Lord Banshee- Fairy Dust

by Russell O Redman

  Chandrapati spent much of his time in the meditation halls and smaller shrines. At noon, the temple closed because it got too hot and the priest needed the time for his own worship in the main temple, so Chandrapati was left by himself to guard the compound and meditate in peace. When not meditating, he had been helping to feed pilgrims from the sacred rice bowl, and occasionally guiding small groups through the temple. He had also spent quite a lot of time that week in the basements under the shrines, helping to clean the temple in preparation for Janmashtami, the festival celebrating the birth of Krishna. Ancient India had celebrated the festival in the summertime month of Shraavana, but since the Great Burning had moved it to the winter to avoid the killing summer heat.

  It had been a beautiful morning, with a cool breeze off the sea and cloudless blue skies. When Sri Ramanujan, the priest on duty, left at noon, he closed the front gate and side door, locking them both. Unfortunately, the lock on the side door was rusted and did not catch properly, allowing it to spring slightly ajar. A neighbourhood dog pushed it open and walked in, hoping for a pat and a handout. The dog was followed by one of the local merchants who was surprised to find the temple open. As he chatted with Chandrapati, a group of three tourists came in, so the two of them shooed the tourists out, trying to explain that they were just cleaning the site. The lock was too rusted to close, so Chandrapati went looking for tools to scrape away the rust and the merchant went home with the dog.

  When Chandrapati got back, the courtyard was occupied by four very frightened women wearing Law Enforcement uniforms, shirts and long skirts in a light grey fabric that was now splattered with copious amounts of a dark blue ink. They were trying to hold the door closed while peering through the crack. He tried to explain that the temple was closed, but their leader, a tall woman with North Indian features, asked in Hindu if he was the LE agent known as Chandrapati, presenting her own LE ID. She explained that they were legal assistants working in a small LE detachment in the base of one of the nearby towers.

  They had been taking a lunch break at a favourite food stall just down the road when a small man on a bicycle had ridden up, threw a jar of blue ink at them, shouted something incomprehensible, and raced off on his bike. They tried to chase him, but could not keep pace with anyone on a bicycle. By the time they got back, a crowd was gathering around the food stall and several large, dangerous looking men had pointed at them before disappearing into an alley with the handbags they had left behind in their haste to capture the ink tosser. Their ID’s were, of course, always on their person, but their phones had been in the handbags, so they had no way to call for help from LE. They were now deeply worried that they had been tagged with the ink, distracted while criminals rummaged through their bags, and might be attacked if they remained visibly in the area.

  They had heard that an agent named Chandrapati – “A real agent! From the Agency!” he laughed – favoured one of the small Vaishnavite temples nearby, so they escaped down the road and through the open gate into the courtyard. They wanted him to call LE to arrange a pickup, and if possible to request some clean clothes for them from the LE stores.

  Chandrapati had learned the hard way that true meditation required him to leave his phone at home. If the office could find you without effort they would, with an endless stream of niggling issues they could easily have addressed themselves. Without his phone, he could not make the call but he was sure that would not be a problem, because the regular priest would arrive back shortly. He could then either escort them back to their office or run over to the LE office himself while they waited in the temple.

  A small boy appeared at the gate, one of the sons of a silversmith whose shop was just next door. He explained in his little-boy voice that Sri Ramanujan had taken ill and requested that Sri Chandrapati attend to the pilgrims that afternoon. Without waiting for an answer, the child slipped out the gate and ran back to the plaza to rejoin his friends in a game of football.

  If the gates of a temple so near the food stall remained closed, even the slowest criminals would guess that the women were hiding inside. If the gates were opened, the women would have to hide deeper in the complex, and the obvious solution would be for them to wait in the basements under the shrines. One of the neighbourhood children would be sure to come in, and he could send the child to the LE office, or, better perhaps, could have them fetch one of their parents to carry a message to the office. This seemed like a good plan, so the five of them descended into the relative cool of the basements. They headed for a back room where the women could wait safely to be picked up by an LE driver.

  On the way, they passed a laundry room with a large basin where the temple hangings were washed. Being a very conservative temple, this was a hand laundry, just a big basin with a scrubbing board. The wet hangings were normally draped over the shrubs behind the shrines while they dried. On a warm, dry day with a gentle breeze, clothes would dry well enough to be worn in half an hour. Since the drying ink was starting to chafe and itch, the four women asked if they could wash their clothes.

  Unfortunately, the laundry room had no artificial light but relied on windows, so the undressed women would be visible from the courtyard if they washed their own clothes. There was still half an hour before the gates had to open, so Chandrapati volunteered to wash the clothes himself. This also seemed sensible, so the women hid in the back room and one bare arm reached out with each set of ink-splotched clothes. He carried them over to the basin, filled it with water, and thrust the load in to start rinsing.

  He realized immediately that this had been a mistake. There was a lot more ink on the clothes than had been apparent. The water was instantly dyed a rich, dark blue, as was the basin itself, and all the skin on his arms. He jumped back, splashing blue on his own clothes and dripping some down his legs. He rubbed his hand across his forehead, wondering what to do next, then realized that he now had a blue forehead.

