me after I saved his life. He… he sounded so scared. I think he’s blind.”
“Is that so?”
“He kept saying he couldn’t see,” the boy confided in an undertone. “He had to follow the sound of my voice, but then he got knocked out by a barrel and I had to jump down to get him.”
“Hmm,” the woman mused. “Nataraja, I don’t think this is just some servant boy you’ve rescued. See, look at the cut of his clothing. The quality of the fabric. It’s difficult to tell, as filthy as it is, but this is not the clothing a servant would wear. He must be a member of the nobleman’s family. Perhaps one of his sons.”
“Then what was he doing in the kitchen!” the boy, Nataraja, protested.
“His blindness might make his family ashamed of him. They wouldn’t want a weak son to be common knowledge in their society.”
“That’s… that’s so stupid.”
“We’re not meant to understand the ways of the kshatriyas,” the woman chastised. “And stop scratching at those wraps!”
“But they itch!”
The woman grumbled and huffed. “Then they will not heal, and you will be even more ugly. Leave them alone.”
“Pushy old woman,” Nataraja said sourly.
“So? What are you planning to do with him?”
“Do? Wait until he wakes up, see if he’s okay… I guess.”
“And then?”
“What are you getting at? What else am I supposed to do?”
“Have a thought in that chicken head of yours for once. What if you’re wrong, and he isn’t blind and he saw you stealing food tonight? He’s a nobleman’s son, he could blame you for the fire. You’re best leaving this place, Nataraja. Go far away, go where no one might have seen you two leaving the house. They will want someone to blame for this, and that person will be you.”
There was a long silence, one that even Pasupata in his incapacitation felt somewhere deep down. There was some shuffling, a hint of movement near his shoulder, a shifting of air that told him someone had come to settle close to him.
“Nataraja, you must leave. I will watch over him. I will tell him a story and he will be none the wiser.”
“No,” the boy said. His voice was stubborn and much closer. “No, I’m not leaving him.”
There may have been protests. They may have continued to argue but their voices had begun to fade, and Pasupata felt himself drifting, pulled somewhere away from the pain in his lungs and the feeling of dirt and ash on his skin and in his hair. I didn’t see anything, he thought, I didn’t see him take anything, and it was his last thought for a long time.
Pasupata remembers:
He woke up coughing, mouth dry and throat burning and both of his lungs trying to crawl their way out of his chest.
“Water,” he gasped, and a simple bone cup came into view and was pressed to his lips as he was helped to sit up. The water was metallic but cool, and he drank gratefully.
And then Pasupata remembered: he was blind now.
“Who’s there?” he asked, and the way his voice shook took no pretending.
“Um… I’m Nataraja,” said the voice belonging to the arm behind his shoulders. Pasupata turned in his direction, letting his eyes come to rest somewhere over the boy’s shoulder. He could see only the edge of a face, dark skin and a trace of ash still smudged high across his cheek. His hair was a mess, the same spiky, unruly fluff that he had seen in the embers of a dying fireplace. He smelled like bitter soot and soil and whatever paste the old woman had smeared all over his bandaged arm (the one holding the cup in front of his face), and Nataraja wrinkled his nose at the unpleasant smell.
Nataraja saw this and let out an embarrassed cough. “Sorry, it’s just… the bandages… oh you can’t see them, can you?”
Pasupata shook his head, pushing himself to sit upright fully. He was in something little better than a lean-to, with thin boards lashed together to make the walls, no windows and only a door that seemed to be barely hanging on its frame and held closed by a knotted rope. There was early morning sunlight coming through the cracks in the wood, enough to push away the darkness and form small shadows on the floor. The ground was bare dirt but he was laying on a pile of what felt like at least a few thin rugs, and he smoothed his hands down the rough bur, letting his eyes unfocus as he attempted to process the sensation as a blind person might.
“Where am I, Nataraja?” he asked.
“Old lady Shirumi’s place. She’s the only one ‘round here that knows how to treat cuts and burns, so I brought you here. I said I’d ste- er, that is, I’d give her something in return for lettin us stay here and checkin up on you. How are you feeling?”
“My chest hurts,” Pasupata said honestly. “What happened?”
“You don’t remember?” Nataraja asked. The arm around his back disappeared and Nataraja leaned away with the cup to fill it with more water from a nearby rain bucket.
