Star-Touched Stories

by Roshani Chokshi

  Of all the human desires and emotions that fascinated her, love was the most mysterious of them all. The texture of that desire manifested differently in every individual. She had sensed the desire between two people and found it scorching to the touch, or desperately entangled with emotions of grief or envy, or desire so light and delicate that it seemed as if it were wrought from strands of daydreams.

  In her wish to live a human life, she had discovered so many human emotions. She had felt envy quite sharply when Gauri had asked to spend time alone with Nalini and she had not been invited. She had felt a flicker of desire when a young man or young woman held her gaze and flashed a smile full of invitation. Though she knew sorrow best of all these days … not once had she felt love. Romantic love. She knew full well that both Gauri and Vikram held part of her heart. But if she could hold so much in her heart, could she not give it to someone as well?

  She knew what love was supposed to look like. She saw it every day with Gauri and Vikram. The moment they beheld each other, it was as if a trail of light had been instantly forged between them.

  She would never forget the first time that realization had struck her. Aasha had been leaving the kitchens, her favorite haunt when no official duties pulled her to Gauri’s side. There was a shaded path that wound through the orchards of Bharata. That was where she had spied Gauri and Vikram through a gap in the trees.

  A swing hung from the sweet-scented branches of the gulmohar tree. The blooms were plump and garnet red. A crimson so striking that Aasha had once expected the petals to scald her like a flame. Vikram was pushing Gauri, laughing. She smiled up at him, her chin perched over her shoulder. Vikram had cupped her upturned face and kissed her smile until their expressions twinned the other.

  The memory made Aasha want to curl around her shadow. She couldn’t possess such a thing. She dreamed, sometimes, of a smile fashioned for her alone. A smile that only she summoned. That only she knew the secret contours of. That only she could find in the dark with neither candle nor moonlight but only the illumination provided by a beloved memory.

  Beneath her arm, the blackened rose petals fell apart. It was as much a reminder as it was a warning. She should not want such things.

  She’d only char them and be left with nothing but ashes.

  4

  “Do you have everything you need?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they pack enough food and water, you think?”

  “Gauri…” said Vikram softly.

  Gauri ignored him.

  “Do you have a knife?”

  “She has something better,” said Vikram wryly. He wriggled his fingers.

  Aasha tried not to pale.

  “What about desserts? Did you say good-bye to the kitchens? Half of them are so used to seeing you they probably think you’re part of the staff.”

  Aasha had said good-bye to the kitchen workers. One of them had given her a favorite earthen pot, and if she inhaled it deeply, she could smell the ghost of spices that had settled into its cracks. Learning how to cook had become her favorite human pastime.

  Only a few people had gathered to see her off. Outside the gates of Bharata, dawn had scarcely touched the skyline. A rosy blush gleamed through the trees. In the early morning chill, Aasha could see her breath plume before her. The cold hardly bothered her, but she pulled her shawl tight anyway, as if it might insulate her from the chill of her own fears.

  The horses had been teamed to the chariot. In a few minutes, this carriage would take her far away from the confines of the palace. Aasha felt like an exposed wound, her heart raw and bared. But deep within her, some remnant of the old Aasha remained. Curiosity flickered to life. What was beyond these walls? And how interesting would it be to learn something new for a change instead of spending her days listening to others?

  “We will see you in three months’ time,” said Gauri. “At our final ceremony before the wedding.”

  “Thank every pantheon of deities,” said Vikram. “So many ceremonies. I can feel myself aging. Look,” he said, pulling his cheek taut. “Do you see any lines?”

  “The only lines I see are the fine cracks in your sanity, my love.”

  Vikram scowled.

  Aasha stifled her laugh. Was it allowed? She had taken so much care to unlearn parts of herself that now everything she did felt stilted, made slow by every second-guess.

  With a final good-bye, Aasha stepped inside the chariot. It lurched forward. A cloud of red dust gathered. The silhouettes of Gauri, Vikram, and their small entourage gradually faded until Aasha was all alone.