  He felt so foolish that he laughed out loud, then had a brainstorm that never afterward seemed so brilliant as it did in that moment. With the festival for blue-skinned Krishna the following week, he could pretend that his own blue-black skin was in preparation, so he quickly stripped to his loincloth and splashed more of the blue water over the rest of his arms, legs, face and body. He put his own clothes back on when his skin was dry, feeling a bit itchy as the last hairs dried off, ran a few more basins of clean water over the women’s clothes and carried the sodden mass of shirts and skirts up to the bushes to dry. He had not been able to remove the ink completely, but it was at least a fairly uniform colour and would be adequate for them to wear back to their office.

  By then, he was beginning to realize how great his mistake truly was. His skin began to itch intensely from the top of his blue scalp to the soles of his blue feet. His clothes were a torment wherever they rubbed his ferociously itchy skin. He had only five minutes left before the gates were due to open. He sat in the sun, but that made the itch worse. He sat in the shade, but got no relief. He ran clear water over his arms, but the ink had been absorbed into his skin and would not wash off.

  The pigeons had returned from the plaza. Seeing human activity behind the shrines, they roosted in the trees beside the wet clothes, hoping for someone to throw them some rice. The macaques scrambled and bounced over the walls of the temple, ready for whatever fruits and breads the pilgrims might bring.

  The macaques spotted the clothes, imagined them to have pockets full of fruit and shiny trinkets, and raced into the bushes to grab several garments. The pigeons took fright at the onrushing monkeys, exploding from their perches and swirling overhead as they escaped to the top of the gopura. In their fright, they did what pigeons do best, all over the blue-grey clothes. The macaques ran off with their stolen clothing, bounding up the walls and along the roofs of the shrines. They fought loudly over each garment, scrounging through the pockets, and finally tearing one of the shirts into pieces. The remaining garments dropped off the bushes into the dirt. The inquisitive dog fr
om earlier in the day was back. It apparently liked the scent the ink had given to the cloth, so snatched up a skirt and raced out the side door. Chandrapati was left thunderstruck in a blue hell of his own creation.

  He could hear shouting out in the street. In trepidation, he minced over to the door, pushed it mostly closed again, and peered out. The dog was still holding the skirt between its teeth as it raced up and down the street, being chased by the vendor who ran the food stall. More sensibly, the vendor’s wife left one of their children to guard the stall and stalked over to the door. She had recognized the style of the skirt as one that her customers had been wearing and followed the trail of blue drips back to its origin.

  She eyed Chandrapati through the crack, demanding, “Hey Ram! That dog is dragging the skirt of one of my most valued customers around the road! They are Very Important People, not to be treated as foolish gopikas. What are they doing in this temple without their clothes?”

  He replied, using as much as he could muster of the bravado that being an agent had taught him, and a tiny grain of tranquility remaining from his morning meditation, that nothing was as bad as it seemed, but if she could bring four sets of women’s street clothing it would be very much appreciated. He would pay for them, but he emphasized that the need was urgent.

  She snorted, but left immediately and returned a few minutes later with the proprietor of a nearby shop that sold cheap, gaudy clothes for tourists from the plaza, the two women carrying a selection of saris and dresses. He showed them the way down to the back room, then waited in the courtyard until the six women emerged.

  The legal assistants surrounded him, astonished at his transformation into a blue-black image of Krishna. He explained what he had tried to do, and that he had completely ruined all their clothes with the help of a monkey army, a flock of pigeons, and one excited dog.

  The dress shop owner called the LE office on her own phone. She pointed out that the four legal assistants would have been better disguised as shoppers in her dress store than as nearly naked gopikas in the basement of Krishna’s temple. With the change of clothes, they were now hard to recognize, just four tourists looking for bargains, scratching as discreetly as they could at itchy patches under their clothes. She led them off to try on a more appropriate selection of clothes, the five of them laughing nervously at the bizarre events as they watched for assailants in the streets.

  Shortly afterward, the food vendor returned with three of his nephews, large boys who often came around for lunch. When the legal assistants had tried to chase the ink assailant, a rival troop of macaques had snatched and dumped their handbags, grabbed anything that might be pretty or edible, and raced into the alleys. The three boys had retrieved the handbags, recognized who they belonged to, and chased the macaques to find the stolen contents before the monkeys dispersed them over half the city. They had found three of the four missing phones and an assortment of other items, but of course had no idea which things belonged in which bag.

  The food vendor had to return to his business, but left the nephews to help clean up. Chandrapati begged him to spare his wife, if it was possible, to help him attend to the pilgrims, because the itching made even scooping rice into a worshiper’s hand an excruciating torment. Barely able to control his laughter, the man agreed, but the good woman had the sense to make a detour first through the dress shop to tell the legal assistants who the young men were and what they had really been doing.

