Star-Touched Stories

by Roshani Chokshi

  PRESENT

  Hira had hardly blinked the whole time her grandmother spoke.

  “Why would the messenger of Death say such a thing?” she asked. “Why wouldn’t the queen have wanted her bridegroom to return alive?”

  Her grandmother did not look at Hira.

  “Love changes,” she said. “First bloom is not last breath. That is not a good thing, but a truth.”

  “So?”

  “So, my little jewel, I pose the question to you. Imagine you had the most beautiful flower in all the world. Imagine that only you possessed such a wondrous thing. Now imagine that it has begun to wilt. Do you let it wilt? Do you let that stunning fragrance of freshness soften into rot? Do you let the petals fall one by one and know that you had loved it for as long as time gave you? Or do you drop it when the blooms are at their height into a preservation liquid? You may not be able to smell it anymore. But you can see the moment at which it is frozen, eternal. And perhaps, the longer that you cannot recall how it felt in your hand, how it made your very senses sing … perhaps in memory it becomes all the sweeter.”

  Hira thought about it, and found herself rather furious when she realized that she did not know. She huffed. “But what’s the right answer?”

  At this, her grandmother smiled.

  “No such thing, my little love,” she said. “The question is when you choose to let something go. And who can tell you the answer to that?”

  “But what did the queen do?”

  Her grandmother rubbed her glass hand. “She did what she thought was right.”

  THE FIRST GATE

  The messenger of Death stomped onto the marble floor. The ground trembled. A neat circle dissolving into the stone as easily as sugar stirred into steaming tea. Logic told her that the entirety of the kingdom should have been thrown out of their beds by the force of the trembling. But the kingdom stayed silent, caught in the jaws of their dreaming.

  The hole in the ground was nearly lightless.

  And yet, Gauri caught the glimmer of details. A staircase. A tiny, muted glow at the very end of the steps. Even from where she stood, she could tell how the quality of the light would be thin and watered down. As if someone had skimmed moonlight off a pond, and not bothered with replenishing the light’s luster for centuries. No stench of malice wafted from the ground. Not a whiff of decay could be detected, nor could she sense that hot iron perfume of old blood. But she did not sense any bliss either, for this was the space between the living and the dead.

  To cross it took as long as an eon, and as short as a blink.

  The land was as vast as an ocean, and as narrow as an alley.

  The land had a name, but all who knew it promptly forgot.

  “And where will you be?” asked Gauri.

  The messenger of Death sat at the edge of the bed, its back unnaturally straight. But for Gauri, who had been a soldier for nearly as long as she had been a princess, the familiar posture needled her. The being looked around the room and then said:

  “Here. I shall sleep in your bed and run my hand across your clothes. I will pace the floors you have paced and touch my hand to the walls. I may go wherever Death may go, and Death is everywhere. Even now, Queen, I see his shadow on you. The gray that will touch your hair. The veins that will cobble your skin into a landscape. The ache that will slow your limbs. I see.”

  But if the yamaduta meant to frighten her, it had failed.

  Gauri was not frightened of that kind of death.

  What she was frightened of was something far quieter. It was the death of being forgotten to the one who loves you. The death of being left behind in a place that will forever hold more grief than glee. The death of laughter.

  Gauri turned to the stairs, grabbed the railing, and started her descent.

  Where was Vikram now, she wondered? Surely, if his soul had fled past hers and already begun its journey to the realm of Naraka, then something in her would have answered?

  The steps forming the staircase were disturbingly uneven. Through the fabric of her slippers, Gauri felt slopes … ridges. Things that might have once been a woman’s sharp clavicle or a child’s bicuspid now worn to the smoothness of a pearl.

  Her eyes took an eternity to adjust. For here, darkness grew thickly when there was no one there to tend to it. At the bottom of the staircase, a long hall stretched forward. She looked behind her and saw an infinity of staircases, footsteps disappearing on the incline or descent. She realized then that she was not the first or the last mortal to visit this land. She was not the first to know grief so acutely that she would have fought Death. And for some reason, this offended her. It was arrogant, she knew, but then again perhaps all who had come here had felt the same fury at this realization. Every pain is its own world with its own language. None else could speak that unique dialect unless they had been born to it, or, as was more often the case, had borne it.

  Around her, footfalls broke the silence, along with something else … the sound of something being dragged. Gauri had been sent only to recover Vikram’s last breath.

  What had the others been sent to gather?

  The moment Gauri leapt down from the last step, hot breath ghosted against the back of her neck. She froze, one hand on a sword. It was the sword Vikram had practiced with when he fell down in the arena. Maybe it was no talisman, but anything else of his would have weighed her down with grief.

  Something snorted behind her. A muzzle whuffed across her scalp, tugging at her hair.

  “I know you,” said a rasping voice. “I carried you on my back, inedible thing. You never said thank you.”

  Gauri turned and found herself staring face-to-face with a not-dead and not-alive white horse. Half of its body was in perfect health, its pearly white flanks shone, and muscles corded its body. But the other half? The other half was rotted and open, strips of flesh peeling off a giant rib cage, its garnet-dark heart beating at the shallow of its chest. Half of its face wore a permanent grin.

