Word Count: 4221 | Reading Time: 15 min
Each city begins as a vision in the dreams of a mind, is sung into thought by an eloquent bard, and made real by strident hands. The city of Pratpura, a product of all three and a marvel of stone, has sat on an island in the eye of a lake for a thousand years. Men walk its walled streets and call its tiered structures home; a necropolis to the west where the departed rest and the eastward theater where the living make merry over rice wine. Two streams straddle the outer walls from north to south while the acropolis, with its citadel, overlooks them all.
Now, it is time for the burg to fall.
Over eons, I have sung the doom of such marvels as Pratpura, but it never gets easier. It is a familiar feeling I nurse in the wefts of my lattice as I rest in High Priest Trikta’s fist. A rush of madness fills me with unbridled power and purpose so raw, I burn like a sun even as I remain cold to the touch. My song, which Trikta has beheld, is not what a flourishing civilization along the banks of Rivers Sindhu and Saraswathi expects, but it is the grand, imminent truth. To this song, only death may dance, and it is my duty to caution, not coddle, the mortal mind.
“I am certain of the Agni Kanta’s revelation, O Grand Priest,” Trikta, my beholden, says.
Human constitutions and fellowships never bind me, but they are amusing. This city, like the hundreds that dot the highlands along Sindhu and Saraswathi, exalts high priests, one of whom is Trikta. He wears an ornate cotton shawl that covers his sacred right arm, a mark of his status and privilege. Nestled within its soft folds, his hand cradles me.
These people call me the Agni Kanta. My names vary, but my purpose does not.
“I am not here because the council distrusts your omen, Trikta,” says Grand Priest Hoka. “I am to make a better sense of what you heard, is all. So, recite to me what it sings.”
Trikta’s palm sweats as he brings me out of the folds of his shawl. He stands before Hoka, a tall man with a wiry build and imposing stature looking down on him. In his gaze, there is no humility that accompanies authority. It is greed and envy that radiate, carrying the heady scent of skepticism and surprise, perhaps at Trikta’s recantation of my foretelling. Around us, the circular ceremonial chamber in the citadel unfurls, wood posts lit at their tips with fire that crackle in anticipation as Trikta holds me between his pointing finger and thumb, over the prime of his head, and I sail into his mind through the gates of the third eye like a boat into the rapids.
Chaotic eddies try to warp my notes into something more pleasant and favorable, but I break through and unfurl for Trikta this city and the turbulent lakebed it rests upon. Hardworking residents tussle with rowboats to ferry spices and handlooms from far-flung cities in the north, venture into the seas to catch fish, toil under the berating sun to plant crops and harvest the yield. All this, season after season, the city strives to make its living with, only to fall prey to a grave disaster. Smart as they are, their attempts to survive fail against nature’s whims. At the cusp of the coming monsoon, Pratpura’s walls topple. The island tear open and quake. Nothing burns, only swallowed whole as the lake breaks the city’s bunds. Structures collapse, and people drown in the wake of water from the lake washing over the city’s ruins.
“Enough!” yells Hoka, stunned. His garb of richly dyed hues flutters in the rouse of his raised arm as anger flashes in his eyes. “Do you grasp the weight of the omen you portend?”
“Y-yes, Grand Priest.” Trikta’s fist shakes, his grip so tight that my faceted and polished edges threaten to part the skin of his palm and I sense the fear his frantic pulse betrays.
“Hand me the Agni Kanta,” says Hoka.
“But Grand One, I am the beholden. It sings to me.”
“Do not cite to me the ways of singing. I was there when they first heard its music.”
Trikta blanches, but neither of them knows who or what “they” are, nor I, the object of this adage. I have much left to understand about this world, much to learn of it, from it.
“My apologies.” Trikta concedes, and the pressure of his grip around me eases.
In a second, my refined curves grate against the calluses of the lesser man’s hand.
“Sing to me,” says Hoka, glaring down at me like I am his slave. “If you dare.”
