A Crown of Wishes

by Roshani Chokshi

  Vikram paced over the floor, tugging at his hair. “What’s strange? Can you fix it?”

  “The poison in her skin,” said Aasha. She looked up. “It’s the same as mine.”

  “How is that possible?”

  Aasha stared at the flames, her expression inscrutable. “I … I don’t know. My sisters always said that we got our poison as a blessing from a goddess, but … but that doesn’t seem to make any sense now.”

  He stopped walking. “What does that mean for Gauri?”

  “It means that I can draw it out.”

  Vikram breathed a sigh of relief.

  “But it also means that I can’t counteract it. I can’t control whether she will live or die. She’ll have to fight it on her own. And if she lives, I don’t know if the poison will have changed her.”

  Vikram slumped into a chair. “Just do whatever you can.”

  Aasha nodded, and bent her head over Gauri. He didn’t look. Hours passed, and dawn lightened the sky. Aasha took a seat across from him, and her expression told him that she had done all she could. Now all they could do was wait.

  Sometime in the night, Vikram sat beside her and watched the heatless blue flames gutter. They were dying. But so was she.

  Magic might be vast, but right now, he felt it as a quiet hum in his chest. The enchantments that seemed greater than life had done them no favors. He turned, instead, to small, ordinary magic. The same magic that his mother had conjured each time his nightmares shot him out of sleep and left him breathless with fear. She used to fold him to her, rocking him back and forth and crooning a song. Vikram let go of reason. He lowered his lips to her ear … and sang. Soft, broken words. He was no singer. But, he thought, thinking back to the sage’s invitation so many nights ago, maybe it was about the sincerity. So he sang, forcing his heart into every lopsided tune. An unspoken summons and plea cropped up between the notes of his rusty voice:

  Don’t leave.

  28

  EATING POETRY

  GAURI

  I woke up to a burning sensation coursing through my leg. Pushing myself up one elbow, I looked around the room. The sky above me was flecked with stars and wispy violet clouds. How long had I been out? I groaned and tried to lift my leg. Nothing broken or sprained. Throwing back the covers, I saw only the usual expanse of bronze and unbroken skin. It was as if that poisoned water had never touched me.

  “Gauri?”

  Vikram rose out of a chair. Dark sleepless circles marked his eyes. “You’re awake.” He sat down on the bed beside me and reached for my hand. “We weren’t sure you’d make it.”

  “We?”

  A figure stood up from the other side of the room. The light washed over her. Aasha. She walked to me tentatively, her chin ducked as she looked at us through her lashes. Nalini moved the same way when she first came to Bharata. Hesitant. As if she thought the air would push back at her for not belonging. But then I remembered why I was lying down in a bed, pain shooting up my leg. I had chosen wrong after relying on Aasha’s word. Kapila’s crumpled face swam in my vision. From across the room, the vial of the Serpent King’s venom caught the light.

  “How do you feel?” asked Aasha. “You slept the whole day.”

  My hair had fallen in front of my face. Vikram leaned forward, raising his hand to brush away my hair. I turned my head, shoving the strands from my face, and he withdrew his hand as if stung.

  “I’m in pain,” I gritted out.

  “Do you feel any different?”

  I had drawn it away to show them the unbroken skin when something caught my eye. I thought I had no scar, but the poison had left something behind. A small blue star, no bigger than a thumbnail, was imprinted on the back of my calf.

  Aasha saw it and sucked in her breath. “That is our mark.”

  A vishakanya mark was on me? My heart raced and I turned to Vikram. “You touched me. Do you feel any different?”

  His eyes widened. “No. I don’t feel a thing.”

  “Maybe it is just a scar from the poison?” offered Aasha. “I am sure it is nothing.”

  Bitterness stole into my throat. What was sureness and certainty? I used to hold on to certainty like a light inside me, hoping it would chase out the dark unknown. But certainty was a phantom strung together on hopes. It would lead you astray at the first chance.