“There was smoke…” Pasupata said, picking his words carefully. His head hurt and it was difficult to think when all he wanted to do was cough. The cup was brought back to his mouth and he took a long sip. “It was hot and… I couldn’t open the door. I heard a voice, calling to me. Someone saved me.”
“That was me,” Nataraja said, sounding proud. “I, uh- I was walking by your house and I saw the flames. I ran to the garden and then I heard you shouting for help. You’d almost made it to the window but then you got knocked out so I had to jump in an’ get you. Lucky I had some rope with me so we could get back out, or we woulda been barbeque.”
“Thank you,” Pasupata said sincerely. Nataraja’s story was a half-lie, but Pasupata had lied plenty of times in his life to get out of being in trouble with his parents. He could understand. “Did my family… was there anyone else? Did you see anyone else?”
“Um…” Nataraja grew quiet, and Pasupata turned fully to look at the boy next to him. His eyes were downcast and there was a pinched look of consternation on his face, but it gave Pasupata the opportunity to look at him unseen. He had a long face, thin from hunger and a much harder life than Pasupata had ever had. There was an older looking, fist shaped bruise on his left shoulder, and his hair was an unruly mess of locks that couldn’t seem to decide which direction they wanted to point in. His forehead was wide, his nose narrow, and he looked close to, if not the same age as Pasupata.
“Nataraja?” Pasupata asked quietly, looking away. He could feel his throat clenching and tears prickling in his eyes the longer Nataraja’s silence went on.
“I didn’t see anyone, but… maybe they’re okay? I just… it’s just, I heard some of the townsfolk talking. They said… they said they didn’t think anyone survived. I guess they don’t know about you yet, huh? Heh. Oh, crap, are you crying? I’m sorry, that was your family. I’m so sorry. Okay? Hey, hey.”
And Pasupata was crying openly now, because he hadn’t once thought that his father and mother and brother and sisters hadn’t managed to get away from the fire. They’d locked him in the kitchen and forgotten about him, and he’d wanted to find them and be angry at them for it, but they were supposed to be okay. They weren’t supposed to be gone for good where he couldn’t tell them how mean they’d been and that he had promised to be good from now on. Nataraja’s arms had gone back around his shoulders, holding him so that he was leaning against the slimmer boy’s scrawny chest, and they both smelled horrible like burned hair and skin and soot and it made Pasupata cry even harder.
“I asked God to save me,” he confessed, hiccupping. “I didn’t ask him to save them too. What if… because I didn’t…”
“Don’t even think that,” Nataraja said, fierce and near Pasupata’s ear. “Bad stuff happens and there are fires and people die, people die in the streets every day. You gotta… you just gotta be glad God listened to you. Maybe you’re special, maybe you’re meant to live. God seemed to think so.”
“He sent you to save me,” Pasupata whispered. He couldn’t be bothered to wipe his tears away, and then ran freely down his cheeks and tasted salty and bitter where they slid over his lips.
Nataraja said nothing and only continued to hold him, making small sounds of comfort in his throat like Pasupata wasn’t the first scared kid he’d had to rock through waves of grief and sadness. He just let Pasupata cry hard until his throat was so thick he didn’t think he could speak and his chest felt all dried up like an empty husk, and he held him even after Pasupata had stopped crying and could only sniff and use his dirty sleeve to wipe the drippings from his nose.
It was a long moment before Nataraja spoke softly. “Hey, what’s your name?”
“Pasupata,” he answered. “I’m… I don’t have anyone, anymore. I’m alone.”
The hands holding him tightened. “You’re not alone, Pasupata. I’ll look after you. It’s okay, you don’t have to be alone.”
Pasupata didn’t cry again, but the big empty hole in his chest didn’t feel much better, either.
Pasupata remembers:
They were forced to live on the streets after old lady Shirumi cleared them out of her hut that morning. Nataraja didn’t leave his side and they walked together with clasped hands as he led them through the twisting lower streets toward the cleaner, well-tended district of the nobility. The faint smoke still coming from the smoldering remains of Pasupata’s house was visible even from a distance, but he didn’t remark on it, nor look upon it with trepidation the way Nataraja was. But that didn’t stop him from feeling nervous on the inside.
There was very little left of the house when they arrived, and they were not the only onlookers to have come from all parts of the city to see the destruction. The houses on either side had also suffered some damage, scorched siding and roofing material burned away at the edges; plants all around had died in the blaze and the neighbors’ gardens were covered with filthy black grime that made the air smell unpleasant. Someone had tried to tie a rope around the lot but that wasn’t stopping most of the onlookers, and there were people stepping through the ruins, picking up random items, looking for objects of value among the rubble. Pasupata looked on, feeling his anger rise and bile trying to crawl up his throat. It took a willpower he’d never had to exert before to keep his temper in check.
