When it snows, think of me. You taste those words on your silent lips, trace their shapes across your inkstained palms. The weight of a story in them is unmistakable, and for a seasoned storykeeper, they taste like metal, like gold, like blood. You stand before the hired boat and look at where your chase has led you.
River Indhu’s waters rage across landmass, demarcating the borders of the two kingdoms so neatly that it looks like a painter has drawn a white line across these two great lands to separate them. Standing in front of the mighty estuary, you catch your first glimpse of Samudhrapura, the capital of the thalassocratic empire whose thousand ships rule the sea of the continent. Nestled between the raging river and sea, the capital is a semi floating city, layered by its patrolling warships, floating markets, the houseboats and then, the bronze gates against walls of blackstone which barricaded the land and water. The city’s indomitable high tower cut through the skyline like the index finger of the god you’ve come to chronicle.
Back guarded by the Aydurash mountains’ freezing peaks and the famed five headed cobras infesting the holy river, you’ve long known the only way into the great city was by its seacove. As soon you exchange the firm ground beneath your feet and your beloved cane with the ferry’s shaky wooden floor, trepidation fills you. Your stomach roils and your chest burns.
But the object of your long search rules the city. The monastery made you to chase the tales of the reincarnations of the divine wills. And in a glade farwaway from the shores of the river, you learnt his named whispered as if its a prayer: Karirul, the pitch black night. If stories about the godwalker can be found somewhere, it should be his own city. And nothing, not even your own fears, could keep you away from your quest.
The ferry travels into the city, through its seemingly disorganized layers which were the implementation of the chakkara viyugam battle formation. You trace your arms, remembering the war stories. They taste like misery, they taste of nightmares. There are other stories in the outer layers too. You pass a lone houseboat with a lonely widow whose story, you are sure, will taste of bitterness and tears that were long stuck at the back of her throat.
You make it to the bronze gates flanked by roaring mathya statues. There’s a bloody handprint on the wall and to you, it smells sharp and acrid, burning the back of your throat. It tastes of revenge, long sworn and never forgotten. The ferryman soon whispers the tale of Amba who swore revenge on the city that failed her. His voice is a mix of fervor, delight and reverence when he describes how she built a pyre by her own hands, wet driftwood’s splinters cutting through her palms, before summoning the heavenly flames with her blood as oil. As she set fire to her body, she promised to visit destruction on the lord who failed her and the city that was his home.
‘Legend says when Amba comes again, with her bloody sword and unbound hair, Samudhrapura will pay for its crimes,’ the ferryman recounts gleefully, his allegiance to his home kingdom clear. Stories are like that. They change with every telling and they morph to fit the place too. Now you can feel the undertones of grief in her tale. However, you shake your head. You know Amba’s tale is for another day and for now, you need to find the one you chased. It nestles close to the heart of the city, where the lord rests. Spun in silks and truths that taste of lies, in the storyteller’s market which is Samudhrapura’s glory. You’ve always found it ironic that a lord who never gave his tale away had fostered the silken market where all stories can be sold.
Here, every story has a price and not all are willing to pay it. For the story demands its due, from both the teller and its listener. You learn this intimately when you scour the market’s beautiful sheet screened rooms, refused away by those not willing to accept your price. Your hands show gold yet the well robed storytellers shake their head, their lips thin and eyes showing back fear. The thump of your cane is silenced by their snapping fingers, quickly rushed out despite your limp. You lean against a pole, close your eyes and stretch out your leg, the searing pain finally climbing up to your thigh. However, what bothers you more is the dead end of this thread you’ve traced.
The story you seek is old, but not so old that it’s forgotten. It is rare although every storyteller would know it by heart. It concerns the lord who stands by the high tower palace’s paraphets whenever it snows, hands outstretched as if to catch something he wished he didn’t miss, yet the melting ice already leaving his grasp.
It tells of the boy who laughed before he became the lord, before his blade was called Falling Sunset, bathed in the red of his uncle’s blood. Above all, it concerns his heart. And who would presume to know their Lord’s heart?
Cowards, you think. You had scoffed at your monastery’s disdain of the market, for which storyteller would fear a tale? Ones from the storytellers market of course. Not storytellers. Storysellers. You haven’t yet learnt of the stories that could kill, those that would accept nothing except your non-existence. You are only a monk of nine and twenty summers, a remarkable one who had chased an impossible tale across continents but a young one nonetheless.
Luck finally finds you in the way of an old woman draped in a white sari with a long cane to aid her walk. She sees you now although she’s heard of you before. And she knows the story you ask for.
You don’t see her, not until she taps you rather impolitely with her cane. You open your eyes, and judge her to be one the storytellers of the market. Her hair is iron gray, highlights of white running through them and her eyes are unfocused yet bright. You close your eyes again. this time, she smacks you and you fall to your knees.
“Aiyo, so it should be you who asks for the heartborn stories of our Lord ” she says, her voice barely above a whisper, as if she’s used to beating the life out of impertinent young monks.
You nod, brandishing your white beads in front to indicate your vow of silence. There used to be rage in you but the monastery beat it out long ago. Now you look at her, ready to hear yet with something nameless stirring in your belly.
“So the stories I tell you will stay within your heart, little monk?”
You shake your head, your palms open before the hunched woman so she can see the ink swirling into words in your palm, mesmerizing in their patterns.
The woman goes still, the quiet of a death.”So you are a story keeper, little monk, here to take away Duruvaha’s most treasured stories before we fall to ruin.” You are only mildly shocked at her knowledge of your order. The woman turns and walks, every step punctuated by the clack of her staff, She keeps muttering “… if only the old fools had listened to me.”
She calls to you, still marching forward.
“Come with me, little monk. I shall give you what you ask, whatever the cost to me will be. I will give you his heart, his home, his love and regrets. I only ask you to remember him well, for hosting a god doesn’t make his heart any less human. I will give you his Radha’s story. Take it with you. Take it faraway before we fall.”
In a quiet alley, far from the colorful storyteller’s tents and their regal spellwork to hinder any eavesdropper, the woman sits down cross legged, ready to tell the story no one will.
You stand there, the twin wounds in the center of your palm leaking ink, ready to write what lies within the heart of the lord in your lifeblood. And I creep out, the everlasting companion in your blood, ready to record the tale in exchange for your soul.