Grandma warned Jambu about Tavila’s thieves and cutpurses, but didn’t mention its bazaars. By the strange alchemy of roads that all markets wield as weapon, the bazaar had dragged him right to where his heart would beat the fastest. Everywhere he looked, the stalls were loaded with mountains upon mountains of yarn.
Must hurry, he reminded himself. He had to get to the gardens soon. The sorcerer would be cross if he woke up and found Jambu engrossed in yarn. Then again, the tomb would still be in the gardens tomorrow; the woolmonger selling whole skeins of Purple Marcona might run out anytime. Even someone as bereft of art as the sorcerer could understand that all legendary tapestries need purple.
Having convinced the only person he really needed to, Jambu scuttled over to the stall with the mountain range of purple wool. Picking up a strand, he gingerly ran it through his paws, changing his life forever. This wasn’t just yarn. It couldn’t be. It was water and wind woven into being. It was silk masquerading as wool.
The mere touch of this yarn embarrassed Jambu for having dreamed so high in Uswalpur. He’d dreamed of being a legendary weaver ever since the first day Grandma set him to the loom, but what heights could he have scaled in that backwater? What could he have accomplished with Uswalpur’s coarse yarns and fossilized patterns? Here in Tavila, even this single strand offered eternities. He could sit here forever, not even buying it, just feeling what was possible. And yet, buy it he did.
It was nearly dark by the time Jambu, his bag stuffed and purse near empty, reached the inn suggested by the caravaneer. The Arbor turned out to be a charming pile of limestone and timber. A row of little vermillion pictograms along its side advertised its clientele. To Jambu’s relief, the pictograms included a rheech, complete with a white snout and beady eyes.
After pocketing most of Jambu’s remaining cowries, the publican led him upstairs to a room as large as Grandma’s house back in Uswalpur. The quality of the fabrics in here was dismal. Despite the ear-waggling array of material available in the bazaar, Tavila’s weavers seemed to have no standards. Jambu would change that soon enough.
But first, he had to deal with the sorcerer.
Rolling back into the moth eaten and filamented bedsheet, Jambu thought loudly to himself, hoping the spirit of his past life would hear him. Mister sorcerer sir, are you awake? We have arrived at the inn.
Whosat—Bloody bear, can’t you see—The voice in his head cleared its intangible throat, a holdover from when it had a body. Are we near the Regal Gardens yet?
I don’t know, mister sir.
What do you mean you don’t know? What have you been—Noticing Jambu flinch, the sorcerer’s voice softened into a conciliatory tone. Listen, bear … the sooner you find our name, the sooner you can get on with your weaving or whatever it is.
Yes, mister sorcerer sir, Jambu agreed.
Good bear. Now let’s find someone to tell you how to get to the Regal Gardens.
Jambu’s ruff curled with anxiety at the thought of talking to the publican. They would likely call him crazy. Licking his lips and nose clean to soothe himself, Jambu made his way down to the inn’s drinking hall. He couldn’t spot the publican amid the myriad shapes, sizes, and colors of the people here.
Back in Uswalpur, there were only others like Jambu. In Tavila, even this middling inn’s tables hosted eagle-headed garudas, lion-maned singhas, celestial apsaras, and every other conceivable type of person under heaven. Even the tavern-maids were krill-pink rukhnis skittering between tables on spindly legs. One of them passed Jambu with a tall carafe of something that smelled like anise and nausea, setting off a little sneezing fit in him.
So much chaos, the spirit muttered.
Too many people, Jambu agreed, licking his nose again.
Go talk to them, bear, the sorcerer hissed. Ask them where our tomb is!
Jambu looked around at the garudas and the singhas, his heart slowing in dismay. None of these formidable and pure races would deign to talk to him. Grandma had definitely warned him about that. In search of some less stationed being, he ambled towards the back of the tavern, where the sunlight didn’t reach and the air smelled of stale liquor and tallow.
A single seat remained across someone far into their liquor, their face flat on the table. A bowl of congealing porridge and a bowl of something pungent framed the patron. Jambu peered closer and felt a little tingle in the fur of his belly. The gray skin and bristly hair were a dead give-away.
Ugh, a pig. The sorcerer grunted mockingly
A varahan, Jambu thought.