  The sight of it summoned a memory that she had buried deep in her mind.

  A not-dead and not-alive white horse racing across a barren landscape. A pale kingdom. A Tapestry on the wall that she could not bring herself to look at for too long.

  “Thank you?” she said, uncertainly.

  The horse tilted its head, examining her. It smacked its lips.

  “You look unappetizing,” it said. “You would taste dry as a sun-bleached bone. Where is your softness? Your whimsy? Bleh. Too salty. I feel thirsty just looking at you. I do not like it.”

  “Thank you,” said Gauri, once more, this time with absolute certainty.

  She took one step closer to the gate.

  “This has been thoroughly alarming, and now I have to go,” she said, turning on her heel and hoping the monstrous horse would not follow.

  Men and women, children and beasts walked down the hall in either direction. Pale cave formations dangled from the ceiling. They glowed, but cast little light, and in the gloom they reminded Gauri of teeth. Perhaps this place was a monster’s skeleton, hauled out, its body now a relic and a hall.

  At first, Gauri thought that onyx pillars lined the walls. They were stately and black, flecked with bits of glittering stone. But then, she watched as a thin band of fire unraveled from its top. Light dribbled slowly down the columns. Around her, everyone stopped. Their heads turned to the pillar closest to them.

  “The sun is on its way,” whispered one woman.

  She was clutching something to her chest: a child’s ragged doll.

  “Where are you?” she called softly. “Where are you?”

  Gauri looked once more to the pillars. She had been wrong. They were not onyx at all, but night poured into columns to create an hourglass of sorts.

  When the pillar turned to gold, the sun would have risen.

  And she would be out of time.

  The sound of hooves clattered behind her. Again, that stench of decay. The horse had followed her.

  �
�Where are you going? Can I come? Actually, I do not care for your answer. You move with urgency. How strange! What is urgency like?” asked the horse. “Does it feel like a fire? And if so, what kind of fire? A fire that flays the flesh? Cooks a person down to the marrow? Or one of those ornamental fires that do not singe the flesh at all? I detest those. If it does not feed you, its purpose is hollow. What are you doing—”

  Gauri looked at it sidelong. The horse’s decayed side faced her and she did not like looking at its hollow eye socket.

  “I have to get something,” she bit out, hoping it would make the creature shut up.

  The horse eyed her. Or maybe not. It was hard to tell when she could not see its eye.

  “You are wearing bridal henna,” it said. It huffed, and something red sprayed across its muzzle. A black tongue snaked out from its mouth and wiped it clean. “It smells too fresh. When was your wedding, inedible thing?”

  Gauri grit her teeth. “It is tomorrow.”

  “Then what business have you in the space between life and death?”

  She could sense, somehow, that the horse knew what she was doing. But why was it trying to force out the words? Was it taunting her?

  But there was nothing for Gauri to hide. The truth was what it was.

  “My bridegroom had a split thread,” she said. “He already breathed his last. And his last breath is at the end of this hall. If I don’t get it before morning, he will die.”

  “Everyone dies.”

  “It does not have to be so soon,” she said.

  The horse nodded once. And then, it grabbed her. Its blunted teeth closed around the fabric of her sleeve. Gauri tried to shrug out of her clothes. She would run naked down these halls if she had to, but the horse moved with inhuman speed, and moments later, she was on its back. She grabbed the pale wisps of its hair, holding on tightly as it ran through the hall.

  “What are you doing?” she hollered.

  The horse’s head whipped to face hers. One hollow socket, one black eye. Its flesh pulled back at the lip in what Gauri imagined was a snarl, but turned out to be a smile:

  “Helping!” it shouted.

  The hall sped past. Light trickled down the onyx columns, swallowing the stars. Around her, the people moved like shades. The floor was littered with mementoes: scraps of paper with smudged names written in the edges, children’s playthings, a woman’s silk slipper, and even a mangalsutra. The necklace that a groom tied around his bride’s neck. Her heart squeezed.

  Unable to look any longer, Gauri shut her eyes.

  And soon, the horse slowed to a stop.

  Gauri slid off, quickly backing away and facing the horse so that it could not snatch her again.

  “That was very difficult,” huffed the horse. “I know you will taste bad, but I admit that I still wanted to break your skin. Just a quick sip, you see. Running makes me hungry. I much prefer just appearing behind someone when they least expect it.”

  It grinned.

  Gauri stared at it. “Why are you helping me?”

  The horse’s withers rippled. Its ears swiveled and pointed at her.

  “Because you need it.”

  “But why you?”

  “Because,” said the horse, and this time its voice reeked of something ancient, something that might have once been sinister but grew bored of malice and had landed at a strange medium. “I am trusted. Not everyone fights on behalf of those whose life thread is split. And perhaps you have more friends than you think.”

  Gauri’s hand flew to her neck. It was a habit that she still could not shake, for it happened every time she thought of her sister, Maya. Once upon a time, her sister’s necklace had dangled against her throat. A heavy sapphire pendant on a delicate string of seed pearls. But she had since stored it in her jewelry chest.

  It did no good to wear a ghost around her neck.

