by Astrid Amara
“I think I understand,” Suraya said.
Jandu stroked her head. “I do love you, Suraya—as a sister.”
Suraya reached out and stroked Jandu’s shoulder. “All right.”
Jandu smiled shyly. “You know, if you want to go back to Baram, I’m all for it.”
Suraya studied Jandu’s face. Her gaze was so intense, Jandu began to panic.
“What?” he asked nervously.
“Nothing.” She smiled slightly. “You are just… surprising. That’s all.”
Jandu closed his eyes, luxuriating in the softness of the pillow beneath his head, the warmth of the shared sheet. “I’d prefer to pretend like we’re man and wife, however, just so I can stay here in this comfy bed of yours.”
Suraya rolled over and placed a soft kiss on Jandu’s cheek. “It’s all right by me if you stay. We can just keep each other company in the dark.”
Jandu put his arm around her, and closed his eyes again. “That sounds perfect.”
◆◆◆
Their marital life fell into an easy pattern. During the day, Jandu made sure his relationship with his wife was loving and enjoyable. He didn’t want his brothers to suspect anything, and so he showered affection on Suraya every chance he had. He included Suraya in almost every activity, and the two of them walked the lake shore, collected interesting plants together, and made up stories about their enemies. Their favorite game was, “what disease does Darvad have?” where the two of them would sneak off by themselves for hours, drink milky tea and crack each other up with new, imagined ailments that pocked Darvad’s skin and bloodied his sex life.
At night, the two of them settled comfortably together in the bed, curled around each other in the small space, and slept soundly. Jandu never tried to touch her after their wedding night. And Suraya never again made any advances either.
Life would have been pleasant, if they weren’t desperately starving. By the time Suraya’s pregnancy showed, they had no food stores left, no fresh meat, no fish, and only a thin supply of milk from their cow. Baram looked Jandu in the eye one morning, and then pointed his finger at him.
“You are going to have to beg,” Baram told him. He pointed to the door. “So go. Beg.”
Jandu scowled. “Why do I have to do it?”
“You want Suraya to beg?” Baram shouted.
“No!” Jandu glared. “I want you to beg! Or Yudar!”
Yudar held out his hands in the sign of peace. “I cannot take anything from pilgrims. I would rather starve then lead them to starvation.”
“Starve, then,” Baram spat at him. “But someone is going to have to feed the rest of us, and so it’s up to you Jandu.”
Jandu stood up and approached his brother. Even though Baram was several inches taller than Jandu, Jandu still looked angry enough to make Baram back up a step.
“Why don’t you beg?”
Baram smiled. “You’re the youngest. You do what I say.”
“But—”
“Besides, I look intimidating. You look like an innocent, malnourished peasant in ripped clothing.”
“No. You have to come with me. I’m not doing this alone!” Jandu grabbed an empty rice pot angrily, and stormed out of the hut.
Baram did come with Jandu the first few times, walking down the pilgrim’s trail several miles from where Jandu sat, begging rice and grain off the travelers. But Baram was right, he looked too big for people to easily pity him. Alone, Jandu received twice as much. Soon Baram stopped accompanying him.
Jandu hated begging. The indignity devastated him. He had passed by beggars in the street back when he was a prince and despised their sad, pitiful eyes, detested the way they reeked of spoiled milk and soiled clothes, found their whole presence demeaning. Now here he was, the son of King Shandarvan, a fucking beggar. The shame was unbearable and yet it fed him and his family.
“Please help me,” Jandu grumbled, holding out his begging bowl to the holy pilgrims, keeping his head down so that they couldn’t see his blue eyes. No one would ever have guessed he once slept on feather beds. His clothes were stained and torn, his skin had darkened in the sun, and his hands had grown rough and calloused with chopping wood. The bones of his cheeks and ribs stuck out prominently.
“Help,” Jandu mumbled. Occasionally someone would stop long enough to pour some rice from a sack into his bowl. It was considered bad luck to ignore the pleas of a beggar while on a holy pilgrimage. For once, their proximity to the retreat worked in their favor. But many pilgrims chose not to stop. There were too many hungry mouths, too many desperate people in these times to help every one of them.
