The boy shifted on the carpet of ochre leaves, light as the whispering airwhich wove its way around the trees. The forest shivered and fell silent as the breeze died. Briefly fingering the feathery tips of taruppai grass, he sniffed the cool autumn air with the slightest hint of a smile.
Blood. I smell it in that hollow.
He crept forward up the gentle incline, his copper skin dancing through pools of sunlight, moving with the grace of a hunter. Lowering himself to a crouch, the pungent, earthy odours of the forest rose to meet him. Dark soil and scented mullai flowers somewhere close.
Your Amma was Veḷiyāḷ.
Outsider.
You aren’t one of us.
He blinked away the memory and picked at a sticky cobweb on his cropped black hair, feeling the raised bump of the scar which he’d received two summers ago. With time the words faded, just as light seeps from the mountains at dusk. The hurt remained, biting harder than the blows of Chozan’s heavy arms. Chozan knew how to use the power of words to injure.
Your Amma left because she hated you. Your own Mother hated you!
The boy’s face was lean. Alert. Without the cringe of a superstitious peasant from the deep mountains. Rather, his was a face that held nobility. A little hidden to the casual observer, but something a lifetime in an isolated village couldn’t quite erase. The boy felt for the reassuring curve of the leather sheath containing his curved aruval knife.
You’re a nobody.
Now his body was almost prone. His homespun vest and loose vetti pants brushed the dark earth. A brown and white hare scampered across the forest floor in terror. He gripped his bow and paused, forcing his thoughts from the pain.
I’ll use my bow. It won’t even notice until it’s too late. They’ll make me the first sixteen year old forester in the province after this.
He gulped, his heartbeat hammering his chest.
They won’t call me an outsider. Then I’ll find Amma.
He froze and listened. Watching the forest through intense eyes the colour of mahogany wood.
Amma loved me.
So why did she leave?
Pain churned in his gut. He took a slow breath just as his Guru had taught him, his mind calming and the forest leaping into clarity, his senses heightened.
The musical note of a songbird rising and falling in quick succession. Forest leaves spinning though the air and settling like soft rain.
He raised his head above a fallen log, green with moss, peering into the gully. The stench was overpowering. Spilt guts and the peculiar smell of lion. The snap of deer ribs echoed.
The boy’s head jerked back.
You’ll never be a forester.
Hands trembling, he raised his head for a second time. The tawny sabre-tooth lion was too engrossed in its kill to notice. It placed its muscled front legs on the deer’s neck, plunging giant canines into the carcass. A fresh outpouring of blood joined the dark stain, surrounding the deer like a maroon flower.
The faint metallic scent of blood brushed the boy’s nose. He ran his finger down his bowstring and inched it up, reaching back to his leather quiver and gripping an arrow.
When he looked back at the beast, it was staring at him with bright gold eyes.
Vishnu help me…
A low growl reverberated through the trees, challenging him. He felt it pulse through his body like a drumbeat. His stomach knotted.
Run. That’s what your Amma did.
Too late. The sabre-tooth lowered its enormous head and took a step forward. Leaves crackled underfoot as it edged closer, its eyes never leaving him. Not even for an instant.
The lion began to circle.
Arul fumbled to nock his arrow, struggling to still his shaking hands.
It’s smart, circling around me.
The first arrow went wide, skidding off a tree and leaving a dark furrow, a wound in the forest. The beast froze, glancing at the arrow, its heavy shoulders giving it a strange hunched appearance. Now those same shoulders tensed for a leap that would bring it into killing range. It snarled, lips tight over its bloody canines.
Foot long curved daggers.
The boy dropped his bow, his fingers rigid. He shivered, yet sweat trickled down his face in crystal beads.
I’m dead if I don’t think.
He sensed blind panic raging up from his core, his eyes fixed on the lion’s feet, away from those terrible eyes. That was his Appa’s training. Father’s wisdom. Forester wisdom.
