The Library of Fates by Aditi Khorana

Author:Aditi Khorana
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2017-07-18T04:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

I RAN TO HER, collapsing to the ground next to her. “Thala! Thala, are you all right?”

I reached for the skin of water, handed it to her, but she could barely lift her head. I tilted her face back to look at her. She had a smile across her lips, but her eyes were closed. “Feeling so strange . . .” she mumbled. “Out of sorts. Dizzy.”

“It must be the heat,” I said.

Varun reached down, pressing his palm against her forehead, a hint of uncertainty crossing his face. We helped her up, guiding her to the nearest fountain. The way her body slumped against it when we carefully sat her down frightened me.

“Thala, Thala!” The pitch of my own voice was enough to induce a terror in me. She was practically the only person I knew in this world. If something happened to her, I would be completely adrift. I forced myself to maintain my composure, but my heart was already racing with fear.

“Thala, I know you’re tired. We can rest here for a bit. And when you feel better, we’ll start walking again,” I whispered to her, and she merely nodded.

I turned back to Varun. “She’s been through quite a bit today,” I said to him. “I think it’s probably just exhaustion. Maybe if we rest here—”

Varun shook his head. “No, that’s not it,” he said. His voice was coated in worry, his brow furrowed as he carefully examined Thala.

“What do you mean?”

“Her eyes . . .” He gestured to her, and some sort of recognition registered on his face. “I’ve seen this before. Your friend—she needs chamak.”

“She needs chamak?”

“Look at her eyes, her skin . . .”

I carefully inspected Thala’s face. Her skin was paler than I remembered it, beads of sweat glistening across her forehead. But it was her eyes that terrified me. Her irises were large and black. I placed two fingers on the hollow of her throat, as Mala had once instructed me to do to measure out my own heartbeat, and the swift pounding of Thala’s pulse, beating like a war drum, terrified me.

Varun reached for my arm, touching it gently as though to brace me for a jolt. “She’s been taking chamak—a lot of it—and from the look of her, she hasn’t been properly weaned off it. Look at the goose bumps on her arms, the way her teeth are chattering. She’s very sick, your friend,” he quietly said.

I anxiously watched Thala again, and I knew he was right.

“What can I do?” I asked.

“There are two options. We could give her more chamak to stabilize her, but the results would be temporary, and we’d have to keep giving her more and more. Taking risks with chamak can do severe damage to her body’s natural balance. Besides, it looks like it’s already too late for that, given her symptoms. At this stage, if you give her chamak, she might stay in this state indefinitely—hallucinating, her mind still active but her body unable to function.

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