Star Daughter

by Shveta Thakrar

  Cookies. He’d actually baked her cookies. Sheetal caught her mouth stretching into that dorky smile she always got around him.

  He must have showered right before she came over, because the last of his dark hair was still drying into waves. Sheetal tried to focus on it while he transferred the cookies to a rack, on the blue band T-shirt that fit him so well, but her gaze kept straying to his mouth, and she found herself wondering what it would taste like after a cookie.

  Dev made a ta-da gesture toward the cooling cookies, so clearly pleased with himself that she commandeered the whole rack. “If you’re nice,” she offered magnanimously, “I might let you have one. Maybe.”

  His eyebrows came together in mock outrage. “I baked them!”

  “And I stole them.” Balancing the rack in one hand, Sheetal searched the island drawers until she located a butter knife. “Look, it’s my sword!”

  Dev nabbed a cookie anyway. “Figures you’d be a dark knight.”

  Sheetal brandished the knife at him, then put the rack back down and reached for a cookie herself.

  Her teeth crunched into what should have been gooey and warm chocolate-chip bliss, and she tried not to wince. He’d left the baking sheet in the oven too long. But who cared? He’d baked her cookies!

  “Not bad, right?” Dev took a bite of his. “Huh, I thought they’d be softer.”

  “Not bad at all,” Sheetal agreed, and she wasn’t even lying.

  They pushed their stools together until their sides were touching. Dev broke a cookie in two, ate one half, and fed her the other.

  He didn’t even wait for her to finish chewing to lean in for a kiss. Just a brush of lips before he sat back on his stool and grinned. A dimple appeared near the corner of his mouth. “Oh, right; each cookie costs one kiss. By my calculations, you’ve already had one and a half.”

  “I do like to pay my debts,” Sheetal said, and leaned in for her own kiss. “There. Now you owe me half a cookie.”

  “Actually, accounting for inflation, you just earned one-fourth of a cookie.” Dev grinned evilly, but when she protested, he gave her the other half.

  While she ate, Dev produced a DVD still in its shrink wrap: Furious Fungus 5: Shiitake Strikes Back. The cover looked like someone had colorized angry mushroom clip art and then run the results through a terrible photo filter. “Hey, so we could either watch this thing I found on clearance, or . . .”

  Sheetal stared for a minute, trying to figure out why anyone would pay even the ninety-nine cents listed on the price sticker. “I’m guessing you really want me to pick option B?”

  Dev glanced at her, face serious, then at his feet. “Or, you know, we could go up to my room.”

  His room. Her heart started pounding, and her skin prickled with nerves. Even the silver flame at her core kindled.

  “That’s where I write them,” he hurried to add. “My songs, I mean.”

  “Okay.” Just saying the word set off the butterfly ballet in Sheetal’s stomach. She surreptitiously wiped her palms on her skirt. “If it means not watching whatever that was.”

  “Good.” He smirked. “I didn’t actually want to watch it, either.”

  Leaving her bag on the kitchen table, Sheetal followed him up the gleaming hardwood stairs. All she could think about was how close he was and what might happen next.

  At the door to his room, his easy stride faltered. “Guess I should have cleaned up a bit. It’s normally not this bad.”

  He wasn’t kidding. Books, crumpled pieces of paper, and graphic novels lay all over the beige carpet. Clothes were heaped in front of the closet, half hiding a Batman poster. He hadn’t made his bed, but at least the sheets looked clean.

  Dev quickly started dumping things in the closet. When Sheetal bent down to help, she saw one of the balled-up pages was covered with scratched-out words. A draft of the new song?

  “I wasn’t kidding,” he said, watching her with his dark, beautiful eyes. “This is pretty much all I’ve been doing, writing songs. You just make me want to write so many.”

  Sheetal turned into one big cheesy grin on the inside, but she tried to sound skeptical. “That’s a bit much even for you.”

  Dev shrugged. “It’s the truth.” He chucked a bunch of laundry into a hamper and slammed the closet door. “There.”