Quick as lightning Arul snatched a rock and pegged it at the beast. As it flinched, Arul leapt off the rise and rolled away. He came to his feet in one smooth motion. Looking ahead he saw a bright splash of light edged with green.
The end of the forest.
That was all he needed to see. He exploded into a desperate sprint for safety, moving as fast as he ever had.
Too slow.
The creature watched the running boy for a second, then exploded from behind the rise in one gigantic leap, its growl rising to an ear-splitting roar. Glancing over his shoulder, Arul glimpsed a blur of tawny fur, closer than he would have liked.
Faster.
Focusing on the exit, Arul mustered every bit of willpower to drive his legs on. He sprinted down the forest path, feet skimming earth, fallen leaves exploding in spinning clusters. The creature closed on him, the thump of its paws growing louder.
Arul’s strength bled out, his lungs burning.
Amma, help me.
A faint vibration sped from his amulet, from its jewel set into a gold disk. Heat surged into his chest. Flooded his muscles. And something more came.
Something that felt like starlight.
Like a deer in full flight, he cleared a fallen tree without slowing. Flashing through shadow and light, weaving around huge buttressed trees with catlike agility.
Fifty feet…twenty feet…
His eyes flicked from the ground to the nearing exit. Something metallic sliced through the air towards him at a frightening speed.
No time to crouch.
He screamed, his spent lungs near collapse.
The object rushed past his head with a foot to spare, its metal tip glittering like the edge of a razor. It hissed through the air as it passed in the blink of an eye. Then a sickly noise of metal slicing into flesh.
A piercing howl ripped through the jungle. That moment burned into Arul’s memory as long as he lived.
He screamed again.
Better to die than to live as a Veḷiyāḷ. Outsider.
Again energy surged from his amulet. Softer this time. For a fragment of time, he thought he heard a woman singing to him. A light in the corner of his eye.
Amma?
Seconds later, he shot out from under a giant tree into a field of emerald grass. Sprinting blind into the sudden light, a powerful arm lifted him off his feet. Sky and grass spun, his eyes rolling back in his skull. Darkness took him, rather peaceful in a strange way. He thought he heard a deep voice, as if in a dream.
It sounded awfully familiar.
He drifted on a black sea between sleep and waking. From somewhere inside that darkness, a ghastly fog arose. The familiar nightmare of the sea.
Drowning. The ocean rising to a deafening crescendo, tearing at his mind. Reaching for him. He stared dumbfounded at the onrushing wall of water, towering like an angry blue giant above the green plains. Sunlit flecks sparkled off the surface of the gigantic tsunami, while deep inside its green-blue colour faded into midnight black. Towns and entire mountains were swallowed whole, as though some divine being had focused all of his rage into this moment.
With a choking cry, Arul sat up. He was dripping with sweat, shivering violently, nausea swirling in his stomach. His eyes jerked wildly around the room, unable to focus. Light and dark blurring, he rubbed his hands over his slick face, trying to force himself from the nightmare. A sparrow flashed tan and brown past the open door, distracting him from the lingering terror. He stared out of the door into the wall of green.
Autumn had begun to probe its chill fingers into the alpine valley like creeping shadows. Whereas the sun had shone forth a fierce summer heat only a month ago, now it had cooled to a wintery disc that gave little comfort.
The snows would not be far off.
He was home. A thatched hut built around a bamboo frame with palm-leaf walls, the smell of earth, spices, and dried grass comforting him. A few well-worn implements and cooking pots hung from pegs set into the crossbeams. Above, a sloped thatched roof hung dark, trickling slivers of grass through the still air. Let in by gaps in the reed walls, slivers of light shivered on the mud floor,. Dazzling drops of sunlight in an otherwise dark interior.
Arul lived in the isolated mountain village of Sailem, deep in the western mountains of Kumari Kandam. Its folk tended cattle and goats, and cultivated grain that thrived in the cool climate. He had loyal friends, and he treasured the long days wandering fields and forests.
He felt whole.
Almost.
