The servant girl walked up shyly to the girl with the red and gold curls.
Seeing those blue eyes turn curiously on hers, the servant girl smiled.
Remembering her training, she curtseyed, like the English did.
“For you, thoda maalakin,” the servant girl murmured.
She held out the box carefully, keeping her eyes lowered.
A male servant stepped forward, frowning.
“Let me take it, little miss,” he said, his voice impatient.
He reached for the box, but those dark blue eyes shifted up, even as a scowl twisted those perfect bow lips.
“It’s my present,” she snapped, her voice cross. “I will take it, coolie.”
The servant girl flinched, her eyes flickering up in shock. She’d never heard a child speak to a grown man that way. Then again, she was not accustomed to English children.
Perhaps they spoke to all adults that way.
The rich white girl turned her blue eyes back on the servant girl.
“Give it to me,” she commanded, holding out her hands. “I will open it next.”
The servant girl handed the pink box gingerly over.
Once the girl in the white dress held it in her lap, the servant girl hesitated, the barest breath, then curtsied again, before she began backing politely away.
She walked backwards as she had been taught, her head slightly lowered, until she was well outside the circle of other children, who were all close to her in age. Once she’d achieved enough of a polite distance, she turned and walked away normally, back in the direction from which she’d come. She didn’t stare back at the girl with the red and gold hair, knowing that would be frowned upon, too.
She would have liked to stay, to see what was inside the box.
She’d been given very strict instructions from her owner not to stay, however.
“Give the girl the box, my little bhoore shikaaree,” he said, stroking her hair back from her face. “Give it to her, then come directly back to me. Understood?” He held up a finger in warning, his mouth and words stern. “Do this exactly as I say. Do not dally. Do not fool around with the English, or their servants. Come straight back here. I will be watching.”
She’d nodded, bowing.
She knew the exact cluster of trees where he would be waiting.
She hadn’t read him to determine the reason for his instructions.
According to her training, she was not allowed to read him unless he commanded her to do so. It was a lesson she had learned much younger, at her own peril, and after many sleepless nights of pain and grief. Although she was older now, and better at hiding such things from him and others of his kind, it was still a rule she tried not to break.
Well, not unless it was for something serious.
Like, for example, if she feared for her own life. Or if she feared he would inflict serious pain if she did not know his mind.
She was most of the way across the lawn before she could see him under the shadow of the trees. He stood with two other men, and they were drinking tea and smoking.
She adjusted her feet so they were in a straight line towards him, knowing he could see her by now, regardless of how preoccupied he might seem.
She heard a shout go up behind her from the polo field, delighted laughter from a group of women who sat in lawn chairs down by the stands––
When an explosion ripped across the lawn.
The servant girl gasped, turning in terror.
She stared at the cloud of black smoke for the barest breath.
Then she broke into a run.
She didn’t know what she ran from at first, but heard screams around her as others ran as well. She looked behind her as she ran and nearly fell, seeing the curl of black smoke rising up higher into the sky from the direction she’d just come.
That’s when she saw them.
The chair where the girl in the white dress sat was burning now, along with the chairs of children who’d been seated around her. The servant girl saw patches of grass burning next to holes ripped in the turf. She saw dark forms, lying in strange lines over the grass. She realized she was looking at the bodies of children, spread in pieces over the manicured lawn.
Some of those bodies were moving. Many were not.
Some were burning.
The servant girl saw legs ripped open, arms and chests broken and bleeding.
She heard screams.
One girl gripped her plump thigh with both hands, screaming, her foot and calf mangled and bleeding below the pale blue dress she wore. The girl screamed again, eyes wide in her face, her blue bow askew on her dark brown head.
The servant girl stared around at them, paralyzed with shock.
She didn’t see the body of the girl with the red and gold hair, not at first.
Then she noticed something burning behind the chair where the little princess had sat. It smoldered on the lawn, unmoving, and the servant girl thought she saw a white leather shoe poking out from the bottom of what had been a frilly lace dress.
Then she saw the gold and red curls burning, turning to ash.
She couldn’t move.
She stood there, frozen, staring at the burning lawn, the screaming English women and the men riding over on their horses with the tiny saddles, looking strangely overdressed in their thick red, brown and black clothes, their round leather hats.
She didn’t realize she’d stopped moving until someone grabbed her arm.
“What are you doing?” a voice hissed. “Come with me, you stupid girl! Before someone thinks to come looking for you!”
The servant girl looked up, staring into the angry eyes of her master.
When she swallowed, unable to tear her eyes off his, or to speak, his frown deepened. Exhaling in exasperation, he began to drag her with him across the lawn by her arm.
She didn’t struggle, but stumbled to keep up with his long legs.
Only then did she notice she’d lost one of her brand new sandals, the brand new sandals the prince had given her, while she ran across the lawn.
She looked over her shoulder without slowing her fast-moving feet.
She didn’t see it anywhere.
She saw something else, however.
