Chapter 25
A Cave and a Circus
We rematerialized in a thick forest of trees. The air was warm but clouds were gathering overhead. I inhaled and I recognized the place immediately.
“Oregon,” I said. “Why are we here?”
Anamika started forward through the trees and said, over her shoulder, “We have to free Ren.”
I frowned and trailed after her. “Free him? From what exactly?”
“He is currently trapped as a tiger. This is something you inflicted upon him when he was captured, correct?”
“Yes, but…”
“We are here to free his human side. Unlike you are now, he will be limited as to how long he can sustain his human form, but it will give him the opportunity he needs to eventually break his curse.”
I froze. “This is when Kelsey meets him at the circus.”
“That is what the paper says.” Ana turned to me. “What exactly is a circus?”
Never having been to one myself, but hearing about it firsthand from those I trusted, I said, “Kelsey and Ren have opposing views. Perhaps we should find out for ourselves.”
“Agreed,” she said.
When we reached the edge of the trees and I saw the large building ahead of us and a parking lot full of cars and trailers, I touched her elbow. “Perhaps we should change clothing to fit in with the locals?”
Ana nodded and though Kelsey had yet to meet either of us at that point in her life, we decided it would be best to alter our appearance as well. After using the scarf, we both looked like an average young Oregonian couple out for an evening of…uh, circusing. At least, I hoped we did. From my experiences in Kelsey’s country, most events could be attended wearing what she called jeans. Ana rubbed her hands on the thighs of her pair, feeling very uncomfortable.
“Are you certain that women wear such things in this time?” she asked.
“It covers a lot more than that dress you wore to Ren’s wedding,” I said.
“Yes, but…” Ana stepped closer and whispered into my ear. “It shows my shape.”
My eyebrows lowered as I took a step back and looked her up and down. The pair of jeans hugging her body certainly did show her shape. Even though we were disguised as other people, her figured had remained virtually the same. I let myself appreciate the view for just a few long seconds while she squirmed uncomfortably.
“Would you prefer a skirt?” I asked.
Ana looked down at her long legs, considering. “No,” she finally sighed. “If this is what the women wear, it would be best to fit in.”
“It would,” I agreed.
Giving me a nod, she took my outstretched hand, and I led her to the front of the building, where we met a young man selling tickets.
“How much?” I asked him.
“Ten for each of you. Total of twenty,” he said.
I grunted, patting my pockets. Ana handed me a large gemstone and I shook my head minutely. A family got in line behind us. “I must have left my wallet in my car,” I said. “We’ll be right back.”
Turning around, I looked for a sign to indicate where the money machine might be. I wasn’t sure I could get it to work using our powers but it couldn’t hurt to try. Finding it, I showed it to Ana, who tapped on its side. “Where is the lock?” she asked.
“I’m not entirely certain,” I answered. “Also there are cameras. We can’t play around with it too much or it will alert the bank.”
“Cameras? Bank?”
“Cameras take your picture. Like someone drawing your image. But instead of an artist, it’s a machine that does it. And the bank is the business that owns the machine.”
“I see.”
I wasn’t sure she did. “May I borrow the amulet?” I asked.
She removed it from her neck and handed it over. I held it tightly in my hand, telling it what I wanted, but the machine didn’t so much as hum. As I tried again, I heard Ana’s voice say, “Thank you very much.”
I glanced over my shoulder and found her in conversation with a young man who looked like a college student. He passed her something and grinned as he left her, walking backward until he nearly tripped over a cement parking block.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“He gave me twenty,” Ana answered.
I looked down at the money clutched in her hand and she held it out to me. There was more than twenty dollars in her hand. It looked like the young man had emptied his entire wallet. She had several bills amounting to at least three hundred dollars as well as his personal card with his phone number circled.
“Is it enough?” she asked.
“More than enough.” I held out my hand and she took it.
“Why are you frowning?” she asked. “Are you not happy that we have twenty?”
“Yes. I just don’t like the idea of young men giving you their phone numbers.”
“I do not know what that means.”
