Rakshasa!

Savitri bolted upright and practically flew off her bottom as she stood. A quick glance towards the window affirmed the cry that she heard. Through the cracks of the logs that Debashish had set up, a blurry image of a tall, large, blue rakshasa stomped through the small village. In his hands he held two young men and from his mouth came large torrents of hot fire.

Not again with the fire, Savitri groaned. Didn't we just finish with this?

A roar that sounded similar to the dying cry of an elephant shook the already unstable house. Savitri held her arms out to balance herself just as Suman's eyes blearily opened. He flopped over onto his back.

"What in the world is happening?" He croaked. "Is it morning already?"

"There's an attack." Savitri grabbed her bow and tossed Suman his pile of weapons. "Quick, get up and get ready to fight."

"What...?" He was still extremely slow to get up and kept blinking the heavy sleep out of his eyes. "What am I doing?"

Savitri scowled. She stomped over to him and grabbed his arm. Lifting him was futile, but she was able to pull the top half of his body up enough to put him in an upright, uncomfortable position.

"There. Is. An. Attack." She said, accentuating each word. "Get up, find Debashish, and go fight."

"What about you?"

"She will help me find the children and hide," Rhea answered, rushing into the room. A tail of boys and one young girl followed her. Some were crying, some were quiet, and some were...plainly, luckily, indifferent to the monstrosity outside.

"What about the men? Suman?" Savitri asked, fumbling when Rhea handed her the baby she had been carrying the day before. "They need help!"

"We'll be fine." Suman, now roused, grabbed his things and cleared his eyes. He put his hand on Savitri's shoulder as a roar split the ground again. The walls around them shook and crumbled slightly. "Go, hide. Stay safe."

"But-!"

Suman left before she could argue with him. He had to weave his way through the group of kids who kept trying to touch his weapons or cling to his leg, however he successfully (to Savitri's annoyance) managed to find his way out and into the raging battle around them.

"That is not fair!" Savitri growled and clenched her fists angrily. "I want to help fight too!"

"Help later," Rhea said quickly as she rounded all of her kids. Panic flashed in her eyes like rolling waves of fire. It was as if she were reliving a distasteful memory. "Come, bacho, let's go to the cellar."

"Cellar?" Savitri repeated. "Where cellar? What cellar?"

"Come, I'll show you." Rhea pulled Savitri aside just as a part of the roof collapsed on the spot that she had been standing in. "Now."

Savitri didn't object this time. Allowing Rhea to pull her, she held onto her bow and ran in the direction that Rhea hurried in. Periodically she'd look back to make sure that all of the kids were in line. Some of the boys would push each other, some were crying, but the girl, the only one in the bunch, just walked quietly. Her big brown eyes were wide with interest and her mouth was open as she looked around her new world.

Behind the house there was a broken, charred well, and right beside the well was a patch of grass darker than the other parts. Rhea let go of one of her son's hands and brushed the grass blades out of the way, revealing a small, wooden hatch.

"Is that...?" Savitri bounced the wailing baby on her hip. She tilted her ear away from his mouth so that his screams didn't deafen her.

"Come, quickly." Rhea's cheeks were flushed from the heat of the rakshasa's flames. "We will be safe inside her." One by one she lowered all of her children. Savitri followed the last child, carefully tightening her arm around the baby as she climbed down the iron ladder.

Dirt filled her lungs like thick tubes of smoke and she had to hold her breath to keep from coughing on the baby. Her vision was darkened to behold nothing but the little ledges of rocks poking from the soil around them. The ground had stopped shaking, however Savitri could still hear the rakshasa's roars - whether they were in triumph or agony, she wasn't sure, though.

"How long are we going to stay down here?" Savitri asked.

"As long as we have to," Rhea replied. One by one, she went to each of her children, attempting in vain to calm them. The rowdy boys shoved each other in the tight space that they were confined to and the quieter children sniffled their sobs. The baby watched them carefully, considering each of his siblings with an unnerving sense of calmness.

"He's a quiet one, isn't he?" Savitri asked. She bounced her hip to lift the baby up higher to get a better grip on him.

Rhea nodded. "He's a gentle soul," she murmured and took the boy from Savitri's arms. "Just like his sister."

Which one? Savitri thought, but didn't say out loud. The little girl nudged closer to her and was soon clinging to her leg. Savitri felt the end of her dhoti dampen.

"Do you know why he's attacking the village?" Savitri turned to Rhea. "Where does he come from?"

