"That's not all she's made clear, though," Avalon was referencing my magical reaction to Jericho, I felt what he meant, but I wasn't sure Jericho understood. At least I hoped he didn't understand.
"Avalon, seriously. Let's move on. One day, when Eden is ready, I will be ready too. But until then, I'm not going to get in her way. She can make her own decisions and choose her own path. I'm not going to even try to change her mind. Have you seen her listen to anyone else? Ever? Or let things like rules and decrees get in her way? She is the most self-determined, amazing woman I have ever met and if I have to wait for her, I will. So let's just drop it," Jericho picked his book up and held it in front of his face, blocking Avalon and proving that the conversation was over.
"Jericho, that is seriously pathetic," Avalon laughed, satisfied with where Jericho stood even if he wasn't going to share that opinion with him.
Jericho ignored Avalon completely and I felt like I had seen more than enough. I shouldn't have been eavesdropping, it was wrong. It was very wrong, I felt awful. Suddenly I was more than a ball of nerves, I was a ticking time bomb of explosive energy and I felt terrible.
It didn't seem fair that Jericho would be such an amazing guy. He deserved someone truly incredible. I certainly wasn't a good enough girl for him and he shouldn't be spending his time standing around waiting for me. I was taken. And I was in love. It wasn't fair that he was just waiting for me. I was never going to be there for him.
A sinking feeling washed over me and I decided I had enough of thinking. I closed my eyes and turned off my brain. I couldn't think about unchangeable things right now, I had to focus on India. I would be landing in a matter of hours and I still needed to figure out how to disguise my magic in a place God, Himself, apparently designed in order to reveal the most secret parts of our magic.
My relationship with Kiran seemed impossible. A relationship with Jericho was actually impossible, but I had more important things to worry about. I had an actual impossible task facing me and if I let these boys cloud my mind any further I wouldn't have to think about any of them anymore, I would be in the bottom of a Romanian prison pit, spending the rest of my life, which apparently would be the rest of forever, wishing I had never met those two.
Chapter Twenty
I stepped off the plane in Bangalore to a wave of humid heat, the feeling I needed to shower and five women in elaborate scarlet saris with gold stitching pressing their palms together in a sort of half bow. None of them looked me in the eye, but I could not take my eyes off them.
They were all different ages, from mid-twenties to middle age. They had long dark hair wrapped in elegant braids or hanging waist-length with golden thread tied through them. They had beautiful tanned Indian skin and between their eyes was the customary red dot, most Hindu women wore.
Elegant floral designs made out of an orange flower paste, called henna, wrapped their right arms from finger tips to shoulder blades. The pretty flowers intertwined each other in delicate brush strokes and mimicked the exotic beauty of the five women that would be my stewards.
I stood at the bottom of the moving stairwell feeling grossly under-dressed and more unprepared for the task ahead of me than I ever had. I mirrored their bow, palms pressed tightly together and nose resting on my middle fingers and if I would have been allowed to talk I would have gladly called on my yoga knowledge and said, "Namaste."
The vow of silence held my tongue and when the women dropped their hands, I followed suit, brushing my plain, unpainted fingers against the tan cargo pants I felt appropriate for the trip. I shouldered my back pack, still trying to get used to its stiffness. A pang of regret washed over me as I remembered my beloved old bag and how it had gotten me through my last overseas trip.
The five women turned around silently in unison and began walking towards a black limousine that could have been plucked from the early to mid-nineteen hundreds. They stopped at the door, opening it for me and allowing me to get in first.
I crawled in the hot back seat and sunk down on the scorching leather. I was already sweating and all I had done was walk from the plane to the car. The women piled in after me and the driver placed my carry-on suitcase and backpack in the trunk before sitting back down into the driver's seat and taking off.
The windows were rolled down and the hot, humid breeze blew through them in a barely satisfying way. The Kendrick airstrip was located outside of the actual city of Bangalore, so I regretfully never saw anything but the outline of the city. We drove through winding, pot-hole stricken roads, passing small farms with nothing more than shanty's for dwelling places and starving children waving us by.
Every once in a while we would pass a temple, either a closed structure, that housed the statues of exotic gods, or outdoor pavilions with tall monuments to Buddha in the middle. Red flags waved from the Buddhist temples and at all the religious sites were thousands of candles lit in prayer to a deity created from stone.
The road was relatively empty and the driver made good time. The women next to me remained silent, their expressions not even changing. I continued to sweat well into the twilight of evening and eventually gave up on consciousness all together. The trip to the palace would take two days of driving and one full day of riding on an elephant, whatever that meant. I was exhausted and sorely jet-lagged; if I couldn't talk, I decided I'd better just go to sleep.