Grandma would be upset if she saw Jambu sitting by a varahan, but she’d also be upset if she saw him sitting by his betters on the other tables. At least this varahan didn’t smell like Grandma said they did. Stop thinking about Grandma. Jambu reminded himself, settling into the bench. This is why you ran away! To do what you want without Grandma telling you off.
The sorcerer sniffed his incorporeal nose in disdain. You don’t need to sit next to pigs just because you’re angry at your gamma.
Feeling the bench creak under Jambu’s weight, the varahan snapped its head upright with a snort. Piggy little eyes looked at Jambu over a dusty grey snout. “Well met,” the varahan declared before slopping away at the bowl of porridge with enthusiastic grunts.
Willing himself to speak, Jambu introduced himself. “Hello mister sir, I am Jambu.” What had grandma said? Ask questions about them to fit in. “What are you eating?”
The only sign of acknowledgment was a hearty belch from the varahan. Eventually, tusks began scraping wood and its meal ended. “Hello, bear, my name ish Bin—” The varahan belched loudly. “—od. Binod.” He held the other bowl to Jambu. “Arrack?”
“No, thank you, mister Binod sir.” Jambu shook his head. “And I do prefer rheech to bear, if it is all the same to you.”
“You’re shure?” The varahan squinted at Jambu, “It’sh … It’sh help with the voicesh. Unlesh you wanlearn how to—how to meditate”
Jambu’s right ear pricked up with excitement. “Voices?”
“In yer head,” Binod sipped at his bowl without breaking eye contact.
“Mister Binod sir, my grandmother says the voice I hear—” Jambu tapped his head, “—is my past life talking to me. Nobody believes me except her. Can you help me understand more about the voice? He says he’s a sorcerer.”
Idiot! Don’t blab to any old pig you meet on the street, The sorcerer barked.
“Pasht-touched?” The varahan snorted. “You and every other farmhand coming up the country road. Go home, rheech. Sh-sit and till your cabbgesh or make bash—bash—basketsh or whatever it ish your family doesh. Don’t get involved with thish—all this—this.”
“Please, mister Binod sir,” Jambu lowered his head so the varahan could meet his eyes. “I can prove it. My past life has spoken to me. It has shown me truths I had no way of knowing.”
“That sho?”
Time to go, weaver-boy, the sorcerer hissed in Jambu’s. You can’t trust pigs in the city. I don’t remember why, but I know you can’t.
“When our crop died of boll weevils, the sorcerer came to me at night and showed me visions of an ancient gold mine under a creek.” Ignoring the voice, Jambu recollected the long summer afternoon when he and his grandmother had traipsed over to the nearby creek. “We found gold sand there; enough to save the house.”
“Creeksh often have gold. ” Binod shrugged.
Jambu blinked in surprise. When his parents said he wasn’t past-touched, they’d meant he was being haunted by a passing spirit. The idea that the creek could’ve just had gold simply hadn’t come up. At least Grandma believed him.
“Ish that yer proof? Thash it? Half-remembered common shense? Hope you didn’t travel far.” The varahan had his hand raised, a copper cowrie glittering in it to try and grab a passing tavern-maid’s eye.
One of the rukhnis squawked in alarm as his arm drifted towards her.
“Don’t touch me!” s he shrieked, skittering back from the varahan.
“Ey—ey now, shweetie, I didn’t touch you at all.” Binod rose onto wobbly trotters and leaned forward with the coin in his hand. “Get ush another arrack, will you?”
Binod’s hooves slipped as his intoxication got the better of him. The rest of the tavern, which had turned to watch the varahan get thrown out, gasped in shock as Binod fell with balletic grace onto the rukhni’s outstretched wings. Bowls and carafes went flying into the air in a splash of liquor that made Jambu’s nose water and ears ring.
“Get away, pig!” The rukhni kicked and scratched at Binod, her claws finally finding their mark. A red gash opened on Binod’s snout, and the varahan squealed in agony as the rukhni flapped away over the heads of the other patrons.
The tavern watched with keen eyes as Binod struggled to his feet. “I didn’t! Toush—touch you!” he cried out after the rukhni before smoothing down his stained kurta.
