Shattered

I know it is pointless to speculate and torture myself with what might have been, but I expect I’ll take a good long while doing it. Later. To prevent a spiral of second-guessing and self-recrimination, I’d try to grab a few hours of sleep to get myself adjusted to Indian time, so I could begin again at dawn. I’d search for this Logan guy, and when I found him, I’d ask where he got that urn.

It’s an excellent plan, and the flaw doesn’t become clear until I stop Ray in the morning, before he makes it to the trailer and sees that the doorknob is gone. I am so very smooth: I tell him my name is Beverly Childress, drop Dr. Liu’s name, and say I’ve been hired by the university to investigate the disappearance of Donal MacTiernan. My American accent in this place gives me instant credibility with him.

Indian-born but educated in America, Chirayu Parekh is an adorable if slightly doughy man with glasses and a mustache imported from the seventies. Like many people from overseas who spend any time in the United States, he had grown tired of repeating his name over and over again and had hacked it down to Ray to simplify it for the ’Mericans. He carries a leather messenger bag in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, and he’s very eager to help once he checks me out and decides that he wants me to like him.

“Mr. Parekh, in my preliminary investigation we came across a student of Dr. MacTiernan’s named Logan, who was working here on site,” I say. “Can you tell me anything about him?”

“Oh, sure, that guy. Kind of tall, blond, sort of kept to himself. Or at least kept away from Miriam and me. He hung around with Dr. MacTiernan a lot.”

“Where can I find him?”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know.”

“All right, what was his last name?”

“I don’t know that either. He was always just called Logan.”

I try to hide my irritation, but I’m uncertain that I manage it. “Will he be joining you here at the dig today?”

“No, I don’t think so. He disappeared at the same time Dr. MacTiernan did. But we couldn’t report it, you know, because we didn’t know his name.”

I frown at him. “We? You mean Miriam Vargas doesn’t know either? How do you let someone work on a university-sponsored project like this without knowing his name?”

Ray begins to panic at the implication that he screwed up somehow. “Well, Dr. MacTiernan vouched for him and he knew his stuff, so who was I to question? I mean—”

“This man may be responsible for Dr. MacTiernan’s disappearance. Can’t you think of any way to find out his name?”

I fear that the opposite might be true—that my father, once he was possessed by the raksoyuj, caused Logan to disappear—but I can’t share that with Ray.

“Well, no, I mean, I hardly even think about living people; it’s not in the job description of an archaeologist, you know—”

“Walk me through how you first met Logan, please, Mr.

Parekh.”

“Oh, well, when Miriam and I arrived, he was already here with Dr. MacTiernan, who introduced the guy as Logan, a former student of his. Hey, should we maybe talk more in the office?”

“No, I’m almost finished. You flew in from the States?”

“Yes. Dr. MacTiernan flew in from a dig he had going in the UK, so he got here first.”

“And this was on October third?”

“Right.”

“You were called in by Dr. MacTiernan?”

“Indirectly, yes. He called Dr. Liu at the university and asked her to send someone who could help with Sanskrit. She tapped us and we packed our bags. We were going to publish together.”

“There was a vessel here, wasn’t there, with Sanskrit markings on it? That’s why he needed you?”

Ray is taken aback by this. “Yes. How did you know?”

“Dr. Liu informed me,” I say. “Where is that vessel now?”

“It disappeared with Logan and Dr. MacTiernan. We think one of them took it.”

“That’s my suspicion also. Was the vessel unearthed here?”

“That’s what Logan claimed. He said he dug it up here and showed us a depression in the earth where he’d excavated it. But we just got lab results back on the soil and material samples Dr. MacTiernan sent off, and it looks like it didn’t come from here at all. The lab says it was buried originally somewhere in the west, probably in Gujarat.”

“Interesting. Thank you for your time, Ray. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

“What? That’s it? Hey, you want some coffee?”

I wave goodbye at him without answering. With Orlaith at my side, I put some distance between us, before he can discover that the office has been invaded and remember that he really isn’t that good with people and probably should have questioned me a bit more. No doubt he’ll get some grief later from Miriam for being so trusting. Poor Ray.

As soon as I’m out of sight, I cast camouflage on the two of us and we jog down to the house south of Thanjavur in which my father—or, rather, the raksoyuj—had been staying. I’d never gone inside to check it out, and if Logan had disappeared with Dad, then maybe he had been there too. Maybe he’s still there—and dead. Or maybe I’ll find a clue to his whereabouts. It seems as good a place as any to begin.

Except it’s no longer a place. When I get down there, I can’t find it anywhere, though I’m sure I recognize the field in which it stood and where everything happened. And then I realize that Durga had probably wiped it from the earth as part of her cleansing ritual. The earth had been scoured clean. No evidence of rakshasas or asuras for humans—or even me—to find.

I don’t know what to do next. If Logan’s body had been in that house, it wasn’t there anymore. There might be an immigration officer who could tell me all the Logans that had entered India in early September or early October, but I couldn’t just smile and lie my way into accessing that information. I might be able to try approaching Dr. Liu back at Dad’s university, posing as an investigator hired by his family, but she’d be far more skeptical than Ray. Besides, even if she could access Dad’s class rosters for the past twenty years or so, privacy laws would prevent her from handing out names of former students without serious legal paperwork signed by a judge.

One thing I do know is that the “Sorcerer’s Urn” didn’t disappear with Dad or Logan. It was somehow found by Laksha, and she was still someone to whom, in theory, I could talk. She’d need a mouth for that, however, since she’s clearly not interested in jumping into my head anymore.

I return to the hotel to consult my laptop again, because it’s easier to mask than cell phones or other wireless gadgets. I grab us some lunch, and Google tells me about the Raja Mirasdar Hospital in Thanjavur and provides me with a map. After I retrieve Laksha’s necklace and stuff it into my pocket, we set out to find Laksha a new body.

