Nala rushed into Parshuram’s arms, face pressed against his hairy shoulders as shudders ran through her fragile, small frame. Stunned, the Acharya remained still. Nala wept for a long time, but Parshuram stood unmoving, as solid as a rock in a storm. He let the child in his arms, for child she was, cry in the throes of hope.

‘Tomorrow,’ he finally said as Nala let him go, ‘we learn the asanas, the postures you will need to master to learn the Dance of Shadows. Now, will you have tea? Yes? Go make it then.’

VII

‘I see you are well versed in yoga.’

‘I completed the third semester of Yoga Three. We were done with the basics of Ashtanga Yoga and Bhakti Yoga.’

‘Asanas?’

Nala nodded. ‘We were made to wake early and practice them every day.’

‘Headstand pose.’

Nala complied.

‘Cobra.’

Nala complied.

‘Half Spinal Twist.’

Nala complied, grunting.

‘Warrior Sequence.’

Panting and struggling, Nala complied.

‘The Triangle.’

Nala fell.

‘Useless! You are a girl, yoga should flow from you like a river. Is this how you plan to become a Shadow Dancer?’

The dreaded Shadow Dance. The days when she had pined for Parshuram to teach her the Shadow Dance now seemed a distant, alien memory. He had said that she would have learned everything he had to teach her when she could do a complete routine of the Shadow Dance before a cult of priests who worshipped Ratih, the Goddess of Darkness, and her lesser sister, Usha, the Bringer of Dawn, and they deigned her worthy of a black rose.

Nala had been taken to watch this secret ritual on the last new moon. It was a secret form of worship of the supposed illegitimate brother of the deities, where devotees saw not the dance but the dancer’s shadow, cast on walls, on the floor, and on the ceiling. Nala had gasped when a dancer had formed eight shadows, and all eight forms – tall, slender, large, thin – had danced together in perfect unity. If Parshuram thought she, Nala, capable of performing such a dance, he was more deranged than his reputation made him out to be.

‘Nala!’ Parshuram’s voice boomed. ‘A word of advice. Do not let your mind wander. It is too small to be let out all by itself. Understand? Now, do the pose again.’

Nala hated the standing poses. Her sense of balance was atrocious. The number of times she had fallen in the Tree Pose would have been downright comical had it not been so pitiable.

‘Do you know what the Dwi Pada Sira Asana is?’

Any asana with such long a name could only spell trouble. In that moment Nala wanted nothing so much as to give up her plans of vengeance and retire to the forest. ‘No, Master.’

‘I wonder who pissed in the soup of Meru’s yoga teacher? It is the Sleeping Tortoise.’ Saying which, the Acharya sat, drew his legs behind his neck to cross each other. It did look like a tortoise withdrawing its head into its shell. But all Nala could see was a world of pain.