Star Daughter

by Shveta Thakrar

  Sheetal started sweating. She was supposed to have an escort? Like, another star? And what if she didn’t know the answers?

  The guard on the left turned to Minal, his lips pursed in distaste. “As for you, mortal child, you must be the lady’s companion?”

  “Indeed. My lady’s flame could rival a supernova. Her heart is all star,” Minal intoned, oozing obsequiousness like syrup. “I am not worthy of being the dirt on the soles of her golden chappals, let alone her blessed maidservant, but my lady requested I accompany her on this journey, and far be it from this mere mortal to question her will.”

  “Your companion seems very . . . pliable?” the guard on the left asked Sheetal doubtfully.

  She tried not to laugh. Nothing to do but run with it. “Yes, she’s perfect. So eager to please.”

  “Aha.” He sniffed. “In that case.”

  “Shall we begin, daughter of Charumati?” asked the guard on the right.

  Her laughter cut off. “Certainly,” she said, praying she sounded arrogant and not afraid.

  “First, what offering did the elephant who sought divine rescue from his enemy make to Lord Vishnu?”

  “Oh, that’s easy.” That was one of her favorite Hindu stories growing up. Gajendra, leader of a herd of elephants, neared a lake where he fell prey to a crocodile’s jaws. They stood locked in that stalemate for a thousand years, the crocodile patiently waiting for Gajendra to give in and become dinner, and Gajendra fighting to free his leg from the crocodile’s powerful grasp. “A lotus from the lake where he was trapped.”

  The tension in her shoulders gave way. If the questions were all this simple, she’d be fine.

  The guard’s expression remained inscrutable. “Correct. Second question: After Damayanti was abandoned by Nala in the forest, with whom did she seek shelter?”

  Sheetal knew this, too. When she was little, Dad had given her a comic version of Nala and Damayanti. She’d eaten it up.

  But she hadn’t read it in so long, the minor details had fled her memory. Think, she told herself. Think!

  Her palms tingled. Why wouldn’t her exhausted brain come up with the name?

  When a minute had passed, Minal said, “My lady, you are drifting. These poor sentries await your reply.” Under her breath, she whispered, “Chedi. The Princess of Chedi.”

  Her gaze never leaving the guards, Sheetal gave them the answer.

  “Correct,” admitted the guard on the left. He sounded irritated.

  Two questions down, one to go. Sheetal yawned. She couldn’t help it; it had been such a long couple of days, and she was so tired. She tried to stifle the yawn, but the guard on the left had already seen.

  Now he smirked openly. “Third and final question: When the nagini left the heavens, what did she take with her beneath the earth?”

  They’d been toying with her. Anyone conversant with the old myths could have answered the first two questions. But only a star could ever know this. It was pretty clear the guard on the left—and maybe the other one, too—didn’t think Sheetal did.

  The whole charade made her furious. Her mother was waiting inside.

  “Some trouble, madam?” the guard on the right inquired mildly. “Surely not.”

  The guard on the left had drawn his sword and was inspecting the line of its blade. “A true star’s daughter would know the answer.”

  A true star’s daughter. One who wasn’t mortal, he meant.

  The flame trembled within her. It would be so easy to just let it loose on the guards. Every second they kept her out here was another second she wasn’t helping Dad.

  Minal laid a steadying hand on her shoulder. “My lady, you know the answer.”

  And Sheetal did. After all, she’d written it down herself in her journal, the same journal now tucked into her messenger bag along with some toiletries, Radhikafoi’s snacks, and a picture of Dad.

  “The stars,” she told the guards, her words bold and precise as the silver light dancing up her arms. “A few stars went down with her. We say they became the first diamonds, because they lit the way, but really, they were just the first to mix with humans.”

  “Correct,” the guards said in unison, their expressions melting into grudging respect.

  The one on the left sheathed his sword. “Come, then. Your mortal companion, too.”

