Haunted Legends (7 page)

“Don’t,” she cries as he launches into yet another long passage. “Oh please, Terry. Don’t!” For the first time in a marriage built on love, Sara wonders whether it will last. She bats words away with her hands; there is no way to explain without hurting him.
How can I listen with you reading, and so loud?

They come to another red sandstone building. Sara groans with relief as they step into the shadows.

“And this,” he says, and he is reading instead of looking, “is the Diwan-i-Khas, the hall where Akbar held audiences. He sat up there, at the top of that pillar, behind all those screens, so he could hear but not be seen, because he was the power here. When the emperor spoke, none of the subjects waiting down here could see him, but every one of them heard every word when he passed judgment, and the judgment came down loud and clear.” He points. “See?”

For once Sara does as told. She follows his finger up the stone column that supports Akbar’s screened pedestal. From down here the thing looks like an inverted Sno-cone or an upside-down wet dream of a wedding cake ornamented with what could be dangling . . .
Oh, good grief.
“He had audiences here?”

Oddly, Terry says, “Down here we could hear him speak, but we couldn’t see him deciding.”

We.
This is troublesome. “Deciding what?”

Whatever he wanted.

Thank God you’re back.
Frightened, alone in a foreign country, Sara can’t even guess which god she is thanking.

“Oh, all the important things.”

The next thing she knows, Terry is climbing, scrambling up worn stairs to the balcony. “Where are you going, Terry?” She sees him running along above her. She calls, “What are you doing?” With a wave, he crosses one of the six bridges that lead to the emperor’s platform and disappears into the central pod.

They always get what they want.

This makes Sara groan. Disturbed, increasingly anxious, she tries again to make him answer. “Terry, what are you
doing
?”

After much too long his voice comes from above and the blind, loving bastard is reading aloud from the guidebook, sitting up there in the pod:

“According to the legend, it says here that none of Akbar’s wives could give him a male heir. Then travelers came to him bringing stories about a great Sufi saint, and so he came out here to the middle of the desert on a pilgrimage. He traveled a long way to sit at the feet of Shaikh Salim Chisti, and tell him of his great need, and then the saint . . .”

Her breath shudders. “Is that what you want?”

“. . . prophesied that he would have a son, but the mother must be a Christian.”

Words pour out of her like vomit. “You thoughtless, deceitful . . .” The noun eludes her and she blurts, “Is that all you want from me?”

Then the air cracks open. Something huge thunders in.

SO MANY WIVES, SO MANY WOMEN, SO MANY DIED AND NOT ONE SON TO CARRY ON MY RULE.

Deafened, she thinks,
This can’t be Terry talking.
“Terry! Did you hear that? Terry?”

SALIM CHISTI GAVE ME THE MIRACLE . . .

The tremendous, powerful voice shakes her to the spine. “Terry!”

MIRIAM.

“What’s that, Terry, what
is
it?”

Heedless, her husband goes on reading smoothly, as untouched and voluble as a talking head on NPR informing her: “Akbar searched until he found her and she bore him a son, the future Emperor Jehangir, and in gratitude, the emperor transferred his capital to the ridge at Sikri and built his new and splendid city here.”

“Dammit, Terry, listen!”

Above her, hidden, her husband goes on as though he neither hears nor cares. Then, when she is at her most vulnerable, he stops short. “No, you listen.” Then he cries, “Oh, Sara. Let’s try again, I want it so much.”

“I thought you loved me!”

Just then huge words roll out of nowhere, unbidden, piling up like stones closing an emperor’s tomb.
IT IS BITTER, BUT EVERY MAN NEEDS A SON TO BURY HIM, AND SHE . . .

As he speaks a sigh fills the audience hall and then dwindles. Terrified, frantic, Sara understands that her friend, her ghost, her familiar is receding. Her friend’s last words come out in a dying fall.
Now you know.

She calls out in a thin voice, “Miriam? Miriam, don’t go!” but Miriam is nowhere now. It is as if she had never been.

She is alone with the men.

DO NOT ASK ME WHICH IS TRUTH AND WHICH IS LEGEND. GO.

Stone grates against stone, as though some huge trap is closing.

Staggered—no, overturned, Sara calls, “Akbar?”

But there is only Terry, scrambling out of the stone pod above her head and over the walkway to the balcony where she can see him. If Sara lives until she dies—and she will; if she thinks about this every day until she is an old, old woman, she will never figure out who or what just spoke to her.

What she will do, standing there in the bare, beautiful, audience hall in the emperor’s ghost city at the top of a dry ridge in the Rajasthani Desert in northern India, waiting for her husband to scramble downstairs and come running toward her with his arms spread, is come to a decision.

He hurries back to her, grinning. “Well, what do you think?”

Sighing, she dissembles. “Let’s don’t do this right now, let’s just enjoy what we have here.”

When they step outside, orange-gold light staggers her. The sky is streaked
with sunset. How long has it been? Swallowing sand, she clutches at her water bottle and finds it empty.

Terry takes no notice. He just hurries her along the ridge to the tomb of Salim Chisti. A sign in English tells them to take off their shoes before they enter the tomb, but Terry ignores it. Even though there’s nobody around, Sara slips out of her sandals. The marble underfoot holds the heat of the day but drained and thirsty as she is, Sara is comforted by the long shadows. Terry looks up from the guidebook. “It says the sheikh is buried here.”

