The Star-Touched Queen (23 page)

I opened my mouth to say something, but Kamala spoke first.

“Then give us a cloud bridge. To get back to the other side. There is more than one way into the Otherworld.”

“We’re just going to turn around?” I asked incredulously.

“If you know the area where the Dharma Raja will be, I can sniff out his location,” said Kamala.

“How?” I asked.

“When death is close I become alive…”

I stared at Kamala. I had already given her my hair and pledged her a bite of my skin. I knew she was bound to help me. But it never struck me that she might do so voluntarily.

“Why are you helping me?”

“Why do I do anything? Why do I hate beets or lust after the feeling of hair in my mouth instead of blood? Maybe I like the thought of being filled. Of being less empty,” said Kamala with another ghoulish grin. “Maybe I am bored and your company is a funny thing. Your energy is a strange one. You are a pillar of salt I want to lick and break, but save and love.”

Where would I even go? I couldn’t chase false horizons hoping it would somehow land me in front of him. There had to be a specific place, somewhere he’d be drawn despite himself. Amar’s words floated back to me:

I love you,
jaani.
My soul could never forget you. It would retrace every step until it found you.

Retrace every step …

Death always visited his familiar haunts. Blood-damp stretches of battlefields, sage-sharp mats of midwives’ huts, rain-slick rocks of riverbeds. But maybe there was another place he would go. A place that, once, had meant something to
us
.

I fished out the onyx stone filled with two memories. I could use it to find my way back to Amar. Back to the Night Bazaar. Back to Nritti and her ice and honey words. Back … to myself.

Airavata batted his ears. “And what do you expect me to do?”

“We need that cloud bridge.” I turned to Kamala. “When we get back, there’s something I must do, and I hope that will tell us at least where the Dharma Raja will be. And then we can use your … talents … to get us all the way.”

“Delightful,” murmured Kamala. “I have not been so excited since a massacre twelve years ago. All those bodies. So delicious.”

Airavata bowed his head in assent.

Hooking a cloud between his curved tusks, he began to comb it. A billowy vapor formed a mist over the ocean before flattening into a uniform stretch of white, dotted here and there with iron and purple storm clouds. I reached for Kamala and swung myself onto her back.

Gently, I kicked my heels into her side and we took off onto the cloud bridge. I had thought the cloudy material would be soft, like running on sand or fresh grass, but the cloud bridge was as hard as stone. Airavata walked beside us, sinking ever deeper into the waves until only his head was visible. His eyes twinkled, a knowing glint in his eye. But if he had a secret to tell or a thought to give voice to, he would not share it with me.

And with that, he sunk beneath the water. As Kamala raced over the bridge, I leaned over, reveling in the occasional spray of seawater. Tears burned in my eyes, but I wouldn’t let this failure set me back. I had to succeed. I clutched my mother’s necklace tight around my throat, praying it would give me strength, and looked around me. On my left, I could see what the ocean looked like at night. Its waves were higher, the crests of its ripples stretching far onto the shore. I caught glimpses of luminescent creatures bobbing just under the surface. Occasionally, a dorsal fin cut the water. On my right, sunshine capped the waves gold. Fish as green as parrots wriggled by the cloud bridge and twice I saw a limpid pink jellyfish.

Where was Amar? I turned back to the shore. Already the beach seemed like a distant gray line. I drew out the bracelet of my hair. With my memories came the love I had always felt for Amar leaving me heavy and weightless at once. I hated that I didn’t tell him that I love him. And I hated how those memories—though fleeting—felt like wounds reopened. But even then, I found hope. My heart had not been false and that knowledge was unshakable and scrawled on the secret joints of my soul, like a spell that kept it whole.

“Are you weeping, young queen?” asked Kamala.

“No,” I lied, “the salt is stinging my eyes.”

“Pity,” grumbled the horse. “I have not tasted tears.”

My whole body felt worn out from tension and I closed my eyes, my arms wrapped around Kamala’s neck as I fell asleep. In my dreams, I danced with Amar. We spun in circles to the heavenly music of the
gandharvas
. We danced around a wide courtyard filled with colorful birds until I stumbled forward, my arms spread out to brace my fall. I cried out loud and my eyes fluttered open—

“We are here,” said Kamala.

