A Crown of Wishes

by Roshani Chokshi

  Almost six months had passed since Arjun’s betrayal. One more cycle of the moon and it would mark the anniversary of Nalini’s arrival in Bharata and my Age Day. I still remembered the harem preparing for her arrival. Nalini was the daughter of an important tribe leader on the outskirts of Bharata, and her upbringing at court was a promise of peace. She would be raised as a princess of Bharata and married into the nobility. In exchange, her kinsmen would keep the borders safe.

  Nalini arrived the day I turned thirteen years old. Immediately upon arriving, she tried to set fire to the harem and escape. Her name was on everyone’s lips, which meant that everyone forgot about me. I disliked her instantly.

  The week after, I tried to get my revenge. Skanda was holding a celebration along the waterfront. The women walked in pairs, shielded by an ivory screen that broke our view of the world outside the harem. Nalini defiantly walked by the water’s edge, her chin held high and gaze fixed ahead. I stuck my foot out when she walked past. She stumbled, lost her balance and fell with a loud splash into the water. It was meant to be a prank. But when she didn’t come up for air, I panicked. And so, amid all the shouting of Bharata’s citizens and the thin screams of the harem wives—and in full view of Skanda—I leapt in after her and pulled her back to the surface.

  “I thought you could swim,” I gasped, coughing up water.

  Nalini hissed a stream of curses, but no one heard over the villagers’ loud proclamations:

  “The Princess Gauri is a hero!”

  “Praise her! Praise her!”

  “See how she saved the savage princess’s life!”

  Eventually, Nalini and I would become as close as sisters, but it would be years before I realized how that day became the beginning of a story that would trap me for the rest of my life. Skanda was the one who made sure everyone called me a hero. He retold the story of how I dove in after Nalini so often that it muddled people’s memories, until it became a different tale altogether. Being called a savior shamed me. I had done something petty and had been rewarded for it. It wasn’t right. I should have told the truth. Maybe things would have been different.

  A muffled sound caught my attention. I stood, flattening myself against the wall. A quiet shuffling sound followed. Someone fumbling with keys. The door swung open gently and the Prince stood over the threshold.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  I nodded, stepping outside and over the sleeping forms of the drugged guards. The moment I left the room behind, I felt as though the world had been waiting. The air pinched and shifted around us. Agitated and restless. Midnight had divested itself of stars. Not a single light fell on us as we ran through stone archways to the warm musk of the stables. Not a single sound rustled in our shadows as we untethered two horses and clattered out of the palace. Not a single echo of breath lit up our escape. It was as if we’d slid into the lost moment before sleep.

  We rode until dawn smudged scorched clouds across the world. The horses shone with sweat. By then, whatever magic had let us escape into the night had lifted. Birds screeched. A thousand insect wings stabbed the air. My stomach groaned. Being a palace prisoner was more coddling than I thought. At least I was fed on time.

  I eyed the Fox. He was almost irritatingly vulnerable. He still wore no weapons belt. And yet he held himself as if he were invincibility made flesh. Before we left Ujijain, I’d checked the pack slung across my horse and found a pair of knives. They weren’t my customized weapons, but I’d still hidden one of them in the sleeves of my tunic. The Fox wore the ruby openly. It glinted from a shallow pocket on his tunic, ripe as fruit and begging to be plucked. So much for clever. Killing someone on a horse wasn’t difficult, but I didn’t want to spook the horse. Besides—

  “What do I call you?” he asked, turning to me. I froze. “The ‘Jewel of Bharata’ just seems too modest, don’t you think?”

  I hated that nickname. Skanda had ordered that the title be spoken at every festival.

  “Call me Gauri.”

  “How intimate.”

  I glared. “Enjoy it, because that’s as intimate as this will ever get, Fox Prince.” Consider it a courtesy before I end you.

  “I prefer Vikram,” he said, smiling as if I’d given away a secret.

  We were still too close to Ujijain for me to kill him. Besides, I wanted to lead him closer to Bharata.

  “Where are we going? You said we’d need access to a magical place first.”

