Excerpt:
PROLOGUE
5000 years ago
Rajasthan, India
In the small,
secluded village Kendraa somewhere in the middle of 500,000 km2of desert and home
to only about three hundred or so people, residents halted their work of
woodcutting, ceramics, and making dung cakes and rushed into their Wigwam huts.
Five minutes passed, and then the village’s mukhiya, Ram, a fifty-five-year-old
who looked like he was thirty, began to patrol, scrutinizing whether everyone
had secured themselves in their huts. From the way the villagers had run and
how Ram was inspecting the village, it was crystal clear that it was their
routine; each of them was aware of the regular impending doom that escalated at
or after dusk.
After everyone
had locked themselves in, and when Ram found no one outside still working or
wandering around, he locked himself in his own hut. Two other huts flanked it
on each side, and they stood only a few inches away from the dirt road.
In one of the
huts near to Ram’s, a child sat with his father.
“I’m scared,
papa,” said a boy after a brief look at his father,who was sitting on the
ground against the wall.The man securedhis child in a hug with an expression of
dread, startled at his son’s rush of feelings. Then he forced a fake smile,
patted his son’s back, and kissed his forehead, assuring him that he was safe
with his dad.The boy’s fear vanished, and he smiled back. All the while, the
child’s mother sat against the wall opposite, hugging her knees and crying
silently, keeping her face hidden in the hollow between her legs and breast to
prevent scaring her son.
In one of the
other huts, another wife cried, this one hugging her husband.
“She ate my
brother last month, my sister last week, and your brother yesterday. I don’t
want to lose you.”
She was talking
about an evil lady who visited the village after dusk and enjoyed massacring
humans and eating their flesh.
A sense of
apprehension dangled over every hut.
* * *
At the end of
the desert, in a cave a few miles away from the village’s border, a churel
(witch) named Dali glowed in the moonless night.She began to consume negative
powers from the environment, levitating herself with her eyes closed and hands
wide open. Dali, whom no one could kill with any weapon known to man, appeared
out of nowhere about a year ago and had resided in the cave near Kendraa
Village ever since. She did this not only because she had found humans to hunt
but also for her own security.
Though it was
true no one could kill her with any type of known weapon, the villagers didn’t
know that she had a fatal flaw: she could be captured in any object and killed
by fire. She knew if she began hunting humans in a bigger kingdom, a king might
find a tantrik, the one who has thorough knowledge about mysticism and magic
rituals, rishi (a sage), or someone else with this knowledge. They might
capture with the help of a devotional hymn, black magic, tantra, or curse, or
even execute her. But Kendraa Village was secluded; very few people knew about
it, and it was rare that a traveler or a rishi passed by.
The villagers
believed in God. They worshipped God, day and night, and they knew devotional
hymns well. Yet, there was no one strong enough to use one against Dali—not
enough to weaken her and capture her, and certainly not to terminate her. That
was the reason Dali was completely safe here.
* * *
“I have heard
that churels become strong on the moonless night,” said a teenage girl to her
sister in the hut that stood in the center of the village. “Is it true? And if
it is, how?”
“Everyone
believes it,” said the sister. “So it must be. I don’t know exactly how.
But people say
the negative vibes we spread every day through our anger, jealousy, and other
bad feelings become the churel’s fuel. She sucks this energy on the moonless
night, and she becomes much more powerful.”
* * *
The wind
whooshed as Dali exited her cave. Ten feet tall and two hundred years old, she
was an ugly churel with a wrinkly dark face. She walked toward the village on
her abnormal feet, which pointed backwards, looking around with her pure-white
eyes and smiling broadly, showing her uneven, rotten teeth. When she was
halfway to the village, she began to levitate, gliding the rest of the way with
lightning bolt speed.
When she reached
Kendraa, Dali halted in the air over the huts in the center. She looked around
with a grin on her face, happy to find everyone had locked themselves in their
huts due to the terror she wrought.
She let out a
booming laugh in her croaky voice.
“She’s here,”
screamed a girl, hiding under a blanket in horror.
“Everything will
be alright, sweetie,” whispered the girl’s mom, stroking her back.
The girl stayed
quiet, not reacting to her mother’s warmth.
“On this
moonless night, I will gain more powers. I will become immortal,” Dali’s voice
rang out, loud enough to enter every ear inside the huts.“After having the
flesh and blood of more than two hundred.”
Camels grunted
from where they weretied to skinny wooden posts, yearning to run away to
protect themselves.
Everyone stayed
absolutely quiet, trying not to breathe to avoid producing even the slightest
sound, sweating profusely in trepidation of their death. Dali’s cackle wafted
through the air, scaring the hell out of the villagers who were praying to God
for help.
Suddenly, the
camels rose into the air. Dali then began to squeeze their bodies by only
staring at them and clenching her right fist. She sucked out their blood,which
floated out of the animals’ crushed bodies and into her mouth.
The night grew
darker, and the wind whooshed faster and faster, rapidly swirling the sand in
the air, as if Mother Nature herself was upset for the innocents.
The empty bodies
of the camels fell to the ground; it seemed as if they were not corpses but
bags full of shattered skeletons. No trace of blood or flesh remained.
