Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 83

by Vandana Singh

  “I can see why you are a poet,” she said, smiling, mesmerized by his descriptions.

  “No longer,” he sighed.

  He told her how his talent with words had vanished on a night in Madrid, seven years ago. Hunched over a drink, listening to an unusually strong sirocco howling outside, he had not known until the morning that the poetry had been taken from him.

  “Did you try going home?” she asked him. “Sometimes that works.”

  He said, quietly, remembering: “Two years later, for my mother’s funeral.”

  “And your poetry didn’t come back to you then?”

  “No.” He had nursed a secret hope that it might, but there was nothing. Only grief, and guilt that he hadn’t been back in time, as he gazed upon his mother’s emaciated body, her hands like claws, as though she had been in the middle of a transmutation that had been arrested by death. He went to the old market and consulted a healer, but there was nothing anyone could do. He remembered arguing with Pedro in Madrid later on, Pedro the friend, later the suicide. Pedro’s memory said to him: “Why do you think the world has magic, then, that things are not just of themselves, but of something ineffable? Why do you persist in believing this childish rubbish?” He shrugged defensively at Pedro’s ghost.

  So they drove to Jaipur with the storm following on their heels like a wild beast, and they talked, and she told him stories. The Great Indian Bustard was once seriously considered for the national bird of India, but was defeated by the peacock. “Because those fools were afraid it would get misspelled,” she said. “Can you imagine, the Great Indian Bastard? What kind of name is Bustard, anyway? I like the Indian names better. Kharchal is one of them. Or Hoom . . . because of the male bird’s cry—I’ve heard it a few times, too few times. There’s nothing like it.”

  She fell silent for a while. When she spoke her voice was thick with tears. “There are fewer than two hundred left in the wild,” she said. “They are this close to extinction. They used to live around people, near villages without harm, but modern agriculture is their enemy. And modern mega-projects signed on by multinationals. No habitat, no bird. And nobody cares.”

  She looked out of the window. Her passionate rage moved him. He sensed a delicate thread of sympathy between them—a kinship beyond the obvious. He wanted to tell her she mattered to him. He wanted to tell her that she could have walked out of one of Jaime Saenz’ poems. The dead poet whispered lines into his mind, as was his wont, but they were not Felipe’s lines.

  “I had my first poetic thought in years when I saw you,” he said at last. He told her about his fancy that she was the harbinger of the storm. Her laughter rang out, startling him.

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard!”

  She said, more seriously, with a long sigh as though of despair, “I’m just a human being, Felipe . . . I hate the human race for what we’ve done to the world, but human is all I am.”

  “Nobody is just a human being,” he said slowly, keeping his eyes on the road. “We have something else in us, yes, a kind of magic, a connection to the world that can transform us. I am hoping it will transform me.”

  His words sounded unconvincing even to him. But she looked at him without mockery, with a half-smile. Jaipur was approaching with distressing rapidity. He wanted to hear her speak. He asked her if there were any more stories, legends, myths about the Bustard . . . the kharchal.

  “Not many,” she said. “But people who live close to them have fancies about them. They are very compelling creatures. One old man took care of a small flock of them outside his village. He would guard the eggs they laid, and in return he said they would warn him if a storm was coming. He took to believing that they could call storms. There is one major legend about them, though. Have you heard of the queen of Chattanpur? There’s a hotel they’ve built over her fort. I sometimes stop at the restaurant there on my way to Delhi.”

  That was the first time he heard about the hotel. It was not called Chattanpur any more: it was the Hotel Vikram Royal.

  There was a woman who lived outside a village in Rajasthan many hundreds of years before now. Nobody knew where she had come from, but she was a healer and a tantric practitioner with great powers. People were afraid of her but those in need would come to her and she would cure them for a small price of cloth or food. She was young and beautiful but nobody dared to touch her.

  Then the king of the region happened to pass by, and he was taken by her beauty and her quality of self-possession, and he desired her for one of his queens. She, too, was struck by his noble mien and his kindness to her, and agreed to marry him, on one condition.