  * * *

  Aasha had seen cities of legend. She had visited the realm of serpents, and wandered through the mother-of-pearl and moonstone palaces. She had walked in the Night Bazaar and felt the moonlight silver her skin and the sunshine warm her face at the same time. But nothing compared to human cities. They reeked. Even from her chariot, Aasha could smell the animal sweat wicking from oxen dragging ploughs. She could smell the paste for brick-making, and the char of cooked food. Human cities were imperfect. To her, it made them all the more beautiful. All the more real. There was no magic here where someone might simply lift a palace from the ground. Everything demanded time. Patience. And yet the very nature of human existence—little more than a gasp of breath and a blink—seemed at odds with human marvels. A man might spend his whole life building a work of art, and never see it finished. But it was that dream—of what it might become, of knowing he had contributed to something immortal—that fed his soul. That was the magic of humans. Aasha felt humbled even to glimpse such endeavor.

  For four days they traveled through Bharata.

  Eventually, cities gave way to towns, then villages, then … forests. Aasha dearly wished to stand at the front where the charioteer drove the horses. She wanted to stretch out her hand, and feel the firm silk of vines dangling from the branches. She wanted to step outside and feel the damp earth squelch between her toes. But when she had asked the charioteer, he had been appalled.

  “No lady of the court would do such a thing,” he said.

  Perhaps a braver person would have pushed back. It was not as though the court of Bharata were there to see her stare wide-eyed at the jungle. But the man’s condescension cut her. Ashamed, she did not ask again. Instead, she stayed curled up in her seat, leaning out the window with her chin tipped toward the ceiling of tangled trees and her mind lost in daydreams.

  On the fifth day, they reached the Spy Mistress’s tower. The chariot in front, full of Bharata’s soldiers, stopped first. Aasha wanted to get out with them, but she was told to wait. Not wanting to offend the Spy Mistress before she had even met her, Aasha did as she was told.

  Once she was allowed to descend, Aasha surveyed her new home for the next three months.

  A thin frost hung in the air. It was nearing dusk, and the gathering darkness made the roads look unattended and lonely. She had imagined that the Spy Mistress would live in a palatial mansion hidden in the trees, disguised by mirrors so that the eye didn’t register its grandeur. Or perhaps a home cut into a waterfall. Something fanciful that said “Here Be Secrets.”

  But this was not it.

  It was a slab of sandstone along the side of the road. Obvious, and yet unattended. There had to have been a village nearby, and yet there were few signs of life aside from some stray cattle wandering by the road.

  A crow circled overhead. Aasha looked around, but there wasn’t anything dead for it to consume. Unless it was somehow feeding off the sad, empty energy of this whole place.

  There was no one out here.

  No sentinels.

  No guards.

  Not even a large fence with chinks cut into the stone, so that someone might be able to peer through it and find another person.

  “Does she know we’re coming?” asked Aasha.

  The soldier, Suraj, squinted up at the tower.

  “She should. But then again, that’s never made much of a difference to h
er.”

  “Is she truly so awful?”

  “Certainly!” said Suraj. “She wears her hair shorn like a widow, but she has never married. She curses like a man. Wears pants. I bet she was the one who decapitated the Spy Lord of Ujijain.”

  Aasha felt a bristle of indignation. She had heard people talk the same way about her own kind, how they were wild and consumed men out of spite.

  “Have you met her?” she asked coldly.

  “Not at all,” he scoffed. “And I hope I never do.”

  Frowning, Aasha looked back at the door to the tower. It was half-open. But it didn’t look like an invitation. It had that same tense quality of a monster sinking back on its haunches. Waiting.

  Not even the evening light—hungry as it usually was to spill over the land before it was reeled back into the sky—dared to step past the tower’s threshold. Aasha tilted her head. It looked strange. Flat, somehow.

  “Spy Mistress!” called Suraj.

  But no one answered.

  The other soldiers had begun to discuss the best way to enter. The Spy Mistress was known for laying all kinds of traps around the place.