  Sheetal’s pulse stuttered. Here they were in his room, with the blinds drawn, and he was lighting a candle. Should she sit on the bed? Or stay on the floor and pretend she wasn’t sneaking peeks at the song?

  Struggling not to feel completely awkward, she looked around for something to do and noticed the pictures on the orange walls. Whew!

  She let go of the rejected draft and walked over to the nearest wall. The photos told a story: Dev with his family; Dev with his friends; Dev with a curly-haired older boy. She stopped at a shot of Dev trapped in the older boy’s headlock, both of them wearing green soccer jerseys and huge grins. “Who’s this?”

  Dev ran a hand through his hair and frowned slightly. “My cousin Jeet.” He flopped onto the bed, propping himself up against the pillows, and motioned for Sheetal to join him.

  A quiver ran through her. Never mind the pictures. She had her answer about where to sit.

  Her belly heating, she climbed up beside Dev, half thrilled, half terrified. Suddenly his arms were around her, his face so near hers she could feel his eyelashes when he blinked.

  “Caught you, pretty girl,” he teased. “Now what?”

  She met his gaze head-on. “Maybe I wanted to get caught,” she said coyly. Part of her couldn’t believe she’d just said that. But right now, here with him in his bed, she felt dangerous. Unbound.

  For once, Dev seemed at a loss for words. “Oh, yeah?” he asked at last, his voice lower. His eyes, velvet-dark and hungry in the candlelight, searched her face until everything beyond them faded. She really could fall into them now, she thought, giddy, an electric flood of energy setting her every nerve sparking.

  She shivered.

  “You look cold,” Dev said, pulling a blanket over them. “Better?”

  Sheetal refrained from pointing out that it was eighty-four degrees in June. Instead, she leaned into his chest.

  This close to the heat of him, her skin tingled. Her heart thrummed chords that matched the ones his heart drummed out. Something brilliant shone inside her, and she couldn’t tell whether it was her flame or what happened when you were just a girl who liked a boy.

  Just a girl who wanted Dev to take all of her in, to really get her. And for his mouth to find hers.

  Between kisses, she wanted him to tell her his private dreams and wishes. In return, she wanted to divulge all the things she’d kept in confidence for so long, air out all the truths moldering in the chambers of her too-full heart.

  His arms felt so right around her. Strong, solid.

  She was already breaking about thirty rules by being here, and he’d never believe her anyway, so what if she gave him a hint?

  “When I was a kid, I used to sing all the time. With my mom,” she murmured, her fingertips learning the line of his jaw. “We’d go outside and look at the sky, and she’d tell me stories, and we’d dance and sing all these songs. Maybe it’s stupid, but I thought . . . I thought we’d always do that.”

  Dev squeezed her hand. “That’s hard. I’m sorry.” His mouth was close to her ear, and his breath tickled.

  “She’s the one who taught me to sing. Under the stars.” The song of the stars. “I—I miss her sometimes, you know?”

  Dev nodded. “What if you sing one of those songs? Just for me. No one else has to know.”

  “What?” Sheetal said too fast, the tapping in her heart turning to painful thuds of a sledgehammer. “I thought you were going to sing for me.”

  “I’d rather hear you. But—”

  “I’m not a performer like you.” The brilliance flared inside her again, and now it merged with the notes of the sidereal melody. She’d never sung for anyone but Minal and Da
d. She certainly couldn’t sing for Dev. One note, and he’d know she wasn’t fully mortal; with the starsong chiming in her chest, she was sure of it.

  Before Dev could argue, she took his face in her hands and kissed him.

  She’d only meant to distract him, to turn him away from what she couldn’t share after all, but his lips were so warm and soft, and the way they parted against hers made her forget, too. He did taste sweet as he drew her to him, though nothing like a cookie. His fingers ran over her back, wove through her hair.

  Here in the dark, the starry song she’d refused to sing aloud surged through her in a gale of thundering bass notes and shimmering ornaments. It rang in her blood, in her lips where they touched Dev’s, in the furious beating of her heart. Right now, as long as it didn’t try to take over, she couldn’t care less what it did.