  “Ah. Yes.” He patted the pocket with the ruby, but didn’t bring it out. “I imagined the ruby would become something like a compass.”

  “And?”

  “My theory was incorrect.”

  “So … you don’t know where we’re going?”

  “I didn’t say that,” he said. “We’re going to the Chakara Forest. The legends always said that the Otherworlds were linked. If we find one entrance, we find the bridge to all of them.”

  The words snipped at my heart. The Chakara Forest was the last place where I’d seen Maya. The night she disappeared, enchantment had cinched the world tight, drawing down the heavens and tempting me to grab a fistful of stars straight out of the sky. I pushed out the memory of Maya and focused on the advantage. The Chakara Forest was close to Bharata. I could kill him and sell the ruby in the markets by tomorrow.

  I dug my heels into my horse. “Then let’s go. We can’t lose the light.”

  The day wore on. I kept looking over my shoulder, waiting for a search party, but none followed. I wasn’t arrogant enough to assume that our departure was so stealthy and intelligent that it had stumped an entire kingdom. Some force of the Otherworld had snapped common sense and logic. It … wanted us. I snuck a glance above me, as if I’d see the soft underbelly of magic crouched over us like a beast closing in on its prey.

  By evening, we had reached the outskirts of the forest. Even on the fringes, it seemed like a place touched by magic. The trees didn’t stay in one place. A silver pool spilled over inky roots that had slumbered in earth only a moment ago. Cold fingers slid down my spine. I felt the shadow of the forest like something that would cleave my life. If I stepped inside, the magic I was trying to avoid would swallow me whole.

  Which meant I had to kill the Prince right here.

  “We should get off the horses,” I said. “They might spook in the dark.”

  He raised an eyebrow, but jumped off without comment. Soldier or no, there was something too shrewd in his gaze. I had to catch him off guard.

  “I’ll secure the area first,” I said, moving away from him.

  “Without a weapon?” he asked, leaning against a tree.

  I stilled. I couldn’t give away that I already had one. I fake-rummaged through the pack and lifted the other knife. On closer inspection, I’d never seen a blade like this—it was sharp with a fine enough balance, but there was a strange bump on the hilt.

  Poorly designed.

  The Prince grinned, waving me away. I made a great show of moving into the forest, but I kept to the shadowy edges. I bided my time, waiting for the growing dark before I stalked him. I kept one arm over my mouth to hide my breathing and kept my steps to the soft, silent grass. The Prince had his back to me.

  I lunged.

  I grabbed him around the collar, pressing the knife to his throat right as he fell to his knees. I placed my heel at the instep of his foot, pinning him into place.

  “Aren’t you going to ask if I have any last words?” he gasped.

  “You just uttered them. Toss out the ruby.”

  But he only smirked. “Anything for you, fair princess.”

  He reached into his pocket and threw out … a piece of colored glass. A decoy.

  “Where is the real ruby?”

  He shrugged. “Must have dropped it.”

  “It must be on your person. Give it.”

  “Go ahead and search every inch of my body,” he said, winking. “In fact, keep me alive for that.”

  I pressed the blade harder and a thin l
ine of blood seeped from the metal. The Prince winced and then smiled.

  “Try,” he said.

  I was done with this. I pressed the blade harder and felt a slight give in the hilt. Like a sigh. One half-push later and the blade snapped off, falling into the grass. The Prince snatched the blade, rolled away from me and shook the dirt from his hair.

  “Clever, isn’t it?” he said, tossing it behind him. “My own design. Took me about a year to perfect the mechanics. Any killing pressure breaks the blade.”

  I stared at the useless hilt in my hand. “You gave me a fake blade?”

  “And showed you a fake ruby,” he added. His eyes met mine and he grinned. “What were you going to do, Princess, kill me and sell the ruby? Raise an army on your own?”

  My mouth fell open.

  “Trust me, I have no desire to work with you, but the ruby led me to you and you fit the description. Think of what we could do together,” he said. “We could use magic. But you’d rather close your eyes to all that in exchange for a couple of mercenaries?”