  The four legal assistants arrived back, still nervous but now dressed quite properly and with delicate good taste. They explained that the dress shop owner ran two stores, back to back. The one facing onto the plaza sold gaudy costumes to tourists, but the other sold quality clothes for professional women working in the office towers nearby. The three nephews apologized for acting so irresponsibly, and the women apologized for confusing them with criminals in their panic, especially as they now recognized that the boys had been around at lunch many times before.

  As they were sorting out the remaining contents of the handbags, another man arrived at the gate, dragging his teenage son with him. He explained that his family was from the Karnataka region and spoke the Kannada language at home. The adults in the family did custom tailoring and dressmaking, dying their own fabrics to ensure the highest quality. He had sent his son, who had been the small man on the bicycle, to fetch a new jar of royal blue dye. As he rode past the food stall, the boy had swerved on his bicycle to miss a dog in the street and hit the curb. The jar of dye had not been properly fastened to the bicycle. It bumped off and shattered when it hit the ground beside the food stall. He panicked when the dye splattered over four uniformed Law Enforcement officers. He had shouted an apology before fleeing on his bicycle, but in his haste, spoke in Kannada rather than Tamil or Hindi. The boy now apologized abjectly, humiliated in front of the great ladies he had offended. They forgave him very gravely, and begged that in future he ride more carefully and secure his loads more tightly. The father paid on the spot for the women’s new clothes, in partial atonement for the distress his son had caused.

  He then came into the temple and halted in astonishment in front of Chandrapati, who was gamely trying to bless each pilgrim as the food vendor’s wife dispensed the sacred rice. The man asked if the itch was bad, to which Chandrapati could only nod gently. The man had brought a small bottle of lotion that would relieve the itch enough to sleep at night. He promised that the dye was not otherwise toxic and that the itching would go away in a couple of days, but warned that the blue would only fade as the outer skin wore away and would probably last another three weeks. He had not brought enough of the lotion for a whole body, since most people only got a bit on their hands and arms before the itching convinced them to be more careful. He dispatched his son to bring back a large bottle.

  Chandrapati told him to use the small bottle to ease the itch for the four women who had been splattered, and who must themselves be in torment by now. They retired back to the basement to salve each other, grateful for the relief. When they emerged, the driver from LE was waiting to take them back to work.

  While he waited for his son to return, the dressmaker confessed that he had originally intended to scold the boy privately and had only come because of the rumour spreading at the speed of excited children that Krishna himself had appeared in the temple.

  There were consequences from his moment of misguided inspiration that gave Chandrapati many hours of material for contemplation. Some were good. Chandrapati had already intended to stay for the Krishna festival, which his participation in the role of Krishna made such a resounding success that the temple repeated the act each year afterwards, using proper body paints. The food vendor and his wife prospered as their reputation spread for honesty, charity, good sense and good food. Within a year they opened a real restaurant that they named Krishna’s Palace. The younger nephew became their head waiter, recounting the tale of Krishna’s appearance to any who would listen, elaborating the tale with each telling. The dress shop owner had been introduced to a new supplier of custom clothing suitable for her higher-end shop, as well as a new group of loyal customers.

  Some of the consequences were not good. The poor, foolish dog was sick for three days, suffering with a blue, itchy tongue that prevented him from eating. The wash basin had to be replaced, and in the meantime, they had to hire a washing service. Faced with the extra cost of the washing service, it took a month to raise enough money to replace the basin, even after the Krishna festival.

  In many ways, the consequences were worse for Chandrapati himself. LE gave him a severe and well-deserved reprimand for having broken his cover so publicly.

  The reprimand was softened only by the glowing commendation from the legal assistant’s office for his exemplary consideration for others and clear thinking during an extraordinary sequence of events. Chandrapati did not use those words in recounting the tale, of course, and only admitted to the commendation when Evgenia refused to let him proceed without that critical exp
lanation.

  Afterwards, however, his closest colleagues began to view him as an unreliable screwup and refused to work with him on major cases. He was offered the options of resigning or taking a demotion. He had a full month to decide while the blue dye faded, and in the end accepted the demotion. LE gave him a more complete change of persona that was normal between jobs, including using an expensive epigenetic treatment to lighten his skin colour permanently to something that would have been more normal in the Nepalese and Tibetan regions of northern India.

  He could no longer attend his old temple, where even these changes would not have been sufficient disguise. Instead, he searched the city for small, quiet temples, and found many others outside the city in his work-related travels. Some were still active, but many had been abandoned three centuries before during the Great Burning that followed the Final War. He started to repair some of them in the breaks between cases, as part of his penance and as an act of charity for the believers who lived nearby.

  Chandrapati summarized. “I had started hoping to be like Arjuna, briefly aspired to be like Krishna, but only demonstrated myself to be a monkey. When I catch myself feeling proud, it helps to remember that afternoon.”

  Evgenia protested that the true ending to that story was totally different. Chandrapati had for years been of one of her heroes within LE. The LE lawyers and legal assistants idolized him. However, the official reports never explained how he had risen above the ordinary run of Agents, and the unofficial tales were both less credible and less remarkable.