A man stood there, between her and the burning remains of the girl with the beautiful white dress. Gray-haired, with a perfectly trimmed, short gray beard, he watched her with strangely light eyes––eyes the color of dirty latrine water.
He stared directly at her.
He didn’t look at her master.
He didn’t look at any of the English running around, shouting and screaming.
He didn’t look at the burning remains of the cleanest, fattest, most beautiful children the little girl had ever seen. He didn’t look at the fires, or the men riding up on polo ponies, shouting in shock to one another when they saw the children.
He looked only at her.
His whole body remained perfectly still as he stared, as if trying to see into her soul. His hand gripped a bone-colored cane. He wore the dark, heavy clothes of an Englishman, but she found herself looking past the clothes, past the tall, black hat he wore, also like the English, and his short, strangely manicured beard and dark leather boots.
He stood there, gaunt and forbidding, watching her.
He looked so very English. The costume was perfect, without flaw, even down to the way he stood there, overly stiff, his face pinched, his skin pale. She saw no error in his presentation, nothing concrete, but found herself looking past the illusion, regardless.
Whoever the man was, he was not English.
He wasn’t like the Indian humans either, or like the Africans, or the Tibetans, the Chinese or the Arabs, or any of the other types of human the girl had seen over the years. He wasn’t like any human, because he wasn’t really human at all.
He was like her.
He could see her. He could see past her costume, just like she saw past his.
The thought should ha
ve been a relief.
It should have brought a thrill of elation, of hope, even of joy. The belief that she might one day find another like herself again––it was the only thing that sustained her some nights.
Her master’s people had killed her parents. They’d looted her village, raped and killed. He’d taken her in out of pity, after seeing what they’d done, and the girl had gone with him, knowing she had little choice, knowing she had no people with her own blood left to whom she could turn.
Still, she hoped one day others might come for her.
That reunion with her own people, her own race, had been a waking dream of hers for as long as she could remember.
She should have been relieved to see this man.
She should have been elated to encounter a male seer in India, however he was dressed, however he’d stumbled upon her, however he looked at her––no matter why he was here.
Yet, seeing him brought up none of what the girl thought she would feel.
It brought none of the hope, none of the joy, none of the sense of kinship, none of the sense of family or homecoming she’d imagined.
Instead, it sent a cold, dark shiver down her spine.
HER EYES JERKED open, her heart thudding in her chest, terror ripping through her blood and light. She fought to control her fear.
She couldn’t.
Panic gripped her, paralyzing her past where she could think.
It mixed with dizziness, the struggle to breathe, the heat, the closeness of the other lights in the dark kiva. She felt the old man next to her, and the one across the fire, the one who invited her here. She felt all of their lights sparking and twisting around her, and once more had to fight not to scream.
Yellow eyes shone at her in the darkness.
Cold, urine-colored eyes looked through her.
The room swirled, lost in white steam and mask-like faces.
She was soaked with sweat, breathing in thick, difficult gasps for oxygen.
She gripped her hurt thigh, where Brooks stabbed her with the organic stake. Hanging there, her clothing soaked with sweat, she gasped, trying to bring her mind level once more, to remember herself, who she was, where she was.
She saw a little girl with dark blue eyes, reddish-gold ringlets, a perfect white dress––
Those eyes turned a pale, jade green.
She saw Allie, her beloved Bridge. She saw her aiming a gun at her, her face twisted in hate. She brought the gun level with Chandre’s face, right before she pulled the trigger.
Chandre burst out in a sob.
She didn’t know where it came from. She had no awareness of the physicality of it, even as she wrapped her arms around her ribs and torso, as if to hold it in. She closed her eyes, but those yellow eyes returned, making her flinch, bringing back that terror.
Could it really be memory?
She remembered Rajid, the man who’d owned her in those years.
She didn’t remember a bomb. She didn’t remember the little girl.
She didn’t remember the silhouette of Menlim on that English lawn in Calcutta.
Could it be real? Had any of that really happened?
Pressing her face against the wet fabric of her pants, she sucked in breaths from between her knees, resting her forehead on her crossed arms.
She closed her eyes again, and saw yellow eyes. She saw his face, close to hers, and flinched violently, fighting a surge of bile. She saw his skull-like cheekbones, the hollows of his eyes, a faint smile on his lips as he whispered to her.
She heard his voice, speaking to her in rhythmic waves, murmuring softly…
“…YOU ARE A tiger,” Rajid murmured, stroking the hair back from her face, his fingers warm, affectionate. “My little tigress. You were so good today. So very good. So strong…”
He stroked her like he would an animal.
She barely noticed.
She stood there, eyes closed. She fought a tightness in her throat, the screams still echoing in her mind from earlier that day. Her chest hurt, making it difficult to breathe, to think. She closed her eyes tighter, trying to push away the sight of the bloody white dress, the girl’s red and gold curls smoking on the lawn.
She had not counted the bodies.
She did not know how many she had killed. She hadn’t counted, or even looked at all of them, she told herself.
She did not know how many she had killed.
She would never know.
Her seer’s memory fought with her mind, refusing to acknowledge how many had died.
