But the distraction allowed Akira to grow the distance from our pursuer. She gunned the accelerator, rushing in a straight line as the UGV turned toward us, stopping. It wouldn’t be able to catch up again. But another RPG explosion vibrated the truck, missing us by a wide margin.
The commotion from the wall had faded into the distance as we tore through the desert. Rough terrain jolted us about. I held onto the door, trying in vain to steady myself. Out the window I spotted refugee families running away from the wall and vehicles spreading out in all directions. None moved as fast as Akira.
And most of them will probably be caught.
Yeah, Evita said, but that will lower the odds that you will be caught…
We rode for some time. Darren continued to babble, descending into delirium. Masaru looked more alert than he had the entire time we were in the refugee camp, eyes wide, staring forward into the endless desert. Despite the rough ride, drowsiness overtook Laura’s expression.
And yet all I could think about was what we were going to do now that we had crossed the border.
Time to pick up where we left off? Will I be able to make them understand what needs to be done?
After a time, Akira slowed us somewhat, becoming confident that we had at least outrun the border guards for the time being.
“Tell me where my daughter is,” Akira said, a calm determination in her tone, even after our escape.
“She’s with the other children,” I said, “they’re all safe.”
I told her where the house was and she put the pedal all the way to the floor again.
Chapter 7
1759 C.E.
“Vimala,” serjeant Charles Preston said in a light English accent, sitting on the porch beside his men, “you’re always a sight for sore eyes, love.”
I smiled, replying in English, “your company is always welcome.”
Satisfied looks fell over the British soldier’s faces as if musical notes were a fresh cup of tea. My small, nimble fingers danced over the sitar strings, each note following from the last in no particular composition. Yet music flowed like a hot spring on a freezing day nonetheless, lifting the spirits of downtrodden redcoats.
Dust coated the simple blue and green Salwar Kameez dress outfit draped over my thirty-four-year-old body. Legs curled to my side away from the bulbous kadu, music gently brushed my eyelids closed. I wore my hair shorn to neck length, making it easier to care for during month long siege on the Indian city of Madras. Word of a short-haired, English-speaking Indian woman who played sitar for weary soldiers spread throughout the garrison, prompting men to travel from from every corner the city to listen. A quiet rumor even began to spread that their French enemies grew merciful while I played.
Indian people began calling this conflict the Third Carnatic War. British people had little use for what the indigenous thought. None of it mattered to me. Playing music was as much a distraction for myself as it was for the British soldiers. Their war against France and the Habsburgs held little interest for me.
“I saw you playing already when my shift started,” the Serjeant said, moving himself closer to me, “am I going to need to barter for some new strings for you?”
The soldier’s expressions were distant. Fatigue and hunger occupied everyone’s mind, but the music always brought about introspection. Every note plucked by my fingers tended to reflect my mood, which always became somewhat sorrowful when the Serjeant came around.
“Not yet,” I said.
Crooked teeth flashed behind stubble when he smiled. “I don’t think I’ve seen you stop playing since that chap you came with passed.”
“Madhava,” I said without missing a note.
The Serjeant sat near me listening for a while again. Sorrow creeped into the notes I played. Madhava’s smiling face occupied my mind. It had been a life of hardship since meeting him, but not the kind of hardship I usually tried to avoid. It was more of an adventure, ever since the first day I met him seventeen years earlier.
“It’s nice to finally meet you,” Jayesh said with obligatory warmth.
“And you, too,” I replied, forcing a courteous smile.
Food filled every inch of the long table, both families ready to sit down and eat. Despite crippling gout, Jayesh, my betrothed, was an incredibly handsome man. At twenty years old he was three years my elder. A trimmed black beard covered his light-skinned face, arms lean from the wheeled contraption he used to move around without upsetting his painful affliction. He spoke in a deep and commanding, yet gentle voice. All the well-choreographed stately charm befitted his high station in life, yet I could already tell he felt nothing for me. This didn’t bother me, because I felt nothing for him, either.
Mughal formalities bored me, although there had been much worse lives than this one. I found some distraction in the brilliant fashions of eighteenth-century Indian nobility. My morning had been spent with servant girls attempting to find a suitable outfit to meet the husband my parents were so happy to have arranged for me. I landed on a teal green and coral pink Lehenga that hung from my shoulders down to the ground, a pearl encrusted Matha Patti wrapped around my hair line, its green emerald dangling to my forehead, matching my dress. Now that the fun of dressing up came to and end, it was back to the grind.
Yet I still planned on killing myself before the wedding. Nothing had felt right for the past hundred years. Not since what I had been through. What I had done in recent past lives. Guilt wracked my conscience over people who would have died by now, anyway.
Yet, part of me missed it. The excitement of terror and pain. Somehow death had made me feel alive. But now the celebration of life made me feel dead. A restart would not necessarily fix that feeling, but it couldn’t hurt. Pain always dissipated the more lives I put between myself and any horrific occurrence, no matter how terrible it had been.
