Aasha didn’t even let Vikram finish. She threw her arms around him and Gauri. Her shoulders shook as she muffled one critical word:
Yes.
Yes, of course she wished to stay. Nothing horrified Aasha more than the prospect of a human life without friends. Growing up, Aasha’s only family had been the sisters of the vishakanya harem. But then the Otherworld kingdom had held the Tournament of Wishes, and Aasha had met Gauri and Vikram. Back then, they were merely contestants, a young prince and princess fighting to retain a wish. But though they were champions, they were not the only victors. For her role in their story, Aasha had received the wish that let her out of the harem’s confines. At Vikram’s words, gratitude overwhelmed her. She was not yet ready to tire of the human world. With this promise of a new position, she would not be forced to leave.
When she finally lifted her head, she saw Vikram mouthing: I told you so to Gauri, who rolled her eyes.
“Well then it’s settled,” said Vikram.
“You haven’t even told her what the position is,” said Gauri.
“Oh right,” said Vikram.
Aasha didn’t much care for the name of the job. Kingdoms handed out titles that hardly made any sense. There was a secretary of Interior, but the person did not stay inside all the time. There was a Royal Taster, whose main task was to set out the food and never commented on the taste of a dish at all. Whatever they asked of her, she was certain it would be simple.
“What is it?” asked Aasha.
Vikram reached for Gauri’s hand.
“We would like you to be our Spy Mistress.”
2
Spy Mistress.
That title was nothing at all like the royal titles that dealt with interiors or tasting. In fact, just the way Vikram spoke the title sounded strangely heavy. Gauri looked at her expectantly. Hopefully. All traces of lightness vanished from Vikram’s face. This was no light or meaningless task. To them, it was both an honor and a burden. She could see that now.
Aasha had to grit her teeth and focus all of her energy to keep the vishakanya star from showing on her skin. If it showed, then Gauri and Vikram would know that she could no longer control when it appeared. She would be forced to reveal that sometimes—like when she was frightened or surprised—the star would show and her touch would instantly become deadly. She would be forced to reveal that she was a threat to their lives. Lately, she had taken to barring her doors just in case Gauri ever thought to wake her up from sleep. The thought that she might hurt the very people she loved filled her with nausea. And now they had given this great gift to her. A sign of their trust. Their love. She was not worthy.
“Aasha?” asked Vikram.
Aasha knew she could not force a smile. Vikram was too shrewd. He would know. So she mimicked the humans she had watched all this time. She sank to the ground, her chin tipped toward her chest. The posture of a subject to one’s sovereign.
“Oh, Aasha,” said Gauri, embarrassed.
Gauri placed her hands at Aasha’s shoulders, drawing her upright.
“It will not be an easy task,” she said. “Although we want you to be our Spy Mistress, the final approval falls to Bharata’s current Spy Mistress. You will have to leave court and train with her. If, in three months’ time, she finds you worthy, then you will become her equal and work alongside her.”
“Bharata’s Spy Mistress is…” Vikram’s brows drew together. “How do I say this? Well. It’s said that her temper makes Gauri look soft-spoken in comparison.”
Gauri glared.
“I mean that in the most affectionate way possible,” he said.
She did not seem appeased.
“And if I do not succeed?”
“Then you return home,” said Vikram.
But there was a silence there. In the past, Aasha had not always been able to recognize such pauses for what they meant. In the past, she would’ve simply said “very well,” and then turned on her heel in search of diversion or entertainment. Now, she knew better. Humans always paused before sharing bad news. She did not know why they waited. Perhaps they thought to give the air a break before assaulting it with sorrow.
“And then?” prompted Aasha.
Gauri, always the braver of the two, spoke first. “If you do not secure this position, we have been informed by our joint councils that they would prefer you not to be in the room during meetings of state.”
Aasha’s eyes widened. “But why? Have I not done my job well? Or—”
“You’ve been a boon to us,” said Vikram. “The problem is that we cannot reveal what it is that you actually do.”
