The Mountain Goddess Read online

  “As for Lord Shiva, he went to practice his disciplines in his mountain cave without another thought of suffocating ashes, until one day when the beautiful goddess Ganga distracted him. When they lay spent after frenzied lovemaking, the goddess traced her finger up and down his naked limbs.”

  Dhara and Sakhi looked at each other in the same instant, stifling smiles.

  Mala fixed her eyes on Dhara. “‘This existence has its pleasures, my lord Shiva,’ the goddess sighed. ‘Perhaps I could save it.’

  “‘You could let your waters pour over the ashes and bring the Aryas back to life,’ Shiva said, and kissed her mouth, her neck, her breasts, and nuzzled her warm, soft stomach.

  “Ganga shook her head. ‘Their force would be too great,’ she said. ‘The flood would sweep away everything.’”

  The yogi paused and shut her eyes. No one moved. Dhara dared a whisper behind her hand. “But your father never said anything about Ganga and Shiva making love!”

  Sakhi nodded, her eyes shining despite Bhrigu’s disapproving stare. She pressed her lips tight to stop her laughter. Dhara clasped Sakhi’s warm hand in her cold one. The sister of her heart did show a rebellious spark now and then.

  “Then something occurred to Shiva,” Mala continued. “‘Yet there is a way, fair-hipped Ganga,’ Shiva said. ‘If you release your waters over my head, I will break their fall.’

  “So Ganga stood up in all her glory, and Shiva knelt and buried his face in her flesh. Her love poured over his strong shoulders, then frothed and tumbled from the supreme yogi’s Himalayan cave all the way to the Eastern Sea, and her life-giving river restored the ashes of the Sixteen Clans to life.”

  Mala fell silent and gazed up at the mountain goddess’s looming, snow-covered peak, which emitted a dim glow in the moonless night. Dhara was enchanted. So this was how Great Mother Ganga’s waters had come to flow to the sea. She had a sudden desire to know the tale by heart and to enthrall future listeners just as Mala was captivating her village.

  The yogi kept her face lifted and eyes shut. Silence reigned. The villagers glanced at each other, shrugging in puzzlement. Everyone wanted her to go on.

  “There is more to that story,” someone called out. “Kapila made a prophecy. About a Sakyan child.” This prophecy about their rivals, the Sakya clan, was known, but not given much credence in the village—though Dhara sometimes wondered about it. Her formidable grandmother had been a Sakyan princess. She glanced at her mother, who was staring at the yogi, her beautiful face rigid, her eyes narrowed.

  The fire gave a sudden crack as a log split. Sparks flew upward and vanished. Dandapani rose from his crouch and tossed more wood on the bed of red coals, glancing at Mala as he did so. That strange current of energy passed between them. Dhara’s mother glared at the yogi. The wet wood hissed. Dhara’s skin prickled again.

  “Just so.” Mala inclined her head. “I will finish the tale.”

  The yogi took a sip from the wooden bowl next to her. “Once revived, the Aryas showed the ancient sages more respect. The Sakya clan even offered Kapila a hermitage in their sacred grove and asked him for teachings. Irascible Kapila was bemused by the gesture. After all, he could easily lose his temper and reduce the whole tribe to cinders again. Still, the Sakyas’ devotion to the dharma pleased him, and he stayed and taught many generations of their children.

  “When it was time for him to leave, the aging Kapila made a prophecy. ‘You Sakyas will become a great people. One day a scion of your royal house will become the age’s greatest warrior and conquer the world, and your clan will endure for a hundred generations.’”

  Mala had not said “prince.” A scion could be a girl.

  Dhara sucked in a breath. She wanted to jump out of her skin with excitement. “Behave like a princess,” her mother would often scold. “The blood of the Sakyan clan’s royal house runs in your veins.” She held back. But could it be… ? No. Yet, perhaps…

  Her father had insisted she train with the boys as soon as she could hold a little wooden sword. Her mother disapproved, but Dandapani said Dhara should learn a warrior’s ways so she could defend her birth clan against these very Sakyas. They, among all the Arya clans, were most closely related to the Kolis, but behaved like enemies—stealing Koli women, challenging the borders, and claiming Koli lands by marriage. Dhara had dreams of glory. She glanced at her father. Dandapani was staring intently at Mala, who was looking straight at Dhara. The woman’s haunted gaze pierced her to the marrow.