  Aasha walked forward. Strange. The light did not reach over the threshold.

  But neither did the dust.

  Instead of going in front of the door, she walked off to the side. She reached around for a pebble on the ground, throwing it directly into the door. It ricocheted with a metallic, pinging sound. Aasha almost grinned. It was false darkness. The first trap.

  Sure enough, the ground right in front of the entrance to the door crumbled into a pit. If anyone had been standing there, they would have fallen instantly into a hole.

  Aasha had seen something similar to this at the entrance of Nagaloka, the realm of serpents. A trapdoor that punished those who were disrespectful enough to enter an open space. It was far more polite to sit at the side, and wait to be noticed. That was the true entrance.

  Suraj jogged over to her.

  He walked cautiously toward the edge of the hole that had widened where the trapdoor fell. And then he hopped back.

  “How did you know?” he asked, staring at her wide-eyed.

  Aasha did not know how to answer. Some things were instinct. A human of Bharata would see a tiger and run, thinking it meant to harm them. An individual of the Otherworld would see a tiger and stop, thinking they might know them.

  “I just did,” managed Aasha. And then she wondered what Suraj had seen that would make him leap away from the edge. “What’s down there?”

  “I do not wish to alarm you. I do not think a well-bred lady would have ever seen such a thing.”

  But Aasha was not a well-bred lady.

  Ignoring him, she walked to the brink of the trap and looked down. Would she see a pile of bones or a pit of iron spikes? But no. Open water met her gaze. A scaly tail whipped the water into waves, thrashing hungrily. She jerked backward. There wasn’t anything that would save a person, and the Spy Mistress hadn’t even bothered to warn them about the kinds of horrors that might be faced in their halls.

  Perhaps someone else would have seen such things and called the Spy Mistress ruthless. It did not seem human to punish intruders this way or to be so cunning. But for the first time, Aasha breathed easier …

  This she understood.

  This cunning. This testing. This crouching.

  Gauri and Vikram had thought that the Spy Mistress position would suit her. This was the first time that Aasha believed that perhaps they had seen something within her that even she had not.

  At the side where Aasha had thrown the pebble, a scraping sound filled the emptiness.

  They walked over to see that the dry and twisting vines that had covered the side of the building were nothing more than artfully painted whorls of steel. Now, they were being pulled up, like chain mail, over the side of the tower to reveal a sturdy black door. The true entrance. There was even a note nailed to the center:

  Speak true

  Speak fast

  Or I’ll kill you

  Aasha appreciated her bluntness.

  She did not doubt that the Spy Mistress meant her words and she found it exhilarating. In Bharata, everyone hid their spite behind silk. They hid murderous ideas behind well-bred manners. Here, she did not have to think too hard.

  Just as she had at the brink of the well, Aasha reached for her own instincts.

  If anyone thought it was odd that the strange advisor of Queen Gauri was clutching her throat, no one said anything. Which was a good thing too because Aasha was reading them. She cast out her will like a net, gathering what desires floated to the tops of people’s minds like oil separating from water.

  Desires were gauzy blooms of heat—they flared or subsided. But always, they were there. If there were any humans present, that soft dent of heat would have revealed them.

  The Spy Mistress couldn’t be here, she thought.

  “You brought me a gawker?” called a peevish voice on the other side of the door.

  Aasha jumped back.

  It was impossible. How could she have avoided Aasha’s reading?

  Suraj appeared behind her. “Yes, Mistress. This is the Lady Aasha, personally selected by Emperor Vikramaditya of Ujijain, and Queen Gauri of—”

  “Did you not the read the door?”

  “I beg your pardon—”

  “Please don’t. I never cared for beggars.”

  “Yes, I read the—”

  “When I say speak fast and speak true, it’s not me showing off my sparkling wit and humor. It is the baldest plea of: DO NOT WASTE MY TIME!”

  The stones shook.

