Aman’s eyes forced themselves open. Beside him, Fayza breathed so sparingly it felt as if she were frozen. He stood up and made straight for Fayza’s cloth bag. He had remembered that all the Souls had packed palm leaves in case they needed to send a message to Vanyasa.

He fished out a palm leaf, a pankh and some ink. In the light of the fire, he wrote a letter and tucked it inside Fayza’s bag.

He stood up and looked at Fayza, who was deep in Atmayog. She had been his first true friend. But after her, Aman had met many others to whom he had grown close. Prithvi, who was no longer with them. Ujal, whose whereabouts none could venture. And more who had lost their souls in the Mahayatra.

Were all those sacrifices for nothing? Could he really gamble with the lives of his mother, Idhika and the rest of the Souls to save his own and Fayza’s?

‘Oh,’ the word escaped Aman’s lips. A cloud of doubt cleared before his eyes. For the first time, it was crystal clear where the Himalayan bees were. As he’d predicted earlier, they were in much lower altitudes than the ones traversed by the Souls. Aman could feel his instincts taking over, his body channelling the boon of Indra, dedicated above all odds to drive him to the destiny of an Eka.

Aman knew exposing Sanaka’s scheme was vital. But for that, the Souls had to return to the valley, which was unlikely without him. Moreover, as long as he was with Fayza, her life too was in danger. A general feeling of panic and dread washed over him. He knew what he had to do. Something Fayza would never let him do, the same way he wouldn’t let her if she were the Eka.

For Fayza’s survival, for his mother’s survival, Aman had to fulfil his destined role. He had to defy Indra and continue with the Mahayatra.

His shoulders hunched, Aman struggled to look at Fayza’s face. It would have been impossible had she been awake. It was she who was Aman’s true saviour, his new lease of life. The one who saw him for who he really was.

There was much he had never said to her, and he now wished he could. He wanted to tell her that in another life and different circumstances, he would have followed her to the edge of their days, to their very last tomorrows. Reveal to her that he’d been in love with her, or at least with the idea of her, his entire life—he only hadn’t met her until Vanyasa.

Tears shone in his eyes as he recalled the warm memories of the first time he’d met her, in the first class of Gurukul under the Kalpavriksha when Acharya Ashwini had told all the new recruits that they were in their seventh and last life cycles. How Aman had instantly fallen for her and would repeatedly recall from then onwards her radiant face with the mole on her temple, the cut beside the eye that he could see now as he stood in the cave.