When someone did give Jandu food, he fell to his knees and touched their feet, as was tradition. He had done so for several days before he realized that none of the pilgrims were Triya. He was touching the feet of Suya and Chaya caste men and women, soiling his purity.
Jandu tried to resurrect some of the old indignation he would have felt, dirtying himself with lower caste skin, but the truth was, a foot was a foot. The Parans might have been the only Triya on the mountain, but they were the ones that were starving. Suddenly, religious status seemed unimportant.
Jandu pushed the thought from his mind, but he couldn’t help but notice that the clearly Chaya-caste pilgrims were more likely to give him something to eat than the better-off, Suya merchant caste. The poorer were more generous with the little they had. It made Jandu feel ashamed of the way he used to mock the Chaya. It also made Jandu miss Keshan even more, hearing Keshan’s chiding voice in his mind.
Once, late one evening when Jandu had struck out with every pilgrim who wandered on the trail, Jandu followed a lone merchant making his way to the retreat to sell herbal medicines.
“Help me,” Jandu pleaded, walking alongside the man with his bowl out.
The man was shorter than Jandu, and older. He eyed Jandu warily. “Leave me alone.”
Jandu followed him. “Please. My wife is pregnant.”
“Bugger off.” The man quickened his steps. Jandu kept pace. The man watched the way Jandu strode up the hill and frowned. “You do not walk like a beggar.”
“I don’t?” Jandu looked at his feet.
“You walk like a thief.”
Jandu narrowed his eyes. “What kind of fucking thief follows assholes like you up a mountain begging for a handful of some fucking rice?”
The man stopped and glared at Jandu. Jandu squared his shoulders and stared back.
“Fuck you,” the man said finally. He spat in Jandu’s face and walked up the hill. Jandu’s fists tensed, and he dropped his begging bowl.
Jandu’s face clouded with rage and he took off after the man. He caught the older man easily, grabbed the man’s shoulder and spun him around.
“If I wanted to take your money I’d have fucking well done it and left you dead on the side of the road. You want to know why I don’t? Because I’m better than that, you prick.” He let go of the man’s shoulder, and watched him sprint up the trail in a panic. Jandu waited until he was out of sight, and then stooped down to pick up his begging bowl again.
He felt beaten.
But he continued to beg the rest of the winter. He thought the humiliation would wear off. He thought that spicing up his begging with telling jokes, or offering to read palms, would bring some joy into the situation. But there was a constant, sinking, understanding that Jandu was as low as he could get. It would have been easier if only he had gotten a letter from Keshan, but none came.
The winter months passed and as the air sweetened with blossoms and fruit finally hung throughout the forest, and the sky tumbled and rumbled with the threats of monsoon rain.
But still no new word from Keshan arrived.
Jandu’s letters collected under the stone statue in his forest clearing like the leftovers of an abandoned library. He built a bigger box to store them all. Mice had gotten into the box and chewed on the pata cloth, ruining one of his better sketches. Three months without word from Kes
han turned to four, and Jandu’s optimism, the spark that had heated his family through the chilly first year and a half and brought a little light into their dark situation, faded from his heart completely.
On his way back from begging one evening, he checked the forest clearing to find that his box of letters had been knocked over by some wild animal, his precious words strewn around the forest floor like leaves. He let out a strangled cry and rushed through the glade, picking up his letters and putting them back in the box with trembling hands. When he returned the box in its place, with all letters accounted for, Jandu leaned against the statue and covered his face with his hands. Something broke in him. He could feel it, in his heart, a gentle snap, and he covered his face with his hands and wept. He lost his sense of righteousness, his sense of duty, his pride. And, worst of all, he had somehow lost Keshan too.
Chapter 23
JANDU HADN’T HEARD FROM KESHAN IN FIVE MONTHS.
Had Keshan found someone else? Someone who could touch Keshan in the ways that Jandu, hiding in the forest, could not?
