Realm of the Goddess (7 page)

The article went on to talk about possible locations of the sword, ranging from the jungles of Kolkata to caves buried in the snow-capped mountains of Mongolia. There were some who believed it had traveled to Greece during the invasion of India by Alexander the Great. I closed the webpage after a while. I would have to talk to Shiv’s parents in the morning and see if they knew anything more about the sword and its possible location. I couldn’t believe I was sitting here and contemplating the chances of getting my hand on a five-thousand-year-old sword that had once belonged to the Goddess of Destruction herself. Life was funny that way.

I turned my attention to something else that had been nagging at me: the fact that my dad had come to me in my dream and actually talked to me was strange. And I knew all about strange dreams. But this was different. He had tried to communicate with me and it had seemed so real, not like any other dream I’d had before. It was as if he’d known I’d be frantic with worry about them and he needed to tell me what to do next. I sat up straight and typed “dream manipulation” in the search box. A bunch of results came up.
How to Control your Dreams. Download an App for Dream Manipulation.
So it was true. There really was an app for everything. I cleared the search box and typed in “Dream Manipulators, Hindu mythology.” Not a lot of results came up, but once again one of them caught my eye. Oneiric manipulation. I clicked on the link.

Oneiric manipulators possess the power to enter someone’s dream and take control. They can influence thoughts and actions, even during waking hours, by planting the seed of an idea or thought in their minds. They are also able to communicate with a person but at great cost to themselves. A successful communication requires the manipulator to drain his own strength. As a result he is weakened and cannot repeat this activity until energy has been replenished.

I stared at the screen for a while. Could my dad have such an ability? It was amazing how the realm of what was possible had expanded exponentially for me in the last couple of days. This seemed as good an explanation as any. How else would my dad know exactly what I was thinking and be able to tell me how to proceed? With a sigh I picked up the laptop and put it on the desk. I needed to get some sleep, even if it was only for a few hours. The clock on the nightstand said it was 3:30 a.m. I fell back on the bed and was asleep within minutes.

I awoke the next morning feeling optimistic. The dream about my father had given me hope. Firstly, I was now convinced that my father had in fact been communicating with me and I felt a sense of relief knowing that my parents were alive and relatively unharmed, at least for the moment. Secondly, I felt that Shiv’s parents might have more information about the sword my father had mentioned. Once I knew its last known location, I might have a shot at rescuing my parents after all. This motivated me enough to get me ready and downstairs with a positive attitude, which must have shown on my face, because Nina noticed it right away. They were all sitting at the breakfast table in the kitchen. The big bay window looked out on a sunny yard.

“Callie, you look rested,” she said cheerfully. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

Over a breakfast of eggs, toast and fresh fruit, I told them about my dream. They didn’t seem too surprised. Dev was already nodding as I finished.

“It’s not unheard of that some Rakshakari have powers of oneiric manipulation,” he said.

“But my father is not a guardian,” I said, a strange realization blossoming in my stomach. “He’s a professor,” I finished weakly.

“Callie, I can assure you that ordinary humans do not possess such powers. However, there are Rakshakari who have forsaken the call and chosen to live normal lives. Their powers diminish but are never truly lost.”

I said nothing for a while. I tried to think back and remember if there were any clues, any signs I had missed. It was strange trying to look at my life and realize that there might have been so much I didn’t know, so many things about my parents that they had kept from me. I thought about snatches of conversations from when I was younger, too young to understand their significance. I’d walk in on them and they would abruptly stop talking. I had probably been too self-absorbed to think anything of it at the time, but now I desperately wished I had paid more attention. Maybe I would have learned something that could have helped me now. I must have sighed or something, because Dev looked at me sympathetically.

“Callie,
beti
, you mustn’t blame yourself. None of this is your fault.”

Nina nodded in agreement as she buttered a piece of toast. “Callie,” she said, “if your parents kept any of this from you, it was only to protect you. I’m sure they had their reasons.”

I knew they were trying to make me feel better, but I couldn’t help the tiny worm of resentment that was making its way into my mind. I was seventeen years old, for goodness sake, not a child. I could have handled whatever dark secrets they were hiding. They should have had more faith in me. Now here I was, completely in the dark, having to rely on strangers whom I felt forced to trust.

I bit into a piece of toast that Nina had put on my plate next to the scrambled eggs. I didn’t want to be rude, so I just nodded politely.

“Shiv,” Nina said, taking a sip of her coffee, “why don’t you show Callie around and then this afternoon we are going to meet with Vikram.”

I looked around the table. “Who’s Vikram?”

“He’s the head of the Council for the West Coast,” Dev replied. “We went to see him yesterday to apprise him of the situation, and he is eager to meet you.”

“Wait...you mean there are more of you?” I said. I regretted it as soon as I said it, because Nina raised her eyebrows slightly before replying.

“Yes, Callie, there are more of us. In fact, we have centers all around the world. We train our Rakshakari and warriors there. They are also taught all about the history of the Council.”

She shot Shiv a glance. “Shiv, perhaps while you are showing Callie around, why don’t you fill her in a little bit? That way she’ll be prepared before we meet with Vikram.”

She excused herself and left the kitchen. Dev finished his coffee and left too, leaving me alone with Shiv.

“Did I offend your mother in some way?” I asked as soon as we were alone.

Shiv, who had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout breakfast, just shrugged. “Don’t worry about her,” he said, putting down his glass of orange juice. “She just feels responsible for you, and maybe the rest of the Council isn’t too happy with how things were handled with you and your parents.”