  “I am not an ordinary woman,” she said. “As a magician I have duties to the great forces from whom I derive my powers. There are times when I will have to go away from you for several days. If you let me do this without question, I will always come back to you.”

  The king did not like this but he was much in love, so he agreed, and took her away to his fort on the great hill. His other wives were jealous and took to gossiping about the new queen, and spreading rumors about her. For several nights she stayed with the king, but after that she told him she must leave for some days. She went into her room and closed the door, but he stepped out on a balcony and watched her covertly with the help of a mirror. She threw off her clothes and muttered some words, and a mist surrounded her, and then a bird—a kharchal—flew out of the mist and out of the window. He could hear, far away across the desert, a long, melodious call of such yearning that he, too, was moved by it. The bird flew toward the call and was lost from sight. Then the mist in the room dispersed and there was nothing there but her pile of clothing.

  Some days later the bird flew back, again under cover of darkness, and returned to the form of a woman. As the King got to know his new wife, he began to wonder whether she was more bird than woman, but he kept his thoughts to himself, not wanting to tell her that he had spied on her. His other wives were not pleased with the King’s continued devotion and spread rumors that the new queen went off secretly to meet a lover. The King began to half-believe these lies even though he knew the truth. He became jealous of her time away. After all, what was to stop her from turning into a woman again, somewhere far across the desert, and lying with another man? One day he challenged her with the accusation of infidelity. If she wanted to prove her loyalty to him, she would have to stop these excursions.

  “I think the time has come for me to leave you,” said the queen, sorrowing. “If you will put bars around me, I cannot stay.”

  And she ran to her room, but the King was at her heels, so that when she turned into a kharchal and flew out, he managed to pull a long feather from a wing. When he did that, the bird shimmered in mid-air and turned back into a woman. The queen fell to her death from that balcony and the King was left holding the feather in his hand.

  After that terrible day, ill-luck befell the fort city. There was a plague, followed by a storm, and then a fire. It is believed to this day that the queen cursed the place as she fell. It was abandoned not long after, and fell into ruin. For a long time after that the local villagers heard the kharchal call for days upon end, as though in mourning, and they say the cries had such longing in them as to make the hardest-hearted men weep like children. Now the kharchal don’t cry so often, or if they do, it is likely for themselves, for their own coming extinction. But who’s to hear their cry?

  Lalita slipped out his car with a wave and goodbye somewhere on Mira Marg in Jaipur, as casually as though she hadn’t completely changed his life, burned away all he had been before. “When . . . uh, where will I see you next?” he yelled after her over the cacophony of traffic, terrified he would lose all contact with her. She turned back, her blue scarf loose about her neck, her hair long and loose about her shoulders. “I’ll come with the next sandstorm,” she told him, mocking him, and then she was gone.

  Later he Googled her name, sent emails without much hope (“I don’t do much email, and F
acebook, don’t even think about it!”) and went to ornithological meetings when he could, asking about her. She always seemed a step ahead of him—he had just missed her, she had just left. To make ends meet he wrote a book about modern Bolivian poetry and the enduring influence of Saenz. The book was reasonably well received; as soon as he could, Felipe took his earnings and himself to the hotel she had talked about. Here he felt an unreasonable hope, not just because she had told him she sometimes stopped at the restaurant on the way to Delhi, but because reminders of her were everywhere, through the latticework on the balcony windows that showed the kharchal amidst leaves and flowers, and the statuettes of the birds in the queen’s room. It was all very romantic and very expensive, and time and money were running out. In desperation he talked to Avinash. The errand boy Raju had recommended him. Avinash had seemed so sure he could bring Lalita here, the poet had come to believe him, despite his distrust of the man. And now there was this impossible storm. But she had said, hadn’t she, that she would come with the next storm?

  She’s a modern young woman, and an ornithologist, his mind told him. And as he was thinking this, leaning on a balcony pillar, staring out into the sand-smudged night, he was startled considerably by footsteps.