  “Are you?” I asked quietly. “Are you as sure as you were when you told us that the Serpent King had stolen Kauveri’s sister? Or that she even wanted his venom in the first place?”

  “Gauri…” said Vikram under his breath.

  I knew that tone. It was a stop while you’re ahead tone. I refused. There had been a chance to choose a path without bloodshed. Without hurt. And now that opportunity was gone. Once you choose, it cannot be undone. No matter how much all of our hearts may break beneath your choice. The problem with guilt was not how it attacks the present, but how it stained the past. Hindsight was a blemish on memory. Had I asked enough questions? Could I have figured out that I didn’t have all the pieces I needed to make that decision? Could any of this have been avoided?

  “The Serpent King didn’t steal away his wife. Where did you get that information?”

  Aasha stepped back, shocked. “I told you what I knew from my own sisters. All of the yakshas that serve the Lady Kauveri had said she wanted the Serpent King’s venom. They told us this when they frequented our tent. I overheard many of them saying that the Lady Kauveri only wanted the poison because he had stolen away her sister. It was gossip, I admit, but it was all the information I had.”

  “Aasha saved your life, Gauri,” said Vikram. “You can—”

  “Did you save me out of guilt? Because you lied?” I asked, my voice rising. “Did you want the Kapila River hurt too? You knew that we would go down there and assume that he’d done something wrong because of what you told us. Maybe you did it out of spite. Maybe one of your sisters or even you were the Serpent King’s scorned lover. Was that it?”

  Vikram stood up abruptly. “You didn’t make that decision by yourself. I believed her too. She gave us the best information she had. We had to make a choice. We did. That decision and responsibility is ours and ours alone.”

  “Oh, it’s that easy, is it?”

  “It is easy,” said Vikram coolly. “You would see that if you took a moment to unclutter your mind from all your self-pity.”

  My cheeks grew hot. They were both standing and staring down at me. I felt caged. Small. Manipulated.

  Aasha backed out of the room. “I didn’t save you out of guilt. I … I only tried to help.” She turned to Vikram. “I am glad she is safe. I must go.”

  She turned and fled the room, but not before I saw tears forming at the corners of her eyes and her limping gait. Every fight in me deflated. What was wrong with me?

  “Are you satisfied?” shouted Vikram. “We were both worried about you. We both waited by your side. Aasha worked all day to try to get the poison out of your veins or manipulate it so that it wouldn’t kill you. People care about you. You could have been grateful. Instead you spent the first moments of consciousness attacking everyone around you. Is this what you meant by surviving? You just blame and slash at everything around you because you can’t control yourself?”

  I stood up. The pain in my leg flared and dimmed. Pain or not, I owed Aasha my life. And I repaid her with cruel words. I had owed Nalini my life too and repaid her the same way: letting cold words chase her shadow into the night. My intentions might have been rooted in good, but they always grew thorns in the end.

  “We deserved answers.”

  “What answer? She heard something. She told us. We acted on it, justifiably so, because we have no experience with Serpent Kings or their consorts who also happen to be actual rivers! Anyone would have done the same. You’re just looking for someone to blame.”

  His words cut me. “Stop talking to me as if you could even understand anything I’ve gone through.”

  “Do you thi
nk you’re the only person suffering?” he demanded. “I know you. I … I saw you in the Undead Grotto. In Bharata, you kept people alive even if it killed you a little every day. You made choices no one should have to make. That is the Gauri I respect.” I flinched. “But this person? Now you’re just looking for an escape.”

  The words hung between us. I wanted to yank them out of the air and retreat behind them, but I couldn’t. Those words burrowed into my thoughts, bringing out a past I never wanted to revisit. In Bharata, surviving in Skanda’s court meant knowing all the players and all the pieces and all the information. All that time, I only thought how those pieces affected me. I sank onto the bed, staring at the slightly mussed cushions where Aasha had kept her vigil. Vikram scrubbed a hand through his hair. He sat down at the edge of the bed, his spine straight and chin high. He didn’t reach for me.