Arul had never known his Mother. He was told that she had vanished when he was a baby. People made up stories about her disappearance. Perhaps she ran away. Maybe she was taken by a wild animal.
No-one knew for sure. His Father never spoke of her, and other villagers avoided the subject. It was an unseen wound which hurt him inside. Yet even deeper than this, Arul sensed something calling to him. Something in his blood singing from a great distance away. Sometimes he dreamed of it, sparkling like a cloak of diamonds against a dark sky.
Arul sat on his rope bed awhile, feeling it creaking, his mind drifting. He rubbed his face and forced his mind back into the waking world. Cool earth pressed his feet reassuringly, though his mouth was dry and his body drained. He stood and swayed on his feet, tottering past the circular fire-pit, staring at the dancing flames that licked the blackened cooking pot. Sambhar bubbled and filled the hut with an aroma of onions and spices. His stomach rumbled, and he realised that he was hungry enough to eat the whole pot. He and his father were reduced to eating one meal a day like the rest of the village. Hunger was constant.
Then he remembered.
What did my amulet do to me out there?
Amma’s gem.
He shrugged. Probably imagined it. I was panicked. Yes, that’s it. Panicked.
But he didn’t quite believe himself.
Something more happened.
His rickety bed creaked in protest as Arul sat down and shook his head, his mouth drawn tight.
I’ll never become a Forester at this rate. I can’t even kill a lion.
A shadow fell across the glare of the hut’s door. Arul looked up to find his father, Ori leaning against the doorframe. His short muscular frame moved fluidly into the hut.
‘Appa!’ Arul cried, shielding his eyes against the glare. His Appa wore the outfit of a Royal Forest Warden. A red talaipakkai covering his close-cropped hair, matching vest and loose vetti trousers. Like all foresters, his Appa wore a curved aruval, larger and better fashioned than Arul’s. His job was to patrol the vast estates and forests of the King of Ailas, like his ancestors before him.
Arul’s Appa flashed a cheeky smile, revealing a set of startling white teeth set in a weathered face. Yet the space behind his weathered face seemed to hold a deep sorrow. Sunken eyes that never smiled.
Arul’s head swam as he turned his head, looking for the dull glint of his Appa’s throwing spears. There seemed to be a few missing from the bamboo rack. He swallowed hard as the memory of the sabre-tooth attack washed over him.
His Appa let out a sharp breath. ‘Arul, why did you take on the lion without me?’
Arul stared at his feet.
‘Is it because you want the village kids to see you as a hero? You risk death to be worshipped?’
‘I don’t want Chozan and his gang to call me an outsider. I’m not. I was born here!’ Arul said, bitterness edging every word.
‘The blacksmith’s son? So that’s what this is about.’ His Appa sat next to him on the bed. ‘Chozan is not too bright if you hadn’t noticed.’
Arul smiled and nodded.
‘Yet you want to be admired by him?’
Arul shrugged. ‘That was stupid of me, wasn’t it?’
‘It was. In any case, that creature was as big as they come,’ said his Appa in a deep voice, sounding like a rumbling waterfall.
Arul eyes filled with confusion.
‘I trust you didn’t knock your head in the forest,’ his Appa chuckled. ‘The sabre-tooth lion! They don’t usually come down to the lower forests unless…well unless…’ He pinched the stubble on his jaw and gave Arul a thoughtful glance.
‘Did you carry me all the way from the Ancient Forest? That’s two days walk!’ Arul said, his voice rising in pitch.
‘Of course I didn’t carry you, Son. I rigged up a bush sled and dragged you. That was hard enough! You were mumbling and crying out about the ocean and the stars. And…’
‘And what?’
His Appa’s voice fell to a whisper. ‘Well…you called out to Amma.’
Arul dropped his head. ‘Oh.’ They sat silently for some time, sharing a common grief.
We’re not going on any more hunts up there until its safe. Understood?’ His Appa said, the iron in his voice unmistakable.
Arul let out a deep breath. ‘Yes, Appa. But do you think it was an earthquake that drove that lion off the high passes? Or hunters?’