  “Yes. This is her!” shouted back Suraj. “Take her. Train her. Make her like you—”

  “Truthfully?” laughed the voice. “The new sovereigns must have a sense of humor. Or self-loathing. To the untrained eye, they can look remarkably similar.”

  The Spy Mistress still had not opened the door.

  “It is my duty to dispatch her,” said Suraj, growing more red-faced by the moment.

  “Is she a letter? Or a prisoner in need of execution?”

  “She is not,” said Aasha rather forcefully.

  “Lo!” called the voice. “It speaks.”

  Suraj shot her a look of sympathy. The luggage was placed by the door. The soldiers, fierce creatures that they were, had already closed the door to the carriages.

  “We will be back at the third new moon to take Lady Aasha back to the palace,” said Suraj. “At that time, you will be asked to accompany us and either name her as co–Spy Mistress or rescind any recommendation.”

  “Third moon?” taunted the Spy Mistress. “We’ll see if she lasts that long.”

  * * *

  Aasha was left standing outside of the door.

  The court of Bharata had taught her how to wait and stay still. The vishakanya harem had taught her to fold her hands and look demure. But Aasha … Aasha for all that she had learned, could not unlearn her curiosity. Her fingers twitched even as she tried to lay them flat against the tops of her hands. The sense of useless waiting grew from barely tolerable to scalp-burningly impossible.

  Unable to stand it anymore, she stepped aside from etiquette.

  “Hello?” she called.

  The door swung open. But the Spy Mistress was not there.

  The moment Aasha stepped inside, a fugue of magic hit her. Not the kind fashioned of hopes and unexplained wonders, but the kind wielded by demons and deities. It took Aasha by surprise, as if she had wandered to the end of a dark tunnel only to find a secret entrance to her room. The enchantment fanned the blood through her veins, and the blue star, without any summoning, burned on her skin. She clapped her hand over her throat.

  Hide yourself.

  That was the first and only condition that Vikram and Gauri had imposed.

  Not even two steps inside the door, and you’ve already failed, she chided herself.

  But the Spy Mistress could not have noticed. For there w
as no one inside.

  Although Aasha could feel the weight of enchantment in the air, she could not find its seams. She did not know where things started or stopped, and she found herself wondering how the Spy Mistress had ever come to wield such magic. If she was a magical being, her desires still should not have been obscured.

  No furniture touched the bare stone. But veins of warmth ran through the floor. Life was not here, but below. It had to be, because the smells of cooking had seeped through the stone. Luxuriant smells that gnawed at her stomach. Roasted vegetables and rice fluffed with strands of saffron and mixed with ghee. Iced fruits. Bread glistening with oil.

  A voice called out from the stone:

  “If you can’t find the food, then you can’t eat it,” taunted the Spy Mistress. “Think of it like a secret you’re supposed to sniff out.”

  Annoyance flickered through Aasha. Cast out of Bharata, separated from her friends, and now dying of hunger, she had no patience for cruelty too. Perhaps in another time she would have tried to intimidate this Spy Mistress. Perhaps a demonstration of her deadly touch to suggest that she was not someone to offend. But the deadliness of her touch was not a thing to use frivolously. A rush of texture flew through her mind. The iridescent silk feathers of the mynah bird, the warm damp of the child’s palm, and the bird as blue as her star, its feathers still ruffled from a wind it would never again feel.

  Outside, the sun had begun to sink slowly, light dribbling over the horizon. Her stomach ached. From a distance, the light looked like a plush mango split open. She licked her lips. Why didn’t she think to bring any snacks with her? Soon, evening fell. Aasha’s hunger sharpened. But so did her sight.

  For so long, she had tamped down the instinct of the Otherworld that to reach for it once more felt almost shameful. And yet, even as she tried to read the room once more, it yielded no secret desires. Aasha felt blind.

  “You cannot possibly mean to starve me!” she called. And then, in a smaller voice. “Do you?”

  That would not be very kind. Bharata hadn’t always been kind either, but at least they had never denied her the pleasure of a full stomach.