The ocean remained, but the sky above was a normal hazy gray-blue. Before us, a great jungle unfurled dark green leaves in invitation. I rolled my neck. Whatever peace I had found in sleep vanished. All I could feel now were my aching muscles. My skin reeked of salt water and my hair was whipped around my face. I glanced at Kamala and bit back a gasp. Her once thin flanks bulged with muscle and her coat gleamed with soft white hairs. Even her eyes were now a dark crimson instead of the rheumy white from earlier. Kamala plodded forward carefully, occasionally warning about low branches.

“Is death nearby? Is that why you look—” I faltered, gesturing at her dramatically different body.

“We are fully in the human world, so death is always nearby. You should see me when we are truly close, false queen. Then, I am a sight to be reckoned with. Sometimes I have lulled away beautiful maids and handsome youths just with my borrowed glory alone.”

I didn’t ask what happened next.

“Now what?” asked Kamala.

I took the small onyx stone and pressed it to my lips. The memories shifted under my gaze, translucent and wispy.

“Now I find out where he will be.”

I sank myself into that memory, into the moment where we first met, bending my whole body into a single event captured within one of those glittering pinpricks.

*   *   *

I had been walking through the Chakara Forest. Fat moths the size of palms wreathed my hair like pearls and moonstones. And then, as I had done since before language burgeoned in the velvet clefts of the mind—I danced.

Not a slow dance, but sharp, punctual movements. My dance organized the shadows of trees, canceled the cloying plumes of wind-fallen fruit, aligned the moonbeams themselves. My back arced gracefully as I moved, neck extended like an oryx, fingers conjuring sharp
kathas
of rhythm, when a sound crunched not far from me.

I spun around. “Who’s there?”

From beneath the heart-shaped leaves of a
peepal
tree, something rustled. And a voice, so lush it made ambrosia acrid, answered me.

“Only the lowly painter who tries each night, in vain, to capture evening herself.”

“What do you want? Show yourself.”

The stranger stepped out of the
peepal
tree. He was broad-shouldered, his features as severely beautiful as a strike of lightning. He wore a crown of blackbuck horns that arced in graceful whorls of onyx, catching the light. But it was his gaze that robbed the clamoring rhythm in my chest.

His stare slipped beneath my skin. And when he saw my eyes widen, he smiled. And in that moment, his smile banished my loneliness and limned the hollows of my anima with starlight, pure and bright. He moved toward me, grasping my hand, and his touch hummed in my bones like an aria. A song to my dance. The beginning of a promise.

*   *   *

I pulled myself out of the memory. My breathing was ragged. I couldn’t push out the feeling that the memory left. Something so whole that my body craved and curled around it. I thought my soul was leaning toward the stone, wishing desperately to cling to a truth, a beacon that could guide me back to myself. That raw tenderness. That
kiss
that said
goodbye, come back,
and
I love you
all at once. This memory showed me hope. And that was something I could chase to the ends of the earth.

“We need to get to the Chakara Forest,” I said, turning to Kamala.

She had not moved once since I sank into that memory. She had not laughed, nor gnashed her awful teeth, claggy with blood.

“You changed,” she said slowly.

“What?”

Kamala whinnied. “You looked different. Shade-play, shadow-play against my eyes. Trust me, false queen”—she paused—“
maybe
queen, I know shadows.”

“What did I look like?”

“Like ink-spills and umbra, cloudless nights and winter mornings. Lovely, lovely,” said Kamala in her singsong voice. “But you wore no crown of blackbuck horns and something swirled across your skin. I almost tried to taste it, but I did not want to get swatted by a maybe-deity. Maybe-deity! Maybe-deity! Oh, what a song.”

I glanced at my arm, ignoring Kamala as she pranced about in a circle, tossing her head and singing
maybe-deity
so loudly it might summon thunder. There was nothing on me but the crust of sea-salt and dried ash. I dusted it off. Kamala’s words put flesh on the bones of my hope. Still, that didn’t give me as much comfort as I’d like. I was asking a flesh-eating demon for comfort.