Rhea's tongue softened her hard bottom lip in hesitation. "His name is Jarmat. He's a forest rakshasa. His cave is close by here...maybe a few miles or so, right by the bridge that you must have crossed."

Savitri ran a mental check through her mind about the places she and Suman had passed by. The images were desaturated and blurry because of the rush that they had been, but as she retraced her steps to the end of the bridge, she remembered.

"Yes...I remember the cave," she said. The fog in her mind was clearing. "Suman and I had passed it, but we didn't think much of it. We didn't want to go inside - there could have been an animal in there."

"It's Jamrat's home," Rhea said. "Every year, we are supposed to give an offering to him to sate his hunger. In return, he promises to protect our village instead of massacring it." She brushed one of her son's hairs as he passed by her. "But with Aarvi's death this past year, we all completely forgot our deal with Jamrat. He is simply going back on his end of the bargain, just as we did ours."

"You didn't go back on your end!" Savitri snapped. "You were mourning. Any rakshasa with a heart would understand that!"

"Since when has a rakshasa ever had a heart?" Rhea sighed. "At least...perhaps Dharmaraj does."

"Dharmaraj?" Savitri held one of the rocks to keep herself from tilting over when the ground shook haphazardly from Jamrat's heavy stomping. "He's a...?"

"A Rakshasa's son," Rhea finished plainly, as if the news was just something normal to her. "He, unlike his brothers and sisters, had a heart, so he was given a job by the gods."

"He was a rakshasa..." Savitri ignored the end of Rhea's sentence and kept her mind grazing on the new piece of information that she had gathered. So, Dharmaraj wasn't a god? He was merely a good rakshasa? She had never heard of such a thing before - was that even possible?

Oh, my head is now spinning, she groaned. This isn't helping at all. How did I not know this? How did barely anyone know this?

"The fires are cooling," Rhea realized with wonder. "Jamrat is finishing his meal."

"He is?" Savitri perked up. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

Rhea shrugged. "It depends," she said. "If the men have won the battle."

The scream that followed her suggested otherwise, though, and the fear-inducing, stomach freezing roar that came afterwards proposed a different ending to the fight.

"I have to go help." Savitri climbed up the first few ledges of the ladder. "They could be in trouble, and it'll be better to have more hands than less."

She paused, expecting for Rhea to try and convince her to stay in the safety of the cellar instead of going to help the war raging above them, but when she regarded the older lady out of the corner of her eye, all she could see was a placid smile and a gaze of indifference.

"What are you waiting for, then?" Rhea asked. "Go help them."

Savitri didn't have to be told twice. She scaled the ladder with a speed that could rival a gecko and lifted her head into the misty, exceedingly hot village air that seemed to have dried her lungs out the moment that she opened her mouth.

Ugh, all this fire is becoming quite annoying, she thought irritably. She pulled the ripped odhni that had been tucked into the waistband of her pants and wrapped it around her nose and mouth again before beginning to sprint across the burned, desert-like floors of the village to the main road. She had no doubt that Jamrat would be there, because wasn't that were all rakshasas were when they rained carnage on any place that they were terrorizing.

She didn't have to run very far, since the village was so small and the distance from the cellar to the front door of the now crumbled home was close to each other. Through the thinning fog, she could see the outline of Jamrat's large, hulking figure as he lifted his hands up in the air. The sound that came out of his mouth was so reminiscent of a flock of chased crows, except much louder and less bearable to hear.

"Where are you going?" One of the fleeing men yelled at Savitri when she passed him. "Shelter is the other way!"

"I'm going to help!" Savitri yelled back.

"Are you crazy?" The man grabbed her arm. "You can't help! It's not safe for you! Go back!"

"No!" Savitri yanked her arm out of the man's calloused hand, and put her bow in between them before he could grab her again. He hesitated, and she was able to pick a fallen arrow up from the ground before he was reached for her again.

Try me, she thought, waiting for the man to edge away before she resumed her sprint.

Jamrat wreaked havoc throughout the entire town, destroying homes and burning many public facilities (although since it was such a small town, there weren't that many). When Savitri found him, he was beginning to calm down by a marginal amount. Of course, he was still thrashing and roaring, but it wasn't as strong as it was when he first started his attack.

"Hey! Savitri!" Suman's called for her, his voice shrill with panic. To Savitri, it sounded a bit like a baby bird.

"Suman?" Savitri looked around. "Where are you?" He didn't get himself trapped in a fire pit, did he?