“Handled?” I said, annoyance tinging my voice. “What exactly is that supposed to mean? If they knew that something like that would happen, why didn’t they say something?”

Shiv looked at me and there was something in his eyes that I couldn’t define.

“Why don’t we go to the library and I can fill you in on what I can about the Council,” he said, getting up without waiting for an answer and taking his plate and mug to the sink. I noticed that he had conveniently chosen not to respond to my previous comment. I decided not to push it. I got up and cleared some of the breakfast dishes as well.

We went to the library and settled in the seating area by the windows. Shiv was holding a thick bound volume of some kind, which he now gave to me.

I took it and placed it on my lap. The cover was soft, some sort of cloth, dark brown with the title in gold, embossed letters.

Rakshakari.

And underneath that in smaller letters:

History and Organization of the Council.

“So,” Shiv said, nodding his head toward the book, “this has all the information you need about the Rakshakari. Everything you want to know about who’s who and how it all got started.”

“Could you maybe tell me the important bits?” I asked, thinking I didn’t really need to know every single detail. There would be time for all that later, after I’d found my parents.

Shiv smiled and nodded. “I suppose I could do that. So let’s see...where to begin...I think I’ll start by telling you about the organization. So we have the Elders, they are sort of the head of the Rakshakaris. They live in seclusion on Mount Kailash.”

I nodded. I had heard about Mount Kailash from my grandmother. It was located remotely somewhere in Tibet and in Hinduism it was known as the home of Lord Shiva. My grandmother had described it as a place of great power and peace, the source of three great rivers in Asia, but most of all that it was older than any civilizations we knew about. I forced my attention back to Shiv.

“At first the Rakshakari Council only had branches in India, but over the last hundred years or so they have spread all over the world.”

“It makes sense, I guess,” I said, thinking out loud. “People from India live in all parts of the world now.”

“There are training centers as well, so the new initiates can learn combat techniques. So in North America we have one center here in Seattle, one in Houston and one in New York. Vikram is the head of the Seattle center; you’ll meet him tomorrow. He’s quite the character, but I’m not going to tell you anything. You’ll have to wait and see.”

“And what do the Elders do?”

“They are the supreme authority on anything and everything to do with the Rakshakari,” Shiv replied.

“But if they’re in seclusion so far away, how do they even know what’s going on?” I was imagining a group of old monk-like men sitting on a mountaintop and meditating.

“I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard that they are really old, like hundreds of years old, and that they’ve developed special powers from all their years of isolation and deep meditation. Some even say that they are avatars of the Trinity.”

The trinity included Brahma the creator, Vishnu the maintainer or preserver and Shiva the destroyer or transformer. The idea that these Elders were avatars of the three gods was a fascinating idea but not necessarily one that I bought into. There was still a large part of me, my cynical side, that didn’t accept any of this. But then there was the other side of me, the voice of reason that said it couldn’t be a coincidence I’d always had those dreams and that Shiv and his family knew all about them. That, plus the fact that at the moment they could provide me with some sort of help in finding my parents. Without them I had no clue where to begin. And then there was the fact that my father had come to me in my dream. That was what compelled me to believe that I was right in trusting Shiv and his family. Now I pulled my attention back to what he was saying.

“So tomorrow, when we go to the center, you will meet all the other Rakshakari who work or live there.”

“They live at the center?” I asked.

“Yes, some of them have no family. Many of them come to us from orphanages.”

“I thought that Rakshakaris were all descendants of the same bloodlines.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Shiv replied, “but many in India are orphaned as infants because their parents die in battle. And if there is no one left in that family, then they get placed in orphanages by a neighbor or someone.”

A heaviness weighed down my heart at the thought of these poor children who would never know their parents. “But then how do they end up as Rakshakari?”

“Rakshakari are all born with a mark,” Shiv said, turning around and pulling the right sleeve of his shirt down to expose his shoulder. I moved closer to get a better look. There it was, his birthmark, a dark bluish one, shaped a little like an eye. It was almost indistinguishable among his many other serpent tattoos. I sat back down and looked at him.

“So what is it exactly?” I asked. “It looks sort of like an evil eye.” I’d seen symbols like this in books and movies, but usually they were actual tattoos, not birthmarks.

“Actually, that’s exactly what it is,” Shiv said. “It’s a symbol for protection against evil. And that’s what Rakshakari are born to do.”

I was still fascinated with the whole orphan thing.

“So you’re saying that somehow these orphans find their way to other Rakshakari?”

“Some are drawn to us when they’re older and their powers start to manifest. Others are found by Council members.”

“You mean that they actually go around to orphanages and look for them?”

“Yes, think about it,” Shiv replied. “India has so many poor people, and orphanages are full of unwanted children. The Rakshakari do a lot of social work, including working with orphans, trying to get them placed in good homes. When they come across ones who have the mark, they bring them to the centers and give them a better life. One with purpose and security.”

“But what about a family?” I couldn’t bear to think that these children grew up without the love of parents and siblings.

“Callie, if the Rakshakari didn’t take them, they would end up being turned out into the streets when they turn sixteen. The orphanages are full and there’s no room for them once they get to that age. Plus, if they don’t get initiated they end up with all kinds of psychological problems.”

“What do you mean, psychological problems?”

“Well, we are different, all Rakshakari are. It’s in our blood. And if we aren’t doing what we’re supposed to, things go wrong. Some Rakshakari have powers. And if they aren’t taught to control them they can mess with their minds.”

This was getting more and more interesting by the minute. So now they had powers too. But then I remembered that just this morning Dev had mentioned my dad having a power, oneiric manipulation.