One of the patrons detached from the watching crowd. It was a tall singha with canines curving out under his muzzle, and a mane braided into war-knots. The jagged tooth motif on the singha’s tunic marked him as a warrior-caste, Jambu noted with worry. Unlike the merchant-caste Singhas near Uswalpur, this one was permitted to draw first blood.
“Time to leave, pig,” the singha growled.
“I didn’t touch her.” Binod wiped down his bloodied snout.
Jambu mumbled, “That is true, mister Singha sir.”
“I didn’t ask you a single thing, bear.” The singha licked one of his canines clean.
“Please, mister Singha sir,” Jambu persisted. “This varahan is helping me out. He is a very nice person and even offered me his drink. I do not think he would do this. And I am a rheech, sir. Not a bear.”
“What is this world coming to that a bear and a pig dare talk back to me?” The singha’s amber eyes turned to slits as he unsheathed a sword half as tall as Jambu. “This is my city, vermin. Not yours. Get out of the way so I can give this pig what for.”
“Hey, now—Leave this—Thish—Him alone!” Binod made to move towards the singha.
With a snarl, the singha leapt forward with his blade overhead.
“Stop!” Jambu shouted.
Don’t do it, bear! The sorcerer warned him, but it was too late.
The light from the windows turned bright silver, leaching color from the room. Every hair on the body of the singha toward them crackled as a powerful surge of lightning passed through it. When vision and sound recovered from the bolt’s ear-splitting roar, the patrons saw the singha twitching in the corner: alive, but barely.
“Wali shave us,” Binod mumbled with a soft whistle.
“What is this racket?” A new rukhni, frilly brown in feather and attire stamped over to them on stilt-like legs, curious about the commotion. Spotting Binod, she clucked in exasperation before chivvying them toward the door the door. “Out. Out. Out! No varahans allowed. Didn’t you see the vermillion strip?”
“You were fine when I was giving my moniesh, you—” Binod trailed off, likely realizing they were lucky the rukhni hadn’t noticed the Singha sizzling in the corner yet. Once they reached the fresh air outside, Binod snapped into blisteringly clear sobriety, as if the past few moments had only just caught up to him. “Rheech! What did you do!? How did you do that? What did you say your name was? Jambo? You’re a sorcerer?”
“Jambu, mister Binod sir,” Jambu’s ears flicked anxiously. “I am just a weaver, sir.”
“Hell of a carpet back there.” Binod grunted with amusement.
“My past life was a sorcerer, and he tells me what he remembers when he remembers it.”
Don’t run your mouth too fast, weaver-boy, the sorcerer cautioned.
Binod turned back to look at The Arbor’s door just as Jambu’s hamper came sailing out of it. A curious look settled in the varahan’s eyes. “Come on, let’s find you a place to live. I don’t think we’re welcome there anymore.”
“Do you know where the Regal Gardens are, Mister Binod sir?” Jambu ventured.
“Halfway across the city,” Binod cocked a bristly brow. “Why?”
Shut your dumb yapper!
“My grandma says they are beautiful.”
“Look at them tomorrow then,” Binod took Jambu’s hand and led him down the alleyway. When Jambu hesitated, he pointed at the purpling sky and explained, “Rheechs and varahans and all the other ‘foul’ races can’t go that side of Tavila after sunset. First thing in the morning, I swear on my entire litter.”
The sorcerer snorted in derision. He’ll just make some to spare. Ignore him and let’s go. I’m certain I’ll remember more spells as we near the gardens.
Jambu remembered the singha twitching in the corner like a crushed beetle and made up his mind immediately. He followed Binod down the alley, much to the sorcerer’s chagrin. Besides, calling down lightning had tuckered out Jambu. All he wanted was to find a dirt patch, curl up, and sleep the weariness away.
The varahans of Tavila lived in a cluster of hutments across the river from The Arbor, even closer to the curtain walls of the city. Despite his grandmother’s warnings, the varahan colony’s streets seemed clean even by her exacting standards. Jambu walked gingerly down the narrow lanes, careful not to bump into the doors and walls closing in on him on both sides.
What are we doing here? For once, the sorcerer sounded afraid.
Binod halted before one of the identical mud huts and swept aside the straw curtains on the varahan-sized hole in its wall. Dropping into a self-effacing bow, he invited Jambu in, “Welcome to my humble abode, milord. As splendid as Adar’s Palace and Wali’s Heavenly Above combined.”