“Yeah, I know you don’t. It means he likes you.”
“If he did not like me, then we would not have twenty.”
“It’s not that I don’t want people to like you. I know they love you. They’re drawn to you.”
“They respond to the goddess,” she said.
“They do, but it’s more than that. Even before you were a goddess, your men followed you blindly.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No. Yes. No.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Your men should follow you. I just don’t want them getting any ideas.”
“Ideas such as…?”
“Ideas of romance.”
Ana gave me a long look as I paid the ticket taker. When I offered my arm, she took it and followed me inside. After we found a seat, she finally spoke. “You do not wish me to experience romance?”
I let out a heavy sigh. “I wouldn’t think you’d want to. Not after what happened.”
“What happened to me was long ago.”
“It doesn’t feel long ago.”
“No.”
A man walked by holding a large container filled with red-and-white popcorn boxes. I raised my hand and bought one.
Opening it, I tilted it toward Anamika, who wrapped her hand around mine and lifted it to her nose. “What is it?” she asked.
“It’s called popcorn. This one is, in fact, caramel corn, which is even better than the original.” I nudged her shoulder. “Try it.”
Gingerly, she picked up a kernel and placed it on the end of her tongue. I grinned at the expression of surprise on her face when she bit down and I heard the crunch.
“Do you like it?” I asked.
She nodded, and I angled the box so she could take some. When I grabbed a large handful after her, she protested with a squeal and a full mouth and pulled the box from my grip. Popcorn threatened to spill out of her lips, and she nudged it in with the back of her hand, chewing quickly, and threatened my life if I took more.
I laughed and made a halfhearted attempt to grab the box from her, but she deftly maneuvered it away, and when I saw her mumbling slyly and the box refilling on its own, I warned, “Better not let any of these mortals see what you’re up to.” She just smiled at me and leaned back, munching on her snack.
People filed into the tent, filling up the seats, and Ana suggested we move up a few benches to see better. When we were settled again and she’d finished half the box of popcorn, she rolled a kernel between her fingers and said, “You did not ask me about Sunil.”
I shrugged. “I thought it was pretty self-explanatory. You wanted to see him happy. Truthfully, I was glad to see Nilima found love. She’s an amazing girl. I think they’ll do well together.”
“So, you approve of their…romance?”
“Yes. Don’t you?”
She considered her answer for a moment and then said, “I love my brother. He was a true and loyal companion and he will dedicate himself to your Nilima just as he did to me. Her safety will never be in question.”
I nodded, deciding not to elaborate on the dangers of Kelsey’s time. “I got the impression it took a long time for him to wear her down.” When her brows furrowed in puzzlement, I explained, “To convince her to marry him.”
“He is tenacious,” she said.
Chuckling, I said, “I remember. In this case, his tenacity paid off.”
“Yes, but it still took him more than two years since the time he left my side to completely gain her favor.”
I blew out a breath. That was a long time to wait. I’d seen them kiss at Ren’s wedding, which, by my calculations, was only a few months after they returned. Nilima had been stubborn. Apparently, Ana’s thoughts were along the same lines because the next question she asked was, “If their hearts beat for one another in such a way, why did they hesitate to form a bond?”
“There could be a number of reasons.”
“Such as?”
“Timing, first of all. Sometimes life gets in the way.”
“I do not understand this reason.”
“It applies to this era more than ours. Sometimes one person wants to finish school while another works in a different country.”
“A physical separation?”
“Yes.”
“This would not hinder me.”
“I…I wouldn’t imagine it could,” I said slowly, not liking where this was heading.
“What else?” she asked. “What other things hinder romance?”
“On occasion, one person feels more strongly than the other.”
She nodded sagely as if I’d given her the answer that explained the origins of the universe.
“And third?”
The lights dimmed and the music started and I’d never felt so relieved to be interrupted. A large man wearing garish makeup sparkled under the spotlight as he announced the acts. Ana quickly learned the art of clapping and began the process too early and ended it too late to be natural, but her eyes were riveted on the performance.