  10

  The guard led Sheetal and Minal into a long corridor lined with carved marble pillars. No human building Sheetal had ever seen—not the Taj Mahal, not the Palace of Versailles—could hope to rival that intricate mosaic ceiling, its enamel-and-gold inlay telling stories that moved, unfolding in time with her footsteps. It was enormous, eternal. It made her feel small and dizzy.

  When she sneaked a peek beside her, Minal was taking it all in with wondering eyes.

  They emerged into an area that was open to the sky, a spacious courtyard full of beautiful people dressed in sumptuous clothes that might have come straight from the Night Market. Some of the faces looked like they were glowing, but it was hard to tell in the light from the hanging lanterns.

  “You are likely to encounter your mother here,” the guard said abruptly, then merged into the crowd.

  “Thanks so much,” Minal called after him. “You’ve been ever so helpful.”

  Across the chamber, two jeweled thrones rested on a dais. Her blood thrumming, Sheetal took in their owners. There sat Indra, warrior king of the demigods and the heavenly realm, bringer of thunder and rain, wielder of the thunderbolt. On his left lounged his queen, Indrani, the goddess who presided over wrath and jealousy but paradoxically also over their banishment.

  Sheetal stood just feet away from the gods. The gods! Her knees quaked with deference, with dread. My mom lives here, she marveled, hurrying Minal into an alcove where they could try to get their bearings. Right alongside the gods.

  What did she know about being noble, let alone divine? Even that guard hadn’t believed she belonged here.

  It didn’t matter, she told herself, annoyed that any part of her cared. All she had to do was find Charumati. Then she could put all this behind her and go back home.

  Minal nudged her. “Wow. Sheetu, how is this even happening?”

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly.

  Svargalok was massive, an entire other realm. The adrenaline she’d been riding high on flagged, and all the bruises on her heart resumed throbbing in concert. She needed sleep. She needed time to process all of this.

  Time she didn’t have, not if she wanted to save Dad.

  The sound of a sitar rang out, followed by a tanpura, and onstage, a troupe of apsaras in vivid green saris swept into motion. Their performance was breathtaking, full of involved movements and flirtatious glances, and the gandharvas’ music swift and complex, but Sheetal barely noticed. She was too busy searching the room for a familiar face.

  The crowd around her was distracted, too, yakking away. Minal, though, was riveted, taking pictures until the dance had finished.

  “Wow,” she repeated, fanning herself. “So pretty!” With a grin, she added, “I’d take one of them as a reward for my loyal service. Any one. I’m not picky. They like hanging out with humans, right?”

  Despite herself, Sheetal laughed. “I’ll see what I can do, my dear maidservant.”

  “Thank you, ladies, for that superb recital!” a herald cried out. “Such a marvelous opening piece to a competition we have not seen in many an eon. It is a fitting tribute to the reign of the Esteemed Patriarch of House Dhanishta.” He waited for the applause to die down before continuing. “And now, let us recognize the competing nakshatras and their mortal representatives. Welcome to House Magha and its champion, Priyanka Chauhan!”

  Houses Dhanishta and Magha. Those were nakshatras. And they were competing?

  Foreboding coiled in Sheetal’s stomach like a cobra. It couldn’t be, could it? This wasn’t why she’d been summoned?

  Surely you heard the call.

  “Hey, didn’t that g
uard say something about a welcome ceremony?” Minal whispered. “Guess this is it.”

  No, Sheetal was just overreacting. And who could blame her after the day she’d had? As unobtrusively as she could, she peeked out from the alcove again.

  The first thing she saw was a spiky-haired human girl a couple of years older than her, one who dangled a Rajasthani-style marionette and made it dance. Then, looking past the girl, Sheetal glimpsed stars. Lots and lots of stars both on- and offstage, all chattering excitedly. All gorgeous and glowing, like figures out of a fairy tale.

  Something tugged in her chest. Her people.

  That meant her mom was probably somewhere in this room, too. Her palms grew tingly.

  “Priyanka is single-handedly reviving the art of Kathputli puppetry in her community,” one of the older stars of House Magha proclaimed. “She has mastered the craft of creating the traditional marionettes and performing with them, earning herself a number of prestigious prizes, and we are confident she will shine brightly as our champion.”

