Kama: Liberation (Vol-I)

Chapter 15: Fleeting Moments

Sometimes we don't know who we really are.

****

Indumala exhaled deeply before knocking on the door of the room. She was going to meet a very important person, a woman who would go down in history as the wife of one Rajan and the mother of another.

"Come in."

She pushed the door open. The old lady was sitting on a chair facing the window, her brilliant purple eyes scanning the horizon. The border of Ishgar could be seen from here. Her focus remained on the direction of the Southern Forest.

Indumala bowed and waited for the Mataraj to acknowledge her presence. She had heard about this woman from both the Rajan and her Baba. The men respected this lady. Wisdom glowed in her ancient gaze. She was, after all, a former queen, now elevated to the position of a Mataraj.

"You were brought up in the Southern Forest?" Mataraj asked, a surprising way to start the conversation. Tears sparkled in her attentive eyes lined with kohl. She heaved a sigh, swallowing down an abysmal pain.

"I was. I am a mage, just like you," Indumala answered.

Mataraj sharply turned, the aged bones snapping. She winced, displeased to have acted in haste. "Did Rudra tell you?"

"Yes."

"What else did he say?"

"That you trust very few people, and that it gets hard for him to read your mind."

Mataraj studied Indumala like she was an exceptional enigma of nature. She fidgeted with the folds of the grey fur coat that guarded her from the coldness of a solitary life, twisting the ends of the fabric while lost in thoughts. "Your name is Indumala. I have heard about you, too."

Indumala raised a brow. "You know about me?"

"The adopted daughter of Aryamna, a mage who defeated all men to become my son's bodyguard. Yes, this everybody knows."

Indumala relaxed, the trapped air escaping her lungs. For a moment, she thought the Mataraj knew more than what was sufficient.

Her violet pupils dilated, lips parted in a silent prayer. "You lost your parents in the plague, or so you believe. You were a physically weak child. People said you would not survive beyond five years, such was your frailty. You lived in sickliness–"

"Baba told you this–"

"And surrounded by nightmares." Mataraj narrowed her eyes and grunted, not happy that she was interrupted. She massaged her forehead and moaned, trying to capture more about the bodyguard. "You have suffered a lot– been called names, cursed to die, but you survived. A miracle. A child of magic."

The spear fell down from Indumala's grip.

Impossible. This is impossible.

"How...how do you know? Did Baba share these with you?"

"Your Baba won't ever."

"The-then?"

Invisible bony hands choked Indumala. She needed water, yes. She searched around the room. There was a jug kept on a table. She took it and chugged down the liquid. It was sweet and sour, like lemon. The aftertaste made her scrunch her nose in disgust.

The Mataraj was no ordinary woman.

"How do you know?" she asked. Indumala thought her past was buried deep. No one would get to know what she had lived through. The diseases that ate away her flesh and skin, the lack of life in her blood, her breathing issues or the fact that she began speaking very late. The doctors had said she was born of a mother who had the plague inside her, so she, as a baby, was harmed by the same. She won't live beyond childhood, they had told. The plague affects generations.