  The yogi looked away and began to speak again. “Grateful for the prediction of such a rosy future, the Sakyas named their thriving city Kapilavastu in their beloved guru’s honor. The old sage renounced every worldly possession and set off on the road to Varanasi in search of death. He trudged a long way before he suddenly stopped. What if the prophesied prince didn’t choose the warrior’s path?”

  Mala paused again. The fire had burned to embers.

  Dhara stared into the glowing red, letting the heat and smoke sting her eyes to tears as she breathed out.

  Prophesied prince. She cringed with angry embarrassment. She had dared imagine herself as a princess, leading a vast army and conquering powerful foes. She had even envisioned ruling the vanquished so that even the gods would praise her justice, mercy, and devotion.

  Prophesied prince. She felt a fool, as if the whole village could see the secret dream she had not even shared with Sakhi. She huddled closer to her heart’s sister, who gave her a quizzical look and squeezed her hand.

  “What would happen if he chose the path of wisdom instead?” Mala continued, very softly. The trees bowed closer in another gust of wind, as if they, too, were listening. “Kapila gazed at the threads of time’s loom, and saw that if the Sakyan prince renounced his royal heritage he would become the greatest sage of all time, a Buddha, an Awakened One, and show the way to conquer death itself. Conquer death! The old man trembled at the thought.

  “But should the prince choose the way of a sage, the clan would have no strong king to lead them to greatness, and their enemies would wipe them from the face of the earth.”

  A world without the troublesome Sakyas was perfectly agreeable to many Kolis, despite the generations of intermarriage. A few sitting around the fire smiled and nodded with satisfaction, and the flames nodded with them in the night wind.

  But an odd unease settled just below Dhara’s heart, a place where she sensed the truth of Mala’s tale but was afraid to look too closely. But what if there was a princess? A warrior princess who would lead the clan while her prince bestowed his wisdom on his people?

  “Kapila pondered whether to return to warn his spiritual children in Kapilavastu of this danger. After all, they had treated him well. On the other hand, he was old, hundreds of years old. What did it matter to him if a son of the Sakyas defeated death? He simply wanted to surrender to it. He wanted to die in the holy city Varanasi, Lord Shiva’s dwelling place. For to die in the Great God’s Shining City meant liberation from endless rebirths into this dream full of suffering that mortals call life.”

  There was a pause when the wind died, and the fire burned silently. It was so quiet that they could hear the distant splashing of the river in its rocky bed. The clan held its breath.

  Then Mala continued. “A passing eagle heard Kapila’s thoughts. ‘I will take your message to them, holy one,’ the eagle said, dipping a wing in salute.

  “Kapila shrugged. ‘Bah. I doubt they’ll listen.’ And then,” Mala said, surveying her listeners, “he turned west toward Varanasi and continued on his way.”

  The villagers let out a collective sigh. They bowed over joined palms and murmured their thanks to the yogi for such a fine tale, then they gathered up their sleepy children and dispersed to their homes. Dhara waited until almost everyone had gone, wishing desperately to speak to Mala but not knowing what to say. Then her father took her hand and led her ba
ck to the chief’s hall.

  In her room, Dhara lay wide awake and restless after the yogi’s tale while Sakhi fell asleep under the skins piled over the bed.

  Princess Dhara. Astride a tall horse, not a mountain pony. A breastplate of gold, a golden bow and quiver full of silver arrows slung over her shoulder. She looks back at the horsemen massed behind her, all clad in blue and gold. Sakyan colors. Conquered by a Koli army in forest green and brown, colors that melted into the forested mountain’s flanks…

  All night her imagination ran wild. Fierce battles. Kings kneeling in defeat. Princes at her feet in the palaces of the conquered.