Or, worse, had something happened to him? In Keshan’s last letter he had mentioned the spies who swarmed through Tiwari, looking for signs of the Parans. Perhaps they caught Keshan and were torturing him now, trying to get information of the Paran’s location. Maybe Keshan would break, and he would show them the map to their hiding spot. Jandu could be responsible for leading his family’s enemies straight to them.
Not knowing drove his paranoia. Only the soothing continuity of Keshan’s letters had given Jandu complacency. Now, without them, the bleakness of their situation became painfully obvious.
Jandu visited the statue daily on his way to beg on the pilgrim’s trail, but his letters remained, with no word from Keshan. Jandu grew angry at being forgotten. And then depression set in.
Jandu wrote more letters, as if sheer volume would draw Keshan’s servant. He wrote one every other day. They always started with deep affection, and then grew more and more hostile at Keshan’s continuing silence.
And then, one morning, Jandu walked out to the clearing, and noticed all his letters were gone. His heart skipped a beat.
But nothing replaced them. Chezek had taken the letters but brought nothing in return. Jandu furiously searched the clearing but found nothing. Chezek had traveled for weeks to this point, and he didn’t even bother to bring back a single sentence for Jandu?
His fury tumbled into fear as other, more horrible scenarios came to mind. Darvad’s men captured Chezek, and their location had been discovered. His letters were found, and were making their way to Darvad this very moment. Or Chezek had been killed before he could drop off Keshan’s scroll. Only terrible endings could explain such an odd occurrence.
Jandu couldn’t sleep. He kept Suraya awake at night as he tossed and kicked off the cotton sheet, worry preventing him from even being able to enjoy dreams.
One night Suraya stared at Jandu as he rested his head on his hands and glared up at the ceiling of the hut, watching a trail of ants make their way from a hole in the thatch work along the ceiling and down the wall.
“What’s wrong?” Suraya asked sleepily. She rubbed his shoulder gently.
“I can’t sleep,” Jandu said.
Suraya turned to face him as best as she could. Her large belly made the bed much smaller.
“Why not?” Suraya asked.
“I’m just worried.” Jandu looked at her. Anxiety over Keshan’s silence gnawed at him. He wanted to tell her so badly he almost blurted it out. And then, as always, he realized the insanity of his primary instinct. That would be the worst thing he could do. “You have to eat for two. You aren’t getting enough for one.”
Suraya watched his expression closely. “You need to stop worrying about me.”
Jandu smiled falsely and kissed her forehead.
“Good night,” he said, turning away from her.
“Sleep.” She whispered it in his ear, as if a command. And for once, it seemed to work.
But Jandu awoke before everyone, before dawn. Unable to rest in bed any longer, he rose and wrote another letter to Keshan. At dawn he left the letter under the statue, praying that Chezek had only been scared off and would be back any day to leave a note from Keshan.
But weeks went by without another word. Jandu’s letters collected under the statue again, and then, as before, they disappeared one day, nothing left behind to suggest they were ever there.
Jandu swore, and searched the glade frantically. What the hell was going on? Why would Chezek come all the way from Tiwari to pick up his letters and yet leave nothing behind?
Unless something really had happened to Keshan. Jandu knelt suddenly on the damp forest floor and prayed for Keshan’s safety.
With his eyes closed, he heard soft footsteps behind him. He stood and whirled around quickly, drawing his hunting knife.
Jandu’s eyes widened. He lowered his knife.
Standing there, in the middle of the morning forest, was a woman.
She seemed ethereal. Her skin shimmered and swam, and Jandu instantly knew she was a Yashva. Her golden sheen, her flawless perfection, and her swirling eyes made her clearly inhuman.
She was beautiful, like an exaggerated effigy of a goddess. Her waist seemed impossibly thin between the voluptuous curves of her breasts and hips. She wore only a thin golden belt around her waist, barely covering her groin.
Her breasts were heavy and round, with large nipples pointed straight at him. Her thick black hair reached all the way to her lower back in a shiny straight curtain. Her eyes were almond shaped, spinning and flashing in a way that made Jandu dizzy.
He felt his cheeks grow hot with embarrassment at her nudity. Why did she stare at him?
