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We were the original Aryans--blond and blue eyed We invaded India, before there were calendars, like a swarht sharp swords and spilled much blood But in 3000 bc, when I was born, ere still there, no longer ene every invader andhim a brother I cae in Rajastan, where the desert had already begun to blow in sand fro, and had as a friend the e She was a good woman Amba was seven years older than h separated by seven years, ere good friends I was tall for , bajans s from the sacred Vedas, which we chanted by the river after dark My skin was brown frorandfather as of original Indian stock We did not look alike, but e sang our voices were one and I was happy Life was simple in Rajastan

Until the disease came It did not strike everyone, only half I do not knohy I was spared, since I drank from the polluted river as much as Amba and the rest Amba was one of the first to fall ill She Vomited blood the last two days of her life, and all I could do was sit by her side and watch her die My sorroas particularly great because Ah I was her best friend, she never did tell me who the father was She never told anyone

When she died, it should have ended there Her body should have been taken to the creround and offered to Vishnu, her ashes thrown in the river But recently an Aghoran priest had entered our village He had other ideas for her body Aghora was the left-handed path, the dark path, and no one would have listened to what the priest had to say if the panic over the plague hadn&039;t been in the air The priest brought his blasphemous ideas, but ue He said the plague was the result of an evil rakshasa or dereat God Vishnu He said the only way to free our village of the rakshasa was to call forth an even greater being, a yakshini, and iht this idea was reasonable, but many others, myself included, felt that if God couldn&039;t protect us, how could a yakshini? Also, many of us worried what the yakshini would do once it had devoured the rakshasa From our Vedic texts we knew that yakshinis had no love for huhoran priest said that he could handle the yakshini, and so he was allowed to go ahead with his plans

Aghorans usually do not invoke a deity into a statue or an altar but into the corpse of someone recently dead It is this practice in particular that has theious people in India But desperate people often forget their religion when they need it most There were so many dead at the time, the priest had his choice of corpses But he chose Anancy attracted hi in the eyes of the priest that frightened , I was not permitted to attend the ceremony None of the wo to do with my friend&039;s body, however, I stole into the woods in the ht they were to perfore of a clearing, as the Aghoran priest with the help of six men--one of them my father--prepared Amba&039;s naked body They anointed her with clarified butter and ca fire, seated close to A repetitious chant I did not like it; it sounded nothing like the bajans we chanted to Vishnu The mantras were hard on the ear, and each time the priest co sharp stick It was as if he were i up inside her

This went on for a long tihtened theperson, as if there were a heart beating inside her But I knew this could not be I had been with A time afterward, and not once, even faintly, had she drawn in a breath I was not tempted to run to her Not for a ht her back to life Indeed, I was tempted to flee back towhere I was Especially when a dark cloud went over the an to stir, a wind that stank of decay and waste The se demon had suddenly appeared and breathed down upon the cere had coan to mutter aloud that they should stop, the fire abruptly shrank to red coals Slow of the e prey Sohed and chanted louder Yet even his voice failed when Amba suddenly sat up

She was hideous to behold Her face dripped blood Her eyes bulged frorin widened over her teeth as if pulled by wires Worst of all was her tongue; it stretched ue could, al snakes that danced beside as left of the fire I watched it in horror knowing that I was seeing a yakshini colow it turned to face the priest, who had fallen silent No longer did he appear confident

The yakshini cackled like a hyena and reached out and grabbed the priest The priest screamed No one came to his aid

The yakshini pulled the priest close, until they were face to face Then that awful tongue licked the priest&039;s face, and the poor ed in his throat Because wherever he was touched by the tongue, his skin was pulled away When the priest was a faceless hed Then its hands flew up behind the priest&039;s neck and took hold of his skull With one powerful yank it twisted the priest&039;s head around until it was

facing the other way, his bones cracking The priest fell over dead as the yakshini released hilanced around the calance it was It smiled as its eyes came to rest on me Yes, I believe it could see e stone that separatedinto my heart

Then finally, thankfully, the monster closed its eyes, and A moment none of the h not the wisest-- moved and knelt beside Amba&039;s corpse He poked it with a stick and it did not move He poked the priest as well, but it was clear theany more ceremonies in this life The otherboth of the bodies then and there Hiding behind orously The stench had bloay on the wind, and I did not want it to return Unfortunately, before athered, my father noticed movement inside Amba&039;s belly He cried out to the others Amba was not dead Or if she was, he said, her child was not He reached for a knife to cut the infant out of Amba&039;s womb

It was then I ju

"Father!" I cried, reaching for his hand holding the knife "Do not let that child come into this world Amba is dead, see with your own eyes Her child must likewise be dead Please, Father, listen to me"

Naturally, all the men were surprised to see ry at me, but he knelt and spoke to me patiently

"Sita," he said "Your friend does appear dead, and rong to let this priest use her body in this way But he has paid for his evil kar evil karma of our own if we do not try to save the life of this child You remember when Sashi was born, how her mother died before she ca child is born to a dead woman"

"No," I protested "That was different Sashi was born just as hisliving can coestured with his knife to the squir life inside Amba&039;s bloody abdomen "Then how do you explain the life here?"