It was of utmost importance that Aasha not reveal her true nature.
“I understand,” she said. And she did.
Aasha tried to put herself in the mind-set of the human councilors. If she had no official position, then she would be forced to the margins of court. All those hours spent in activity, in purpose, would be replaced with loneliness. Without a purpose, what would she serve to Gauri and Vikram except as some bizarre ornament or relic from a long-ago adventure? She would be a burden to them.
“I do not want to go,” she said. “I’ll just stay and continue on as I have before.”
Again, that pause.
“Our joint councils have been strict,” said Vikram miserably. “Either you earn an official position or…”
“Or you cannot be in our company. Period.”
Aasha’s heart began to race.
“I have to … to leave to stay?”
They nodded.
The world now felt terribly larger than it had just a moment ago. Bharata was safe. She might be ridiculed for her oddness, but at least it was in an enclosed space. As it was, Aasha could hardly mimic the correct human mannerisms. Her blunderings were only tolerated because of her friendship with Gauri and Vikram. Even tolerated was a generous word. Some dared to whisper that the queen of Bharata kept company with a witch. Not all citizens were eager for the kingdoms of Bharata and Ujijain to join together. They would take whatever observation they could and twist it cruelly. Aasha was reminded all too often that every blunder she made had consequences beyond her.
Once, when Gauri had been in a meeting with various diplomats, Aasha had started yawning. She tugged on Gauri’s sleeve, interrupting her, all to ask whether or not they could go outside instead because she was terribly bored. Gauri had turned to her, and in a voice so low that no one else could hear her, said:
“Do you not realize how deeply you are embarrassing me? Stop.”
There was no malice. Or heat. And it was the calm, flat of Gauri’s voice, spoken while her face was still a mask of pleasant calm, that had set Aasha’s insides on fire …
She had done wrong. There was no other way around it. Gauri had apologized for speaking so harshly the moment they were alone, but the humiliation felt sticky for weeks to follow. It had not even occurred to her how her actions might look to another person. Interrupting the queen of Bharata was tantamount to insulting her control of court and even her fitness as a sovereign.
And now, she would have to leave even this behind. What strange terrain awaited her? She could feel the weight of Gauri and Vikram’s expectations like a hand pushing down on her lungs. In the Otherworld, she had been called too curious for her own good. Now it seemed as though she had traded curiosity for cowardice.
“Do you accept?” asked Gauri.
Aasha wanted to say yes. But the question was not whether she could accept, but whether she should. All she had wanted was to know what it meant to be human and all that that entailed. But it had come at such a jagged price. In her panic, she felt her blue star prickling. Aasha tamped it down, and stared at her two friends.
They had fought through so much. Could she not do the same? And then she saw their smiles fall just a bit. As if they’d been stung. And all fear drained from Aasha’s heart. Her friends needed her. Love, fierce and sharp, grabbed her heart.
“Yes,” she said. “I accep
t.”
3
Aasha could not remember falling asleep.
In her dreams, her thoughts tangled and stuck together. The dreams lost their edges—she was in the vishakanya harem, the heat forcing her hair to stick to the nape of her neck. In the next moment—or perhaps it was an hour later, or perhaps it was at the same time—Gauri was running toward her. Blood on her mouth. Hands full of thorns. Aasha’s blue star wouldn’t disappear in time. She tried to warn her that she could no longer control her powers. She tried to warn her to stay back. But Gauri didn’t hear her. She flew into her arms, then wilted.
Aasha bolted upright.
Failure sat heavily on her chest. For a moment, she could hardly draw breath into her lungs. Her heartbeats roared loud, an unruly cadence that seemed to scream at her in that gray fugue of sudden waking:
You failed. You failed. You failed.
Her head dropped into her hands. Something sharp and dry scraped against her skin. She shrieked, drawing back.