  The horse’s words nudged at a memory that brought her solace. In it, her sister told her a tale until the sun rose, and promised to see her again.

  “Very well then,” said Gauri uneasily. Trusted or no, that did not mean she had to face her back to the creature. “Where are we?”

  “This is the first gate.”

  “How many gates are there before the threshold of the Kingdom of Death?”

  “Two,” said the horse. “The Gate of Names and the Gate of Grief.”

  Gauri had seen many gates in her life. And this did not resemble one. It looked like a grove gathered from scraps of children’s nightmares. A sickly crescent moon hung in an unfinished sky, the ends of it unraveling into the solemn gloom that coated the entirety of this in-between place. Trees that looked more like twists of iron than any living thing grew in tight spirals. No fruit dangled from their branches. What swayed from their branches were voices. Names. Names repeated softly, deliriously, like a person who has lost all but this last cut of themselves.

  The voices took all kinds of forms. The name Chaya transformed into a silver anklet when a young man reached for it. The name Urvashi dangled like a dried-out root. None reached for it.

  People wandered through the grove. Plucking names and putting them back. Some looked stricken as they held the name to their ear. Others looked disgusted and turned around, leaving the Gate of Names instead of passing through it. Still more people wept when they held the name to their ear. But those who wept did not turn. Instead, they gathered the name to them, and walked into the grove and through the gate.

  “Why names?” asked Gauri.

  “Would you rather they have a Gate of Skin?” asked the horse.

  Gauri recoiled. “No.”

  “Names are powerful things, my inedible bone!” said the horse. “They are the gristle of destiny once fate has chewed a life down to its death. Mmm, gristle. Names are sweet as blood spatter. Names are cobbled-together hopes. Why else would someone name a wrinkled blanket of a newborn if not to impress some hope upon them for what they might be? But, you see, my little bone girl, while a soul can leave a name behind, a name cannot let go of a soul’s hold. A name can get enamored of a person. They’re very sensitive.” The horse tilted its head in thought. “And also very tasteless. Pity. They always seem so succulent in life. But that is why the discarded names find their way to this place and affix themselves to this gate. Here, they become a window of a kind. A way to view what might have happened to the one who bore it.”

  In front of her, people twisted their way through the groves. They held up the names as if they were inspecting fruit. Gauri watched as one man flung a name down onto the dirt. Fury twisted his features. Whatever he had seen in the name had made him abandon the soul who it had once belonged to. The man turned on his heel. And then he walked out of the grove.

  “What happens when someone holds a name?” asked Gauri. “Does it show the future?”

  “A little,” said the horse. “It makes no pronouncements upon the name-bearer’s end. But it shows a direction that soul will encounter should that name be allowed to ripen. It is up to the one who plucks the name in this gate whether they believe it is a direction worth suffering.”

  The horse turned its head, its unsettling gaze pinned to the man who had thrown the name onto the dirt and now stalked down the hall.

  “You can always turn around and leave it behind.”

  No. She could not leave him behind. She would not. And yet that did not stop the shadows of her anxiety from falling across her thoughts.

  Falling in love with Vikram was as easy and natural as drawing breath, but what about staying in love? What if ruling a country together changed them … what if the things that had once made them smile now made them scowl? And worse, how could she bear it if she saw that it was not time or circumstance that had made his heart falter, but her?

  But she would have to. She would haul back his soul to the light even if she knew that she trailed her own devastation in its wake.

  Gauri steeled herself. She needed a distraction, and so she turned to the horse:

&n
bsp; “I never thought to ask if you have a name. Do you?”

  The horse stamped its foot. “I am called Kamala.”

  “… lotus?”

  It tossed its mane. “A beautiful name for a beautiful me.”

  “Well—”

  “And I chose my name myself,” said the horse proudly. “Snatched it off a dead woman’s tongue. Her blood tasted like apples. Tasty, tasty name. Tasty, tasty blood.”

  It smacked its lips.

  “And your bridegroom?” asked the horse. “What is his name?”

  “Vikram,” said Gauri. She hated how her voice shook when she said it. She hadn’t spoken it for a whole day and the echo of it sat thickly in her throat. “It means wise.”

  He used to tease her about it all the time. Gauri, my very name encompasses all that I am. So trust me when I say that I should decide on this week’s desserts. I’ll be very judicious. I’ll only help myself to a full serving of my own and then maybe half of yours too. Her chest tightened.

  “And yours, little bone?” asked the horse.

  “My name means gold.”

  PRESENT

  “That’s what your name means too, Dadi-Ma!” said Hira happily.

  Her grandmother bowed her head in acknowledgement. “I know.”

  “And my name means diamond,” said Hira, lifting her chin. “Which is a lot better than cloud.”

  Which was the meaning of Meghana’s name.

  Her grandmother laughed, and then cupped Hira’s cheek. The cold crystal of her palm felt soothing in the day’s heat. Hira leaned against it and breathed deeply.

  “A precious name for my precious girl,” said her grandmother.

  “Is it bad that I like the horse? She makes me giggle.”

  “It is not bad,” she reassured Hira, leaning close. “Even I like the horse.”