Unknown 9 by Layton Green (each kindness read aloud txt) 📕

over breakfast?” He yawned and ran a hand through his hair. “What’s the scoop?”

“I was wrong. I thought the design was exactly the same—but it isn’t.” She showed him the photo of the Kali yantra on Zawadi’s phone again. “Do you see how the circle is made of undulating wavelike sections that repeat over and over?”

“Barely. It’s small.”

“I know, but the one I saw through the Star Phone was different. The pattern looked more like marshmallows rising to a point, like those Arabian-style sultan hats.”

“You do have a good memory.”

“Once I realized the difference, I started searching for a specific replica of the yantra on the Star Phone.” She opened a different page on the browser. “That led me to this.”

He leaned over to take a long look at the image of a Kali yantra made of colored tiles. “Where is this?”

“Right here in Kolkata, on the ceiling of the Kalighat Kali Temple.”

“I’m not sure what’s worse: the nightmare I was just having, or the thought of visiting a temple in Kolkata dedicated to a death goddess.”

“The Kalighat is one of the most famous Hindu shrines in the world,” she said, “and it’s right in the middle of the city. There will be plenty of people around. If it’s the right place, Dr. Corwin must have had a reason for sending us there.”

“Plenty of people around like the Ascendants?”

She looked away, and he ran a hand through his hair. “Sorry, I’m just cranky when I’m woken up before dawn. You did great work. But maybe you should catch a few z’s.”

With a few hours left before the temple opened, in desperate need of some rest, she decided to heed his advice. Yet as soon as she closed her eyes, despite understanding the true meaning of the goddess, she couldn’t stop forming an image of Kali in all her destructive glory, her fanged mouth open wide and dripping blood as the bright-red tongue unfurled halfway down her chest, her pendulous breasts wreathed with a necklace of skulls. And in two of her many arms, held high on either side of the blue-skinned deity, were the severed heads of Andie and her mother.

   12   

Hours later, after a taxi procured by the hotel dropped Andie and Cal on Kalighat Road in the heart of Kolkata, they proceeded on foot through the narrow lanes surrounding the mandir, or temple. Andie couldn’t resist looking over her shoulder with every step, unsure who the Ascendants would send but knowing they were out there, searching the city.

After breakfast, they had decided to disguise themselves better and had taken another trip to the street stalls. Andie was now wearing a blue sari over jeans and a matching cotton undershirt, a wig of straight black hair that fell halfway to her waist, bangles on her arms, and a dot of red dye in the center of her forehead—a bindi—that represented the sixth chakra or third eye, the locus of concealed wisdom. Andie had to admit that, except for the paleness of her exposed skin, she resembled half the young women in Kolkata.

Cal chose the same clothes and hat and sunglasses he had bought the day before, but with a fake beard—repurposed from a wig—that transformed his appearance. Andie had the Star Phone and Zawadi’s cell in her pockets. Cal was carrying the rest of their meager belongings in the backpack they had purchased, in case they didn’t return to the hotel.

She had done her research on the Kalighat Kali Temple. Once located on the banks of the Hooghly River instead of a grimy side channel in the center of a densely crowded neighborhood, the original structure was a ghat, a wide set of steps leading down to the river for bathing and ritual cremation. The site had long been devoted to Kali, and according to local folklore, the jungle surrounding the ghat was once inhabited by tribal Kapalikas, or skull bearers. The Kapalikas dedicated human sacrifices to the goddess, used hollow skulls for begging bowls, and smeared their bodies with ashes from the cremations. These aspects of Kali worship—though real—had been poorly understood and sensationalized by the British.

Yes, there were once sacrifices to Kali, just as there were similar practices in the ancient versions of many religions. But focusing on the Kapalikas or the infamous Thuggees or even the terrifying Kali iconography was to ignore the true meaning of the goddess. To the vast majority of Hindus, being devoted to Kali meant to be fully present in time, to experience life and change and death in all its chaotic splendor, to succumb to the eternal rhythm of creation and destruction. To dance with abandon to the beat of the tabla drum at festival, to hear the ringing of the celestial spheres, to celebrate the goddess and the animal in us all.

As Andie wound her way through the claustrophobic alleys, the research became a dry and distant memory, and she experienced Kolkata in all its filthy, luscious, stinking, messy glory. Stray dogs pawed through garbage in the street, trailing behind women in saris who carried plastic baggies filled with baked goods for the altars. Electrical wires were strewn overhead like jumbled Christmas lights. Beggars and holy men crowded the streets; devout women of all ages knelt against stone posts and washed their hands in bowls of water; a robed tantric priest with dreadlocks and a chalked-white face balanced a pair of skulls on his shoulder; professionals on their way to work hopped across rivulets of blood from the ritual sacrifice of a goat in a street side murti shrine. Every now and then, she saw a tourist looking lost and overwhelmed, ready for the exit. Worst of all were the dalals she had read about, local touts posing as guides, who harangued the tourists. They swarmed around Andie and Cal like flies, offering to help them select puja offerings from the stalls crowding the streets and guide them to secret places in