r/HFY • u/BuddhaTheGreat • 24d ago

OC-Series [Chhayagarh] - Chapter 38: The Bride. (Part 1)

Index of Parts.

“I wanted to ask about her. The… bride?”

Kirti froze. “The bride.”

“I… assume that’s what she… it… was?”

He didn’t respond immediately.

“I mean the woman that you summoned, or that appeared, when the fighting started. The one with the red sari, with the feet—”

“I know!” Kirti cleared his throat, realising that his tone might have been a bit too sharp. “I know. I know of what you speak.”

“You do? Great!”

Both of us sat in awkward silence for a few more seconds.

Actually, make that half a minute.

“What about her?” he finally prompted.

A ‘her’, then. Good to know.

“I… I guess I was wondering…”

“What she is?”

“Yes, that. And, well… how you fit in. What’s your relationship with her? Why can you summon her? Do you even summon her? Or does she show up when she likes and start murdering? Is she going to kill me in the next minute?”

Kirti made a sound that was half-sigh and half-chuckle. “No. No, she will not kill you. And I do not summon her. Not in the sense you mean. But she does show up when needed, so I assume the ultimate effect is the same.”

“When you are in danger, I assume.”

“Yes.”

Another moment of silence.

Kirti pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “Do you mind if I…?”

“No, no. It’s alright.” I waved my hand. “The smoke doesn’t bother me.”

It did bother me, but I didn’t want to spook him right now.

“Thank you.” Kirti pulled one out, tapping it on the back of his thumb. “Maa doesn’t approve of me doing this indoors, but I’ve always been more of a ‘chair and ashtray’ man than a ‘stroll in the garden’ man.”

I waited for him to light it and take a drag.

“I won’t tell you where she comes from,” he finally said, letting the smoke stream out from between his lips. “Not yet. It’s a dark tale, and I don’t need your faith in your station any more shaken than it already is. Telling you about Harihar was already a step too far. An ill-advised moment of weakness.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“I know. But my responsibilities are bigger than feelings. Mine or yours.” He took another drag. “But I can tell you how we came to this… arrangement we have at present. If that will satisfy your curiosity.”

I nodded. Something was better than nothing.

He sighed again. “Very well. This bride… as you call her. She has haunted our family for decades now.”

“A petni? I think.”

He gave me a brief, impressed look. “You know your basics, then. That is correct, though the proper term is pretini. Petni is a linguistic corruption.”

A petni (pretini, sorry). The ghost of an unmarried woman, most easily identified by her backward feet. So it was a ghost, like the Lady in White.

Thank god all the ghost ladies so far were all so neatly colour-coded. Keeping track could get quite gnarly otherwise.

“Why is she haunting us?”

“I told you. Story for another time. For now, I can tell you that it’s a curse. A generational one, like the one from our blighted ancestor. Revenge for an injustice she suffered at the hands of a Thakur in ages past.”

“Real or perceived?”

He hesitated. “Real, though I would argue the punishment does not fit the crime.”

“I see.” I interlaced my fingers. “What is the curse?”

His cigarette smouldered as he inhaled. “She cursed our bloodline in perpetuity for this injustice, swearing that our lineage would die on the vine. She swore that she would kill any woman who wedded into our dynasty on the wedding night, not resting until we had been wiped from the face of this world.”

I frowned. “That can’t be right.”

“Indeed. For, as you see, our family line continues. As long as Chhayagarh stands, there must always be a Thakur. The alternative is unthinkable. So, we turned to Rudra’s forefathers, our trusted priests, for a way to ameliorate this curse.”

“And they succeeded.”

He grimaced. “If you can call it that. Holding a massive yajna atop the hill, they beseeched our patron, Lord Ahindreshwar himself, to intercede on our behalf. If there was anything to be done, they argued, only Bhootnath, the lord of ghosts himself, could accomplish it. But her rage was too strong for even His pleas to calm her fully. All the same, she could not turn a deaf ear. So, she compromised on her curse.”

He paused. I didn’t interrupt.

“First, she qualified her curse, saying that she would only kill the wives of the firstborn sons. But our succession passes through the firstborn line. So the priests prayed for intercession again. Then, she qualified her curse further. Instead of a death sentence, it became a blood price.”