  I growled, stalking toward him. “A blade would have been a more merciful death for you.”

  Hesitancy flashed in his eyes. He took one step backward into the Chakara Forest. I followed, ignoring how magic soaked the air, reaching for me, whispering yes, yes, yes.

  Vikram held up his hands. “Consider the possibilities—”

  A flash of gold glinted in the trees. Air rushed past me. Vikram paused. I snapped my head in the direction of whatever sailed toward us. I squinted. A ball? A rock? I ducked out of the way just in time to catch the thing in my palm.

  A golden apple sat in my hand. Its rind was as burnished as a miniature sun. Not just golden.

  It was pure gold.

  Vikram stared. “Is that—”

  The branches overhead snapped. Sharp monkey laughter split the air, cawing and cackling. A hundred apricots, cherries and split guavas rained from the sky. Through the veil of fruit, I caught the shape of three creatures. I scanned the trees. Nothing else joined them. I thought monkeys traveled in huge packs, but these three were acting as a hunting group. Or a band of soldiers.

  I tried dropping the golden apple and reaching for a stick on the ground to scare them off, but it clung to my palm as if it had grown tiny burs. Honey seeped from the rind.

  The fruit stopped falling. Vikram moved to my side just as the three monkeys approached us. Dread gripped my heart in a fist of cold. Magic clung to the air, pushing the air out of my chest. When I blinked, something shimmered behind the trees. A ghostly outline of cities. Nocturnal eyes blinking open. The Otherworld felt like a body in the dark, a presence hiding its true face.

  I didn’t need a ruby to tell me that these creatures were connected to the Otherworld. They walked like men, wore gold jodhpurs and one even had a helmet. The tallest—black-furred with a silver scar down his forehead—eyed us, a bright sword gleaming in his hands. I tensed. I knew I couldn’t fight with one hand, but I wasn’t entirely useless. Magical or not, everything bled.

  A pile of dirt and fruit peels caught my eye. I kicked it hard, aiming straight at the monkey’s eyes.

  “Run!” I shouted at Vikram.

  My aim was true. The monkey screamed, dropping the sword. Just as I reached for the blade, something sharp grazed my throat. Knives floated in the air. Poised to kill. One of the monkeys had forced Vikram to his knees. Three enchanted knives formed a collar at his throat.

  “Get these things away from us, monkey—”

  “Not monkeys,” hissed Vikram. “Vanaras.”

  Vanaras. Real vanaras. I ran through what I knew about them from Maya’s stories. Cunning. Ruled over by the legendary Queen Tara in the cold kingdom of Kishkinda. I couldn’t use any of that information, though. Maya’s stories had failed to mention that they weren’t short, talking monkeys but tall beings that looked as strong as Bharata’s best soldiers. Worse, they knew magic. And they showed no hesitation in wielding it to kill.

  “You!” screeched a vanara, jerking his head at Vikram. “We came for you! A thief always returns to the spot of plunder.”

  Vikram’s eyes widened. Sweat gleamed on his brow.

  Is this what you wanted out of magic?

  “I didn’t steal anything.”

  “You can’t fool us,” said a vanara with a yellow ruff of fur. He took out a knife and cut a slash in the air.

  A thin ray of light stretched where the air had been cut, widening into an image of a man running through an orchard of bone trees. He reached into the bark, pulling out a golden apple. There was no mistaking the man: It was Vikram. In the image, he ran away with the apple before hurling it through the branches.

  Then the image disappeared.

  “See?” said the vanara. “We’ve waited for you for a hundred years.”

  “I’ve always hoped to age with grace, but a hundred years? That’s impossible. Look at me. That can’t be me,” protested Vikram. “I’ve never seen an orchard like that.”

  But the vanaras paid him no attention. The yellow vanara smiled slowly. “I know what thievsies and beasties gets.”

  “A trial!” shouted another.

  “But the Queen is not here,” said the gray one. “She left us. More than a thousand moons have since guarded the sky and not one has seen her.”