She found out from the prince, his servants, and her own master, Rajid, that the girl with the dark blue eyes had been the daughter of Someone Important.
Her father was an Englishman who was not doing what the prince wanted, who was “insolent,” the prince said, and who “overstepped in their kingdom.” He wanted the Englishman to know his true place in the world, and to remember who India really belonged to.
That beautiful pink and white present had been a message.
The prince of Bengal wanted to send a message to the English, via a perfect pink package carried gingerly by a little girl with red eyes and too-dark skin.
The prince in his jeweled, peacock kurta had been very pleased with her.
When Rajid and the girl returned to his palace, and his servants reported on what she had done, the prince beamed at her. He gave her a small statue of a tiger, saying he found Rajid’s nickname for her charming.
The token was small, only as long as one of her fingers, but it was made entirely of lapis lazuli. The tiger was perfectly drawn, each stripe carved carefully into the stone, each tooth and ear and padded foot recreated in painstaking detail.
If it had been any other day, the girl would have been delighted.
As it was, she could only stare at the little thing, mute.
In the end, Rajid had to thank the prince for her.
The girl could not tear her eyes off the roaring mouth of the small tiger clutched in her hand. To her eyes, it looked like the tiger was screaming. The blue of the lapis lazuli was the same blue of the eyes of the girl in the white dress––and it was screaming at her.
Now, alone with Rajid in his room, she only stood there, enduring his hands on her.
This part of their ritual was nothing new.
She normally didn’t speak while in his private sleeping quarters with him. It was neither expected of her to answer his words, nor required.
Nor was it likely desired.
The blue tiger remained in her pocket the whole time she was there.
Her fingers rubbed it now and then, reminding her.
She told herself the soul of the little girl with the red and gold hair lived inside the blue tiger now. She would safeguard it for her.
She would keep it safe until she died.
SHE WAS CRYING.
The servant girl lay on her own pallet now, in her own small room just off her master’s. Her bed was a straw-stuffed mattress, but she did not mind––it was warm enough here that sleeping on the ground wasn’t a problem.
Her only real fear was snakes, which she’d had a deathly fear of since she was young and saw them in the fields above Ladakh.
Sniffing into her duck-down pillow, she wiped her nose on her sleeve, gripping the carved tiger in her hand. She couldn’t sleep.
She knew she must sleep, that they would have work for her again tomorrow, but she couldn’t make herself close her eyes for more than a few seconds at a time. She would find herself staring at the blue tiger in the dark, rubbing the tiny etchings in its sides and face and legs with her thumb.
Chandre-la, a voice whispered in her mind. Chandre-la… wake up, little tiger.
She froze, holding her breath.
Staring at the back wall of the small room where she lay, she didn’t move for a long-feeling few seconds. She lay there, fighting short, pained breaths.
Chandre… the voice coaxed. Come to me, little sister. Come to me.
Slowly,
she turned her head, staring behind her in the dark.
No one was in her room.
She was completely alone, in the dark.
Still breathing hard, half-choking on her own breaths, she gripped the little blue tiger tightly in her hand as she twisted around on the straw-filled mattress. Gingerly lifting the blanket, she slid her bare legs out from under the coarse blanket. She wore only a long shirt, a cast off from her master, made of thin but soft white cotton.
She sat there, trying to control the beating of her heart.
Do not be afraid, the voice sent. For I would never hurt you, dearest, dearest little sister. Little tiger girl… don’t be afraid…
CHANDRE JERKED WHERE she sat, choking on her own breath.
Pain filled her chest, her head.
Smoke filled the spaces behind her eyes, blinding her.
Her head hurt so much.
The back of her skull pounded, each strike a white-hot, scalding pain.
It felt like a glass shard had been stuck all the way through her skull, starting at the back and ending in the space directly behind her eyes. She closed her eyes, gasping against that pain, but it only worsened. She grew dizzy, even as her mouth filled with saliva. Snakes writhed in the spaces behind her eye sockets.
The pain worsened, blinding her, making her gasp a sob.
She wanted to die.
Gaos di’lalente u’hatre davos… she wanted to die so badly.
She wanted this to be over. She just wanted it all to be over now.
Behind her eyes, she saw Alyson the Bridge standing over her, holding a gun, clicking the trigger to disengage the safety. The look on her face was disgust, revulsion, cold disinterest. It wasn’t the face of a friend killing a friend, or even an enemy killing an enemy.
It was the face of a human exterminating a rabid dog.
From the very beginning, from back when she was a child, she had failed.
She had failed before she even knew the war had started.
She choked on a sob. Tears streamed down her face.
The snakes writhed behind her eyes, making her sick, making that weight in her chest heavier, harder, thicker, more rotten. She was dying, drowning in the wet air of the room, dying in the blackness of her own heart. She fought to groan, but even that hurt. The snakes writhed faster, in and out of her skull. Their movements brought a debilitating wave of sickness, a nausea that made her sweat more, made her skin cold and clammy even as moisture poured off her skin.
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