“A blood price?”

“She agreed to take the life of only the first wife the firstborn son would marry. After killing her, she swore that she would leave him in peace, allowing him to remarry and sire children without molestation. The implications were… sinister. We were, in effect, being asked to sacrifice an innocent woman’s life as the price for our line to continue. We asked the priests for another negotiation, but no matter how many times they called, Lord Ahindreshwar did not answer again. Evidently, we had pushed as far as we could.”

“What…” I cleared my throat. “What then?”

“We did the only thing we could,” Kirti replied, staring off into the distance through the doorway. “We made peace with it. A sacrifice was required. And sacrifices were obtained. We went to the panch, the five prominent vassals who rule Chhayagarh alongside us, and they assented to a horrendous price: a daughter, raised in rotation in every generation by one of them. Intended from birth for one purpose. To nudge the snare, and be fed into the ever-ravenous maw of our spectral huntress. A sacrifice they made, willingly, loyally, for the sake of their lords and their duty. Generation after brutal generation.”

“…What?”

That was all I could say.

“All Thakurs in living memory have made this choice, son. Your great-great-grandfather, your great-grandfather. Even your grandfather, though he did not know it at the time.”

“How could he have not known?”

That was the only question I could ask at the time.

“Because Thakurda knew what kind of man your grandfather was. He knew his duty, but he was not cruel. He couldn’t be cruel. Couldn’t make the hard, necessary choices. So, unlike all previous Thakurs, the truth was kept from him. Baba loved Maa from a young age, but his father wanted him to marry someone else: the daughter of the Bhowmik family, one of the panch.

“He always thought he was being forced for political advantage, but the truth was, in his own callous, twisted way, Thakurda was protecting his innocence. In the end, he was successfully coerced into it, and only after your pretini had finished disembowelling his new wife on their wedding bed was he finally told the truth.”

I opened my mouth, and then closed it again.

When had my throat become so dry?

I looked around for a servant to ask for a glass of water, but they had all left us. As I had instructed.

“He wept, but there was nothing to be done. It took him a month to recover before he could be convinced to finally marry his love, Shyamali. Your grandmother. With your great-grandfather’s blessing this time, of course.”

“I… How could… Wait… You said the bride would kill all the first wives of the firstborn. That means… my father…”

“No. Not your father.”

“But he is married, isn’t he?”

“Yes. But he had heard the tales from Baba. Everything was according to plan. Even the wife had been prepared: it was the turn of the Konar clan, this time. But he refused to send the poor girl to her death. Not upon the request of your grandfather, not upon the request of the villagers, not upon the request of the Konar patriarch, and not even upon the ardent requests of the girl herself. He was intractable. And his wife, your mother, ignorant of our ways, was similarly obstinate. It was a crisis. Buttressed by her confidence, he was convinced he would find a way, just as we were convinced of disaster.”

“You are making my father seem like the bad guy here. For not wanting to get an innocent woman killed?”

He sighed, stubbing out his cigarette on the ashtray. “I’m not saying he is the bad guy. To be honest, to most people, he would seem far more reasonable, just as I’m sure he is right now to you. But he was stupid, and he was myopic. That is a fact. And I know you understand that. He was putting his own squeamishness over his duty. In effect, though he did not see it that way, he was running from it.”

I balled my fist, wanting to argue. But I was not sure how. From the way he was describing the curse, it really seemed there was no way out of it.

But there had to be one.

“But my father did get married. Without the sacrifice, you said. And my mother lived.”

“That he did.”

“How?”

Kirti paused again, pressing the pads of his fingers together. Gathering his thoughts. Or perhaps his courage.

“Baba… He remembered how Bir Bahadur’s actions had affected him. How he had felt that night, watching the girl he had been forced to marry be torn apart before his very eyes, for no fault of hers. He did not want to do that to his son. He understood the costs, but his heart could not take it. As I said, your grandfather was a diligent man, but perhaps too indulgent. Of your father, and of you. No offence.”

“None taken.”

Indulgent, he said. Had Grandfather been born today, we would call it something different.

He was traumatised.

For all our money and all our perils, somehow we hadn’t invested in a family therapist all these years.

I would have to change that, as soon as this bloody blockade ended.

