Star-Touched Stories

by Roshani Chokshi

  Today was Teej. I tried to forget it, to lose myself in some other thought. But I couldn’t.

  The sky tilted to dusk. I fled to a part of the kingdom where souls waited to be categorized and organized, remade and reshaped. There, a familiar soul caught the light. And I remembered the request of the wife from so long ago, the woman whose words had spurred the listless existence that would very well be my future.

  “Do you wish to wait for your wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because life does not look how it should without her. It is a piece gone missing, a perspective that reminds me what it means to live. Without her, my life would be colorless. Life does not owe me fairness. But I will see beauty, even if I must fight for it. So will you let me stay beside her? And wait until she comes?”

  Maybe the words hadn’t truly come to me until now. But finally, finally, I saw it. And the truth was a latch in my heart. The soul reached out and touched me, and in it, I saw the barren wasteland of my thoughts. How the world had lost shape and color and texture since I had not seen her. What she coaxed out of me was a visceral need to live, and wasn’t that what fueled immortality and made it worthwhile anyway? That there were wonders still left to be uncovered? Perhaps she could not bend the world such that it would break a curse. But she had bent my thoughts until I saw hope around its meaning, silver in its bleakness. I wanted to believe the curse had broken. Because I did love her. I couldn’t remember where it started and I couldn’t fathom it stopping. And she had left. And the pain of it had sucked the color from my world.

  “I grant you this request,” I said.

  And then, I ran.

  Gupta was waiting for me, a dark green sherwani jacket in his hands.

  “I have been waiting out here for so long, I thought I had started aging.”

  “I don’t have time for this. I have to get to her—”

  “She won’t be at the grove. She’s at Teej.”

  My heart dropped.

  “Even if I go, how will she recognize me? Don’t most of those lovers use ridiculous signals or secret words on their palms or something?”

  “Maybe that’s the test,” said Gupta, shrugging. “You saw through a curse. Now she has to see through you.”

  * * *

  Choose me.

  I stood behind the podium, curtained off from everyone else. There were all kinds of tricks to Teej. People tattooed their hands with hints so that they would not end up with the wrong mate. But there was the leap of faith in this exercise, the same leap of faith required of a relationship. Maybe it was a fool’s errand, but I had made my hand indistinguishable. We had never studied each other’s palms but perhaps that was where the beauty lay. Whatever form she took, I would recognize her. Because it was not me that knew her, it was my soul. And it could never forget her.

  11

  NIGHT

  Hope is light. It shines its way into crevices and shadows you wouldn’t recognize. I held that hope within me, and I let it flare into a fire until it laid to waste my every doubt. I hardly remembered walking to the Teej celebration and waiting my turn in that line. Nritti held my hand tightly and waited beside me.

  “Uloopi told me to give you this,” said Nritti, opening my palms.

  A necklace with a round-cut sapphire and strung with delicate seed pearls fell into my hands.

  “What is this?”

  “She said this was what she created the first time she tried making the resurrection stone.”

  “Does it bring back the dead?”

  “No. But it calls forth our happiest memories.”

  I clasped the necklace around my neck, savoring the strange warmth of the pendant between my collarbones. It was magical, but not enchanted. No memories surged before my eyes. And yet, I felt a thread of warmth from my head to my toes. Like the afterglow of a long laugh.

  When I ascended the stage, some of the lesser beings taunted me. But I pushed past them, clutching that hope within me. This was a beginning. Maybe it would not be the beginning I wanted, but it was a beginning I deserved. I surveyed the row of hands, one by one, stopping when I saw the hand covered in soot. At first glance, it looked like it belonged to a raksha. But when I looked closer, I saw cracks in that paint. I saw that the monstrous was little more than a flimsy coat of color. More than that, it was an invitation—to start a life with a different way of seeing. Starting now. I reached out. The curtain fell back with a crumple of silk. Dimly, I heard the audience suck in their breath. There … there he stood. Tall and shadowed, with a crown of blackbuck horns threatening to pierce the split sky above us. Guilt flashed in his eyes, before it became something else entirely: relief.

  “I hoped you would choose me,” he said.

  I fought back an impossible laugh as that hope and light broke inside me.

  “I have no dowry.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Then what do you want from me?”

  “I want to lie beside you and know the weight of your dreams. I want to share whole worlds with you and write your name in the stars. I want to measure eternity with your laughter. Be my queen and I promise you a life where you will never be bored. I promise you more power than a hundred kings. And I promise you that we will always be equals.”

  “Not my soul then?”

  “Would you entrust me with something so precious?”

  I reached for one of my slippers and held it out, grinning.

  “Here, my love, the dowry of a sole.”

  He held me closer than a secret and when our lips met, the world between us became a charged and living thing.

  12

  DEATH

  I knew little of curses, but much of stories. These were the tales collected in teeth, passed down from the mouth of one generation to the next. I heard the dead murmur them like talismans when they walked through my halls. They shared stories of curses shattered by moonlight or splintered by kisses. In all the years since the Shadow Wife had pronounced my heartbreak, I had never believed them until now. Because here, with Night’s lips to mine, and the world yielding its treasures one by one … I knew that I was free.