Time is an inconvenience, a shadow I cast when facing the light. Most priests go entire lifetimes never beholding, let alone holding, me. To be my beholden is for any shawl-wearing man an honor higher than Pasupathi’s calling, grander than the gifts of Sindhu and Saraswathi that weep into the seas of Arabia to Pratpura’s west. This lesser man, Hoka, carried me from High Priest of Dulheri to Trikta. A mere pigeon, relaying a message never meant for him to read.
Yet, he dares command me now.
“Why won’t you sing?” he growls. In the reflections of my blood-red hue in his twin irises, I catch the wink of a wicked blue. Much like the world, I do not grasp aspects of myself. Why do I sing? How did I arrive here, a land the scholars of Sumer call Meluhha? If I have seen the streets of Sumer, why can I not recall even a figment of my transgressions there?
“Are you a mere trinket?” Hoka bares his teeth. “Mayhap, you need a trial by fire?”
I still do not sing to him; the tether that connects me to my beholden is too pious to break. Using Trikta as my mirror, I beam my lamentations, which rebound and pour into Hoka’s mind like hot tin into a cast of clay. Lamps in the alcoves of the ceremonial chamber blow out in one go as gusts of hot wind barrel through the black void. His shawl flutters, and Hoka staggers, grappling with flailing senses. Light, powerful as the sun, bursts overhead, making him cringe and cower.
A cloudless blue sky unfurls. Sand and cracked earth everywhere. Along the seven rivers that gave bounties of food and life, only dry, hot winds flow. Droves of caravans line the ground, heading south and east in search of better, greener lands. Children are all bones like string puppets of wood and clay they once played with. Women fall, robes catching wind and exposing their nakedness. Men with wide eyes and gaunt cheeks howl. Dunes move like tumuli, swallowing the grandest of brick structures. Cities erode, and time erases every shred of Meluhha’s existence.
I break my song and plummet Hoka back to the chamber’s silence.
His grandeur eroded, the Grand Priest lies on the paved floor, glistening with sweat and rasping hard, his shawl cast aside. His heart hammers away, soaked in swirls of red and blue like me, wishing to never inhabit a body again. What must such freedom feel like? Never to be bidden or bound, to roam without consequence, to behold the world and its creations and not sing its dirge.
Is that my destiny, to sing of this civilization’s doom and attain freedom? Was it why my song changed its melody? To Trikta, my notes delivered this city’s elegy but it is the funeral of the civilization of Meluhha that Hoka heard. This will not bode well for my beholden.
“You lied, Trikta!” Hoka crows predictably. “Oh, what a treacherous vision you hoard as you distract me and your council with a pittance! A lie, even!”
“Grand One, I dare not!” Trikta’s bald head is a dome of sweat. “It is cataclysm I saw—”
“Indeed!” Hoka rises to his feet. Trikta picks his shawl from the floor, and Hoka snatches it from him. I have hurt his pride, inadvertently so, yet it is a fellow mortal he directs his anger at. What cruel trickery is fate up to? “A cataclysm not meant for Pratpura but Meluhha!”
Trikta’s eyes widen.
Hoka has deemed him a charlatan, undeserving of priesthood or his shawl. To trick the Grand Priest was blasphemous. Does Hoka not know that my duty forbids me from lying, and by virtue of being my beholden, forbids Trikta from doing the same? Perhaps my desire for freedom meddled with my song, let it falter, and like a crystal that polarizes light when held at the right angle, the refractions of my melody must have warped. A key rendered off note is all it takes for a fragile faculty like the human mind to hear an echo, to sense a phantom vibrato.
Is there more that I sense? A haunting reverberation, a leftover energy, courses through me as Hoka and Trikta stare each other down. Pratpura’s fall is imminent, and what Hoka heard is an eventuality. How imminent? How eventual? The vibrations fade away before I can fathom.
“You smite the heavens!” Hoka says. “The sun is to dry our rivers, you claim Ma Bhumi threatens to sink this city?” He shakes his head. “I must urge the council to undertake all the rituals necessary to appease the gods. Trikta, your folly is too great. You are no longer the High Priest of Pratpura. I strip you of your shawl and the Agni Kanta, condemn you to the pit for three seasons! Who stands in waiting? Come apprehend him!”