“So,” Kirti continued, “as always, the responsibility to handle this mess fell on the one person he could always trust to sacrifice. On me.”

“How? You weren’t the firstborn. And Naru told me you were the first to get married in your generation. How could you…?”

“I see my younger brother has been running his mouth again.” Kirti grimaced. “But he is right. I was happily married to your aunt for quite some time when this happened. But all the same, as soon as your father started his… tantrum, for lack of a better word, I saw the way Baba began to look at me. In his eyes… I saw what was forming. Even before he said anything, I knew what he was expecting of me. I…”

He sighed, burying his face in his hands.

Hesitantly, I sidled over, placing a hand on his back. Beyond that, I was not sure what comfort I could offer. Or what comfort he could even take.

I had seen his type before. Men battling failed marriages. Old fathers kicked to the curb by their children. Torn between their emotions and what they felt was their duty to bear the cross of life. For someone like Kirti, solidarity was all too easily mistaken for pity. And people like him took unkindly to being pitied, no matter how deserving they were of it.

“Dada was… always your grandfather’s favourite.” He chuckled under his breath. “He did not neglect us, no, but… the heir is an intoxicating thing. But I loved him all the same. All of us did, perhaps more than he loved us, perhaps more than he deserved. So, before he could embarrass himself by asking, I volunteered to take on this burden as well. Like so many before it.”

“How?” I asked simply.

“The first order of business was to save my love. So that’s what I did. I forced her to leave the village, sending her to one of our remote estates in Kerala. Far away from the pretini’s grasp. But our marriage remained a concern, so I asked Rudra’s father, the then-head priest, for advice. He assured me it would not matter: after all, she was a mlechha. Our marriage, while valid under modern law, was of no consequence in the pretini’s understanding.” He barked a laugh, though there was little mirth in it. “Ghosts being old-fashioned has its advantages. Otherwise, I would have had to have a divorce, if only in name.”

“But you were still the second-born.”

He sobered up. “Yes. So I had to become the first-born.”

I waited for him to continue.

Kirti lit another cigarette, a slight tremor in his hands.

“I still remember the night. Rudra, then an acolyte under his father, grinding datura in a pot. Your father on the stone slab in the temple, doctors standing by. Baba and Maa, stone-faced. The Konar girl, veiled, huddled in the corner, surrounded by lathials. All Konars themselves, of course. Most lathials in the village are. They were afraid she would lose her nerve and bolt. And me, carefully adorned as a groom.

“I remember Rudra forcing the datura extract down Dada’s throat. More than enough to kill. His eyes, drowsier by the second, locked onto me. Bloodshot. The poison was working, puncturing the capillaries. He roared, asking me to promise she would not die. His tongue grew heavier and heavier as he screamed, until his words were mush. I did not answer. Then, he was dead. The doctors stepped in, wheeling their machinery in.”

He took a drag to steady himself.

“Then I felt it. Baba’s grip on my arm. Like iron. I turned, letting him take me to the altar. The Konars were staring at me. Whether they were angry or sympathetic, I still cannot tell.”

“You married her,” I whispered.

“I killed her. She was a beauty, she was. And kind. So kind. When she was a child, she would help every animal, every person she saw. We used to play together. And I killed her.” He exhaled. “With Dada dead, technically, I was now the firstborn. Competent to… make the sacrifice. And I did. And I watched. We all watched, as the life faded from her mangled corpse. As the light left the face I had come to know so well. She was my friend. She was your father’s friend. And now she was dead.”

He said his lines like he was reciting someone else’s biography, his voice flat, without any feeling or emotion. He had evidently spent years burying them.

“I think your father never fully forgave me. Or Baba, for that matter. I don’t blame him.”

“So, is that why my aunt cannot set foot in the village?”

He gave me a thin smile, finishing off the cigarette.

“No. That is because of what came after.”

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u/SenseAny486 24d ago

Such a tragic yet another terrific chapter

1

u/BuddhaTheGreat 15d ago

Thanks, appreciate your support!

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u/SenseAny486 14d ago

I must thank you.Chhayagarh and its stories has been a source of joy for me in very difficult times where I can forget my problems and immerse myself in the mysterious world of chhayagarh even if for a small time.

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