  “Surviving isn’t just about cutting out your heart and burning every feeling into ash,” he said. “Sometimes it means taking whatever is thrown at you, beautiful or grotesque, poisonous or blissful, and carving out your life with the pieces you’re given.”

  “Stop being wise.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Then stop demanding wisdom.”

  Shame spread through me. I thought back to that last night in Bharata. I would never forget Nalini’s tear-streaked face or the words I hurled at her. I never apologized when I had the chance. I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

  Leaving Vikram, I slipped out to the baths. As I dressed, I brushed my fingers against the strange blue star on my skin. It was small, almost smudged around the edges. Nothing at all like the ornate stamps branding the vishakanyas’ throats. When I left the baths, Vikram was turning the vial of the Serpent King’s venom in his hands.

  “Tomorrow is Jhulan Purnima.”

  “What? That fast?”

  He grimaced. “We lost time in the Serpent King’s palace.”

  “Wonderful. Not even a day of rest before the next trial.”

  “It could be worse.”

  “Always optimistic,” I said with a small shake of my head.

  “Hope shapes the world.”

  “Or stains it so you don’t know what it really looks like.”

  “Or that,” he allowed.

  “Rest,” I said, when I saw him stare longingly at the bed. “I’ll come back later tonight.”

  * * *

  Outside, the courtyard had transformed. Delicate silver bells were strung through the trees. Snow dusted the air, and everything was silver and iridescent, pearl white or the barest touch of blush. Swings with braided lotuses for ropes hung from the trees, an homage to the sacred lovers who had spent so many afternoons with their heads bent as they swung side by side, flute music wreathing their limbs and their eyes brimming with the sight of each other’s faces. The swings listed gently in the windless air, an invitation to sit and talk and fall in love.

  I never wanted to fall in love. To me, love looked like pale light. Not lustrous enough to illuminate the world or dazzle one’s eyes, but bright enough to fool you into thinking it might. In the harem, some of my mothers told me love was a decadent ambrosia, something to be sipped and savored. Others told me it was an open wound. One of the mothers—a slip of a woman who wouldn’t survive her first pregnancy—had pulled me aside and told me something I never forgot: “Love is like Death without the guarantee of its arrival. Love may not come for you, but when it does it will be just as swift and ruthless as Death and just as blind to your protestations. And just as Death will end one life and leave you with another, so will Love.”

  Her words terrified me. I would never feel that way about someone. I never wanted to.

  Not too far from the vishakanyas’ tent, I found Aasha sitting by a stream. She looked up when she saw me, any expression in her face instantly shuttering.

  “May I sit with you?”

  She nodded.

  “Listen … I got lost in my head back there,” I said. “And somewhere in between being horribly ungrateful and just plain horrible, I never thanked you. I owe you an apology. You have no reason to accept it, but I hope you will.”

  Aasha nodded. “I understand. And I forgive you.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “That’s it? I was expecting you’d ask me to grovel or chase me away with a touch.” I laughed. “You’re a far better person than I am.”

  “Am I?” she asked. “A person, I mean? I started out as one. I started out like you.”

  Her question took me by surprise.

  “Of course you’re a person, Aasha,” I said. “Humanity has nothing to do with what runs through your veins or shows up on your skin.”

  She closed her eyes, as if savoring the words. “Did you know that the Lord of Treasures had this stream commissioned especially for vishakanyas? He did it so that we would have a place to dip our feet into without worrying about killing any mortal thing in its waters. I found out only a day ago.” She kicked her foot in the water, frowning. “I could have been doing this since the day we got here.”

  “Better a late discovery than none at all?”

  “I suppose so.” She shrugged. “There are some streams that run through our harem back home, but it’s nothing like this … nothing under open skies.”

  “Where is home?”

  Aasha looked away from me. “We are not permitted to say to those who are not vishakanya.”

  “Oh. Have you ever had another home?”

  “I suppose I must have,” she said. “But my sisters took me when I was four.”

