Nadir

The stench of disintegration stings my nose. Dank, dark, and decaying. Stealthily, it sneaks up on me, gaining strength every day. I need to escape.
Rapier tongue rusted, memory milky, ragged mane. A draining of his vitality.
Steely eyes have lost their power to impale. His roar is now a garbled croak. Walled up within himself. The impenetrability he used to wear like armour is now his prison.
The ebbing of power should have made me sad, but I am elated at the freedom just within my grasp. The ability to walk away. The ability to breathe. To not live under his shadow. Creeping shadows whose long tentacle-like fingers choked and squeezed for amusement, bolstering his pride. I realised long ago, submission was the easiest route if I was to survive and protect my children. Subjugating myself was not easy. We were pawns in his deadly game with his constantly changing rules. Swimming with stone weights, frantically gasping for air. The shore was just within reach.
Once our home thundered with his voice. Now it is muted and silenced.
Parchment skin. Transparent in places, revealing a map of transversing lines in green, purple, and blue. Colours of the bruises I used to wear. Contours of scar tissue from his hard-won battles. My scars have faded but run deep. My anger simmers beneath my skin.
My family’s rejection of him created a hatred that he could barely contain; it spilled over without warning. His wildness and violence shocked them, but he had been tender with me. I went willingly.
The decision to leave was mine. I chose him, above my parents’ choice of husband. I resented being paraded like a prized cow in front of suitors. My head covered, forced to be demure, a shawl obscuring my face like a suffocating shroud.
Any one of these suitors would have provided a life of comfort, tradition, and status. Status without independence. I chose a life of freedom, of simplicity. A man living on the fringes represented unlimited possibility. An ascetic life in the jungle, not confined to live within the yoke of societal norms and artifice. Return to the essence of life, he said. Excitement and challenge. He was the heir to the moon and flowing streams. I saw my future: lying together, my head pillowed on his bent arm as we gazed at stars through the trees. Yet I wavered before making my final decision.
My deliberation cut him deep. Did he expect a young girl to throw away her whole life as if it meant nothing? I left that life delicately, like a snake choosing two rocks to slowly rub its body against. Shedding its skin almost whole, leaving a perfect translucent memory of what had been.
These memories fed my children. I sang the songs of my childhood, cradling them beneath a canopy of emerald leaves. The resin that leaked from tree trunks reminded me of jewels that once adorned me, the flutter of iridescent wings, the rich robes I had worn. We had no use for these luxuries, and they were not material to me, but they wove into the fabric of my stories.
They did not realise these were glimpses into my past. They lived only in the present. Tales of granaries larger than our cave and ornamental baths were so fantastical, but what made the children gasp were stories of other children.
Amma, are there other children in a land far, far away?
Yes.
Do they play with each other, like Nangi and I do?
Yes.
Is this a real place?
Yes.
Amma, can we go and play with these children?
Questions left unanswered. Fault. Mine. My stories opened a fissure in our world.
I paid for it.
What will the children do when they grow up? Will you have them marry each other? Do you want your line to die out?
Fault. Mine.
There was no room for joy in his presence; laughter died in our mouths. The children were not allowed to be children. Our son had to be a man. He returned from his first hunting trip bruised, eyes swollen. He shrugged off my embrace and was as laconic as his father.
The fissure widened into a fracture, the fracture into a cleft.
Walking on eggshells, we did not want to anger him. As the children grew strong, I became more fearful for them.
Don’t contradict your father. I told them.
Amma, let’s leave him and go to a land far, far away.
How can we go?
You know the way. You’ve shown us the path through the jungle. Nangi and I have walked that way to the edge of the jungle many times. I won’t let him talk to you like that. I won’t let him hit you. I will kill him and wall him up in the cave.
Don’t talk like that. You are better than him. Don’t be like him.
But our son has inherited his father’s strength and wilfulness. It is the way of the jungle. The son will grow and dethrone the king.
The two of you must leave. I cannot.
But they stayed. Probably for too long.
When do bonds become bondage? My spine is aching from tending to his festering wounds, grinding medicinal leaves into poultices. If the children were here, they could have helped me, they could have carried water to bathe his brow and stayed by his side. I’m compelled to leave him alone while I search for plants.
They are gone. Disappeared. Leaving me without a single word. Gone too are the vestiges of my old life. Jewels of my father that I returned to the earth having no use for them. Excavated hurriedly, the shards of the clay pot that had entombed the jewellery lie scattered, like fallen warriors. Dug up and taken as proof of lineage. I wonder when they did this.
Why do they leave now, when I need them? Perhaps, they saw the mighty Lion being felled. Maybe a gaur gored him. Maybe he lost his footing and hit his head on a rock. Maybe. Maybe. I will not think about the other possibilities.
Adjusting the bundle on my head, I pick my way along the worn track to the cave entrance.
Fresh prints on the path. I am accustomed to footprints, but these are impressions of sandals. I look up as I start the ascent; a figure looks down from his promontory. I shade my eyes from the sun. He is awake! The Lion is strong again! But something on his arms glints in the sunlight. I call out. But my throat is dry and my voice is barely a whisper.
He comes to me and I’m frightened. This is someone I don’t know. His hair is oiled into a topknot. On his arms are bangles. My bundle falls away.
Amma, it is done. We must leave. I came back for you.
I scan the face I love. I used to mourn the way the softness in his face was slowly giving way to hardness. But now, it is in his eyes.
I am not allowed to go back to the cave or look back. Only forward, as I am led out of the jungle.
Later, like a blind man, I run my hands over once familiar furniture but find no comfort. I am elated to be with my children. The silk robes I wear remind me of the birds I left in the jungle. I cannot wear anything on my feet. The place I feel most happy in is the luxuriant gardens.
Tears prick my eyes. Isn’t this what I wanted? To be able to breathe?
But his absence is always present.

Darika Ellawala