From inside, Binod’s hut was a wattle-and-daub cube with holes cut into it for windows and a door. He lived a spare life. Apart from the candle he was lighting, the hut only had a clay pot, a rack of steel utensils, and a rolled-up coir mat. Even the floor was just hard-packed dirt.
“The singhas and the rest of the pure won’t follow us here,” Binod reassured Jambu, handing Jambu a cup of water sweetened and cooled by the pot. “Have you always been able to call down lightning?”
Jambu shook his head. “The sorcerer says he bequeathed his powers to his next life—me—and wants me to regain all of them.” Noticing Binod’s expression, he added, “Grandma believes him.”
“This is powerful magic, Jambu.” Binod whistled softly. “Are there rheech sorcerers?”
“Grandma says rheeches are only good for weaving.”
“Your grandma is a wise old bear, I must say. Do you know who the sorcerer was?”
“Rheech,” Jambuvan corrected. “And he does not remember.”
“A wise old rheech,” Binod corrected himself. “Did you come to Tavila to refresh the sorcerer’s memory, then?”
“Partly,” Jambuvan said, adding, “What I really want is to be a better weaver.”
This again, the sorcerer sighed.
“A better … weaver?”
“Yes, sir! The best weaver!” Jambuvan nodded eagerly, ears flapping. “Living in Uswalpur is—” He paused, recalling his Grandma’s admonitions about being unkind. “Straightforward. My family makes rugs with weaves that descend from centuries of tradition. We eat three square meals a day: fish, rice and honey. Grandma keeps reminding me that most rheeches my age are married and have a cub or two already. But all I want is to be the best weaver, not just in Uswalpur, but the world!”
Binod took a deep draught of the water from his cup. “You cannot be serious.”
“There is only one way for rheeches to live in Uswalpur, and so there is only one way to weave in Uswalpur.” Jambu shrugged. “That is what grandma says, anyway.”
“You have a sorcerer’s powers,” Binod shook his head. “Possibly the first of a foul race to possess them, but your ambition is to weave better?”
The pig has some merit to it after all, said the sorcerer.
“It is! And Tavila is heaven. Look what I found,” Excitedly, Jambu pulled out the skeins one after another. “Look! Ballepore Chenille! Purple Marcona! Can you imagine it? Purple for only eighty cowries! I can finally finish the pile on my woven portrait of King Adar. There is even a new kind of thread! Look at this: half cotton, half wool. Two threads into one. Can you imagine what the possibilities—”
“Why not do something better with your power?” Binod cut in. “Haven’t you seen how the pure treat us? Don’t you care?”
Jambu deflated like an old bladder, his excitement punctured. “I suppose so.”
Tapping his forehead in distress, he began stuffing the skeins of yarn back into his hamper. His nose twitched and his ruff bristled with shame. Grandma and the sorcerer had both warned him, but here he was. He’d embarrassed himself again, going on and on about things nobody cared about.
Too right you did, the sorcerer growled. Blabbering about bloody wool! Tonight, run away when the pig sleeps. I don’t trust it. Godsdamned bear—can’t keep its mouth shut.
“Did you say this one has two threads?” Binod lifted the skein of Dvitiya and held it up before Jambu. The varahan smiled crookedly as a shy smile spread across Jambu’s snout. Binod tossed the skein over. “I’m sorry I’m like this, weaver-boy. I’m just an old brawler with no appetite left for life. Sometimes I forget that the fighting isn’t why we fight.”
Jambu’s ears waggled in delight as he took the skein back. He had remembered the name! He was listening. “Did you fight a lot?”
“Oh yes, a lot.” Binod sighed. “Most of the fights turned out to be not worth fighting.”
“I hope you won the ones that were.”
Binod winced and began passing back the remaining skeins in silence. After a few more, his trotters landed on the Purple Marcona. “Could I ask you a favor, Jambu?”
Here it comes, the sorcerer whispered.
“Of course, mister Binod sir,” Jambu replied.
“Take this purple yarn of yours and burn it.” Binod handed him the skein of Purple Marcona. “Don’t make Adar’s portrait with it.”
Puzzled, Jambu cocked his head, “I thought everyone in Tavila loved King Adar?”
