Chapter 17 – Shivan
In the midst of her annoyed muttering and toweling his hair, Nalan suddenly hugged her tightly and then pulled back, laughing out loud as he had transferred most of the water on him onto her half-sari. She reached out to hit him, but he ran away into the woods at the back of the house and she took off after him.
Well, so much for the shirt that he had bought!
He threw it on to the rocking chair on the porch and walked around the grounds, getting a feel for the place. It was enormous, he knew, the largest of the three properties that he was acquiring. The house itself sat on a big piece of open land, but the woods behind extended at least two acres that he now looked at with some level of trepidation. He wondered what they could possibly be doing in there; there must be bugs and snakes and undergrowth and overgrowth and crawling things and any number of other variables that really must take offense to humans invading on their space. After several minutes, he decided to see for himself. Why he didn't know… Maybe the fact that the girl appeared to have no known fears in life stuck in his craw… he would like to call her inexperienced and think her stupid, but he was starting to doubt the former and had never for a moment believed that she was the latter. And she clearly had the unencumbered adoration of Nalan, whose judgment for some reason he trusted implicitly. He trusted no one's judgment implicitly. Not even his uncle's and aunt's or Akash's, and they were the only kin he had left and the only ones who received his closest approximation of fondness.
There was something about the boy, though, something that was innocent and wise all at the same time… he had figured out that the boy had a propensity for lying – he hadn't been able to figure out exactly what he lied about – but just the same, he knew that the boy lied… in spite of that, or maybe even because of it, he liked the boy. It helped that the boy didn't know who he really was, not that the boy would care even if he did…
He had been lost in such musings as he navigated his way through the woods, but stopped suddenly when he heard a hiss. He felt the hair on the back of his neck and arms rise up as his heart-rate took a nose-dive before surging to life with an intensity that made him think that it was trying to break out of his chest.
"Don't move." He heard her voice just to his right.
He closed his eyes. What he really wanted to do was bolt.
He took a deep breath just as he felt the swish of her skirts in front of him. He felt out of balance at this unexpected intrusion of his space and grabbed onto her waist to steady himself.
When he opened his eyes, he saw it.
It was a few feet away, its long twisting body with a fully open hood poised right at them.
He didn't realize that his hands had tightened on her waist until he felt her own fingers over his. He thought her intent was to remove his hold on her waist, but it was only a touch of reassurance, surprising him.
He felt someone behind him and knew by the bony hands that came to hold him at the waist that the boy was behind him.
He didn't know if the boy was afraid of if he was merely offering his own brand of guard; whatever it maybe, it was the first time in his life that he felt… protected… and that too by an itty bit of a girl and an eight-year old boy…
He stood still, as did the boy and the girl.
He didn't know what the girl was doing exactly, aside from the fact that if the King Cobra decided to make a go for it, she would be the first in line…
As he had said before, she was not stupid, which meant that she wouldn't really put herself in danger's way to save him… her enemy… which meant that she must know what she is doing.
After what seemed like a staring session that seemed to last eons, although in reality maybe just a few minutes, the snake lowered its hood and slithered away in the opposite direction.
He heard an audible sigh from her suddenly as she fell back against him.
"Amma! Ee Shivan keman tanneyatto. Aro oru puthiyayal ee stathalattu vannunnenganeya ithra pettannarinje?" ("This Shivan is pretty incredible. How did he find out that someone new had encroached on his territory so quickly?)
"What?" he asked, his voice coming out in a croaky whisper.
His hand tightened on her waist in embarrassment and this time she noticed and brought her own hand up to pull his hands away, although inconspicuously. He looked down at her in surprise when she turned to look back at him in profile.
"You're lucky that I was here. He would have killed you otherwise. He tends to think of all strangers as encroachers. If legends in my family can be believed, at least six people have been bitten and killed by Shivan in these woods." She finally said in Hindi.
"He? Shivan? The snake has a name?" he asked, his tone incredulous. The adrenaline from the near-death experience was now pumping through his veins in a ricocheting motion that was making him jittery.
"Yes, Shivan. He has been in these woods for, oh I don't know… longer than I have been alive."
"That would mean that he is more than 25 years old! I don't think snakes – even King Cobras - live for that long."
Nalan had let go off his waist and was now standing next to them looking back and forth between them, not understanding the pace of the Hindi.