“What’s happening?” he asked Nataraja tightly.
Nataraja made a face, as though he found the task of relaying this information unpleasant. “Um… it looks like it’s all gone. I’m sorry. It’s just… all burned and stuff. There’s a wall in the back still standing, or a part of it, but it’s all burned up on the inside too. That could be the… well, no, it’s hard to tell. Do you… did you want to go in? We could look around, see if we can find anything that belongs to you?”
Pasupata tipped his head to the side. He didn’t particularly like the thought of stumbling across the charred ruins, not if his family was still somewhere in there. He shivered. “Why can I hear voices? Are there people here?”
Nataraja was silent for a moment, and Pasupata turned so that his face sat just out of his direct line of sight. Pasupata couldn’t help wondering how much of the truth would be freely given to him, if Nataraja would tell him the ugly truth of people digging through the remains of his life, or of his own neighbors looking on from their balconies at the black smear of his former home with little but distaste on their faces. How much of this foul world would Nataraja allow him to see?
“There’s people here,” Nataraja said at last. “Not too many. Some of them are just walking by and looking. They’re probably wondering what happened. You’ve got some neighbors sitting on their comfortable chairs looking like they can’t be bothered to lift a finger, and some people,” and here Nataraja suddenly raised his voice. “Some people have no respect for the dead!”
His outburst caused a few heads to turn, namely among those who were picking through the rubble. Most of them turned back to what they were doing, but a few were chastised enough to look sheepish and slink away back through the crowd.
“Bunch of vultures,” Nataraja sneered, then seemed to deflate. “Sorry. That’s just… I shouldn’t be mad, but it’s your family’s house and you can’t even see what they’re doing.”
“It’s alright,” Pasupata said, his anger gone for the moment. He squeezed the hand clasping his. “You said it’s all gone anyway. I have to… I have to move on I guess.”
“What are you going to do?” Nataraja asked, and even he sounded a bit worried.
“I thought you weren’t going to leave me,” Pasupata said, something irrational and tight taking hold in his chest.
Nataraja sighed. “I told you, I’m not going anywhere, but you gotta find someone, Pasupata. Don’t you have rich relatives or something? You don’t know my life, you can’t live on the streets like me. You’re too good for that. God didn’t save you just so you could become a dalit. You’re not meant for that. You shouldn’t even be… if you knew what I…”
Pasupata abruptly turned to walk away, forcing Nataraja to be dragged along with him, who let out a surprised gasp at the move and then quickly caught up to place himself slightly in the lead. Pasupata was almost tempted to reveal everything right then, because it wasn’t fair that you couldn’t walk away angry if you weren’t even supposed to see where you were going.
“Is that what you are then? Do you think you’re untouchable,” he nearly spat the word, and he corrected the grip on his hand to lace their similarly dirty fingers together. “I don’t care what you are. I’m the same as you now. I’ll live on the streets if I have to.”
“No no no no,” Nataraja protested rapidly. He took them off the main road down a narrow alley between two houses, the sudden shade making the air much cooler. There were leafy green plants hanging over the walls of the homes’ back gardens and they perfumed the air with something much sweeter than the charred cinders they’d left behind.
“What do you mean ‘no’?”
“I mean it like ‘no!’.”
“Well I don’t like your ‘no’!”
“It’s ‘no’ for a good reason!”
Nataraja dropped Pasupata’s hand and stalked away a few steps. At a loss, Pasupata let his hands hang by his sides. It was hard not to consciously watch Nataraja and the twisted emotions crossing his face, because Pasupata was a little angry but mostly he was curious what had brought on the other boy’s vehement protests. Nataraja crossed his arms and spun around a few times on his heel, his bandaged forearm held slightly out in front. He even glanced back at Pasupata once or twice and frowned each time, and it was making Pasupata nervous.
“Nataraja,” he implored, lifting his fingers to grasp at the empty air.