I followed the stranger I was to marry on the opposite side of the table, taking a seat across from him. Dinner commenced with subdued ceremony and polite laughter.
Throughout dinner, all I managed were gracious smiles at dreary conversation as I lost myself in the soft music playing in the background. The last time I had heard good Indian music was when I played a more primitive version in the fourteenth century Delhi Sultanate. Music evolved in style and rhythm since then, but I could still hear its unmistakable influence. More authentic enjoyment came from the four musicians than anyone celebrating my joyous occasion. My eyes kept wandering to the man playing the sitar. Although not as classically handsome as my betrothed, I still found him much more intriguing.
When dinner finished, servants began clearing the table. As always, there was more pomp and circumstance to observe, more pleasantries to exchange, more formalities to perform.
I made sure to ease my way over toward the band. But not before Jayesh caught up to me in his chair on wheels, strong arms moving him nimbly about the dinner hall.
“I’m told that you have excelled in calligraphy,” Jayesh said, his tone betraying that this was more courtesy than genuine interest.
“I have.”
“I would be pleased to see your work.”
“Do you practice the art?” I asked.
“For school I had to,” he said.
“Is there a different art that interests you?”
“I’ve had the honor of attending a French symphony,” he said, “I find their music much more appealing than this trite noise,” he signaled to the quartet playing traditional Indian music.
“I rather enjoy this,” I said, looking to the sitar player winding his soul into the music.
“It’s rather unsophisticated,” Jayesh said, a smug look on his handsome face, “I prefer Jean-Philippe Rameau.”
“I don’t know who that is,” I said.
He smiled with a hint of condescension, “when we are married, I shall take you to a French symphony and show you what the world outside this backward land is like.”
“Are they still playing the baroque style
?” I asked, “or is it closer to the earlier style of someone like Jacques Mauduit?”
Jayesh stared at me, perplexed. I gave him a demure smile, as if sorry that I had emasculated him.
“Where have you heard of this?” Jayesh asked.
“I don’t know, around the court,” I said.
Jayesh gained back some of his confidence, “it will be my pleasure to partake of the finer arts with you as my wife. But if you will excuse me, I have some other business to attend to.”
“I look forward to it as well,” I said with a graceful curtsy.
As soon as he turned his chair around and started away, I turned back to the band. All of them were still caught up in their own music. I stood and watched, not wanting to distract them. People walked about the banquet hall conversing, congratulating each other on the upcoming ceremony. But even as they left to go outside, I continued watching. Listening. Experiencing.
The band members played as if in front of a filled concert hall. My eyes stayed locked on the sitar player, his fingers sliding effortlessly over the neck of his instrument. He was quite plain looking, maybe thirty years old, lips a little too thick, brow a little too bushy, beard a little too patchy. But he had a genuine worldliness that appealed to me more than Jayesh’s contrived worldliness.
Notes of music danced through my mind, taking me away from the memories haunting me. Away from my condition. And away from my current situation, having to marry a pompous nobleman I had only just met. As long as I stood there, each melodic twang of the sitar, every metallic tap on the tabla, and the mridangam’s rhythm sustained, each raga flawlessly segueing into the next until-
“I almost think you don’t want to leave,” the sitar player said, his fingers now only softly plucking away, eyes on me.
“Perhaps I don’t,” I said, shaken from my reverie.
“We’ve never played for such an auspicious audience,” he said, “this gathering is for you, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“That means you must be Vimala,” he said, “I guess congratulations are in order.”
“I suppose,” I sighed, “what is your name?”
“Madhava,” he said, fingers still sliding over the instrument.
“May I try?” I asked, signaling to his sitar.
A huge grin grew over his face, “I would be honored to have someone so beautiful grace my humble instrument with her lovely hands.”
He stopped playing, gently setting the instrument on the floor. I sat down to his right, curling my legs to my left, and picked the cumbersome apparatus up.
“You’re going to want to hold it like this,” he said, reaching an arm around me to help place the kadu near my waist, “and use your other hand to- ah, I see you already know how to hold it,” he grinned.
My fingers found their places on the instrument. I plucked a string with my right hand, sliding my left over the neck. Memories of how to play issued forth from intuition. I plucked again, hearing clearly in my head the notes I wished to play. My fingers slowly caught up to the song playing in my mind, bringing it to life in the large, empty banquet hall.
The other band members listened for a short time before joining in. Our minds syncing together. The palace fell away from me, only music remaining. Each note followed the last like a footstep, going exactly where it needed to go. The tempo increased as memories of how to play solidified, my hand sliding expertly over the neck.
I looked to Madhava, seeing astonishment on his face. He returned the smile I was only barely aware had spread over my lips. If the rest of eternity could be that moment, it might not be so bad. Everything came together like-
“Vimala!” my father’s voice echoed through the hall, causing my fingers to slip, “come here!”