Dali licked the blood from her lips.
Her eyes rolled
over the huts as another grin came over her face.
The villagers’
hearts beat even faster; they knew their death was nearing. All of them wished
for a miracle that could save them from Dali. They continued praying; many of
them asked for God himself to come to earth and end Dali’s after-life.
Each day before
now, Dali had come to Kendraa to kill only one of them, but tonight seemed
special for her. She seemed to want to have a party. She wanted to kill almost
the entire village in a bid to become immortal, and now only God could save
them. Or, more precisely, their courage and hidden skill to fight the churel.
Their ability to sing a devotional hymn, find the courage to face the churel
and the courage to fight her. That could save them.
Dali soared in
the air, glaring at the huts and generating a violent fire bolt. The huts
suddenly ignited in fire and everyone rushed out. Seeing the villagers trying
to run away from her, screaming in angst, Dali laughed aloud.She was enjoying
this more than she had on any other night.
She began
capturing people—children, youngsters, women, even those who were pregnant,
elders—stopping them from escaping one after the other and consuming them. The
desert reverberated with the villagers’ gut-wrenching screams.
Ram and some other villagers had managed to escape her grasp, and they now
stood on the dirt road, watching as she killed their friends and neighbors.
They felt miserable watching their beloved ones die, but they were also afraid
and helpless.
As mukhiya of
this village, it was Ram’s duty to keep everyone safe from the outsiders, solve
the issues between the villagers, and make sure there was no crime. He was the
decision-maker for the inhabitants and caretaker of the village.
He had to come
up with something to save them all from this bloodthirsty churel.
He looked around
with wet eyes, hoping to find something that could help him kill Dali. However,
before he could find something, in the distance to his right, his blurred
vision glimpsed a man-like image coming toward him. He rubbed his eyes and squinted
to get a better look.
Ram saw a rishi,
about seventy years old, coming out of the darkness. He had a divine muscular
physique and was walking toward him, holding a kamandal (container for holy
water) in his hand.
Hearing the churel’s
laugh and the villagers’ painful screaming, the rishi paused, fixing his glower
on Dali. Then he paced to the village and stopped beside Ram. He looked into
Ram’s wet eyes, down to his folded hands and then back to his face. He
understood that Ram was requesting he saves his village and the villagers, as
many had done so before in other towns and villages plagued by cruel kings,
asuras, or churels.
The rishi
marched toward Dali in rage.
Dali stopped her
killing and locked her fury-filled eyes onthe rishi, who stood right before
her.
“Stop killing
these innocents,” he said in a voice full of strict, threatening order.
“Or, I’ll have
to kill you.”
“I’m powerful,”
said Dali, laughing at him. “You can’t kill me; you’re just a human.”
Dali’s mind was
full of her own ego; she had beeneasily killing the villagers for a year. In
her arrogance, she had forgotten that this rishi could set her on fire and end
her terror forever. In this moment, she believed she was the most
powerful being on the earth.
“How dare you
call me an ordinary human,” he raged. “You have made a life-threatening error.
I’m a divine rishi. I warn you one last time to leave this place.”
“I’m not afraid
of you, ordinary human,” sneered Dali.
The rishi
shifted the kamandal to his other hand and took some holy water from it.
Dali kept
grinning at him. “You can do nothing.”
Enraged at the
insult, the rishi replied, “I curse you—if you kill one more human, his blood
will turn into poison for you, and you will burn in an intense fire.”
With that, he
threw the water onto her body.
“Let’s see who
wins!” said Dali, staring at him, her voice showing her importance.
She extended her
arm and grabbed a young pregnant woman nearby by the neck. Her husband screamed
and ran after his wife. When Dali brought the woman near her face, she glanced
at the rishi, before locking her gaze onthe woman’s scared eyes, and without
pause, she thrust her sharp nail into the woman’s stomach. She pulled it back
out, and she showed the nail, dripping with the woman’s blood, to the rishi. She
was mocking him—his curse would fail.
The rishi stared
at her with his intense look of anger, and when Dali brought the nail to her
mouth to suck the blood, a lightning bolt struck her.It was as if her
negativity—which she had spread throughout the galaxy—was coming back for her.
She roared in pain.
The rishi
smiled, seeing his curse had worked, and he happily murmured, “Har Har
Mahadev!”
Dali began to
cough and choke, and the pregnant woman slipped from her hand.
Dali tried to
attack the rishi, but the poison spread through her body swiftly, stopping her
powers and weakening her.
The villagers
watched in awe as her body began to steadily turn green. Before she died, she
said, “I’ll return. I’ll return, immortal.”
The poison
spread through her nerves from top to bottom and choked her completely. Her
paralyzed body, now completely green, fell to the ground and ignited in fire.
The villagers
stared at her burning body, blank expressions on their faces.
Meanwhile, Ram
quickly ran to the rishi and touched his feet to have his blessings.
The rishi gave a
quick touch to his head. “Long live,” he blessed.
After Dali’s dead body had turned to ash, the
rishi sprinkled some holy water on it, and it disappeared. The villagers bowed
to him, an act of thanks for protecting them from the wicked churel, and after
showering his blessings on them, he left the village.
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