  “Sar! Sar!” It was the errand boy, Raju, a handkerchief around his face. “Sar, Avinash boss calls you, sar!”

  Raju’s explanation in broken English didn’t make sense as Felipe followed him through dark corridors, but this much was clear: some others apart from him had been spared. Felipe found himself being led to an unfamiliar part of the hotel.

  “What’s this? Where are you taking me?”

  “Employee wing, Sir! King’s royal store-room in old days. New manager’s room is being re-done. Boss is there.”

  The manager’s room was small and square. Work had been going on in it apparently for widening—a layer of the thick stone wall had been taken down on one side, and a pile of broken stone pieces lay in the middle of the floor, with tools arranged neatly in one corner. Avinash was standing in the middle of the room. He held a small flashlight in his hand.

  There was someone else there, outside the pool of light cast by the flashlight. The person moved suddenly into the light. Felipe’s heart turned over.

  “Lalita!”

  He saw her smile in the inadequate light. She looked both strange and familiar.

  “Hi Felipe. Long time.”

  Raju had found her in the restaurant, the only person there who could speak, and move. She had been going from figure to figure, trying to see if there was anything she could do.

  “Didn’t expect to meet like this!” she said. And then in Hindi: “Avinash, what is all this about? Why won’t you tell me?”

  He was standing in the middle of the room, listening to the queen.

  “Don’t disturb him, he’s thinking!” Raju said.

  Felipe watched them. The young man with the flashlight, head cocked to one side, as though straining to hear something. The woman who had intrigued him so, standing some distance away, alert, practical, and yet, to him, extraordinary. The boy looking at Avinash—faith in his gaze. The pile of stones, the widened part of the room casting unearthly shadows.

  Then he saw that even in the poor light and the dust haze, there was an opening—a gap where a stone should have been in the wall. He moved toward it just as Avinash did. He was startled by the smell of alcohol.

  “The manager was a drunkard,” Avinash said. His voice, sudden and loud in the darkness, startled them. “He kept his stock of booze here, in a secret compartment. Must have been a loose stone in the original wall that opened into this little chamber. He smashed one of the bottles in his hurry when he was packing up. Didn’t think to look further in.”

  “There’s something further in?” Lalita said. They were all crowding around Avinash now. He trained his flashlight into the small chamber, put his arm in.

  “There’s something . . . . At the back.”

  He drew it out. It was an ornate box, about a foot long and no more than two inches in depth. The silver had tarnished long ago, but the mother-of-pearl inlay work still glowed. It depicted a kharchal, each feather carved delicately as though with a hair strand, standing in a garden.

  “This must have belonged to the queen,” Lalita said reverently.

  Avinash opened the box.

  In it, on a bed of white silk, lay a single large feather.

  “This was the king’s storeroom,” Avinash said. He spoke in a monotone, as though repeating someone else’s words. “The king took the feather from the queen as she was in flight, and he kept it in this secret chamber.”

  He paused, frowned.

  “Give it to her? You’re sure?”

  “Whom are you talking to?” Lalita said. Raju looked at Avinash with wide, scared eyes.

  Mechanically Avinash held out the box to Lalita. She took the feather out breathlessly.

  “Give me the flashlight for a moment. I want to see . . . ”

  But something was happening. Lalita looked up in alarm; a mist was coming up around her. Felipe felt the change in the air, moved instinctively toward her, but he could not part the mist. Within it she was getting less and less visible—her arms, her clothes, made great sweeping motions. The alarm in her eyes changed swiftly to surprise. Then he couldn’t see her any more. He couldn’t move into the mist to reach her. His body appeared to have become heavy and sluggish, his arm going up and toward her with so much effort that it took his breath away. The next thing he knew: a large, heavy bird, awkwardly flapping its wings, was making its way out of the mist . . .out of the doorway, into the courtyard. The three of them ran after it. Silently it flew, with increasing strength and grace, making its way to the queen’s balcony. Felipe was hardly aware of their mad rush up the stairs. He arrived, panting, in the little museum with Avinash and Raju. There was the bird perched on the balcony’s stone railing.