"That is the yashiniinside her," I said "You sa the demon smiled at us before it departed It intends to trick us It is not gone It has entered into the child"

My father pondered ent for e and occasionally asked for uidance, but they were evenly divided So inside A a sin Finally my father turned back to me and handed me the knife

"You knew Amba better than any of us," he said "You would best know if this life that ood If you know for sure in your heart that it is evil, then strike it dead None of the men here will blame you for the act"

I was appalled I was still a child andme to commit an atrocious act But my father iser than I had taken him for He shook his head as I stared at him in amazement, and took back the knife

"You see," he said "You are not sure if what you say is true In a matter of life and death, we must be careful And if we are to make an error, it must be on the side of life If this child turns out to be evil, then ill know as it grows up Then ill have more time to decide what should be done with it" He turned back to Amba&039;s body "For now I must try to save it"

"We may not have as an to cut into Amba&039;s flesh Soon he held a bloody entle spank, and it sucked in a dry rasping breath and began to cry Most of the h I noticed the fear in their eyes My father turned to me and asked me to hold it I refused However, I did consent to name the child

"It should be called Yaksha," I said "For it has the heart of a yakshini"

And the child&039;s name was as I said Most considered it an evil omen, yet none of them, in their darkest dreams, would realize how appropriate the naue vanished and never returned

My father gave Yaksha to reatly desired one A si woman, she treated the child as if it were her own--certainly as if it were a hu of her love Whether she felt any love in return from the child, I don&039;t know He was a beautiful baby with dark hair and pale blue eyes

Time went by, and it always does, and yet for Yaksha and for rew faster than any child in the history of our village, and when I was fifteen years of age, he was already, in stature and education, ht years earlier His accelerated develop his birth But they were ruht Yaksha had come into the world never spoke about what had happened when the priest had tried to invoke the yakshini into Amba&039;s corpse They must have sworn one another to secrecy because my father occasionally took ht I did not, of course, because I did not think anyone outside of the six men would have believed me Besides, I loved ht he wasa mistake

It was at about this tio out of the way to talk to me Until then I had avoided him, and even when he pursued me I tried to keepabout hireat beauty, of course, his long shiny euiling How often it flashed in my direction, his ts of perfect white teeth like polished pearls Sometimes I would stop to talk to hiift to offer--a spoonful of sandlepaste, a stick of incense, a string of beads I accepted these gifts reluctantly because I felt as if one day Yaksha would want soive But he never asked

But ht years of age he was clearly the se, and often the adults consulted him on important matters: how to improve the harvest; how best to build our new te merchants who came to buy our crops If people had doubts about Yaksha&039;s origin, they had nothing but praise for his behavior

I was attracted to him, but I never ceased to fear hilimmer in his eyes, and be reiven me before it had supposedly vacated Amba&039;s body

It hen I was sixteen that the first of the six men who had witnessed his birth disappeared The man just vanished Later that same year another of the six disappeared also I asked my father about it, but he said that we could not hold Yaksha to bla up well But the next year, when another two of the an to have doubts It was not long after that e who had been there that horrible night But the fifth ored to death, as if by a wild animal There was not a drop of blood left in his corpse Who could doubt that the others had not ended up the saed , and Yaksha&039;s part in it By then Yaksha was ten and looked twenty, and if he was not the leader of the village, few people doubted that he would be in charge soon But roith pride, no doubt feeling personally responsible for the birth of this wonderful young man And his sister was still Yaksha&039;s step to the others, that he would ask Yaksha to leave the village quietly and not come back

But it was h Yaksha vanished as well My father&039;s body

was never found, except for a lock of his hair, down by the river, stained with blood At the cere his death I broke down and cried out the ht Yaksha had been born But the rief and didn&039;t listen Still, a few heard rief over my lost father faded slowly "Yet two years after his death and the disappearance of Yaksha, nearmerchant My love for Rama was instantaneous I saw his of Lord Vishnu, he felt the same way We were ht I slept with my husband I drea late at night together Yet her words to me were dark She told me to beware the blood of the dead, never to touch it I woke up weeping and was only able to sleep by holding htly