  Early in the morning, after a sleepless night, Dhara elbowed her heart’s sister awake and persuaded reluctant Sakhi to get dressed. They tiptoed through the sleeping hall and scurried to the top of the village’s single, rutted road, where they hid in the bushes at the spot where the road split into two trails, one trail leading to the steep terraces, stubbled and brown after the harvest, the other disappearing into the thick pine forest, above which vast snowfields reflected the morning sun.

  As expected, Mala appeared. Sturdy staff in one hand and heavy sack slung over the other shoulder, she strode away from the village, upright in spite of her burden, muscular arms and legs glistening with sweat even though fall chilled the air. She stopped.

  Dhara followed the yogi’s gaze to the forest’s edge, a little higher on the path. Her father Dandapani was there, his best bow and a quiver of arrows over his shoulder. How had Dhara not noticed him? She shrank against Sakhi, who was staring with wide eyes.

  “You might need this,” he said as he stepped down to Mala and unslung the weapon from his shoulder. They faced each other on the path so Dhara could see them in profile but not the expressions on their faces. He handed the bow and quiver to the yogi, put his palms together, and giving a slight bow, walked away.

  Dhara ducked down until her father passed. Then she glanced back at Mala, who looked directly into the shrubbery where Dhara and Sakhi hid.

  Once again, Mala’s eyes pierced Dhara. The suffering in them took her breath away. She could not imagine what would cause such terrible grief.

  Behind the grief, a cruel fire glinted in those eyes. It would burn Dhara if she got too close to it.

  But oh, it might be worth the pain.

  Sakhi

  Sakhi waited and waited at the barley terraces.

  Dhara didn’t come. She had promised she would. Perhaps she had already gone to the ridge above.

  The afternoon sun beat down as Sakhi scrambled up the steep path, and soon she was sweating despite the autumn chill. A gusty breeze blew from the mountain goddess’s peak and tugged at her padded cotton jacket and long antariya, which flapped around her legs and nearly tripped her. The sudden chill and the mournful rattle of dead barley stalks made the hairs on her arms prickle.

  When she reached the top, breathless and with her heart pounding, Dhara was nowhere to be seen.

  Sakhi threw herself down and started to cry. Ever since the yogi Mala passed through the village, Dhara had been avoiding Sakhi. In fact, she was avoiding everyone. She had skipped archery practice twice, which was unheard of among the young warriors, who feared the weapons master.

  It seemed Dhara had new games to play these days. Sakhi suspected that her heart’s sister was spending more and more time at the shaman’s hut. Now and then Dhara had hinted that she was going off alone to the ancient shrine. Village children scared each other with ghost stories about the place, and they all stayed away. Except bold Dhara.

  Sakhi wouldn’t have dared accompany her friend to either place. She certainly didn’t want to meet any evil spirits. As for the shaman Garuda, her father disapproved of the spells he was always trying to cook up. “That old charlatan doesn’t understand what he’s dealing with,” Bhrigu would say with a stern shake of his head. “If he conjured up a demon, he’d faint dead away.”

  Sakhi leaned against the sun-warmed boulder that marked the hunter’s trail, arms around her knees, face to the sun. She brushed away her dark thoughts. Dhara would come. They loved this view, especially on a sparkling clear fall day like today. They always claimed they could see the glint of Ganga’s river winding through the rich lowland kingdoms. They imagined the caravans that traveled the great trade road stretching from the foothills at one end of Himalaya’s kingdom to the other. They pretended they were beautiful princesses adorned in jewels, with handsome princes bowing at their feet. The airy glades shot through with sunbeams were their palaces.

  A little farther on, the hunter’s path disappeared into the fragrant cedars. The trail climbed all the way to the sacred cave on Dhavalagiri’s heights. Among those cedars the hidden trail to the shrine branched off.

  Before the Kolis conquered them, the tribe that lived here sacrificed on the ancient shrine to the Great Mother during the dark of the moon. After the Kolis arrived and mingled their blood with the conquered people, they forgot for a time the sky gods of their Arya ancestors. They took to worshipping the Mother, confusing her with the Devi, the Aryas’ Great Goddess. Generations later, Dhara’s grandmother, a Sakyan, summoned Sakhi’s father Bhrigu, a lowland Brahmin, to guide the Kolis back to the sky gods and lead the sacrifice at the eagle altar. Bhrigu said evil clung to the ancient shrine and he forbade Sakhi to go there.