“You wish to go to the Chakara Forest?” asked Kamala when she was done dancing. Pearly sweat left a sheen on her coat.

“Yes. But there’s something I must do first.”

My hand closed around my mother’s necklace and I tried to swallow down all those past hurts that had hardened into iron knots.

“I need to bury this in the place where its last owner lived.”

Even through my grief of losing Gauri, Airavata’s words rang true. To enter the Otherworld and save Amar, I had to release the ghosts of my past. Kamala jutted her nose against my neck and snuffled the necklace before loudly snorting.

“That necklace lived in a kingdom that smelled of stone. It is kinder to
sadhus
and
sadhvis
than its own people and its turrets are fat with mango blossoms. It is on the way to the Chakara Forest.”

My heart clenched. Somehow, I felt like Gauri had given me her blessing.

“Bharata?” I guessed.

“I suppose that is the name it goes by now. Cities shed names like maidens their tears. Does its Raja look like a toad in a golden jacket?”

Skanda had never been … athletic.

“Perhaps,” I said, then thought for a moment. “Probably.”

“Then it is so. It is Bharata.”

“We have to go through it?”

“It is the only way.”

“Then perhaps the stars are on our side.” I hauled myself back onto her saddle and we took off through the jungle.

The moon turned motes of pollen into drowsy glimmers. I watched them drift past me, snatching them out of the air. They looked like the wishes from Naraka’s glass garden. I closed my eyes, letting myself sink into the quiet of it all. In the silence, I wished for all the things I had lost—love, lives, memories.
Myself
. And I wept for those things as I wept for the dead. And then like the dead, I released them and hoped with all that was left of me that I could give them new life.

I faced the tree-blurred horizon. Somewhere behind that tangle was Bharata. The same Bharata I had abandoned to warfare. Or was it? Guilt slid up my spine.

I would soon find out.

21

THE WARRIOR OF BHARATA

The jungle zoomed past us, a flurry of brown and green branches with slants of scattered sunlight. Within an hour, Kamala slowed to a trot. Up ahead shined the familiar gates of Bharata. It was missing some stones, but remained sturdy nonetheless. I squinted, leaning forward; there were more guards than I remembered. An outdoor pavilion that I had never seen towered above us, strung with pennants and bearing a strange crest.

My father’s sigil, a lion and an elephant—for strength and wisdom—had been replaced with a fire bird arcing its way toward the sky, while below it was a small golden city. It was superficially lovely. I imagined Skanda thought it meant something meaningful, perhaps an envisioning of a kingdom soaring into the ranks of legend. But to me, it reeked of arrogance. It said,
Let me abandon this city and leave it forgotten in a quest of borrowed greatness.

A crowd had formed outside the city gates, people cursing under their breath and exchanging pointed glances. We stopped some distance away from them, and as I jumped off Kamala’s back, clouds of dust coated my ankles. I never thought I would be here again. It was strange, like moving through a dream. I held out my hand, closing my eyes to feel the sun beam down on me and wash my skin in bright gold.

Hundreds of people crowded the city, but when they saw me and Kamala, they fell silent. My palms turned sweaty beneath their gaze. What was it that
sadhus
and
sadhvis
did? Did they utter blessings or stay silent?

This thought, however, didn’t seem to cross Kamala’s mind. She lunged forward, baring her teeth and shaking her mane. Half the crowd scattered.

“Effective,” I said, patting her neck.

“You’re most certainly
not
a
sadhvi
,” huffed Kamala. “You can go up to them, you know. You can ask for anything you want, and they’ll probably give it to you. Nobody wants your curses.”

“How do I curse them?” Wouldn’t be a useless skill to have, all things considered.

“Oh, I don’t know. You could set me on them?” Kamala smiled and her eyes flashed red.

I cringed. Horses should not smile.

“Can we get around them to the palace?”

All I wanted was to bury the necklace in peace.

“I can rend flesh,” Kamala huffed. “I can’t fly.”

The crowd had re-formed around the gates, still chanting. Their sweat smelled sour, their eyes were bloodshot. And their clothes … tattered things. No better than the ascetic garb I wore around my body. My father would have never let his people dress in such a manner.

“I can smell their hunger,” said Kamala softly.