“Many of us love that he died.” Binod smirked. “Is that the same?”
Get out! The sorcerer screamed in Jambu’s mind. Get out! The pig’s a Tusker!
Jambu clamped his paws around his ears to shield them from the pain of the sorcerer’s shriek. It didn’t work, of course. The command was scratching the walls of the inside of his mind. He began rocking back and forth, trying to drown out the noise with his own internal screaming.
Binod paused in concern. “You okay, Jambu? Hey, what’s happening?”
Get out, you fat load! He will kill us!
“Mister Jambu!” Binod clicked his trotters in front of Jambu’s snout.
Shaking him away, Jambu scrambled around the hut on all fours, looking for something to cease the shrill wailing in his brain. His heart began palpitating, and coruscations of fear traveled over the tips of his fur. Only one thought rang louder than the sorcerer’s voice and it was Grandma yelling at him about how he was going to die if he ran away. Get out! He was weak. He was pathetic. He would go nowhere. Get out! Get out! You will DIE!
A bolt of white and gold exploded in Jambu’s vision, before everything went black.
The smell of eucalyptus and neem tickled Jambu awake. Golden summer glared at him from a hole cut into a mud wall. Black scars of soot grew from the hole like a tree fleeing the sun. This is a hut, he remembered before sitting bolt upright in terror.
“You’re awake,” grunted a familiar voice.
Jambu turned and gasped in shock. Binod sat by his side, hands smeared with green poultice. Bandages and stitches covered his grey torso, following ridges of blackened skin. One of his tusks had chipped.
“You look worse, weaver-boy.” Binod chuckled. “You fried us like that singha, and I’m craving to learn why.”
Jambu took in the wounds on his own body. Wads of black fur had been singed off, revealing skin beneath that was as gray as Binod’s. Root-like streaks of black ran over his torso under the green smears of poultice. He was numb all over, like the time he had to sleep outside during the Uswalpur winter.
For the first time since he was a yearling cub, Jambu didn’t sense the sorcerer in his head.
Are you there, mister sorcerer sir?
Silence.
“The sorcerer said you were a—Tusker?” Jambu asked Binod.
“A Tusker?” Binod’s expression stiffened. “What do you want with the Regal Gardens, exactly. Looking for a particular tomb, are we?”
Jambu’s ears waggled with fear. The third tomb of the West Wing. That’s where the sorcerer was buried, where his name and body laid in wait for Jambu and the spirit in his head. All Jambu had to do to be free of the grating, mercurial voice in his head was to find the tomb. Then, he would meet his true destiny as a weaver of legend. Only now, he wasn’t sure he would survive the night. “No, mister Binod sir,” he lied.
“It’s Adar, isn’t it?” Binod cackled at the top of his voice, the laughter ringing horrifically in the confined space of his hut. “Adar the Pure—in a pig-hut! Inside a dancing bear! There is justice! Gods, there is justice after all! My boy, what you need isn’t Adar’s tomb. What you need is an exorcism! Or enough booze to drown him away!”
Bear? The sorcerer called out in Jambu’s mind, as if from a distance. What did you do?
“Mister Binod sir, the sorcerer is returning.” Jambu’s body grew flush with worry as the memory of the sorcerer’s assault returned. “Please take me to the Regal Gardens, Mister Binod sir. Please get him out of me!”
“So he can resume his purges?” Binod muttered, his hand drifting toward his waist.
For the first time, Jambu noticed a rough-hewn hilt sticking out from Binod’s belt.
“Mister Binod sir, what are you doing?”
The varahan’s hand slipped off the hilt. “Godsdamnit, bear. What’s wrong with you? You know what I’m doing. Don’t—Don’t make me think about it. You’re a good kid, Jambu. And I’m sorry it has to be this way.”
Tears stung the raw skin around Jambu’s eyes. “Please, Mister Binod sir.”
The varahan limped to his feet and towered over Jambu, regret wrinkling his snout. “I’m sorry, Jambu. I have seen thousands of my people slaughtered by the great King Adar’s hand. And for what? Because varahans are ‘the most foul.’” Binod pulled the blade free of his belt. It was rusty in patches, but the edge glistened. “What happens after the pure cleanse ‘the most foul’? Do you think he would’ve spared you? Or your village? Or your grandma?”