  Sakhi didn’t know what she feared more, evil spirits or her father’s stern reprimanding if he found out she had disobeyed him. Best to look for her friend back at the stables, or even the chief’s hall in the unlikely case that Dhara was sitting at her loom.

  But Dhara was nowhere to be found. Sakhi went to the archery range. “She didn’t want to play war with the Sakyas, even if we let her be the Koli chief,” Prem said. The young warrior shrugged. “She said she had more important things to do.”

  So Sakhi headed along the rutted path that ran through the village, kicking the dust and feeling sorry for herself.

  “Daughter.”

  “Oh!” Her father was standing at the door wrapped in the white robe Sakhi had just finished weaving for him. “I didn’t see you, Father.”

  “I know,” he said, and waited.

  Sakhi sighed and began the verse. “‘Inattention is the gravest sin.’” She glanced up.

  He crossed his arms, austere and imposing, framed by the leaning doorway and its cracked lintel. The Kolis were a poor clan and couldn’t give him rich gifts or a grand house in exchange for leading the sacrifice or casting horoscopes, but the shabby home did not detract from his dignity. His height and golden skin set him apart from the shorter, darker Kolis with their blue-black hair, broad faces, and almond-shaped eyes, traits of the conquered tribe that once lived under Dhavalagiri’s heights. They respected their tall priest, even those who still preferred the Mother, no matter that they called her the Devi like good Aryas. All came to Bhrigu’s sacrifices, if only to listen to his beautiful voice chant hymns to Indra, king of the gods, and the other celestials.

  Her father cocked an eyebrow.

  Sakhi resumed the recitation. “‘Impatience is the worst crime. Imprecision is the worst evil.’” She would never understand what this meant. Not paying attention was such a small thing. Everyone was impatient, so was everyone a criminal? As for not being precise, why, that might make her weaving slightly off kilter, but surely there were worse things. Her throat began to tighten. Dhara never had to recite these stupid verses in the sacred tongue.

  “And… ?” Bhrigu prompted.

  “‘Thus said the Creator to his children, the gods, the demons, and mortal men, who were gathered at his feet.’” Sakhi’s eyes began to fill. She was lonely and hurt, and all Father could do was test her memory.

  “Continue.”

  “‘Practice restraint, the Creator said to the gods. Practice compassion, he said to the demons. Practice generosity, he said to the mortals. This is the dharma: to
practice these three, restraint, compassion, and generosity, with full attention.’”

  Every syllable she spoke was perfectly intoned, but Bhrigu offered no praise. Neither had he offered any for the fine robe he wore, her best work at the loom. “We have only the right to the task our dharma puts in front of us,” her father always said, “not for any reward that doing it well may bring.”

  Dhara’s father heaped praise on her for her prowess with her small bow, her skill at riding her little horse, even her impudence. Why couldn’t Bhrigu praise Sakhi? She strove to please him, to be a good Brahmin girl who would one day be a good Brahmin wife, and was diligent when he taught her the hymns he would have taught a son. It was just so hard.

  “When your mother came back from the meadow, she said you ran off.”

  A cloud passed over the sun and a chill descended. Sakhi slumped a little. She had gone with her mother to gather late-blooming herbs and had not spent even an hour at the task before she dropped a handful of poppy-seed heads in her mother’s basket. Then she dashed away to find Dhara. Her father would be disappointed in her yet again.

  “Where is Mother?”

  “Inside, taking a rest. But you didn’t answer my question.”

  It was best just to speak the truth. “I was looking for Dhara.”

  “Ah,” Bhrigu said with rare gentleness. “Your playmate deserted you again.”

  Sakhi burst into tears. “Oh, Father.” He was usually so aloof that she tried to hide her feelings, but she couldn’t help throwing her arms around him. “She’s always off in the shaman’s hut. And she says she goes to the Devi’s secret shrine.” She hated herself for telling on Dhara. It would only deepen his disapproval of her friend’s behavior.