The part of New Delhi we're exploring is just like the dining pavilion back in the village- comfortably chaotic. A hundred stalls and vendors peddle treats, brightly printed fabrics, and toys. The sound of thousands of different people going about their business mingles with the honking of horns, and the whole street is overpowered with the delicious smell of something frying.
Mina, Nasrin, and I wander through the hoard of people aimlessly. We've all shed our armor so, fortunately, we don't look too strange. Nasrin leads confidently, Mina fusses with the hem of her shirt anxiously in the middle, and I take up the rear. I'm not sure of exactly where we're going, but Nasrin seems to. She turns back and shouts for our attention over the noise of the crowd.
"I know you guys probably think that I'm crazy for bringing you here, but I promise that not just leading you on a wild goose chase. I read through some of Mina's newspapers on the plane ride here, and I think we were right to come. There's a huge problem with stray cattle in the streets here, and this street in particular has had more cow related accidents than others around the city. I think that if the bull were to be anywhere, it would be here."
I shoot a sly look at Mina, and she returns a shy smile. Her books did end up being helpful after all.
Nasrin freezes in her tracks ahead of us, and because I was distracted by Mina's success, I almost slam into her. Her eyes widen, and a panicked makes its way onto my face. "What is it, Nasrin?" I ask. Goosebumps erupt all along my arm.
"Shut up," she hisses, signaling for us to halt our advances. She points a silent finger up, and I follow it to a wire stretched between storefronts overhead. An exotic golden bird is perched there, staring at up with its piercing eyes. It's the most beautiful bird- or animal for that matter, that I've ever seen.
It's a bit bigger than a hawk, and its feathers seem to be made of pure gold. It has a long golden beak to match, and its red eyes are a sharp contrast to its color scheme. It literally glows in the sunlight, and when it opens its beak, the most enchanting chirp escapes its large frame. It's like the stories of sirens luring sailors with their voices. Something inside of me draws me to the bird.
Mina releases a long breath. "That's the Shahbaz," she whispers reverently. "It's literally a god." I look around. Somehow, the three of us seem to be the only people that have noticed the magnificent creature.
"How come no one else seems to care? Is it normal to see giant golden birds in India?"
Nasrin shakes her head but doesn't turn to face me. "Regular mortals can't comprehend magical things the way that we do. That's why you never see stuff like this on the news."
I wait for either Mina or Nasrin to elaborate, and my spine tingles. They don't ever get the opportunity. The bird takes off, and Nasrin doesn't hesitate to sprint after it, completely disregarding every unfortunate stranger in her path. She pushes them aside, leaving Mina and I to scramble after her and try to apologize to the disgruntled victims on our way.
We race through the streets, nearly getting run over cars several times. There's just so many people and cars and stores everywhere. It's making my head spin. I stumble and fall behind my friends slightly. I curse under my breath and push myself harder.
After several blocks of running and several angry threats from locals, we end up in front of a building that looks a bit like a warehouse, all in various states of pain. Mina doubles over panting, my breath is a bit labored, and Nasrin doesn't seem winded at all.
I wipe away a bead of sweat from my forehead. "Where's the bird?" I ask, searching the sky.
Nasrin huffs. "Who cares? It obviously led us where we needed to go."
I frown and try to get a grasp on where we are. The warehouse, or barn, or whatever it is, is as tall as a three-story house and supported by blue beams. The air is dusty, and smells of manure and animals. People wander around busily, all dressed in casual wear. "I still don't know where we are," I admit.
"A goshala," Mina chirps.
"A what?"
"A goshala," she continues. "It's a cow shelter, and a big one at that. There's lots of them in India."
I stare up at the barn with a new sense of understanding. "You think it's here?" I inquire.
"Duh," Nasrin says, confidently strolling forward. It seems a bit strange to me that no one seems to question three young girls walking into their massive cow shelter, but nevertheless, I grin. For once, the universe seems to be on my side.
We wander in. The shelter is expansive, so large that I can't even see where the pens of animals end. Bulls and cows are separated into pens adjacent to each other. The pens are made of concrete barriers topped by blue and red metal fences.
There must be thousands of beasts here. We move along the front of their pens. To me, it seems as if they're filled to the breaking point, but the cows stare lazily back at us, unbothered. Nasrin pulls a face at the smell of it all. The air is heavy with the aroma of straw and manure. I peer over a fence in search of the bull to no avail.
Normal workers are sparse in the area of the shelter we're visiting, so it's a bit of a surprise when I see a pair of men in the distance. They appear to be shorter than the average person, and as we near, I see that their skin is a bright shade of red. They both have stubby little horns and pointed goatees to compensate for the lack of hair on their shiny heads.
"What are those things?" I voice.
Mina looks just as baffled as I do. "Those are a kind of daeva," she says, clearly confused. "I've never heard of them going anywhere outside of the Middle East."