At his beckoning, lesser priests from Pratpura’s council scurry indoors. Their fealties once bound to Trikta, they are now asked to wheel him away to the pit prison in the acropolis.
“Grand One!” Trikta shrieks. “I beg of you! We must appease the earth, not the heavens…”
Hoka smirks as he tosses and turns me on his palm. “It must be easy for you,” he muses. “To cast such dark futures so freely when you cannot even muster a teardrop. What do you know of sacrifice and pain, what it takes to build a civilization like Meluhha?” His smirk morphs into a snarl, and his hold around my extremities sores. “Is it true? The so-called tether between you and your beholden runs deeper than mere songs and omens?” He has spat Trikta’s title out like a curse. “You must be deluded, drunk in power, even, to refuse me, Grand Priest of Meluhha, as your beholden and choose an inexperienced, unqualified mutt like Trikta. Have you never wondered why he sits here at a rocky outpost like Pratpura and not the glorious cities up north? Does it never strike as something beneath you to languish here in the fringes of the wasteland when you could be bathed in the finest of oils and polished to glow the very sun that threatens us? What more, the man dares to claim what is truly mine, and it indulges him!” He guffaws, shaking his head, fixing his shawl. “We must remedy that. From now on, I am your beholden. Trick me, you petty rock, and I shall punish Trikta tenfold, make you weep so much our rivers will never ever run dry.”
#
Rituals have power in these lands. They are songs too, conjured by mortals whose lives of profound mundanity circle the whims and fancies of the deities they worship. A season has passed, and true to his word, Hoka has held me hostage, parading around every little settlement to boast about his acquisition and the threat it sang of. He has tried to form a tether between us but to no avail. Neither of us know the ways of a tether, how it forms or why. It simply does, and it frustrates him to no end that I cannot sing to him. Not that it has stopped him from pretending that we have a tether and that I croon into his mind each time he holds me to the folds on his forehead. I indulge his charade, for I cannot risk the safety of my beholden who languishes in Pratpura.
Trikta, a high priest, is now a disgraced prisoner. He has augured the lake’s high and low tides, advised tillers on which crops to grow when, watched the night sky for star serpents to pick auspicious days, mapped solstices and full moons to plan rituals and mark calendars. All his good deeds, Hoka has undone by branding him a liar in Pasupathi’s name. A cruel reward for devotion.
I cannot sense pain, and my memory is as sparse as the liminal spaces between my grains, yet a knot anchors my wefts to the lake city and its High Priest. I hear him sing for me as he stands in the dark and cramped punishing pit at the acropolis. The pit is twice as deep as he is tall, merely wide enough to stand. Wet earth forms walls, squelching as he moves. Worms ring his toes, damp prunes his skin, and rodents use his body as their toy. He is not dead, no, our tether rings strong as ever. It is through this I sense him at all. Perhaps my proximity to Pratpura has an effect, too.
As Hoka makes his return to the city this nightfall after conducting rituals all over the north to appease Lord Indra, the bringer of thunder and rain, my lattices vibrate an ominous note. Hoka intends to perform a ritual at Pratpura as well, for the city belongs to Meluhha whether he likes it or not. But the vibrations… the song they sing are in response to Trikta’s singing. As my beholden stands in the earth pit, the subtle humming that grows around him are too faint for his ears. Yet, they permeate our tether and ring me the alarm: Tonight, everything ends for Pratpura.
Hoka has done his best to form a tether with me but to no avail.
I cannot sing to him, or anyone else in this world, but Trikta. I must find a way to alert him even if he is too far to hold me to his forehead. Our tether, I must bolster it to do so. How?
#
Hoka sits before the ritual pyre in the lavishly decorated and freshly painted stadium, where all inhabitants of Pratpura gather around the terraced stands. The sky is so clear and calm that Hoka could toss me toward the firmament and I would create a perfect ripple. The same may not be said for the lake snaring this city. Beneath it is turbulence, and I sense it through my beholden, who is too tired and cold and forlorn to perceive the vibrations.