"Up here!" Suman directed Savitri's attention to Jamrat's clenched fist, where he was trapped right in the middle of it.

Savitri stared at him with her mouth wide open, but shut it quickly. That silly, silly boy! She screamed internally. She left him alone for a few minutes and that was what he had gotten himself into? How in the world had he been living on his own all these twenty-four years! Sage Agastya must have his hands full trying to keep track of Suman - no wonder he was so eager to have the boy join her.

"What in bhagwan's name are you doing?!" She shouted, her temper flaring wilder than the fires burning behind her.

"Relaxing, obviously," Suman snapped. "What do you think? I got trapped and I'm about to be eaten!"

Savitri sighed. "Hold on!"

Thankfully, Jamrat was too busy indulging in his new toys to catch the drift of Savitri and Suman's obnoxiously loud conversation (he must have been hard of hearing or something) because it gave Savitri plenty of time to gather a few arrows that had been scattered on the ground.

Sumen continued to struggle in Jamrat's monstrous grip. He had soon successfully garnered the demon's attention, but all for the wrong reasons. They began to fight, Suman in the sky like a debilitated chicken, and Jamrat on the ground like a child does with an uncooperative toy. Suman's sword went first, and he didn't get the opportunity to use his bow before Savitri had managed to knock an arrow into her bow and shoot it directly towards the demon's arm. To her surprise and utter annoyance, it bounced off of him like a harmless fly, but it did turn his attention from beating Suman into the collapsing roof of a home towards her.

"Impudent girl!" He roared, advancing towards her with his lion-like teeth bared. Savitri turned and began to run, away from the village and hopefully into the forest, but she didn't get very far before Jamrat brought down a thick, large tree in front of her, barring her path.

Savitri almost cursed to herself. In a futile effort, she kept hurling arrows at Jamrat, but all they succeeded to do was make him even angrier. Her only savior was his size, which proved to be a disadvantage to him as he struggled to manage to trap her.

"Argh!" He grunted and growled as she evaded his swinging hand. As he straightened again with a lanky step, his grip around Suman's waist loosened and gave him a chance to toss Savitri the only weapon that he deduced could get rid of Jamrat.

Takshaka's arrow.

Savitri was in a mid-roll when she saw the arrow shooting towards her. Swiftly, she jumped to her feet and grabbed the shimmery dart before it could pierce the ground.

"Use it!" Suman yelled, agony rippling on his face in strained wrinkles. "It's the only way!"

"But we should save it!" Savitri shouted back. She ducked and rolled again while tucking Takshaka's arrow into her waistband. The scarf on her nose slipped, but she didn't put it back up. "What about when we reach our destination? Or the rest of the forest? Takshaka said only to use it for emergencies!"

"I'm going to DIE!" Suman screamed. "I am pretty sure that this qualifies as an emergency!"

He's right, Savitri thought. She wiped the soot from her cheek. I have to use it now.

She waited until Jamrat was bending down to grab her again, then just as he was about to claw at her, she jumped onto his hand and ran up his thick, hairy arm as fast as she could. It was like running through extremely thin blades of coarse grass, she decided, with greasy, smooth rocks.

Jamrat snarled and let out a tree-bending bellow from deep in his chest. He scratched his arm, then his shoulder, trying to grab Savitri as she bolted across the left side of his body. She stopped at the crevice of his body where the shoulder met the neck. Placing her foot on an oddly, spherical shaped gill on his neck, she pinned Takshaka's arrow to her bow, pulled the string back, and with a quick prayer to both Takshaka and the Lord, she let it fly.

Like a spiraling funnel of wind, the celestial arrow shot straight through Jamrat's eye, glowing brighter and brighter until it collided with him, like a shooting star. He stumbled backward as the wave of collision vibrated through his body, and just when it seemed like the arrow had failed to work, several sparks began to pounce out of Jamrat's eye. Then, it was his other eye. Then, his nostrils and lips that opened wide with a screech of pitiful affliction. Both Suman and Savitri plummeted into the untouched roof of a very broken home. Above them, thousands of dancing, colorful stars flashed around Jamrat. The celestial arrow did its work well. Suman had just managed to pull Savitri out of the way before Jamrat swayed on his feet. His eyes lolled shut and his body careened forward onto the roof. Then, he was dead.

Death with the stars, Savitri thought. What an interesting way to go.

With the light show finished and Jamrat dead, leaving a bloody waterfall oozing from his lifeless body and sputtering fires in his wake, the villages came out from their shelters one by one, peering curiously at the deceased demon. Some of them were wounded, but thankfully (and shockingly) nobody had died.