I furrow my brows. "But what are they?"
Mina bites her lip. "They're minor gods that aren't worthy of worship, or gods that are to be rejected. At least that's their technical definition. I always just kind of thought of them as demons."
Nasrin moans, clearly aggravated. "I don't want to deal with this right now," she complains.
I raise an inquisitive eyebrow at Mina. "I'm not trying to invalidate your annoyance, Nasrin, but they don't look like that much of a threat to me."
Nasrin shoots me a nasty glare. "Daeva are insufferable. They're stupid but determined." She grumbles something about not appreciating my input. "And," she continues, "they can't die. They just keep on coming back."
We get closer and the daeva peer at us with their squashy faces. Their facial features remind me of pigs. They're red in the face, pot-bellied, and they have leathery little wings on their hairy backs. They don't pay much attention to us as we approach; or maybe it's just that we aren't as interesting as the animated conversation they're having.
They wave their hands around as they argue. One of them groans. "We should just ditch. There's no way that we can get one horn off this thing, let alone both."
"Big boss says that we have to bring both horns back or we're dead," the other says, making an exaggerated slicing motion across his neck.
"But you know what else can kill us? A giant fire bull!" the first demon retorts.
"I thought they couldn't die," I say.
"They can't," Nasrin spits out. "They're just being theatrical."
They bicker back and forth, and my head spins as I try to keep track of who said what. They're identical, and their voices are nearly the same. One of them wears tattered jeans on its hairy legs and the other sports linen pants to match my standard pair from Visya. I decide that the denim enthusiast daeva will be called Thing One.
"What are you vermin doing here?" Nasrin snarls at them. I smack her arm.
"Take it down a notch," I whisper, but she ignores me.
Thing Two points a clawed finger at our group. "You can see us?" He asks. His voice is thick and slow like molasses, and I fight the urge to roll my eyes. These guys are walking stereotypes.
Nasrin actually rolls her eyes. "Yes, we can, you bozos." A look of panic crosses the pair's faces.
"I knew that spell Big Boss put on us wouldn't be enough," Thing One whines. He gestures to us. "If these mortals can see us, then we'll definitely get caught by one of Ramin's lackeys."
Nasrin lifts a hand like a mother threatening to smack the back of her child's head. Thing One's cringes. "Don't patronize us! We're from Visya. Use your fat heads. How often do you see girls who are nearly seven feet tall?"
Thing Two frowns as if Nasrin presented him a difficult concept to grasp. The demon's lips curl into sneers. I guess they feel threatened by Nasrin's logic. They raise clawed hands and spread their feet apart, ready for a fight. Nasrin scoffs and reaches down. She flicks Thing Two on the forehead. "Knock it off!" she exclaims.
I raise a hand too. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. We don't want to fight you," I start. "We just want to know what you're doing here," I say slowly, sending a deliberate glare to Nasrin.
The daeva slowly drop their defensive stances and scoot closer together. One of them rubs their toe guiltily in the dirt. "We're not doing anything," he of them says, blatantly lying. I stand on my tiptoes in an effort to see what's behind them, and they move in unison to block my line of vision. I glance to Mina and Nasrin. Mina crinkles her eyebrows, and a sneer of annoyance is plastered across Nasrin's pretty features. She towers over the daeva and can clearly see whatever is behind them.
"So, you're saying that there are absolutely no magic bulls behind you?" Nasrin asks dryly. The demons whip their heads back and forth wildly.
"No!" They cry out simultaneously.
My patience is about as thin as Nasrin's right now. "Okay, we know that you're lying. Why don't you just move out of our way so we can get back there?"
The daeva hesitate, and Nasrin seethes. "Move now or we'll make you move," she demands. The demons stand firm, and something inside my friend visibly snaps.
She reaches out and shoves Thing One backwards. He stumbles, thrusting his hands out to catch himself, and accidentally grabs hold of the latch locking the very monster we were bickering about in. Time seems to slow down as it comes undone, and I make eye contact with every individual in close proximity.
My panicked gaze locks with Mina, Thing One, Thing Two, and even the bull, who looks just as surprised at its newfound freedom as I feel. I finally look to Nasrin. I can't hear her over the pulsing in my ears, but the single word she mouths is crystal clear. Run.
The five of us take off, the daeva fighting for a spot in the front of the line. Bewildered workers shriek and leap to the side as we pass by, but I hardly pay them any attention as I race out of the shelter and onto the busy street. My worries intensify. Judging by the thunderous noise behind us, all the other bulls that shared a pen with the sarsoak took advantage of the open gate as well.
The pounding hooves of the bull behind me motivate my arms to pump faster. I haven't even bothered to glance back and catch a glimpse of the monster, but by the sound of it, I shouldn't. The people outside also scream and jump out of the way, but I have a feeling that they would all be a lot more terrified if they knew that the beast chasing us was not just in fact rampant bull, but a super pissed, two-ton, fiery animal that wants to kill us.