She didn’t get the clowns at all, but she loved the acrobats and especially enjoyed the dogs, making me promise to find her one. I tried to tell her that dogs and tigers didn’t really get along in most cases, but she waved a hand and shushed me. I caught a scent, a familiar human scent, which was shocking considering the vast amounts of popcorn, cotton candy, and hot dogs in the area.
Scanning the crowd, I finally spotted her just a few benches down. She wore a sparkly costume and she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Her telltale ribbon was tied to the end of her braid. My breath caught and the pulse in my neck pounded.
“What is it?” Ana asked, then followed my eyes to the person below us, sitting all by herself. “Is it her?” she queried softly.
I nodded. My palms turned sweaty, so I wiped them on my thighs and then balled up my fists on my knees, not realizing until Ana touched the back of my hand that they’d turned white.
“She won’t know us,” she whispered in my ear.
Turning my hand over, I grasped her fingers, and she slid a little closer to me on the bench. I didn’t glance away from Kelsey until I caught another scent. This one unmistakable. My nostrils flared. I heard the soft snarl, the click of claws, and the irritated huff before he was rolled into the arena.
Wild music played as the man came out to announce the final act. The words rung in my ears like a song on repeat.
“…taken from the harsh, wild giungla, the jungles, of India and brought here to America.”
The spotlights darting around made me dizzy. Sweat broke out on my temple. It was like I could feel the eyes of the crowd staring at me expectantly. The applause became harsh to my ears. The noise came at me from every side. My pulse beat frantically. I felt like I was being hunted. They were going to kill me.
A large cage was wheeled out and my nerves jumped frantically. I had to escape. Behind the curtain, inside the wagon, the tiger, who was also my brother, paced nervously.
The shouted words swam around my brain.
Hunter.
Dangerous.
Predator.
“Watch our trainer carefully as he risks his life to bring you…Dhiren!”
Ren ran down the ramp and entered the large cage, roaring his dislike to the crowd. I jumped at the crack of the whip and tears sprang to my eyes. Soft fingers stole around my heated neck. A cooling numbness washed through me at the touch. Ana pulled me gently closer to her and murmured in my ear, “Hush now, Sohan. I am here with you.” I felt the press of her lips on my wet cheek and nodded.
I reached for her hand, wrapping mine around it, and kneaded her fingers nervously as I watched. It was like being trapped in a nightmare. I knew what Ren had gone through. He’d described it to me often enough. As the act continued, I watched Kelsey instead. She sat there enraptured by the whole thing. When the man with the whip placed his head in Ren’s mouth, my fists tightened. “Bite it off,” I whispered savagely.
He didn’t, of course, though he’d practically unhinged his jaw just to make sure his teeth didn’t accidentally hurt the man. I thought if the man was foolish enough to put his head in a tiger’s mouth, he at least deserved a scratch for his trouble. I couldn’t breathe at all until he left to the uproarious cheers of the crowd, Kelsey’s included.
It felt like a betrayal watching Kelsey sitting there, clapping. She didn’t know any better. I knew that. But to see her so caught up in what, to me, was such a humiliating display was disheartening. Ana sat quietly beside me, as aware of my mood as I often was of hers. I felt melancholy. Wrong. How many times had he performed like that? How often had he been beaten, whipped? It was too much. I was the one responsible for his capture. It was my fault.
“Sohan,” Ana said and wrapped her arms around me.
I buried my face in her neck and didn’t realize at first that she was using her powers. It was a natural, mindless sort of thing on her part. Ana sensed my tension and wanted to soothe me in her own sweet way, and the world around her responded. A light breeze stole into the tent, carrying with it the scents of her garden, which was one of our favorite places. People turned one way and another, wondering if it was some trick of the circus, but I knew what it was. It was the unconditional love of the goddess.
Just as Kelsey was turning toward us, I channeled the power of the Damon Amulet to turn us invisible.