Kashi looked down at him and said, "Nee chennu Unniyettante alamarennu vereyoru kalasamedutitto. Chellu! Ingange nanaju ninnal pani pidikkum." (Go and get a pair of shorts from Unni bhai's bureau. You will get a cold if you stand here wet like this.)
He looked back and forth between them again, his eyes taking on a mischievous glint, before he ran off.
Arnav didn't even bother to ask her what she had told him. He had the more pressing snake issue to deal with.
"Most King Cobras only live about 20 years, give or take. Shivan doesn't seem to know that by the stats of his species, he should have died off several years ago. And we are not about to tell him."
She thought this a joke?? They had a King Cobra that had apparently taken up residence in their backyard and rather than thinking of a way to kill it, they were waiting for it to die off after a long and fruitful life of terminating trespassers??
He said as much. "You think this is a joke? That thing is a predator! Why hasn't someone killed it yet??"
She pulled away from him and turned around, her eyes flashing.
"His family has lived in these woods likely long before we even built this house. And you know how old this house is? The first version of it – before all the work done over the years – is at least 700 years old! The legends of Shivan's family in these woods are part of our family's history. His family has always been my family's protector! And he is the last of his line. He has never mated, as far as we know, and thus never had any children." She stopped and looked away in the direction where the snake had disappeared and he found himself thinking that the entire Namboothiri family was nuts! Going back to their 700 years' worth of ancestors!
She spoke again then in a low voice, "When my father is feeling down, he sometimes muses that maybe Shivan is trying to tell him something…. That this is it… with Shivan's death, we will lose our protector… That this is the end of our line too, just like his… I am starting to think that he's right…"
Then she looked back at him with a ferocity that had him rearing back as she said, "Maybe I should have just let him kill you…"
He recovered in a moment and waited for the familiar surge of anger that was always below the surface to emerge.
The anger didn't come this time, but the adrenaline that was still coursing through his system needed a release.
He pulled her to him suddenly and caught her around the waist to pull her up to him.
"Why didn't you?"
Her eyes were still spitting fire and now she narrowed them in annoyance as she asked, "Do you want to die here?"
"That's not what I asked."
She pushed at his chest. "Despite what I think of you, Raizada, I wouldn't wish death by Shivan's bite on my worst enemy."
"What if he had come after you?" he asked now, not relinquishing his hold around her.
She scoffed before she said, "Shivan loves me. He loves me the most out of everyone! He would never hurt me."
"Loved by a snake. A snake-eater, rather. A practically ancient King Cobra. You know, I don't know if you know this, but I don't think your head is screwed on tight enough."
She didn't take the bait and answered in kind. "I can get a snake to love me, Raizada, while you can't even get a human being to do that."
His hold tightened around her, the anger finally starting to breathe to life. "You only speak of things that you can't prove. Show me a human being who loves you aside from the ones who are obligated to!"
She pushed at his chest again and he thought he had struck a chord there.
He had only wanted to spite her for what she had said, not really hurt her and before she pushed away completely from him, he kissed her.
His kisses always caught her by surprise. This was the same. There was a pause when she recovered before she pushed him away and slapped him across the face.
"You know Kashi, some women slap men not because they didn't like the kiss, but because they liked it too much."
"Why don't you go find those women then and stay away from me? I swear to God, Raizada, if you kiss me again without provocation, I will let Shivan loose on you."
"Without provocation?" he asked.
"What?" she asked in the midst of trying to push him away.
"You said without provocation. I take it that you will accept it with provocation."
"It was a poor choice of words. I certainly did not…" she started, but he cut her off with yet another kiss.
This time there was a definite lag in her response time before she pushed him away.
Rather than turning away and stalking off as most women would have, she pulled him to her by his collar and asked, "Why are you kissing me?? I know you wanted to punish me last night and this morning, but I just saved your life man! A poor choice that has turned out to be in hindsight! And yet you do this again and again!"
He looked at her in surprise and was at a loss for words for a solid minute as she looked at him for answer, her breaths coming out in short gasps as if her lungs couldn't manage to draw in enough air.
He took her right hand off his collar and kissed her palm before he said, "Not every kiss is a punishment, Kashi. Some are in gratitude. Like this one…" he took the left hand off and kissed the inside of that one as well before letting go of her.
"I do not want kisses of gratitude." She told him, looking at each of her palms before suddenly hiding them by wrapping her arms across her waist.
"Only the punishing ones, then? Alright." He had to have the last word and walked away before he gave her a chance to make one of her classic retorts.
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