Stunned by exhaustion, frantic, terrified, and raging, she rips the guidebook out of his hands and hurls it out into the plaza. Halting at the center of the tomb, Sara looks down at the spot, wondering. She thinks to pray, but has no idea what she would say or who she would be telling. They stand under the marble canopy and the world stops. It is as if they are in a vacuum. Terry takes her hand with a sweet grin. It is as though this is a done deal, and her heart turns over.

They turn to leave, shuffling out of the shadows and into the fading daylight. As they emerge from the marble tomb the air splits and in a sudden, terrifying rush, all India comes roaring in on them: tourists, beggars, guides, musicians, and vendors jostling for space in the courtyard of the giant mosque, the smell of red dust and food cooking and a large crowd gathering in a space that will never be big enough for them, accompanied by the ambient noise—the voice of India, but hyped and amplified. It’s as if the great, rich, incomprehensible civilization is flexing like a tiger waking up from deep, preternatural sleep.

As they come down the steps into the slanting light Terry stretches dreamily and rubs his eyes the way he does when he realizes it’s Sunday and hits the snooze button again.

For the first time today Sara runs ahead, wide-eyed, alert, and jangling. At the edge of the ridge, she sees a crowd gathering at the foot of the monumental gate to the mosque for some event—listed, she supposes, in Terry’s stupid guidebook. Outside the city walls, she knows, Ravi Singh is waiting with the car to take them back to safety but for whatever reasons, she is not done here. Instead she elbows her way closer, to see what the crowd is waiting for. There are figures standing on the top of the heavily ornamented gate, poised above . . . what? Sara thinks the people on top of that are fixed on something in the courtyard, but she can’t see what’s at the bottom.

Then somebody grabs her arm and she turns. It’s a kid in a T-shirt and cut-offs—fourteen? sixteen?—one of many kid daredevils hustling tourists for . . .
What do you want?
She doesn’t know. At the gate something just happened; a shout goes up.

“Maaa-am, maaa’m, see me jump into the pretty water.”

She doesn’t hear; she hears but doesn’t understand. He’s at her elbow now, a raggedy kid. “Only forty rupees.”

“What?”

“For forty rupees I will jump into the pretty water,” the boy tells her, pointing to the massive gate. “Come and see. See me jump into the pretty water.”

Sand fills her mouth but she manages, “Water?”

“Only forty rupees.”

“Of course,” she says, crushing a hundred into his hand. “When?”

“Now!” The boy breaks for the gate, but he isn’t fast enough.

Dazzled, Sara grabs the tail of his shirt and darts after him, running where he runs no matter how he tries to shake her off, climbing where he climbs, sobbing as she scrambles up the stones behind him.

“Ma’am. Ma’am!” The boy turns on her, trying his best to get free, but excited and mystified, compelled, she clings tighter. He almost escapes when the torn T-shirt starts to give way but Sara adjusts her grip, locking strong fingers around his ankle.

He can’t go up. She won’t let go. They are at a little impasse here on the rocks. She is the beggar now. “Please.”

Wild-eyed, the boy gasps, “What do you want?”

“I don’t know!”

Below them, diminished by perspective, Terry runs in circles, calling her to come down.

Hanging on to the rock with one hand, the boy gropes in his pocket and throws money, shaking his head:
No.
“Take it back!”

Shivering, she absorbs their position on the rocks, the distance to the top, the fact that she can’t see the water below, can’t tell how big the surface is or how deep it is or what happens to those who plunge; she does not know where this child will land, or what she thinks she is doing, only that at the bottom, there will be water.

At the bottom another boy cries, “Only forty rupees . . .”

Gripping tight, excited and hopeful, she tells this one, “A thousand rupees if you take me with you.”

Afterword

Back in the day I was lucky enough to end up at the top of a plateau in the Rajasthani Desert outside Agra, wandering through India’s famous ghost city. The red sandstone city is rich with elegantly carved sandstone screens and marble mosques—and for hundreds of years, it’s been deserted.

A ghost city, founded on an old Indian legend. What could be better? According to legend, the sixteenth-century Moghul emperor Akbar had a starter set of wives and daughters, but no sons to carry on the line.

Travelers brought tales of a Sufi saint who was known to perform miracles, and Akbar made a pilgrimage into the desert to find him. Revered as a mystic, Salim Chisti blessed Akbar and told him a Christian woman would give him a son. He named the boy Salim, after his benefactor. Salim grew up to become the emperor Jahangir. Shah Jahan built the Red Fort, Agra, and the Taj Mahal. As a gesture of thanks to Salim Chisti, Akbar built the city of Fatehpur Sikri on the site of his camp and moved all his wives and courtiers to the top of this plateau in the middle of the desert, where they lived in splendor until—what was he thinking?—they ran out of water and abandoned the city to red dust and the desert winds. The Tomb of Salim Chisti lies just inside one of the gates to the great ghost city.

Steven Pirie lives in Liverpool, England, with his wife, Ann, and their small son, James. His fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies around the world. His comic fantasy novel,
Digging Up Donald,
came out in paperback in 2007, and he’s finishing up related (although not sequel)
Burying Brian.

More information may be found at Steve’s website:
www.stevenpirie.com
.

Sometimes Ruth closes her eyes. But it’s hard to dream when the tree bark is rough against her shoulders; when
he’s
thrusting away, not caring she might need lubrication, not bothered she might be bleeding down her thigh.