  It seemed to Felipe that in the jewel-like eye of the kharchal was the same humor, the same sadness he had known in Lalita’s eyes. Before he could speak there was a terrible cry from Avinash.

  “Don’t leave me!”

  Avinash looked all around him, like a blind man.

  “Where are you? You can’t leave me after all this! Come back!”

  The bird prepared to launch itself as Avinash’s tortured gaze finally settled on it. With a terrible shout he lunged toward the bird. But before his hands could close on the bird, Raju had moved, swift and efficient, and pinned Avinash’s arms to his side.

  “Boss, boss, let her go!”

  Felipe felt it, then, a presence barely tangible, like spider thread brushing across one’s face in the dark. A presence in the room, diminishing swiftly, a wave departing. No, not a departure, a dissipation. There was a feeling of sadness, of completion. The bird flew free. She flew low over the hotel ramparts, a blurry silhouette against the dusty old moon, and then she was gone.

  “You stupid boy, what have you done!” Avinash thrashed in the boy’s grip. Felipe grabbed a flailing arm.

  “Calm down!” Felipe said, holding his grief and wonder at bay with an enormous effort. “What is the matter with you?”

  “She’s gone! The queen!” His sobs ceased. He looked around him, searching, unbelieving. “I thought she would go with the bird, but she . . . she’s dead. The bitch! To die after all this! To leave me empty! All empty!”

  He sobbed out his story. I am Avinash, and I am nothing, with a mustard seed for a soul. She said she would unleash the power inside me, so I could fill up. She left me . . . they left me. Five years old on the railways station because they wanted to save my brothers and there wasn’t enough food. Through the sobs and the garbled words, Felipe saw in his mind’s eye the railway station, heard the noise, the terror of strangers, the vastness, the scale of the world. Saw that this had been the boy’s nightmare through all his life. Not the orphanage, not his education, nothing had taken away the pain . . . until she had come, the queen of Chattan
pur, and filled the echoing emptiness inside him. Now she, too, was gone, gone to the death she had been awaiting for six hundred years.

  With one long cry of agony Avinash flung aside the restraining arms of the others and leapt toward the balcony. Their rush toward him, their shouts, were all too late. In a moment he was over the edge, limbs working wildly, and then he dropped. They heard the impact on the stone floor of the courtyard far below.

  There was nothing to be done for him. When they got to the body there was blood pooling under his head, and the stillness of death was on him. Raju muttered something under his breath, and straightening abruptly, began to run. Felipe followed him through the dusty passageways, through a door, half-falling down an unexpected spiral staircase into a room where a laptop screen glowed upon a table. The screen saver showed falling leaves, and birds flying. Raju looked about him wildly. He loosened one of the mosquito net’s support rods, and brought it down on the computer. Sparks flew; there was a burning smell in the air. The boy wouldn’t stop, until Felipe took the rod gently from him. Then Raju began to weep.

  “I loved him, the fool!”

  Abruptly a great roaring filled their ears: the storm. They were suddenly back in the flow of time. Above them, in the rooms and courtyards, people screamed. The poet and the errand boy looked at each other, ran up the staircase into the open. There was complete confusion: people running, tables turning over. The emergency klaxon was blaring and a booming voice attempting to direct traffic. Some lights went on as the backup generator began to run.

  Felipe had never known such a night. The storm broke upon them in a fury. He and Raju worked to bring people to safety, to help close and tape windows, to fill up cracks in doorways. Their hands bled, their eyes stung. At last they huddled in Felipe’s room, wrapped in shawls and blankets, handkerchiefs around their faces, to wait it out. Felipe couldn’t stop coughing. Tears ran down his cheeks as he sipped water. Between coughs, he thought he heard the cries of the kharchal, the cry of the desert itself. His soul called back, again and again, soundlessly.