  So this was some kind of talent competition. Envy surged through Sheetal. Must be nice to show off a talent instead of hiding it.

  Studying the groups by the stage, she realized she could pick out various nakshatras by the constellation embroidery on their clothes. House Krittika, House Ashvini, House Magha, House Revati . . .

  Where was Charumati?

  Minal tapped at her phone. “No service, like I thought.” She snapped a few more pictures and showed them to Sheetal. “I was trying to get Indra and Indrani, but all I can catch is light.”

  “Everyone would think you Photoshopped them, anyway.”

  The band of stars cleared the stage to a round of applause, and another group swiftly took its place. “Welcome to House Krittika and its champion Leela Swaminathan!”

  Leela looked like a typical desi grandmother: short, plump, and wrinkled, her white bun matching her plain white cotton sari. She beamed, evidently at home here. Definitely more at home than Sheetal felt. As Leela raised a paintbrush for all to see, one of the elder stars spoke.

  “Our champion found her way to the easel late in life, but her work with the dark feminine has already set the Mumbaikar art scene alight. It is said she paints not with pigment but with emotion. House Krittika could not be more delighted to have Leela representing us.”

  It was a good thing Sheetal wasn’t competing. It wasn’t like she had anything to recommend her. No juries awarding her prizes, no fans clamoring for her next album. No one even knew who she was.

  Maybe if she hadn’t had to hide, she thought, still combing the crowd for her mother, she would have had all this, too.

  “Welcome to House Ashvini and its champion Sachin Khanna!” The stars of the Ashvini nakshatra formed a tight, possessive loop around a middle-aged man who lifted a stone statue above his head.

  “Sachin is a sculptor of—”

  But Sheetal missed the rest, because the starsong rang through her so forcefully, she let out an “oof” and doubled over. Come to us. It is time.

  “Are you okay?” Minal whispered, kneeling beside her.

  Nails digging into her palms, Sheetal staggered forward. The astral melody was almost hauling her toward the stage.

  “House Pushya,” said the herald, “if you are unable to produce a champion at this time, you must withdraw from the competition.”

  Champion. Her. The light in Sheetal’s heart couldn’t touch the shadow spreading there. Her family really had brought her here to compete for them.

  She was going to be sick. They couldn’t just spring this on her with no warning, no training, nothing. She’d thought they wanted her by their side for her, not for this.

  “No champion, and yet still in the running?” someone questioned. “Oh, that is true hubris. Call the delay what it is: desperation.”

  “House Pushya must withdraw!” someone else shouted.

  “Ah, but she is here,” a familiar voice corrected, silencing the titters. “Our champion.”

  Sheetal’s breath hitched. Another group had claimed the stage, wrapped in black-and-silver silks embroidered with the constellation she knew as well as her own name.

  Right in the middle of that group stood a woman with the indescribably lovely face that had never dulled in Sheetal’s memory. Charumati.

  Her mother.

  Sheetal had thought she was ready for this.

  All the grief and anger and utter yearning of the past ten years raced toward her, an avalanche, until she thought she might suffocate beneath it. She wobbled, gasping, trapped between sprinting to the stage and retreating from it. For an instant, she even forgot Dad.

  The stars of House Pushya began to sing. The entire hall hushed. The song was the silver of starlight, of wind chimes and ringing bells and stories braided with skeins of myths and dreams and wishes. It called to the blood in Sheetal’s veins, stoking the fire at her core, making her ache for the strings of her harp and her dilruba.

  The song was the stuff that ran in her veins, the liquid flame that could heal. It needed to be free. She needed to free it.

  Bright, pure notes soared from her throat to join the harmony, and radiance spilled from her skin and out of the alcove where she stood.

  She stepped into the open and sang to Charumati, just a handful of notes, just enough. I’m here.

  “Sheetu!” hissed Minal, right on her heels. “What are you doing?”

