The Palace of Illusions by The Palace of Illusions

Author:The Palace of Illusions [Illusions, The Palace of]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ePub Bud (www.epubbud.com)
Published: 2011-10-26T16:00:00+00:00

I allowed him to take my hand and answered his courtesies ab-sentmindedly. We made our way by smoky torchlight to the camp.

The attendants had raised up a crude structure with a roof of palm fronds that would be home for us women until the war ended. They had tried to make it comfortable with silk hangings and sandalwood incense, and had even brought in a musician who plucked at his single-stringed lute and sang softly. Still, there was an unquietness 256|

in the air, as before a lightning storm, and under the floor coverings the ground was hard with rocks so that Kunti grimaced as she sat down. As for me, I didn’t care. Once I lost my palace, all places—be they mansions or hovels—became the same to me.

As we sat down to eat, my sons came in, followed by Dhri and Sikhandi. They greeted me with courtesy if not tenderness, and I knew I should be satisfied with that. There had been so much I’d wanted to say to them, but now I couldn’t remember any of it. Dhri looked harried. Sikhandi, whom I hadn’t seen in a great while, had grown his hair long. It gave his face ambiguity—male from a certain angle, female from another. My sons were dressed in armor, though surely there was no need for it yet. But for them it was part of this new, exciting game. I watched with fascination as the firelight played on their metal skins. I have no remembrance of what I said in blessing when they touched my feet, and strangely, though I knew I should be concerned as all other mothers were on this day, I felt no fear.

Already Vyasa’s gift was working on me. It was as though I’d fallen into a river, as though I was being borne toward a waterfall, away from the people I’d thought of, until now, as my dearest kin.

In the distance I could hear the rushing of water, or was it voices crying out in confusion? Soon the current would speed up, pulling me over the edge. I looked at the faces around me. They were stern and blank, carved in stone. No one noticed my consternation. Each man was locked in his own inner world where he visualized himself as the protagonist of a glorious drama.

Only Krishna, entering the tent last of all, shot me a quizzical glance. At the end of the evening, when he said goodbye, he whispered another of his cryptic statements into my ear, something about this body being like cast-off clothes, about there being no reason to grieve.

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. . .

At some point that night, I found myself outside the tent, gazing at an enormous, coppery moon that hung low in the sky. I didn’t know enough sky lore to tell if this was a good omen or bad. In the empty terrain where once the river Saraswati had flowed, I caught a sudden movement. At first I thought it a wild animal, but it was a woman, gathering the wild cactus that commoners sometimes eat when food is scarce.

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