I drifted off with the jungle growing denser around me. The call of wild birds and laughter of monkeys was my sound track to the exotic Indian world I had entered. Even in darkness, the colors of India seemed more vibrant than those at home. The red of the saris seemed brighter than usual, the green of the thick, long-branched trees of the jungle seemed more vivid and the sun that grew lower in the western horizon seemed to glow in unusual hues of pink, orange and yellow. India was enchanting and the mystical feeling of a greater magic waiting for me was pulling at my blood, sending pinpricks of feral electricity rushing through me, draining me from any energy I had remaining.
When I woke, the sun was streaming in through the opened limousine windows and the car was pulled over to the side of the road. I felt disoriented and had no idea where we were. The trees around the car had thick trunks and were dense with leaves. Colorful birds and small, gangly monkeys hopped from tree branch to tree branch in a ballet of jungle life.
I sat up, realizing I was alone in the car. I was drenched in sweat, my shirt soaked through and my hair felt like I had just gotten out of the shower. I wanted to call out to the women, but stopped myself, remembering the vow of silence.
I crawled out of the back seat, thankful for the humid breeze that drifted through my clothes. The car had been stifling and the cooler mountain morning air felt like heaven.
The women were surrounding a small roadside stand eating something out of homemade newspaper packets. I approached them carefully, not sure if I was allowed to. They smiled graciously at me, and a middle aged woman with long braids and a gold head scarf held up her finger to me.
She turned to the vendor, an impossibly skinny elderly man with snow-white hair and a stooped back, and gave him the same gesture. He produced another newspaper packet that the woman then held out to me.
I took it from her, pressing my palms together and offering another small bow, frustrated that even my manners were commanded silent under the traditional vow. She smiled at me and bobbed her head back and forth as if to say it was no problem.
I un-wrapped the newspaper, while the driver and the vendor talked animatedly in a language I couldn't even begin to understand. Their sentences seemed to move impossibly fast and I was relieved that not everyone around me was under the constrictions of silence. Inside the newspaper was a doughy bread, I had to assume was made without yeast. I was pleasantly surprised after biting into it that there was a fried egg inside sprinkled with a mild curry. Whatever the name of the native food, it was the perfect breakfast and I devoured the delicacy in seconds.
After everyone else finished their breakfast and the driver and vendor shook hands, we all piled back into the limousine for the continuation of our journey. The roads seemed to worsen as we drove higher in altitude and deeper into the jungle, the driver had to significantly slow his pace and become increasingly creative.
The jungle grew more exotic the further in we drove. The vegetation was like nothing I had left behind in Omaha, and the animals were wild and feral. The sounds were the most frightening part, loud moans or high pitched screeching sounds made terrifying interruptions to our otherwise silent drive. I wanted desperately to be reassured that they belonged only to large birds or friendly mammals, but with everyone restricted to their own thoughts, mine grew increasingly more fearful.
We drove through the heat of the day; the women eventually produced small hand held fans and offered me one. I fanned myself frantically, hoping I wouldn't be judged on appearance any time soon.
We stopped another time during the day for lunch. This time the roadside vendor produced newspaper packets of rice and a curry sauce. There were no utensils provided so I had to watch until the women dug in with one cupped hand, bringing the food to their mouths between their fingers.
I followed suit, but felt more like a barbarian than the custom dictated. Somehow the stewards were perfectly capable of getting the food from hand to mouth without smearing it all over their faces and dropping it clumsily at their feet. I could not figure it out though and so by the end of the meal, more rice had landed on the ground than in my mouth. The floor was a feast for all sorts of large insects that I would have been perfectly happy to never have met in my life.
Since no napkin was provided either, my black fitted t-shirt had to play the role of paper towel and give me back some of my dignity the delicious, spicy curry sauce had taken from me. My fingers were stained in an orange reminder that I would be making Indian food a permanent addition to my diet when I returned to Omaha.
At the end of the day, nightfall fell fast in the thick jungle. There was no room to see a sunset and with the canopy of trees blocking the full shine of the sun, one minute there was day light and the next we were enveloped in darkness.
Eventually the driver pulled off of the main highway and onto an extremely bumpy dirt road. I bounced along in the backseat feeling like an earthquake victim, and sorely apologetic to the women next to me that I kept jabbing with my boney elbows. I was certain the old limousine was ready to just fall apart at any minute.
At the end of the dirt road was a small wooden building with open windows and a light on. The driver stopped the car in front of what I could tell was a sort of house. My increasingly exhausted looking stewards piled out of the vehicle; I followed suit. The driver left us to drive around to the back of the house.
I stopped before entering, half wondering if this was a trap. If I was going to lure someone away from everyone protecting them and either kidnap them or kill them, this creepy shack would definitely be the place to do it.
The house was surrounded by a small clearing but the jungle wasn't far away and the deafening night sounds coming from every direction were the ultimate decision; I would rather face whatever was in that kidnapper's haven than the army of wild animals seemingly surrounding me on every side.
I swallowed my fear and entered the run-down house with my magic ready to react. It all turned into nothing; however, when I nearly released the electricity on the five women sitting down to a meal on an old door propped up on two buckets sitting unsteadily and awkwardly low to the floor.