We reach an intersection in the road, and an instinct demanding to be acted on tugs at my gut. It doesn't make any sense that we're trying to escape this problem. We can't outrun the bull, and I'm the only one who has any chance at stopping it. My friends and the demons all turn a hard left, but I stop and turn around, not letting any self-doubt stop me from what I need to do.
I inhale deeply. My heart raises at a million miles an hour. There's the possibility that I am momentarily going to be blasted to ashes, gored, or trampled by the stampede we released. I ignore my inhibitions. There's no time to think. I raise my extended palms to the sky, and step back as a wall of stone rises from the ground, successfully creating a partition between the bull and I. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Nasrin and Mina creep back around the corner cautiously just in time to see the sarsoak ram into headfirst into the wall. An explosion of dust showers me, sending me into a coughing fit. Even though I can't really see if my attempts were successful or not, my heart soars in pride.
The dust clears, but the air is still thick with the fear and screams of the locals. The bull's horns poke through the earthen blockade, and cracks ripple across its surface. The earth still rumbles with the rest of the stampede in close pursuit. My confidence crumbles, and even though I'm feeling desolate about our current situation, Nasrin finds an opportunity in the chaos.
While the daeva are distracted, she grabs hold of one of each of their thick arms. They may be short, but they're obviously very heavy, as she struggles to lift them into the air. They claw and scratch at the air, successfully nicking Nasrin a few times. Somehow, it doesn't seem to occur to them that they could just fly away. Maybe their bodies are too fat for the little wings on their backs.
Nasrin screams in aggravation, but the daeva mostly just hit each other in their escape attempts. She lifts them higher and higher above the street. By-passers stare up at them, their expressions an even mixture of confusion and terror. I wonder what they see.
"Now, Kiana, now!" Nasrin calls out in the form of a strangled scream. I look around, panicked. I don't know what she wants from me. She lets out a guttural screech that somehow perfectly articulates how much of an idiot she thinks I am. "Get rid of them," she demands. The bull roars in response to her plea, and more dust flies into the air. My eyes smart.
I whip around searching for a solution. "I can't! I'll hit you," I exclaim desperately. "Can't you just drop them or something? You're pretty high up."
Nasrin screams again. "JUST DO SOMETHING!"
I close my eyes and breathe in deeply, drowning out the noise of the battle and concentrating on my connection to the ground beneath my feet. Warmth courses through my body. This is it. The big finale.
The whole street begins to shake. People wobble around as they lose their footing, and loose pieces of buildings tumble to the ground. I summon all my strength, and a massive chunk of the street rises in the air with my extended palms. All the different materials I've called on whip around in the air wildly and slam into each other as if they were caught in a tornado, sending bits of debris soaring every which way. I force them into a ball. They pulse as if they're alive, producing the an unpleasant grinding and crunching. Civilians let out terrified shrieks that mingle with my own pained screaming. Every last bit of energy pours into the task at hand, and it hurts.
I will the ball of asphalt, dirt, and stone in their direction at the exact moment that the demons slip from Nasrin's grip. They fall through the air flailing wildly, and I thrust my hands forward. The ball of earth follows suit. The demons sail through the air, attached at the stomach to my gigantic earthen cannonball. If I wasn't so drained, the sight would have been comical, cartoonish even.
The wall holding back the sarsoak lets out a loud crack, and I whip desperately to the side. I know that I should just pull another wall from the ground, but my energy is so sapped from my last two feats that I can't do anything. I collapse in a heap. I glance over to Mina, who's already a step ahead of me. She's plucked a stone from the top of the bull's temporary prison and she lifts it above her head dramatically. She smashes it down on one of the bull's horns with as much might as I'm guessing she can muster. The appendage looks mostly unaffected. Mina rams the stone into the horn again. I watch from the ground, so weak that I can barely lift my head to observe.
The horn pops off with a disgusting crunch after more than a few hits, but before it reaches the ground, the Shahbaz swoops from the sky and collects it in its wickedly sharp talons. I don't have the energy to be surprised. I try to follow it, but I lose concentration. My vision is spotty, and I'm struggling to keep my eyes open.
Mina heaves, the stone still in her hand as she watches the bird's flight. The bull lets out an anguished cry and Mina turns towards it again. I smile proudly as she shouts aggressively and smashes off the other horn. The bull shakes its head in surprise and falls to the ground with a thud that shakes the earth beneath me.
The last thing I can remember before I lose consciousness is the triumphant grin that overtakes my features.
...
Author's note
I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Please don't forget to interact with the chapter. Vote, share, and comment, if you feel so inclined. How did you like the chapter? What was your favorite part? Is there anything that could be improved? I'd love to read your thoughts.
Thanks so much for reading.
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