We sat there, Ana’s arms around me, as the crowd began to disperse. Since we weren’t visible, Anamika told the scarf to switch us back. I felt the tingling on my body as my physical form shifted, but it did nothing to ease the anxiety pooling in my gut. Kelsey got up and began working. She was apparently on clean-up duty. It was amazing how quickly everything was broken down and how much of a mess a couple hundred people could make. When we were finally alone, Ana asked, “How are you feeling, Sohan?”
I laughed sadly. “I feel…I feel sorry. He went through so much and I was the one who did it.”
“Yes. You did. But he told you he trusted you. Did he not?”
“Yes. He trusted me.”
“Would he not go through it again to be with Kelsey?”
I didn’t answer for a moment. The girl in question entered the building and started moving boxes from one part of the building to another. As she struggled with her burdens, I waved a hand and made half of the boxes disappear and reappear in position on the other side. It shocked me that I had the ability to do it with a mere thought. Now that I considered it, the boxes that moved were full of food, so it must have been the scarf and the fruit combining to do the work. “He would,” I said finally.
Kelsey stopped and turned, hefting a box under her arm and scanning the benches as if she could hear us talking.
When Kells moved on, Ana said, “This is what you spoke of before. The barrier to romance. Ren and Kelsey were separated by time and physical location. Of course, in their case, they were also kept apart due to Ren’s tiger nature. Was this the third thing you spoke of?”
The corner of my mouth lifted. Ana had a way of distracting me from my sour moods. It wasn’t always something I liked, but it worked regardless. “No,” I said. “Most romances aren’t thwarted by one person shifting into an animal.”
“Then what is the third thing?” she asked, rising and waiting for me to follow. “Is it the approval of the family?”
“That was true in past times,” I said, following her down the rows of seats. “But not so much during this time. Children date who they like for the most part.”
“Date?”
“A modern term for courtship.”
“Oh. Did you…date Kelsey?”
“After a fashion. We had dinner together.”
“Eating is courtship?”
“It’s not so much the consuming of food as it is being alone together, getting to know one another.”
She puzzled this out in her mind as we waited for Kelsey to return so we could follow her to Ren. Ana told me that Ren couldn’t transform until she touched his head. I’m not sure why that was important. It just was according to Mr. Kadam’s notes. We watched Kelsey all afternoon and evening, but she never approached Ren during that time.
Ana frowned as we waited for Kelsey to finish dinner. Placing her hand on top of Kadam’s paper, she channeled her energies, and both of us felt the small pulse that thrummed on our skin. “The timing is wrong,” I said.
“You felt it too?” she asked. “This is my fault. I was…distracted when we leapt.”
Tilting my head, I waited for her to finish her explanation but she chose to say nothing. “Do you know how to fix it?” I asked.
“Hold on to me,” Ana said.
I placed my hands on her shoulders and she fast-forwarded time. The stars moved overhead in a blur, and then the sun rose and set within a manner of minutes. Still, there was a thrum of time being slightly off, and when she finally slowed us down, it was almost as if we’d dropped into a notch created just for us. It was late afternoon and the circus had already begun a show. Ren’s act had just been announced.
We crept invisibly into the tent and took a seat near the front. There weren’t too many people attending that day so we ended up very close to the cage. I immediately knew something was wrong. He didn’t take the mark the trainer pointed to. Instead, he ran around the cage, his head lifted in the air.
“He can smell me,” I said as I waved my hand, removing my scent. “We’re too close and I forgot to mask my scent.”
“Maybe that’s not it,” Ana answered. “He seems to have settled down now.”
Ana was right. Whatever had caused him unrest before, you wouldn’t know it now. He performed quickly and was as obedient as those blasted dogs. I tugged at the collar of my shirt, unnerved, feeling like I was tied down with invisible shackles.
When the show was over and Kelsey finished cleaning, we followed her to a large barn. I could hear Ren’s pacing before we even entered the building. He was clearly agitated. Careful to be as quiet as possible, we stole forward, keeping our distance from both Kelsey and Ren.
“Hey, Ren,” Kelsey said, approaching the cage. “What’s going on with you today, mister? I’m worried about you. I hope you aren’t getting sick or something.”