Nataraja immediately looked guilty and stepped forward to seize Pasupata’s fingers. He clasped their hands together again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you there. I was right here the whole time. It’s just that… you don’t understand what it’s like out there. There’s this guy… his name’s Hashid. He’s like my boss. He’s just a gang leader really, but he tells everyone what to do, and if you don’t listen to him… you wind up dead, or worse. I just know he’d take one look at you and he’d take you away and you can’t even imagine the kind of stuff he’ll make you do. Usually he only takes girls but I’ve seen him take boys too, boys like you. That’s what ‘no’ means, Pasupata. I’m not gonna let him do that to you. I’m not gonna let anyone take you, and people are gonna try if you live on the streets. They can sense weakness half a kos away and you’re already blind and, and…”
Nataraja trailed off, looking slightly devastated by this confession. But he was staring at Pasupata straight on, and Pasupata was left letting his gaze trail over the boy’s nose and the walls of the narrow lane. “What do you mean, ‘boys like me’?”
“Pretty boys,” Nataraja scoffed, but there was a strange flush spreading over his cheeks. “Except you’re not very nice looking right now. You’re all dirty and your hair’s all burned off in the back, so… maybe nobody’ll want you anyway.”
Nataraja grinned wide, and Pasupata couldn’t let that slide, even if he was fighting back a smile of his own. He lifted his free hand and punched Nataraja square in the upper arm, which got him a gasp of surprise from the other boy.
“Ow! That was a lucky shot!”
Pasupata grinned. “I may be blind, but I’m not helpless. You better remember that.”
“I will if you throw punches like that,” Nataraja grumbled, rotating his shoulder.
Pasupata tipped his head up and let his eyes close briefly. For a moment he wondered what it might be like if he was truly blind. The sound of the birds chirping in the gardens, the noise of the people passing by on the street behind them, the warm breeze coming between the houses to touch his skin and ruffle his singed hair, all sensations amplified by the loss of his sight. It was a dark and kind of scary place, but Nataraja’s hand was still holding onto his and even with his eyes closed he could still feel him there, a warm presence counterpointed by his steady breathing. He didn’t want to lose this, his first and only gift from God, and Nataraja would never stay if he knew that Pasupata had seen him the night before. If he knew that Pasupata knew the truth why he’d been at his house in the first place. Nataraja would never understand that he had been a gift, sent to save Pasupata’s life. More than ever, Pasupata understood this now, and he had no intention of letting them separate.
Pasupata sighed aloud. “I’m hungry!”
Nataraja seemed to start. “Oh! Yeah? We should get cleaned up too… you really stink.”
Pasupata snorted. “You smell too. You smell worse. I can smell you all the way over here.”
“You’re just smelling you,” Nataraja teased, grinning. He tugged on their hands and led Pasupata out of the alley and back onto the street. “You smell worse than rotting food.”
“No, you smell worse. You smell like that piss the old lady rubbed on your arm.”
“Oh yeah? Well you smell… you smell like a baboon!”
“You smell like pig’s feet!”
“You smell worse than the Ganges!”
They both broke into laughter. “It does smell really bad,” Pasupata agreed.
“Too bad. That’s where we’re going. Can’t afford to go to a bath house. You okay with that?”
Pasupata shrugged, even if inside he was squirming at the thought. Bathing in the Ganges? “Other people do it, so it can’t be that bad. Right?”
Nataraja only grinned, probably not remembering that Pasupata couldn’t see him, but in the end it didn’t matter. Pasupata was looking down at their joined hands with a smile on his face anyway.
Pasupata remembers:
The Ganges wasn’t as horrible as he’d feared. Or maybe he was so grateful to finally wash away the ash and the grime that the dark tint of the water could be forgiven. There were lots of other people in the river anyway, people of all walks of life and in varying states of undress, swimming or bathing or simply squatting in the water, content to let the current push against them and feel the might of the holy river swirling around them.
Nataraja had been oddly patient and attentive to Pasupata since they’d made it to the water’s edge, not once letting go of his hand. In fact his grip was the tightest between them, as if he was afraid that Pasupata might be swept away downstream if he didn’t hold on to him. In reality the current here was barely strong enough to take a grown man off his feet, and the muddy bottom extended for many dand away from the shore, which meant that this section of the river had people swimming in it from all directions.
They stripped down to their under clothes and left their pile of dirty things on the shore before going in together, and the day was warm enough that Pasupata didn’t mind the air on his naked skin. With their torsos bare the differences in their skin color had been especially obvious, but Pasupata was forced to keep the observation to himself. He wasn’t supposed to be able to see just how pale and diminished he looked compared to Nataraja’s bronzed, lean physique, and though Nataraja had looked his way enough times to have noticed as well, the other boy said nothing.
