Page 156 of Tiger's Dream
“Did they hurt you?” I asked quietly, my voice cold.
Ana shook her head. “Not in the way you are thinking, but I feared it would come to that.” She kicked her booted foot in the dark soil. “You know I do not like being forced into an embrace.”
“Yes,” I said softly. “I know.”
“And you know the reason now.”
I nodded.
“I am a leader of men,” she said abruptly. “Sunil protected me until I learned how to defend myself. I was always careful and surrounded myself with those I considered trustworthy. Any soldier thinking I was a simple girl, playacting as a warrior, or someone to be toyed with quickly learned to change his opinion. I earned their respect and did my best to make them forget they were being led by a female.”
My lip twitched and I raised an eyebrow at that but didn’t comment. No man in his right mind would fail to notice Anamika. Even swathed in fabric and layered with armor, Ana was breathtaking.
She went on. “I never wanted to encourage intimate relationships. Firstly, because I wasn’t sure I could be with a man and not feel like I was trapped in a nightmare. Secondly, marriage means children. How can a mother head into battle? How would a husband feel about seeing his wife lead an army? I made peace with what I was. With who I was. That is, until you.”
“Me?” I said. “What have I done?”
“It’s not what you did. It’s…” She glanced up at me and then scowled darkly. “Can you stop looking at me when I say this?”
I laughed. “You want me to turn around?”
“It would help.”
Peering into her large, sincere eyes and then sighing, I turned around. “Fine. I’m not looking at you. If I recall, you were talking about why I’ve derailed your life.”
“Sohan,” she said with a soft exhale. “You haven’t derailed my life. You’ve given me the gift of possibility.”
“Possibility?”
“Yes. I now believe that it is possible for me to live as both a woman and a warrior, as a wife and as a goddess. When I slept in the Grove of Dreams, I saw what could be.”
My pulse jumped.Was she saying what I thought she was?
“Do you not see?” she asked. “That is why I sought out the Lords of the Flame.”
Ah.Of course. “I think I do see,” I said slowly. “You were wanting one of them to fill the empty place in your life.”
“Well, yes. I thought that—”
“No. I get it,” I said, spinning around. “You wanted a husband and only a god will do. So, you searched the heavens until you found not one but two. It makes sense. I totally understand.”
“Sohan, I do not think that you do. What I am trying to say is—”
I held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear any more, Ana. If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to finish Kadam’s list and then we can really take a long, long break from each other. Without our bond, it should be easy. After that, we can go our separate ways. You can go find what you’re looking for and I…I’ll finally have some peace.”
A sort of sharp pain knit in my chest as I stood there, and I was acutely aware of my deep inhales and exhales as we studied each other quietly. Finally, she nodded and said, “As you wish, Sohan.”
She turned away from me and only spoke when she needed to clarify something. I told her of the firefruit trees and of the qilin, and she used the amulet to create an entire forest of the trees beloved by the phoenix. Ana also made vineyards full of glowing globes that looked like a mix between a nectarine and a grape, fields of ripening grain that burst at the top with small flowers that looked like popcorn.
Ana created fire flowers of all kinds and tall waving grasses. Red mushrooms bloomed on trees and rocks. A heavy kind of moth lifted from a tree, and she wove her arms until a thousand of the creatures exploded from a flaming shrub. They made a kind of golden sap and quickly began constructing hives. Everything she touched leaned toward her and swelled with life.
Next, she fashioned hundreds of creatures both large and small. Some looked like rabbits or deer, but others I’d never seen before, even when we’d traveled the forest. Perhaps they had been hunted to extinction by the rakshasa or the Bodha. The idea of it made me sad. She drew up different-colored crystals from the ground and summoned small, long-legged animals. After asking if they would serve her, the animals accepted the gift of the goddess.
The crystals wrapped around their bodies, and soon we were surrounded by a herd of gleaming qilin. They nickered and kicked up their heels as they sped off through the forest, leaving a trail of fire in their wake. They were as stunning as I remembered. I’d thought Shangri-La was beautiful, but the fire forest was equally lovely. If it hadn’t been for the rakshasa, I wouldn’t have minded staying longer.
When I told her of the cave and of the rakshasa, she tilted her head, listening carefully. After I was done, she said, “The rakshasa are with the Bodha now. They will break away at some point, but that time has not yet occurred. We will allow them to progress naturally over the centuries. Perhaps it is the Lords of the Flame who will one day drive them away. Perhaps they will indeed go against my counsel and damage this land, leaving the people suffering. In that case, it would make sense that those who break off will become eaters of flesh.”
After we created a handprint inside the lava tube where Kelsey would enter the City of Light, I touched her shoulder. “Ana,” I began, “I just want to say…”