The moment he saw her, he calmed down. His eyes were trained on her and he was as ignorant of our presence as Kelsey. She seemed as transfixed by the white tiger as he was of her. Slowly, she reached out her hand and touched his forehead. I gave Ana a meaningful glance but she just shook her head and mouthed, “Not yet.”
I heard Kelsey gasp as he licked her fingers. She thanked him for not eating her and sat down to read him a poem. I rolled my eyes. Some things never changed. If any two people were meant for each other, it was the two of them. The fact that I even had that thought startled me. Do I really feel that way? Was Kelsey meant to be with him even from the beginning?
Despite my general dislike for poetry, I found myself caught up in the poem about cats. I liked that one. It served to fix the tiny rift in her character I’d allowed to rankle me over the past hour. Kelsey was young. She didn’t yet know who we were or what we’d been through. I couldn’t blame her for being fascinated by a tiger, even one who was in captivity.
As I listened to her read and talk with Ren, I realized two things. The first was that she and Ren were always destined to be together. The second was that it was time to let her go. To let Kelsey be free to live the life she had chosen for herself.
The moment she whispered, “I wish you were free,” I could almost feel the magic thrumming through the barn. It circulated through me as much as it did through her and Ren. The power of the goddess and her tiger rose, golden light lifting up and away from both me and Ana, and after a brief nudge from Ana, it settled on the two people standing by the cage. Ren and Kelsey responded to it. Whether they could see us or just our power, I wasn’t sure, but they could definitely see something.
The truth stones that hung on our necks gleamed, and we saw the white light of Ren’s and Kelsey’s auras become golden and bright as the sun. Kelsey fell back against a hay bale as she gasped and lifted her fingers to her mouth and Ren, snarling, scrambled to the back of his cage. Approaching my brother, I let myself become visible and used the Damon Amulet to give him back the ability to transform to man, albeit for only twenty-four short minutes a day.
When we left them, they had no memory of us or of what had happened. As far as they knew, the only magic was in a girl touching a tiger. We headed back to the forest.
“What’s next?” I asked.
“The Cave of Kanheri,” she mumbled after perusing Kadam’s list. “We have to create it.”
“Create it?” I echoed incredulously. “I’m not sure what it’s supposed to look like.”
“Since I am entirely unfamiliar with it, I will have to rely on your expertise.”
I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck, thinking, and then snapped my fingers. “I have an idea. We’ll have to be sneaky though.”
She willingly stepped into my arms so I could channel the power of the amulet, and I took her back to my home in India. Moonlight filtered through the wide windows as we snuck down to Kadam’s office. He snored softly in his room nearby. Using my tiger night vision, I perused his files and finally found what I was looking for—digital images of the Cave of Kanheri. Kelsey had taken them when she was there.
Turning, I bumped into a vase full of peacock feathers and knocked it over. Anamika shushed me, and I heard the thump of Kadam getting out of bed and the tick of tiger claws on the tiles in the kitchen. Clutching the files to my chest, I pulled Ana close and we disappeared, leaving behind the fallen vase.
Back at our home, we carefully perused the images.
“The monolith looks easy enough to fashion,” Ana said.
“There were traps,” I explained. “Thankfully, Kadam kept copious notes.”
“These sound dangerous,” Ana said.
“They were,” I mumbled, distracted by what I was reading. “Kelsey almost died.” I pointed to a note made by Kadam. “The cave is ancient,” I said. “We’ll have to figure out the approximate year. Also, there were carvings on the walls.”
“If she almost died, we will have to stay and guide them,” Ana said. “We cannot risk letting them go through it alone.”
I glanced up. “Yeah. Okay. We can do that.”
“But what if we aren’t meant to?”
Shrugging, I said, “Does it matter? Kadam said we were in charge of this. He was purposely vague.”
“I suppose,” she said. After a moment, she thrust a paper at me. “What do we do about this?” she asked.