  The courtiers around them skewered Sheetal with their stares. “The missing champion has surfaced!” exclaimed the herald. “Can it be true?”

  Charumati, too, looked directly at her. Their eyes met, dark brown echoing silvery brown, and relief gleamed there. Though her mother’s song didn’t falter, its tone deepened. It became a ballad of recognition, of connection, and the surrounding stars’ voices shifted to accommodate it. You came.

  Sheetal felt how the chorus wove its song, how it entwined filaments of light into a living net that enclosed the sky. She was part of that cosmic flow, part of a great glittering web. In that moment, even Dad and Dev seemed long ago and far away. All she knew was the gaze tangled with hers, and the way her heart had grown whole at last.

  Charumati beckoned her to the stage.

  “Half-creature,” a voice jeered, its owner hidden in the throng. “Mortal half-thing. Go home!”

  Minal whipped around. “Who said that?”

  Sheetal’s mind screamed at her to pay attention, to hear how the entire hall was whispering, to stop and think about this. The slur, the strange circumstances, all of it.

  But the song was stronger, overpowering everything else. She was home, it warbled, and she’d found her mother once more.

  Following the call of the music, Sheetal glided through the audience, up the stairs, and onto the stage, where the shining ring of stars waited.

  “Welcome to House Pushya,” the herald cried, “and its champion Sheetal Mistry!”

  11

  So here they were, together for the first time in ten years—just Sheetal and the mother who’d left her behind.

  They wordlessly faced each other on a pair of royal blue mirrorwork-embroidered divans in Charumati’s apartments, while Minal pretended to doze on an ornately carved bench. Her mother had brought them here right after Sheetal’s introduction, leading them offstage through a rear exit to bypass all the prying eyes.

  Charumati wore a translucent black sari dotted with tiny diamonds, and her dangling chandelier earrings and necklace were wrought from silver. In her long, shimmering hair perched a circlet of silver stars outlined in obsidian, and her delicate, ring-covered hands were folded in her lap.

  “I was afraid your foi might not give you the message,” her mother said, slicing through the silence. “I am so very glad she did.”

  She looked different than Sheetal remembered, far less human, much more a being of light, if light were made flesh. Except for her silvery aura, she could have been an apsara or even a goddess. Not anyone’s mom.


  This close to her, Sheetal didn’t know what to do with her own hands. Her skin didn’t fit right, as if it had grown too small. Her legs jiggled like overcooked spaghetti. She felt every bit of her human half, grimy and gawky and in desperate need of a nap. “She wasn’t going to. But then you forced her with the starsong.”

  Like you forced me.

  She brushed the scabbed-over cuticle on her thumb. Nope, she would never forget how it felt to be manipulated like that, right into being her constellation’s champion.

  Her mother’s smile faded. “You came, and that is what counts.”

  Sheetal jiggled her leg harder. “I’m not going to be in that competition,” she blurted. “Whatever it is.”

  There went her plan. All the clever things she would do, all the persuasive words she’d say when this moment came, had slipped out the back door of her brain, leaving her numb.

  Her mother sighed. “Oh, dikri. If only it were that simple.” Even her sorrow was captivating, a sculptor’s finest expression of tragedy.

  Sheetal didn’t belong here. “It is that simple.”

  Charumati studied her. “You are so beautiful. Just like your father.”

  Sheetal’s hands flickered with pewter fire. On Earth, she was cute enough, even pretty. Here, though, among these people who had no idea what it was like to wake up with a monster zit or to have to cut off an inch of split ends at a time, she felt less than plain.

  Unbidden, her imagination called up Dev, the hint of mischief in his eyes when he grinned. He’d thought she was beautiful. She felt sick, remembering the shivery feel of his lips on hers. Remembering how she’d trusted him.

  It didn’t matter, though. Only Dad did.

  Her mother leaned forward. “I watched you every night,” she said, tears like dewdrops on her long lashes. “I listened to your music and waited for the day you would come to me. I never forgot you.”

  There they were, the words Sheetal had ached to hear. But she wasn’t sure she cared.