  For the duration of that kiss, and the one after, and all the ones after that, she was just a girl who liked a boy who liked her back.

  She could stay like this forever.

  They finally broke apart, cheeks flushed, lips swollen. “Wow,” said Dev. “You should sneak over to my house more often.”

  “Yeah,” Sheetal agreed, trying to catch her breath. “Wow.” She hadn’t known it would be like that.

  Dev lay back against the pillows, his hair rumpled. She’d done that. She nestled against his chest, enjoying its rise and fall like the sea.

  Just a normal girl and her boyfriend.

  They stayed like that for a while, the shadows cast by the candlelight dancing over them. Eventually Sheetal asked, “If you could have anything, anything at all, what would you want?”

  Dev took a minute to think, and she breathed in his boy smell, a bit of shampoo and a bit of whatever it was that made him Dev. “A tiny elephant to ride on my shoulder would be cool,” he said. “That—and not having to care about what anyone else thinks I should do. ‘Dev’s going to be a hotshot lawyer!’ ‘Dev’s going to be a famous singer!’ How about ‘Dev just wants to be left alone’?”

  Maybe he’d meant the words to come out sardonic, even mocking, but they only sounded frustrated. Sheetal knew how that felt, even if his situation was the mirror opposite of hers.

  Dev played with a lock of her hair. He sounded light-years away. “What do you want?”

  Sheetal started to answer. Then she realized she couldn’t. Not really.

  What did she want? Adventures. Cupcakes and kulfi. To be star bright and mortal dark and make her own choices, too. To not be bound by other people’s expectations.

  More than anything, to be seen.

  If only she could just tell him.

  But she’d taken so long to consider, his eyes had slipped shut. She remembered he’d stayed up all night working on his mysterious song. “You’re so comfortable,” he mumbled.

  Sheetal kissed his cheek, then moved so her ear was pressed to his chest. Thump, thump, thump, beat his heart, a metronome keeping perfect time. It was steady, but slowing as he drifted into sleep. She snuggled deeper into his arms, wanting to be carried off like that, too.

  Listening to his pulse, she realized she was humming. With the memory of last night’s music glinting silver in her mind, it felt good. Besides, he was out cold, so it wasn’t like he could hear her.

  Her own eyes closed.

  And the spark at her core ignited. The sidereal melody flared to life, its strains streaming from her throat like glowing garlands, each woven from shining threads of starlight.

  The threads came together to form a web around Dev and her. A corner of her mind wondered what the hell was going on, but the starsong soothed it into silence. She was only dreaming.

  In a dream, at least, Sheetal could have what she wanted.

  So she followed the melody and let her heart reach out for Dev’s.

  She could see the rhythmic throb of the blood that brought life-giving oxygen to Dev’s cells, could sense the buried river of his recollections and dreams. Her own blood turned to music. Silver fire slipped through her veins as she hummed, flowing from her heart into Dev’s like a bridge between them.

  Images began to form along the bridge, first vague as unspun cotton, then finer, more detailed, the more she sang, a sketch gaining depth and dimension. Then she saw six-year-old Dev among the rest of his family, their plastic plates laden with party food: buttery pulao, its white grains fluffy and flecked with carrots and peas; puri, fried to golden perfection; lightly fried bhajia, spicy and stuffed with potato and onion. Dev chatted happily with the other kids. Even at that age, Sheetal thought, he was a charmer.

  An old man started speaking, and everyone else fell quiet. One of the kids standing with Dev, a curly-haired boy about nine or ten, looked excited, as if he’d heard this story before. “Once there was a star . . .”

  The scene changed, taking Sheetal and her song with it.

  Stars walked quietly among mortals, their long manes sparkling and their dark eyes agleam as they sloughed off inspiration like snowflakes. In their wake, sleeping mortal passions soon transformed into art: painters rendered masterpieces accented with gold leaf and gems, dancers refined their subtlest gestures into movements worthy of apsaras, musicians spun notes into complex compositions to be handed down for generations, and storytellers penned reams of epic verse that effortlessly blended the mundane with the mythical.