My breath stopped as she held out a very clear photo of the Rajaram royal family seal. I took the photo and studied it. It was even more obvious to me now that the thing I’d abandoned carving would one day become the family heirloom in the picture.
“Yes, that might be a problem.”
“You don’t have it?”
“Not exactly. I haven’t…uh…finished it yet.”
“Finished it? What do you mean?”
I gave her the abbreviated version of the truth stone carvings I’d done. She knew they came from the egg, but I hadn’t yet found a way to share the origins of my family seal with her.
She said, “I see no reason why this should stop us. You’ll have plenty of years to finish the stone and you know what it’s supposed to look like. Surely, you can fashion a secret entrance to the cave based on its shape.”
“I suppose I could,” I said.
“Then let’s get going.”
With the power of the Damon Amulet, it took a surprisingly short time to fashion the cave. We went back to the time when Kadam estimated it had been discovered and created the entire underground structure using the earth piece of the amulet. We had photos and rubbings of the monolith, and Ana took great pride in creating that while I set up the various booby traps.
We opted not to do much to the surface leading down into the cave. Kadam had said that Buddhist monks would settle there sometime in the third century A.D. We did, however, create a mark that fit the seal and fashioned it to open the doorway into the cave when pressed and twisted. To disguise it, Ana used her power to recreate all the glyphs from the picture Kelsey had taken. Neither of us could read it, and we weren’t even sure it was an actual language, but there it would remain as the centuries passed.
We opted to create the bugs when Kelsey and Ren entered, otherwise, we were liable to have either a cave full of bugs or a bunch of petrified, extinct insects. When we fashioned the door where the monolith would be, I told Ana about the handprint that allowed Kelsey access and the henna drawing. Ana paced for a time, puzzling out how to make it work.
“How did he create a magical henna print?” Ana asked.
“I’m not sure. Maybe the power to open the door comes from the lightning power of the fire amulet,” I said, then thought differently. “No. That’s not possible. Kells didn’t get that piece of the amulet until later.”
“Can we not simply do the same thing we did with our own home?” she asked. “Create a lock that will open when she touches it?”
“But that only answers to the two of us.”
Musing, Ana said, “We saw how the power of the goddess and her tiger enveloped the two of them at the circus. Perhaps the door will respond to that.”
“I suppose we can try it. If it doesn’t work, we’ll do something else to let her in.”
Ana touched her hand to the stone wall near the door and I pressed mine on top of hers. A silvery light bloomed beneath her palm. When we lifted our hands away, a glowing print remained.
When we were confident that we’d recreated the cave in the right way, we sped through time until we arrived at the exact moment Kelsey and Ren entered the cave. The Rajaram seal hung around Kelsey’s neck, so even though it didn’t technically exist for me yet, I knew I would one day finish this immensely important object.
Invisible once again, Ana and I led them through the labyrinth. We glided on a breeze she summoned with the amulet. That way, our feet never touched the ground to make Ren suspicious. Though he might have sensed us, causing his instincts to warn him of danger, it would only serve to make him more alert and wary. We were trusting this innate sense of his to protect both of them from the traps we’d created.
When Kells almost turned down a wrong path, I caused a gate to appear and block her from backing up. Though it scared her, Kelsey moved forward and headed to the place where they were to find the bugs. Personally, I considered bugs the ultimate pests. Fleas, lice, gnats, flies, mosquitos—these things were irritating to a tiger at best, pestilence spreaders at worst. But Anamika loved animals of all kinds, even bugs.
We walked through the tunnel before Ren and Kelsey arrived. Anamika raised her arms, and not a moment later, swarms were crawling overhead, up the walls, and on us. They moved out of her way with each step she took, the floor appearing just below our feet, and when she held out her hands, they flew to her palms, lifting their sharp mandibles and clicking them as if they were pets asking for a treat. While she cooed over them, I shivered with disgust.
After exiting, I jerked my body back and forth, trying to shake them off. She hissed and made me stand still while she patiently pried them from my clothing and hair. Gently, she placed them back inside the tunnel as we waited for Ren and Kelsey to emerge.
