Arul and Guru Pari began their journey at sunrise, the valley still in deep shadow. They skirted the lake to walk the ancient road, climbing towards the north until they reached the pass, the ground churned into a muddy bog from the stampede. Arul paused to look back. Sunlight flooded into the valley, turning the lake dazzling azure, bluer than the brightest sky.
Three tiny figures waved energetically to Arul, who waved back in turn, a big smile on his face. Inside, he didn’t feel cheerful at all, thinking of the mysterious journey his Guru had planned for him. He took a deep breath and hurried to catch up with Guru Pari, stumbling on the broken paving.
The road led into a rather bleak land, hemmed in by grey forbidding slopes. Clattering gravel would often slip down the mountainsides, echoing in the quiet of the pass.
They walked for the better part of half-a-day before the road split in two, a narrower path leading in a westerly direction while the main thoroughfare continued north, following the spine of the Meru Ranges. Arul noticed that the new track was even steeper. He sighed and followed Pari, treading carefully on the loose paving stones, leg muscles burning from the effort.
How on earth does an old man like Guru Pari could keep up this kind of pace?
Stunted pine trees began to appear, clinging to the slopes, struggling to survive in the high altitude. The trees crowded both sides of the road, casting flickering shadows. The wind grew colder, stinging Arul’s face as they moved higher into the mountains.
They pulled their homespun cloaks tighter, raising their hoods. It became harder to breathe. The air felt thinner to Arul. Guru Pari heard him struggling and turned. ‘I think you need a break. You won’t be any good if you faint,’ he said, chuckling.
Arul threw off his pack and sprawled on a bed of fallen pine needles. ‘Guru Pari, why…is it so…hard to breathe here?’
Pari thought for a second. ‘It’s something to do with the mix of elements in the air. It seems that the life-giving elements are scarcer up here.’ He studied the neglected path. ‘Our ancestors knew a lot more about this than we do.’
People ought to become smarter as time goes on. Not the other way around.
The sharp scent of pine cleared Arul’s head, lessening his tiredness for a while. ‘Up!’ Guru Pari said, rising energetically. Arul snapped out of his daydreaming, groaning as he shouldered his pack. He felt sure that it had become heavier. They followed the path until it became overgrown, thorny weeds sprouting in clumps like grasping fingers, tearing at Arul’s ankles and leaving red scratches. Guru Pari paused awhile, carefully examining the surroundings. With a nod of his head, he seemed to make up his mind, taking a sharp right onto a steep hill.
Half-covered in the grass were the remains of a staircase, the stone mottled with lichen and black with age. Tufts of grass sprouted from the cracked stone, tiny yellow flowers nodding in the wind, their perfume reminding Arul of wild honey. Guru Pari led the way up the stairs, joining another track which twisted through a sheltered pine forest.
They entered a glade hemmed in on three sides by cliffs, the trees taller and wider than any pines Arul had ever seen. Even more astounding, at the far end of the glade grew an enormous pine, its trunk the width of twenty men. Immediately behind it rose a cliff face, towering sheer and dark. Arul gaped at the giant tree, far taller than any tree he had ever seen, including inside the Ancient Forest. Then he realised that his legs really hurt. Folding his body onto the carpet of pine needles with a grunt, Arul looked around.
It feels like the outside world hasn’t intruded into this place for aeons. Even sounds are hushed, like inside a temple.
Guru Pari offered Arul strips of dried fish, which he found unpleasantly salty. It took some chewing, but he was so hungry that he could have eaten a pinecone. ‘We’ll camp here overnight,’ said Guru Pari as he laid his cloak on the ground. ‘You need the rest, and it will be dark soon.’ He pressed a black pill on some kind into Arul’s palm. ‘This should help with those aches.’ Exhaustion overcame Arul swiftly as he curled up under his cloak, the trees whispering as eddies of cold air swirled above the glade.
Arul’s dreams were troubled, filled with torrents of animals racing past him like the stampede at Blue Lake. But these animals were crying out for him to save them, although he didn’t know what. Then he heard something snarling in his dream. Something standing very close to him. The sound drifted into his dreams, then back into the real world, dragging Arul’s mind into wakefulness.
His eyelids fluttered open, afraid of what he might see. Not more than three feet away stood a colossal mountain wolf the colour of dirty snow, its midnight black eyes staring at him, cold and soulless.
Focusing into the darkness behind the animal, he vaguely made out the rest of the pack silently watching, their mottled bodies nearly invisible. Only their eyes shone like precious gems in the night.
Waiting.
The pack-leader edged closer, his teeth bared in a snarl. Arul raised his body into a crouch and drew his aruval, hissing as it slid from its leather sheath. As he leaned forward, his amulet fell from his vest, reflecting the firelight like a mirror. Without thinking, Arul’s fingers brushed the knot of tiger hair on the leather cord.
In the darkness across the glade, the low rumble of a tiger sounded. Arul felt it pass through his body like an invisible wave, his neck hairs standing on end. The alpha wolf bristled with fear, his head urgently pivoting in the direction of the growl. The other wolves withdrew, dissolving into the gloom. The alpha stared at Arul’s pendant, snarling, gradually withdrawing, one slow step at a time, its eyes shining in the dark until they faded like glowing embers in rain.