  POISON AND GOLD

  1

  Aasha glanced around the sumptuous throne room. For once, it was empty. Though not for long. Any moment now Gauri would enter through the heavy, golden doors. Aasha could picture her friend. Radiant and powerful, every bit the queen she would soon become. She could already see Gauri smiling broadly, relaxed, in a way she hardly ever did in public. She only did that because she trusted Aasha. A trust she hardly deserved. Gauri might smile at her, but that was only because she did not know the terrible secret that lurked in Aasha’s heart.

  And she must never find out, thought Aasha.

  She glanced around the room. The two thrones that would soon officially belong to Gauri and Vikram looked foreboding. Around the thrones’ raised dais were gilt chairs and cushions for the councilors and diplomats. Four large windows stretched across the tapestried walls. Today, the scarlet curtains had been pulled back to let in the morning sunlight. Normally, a gossamer net hung from the eaves of the palace, a barrier that kept out any curious birds. But it must have been damaged. The proof lay in Aasha’s cupped hands. She opened them a crack, as if peering slowly might change the outcome. In her hands lay a small bird that fit in the hollow of her palm. It was dead.

  In her hand, it looked asleep. The bird’s small body was still warm. The glossy feathers of its chest stuck up as if it had very recently been wind-ruffled. Tearfully, Aasha smoothed down its blue feathers. The bird was blue, as blue as the five-pointed vishakanya star printed on Aasha’s throat. The very star that had ended its life.

  For a vishakanya, all it took was one touch to end a mortal life.

  “I am so sorry,” murmured Aasha to the bird.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  Aasha looked up. She hadn�
�t heard Gauri opening the door. Gauri walked toward her, smiling, until she saw what lay in Aasha’s hands. Gauri looked at one of the windows, frowning.

  “It must have flown in and gotten trapped,” she said. “But you really shouldn’t touch that, Aasha.”

  Gauri was right. She really should not have touched the bird. The truth was, she had not even noticed. It had flown in silently. Aasha had been sitting down with her back turned to the window when the bird alighted on her shoulder. The animals of Bharata always crept a bit closer to her, as if they knew she was not human and therefore less likely to harm them. But all Aasha had felt was the rasp of claws along her shoulder. She had jolted upright. In her panic, the vishakanya star had flared to life on her throat and the small bird’s life had gone out like a light. Aasha should have been able to control it. That was the wish that the Lord of Wealth and Treasures had granted her after all. A choice. To live as a human and know the touch of a new life, and still be able to turn into a vishakanya and know that a life could fall at her touch. But lately, she could not rein in her power. It made her a deadly risk. Gauri had no idea.

  Slicing a section off one of the silk banners, Gauri used it to pick up the bird and set it aside. Someone else would take care of it.

  “There is something I must ask you,” began Gauri. “Do you remember the meeting with Ujijain’s intelligence committee?”

  Aasha … remembered. In a fashion. She remembered that someone had brought in a strange arrangement of flowers with the spikiest, glossiest leaves she had ever seen, and that she had been entranced with them for nearly an hour. Normally, she could control when her touch was deadly. And though she had been in Bharata for nearly a year, she was still enamored with the feeling of living things beneath her hands. Every texture was a lesson in wonder. Every animal muzzle that pushed into her hand was a gift.

  Which was all to say: no.

  She had no memory of that meeting.

  Gauri must have sensed as much because she laughed.

  “To be fair, I do drag you to far too many meetings.”

  “I know,” teased Aasha.

  But she did not mind. She liked having a duty. She had never really had one in the vishakanya harem. Besides, acting as a sort of guard for Gauri allowed Aasha to indulge in her favorite pastime: watching humans. Humans had so much etiquette. Their desires hardly ever matched their actions. To Aasha, they were fascinating contradictions that spoke a language she only knew in snatches and phrases.

  With their wedding fast approaching, Gauri and Vikram spent most of their waking hours in the company of their councilors. Once they were wed, their kingdoms—once ancient rivals—would join. It was a dream that the people of both kingdoms held tight to their hearts. Their two monarchs, young and beautiful and already legends in their own right, would steer the world into a new age.

  But as beautiful as that sounded, the reality of merging the two kingdoms was less like a dream and more like a nightmare. Political plots were subdued with all the regularity of sunrise. Conspiracies thrived in the shadows, and loyalties to Gauri and Vikram changed by the day. Which was where Aasha’s abilities came into play. As a vishakanya, she might have a deadly touch, but she had another power too. She could read the desires of others. All she had to do was reach forward with part of her mind, and card through a human’s intentions as if they were cloth. From intentions alone, she could discern who meant Gauri and Vikram harm, and in this way keep them safe.

  Looking at Gauri, she did not need her powers to know how her friend felt. Dark presses hollowed Gauri’s eyes. But she wore an exhausted smile like a badge of honor.

  “Why did you wake up so early to speak with me when what you really want, and quite probably need, is sleep?” asked Aasha.

  “As a queen, I don’t always get to do what I want,” said Gauri tiredly.

  “But that’s the whole point of being queen,” said Aasha. “You get to make rules.”