When our two charges ran out of the tunnel, Ana scowled, angry at seeing so many of her creations being destroyed. She huffed quietly, waved her hand, and the two of us rose in the air and moved on to our next trap, letting Ren and Kelsey recover from the experience. The next trap was the poisoned barbs. They weren’t really poisoned. I just floated the scent of poison to Ren’s tiger nose.
It was tough on them, no doubt, and they were frightened, but they were never in any danger. I moved time slowly as they progressed, watching every move they made very carefully. Even when Kelsey slipped, I could have easily made the spike vanish. Instead, I allowed it to go through her backpack just to make sure Ren was properly motivated to take care of Kelsey from then on. There was nothing like watching your girl almost die to get rid of complacency.
The next trap was the tank of water. I worried for the several long moments it took them to escape. It was a fairly straightforward trap, I’d thought. Kelsey just had to use the seal to open it and drain out the water. They still seemed to have a good sense of humor about it afterward, which was a good sign. Poor Ren and Kelsey. I wished I could have just told them I was there or helped them solve the whole thing using my power, but doing so would have ruined their timeline, and as Kadam often warned me, there were consequences, sometimes disastrous, for doing such a thing.
When Ana and I were positioned on the far side of the chamber, she raised her arms, and the earth shook as a chasm appeared. She used the power of the wind to help them across. I looked away, uncomfortable at seeing the tender way Ren held Kelsey. When I turned and saw Ana also watching them, I felt heat creep up my neck. Then, finally, they were at the door where the monolith was hidden.
Kells pressed her hand to the print on the door, and she exclaimed over the light but Kelsey couldn’t see what we did. To her the henna simply glowed red, but to us, we saw the connection between her and her tiger. Both Kelsey and Ren glowed with their golden light, the aura that showed their bond and their hearts that were in tune with one another. It wrapped around their bodies and the lock responded, not just to us but to the other version of the goddess and her tiger.
The door slid open and Ana and I followed them in.
Kelsey went through the necessary steps to trigger the monolith and Ana lifted her hands, causing a chemical reaction that exposed the carvings. The two of us sat up on top of a large rock as the acid began to spread down the sides of the stone and across the floor. We wanted to remain long enough to ensure they didn’t get burned and that the two of them were able to exit safely before we destroyed the cave.
Unheedful of the spreading golden liquid, Kelsey was bent over a stone, making a rubbing and taking pictures. Ren had seen the danger already but Kelsey was oblivious. He growled softly. Ana thought giving them a little jostle might get them going, so she shook the cavern slightly. A rock fell from the ceiling and splashed into the acid.
A spot of golden liquid landed on my hand. I hissed, shaking it, and Ren’s eyes darted up to where we were as if he could hear us, but I was confident he couldn’t see us or smell us, and he was much more concerned about Kelsey anyway than he was about any strange sounds in a collapsing cavern.
The acid bubbled on the back of my hand, quickly eating through my skin. Even as I healed, it continued its work. Whatever it was she had made, it was powerful. I just hoped it wouldn’t get on Kelsey or Ren.
Anamika pursed her lips. Then she leaned over, picked up my hand in hers, and blew softly on the spot. The acid dried up and wafted away. Gently tracing her fingers over the now healed skin, she then lifted my hand to her mouth. The breath seized in my lungs as I watched her lush lips touch my skin. Though I wasn’t breathing, my heart started thrumming a staccato beat.
Better? she mouthed after her chaste kiss.
I nodded dumbly, my own mouth open. Telling myself to snap out of it, I heard Ren yowl. He leapt away, shaking his paw gingerly. Ana blew a goddess kiss to Ren, healing his wound, and I was glad she didn’t have to kiss him like she had me. Then she waved her fingertips and the quaking intensified. Just as the monolith shattered and broke, heavy pieces tumbling down, Ana cracked open a hole leading to outside, and Ren took advantage of it, clawing until it was big enough for the two of them to escape.
Once they were safely out, a rock slammed down over the hole, and we were plunged into darkness.