“You must be Jandu,” the Yashva whispered seductively. She stepped towards him. Jandu looked down and noticed she had no sandals. Her bare feet and hands were painted with henna patterns, and she wore gold anklets.
“Who are you?” Jandu asked. As she walked towards him, he backed up slightly.
“My name is Umia,” the woman said, coyly blinking her eyes. “And I love you too.”
Jandu froze. “Excuse me?”
Umia laughed quietly. She had a tinkling laugh that sounded like bells. “I love you too. I’ve received all your letters, sweet Jandu. I have shown myself to you to proclaim my equal affection.”
Jandu felt the color drain from his face. “My… you read my letters?”
Umia nodded. She pointed to the statue in the middle of the clearing. “You left them at my effigy.”
Jandu looked at the ancient, worn statue, and realized it was, indeed, of a woman. Age and rain had washed off her features, but the hips were now noticeably curvy.
“Umia, you are… a goddess?” Jandu asked, staring at her in awe.
Umia laughed again. She stood next to him, so close Jandu could smell vanilla in her hair.
“I am a Yashva,” she whispered, “and one of Mendraz’s consorts.” She reached up and ran a hand along Jandu’s bare chest. “And although I rarely have anything to do with humans, I can’t resist you.” She brought her lips close to his. “You are the most beautiful human being I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
Jandu stared at her, feeling faint. Oh God, now what?
“Umia, I’m flattered.” He backed up. The backs of his calves hit her statue. “But I’m afraid those letters, they weren’t… I mean, I wrote them to someone else.”
Umia smiled lasciviously. “Nonsense. I read them. Only I can inspire such lust in mankind.” She raised an eyebrow. “You have quite an imagination. And you are very specific about what you’d like to do to me.” Umia frowned. “Although some of it I didn’t quite understand how I was supposed to—”
“—Umia,” Jandu interrupted quickly. He knelt at her feet, bowing his head. “Please forgive me!”
Umia knelt as well, her breasts shaking as she did so. She held Jandu’s face in her hands. “There’s nothing to forgive. You love me, and I l
ove you. I want you.” She leaned closer. “Kiss me.”
Jandu’s mind raced on how he would get out of this situation. The last thing Jandu wanted to do was sleep with Mendraz’s consort. Mendraz was his ally, the king of the Yashvas.
Umia kissed him. Jandu stiffened. After a moment, Umia pulled away, looking confused.
“Jandu,” she said quietly, “are you not attracted to me?”
Jandu started to sweat. He didn’t want to offend her. Who knew what power she had? But he also definitely didn’t want to screw her either.
“Umia, you are the mother of all beauty. I see you as a mother, and worship you as one.” Jandu brought his palms together and bowed low to her in respect.
Umia didn’t say anything, but she stood quickly. When Jandu looked up at her, she shook with rage.
“How dare you insult me like this!” she spat. Her hands were in fists. “You compare me to your mother?”
Jandu held his hands in the sign of peace. “Please! I mean no offense! I just look at you as such a heavenly being, I would never propose to think of you in any way other than as something to be worshipped.”
“Then worship me!” Umia glared down at him. “And make love to me, as I command! Be a man!”
Jandu’s heart was in his throat. “I’m sorry, Umia. I… I cannot.”
Umia’s shock was plain. She obviously rarely had her requests denied.
“As you wish! Don’t be a man.” A soft blue tint surrounded her body. Her eyes glowed blue. Although Jandu had never seen it happen before, he had heard stories of demons with the power to curse. All the stories warned that demons turned blue first. Jandu blanched in horror.
She glared at Jandu. “If you are going to act like such a woman, I curse you to be one!”
“What!”
Umia pointed at him, the other hand on her curvy hip.
“I curse you, Jandu! You flirt with your words, and then scorn me with your body! Since you are so selfish with your manhood, you will lose it and be transformed into a woman!”
A gray mist of curse words formed around her head, and then exploded towards Jandu. Jandu covered his face with his arms as the shower of misty words fell on him, turning his skin cold, making him shiver to the marrow of his bones.