They scrubbed their skin and dunked their heads under the water until the soot and burned hair came loose and washed away, and Nataraja cupped water in his hand and used it to clean Pasupata’s face of the more stubborn streaks he had missed. Nataraja was rather comical in his efforts to keep his bandaged arm out of the water, and Pasupata couldn’t resist splashing him a little just to hear the boy squawk indignantly. He wasn’t supposed to know where he was aiming, anyway.
Nataraja eventually led them out of the water, collected their clothes (which were hardly worth keeping in their current state, Pasupata thought), and walked them the short distance over to one of the lower ghats. There were lots of families perched on this one, spread out on simple blankets or with poles driven into the dirt to erect simple coverings to shield them from the sun. They were clearly lower-middle class citizens, with simple clothing and no traces of jewels or precious metal on their throats or fingers, but the individual pavilions dotted the hillside with an astounding array of colors, like hundreds of gull wings flapping in the early afternoon air.
“Wait here,” Nataraja told him, helping Pasupata to sit in an empty space of packed sand between two large families. “I’ll be right back, I promise.”
Pasupata didn’t mind being left alone since it gave him the opportunity to look around openly. The leveled terrace was wide and only one platform away from the river below them, where even more people were seated and standing, walking to and fro from the river and onto the banks. Farther away, thick smoke rose from a ghat set higher up the hill, the familiar white ash of funeral pyres clouding the air. There were small boats farther out on the river where the waters were deeper and moved more swiftly, their white and tan sails crowding so close together that it was little wonder they didn’t all crash together and sink their ships. Pasupata could just make out the slow moving bodies of a herd of cattle meandering into the water on the opposite side of the river, and even at the great distance the sound of their bells could be heard on the wind, clanging and discordant.
Pasupata spotted Nataraja returning a short time later, the bundle of clothing still stuck under his bandaged arm, though he had thrown his vest back on to perhaps retain some semblance of modesty. When the boy was closer he placed a hand on Pasupata’s shoulder before moving to sit beside him.
“Hey. You didn’t even twitch. I thought I’d scare you.”
Pasupata smiled benignly toward the river. “Being blind enhances the other senses.”
“Huh. So you like, heard me coming? Don’t say you smelled me cause I just took a bath, same as you.”
Pasupata chuckled. “Did you find some food?”
“Yeah,” Nataraja said. He glanced around once, somewhat guiltily Pasupata thought, before he unwrapped his bundle to reveal a few leaf wrapped skewers and several large triangles of roti . It was extremely simple, but to Pasupata’s empty stomach it smelled like heaven.
“It smells great!”
Nataraja grinned. “It’s chicken skewers. Just don’t ask me where I got them.”
“Only if you give me one right now.” Pasupata held out his hand, deliberately reaching high and almost level with Nataraja’s face, which made the other boy laugh. He lowered Pasupata’s fingers and placed one of the skewer ends into it, wrapping the digits securely around the stick.
“There. Eat up, your majesty.”
They ate quickly and in silence, and Pasupata almost wished he wasn’t so hungry so he could enjoy the meal more. The chicken was bathed in lemon juice and still warm, and he had a suspicious feeling some vendor’s cart along the riverbank was now mysteriously short a few tender sticks of meat. The bread was cold and crunchy but had a hint of ghee slathered across the top crust, and it too tasted like the most delicious thing Pasupata had ever eaten. Nataraja seemed to notice how hungry Pasupata was as well, and he passed over half his portion of the roti without batting an eye, something Pasupata could hardly call him on when he wasn’t supposed to be able to see the act of generosity.
Eventually the food ran out and Pasupata sat with his legs folded up, full and surprisingly content considering that he’d lost his home and his family all in one night not even a full day earlier. His belly was full, his skin was clean, and God had sent him a champion to protect and save him in his worst hour. Now he had to figure out a way to repay that kindness in turn.
“Do you have parents, Nataraja?” he asked. He let his gaze stay unfocused, taking in the panorama of the river without really seeing it. “You haven’t once said anything about them, if there’s anyone at home, worrying about you.”
“Not really…” Nataraja said, sounding uncomfortable. He cleared his throat. “There’s no one, not really. I never met my dad. My mom died a few years ago. After that, just been on my own.”
“That’s really sad,” Pasupata said sincerely.