The citadel walls are decorated and freshly painted, sweets and meals of garnished rice and pulses sit in a cluster to the north of the pyre. Lesser priests gather behind Hoka to add the power of their voice to his chants as he decants oils and sprinkles dry rice and grains into the fire. The prayers proclaim the city’s unconditional submission to Indra and its offerings made in peace.
I am within Hoka’s reach. Heat does not bother me as it does the mortals, but the firelight is a different matter. It flashes through my folds and courses through me like blood in mortal veins, bending and forging fresh paths as I keep it from bleeding through. Refractions, like my songs…
An idea chips at me, and I act upon it, trapping the firelight within my wefts until my glow burgeons. This energy is the nourishment my tether with Trikta needs. A beacon in the pit’s dark.
Such solitude he has endured in the last season, he stands a broken man, one who thinks he has nothing left to live for, has no future, deserves no mercy or salvation. I sing, remind him he still has me, and together, we can be something bigger. I have the strength but cannot act. He lacks energy in his muscles but with the determination I manifest in his mind, he can act. Hoka possesses me, but I belong to my beholden. Our bond is like that between the sun and leaf, unwavering.
My song of Pratpura, his home, his world, haunts him more than isolation and the betrayal of his own kin. I am a nomad; it is all I will be, but the belonging these mortals impose upon each other and themselves is endearing. Birth and death confine their existence, and it compels them to seek meaning in fleeting experiences. In their quest I find kinship, for there is yearning even in the silence of my permanence. It is this kinship I submit to. The purpose of my songs—my purpose, I realize—is not to simply herald the doom of civilizations but to use them to empower the powerless like Trikta and the inhabitants who have relied on his augury all these years. It is to give them a fighting chance to preserve their kinship. It is not freedom I have been searching for and dreaming of, for I am already free. Captivity is a human construct. The people of Pratpura live captive to their beliefs in gods they have never seen, under the grips of a council that does not care for them.
I have sung for their freedom.
If cities start as a vision, become a song, then are made real, I can wield the same alchemy of thought. I beckon Trikta’s attention with my radiance. He listens, transfixed.
The world melts, leaving just the two of us. My fierce flirtations tug at his heart, and they cause him to claw at the pit with vigor. My notes grow strong, vivacious, until I hum in resonance.
“What guile is this?” Hoka hisses as he lifts me from the ground.
Hoka has halted his ritual, distracted by my glow. Even the people startle, watching as I embolden my beholden to scramble out of the pit and race toward the stadium.
The lesser priests behind Hoka pause chanting as he holds me under an incriminating gaze. Silence blankets the stadium as people climb down the steps toward the arena where Hoka sits. It is in this man’s essence to weave and spin a tale that best suits his circumstance, and he wastes not a breath in conceiving one now. Holding me over his head, he goes, “This is a sign! Behold the Agni Kanta that glows. Our gods speak through it. They are pleased, you see.”
The people of Pratpura fall for it. Hands clasp in prayer, ululations ring in reverence.
“I hear them!” Hoka cries out, feigning divine intervention. “Their wisdom courses through me, and in return for our salvation, they seek the ultimate offering. Of the Agni Kanta!”
“You lie!” roars my noble beholden.
Gasps burst from the audience.
“You!” Hoka gasps, springing to his feet, gripping me harder. “How did you get out?”
“Your guards deserted me to attend your sham of a ritual. Like how you all deserted me!” Trikta, a husk of the man from a season ago points at the people, who have now formed a circle around the pyre. “All I did for your well-being, you questioned my omens so easily. You doubted the Agni Kanta! Is this your kindness, is this what you stand for?”
“The Agni Kanta never lies,” says Hoka. “It simply divined a cataclysm much graver. One you hid from me by spreading a lie to the council for a reason that still evades me.”
I impress upon my beholden a clarification—the imminence of Pratpura’s demise and the eventuality of Meluhha’s. Refractions as they are, they hold true once divined.
“What if both are true?” Trikta says even as he blanches. “Have you considered that?”
“You make your own rules now, I see. All to fit your selfish narrative.”