‘Hmm…?’ Ori looked out of the door to the trees of the jackfruit plantation. Arul followed his gaze. The white-capped peaks of the Meru Ranges lay above the trees, part of the vast mountain range that dominated the west coast of the continent.
‘I mean…um…they’ve never left the high passes in your life, have they Appa?’ Arul asked.
‘Not in my life, or in living memory,’ his Appa ventured. ‘Something odd is going on up there, I just know it.’ He tapped his nose and smiled. Arul’s brow knitted as he watched his Appa stand, stepping over a glossy black wolf before ducking through the low door.
‘Jaya!’ Arul exclaimed with a grin. The young wolf raised his head and looked straight at him with pale gold eyes that seemed to be saying, you ought to have taken me along into the forest.
Arul rose and sat next to Jaya, his eyes focussing on an orange butterfly flitting over the grass, rising and falling in jerking motions. Arul’s fingers ran over Jaya’s thick fur and soon he felt the wolf’s heartbeat matching his own.
Calm.
The sun slanted gold and orange before Arul remembered his hunger. He walked to the trough by the side of the hut and revived his senses by splashing his head with cold water. Tiny forest birds flitted between the tall trees of the nearby plantation, calling to each other with elaborate songs.
Sailem was a good place to call home. If you excluded Chozan.
Surrendering to his hollow stomach, Arul hurried inside. He helped himself to a small bowl of fluffy rice and hot sambhar soup, shovelling lentils and vegetables into his mouth with his fingers. It wasn’t much, but it was more than most villagers ate. The heat and spices washed over him, and for the first time that day he felt content.
The terror of the morning’s events faded as he sat outside the hut in the afternoon sun. Clouds of insects drifted across the grass with a pleasant droning sound. Arul dozed off and on as the sun begin its descent towards the towering peaks in the west, their tips smudged with the faintest pink. Freezing winds blew great clouds of powdered snow off their peaks, trailing into the gold sky like plumes of steam.
Some distance down the valley from Sailem, near the Village of Karur, a bent figure put down his well-worn axe and straightened his back with a grunt. He stared up the valley at the mountains, watching them change colour with the setting sun. Parthiban had cut wood in this valley his entire life, yet he smiled anew at this painted scene. Reluctantly his gnarled hands hefted his axe and went back to chopping a spindly tree. His threadbare clothes and ancient appearance made him barely distinguishable from the surrounding forest.
It was dark when he arrived at Karur, pulling a ramshackle cart of neatly cut firewood. Villages such as Karur and Sailem needed wood year round for cooking, although he much preferred Sailem to the dirty and overcrowded Karur. Karur stank of rotting rubbish. And worse. As usual, Parthiban planned to take his cart house-to-house, selling his logs. Tonight though, something had caught the attention of the village.
Three strangers on horseback had arrived with an escort of royal soldiers. Gold buttons sewn into their richly woven robes reflected firelight like mini-suns, grand in comparison to the snivelling village elders who rushed out to greet them. They were immediately recognised as Royal Scouts from the great capital of Ailas.
Messengers of the King himself.
Parthiban watched the villagers help the visitors dismount and usher them inside the rundown pañcāyattu, the village hall. There was much bowing and smiling, but none of it by the strangers. The Royal Scouts were aloof and haughty, deeming it unnecessary to engage in small talk. Their escort of soldiers took up positions outside the door, fearsome curved aruvals held low, almost casually.
Parthiban sighed and tugged at his cart. Only once in living memory had Royal Scouts chosen someone from the valley to study at the Royal Academy. Parthiban scratched his bald scalp, but couldn’t quite recall that youngster’s name from all those seasons ago. Heaving with effort, the old man pulled his rattling cart down the dirt street, shaking his head.
Pari. Yes, that was his name. Is that the same person as the old teacher who lives up in Sailem? Parthiban shrugged, unable to figure it out. But there was one thing he knew for sure. He had a terrible feeling that trouble was coming to the valley.