“Not like it could get any better. Or any worse. Except dead, I guess. Nah it’s okay, I know how to take care of myself. I’m taking care of you just fine, aren’t I?”
Pasupata smiled. “Yes. But, what if… I’ve been thinking. About my relatives, like you said. I think I know one of them that might help us.”
“Yea? You got a rich uncle or something? That’d be nice.”
Pasupata lowered his legs and looked to the side, turning his gaze on Nataraja’s mouth. “You have to promise you’ll come with me, Nataraja. No matter where I go, you can’t leave me. Do you promise?”
“Sure, yeah, I mean,” and here Nataraja swallowed visibly, “I told you, right? I’m not going anywhere. You’d walk into a wall without me here.”
Pasupata nodded, accepting the oath for what it was. “My father always said if the family was in trouble, real trouble, there was one place we could turn to. But it had to be really serious, worse than anything else in the world. And I think… I think it’ll be okay if I make contact with them. I only met them once a few years ago, but I remember they were nice. They were kind to me even though I was younger and… kind of a brat. They told us their doors were open if we were ever in need, and I think they’ll help us now.”
“So who is it?” Nataraja asked curiously.
“The Maharaja and his younger brother.”
“What! You’re related to royalty?” Nataraja hissed loudly. His mouth was hanging open and he was leaning away, perhaps unconsciously, but it made Pasupata reach out and snag the boy’s arm to keep him from bolting any farther.
“Just, very distantly,” he corrected in an undertone. “The rajas are like, my second or third cousins or something. I don’t know. My father always said we were related, but he never told me how. It’s why we got to visit them at the palace once a few years ago.”
“The Maharaja,” Nataraja breathed, still sounding rather stunned by the whole revelation.
“The raja, Shiva, he’s only a few years older than me. He was nice to me even though I was… I didn’t have the best manners. If we talk to him, I know he’ll help us. Nataraja, you have to help me. You promised.”
“Pasupata…” Nataraja began. It sounded like the start of a protest, and Pasupata squeezed the arm under his hand tightly in warning.
“Nataraja, you promised. You said you wouldn’t leave me.” Pasupata felt his face crumple and he tipped forward, pressing his forehead against the other boy’s sun-warmed shoulder. “I don’t think I can do this without you. Please.”
Pasupata felt the other boy tense under his touch, but he didn’t pull away and he said nothing for a long moment. And very suddenly, very earnestly, Pasupata wanted him to come with him to the palace more than anything. He wanted it so badly that he knew that he would have done anything to make it come true, that he would have prayed to God and wished away his sight for good if it meant keeping Nataraja with him. He truly couldn’t do this alone, and in that moment he believed it with every fiber of his being.
“Okay,” Nataraja said, so quietly that Pasupata might have missed it if his ear hadn’t been so close. Nataraja’s bandaged hand came around and covered Pasupata’s, loosening his grip slightly so his nails were no longer digging into the soft skin. “Yeah. I’m not going anywhere. We’ll go together, okay?”
Pasupata nodded and took a deep breath, blinking away the tears that had gathered prematurely in his eyes. “Thank you.”
They sat in silence a while longer, the afternoon waning around them and the sounds of the people ebbing and moving with the flow of the timeless river. The boats on the waterfront had moved far downstream and were being replaced by more coming from the west, and sometime in the interim the herd of cattle Pasupata had spotted earlier had been joined by another group, their wet backs glistening in the sun as they splashed and rolled around in the muddy banks on the opposite side of the river.
It was Nataraja who spoke first. “So, how are we supposed to get in touch with your cousins anyway? I don’t think they’d let us just walk up to the palace…”
Pasupata frowned, because Nataraja was completely right. His father had always handled all of those important types of visits in the past. “Do you know how to compose a letter?”
Nataraja made a choking sound. “I can’t write! Why would I know how to write?”
“Well you can read at least, right?”
“A little,” Nataraja admitted, grumbling. “How’s that going to help us?”
“I’m going to write the letter,” Pasupata began, speaking over Nataraja’s protests of ‘but you’re blind!’, “I’m going to write the letter, and then you’ll have to make sure it’s delivered to the right place and read the reply when we get it. Okay?”
“This sounds bad. Like the blind leading the blind.”
Pasupata laughed. “I think we’ll be okay. I think everything’s going to work out okay.”
Because Pasupata had been given a second chance at life, and God had brought them together for a reason. There was nothing more he needed to know or believe in. As long as they were together, they were going to be okay.
Pasupata remembers.