Chapter 37 - my fate is in my own hand.
Dhira fell asleep against the gate and woke to find a family of mountain monkeys sleeping on top of him. Small ones stacked on his chest. Larger ones arranged around him like a border. He looked at the sky. Night had fully settled. He looked at the monkeys. He could move and disturb all of them or he could leave it alone. He left it alone, and went back to sleep.
When he woke the next morning the monkeys were gone. So was every crack he had put in the stone floor. All of it. Like the day before hadn't happened. He stood and frowned at the unmarked ground, trying to work out what that meant, when he noticed someone near the wall.
An old man in a tunic, moving slowly along the base of the gate and lighting candles one by one. His hands were slightly unsteady but his movements were practiced. Dhira was already turning toward the stairs when the old man spoke without looking up. "Did you crack the floor?"
Dhira stopped. "Sorry," he said without turning back, and kept moving.
"You are trying to open the door, young warrior."
It wasn't a question. Dhira was already half a step onto the first stair. He stopped again. Turned this time. The old man was still lighting candles, his back partially to him, unhurried. Dhira looked at him properly. Old. Frail in the way that people are frail when age has taken the excess and left only what was essential. "You can't open it," the old man said.
Dhira walked back. "What do you mean?"
The old man turned slightly. "This door was crafted by the greatest craftsmen of every race that exists. Blessed by mother earth herself and by the strong of all those races who came together to build it." He touched one candle to check its steadiness. "It can only be opened by Ramna. No one else."
"Why?"
"Because what is inside is not meant to be seen by anyone else." He moved to the next candle. "If you want to reach the other side there are other ways. The destination doesn't change. Only the route."
Dhira considered this. "What if I jump over it?"
"You won't see anything, just another side of the world."
"What if I force it open?"
The old man shook his head slowly. "It's not possible, young warrior from the east. If anyone other than Ramna tries to open that door, what they would be opening is not stone. It would be the full weight of mother earth and every ally she has ever had." He looked at him directly for the first time. "You cannot do this."
Dhira stood there a moment. Then turned and left. The old man returned to his candles.
Days passed.
Each day Dhira pushed. Each day the door moved a fraction and then stopped and he had to stop because the floor gave way beneath him. The monkey who had laughed at him on the first day returned with his family and they settled in to watch the fun. At some point Dia came and sat among them without explanation, watching with the same mild interest, her arms loosely folded. The audience didn't improve Dhira's results. The door mocked him with its consistency. Every attempt ended the same way. Ending in failure.
The old sage reappeared after a week. He arrived to find Dhira had managed to move the door slightly more than before, just barely, but more. He looked at it. "You haven't quit yet, young warrior of the east." Dhira didn't reply. The monkeys immediately abandoned their posts and ran to the old man, who distributed fruit from a cloth bag with the practiced ease of long habit. Dia, who had not met him before, watched this and then asked, "Who are you, old man?"
"Just an old sage," he said, handing a piece of fruit to the nearest monkey. "I come to visit my students and light some candles."
Dia accepted this without pushing it further, then asked the thing she had actually been wondering about. "What's behind the door? I know there's another continent beyond it but when I've approached from the other side it's just a door. There's nothing special about it from that direction."
The old sage considered this. "Because you didn't open it." he said with that sagely wisdom.
" In life you cannot become an adult without first being a child. To see what is really there you have to open the door." He shrugged gently. "What is behind it I genuinely don't know."
"Is there truly no way to open it?"
"Call Ramna," he said simply. "She can open it."
At the door, Dhira stopped pushing. The slight gap he had been holding slammed shut. He looked at the gate with an expression that had run out of patience, then hit it once with the flat of his palm. Not a push. Just frustration given a direction. The old man's voice came from behind him. "Give up, young warrior of the east. This door is not in your destiny. Not in your fate."
Dhira turned his head slightly. "My fate was to die, old sage." His voice was quiet. "I didn't. My fate and my destiny are mine to decide." He turned back to the door and began pushing again.
The old man shook his head slowly and said something under his breath that sounded like it belonged to a much older memory.
Later Dhira came down from the mountain and walked out into the tall grass field below, the heavy wind moving through it in long visible waves. He looked back at the mountain once and the outline of the gate against the sky and then turned away and walked. He spotted a stone well in the grass and realized he was thirsty. He reached it and looked inside. Water there but deep, too deep to reach with a hand. He found a bucket and rope at the base of the well and attached the bucket to the hook. The hook had rusted through. It didn't hold. He moved the bucket to the rope directly and began lowering it hand over hand. The rope broke. He stood holding the frayed end above a dry bucket going nowhere.
He stood there for a moment with the broken rope in his hand. His mood, which had not been good to begin with, became something quieter and worse. He wanted to throw the rope. He wanted to shout at the well. He did neither. He set the rope down, looked back at the mountain, and started climbing again.
Near the top he saw something unexpected. The old sage, Dia and several of the elder monkeys were moving together in a kind of synchronized sequence. Stretching, striking the air, shifting weight, moving through what looked like an old form of exercise practiced slowly enough to look like a conversation between the body and something else. The younger monkey sat on the old man's shoulder watching with great seriousness. Dhira looked at it, decided he didn't need to understand it, and walked past them to the door. He failed again.
That evening in the cave the old sage sat eating with Dia beside him, the young monkey on his shoulder working through a piece of fruit with complete concentration. Dia called out to Dhira when she saw him come in. He said he wasn't hungry and lay down on the raised ground and closed his eyes. Dia started to say something and stopped herself. The old sage handed a grape to the monkey and said without looking up, "A full stomach is a prerequisite for a strong body, young warrior." No response came from the far side of the cave.
Dia watched the monkey eat for a moment then looked at the sage. "What were you doing this morning? And why do the monkeys follow along?"
"Stretching old bones," he said simply. "Making sure they don't rust." He adjusted the young monkey's position on his shoulder with practiced care.
"The monkeys just copy me. They always have. Every week I come and every week they follow every movement. Some of them are better at it now than I am." He looked at the small one beside his ear. "Except this one. Very naughty. He used to follow along perfectly and I would give him fruit as a reward. Then my back gave me trouble for a few weeks and I couldn't carry the fruit basket. He stopped immediately. He stopped copying me and started to throw a tantrum." He rubbed the monkey's chin affectionately. "What can I do? I'm too fond of him."
Dia looked at the young monkey, who accepted the chin rub with imperial dignity.
On the other side of the cave, Dhira lay with his eyes closed and his breathing slow. But his face had shifted from what it had been when he came in. Something behind it was working quietly, the way things work when they find the shape they've been looking for.
He wasn't asleep.