  Anger flared through me. “How could they rip you from your family?”

  “Don’t say that,” chastised Aasha gently. “They are my family. And I love them. As they love me. They meant to save me.” My eyes widened. “A soothsayer had come to our village and declared that I would be a young widow. In my village, all widows must commit sati the moment her husband dies. They rescued me from a fate of burning alive with my husband’s body. They even made sure my family would be well compensated. I hope my birth family loved well.”

  I watched her moving her foot in the water, something I could do a thousand times and never find reason to give thanks. “Would you leave the vishakanyas, if you could?”

  She looked at me sharply. “I wouldn’t be able to survive in your world. It’s impossible. There’s no way to feed on human desires without killing the human.”

  I noticed she hadn’t answered me. Having a vishakanya mark didn’t make me suddenly able to read desires, but Aasha’s felt powerful enough. She wanted to know the world that had been denied to her. A vision of Nalini, alone in a dark cell in Bharata, bit into my thoughts. All this time, I had only thought about keeping her alive. What about beyond that? What about what she wanted for her life? Before the rebellion, Nalini had always asked me about returning home to her people. I always told her no because I knew she wasn’t safe in Skanda’s reign. But I wasn’t any different from Aasha’s sisters who had secured her life but given her no choice. Except now I couldn’t even say that I had kept Nalini alive. Shame knotted my heart. When I returned to Bharata, I would make amends.

  “You can ask me anything you like?” I said.

  Maybe it was a flimsy offering, but it was all I had.

  Aasha hesitated for only a moment. “Anything?”

  I nodded.

  Aasha pressed her brows together. “What does sweet taste like?”

  “Uh…”

  I stumbled. What was sweet to someone who didn’t know flavor? I searched for the right words, trying to think of it differently. See it differently.

  “It’s like … like waking up and remembering a good dream. Like eating poetry.”

  Aasha closed her eyes. “That sounds good.”

  “It is.”

  “What about flowers?”

  “Kinda like wet silk?”

  She made a face.

  “It’s better than it sounds, I promise.”

  Aasha laughed. She asked me about dances and grass, bee st
ings and thorns.

  She even asked about kissing and was disappointed when I explained that I didn’t have nearly as much experience as she thought.

  “Why not?” she demanded.

  I choked. “What? That’s … private.”

  “If there was a beautiful woman or a handsome man who wanted to kiss me, I would not hesitate. Especially if I wanted to kiss them too.”

  She gave me a very pointed gaze. I looked elsewhere. My gaze fell to the stream beneath us. Aasha had one leg submerged in the running stream, and the other drawn up to her chest. My eyes narrowed. Her position looked casual, but I’d sprained my ankle once in a fight and had to limp off to a pond just to bring down the swelling. Aasha wasn’t relaxing. She was trying to heal.

  “How did you get hurt?”

  She looked to the water. “You may be glad of my assistance, but others are not. They say I should not have helped. Many will seethe in silence. Others will not be as silent.”

  “That’s not an answer, Aasha.”

  “It is better than an answer,” she said. “It is a warning.”

  I wasn’t going to push her, but her words made me skittish. As far as I knew, no one could go into our rooms and steal what we’d won. But that didn’t mean no one would try. And if someone had attacked Aasha, what was to stop them from coming after me or Vikram?

  “I must go. My sisters will be anxious. I have been gone too long.”

  I stood up. “Thank you for your help, Aasha.”

  She smiled. “Thank you, Gauri, for your time and tales.”

  I trudged back toward the courtyard. In two days, our trials would begin. I was beginning to understand the Tournament of Wishes. Each step we took and every choice we made fashioned the tale that Kubera would keep from us. Whether we would survive to tell it ourselves was not his concern. He wanted to see what we thought, how our very will and ambition shaped the future. I was thoroughly mortal. My touch wasn’t toxic. No magical abilities had ever revealed themselves to me no matter how much I wished for them. But I had a vast source of will. And will was an enchantment that no being could touch because I alone could wield it. That was power.