There, in her lap, lay a perfect circle of black roses. She must have forgotten to take them out of her hair before sleep. Now they looked like something she had dragged out of her nightmare.
Last evening, Gauri and Vikram had been so happy.
Already, there were plans being made for her journey to where the Spy Mistress lived. Already, there were political whisperings afoot. More desires to comb through. To make sure that she was not leaving them in a nest of vipers.
It was not anxiousness that drew her from sleep.
If anything, part of Aasha thrilled at a new opportunity. She was still scared to leave Bharata, still nervous that she might embarrass herself there as she did here. But there was urgency in this task. In the harem, everything was slow-moving and planned. In Bharata, it was much the same. Routines, tasks, feasts. No competition to be seen. In the harem, none of the vishakanyas competed with each other. They were all beautiful. All intelligent. All gifted in some way, shape, or form. And long life, at least amongst the vishakanyas, had all but extinguished any burning desire for recognition. But now she felt that desire. It almost felt like an ache settling against her ribs, this need to show just how much she belonged.
Initially she did not know what it was. She told Gauri that perhaps she had eaten the wrong dish at dinner the previous night. But Gauri had laughed:
“That’s just the teeth of ambition chewing at the heart of you,” she said. “Let it bite. It’s good for you.”
Ambition had not shaken her from sleep. It was fear … fear that her horrible secret might hurt the ones she loved.
Yesterday, Vikram had been confident that she would earn the Spy Mistress’s approval and be taken on for the position.
“You can wield and control such force, Aasha,” he’d said proudly. “We’re not worried.”
Control.
She couldn’t. Not anymore.
The blue star on her throat pulsed. Sweat cooled against her skin. She hadn’t summoned her vishakanya powers, and yet they had reared up anyway, forced to the surface by her own panic.
She couldn’t name the point where it started. It was sometime after she came to Bharata. A courtier had asked where she hailed from, and she had answered that she was a vishakanya. Luckily, the court had taken it to be a joke and pretended to faint if she brushed past them. After that, Gauri and Vikram had forbidden her from revealing her true nature.
At first, she had been stubborn. Vishakanyas, though deadly, were not inherently evil. But she quickly learned that nuance meant little to humans. Over the past year, Aasha had grown used to the rumors that snaked after her. It was around the third month of her stay that courtiers—mad with envy over her proximity to Gauri and Vikram—had taken to calling her a witch. In the beginning, Aasha did not mind. She had been called worse. Not all patrons of the Otherworld were kind. She did not mind what someone else thought because she knew who she was.
At least, she used to.
But her greatest desire—to experience a human life—had changed nearly everything.
“If I told people what I was, then they would not be scared,” Aasha said. “People are only scared of things they do not know or understand.”
She knew that better than most.
In the Night Bazaar, there worked a fear monger. He sold pinches of fear—dark purple blooms with thorns so thin and sharp and crowded together that they looked deceptively like velvet. All one had to do was stroke the bloom, and the fear would seep through the skin and lace through the bloodstream. Aasha had seen ancient rakshas fall to their knees, their eyes ringed with white, just to make the torture stop. They were highly sought after by the kings and queens of a thousand different realms. No need to kill a person with this interrogation device. Merely blow out the candles, and let the darkness do the rest. Aasha had asked the fear monger what he had distilled to create the kind of fear that trailed ice down spines and yanked people from dreams.
“The unknown, child,” he had said, for Aasha was young in the eyes of immortals. “I gather the shadow moving swiftly out of the corner of one’s eye. I gather the creaks in the floorboards when the sleeper balances on the precipice of dreaming. I gather the doubts that turn knuckles pale and hollows the stomach with an invisible kick. And I burn them down to this.”
But Vikram had explained that even if their fear was gone, a new emotion would take its place: malice.
“Imagine what someone would do if they found out that you could sense desires?” said Vikram. “They might try to fool you. Or hurt you. And in doing so, they might even put Gauri and me at risk.”