"The stars came on earth, Ma!" Savitri could hear a boy saying. "We were dancing with the stars!"

"We were indeed," Suman murmured from beside her. Savitri gasped and jumped, whipping her head towards him. Suman laughed weakly, narrowly avoiding being hit by her braid. "We were riding on shooting stars, weren't we, princess?"

"Not a princess," Savitri pointed out, but she was also smiling. She threw her arms around Suman. "Are you okay?" Quickly, she backed away from him. "You aren't hurt, are you? Did I hurt you?"

"No, no, I'm fine," he assured her gently. He rolled his shoulder and his eyes pinched shut for a moment. "I will be fine, that is."

"Did you dislocate it?" Rhea and her tail of children approached him. "Do you need to pop it back?"

"No, no!" Suman paled faintly. "It's just bruised. It will heal."

"You are both heroes!" Debashish broke in dramatically, if not, excitedly. "You saved us all!"

"Yes, yes!" The crowd around them cheered. "You saved us! You're our heroes!"

Suman flushed. "I'm no hero," he muttered a bit petulantly. "Savitri saved you. She's the hero here."

"We all saved each other," Savitri interjected before the villagers could begin to cheer again. "We are all heroes." She put her hand on Suman's shoulder. "Even you, Suman."

"We should thank you for your bravery," Debashish continued to ramble. "We should reward you!"

"Yes!' Another man said. "You've saved us from losing any more of our family members or friends!"

They really don't listen, do they, Savitri thought with a tired sigh.

"We should be going," Suman said. He squinted his eyes against the orange horizon. "Of course, we would love to stay and help rebuild, but..."

"We understand," Debashish said, shaking both Suman and Savitri's hands vigorously. "Thank you, then, for everything. You are always welcome in Laalmishra."

"That's the name?" Savitri hissed. "All this time, we had no idea what in the world this town was called, and it's Laalmishra?"

Suman shrugged. "Weird names," he muttered, still rubbing his arm.

"Are you sure that you aren't hurt?"

"Positive." He lifted his thumb up at her. "Oh, I like that." He wiggled his thumb. "Little finger, big finger..."

"Oh bhagwan," Savitri sighed with a roll of her eyes. Around them, the villagers began to disperse. Some came to shake hands with Savitri or pat Suman on the back, but most went to their homes, studying the damage done to see how they could begin to repair.

"You have done us a great debt," Rhea noted, approaching Savitri. Her hands were clasped around each other.

"It wasn't much." Savitri blushed. "I only did what I had to do."

"Perhaps," Rhea mused. "But you have saved generations of families from being broken apart by a greedy rakshasa, and for that, we are all eternally grateful for you." She opened her hands, revealing a small, baby-sized bracelet made out of brown clay beads.

"Is that...?"

"Aarvi loved jewelry," Rhea said sadly. "Debashish made this for her on her third birthday. Here." She put the small circle in Savitri's hand. "When you reach Dharmaraj's kingdom...if you happen to see her...tell her that her family loves her, please?"

What?! Savitri couldn't even reply. Rhea didn't explain, either, only giving her a knowing smile. A mother's knowing smile...

"I promise to keep it safe," Savitri said, mirroring Rhea's gentle smile. "And...if I do see Aarvi, I promise to show her...to pass your message."

"Thank you." One of the boys tugged Rhea's leg and she picked him up. So many little children, there were. "Be safe, alright. Be careful of...the leopard."

"I will." Savitri clenched the bracelet. "We will be careful."

"I will hold you to that," Rhea said. She and Savitri shared a quick hug before she left to help Debashish with their destroyed home, and Savitri studied the simple bracelet that rubbed on her palm every time she flexed her hand. That hug...it felt so...homely. Like a warm summer day of sitting in the garden of her home with her father, back when they used to smell the flowers together and eat fruits on a wide purple blanket. She could almost feel the warm sun splaying its fingers on her chubby cheeks and the sticky, tender strawberry juice trickling down her chin. On her tongue, it felt citricy and tingly but oh so sweet.

"Savitri!" Suman came up from behind her. He was still a little pale, but his shoulders were beginning to get back their russet tone. His sword, which had somehow not broken, was strapped to his waist and his enthusiasm was addictive. "Are you ready to go?"

Savitri slipped the bracelet onto her wrist. "Yes." Her chest felt liberated. "Let's go to Darchan."