  The stars never advertised their presence to the world. They merely wandered in and out of lives as they were needed, kindling and then fueling the flames of creativity.

  Most artists soon forgot their astral muses as their work devoured them—if they saw the stars at all. They spent their days as if in a dream where the only truth was their work, until that work was done. Royal chefs concocted recipes; architects constructed enameled monuments to love; jewelers fashioned pieces so intricate they looked like dreams made metal. The world gleamed brighter for it all.

  But occasionally an artist turned their head long enough to become infatuated with their star, making of that fixation its own kind of art, a delightful drama of yearning.

  And occasionally a star would forget their place and respond to that hunger, with glances leading to caresses and secret trysts, until silver fire ignited between muse and artist.

  Yet with time, these mortals began to wither, consumed from the inside out.

  They ceased to eat, to bathe, to sleep, even to work. Their faces grew skeletal, their hair lank before it fell out, and they lay in shadow chanting their lover’s name until the last trace of air left their bodies.

  The stars burned their very essence away.

  Rumors began to spread, both on Earth and in the heavens. The sidereal court convened and punished those stars who had dallied with humans, removing any children of these unions until they were old enough to purge their mortal blood. “Mortals cannot bear such prolonged exposure to our inspiration and our light,” came the verdict, delivered by an imposing older couple on their twin thrones, “and to join with them in this way is an abomination.”

  Not long after, a star who in human years might have been twenty or twenty-one and whose beauty was as luminous as her light sought out her mortal lover. As they embraced, her long silver tresses fell around them in a shimmering canopy. Though they had only recently begun their affair, she had to end it, she explained. Her expression entreated him to understand. “If I leave now, you might still be safe.”

  The man, youthful and dressed in a kurta pajama stained with rich pigments, caught her by the wrist. “You can’t leave. What do I have without you?”

  “Do not be foolish,” chastised the star. She gestured to his paintings. “You have your family and your friends and your art. I have given you inspiration, nothing more.”

  “Look at you,” he said. “You’re magic. Where am I going to find that again?”

  The star touched his cheek. “We still have tonight. Let us make the most of it.”

  They nestled together all that night, the man whispering stories to the star. She had dampened
her radiance, so they were lit only by the oil lamps scattered around the windows.

  “Do you truly have to go?” the man asked as day began to break.

  “Yes,” said the star through her tears. “Lord Surya’s chariot will soon drive across the sky.”

  He gripped her hand. “I’m not ready to say goodbye.”

  “Nor am I, but so it must be. I have given you all I can—all my light, all my love. If the court knew I was here right now . . .” Yet she held him tight.

  He considered, then nodded. “One more night. Just one more. Surely you can spare that?”

  The star conveyed her agreement in little kisses. Then she stood, extinguished the oil lamps, and disappeared into the dawn.

  When she reappeared after sunset, her glow driving away the gloom in the man’s small house, the man took her into his arms. “Won’t you reconsider?”

  The star smiled into his hair. “For your sake, I cannot.” She looked over his shoulder at the red cloth covering a large object in the center of the room. “A new piece in progress?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” He stepped back to offer her a small package. “For you.”

  The star opened it to find a mangalsutra, the gold-and-black necklace a bride wore once wed. “How lovely! But I cannot accept it.”

  “Why not?” asked the man. “Don’t you want to be with me?”

  Sorrow infused her words. “If only I could.”

  “You’re everything to me. My life has color now.” The man pressed each word into her throat with a kiss.

  “Your life has always had color. How else would you make art?”

  “Not like the colors I see now.” He unclasped the mangalsutra. “Won’t you stay?”

  The star’s voice quavered. “I cannot. You know I cannot.”

  Dropping the necklace, the man reached for the red cloth. He thrust it aside to expose a giant cage with iron bars. The star had no time to speak before he shoved her through the open door and slid the latch into place.

  She blazed with shock. “What are you doing?” she cried, grappling with the thin bars. “What sort of game is this?”

  The man smiled, but it was a mournful thing. “Don’t you understand?” he asked desperately. “I can’t let you leave. My paintings will turn to ash. I will turn to ash.”