  “True,” allowed Gauri. “But ‘let the monarch nap’ is a far less important rule than the one I wish to speak with you about.”

  Aasha plopped into one of the thrones.

  “Speak!” she said, clasping her hands in her lap.

  But then she remembered that she was not supposed to sit in the throne, even though it was a chair and chairs were for sitting in, and promptly stood.

  “You know I don’t care for those rules,” said Gauri, waving a hand.

  Aasha sank back into the seat, her cheeks flaming. The first time she had done that had been in front of a handful of councilors who nearly accused her of insurrection. How was she supposed to know that humans had all kinds of rules about which people could sit in which chair? It wasn’t as though the chairs minded.

  “You’ve been in Bharata for almost a year now,” said Gauri. “During that time, I don’t believe I have ever once asked you what you wanted. Not for the day or for a meal, but what you want out of, I suppose, this … life.”

  Want.

  The word prodded at her. In the vishakanya harem, her want had been so simple. She wanted a choice that had not been given, to experience the human life that had been denied. But in Bharata, that want had warped. Now she could be a human too. But she did not know how to do that. She did not know the right things to say or how to act. Though she was nearly three centuries old as a vishakanya, the human life-form that she could take was hardly more than a young woman stumbling through the darkness. Which made her wants … complicated. She wanted, now, what any human wanted. A place among people. A home in someone’s heart.

  She wanted to be a person.

  A true person.

  * * *

  But she did not know how to explain that to Gauri. And lately, she did not feel as though she were flesh and bone at all, but poison cleverly disguised as a girl. All she had to do was look at the small silk-covered lump off in the corner of the room as proof.

  “I don’t know,” she said finally. She did not meet her friend’s eyes. “Right now, I would most want a pistachio cake.”

  Which was not a lie.

  Gauri’s eyes narrowed. “I can see Vikram’s influence on you quite clearly.”

  Aside from Gauri, Vikram was Aasha’s other friend. The sly-eyed emperor of Ujijain had made it a point to guide Aasha through the intricacies of court life. Under his tutelage, she had learned how to insult a person with the highest degree of elegance, how to keep a straight face through a lie, and how to curse. Gauri had not been amused when she had displayed that last talent in front of a group of visiting dignitaries. Vikram, however, had been delighted and let her pick the desserts for an entire week. It had been a very good week.

  “What do you want me to do?” asked Aasha.

  Gauri shifted, uncomfortable. “Walk with me through the gardens. Vikram should be there. He should be awake by now.”

  The two of them rose and left the throne room behind. By now, dawn had fully stretched into morning. The servants in their scarlet and green livery had just begun their daily chores. Water was being drawn from wells and purified for morning prayers. Beyond the ornamental gardens, Aasha could hear the clang of swords as the soldiers moved through the day’s first drills. In the gardens, birds with bright feathers roosted in the trees as if they were living jewels, and the slender pools carried the clouds’ reflection in their waters. Out of habit, Aasha touched her neck. Her vishakanya mark flared, and a new sense overtook Aasha. Sensing desires was like perceiving another dimension. She stretched out her senses, feeling for any human intention that desired violence. In her first weeks at Bharata, it had been hard to differentiate nuances of desire. She had nearly attacked a courtier who had desired to kick another man down the stairs. That, she now realized, was impulse. Humans had many violent impulses, but they were rarely brought to fruition. The desire for true violence felt like a river of cold. It ran deep, made more intense by how long the desire had lived there. It was her sense for this intention that kept Gauri and Vikram safe.

  “Th
ere’s been a problem of late,” said Gauri.

  “A problem?”

  An undercurrent of fear ran through Aasha. Was it possible that she was wrong and that Gauri in fact knew of her ailment? Scared, Aasha caved in her shoulders as if she might exist in this world just a little less.

  “Yes,” said Gauri. “And that’s part of the reason why I was asking what it was that you wanted. I wasn’t sure if, perhaps, with all the changes going on in the kingdom, you really wanted to stay here … with us.”

  A cold knot of horror grew in Aasha’s belly.

  Was Gauri trying to say that she was no longer wanted here? That she had to leave? Aasha felt stricken. Of course that would make sense. They would have the security force of two great empires. They would have no need of her. Perhaps her blunderings in front of other people had become too burdensome.

  “Aasha. Where do you see yourself in the future?” prompted Gauri.

  By now, they had reached the end of the pathway. Vikram slouched against a pillar, hands shoved in his pockets. He looked bleary with sleep. He managed a smile, but the moment he saw Aasha’s face, his smile fell.

  Vikram strode over immediately.

  “You’re scaring her!” he said to Gauri. “Just look at her! She thinks we’re kicking her out.”

  Gauri stared at Aasha, horrified.

  “That’s not what I meant at all!” said Gauri.

  “I told you we should have started this whole thing a different way! You always make everything sound ominous,” said Vikram.

  “Your version sounds like too much pressure and like you’re not giving her a choice!”

  “Oh really? Let’s try,” said Vikram. He turned to Aasha. “You are like family to us. You know that. In the process of merging our kingdoms together, a very important position has opened up in our innermost circle of advisors. We were hoping that you might consider staying with us for at least a couple more years—”