“But that is horrible!” Aasha had said.
“It’s human,” Vikram had answered with a weary grin.
All it took was a few months in Bharata to see that Vikram was right. Aasha had never realized how much humans lied, both to themselves and to those around them. Their desires were so tangled and nuanced. If they knew what she could do, they would just bury their intentions further. Humans were beautiful and deceitful. Even with fury in their hearts, their actions could be virtuous. Even with virtue in their hearts, they could act with cruelty. Why? Did that make them bad or good? To fit in here, she was expected to act like them. She was one of them, she supposed. But now all the things that made her who she was had been called into question. No longer could she act on impulse or simply do as she wished. It led to a horrible gap within herself, this sour hollow where all she did was wonder what was wrong with her. Why could she not do as others did?
And then came the day her powers faltered.
Even now, shame rattled her bones.
It was such a small thing too. To cause such devastation.
Last winter, she had tamed a mynah bird in the gardens. It had hurt its wing. Aasha had created a small splint and fed it bright berries and slivers of sweet nuts. For a time, the bird had been her companion. It liked to sit on her shoulder, and nibble at her bright earrings. In the spring, the bird disappeared, and Aasha, though she mourned it, was happy that it could come and go as it pleased.
By summer, she had nearly forgotten about the bird.
Then came the afternoon where she had been walking outside, having just left one of Gauri’s meetings.
She had been deep in thought, turning over a point in the meeting. One man had smiled at her. But his desire … his desire spoke of revulsion. For her. Had she done something? Did she wear her differences so obviously? What else could she do to try and be human?
At that moment, something warm knifed against her cheek. Aasha didn’t think. She only reacted.
A shudder ran through her.
She didn’t even have to raise her hand. She felt the star prickle to life on her skin at the same instant that she heard a low cheep of surprise. When she turned around, the mynah bird that she had loved and nursed back to health was dead at her feet.
From then on, she had kept at a distance from the others. When there were invitations for festivals, she had stayed behind. What would startle her next
? Unannounced fireworks? The belly of a thunderstorm skimming over the city? She wanted to go. Every part of her yearned. This was why she had come to the human realm in the first place … to see and live and dance. To slake her wonder in sips of a life that had long been denied.
But she couldn’t.
Every time she heard laughter outside her suites, she thought of the mynah bird at her feet. She heard its hurt cry of surprise replaying over and over in her head. The mynah bird became the citizens of Bharata, fanned out in a circle around her, struck dead all because she had been … surprised.
Just last week, she’d nearly killed a child. The little girl had accidentally tripped her. Aasha, caught off guard, had reached out her hand to steady herself. The child, thinking to steady her, had tried to grab her hand.
In the last second, she’d gripped a marble column. The blue star flickered and faded in a blink. But a blink was all it took to kill.
Now, Aasha looked around the room.
It would be so easy to pack her belongings and leave in the middle of the night. Aasha slid out of bed, her heart racing and breaking at once. But then she stopped. She couldn’t leave her friends. And even if she did, who was to say that she would be able to control her powers if she returned to her sisters? What was to prevent her from being startled and suddenly turning mortal? What if one of her own sisters, thinking to help her, reached out and killed her with one touch?
Tears sprang to her eyes.
No matter how she looked at this world, she was trapped.
She had traded one prison for another. By tomorrow morning she’d be leaving for the home of the Spy Mistress. She closed her eyes, feeling as though every undeserved hope Gauri and Vikram had placed in her had suddenly sprouted thorns. If they knew what was wrong with her, they would have never given her this honor. Or believed in her. They might have even banished her. She deserved as much.
Outside, the moon was a rind of silver growing on top of the mountains. Aasha leaned back against the cushions, staring at the empty space beside her. A strange ache dug into her bones. Even the shadows had found stillness. Peace.
Star-Touched Stories Page 11