  “What the Queen does not sees, the Queen does not scolds.”

  “Then why not just behead them and be done with it?” said the yellow one. “I like their horses.”

  I couldn’t fight like this, so I reached for a second tactic: bargaining.

  “If you want the fruit, then just take it back!” I shouted, holding out my hand where the fruit refused to budge. “You can take it and keep him. I don’t care.”

  “The fruit has claimed you, girl,” said the gray vanara. “It is useless to us now. But if you wish to see even the hope of a new day, I would not eat it.”

  New tactic: lie.

  “If you behead me, you’ll have to answer to the army of Bharata,” I said, trying to hold my head high. “And they won’t hesitate to slaughter beasts. I—”

  The vanaras stilled. “What did you call us?”

  The largest one stepped forward. “You would reduce our proud and ancient race to beasts?”

  Cold twisted my heart. The knives dug into my throat, on the threshold of blood and flesh. This was it. I wanted nothing to do with magic and now it was going to kill me—

  “What if we’re spies?” called Vikram.

  The knives faltered.

  “Spies?” repeated the vanaras.

  “Yes. Spies. If you behead us first, you’ll never know what kind of intelligence we may have. Why, if it was so easy for me to steal this … apple … what if it becomes easier for other people to steal it too? We could tell you where your guarding went wrong and teach you how to prevent it from happening again.”

  The vanaras’ tails flicked.

  “If it was a trial,” continued Vikram, “then we could talk reasonably. As civilized folk do. And then you can behead us.”

  “Leave me out of this,” I said under my breath.

  “Not a chance,” said Vikram.

  The vanaras huddled together, tails whipping the air. The decision was on their faces.

  “You will come with us and await judgment by our laws,” said the yellow one.

  The knives disappeared. A second later, metal weighed down my neck and arms. Chains. Once more, I tried to shake the fruit from my bound hands. It wouldn’t leave. Worse, I felt as if I could taste it in my own blood. Vikram was thrown to my side, equally chained.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t have a real weapon on hand,” I said.

  “I have my mind,” he said. “You should thank me.”

  I raised my chained hands. “I am bursting with gratitude.”

  “We’re alive, aren’t we? And now I’ve found us an entry into the Otherworld,” he shot back. “No thanks to you.”

  Resentment flickered inside m
e. Much as I hated to admit it, he had saved us. Then again, he’d also used the moment to get us into the Otherworld, which was the last place I wanted to visit. The vanaras tugged us forward and we fell into step, marching through the Chakara Forest.

  “Did you steal that fruit?” I asked.

  “Of course. I want nothing more than to steal apples. I’ve also always manifested the ability to travel through time, and at night I turn into a beast and only your kiss can break the—”

  “I get it. That’s a no. But then where did that image come from?”

  His brow furrowed. “I have no idea.”

  The vanaras led us like cattle down a path of trees.

  “Ignoring the indescribable stupidity of not bringing any useful weapons, you did keep us alive. Now just keep quiet.”

  “Brilliant advice, Princess. Right up there with ‘Breathing is rather useful if you want to live.’”

  “You should listen to me, Fox. Who’s the one with more experience at surviving as a prisoner?”

  “And who’s the one who was never stupid enough to become a prisoner in the first place? At the moment, I’d say one of our opinions is more useful than the other.”

  I glared. “If they don’t behead you, I will.”

  “Where will this trial be held?” asked Vikram, ignoring me.

  “At home,” grunted the largest vanara. “Must run some errands though. The Queen won’t want to return to an empty palace.”

  “If she ever returns,” sighed one of them.

  “She’ll come back! Curses aren’t made to be permanent. They like to be broken or they become resentful that everyone’s forgotten about them,” said another.

  “I thought Kishkinda was in the Kalidas Mountains,” said Vikram.

  “It is.”

  Vikram frowned. Light stained the end of the tunnel, trailing silver ribbons across the compacted dirt floor. The Kalidas Mountains were more than a day’s trek from them.

  “Mirror pools,” whispered the yellow vanara, turning over his shoulder. “Left behind by the war.”