Madhava gave me a mischievous grin, one eyebrow raised. I set his sitar back down, ready to climb to my feet. Madhava lept up and reached an inviting hand toward me. I raised my hand, letting him take it in his firm grasp. He effortlessly pulled me to my feet in a fluid motion, our faces ending only inches apart.
“Have a wonderful evening,” he said, allowing my hand to slip from his.
“You too,” I said, smiling and walking away.
My father waited for me in the arched doorway, scowling.
“You should have come outside with the rest of us,” he said, voice purposefully loud enough that the band could hear, “musicians are not the sort of people a girl like you should be associated with.”
“Yes, father,” I said, walking with him to join the others.
The evening wore on with more of the forced pleasantries of highborn life. I was able to successfully navigate doting relatives and excited in-laws. Being able to fake it with people that would die and be forgotten was easy for me after lifetimes of practice.
As summer day gave way to dark, I was able to retire to bed. Servant girls helped out of the luxurious garments and into a thin red choli and shalwar before I politely dismissed them.
Finally, alone in bed, I decided it was time. I arose from the cushions, moving slowly, listening. Faint conversation echoed through the halls of the palace, but sounded distant. I made my way toward the opening where cool night air washed into my room. It was high enough up that the fall could kill me. Especially if I made sure to go head first. It might be painful for a while, but it would-
A squeak escaped my mouth upon discovering a figure in the opening. A man, facing me.
“Vimala,” the man’s voice whispered.
“Madhava,” I whispered back, “what-what are you doing here?”
“How could I not get another look at the young girl whose musical prowess is exceeded only by her beauty?” he asked, taking a step out of the opening and into my room.
I took half a step back, but he stepped forward, coming close. His face came into dim focus in the moonlight.
“You…shouldn’t be in here,” I said.
“Then perhaps you will accompany me outside?”
“I can’t leave,” I said.
“It looked to me like you were planning on leaving out this window,” he said, “I could show a safe way to get down.”
“I’m…supposed to be getting married…in a few days,” I said.
“But you won’t.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
“I can see it in your eyes,” he said, “you were going to come out that window, one way or another. I prefer you took my way rather than yours.”
“That’s what you see in my eyes?”
“What I saw in your eyes,” Madhava explained, “was nothing. Not while sitting with those people. You were looking past them the whole time, as if you had seen…death.” He shook his head, “either way, I saw life enter your eyes when you watched us play. Life that burned brighter when you took hold of the instrument yourself.”
“All there is in my eyes is life,” I said.
He grinned, “yes. A life that belongs with me. What do you say?”
I looked back to my bed, then to the door, and then to Madhava. “Yes,” I said, “I will go with you.”
Neither Madhava nor I ever spoke about what we both knew I was planning that night. But Madhava had brought excitement. He allowed me to live a life that dulled the pain I had been carrying for over a hundred years. Begging, swindling, and playing for money had been difficult, but it was the distraction I craved.
Madhava had fallen passionately in love with me. We made love on many occasions. When I told him that while I enjoyed spending time with him, but that I didn’t have those feelings for him – that I was incapable of having those feelings for him – he became despondent. I told him about my reincarnation. He lived our seventeen years together believing this to be one of my charming eccentricities. I decided not to try to convince him otherwise.
“He was your husband?” serjeant Charles Preston asked.
“No,” I said, the music flowing through me as easily as it had that day when I first met Madhava.
“He…helped me to feel alive for a time,” I said, “after feeling death for so long.”
“You talk like someone whose been around a spell,” he said, “for such a pretty young thing. Has this siege got you down, love?”
“No,” I said, looking to him and smiling, “as long as I have music, I think I’ll be alright.”
Chapter 8
Blaring electronic music roared loud enough to be painful. Skips and starts haphazardly interrupted the flow of rumbling bass and squawking treble, not adhering to any rhythm I could discern. Dancing teenagers crowded the abandon barn’s rickety floor. Barely clothed figures exchanging messages through gyrating body movements like a neon beehive. Only momentarily could I see their actions obey some rhythm concealed in the disorderly music.
The attendees appeared as outlandish as their music sounded. All of them were transgenic. People who had altered their own genetics to varying degrees. The most popular was strange, vibrant designs spreading across people’s skin that would light up with red, green, and blue bioluminescence. The patterns weaving over their bodies formed a complex ballet of subdermal vessels. There were kids who had their ears enlarged to make them appear like elves, people with eyes that had multiple pupils and bright green or purple sclera, fingers with gnarled animal claws for fingernails, forked tongues, bony protrusions from the forehead like demonic horns, joints that hyperextended, spines bulging under the skin of their backs, calcified protrusions jutting from joints and vertebrae, mosaics of skin pigmentations and textures, and any number of other bizarre modifications. In past lives, they would have been outcast as diseased and deformed. Now it’s become a twisted form of self-expression for a subset of the population.
“I miss the days of piercings and tattoos,” Laura said, only audible over the music through my earpieces, “I feel like an old woman.”
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