Arul looked nervously around the glade, searching for the tiger.
There was no sign of one. No breathing sounds, no footsteps, nothing.
Arul decided not to wake Guru Pari, pondering over the strange encounter long into the night while fingering his amulet. Dawn brought a soft grey light to the mountains, seeping into the glade like a dream, a few hardy birds singing in memory of this long-forgotten corner of Kumari Kandam.
As they chewed on more dried fish for breakfast, Arul opened his mouth to tell his Guru about the wolves, but Pari spoke first. ‘By the way, Arul. I knew that the wolf pack was there last night.’
Arul sat up straight. ‘What? But…but why didn’t you help me?’
‘I wanted to see how you would handle things. You kept your composure. Well done,’ Pari said with a smile, his face crinkling.
Arul wasn’t convinced. ‘And if I couldn’t handle things? Then what?’
His Guru merely touched his own amulet through his cloak and smiled. ‘Your Amma left you more than you can imagine, Arul. I’m not just speaking of your amulet.’
What does that mean? These strange animal encounters have something to do with Amma?
Although Guru Pari wouldn’t say more, Arul felt a glowing pride when he thought of his Amma’s gift living inside him. It felt comforting in the same way that his Appa’s cooking was. It felt like home.
After they had eaten, Guru Pari stood and walked to the giant pine tree, placing his hand on its rough bark, his head lowered. ‘This grandfather of a tree was just a sapling when these paths were built over a thousand years ago.’ He paused and craned his neck, looking up. ‘Maybe longer.’
I may live for a hundred years, but this tree is over a thousand years old.
Arul closed his eyes and touched the ancient bark gently, running his fingers over the ridges and knots. He prayed for the health of the tree, touching his forehead to the ground. To mountain people, old trees were sacred objects, conscious and ever watchful. Breathing in the woody scent, it felt like the tree had transferred something into him.
Strength.
When Arul stood back up, he saw his Guru walk around the enormous trunk and simply disappear. ‘Well come on then!’ Guru Pari’s voice called out.
Arul walked around the tree, where he found Guru Pari looking into a narrow cleft. ‘A hidden entrance!’ Arul breathed. His Guru clapped him on the back and laughed.
The gap in the cliff was choked with wild shrubs, but appeared to be wide enough to allow one person at a time. Arul took out his aruval and cut away the scrub until they had a reasonably clear path. He waited for Guru Pari to lead. When it was his turn, Arul squeezed himself between the rocks.
On either side the cliffs towered straight up, covered with immense green vines like tentacles of some mythical sea monster. There was barely enough light to see. Arul nearly panicked, his breathing quickening, but keeping his eyes on Pari’s back, he forced himself onward.
I really hate closed spaces.
For some reason, Arul glanced over his shoulder into the glade for an instant, spying someone lurking beneath the pines. His eyes narrowed and looked again, but he saw nothing more. Dismissing it as a result of his tiredness, Arul hurried after his Guru, touching the weathered rock and grimacing, impatient to exit the cleft.
Fortunately for Arul, the cliff-walls opened up until they found themselves in a canyon that pierced the mountain like an enormous crack. Walking through the deep shadows, Pari was silent, the only sounds were their sandals scraping along the rock floor. Above them the sky darkened, shreds of hurrying clouds, a jumble of grey and black.
When Arul looked up again, a bright opening loomed ahead, and they came out onto a grassy slope overlooking a hidden meadow. An extraordinary space filled with a thousand colours, acres of tangled wildflowers, wondrous scents filling the air. ‘I call this my secret meadow, although no doubt it had a proper name once. I think I’m the only one to have visited this place in centuries,’ Guru Pari announced with a flourish of his arms. ‘Come, Arul! Come and see!’
As soon as they walked out from the shelter of the cliffs, a biting wind hit them like a splash of freezing water. Dark clouds filled the sky, swept in from the distant ocean to the west, spilling over the mountain ranges and gathering over the valley. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled ominously, towering black clouds quickly blotting out the sun. Daylight turned into purple twilight, the meadow taking on an unreal appearance.
‘I think we should find shelter under the cliff!’ Guru Pari shouted above the rolling thunder. The sky began to spit cold rain, ice needles stinging their necks. They searched the cliff-face, looking for a suitable overhang. ‘There!’ Cried Arul, pointing near the canyon exit from which they had emerged. They raced for a rock overhang on top of a slope, huddling there and watching the storm. Forked lighting flashed horizontally across the boiling sky, illuminating the field in blinding pulses.
Arul’s eyes widened when he saw the tower.
Intermittent lightning bathed the structure in flashes brighter than the sun. A tapering shape rising above the treeline, like some misplaced lighthouse. Bolts of lightning struck the tower in rapid succession, the spire glowing red-hot, bright against the grey sky.
‘What in Vishnu’s name is that?’ Arul shouted.
Guru Pari’s eyes crinkled around the corners as he laughed, the sound rising into the heavens. Arul had a feeling that his life was about to change forever.