Dhampir of Kalika

৮. silver bangle

A golden cage is still a cage.

****

Dressed in purple robes, Maya took a candle in her hand and went outside her room. The electricity was gone. Possibly there was a loadshedding.

The mansion of the Das was a dark maze of twists and turns. The andarmahal had bowed to this darkness with its mouth clamped and eyes soaking wet. It survived in the dull adventure of escaping and by putting up a show of normalcy. Maya was probably the only woman who dared to step outside her room alone in the night. She was barefoot, her silent steps on the marble only known to the omnipresent.

The wax melted and solidified, a ever boring circle of life– to fall and glide, reach the bottom, and stay there, thinking it is stable and harmonious where no one would notice, and yet, after feeding on the ones at the very top, the fire reaches for the ones hiding amidst plain sight. No one is spared from the seething wrath of Time. They must burn to live, live to burn.

Was it the heat of the candle's flame or the horror of the house that made Maya sweat, she didn't understand. Maybe it was a mixture of the two. She didn't know where to find Ram. No one seemed to be awake, no one seemed to be bothered about this disturbance. Here Maya was unable to breathe properly in her suffocating room, and surprisingly the mansion was deadly quiet.

Like the personification of Abhinoy's death itself. The mansion, after mourning so much over the death of its beloved young Babu, had turned itself into the beast itself which sucked his life.

Or was the beast really here, or somewhere else, perhaps in the forest?

A guttural noise escaped Maya's throat. This whole ordeal was getting on her nerves. She was a guest of the Das, the sole woman on whom they had entrusted the search for justice, and still no one cared to visit her when she should have been uncomfortable?

Perhaps it was for her own good, because she heard the muffled cries of a woman.

It was coming from a room towards the left. She entered that particular turn and followed the noise. It was so very faint, like the drowning whispers of a child lost in the sea. She stopped outside the room. Shadows danced inside. She kept her ear on the door.

"You women don't give in easily, when you actually should."

"Spare me, please! I beg you!"

"Why should I? One day, this must happen. I don't think anyone else is going to marry me, the only bachelor of this family, after the crumpled reputation we have come to build."

"But that–" The woman's words died into a screech. Maya heard a thump, a creaking noise. It must be the bed.

"That means, you are mine, Khirodh. You are mine."

Immediately Maya flung open the door. The man was startled and gave a yelp. Khirodh shivered, blinking open her eyes slowly.

"Manihar," Maya said through clenched teeth. "This is what goes on here, I see."

Manihar left his grip on Khirodh. She took her wrist, now imprinted with red marks of his fingers, and caressed it gently. When sanity hit her and she understood she was with a stranger woman in her room, she covered her body with the aanchal, barely trying to stop sobbing. Manihar had almost disrobed her and she could do nothing against his so-called manly valour.

Manihar mustered up a sugary smile laden with a bitter aftertaste. "You see, these are our family matters. In this area, you would find relationships happening within the family. It's nothing odd with the upper class."