Chapter 4
Shattered Goddess
Warning: rough draft ahead : there will be typos, spelling errors and oh so much more.
Chapter 4
I trudged back to the inn with my head full of fog, still reeling from the arrogance of the Shaikti Pujari. What he’d done—making me feel that intense rush of pleasure, then yanking it away—I didn’t have words for it, didn’t know how to carry it. I needed to close my eyes, shut everything off, start over. Sleep was the only thing I wanted more than the food Cook would deny me if she caught me napping in the middle of the day.
Lady Bea was at her usual table in the main dining room, the one that used to be the old house’s sitting room before it became an inn. She watched me drag myself through the door, soaked to the skin by the outside mist and feeling like a wet cat hunting for shelter.
“Girl!” Her shout was a lash.
I didn’t want to deal with her right now and pretended not to hear.
“Come here, now, Trin.” That tone cut through any hope of a rest.
“Yes, Lady Bea.” I turned and went to her. Better to get this over with now.
“Well, you made it back alive, then? No cavern spinners?” she asked.
“No, just the regular spooks and specters.”
“How dare you? Close your slut mouth. Don’t say such things.” She wagged a bony finger at me.
“You say such things.” I replied slowly, as if not understanding what she meant.
“I am a good lady. You are a little lost plague strumpet with no place to live but within the kindness of my heart. You watch your tongue when you speak to me.”
“Yes Lady Bea.”
“Did you do what I told you?”
“I could not open any of the ground-floor windows, the vines need to be cut down from the outside, but I did the rest as best I could.”
“As best you could? Since when is that doing what I told you? You are such a lazy girl. I don’t know why I put up with you. What have you got there? In that sack? Did you go to my family home to steal?”
The crystal I’d found was in the sack. I’d felt it bounce against my back every step I took home, a reassuring touch, something I could sell for a good deal of coin. It might help me escape Lady Bea’s kindness.
“You sent me there to open the windows. I have rags in the sack.” I opened it so that she could see the dust and cobweb coated rags. “There might be a few of the baby cavern spinners in there, do you think?”
Her eyes narrowed. In one swift move she was out from behind the table, snatching the bag and shaking everything onto the floor. Chu’Chu tumbled from her lap with a startled thump. She’d been asleep, I guessed and started barking, darting between chair legs, hunting for imaginary attackers. I was thankful the commotion kept Lady Bea from noticing my face.
I must have looked horrified.
Watching her feet, Lady Bea had to hold her sari up to keep from tripping over her dog. She smirked a little with her wide, thin mouth as she kicked the edge of one filthy cloth with her toe. “I know your type, girl. You can’t be trusted. Clean that mess up and take it to Cook for washing. The day’s half done and you are far behind on your tasks.”
She didn’t see the param. Neither did I.
I cleaned up the rags, wiping up the dirt and dust that shook loose, looking for that magical, strange crystal of power in their folds. Nothing. It was gone again.
I’d never heard of a param appearing and disappearing, and I know that I know that I’d touched the thing. Twice. I wasn’t imagining it.
My mother and aunts knew something of the ways of magic. I remember a special carved shelf of palm-sized param in our house, my mother touching each one with the tip of her finger to make them glow their different colors.
The one I’d found must be something valuable to be able to come and go at will. That was nice. Too bad, but it wouldn’t do me any good at all if it didn’t stick around long enough for me to sell.
Cook told me to wash the rags with the rest of the laundry, motioning to the big tubs in the corner and the heaped pile of linens there. I nearly groaned at the task, but bit my lips closed. One did not antagonize Cook. Thicker, taller, and just as mean as Lady Bea, she would slap me if I looked at her wrong. I’d seen her and her cousin exert themselves to kindness, laugh, even behave generously toward others. For me, there was nothing but gleeful venom. They had made me the vessel for every resentment they’d ever suffered, and the only way I would ever escape it was to leave this place.
Unfortunately, there was nowhere to go if I didn’t have coin. And no way to get there. If I arrived in the city looking for work, I’d end up in the lowest kind of whorehouse, a charging station. I could work in the dark on my back there; no one would see my scars, or care if they made new, deeper ones.
Such houses had always existed, but an influx of tourism from outside Deviraj had seen their numbers increase and their quality decrease. Instead of places of rejuvenation they’d become degenerate houses of transaction. I’d heard travelers say there was one on every corner now, filled with gawking, pale faces from all over the world.
In my parents’ childhood, our little country self managed of all its own needs under the watchful eye of the Goddess. But then came the Virulence and the Drench, and now Deviraj’s main economy was trade in jyoti and param, along with the special flow of magic that charged them. Instead of something from my home’s holiest of sanctuaries, charging stations were slipped into the dark underbelly as one of our main exports.
I did my chores, feeling hopeless, and fell into bed that evening, my fists clenched. I hurt, from my skin down to a place I couldn’t name. There was no relief.