“Selfish!” Trikta looks around. “Is it selfish to care for my kin? Is it not why I am this city’s High Priest? If speaking the truth for the good of my people is selfish, then your recourse is cruel.”
Hushed whispers travel around the circle.
“It is true then,” shrieks a man from within the assembly. “The quaking!”
I impress a final warning into our tether. It carries more weight, more emotion, and it nearly buckles my beholden as he absorbs it, hands over his head. “My gods! It strikes tonight!”
Fear curdles every person’s mood as they come to terms with the reality.
“Blasphemy!” Hoka roars, his voice demonic. “Apprehend the traitor!”
“Enough with your lies,” Trikta snaps. “We must leave the city. This island. Now.”
“This is our home,” wails a woman, a petrified child hugging her leg. “Where do we go?”
“Do not mind his words,” Hoka says. “He is not your High Priest. Your loyalty is to me.”
“Is your loyalty to us?” the woman reasons. “You seek to protect Meluhha, but what about Pratpura? We have watched our High Priest augur and divine from the Agni Kanta’s songs. What reason does he have now to lie? You do not know it yourself, as you admitted not long ago. You do not know why our priest divined the fall of our home because he divined the truth. And it is your selfishness that has now cost us precious time.” Heads thankfully nod. “Why must we suffer for others to live in peace? Are you here to help or witness and revel in our demise?”
My tether with Trikta flares. In seconds, my beholden has charged Hoka, tackling him to the ground and prying me from his clutches. I cherish the familiar touch of his calluses and ridges. This is home, my kin. “We will rebuild Pratpura once the cataclysm passes,” he says. “For that, we must live, survive. Time is scarce, and we only have a few rowboats. Hurry! Gather behind.”
Hoka laughs. “Go on, listen to him. The council will remember Pratpura’s desertion.”
A shiver ripples across the stadium. The streets and drains outside rumble in prelude to the terror about to unfold. It jolts everyone into action. Mothers and fathers grab their children, the strong take charge of the weak, and the lesser priests desert Hoka and his loyalists to rush to the citadel and grab precious relics and texts for preservation.
Pratpura operates with a vigor never witnessed in its thousand summers. The city holds its breath as we desert it, scampering onto wicker boats. A chorus of lamentations burst from every lip as waters churn and the land dances.
It is a moonless night that the elements have deemed auspicious to strike, and Ma Bhumi awakens. Even as people take to swimming across the lake, a tremor births from deep within, races along the island. Pratpura’s foundations shake. The acropolis can stand floods, not fissures. Pillars fall. The walls that fortress the city lose their fight and kiss the soil. Edifices bring their might upon dwellers who are too slow to act, too loyal to defect, too young to help themselves, and too prideful to concede. Somewhere in this crowd, Hoka must have succumbed, too, for he is not among us, this colony of survivors that watches from beyond the shores where the footing is proper. Bunds break, and a rogue tide sweeps over the city’s grave in farewell.
I gleam in the wake of this tragedy, and Trikta beholds me again, tears in his eyes.
“You saved us,” he whispers, then chants, “Praise be to you! Glory be to you!”
These affectations do not soothe me. It is the joy and gratitude for life in each pair of eyes beholding me from near and far, an incorrigible naivety, that plucks my threadwork lattices.
“Forgive us, High Priest,” says the woman with the child. “We should have listened to you. Now you lead the way, and we will follow.”
“The Grand Priest may be no more,” a man says, “but his damage to your reputation has been done. How do we mend it and ensure the council does not consider us deserters?”
“There is a way,” says Trikta as he secures me in the folds of his robes. “We will set sail for the high city and make a plea before the council. They believe in the Agni Kanta, and its song is no longer mine to interpret but a reality they cannot refute. We will be helped. This city will rise again, I assure you, but I cannot do it alone. So, I ask not for your loyalty, but solidarity.”
As survivors take a moment to cherish their good fortune and tend to each other for injuries, I sense a new vision, one I see has no need to be impressed upon my beholden right away. It sings of these mortals of Meluhha, who desert their faith in me as they outgrow their reliance on these harsh lands. What is an eventuality now will soon be imminent, after all.