Bear, who am I? Do you know?
King Adar, my liege, please save me! Jambu begged.
Bear, the sorcerer spoke again, now in a voice of steel and storm. I remember.
In an instant, magics of immense and legendary power breathed themselves into Jambu’s vocabulary: charms to enthrall legions, hexes to raze the world, and spells of immense healing. It was as if the warp and weft of the world had revealed itself to him.
I am Adar, the sorcerer boomed.
On instinct, Jambu set his bones and regrew his fur. Binod leapt back in surprise.
Eternal KING of Tavila.
A glowing lash erupted from Jambu’s hand as he, still operating on instinct, used it to pin Binod against the wall of his hut. The varahan cried out in pain and dropped the knife as the lash seared into the wounds left by the lightning. “Sorry, Mister Binod sir!”
Sorry? Adar asked incredulously. Cleanse this filth from my lands, bear!
“I do not want to!” Jambu shouted.
He wanted to kill you!
“But I do not want to kill him,” Jambu whined. “I just want to weave!”
The power of the world at your fingers and you want to WEAVE? thundered Adar.
“You are free now! Why won’t you go away?”
Go away? To where? Where would I get a body, you stupid bear.
“You don’t have to do this,” Binod said through clenched teeth. “He can’t make you.”
Of course I can! Kill him! A howling wail began in Jambu’s mind, like the wind in a mountain pass. It tore into Jambu’s heart, restarting the palpitations that had driven him near to insanity. Kill him! Or this is your future! Obey me, bear!
“I am! Not! A bear!” Balls of lightning leapt from the ground, snaking fiery yellow tendrils between the roof and the ceiling. They spun madly around Jambu till everything was a blur of yellow, perilously close to touching him.
Binod’s eyes lit up, “You tell him, weaver-boy!”
What are you doing, bear?
“Rheech! And he is not a pig!” Jambu’s toes left the ground as he began to hover.
Stop it! This instant!
“All I want is to be left alone to my craft.”
Have some ambition!
“I do! I want to be the best weaver ever!”
Grow up!
“If you threaten me again, I will dive into this torrent of lightning.” Jambu waved at the vortex stirring around him. “You will faint, and so will I. But I will awaken before you, and in the moments between my awakening and yours, I will scour every singha, every apsara, everything you call pure from this land before consigning myself and you to that selfsame fate,” Jambu bellowed, louder than he ever had. “Do you understand me? I will expend every ounce of arcane knowledge on destroying everything you built.”
Please, my lord Jambu, the King whimpered. We can sanctify the rheeches. They can be pure too. It’s been done before, it can be done again. Please do not be hasty.
“Begone! Begone forever, and never darken our world again!” Jambu’s roar sent cracks through the flimsy walls of Binod’s hut.
And then, silence.
The lightning disappeared as quick as it had appeared, taking the lash with it. The rheech floated back down, his fur relaxing and softening as the lightning fled the air. Toenails clacked against the floor, breaking the silence.
“Are you okay, weaver-boy?” Binod gasped breathlessly at Jambu.
Silence hummed in Jambu’s ears.
“I am!” He waggled his ears excitedly. Looking around the soot-blackened hut, he spotted the charred remnants of his hamper. He willed the lump of charcoal into his hands and exclaimed, “My skeins!”
Tottering unsteadily, Binod drew closer. “What—What now?”
“I have to buy more! I cannot afford all of these again.” Jambu licked his lips and nose in consternation before a small grin parted his snout. “I could skip the Purple Marcona. Could you lend me a few cowries for the rest? Three hundred should do it. Actually—”
Waggling his ears in delight, Jambu reached out into the air before him and pinched. Pulling his hand away, he drew out a length of wool finer than silk and more purple than a pansy. Binod looked on spellbound as Jambu pulled a whole skein of wool out from thin air. Finally, with the purple skein draped over his hand, Jambu said what he hadn’t dared to yet.
“I will create the greatest tapestry in history.”
And nobody would tell him otherwise.
Abhijeet Sathe is a writer by night and cranky in the mornings. His wife and Draft Quest (Chicago’s best writing group) support him through the hard times (writing) so he can enjoy the good times (a finished draft.) You can find more of his work at www.linktr.ee/onebigdoodle
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