We circle the hospital campus a couple of times and pick out a nice tree under which Orlaith can stretch out and take a nap. I camouflage her and then ask Kaveri if she would continue to keep Orlaith hidden while I am inside and cut off from the earth.

Using the binding carved into the length of Scáthmhaide, I melt from sight and enter the hospital in search of a suitable host for Laksha.

She hasn’t spoken to me at all since the disaster in the field, and I’m both hurt and relieved by it. She could have taken up residence in my head again but has chosen not to. I wonder if it’s because she’s too weak or if it’s because she doesn’t want to face the questions I have for her. Either way, I don’t want the responsibility for her life in my pocket anymore, and since she seemed partial to choosing a young woman’s body before, I’m hoping to find one here.

Searching the hospital for comatose patients takes me a while. I don’t understand the signs near the doors, which are only occasionally printed in English alongside other scripts. But a few floors and many dead ends later, I find some comatose patients. Two are men, one is a very old lady, but the last is a tall woman in her thirties with sallow skin and lank, stringy hair. Most of her chart is meaningless scribbling to me, but some vitals are also typed in Roman script, such as her name: Mhathini Palanichamy.

Deciding that has a nice musical ring to it and that I don’t have nearly the patience for an extended search that I had years ago when we found Selai, I pull out the ruby necklace and settle it about Mhathini’s neck. Once I remove my hand, it becomes visible and looks so very out of place against a white hospital gown.

Checking again to make sure I’m the only conscious person around, I bend lower and speak to the necklace, feeling somewhat silly even though no one can see me.

“Laksha, it’s Granuaile. You’re resting against a comatose patient who will serve as your new body. I’m going to leave the necklace here, so if you want to make sure you retain control of it, slip into this woman’s body right now and wake her up before I go.”

I wait a full minute and nothing happens, so I lean down again and say, “Right now, Laksha. You have one more minute and I’m leaving. I won’t know what will happen to the necklace then.”

With fifteen seconds left, the eyelids flutter open and the beeping of the heart-rate monitor speeds up. I drop my invisibility so that she can see me.

“Welcome back.”

“Whur … mur? Er. Nur?”

“Pardon me?”

“Cur. Tur!” Her hand rises from her side, IV and all, and points first at her mouth, then twirls around her head. Her expression twists in frustration.

“Ah. This woman must have suffered some serious brain damage to the speech centers, I’m guessing. She probably has aphasia. Can you understand me all right? Thumbs up or down.” I get a thumbs-up. “Good. Looks like your motor skills are fine. Shall I assume that you can fix the speech problem with time?”

Another affirmative. “Excellent.” I’m disappointed that we can’t speak right away, but I can hardly blame Laksha for the problem. “I will give you that time and we’ll speak later. You have ways of finding me, so I trust you will do that as soon as you are able. We need to talk.”

“Whur mur nur?”

“Your name is Mhathini Palanichamy. Is that what you were asking?” Thumbs-up. I hear footsteps approaching in the hall, which heralds the arrival of medical staff responding to a change in her vitals. “You’re still in Thanjavur. I’ll leave you to the business of starting over.” I wink out of sight just as a nurse enters and exclaims at the sight of Mhathini’s open eyes. I slide past her and sigh in relief once I get out into the hall, glad to have that burden off my back. I don’t know if Mhathini is still in there, sharing space with Laksha, or if she has moved on, but I suppose I will find out later.

I pick up Orlaith and spend the remainder of the afternoon trying to find some way to help the city recover from the rakshasa plague. The language barrier hinders me, however, and that, coupled with perhaps a dose or two of paranoia and xenophobia—or else a fear of big dogs—makes us unwelcome.

It’s been a completely frustrating day, and after a desultory dinner I curl up in bed with Orlaith and my father’s diary, working backward through the entries in case they include any mention of Logan. I don’t find anything about him, but I do find something else: an entry on my birthday.

Granuaile would be thirty-three years old today. I wonder what kind of person she would be. I wish … well, it’s far too late for wishes, isn’t it? Far too late to make anything better. There’s only time for regrets now. Lord, I miss her.

I feel as if I’ve fallen from two stories and landed gut-first on a pommel horse, the air completely gone from my lungs, and when I breathe in again, it’s so very painful that the noise wakes up Orlaith.

It’s okay. Go back to sleep.

I trace the words with my finger, trying to contact my dad through the ink he scrawled there months ago. I know exactly how he felt, because I’m feeling it now. There’s so much time for regret ahead of me, days and months and years of it. I put the book down, turn on my side, and drape an arm across Orlaith, hoping to sleep away some of that time.

I resolve to track down a possible site north of town for the Lost Arrows of Vayu. If this Logan person is still alive, he might be attacking the earth with a shovel somewhere.

When I wake up, a gray Saturday in India, I shoot off a text to Atticus before I hop into the shower, to let him know he shouldn’t worry about me. To my surprise when I emerge, he’s answered, asking if my father is okay.

His death isn’t something I wish to consign to a text message, so I say, You don’t need to worry about him either, and then he does his Shakespeare thing, sweet man, kissing me with a line from Troilus and Cressida: The strong base and building of my love / Is as the very centre of the earth.

It is a game we play, sometimes, to answer one poet’s words with another’s, so that both the bards and we converse. The reply has to make sense in context, of course, but you score bonus points if you use a quote that contains one or more words from the previous one. I send him two lines from Whitman: Far-swooping elbow’d earth—rich apple-blossom’d earth! / Smile, for your lover comes. And then I amend that with, As soon as I can, anyway. Don’t wait up.