by Ellen Oh
Yes, she should tell him. She knew that.
Instead, she watched the calendar and reassured herself there was still time.
The apsara’s warning never came to pass; month after month, Satyavan remained in perfect health. He even maintained his studies as promised. Savitri never saw Rambha again, either. Maybe, she thought, she’d been worried for nothing.
She began to relax. To focus on the last few songs left in their show. To dream again about the bejeweled path.
But one day, while Savitri began chopping onions for lunch, Satyavan, humming a few bars from Anjali’s unfinished lament, went out to the garden to dig up some carrots and cut a handful of cilantro. It should only have taken minutes.
When he didn’t come back, Savitri set aside her knife, rinsed her hands, and went outside to call for him. No one answered, and when she reached the garden, it was deserted.
Just in case, she checked the bower. The bees swarmed, busily gathering the delicate drops of nectar within each honeysuckle blossom. Satyavan had not been there, they informed her, but did she know some wild lilacs had sprung up nearby?
Savitri’s heart flared with fear and pain. The sky shared her sentiment, dressed as it was in a sari gray as mourning doves. She knew exactly where he’d gone. The lake.
She ran as hard and fast as she could, certain she was already too late. Praying, feet pounding on the earth, she ran and ran and ran, hurtling past the trees and onto the sandy beach.
He came into view, pensive, searching as he stared out at the water. The longing in the tilt of his head, the pale cast to his cheeks, scared her most of all. Even his black shirt and pants were dull against the dreary horizon. It was as if he had already gone away, and soon his body would follow.
The sun in her heaving chest nearly scalded her at the sight. She wanted to throw herself at him, yank him back, drag him home to the estate where he belonged. He stood so close to the water, as if waiting for a signal. The flutter of a swan’s wing, perhaps, the fall of a single feather.
The call of his former existence. The one she had kept him from.
Savitri almost let him go then. Almost.
Yet she wasn’t sorry she’d saved him that night, and she refused to pretend otherwise. Moving slowly, deliberately, she strode up to him and produced a jelly jar from her pocket. She’d forgotten a spoon, but with a syrup-daubed fingertip, she painted his mouth.
Then she held his hand and waited.
Instinctively, Satyavan licked his lips. His gaze cleared, and he smiled, surprised. “Savitri!”
Relief broke over her, forceful as a tidal wave. She leaned in to kiss him, to remind him of what he would be leaving behind. To distract him. Could a kiss truly break a curse? Could devotion? “I came to find you. We’re so close to finishing Anjali’s lament.”
His eyes widened, and the moon in his chest lit up, singing to the sun in hers. “What am I doing here? We have songs to write! Dance numbers to plan.” Still gripping her hand, he loped off. “Entire theaters full of audiences depend on us!”
“I don’t think we have enough people to fill a theater yet,” Savitri said, laughing. “Or even one seat.” In the event that Rambha might be watching, she mouthed, You can’t have him. He’s meant for me.
She dearly hoped it was true.
A year to the night Savitri first found Satyavan with the apsara-turned-swans, she woke with the dawn to pluck pink roses and purple lilacs. Once back in the kitchen, she stripped a handful of their petals, which she then rinsed and set aside.
All she had left to do was slice the pistachios, but Savitri allowed herself a moment just to bask in the quiet. Outside the window, the sky wore its crispest, most vivid cerulean silk, trimmed here and there with a lace of puffy clouds.
Something cracked open in her, fragile as an eggshell—hope. It was her first anniversary with Satyavan. It was the day before her eighteenth birthday, when she would tell her parents she was leaving for the city, Satyavan at her side.
Even Satyavan wasn’t up yet; he had taken the day off from studying. Savitri greeted the sun for whom she was named, then set about decorating the rasmalai she’d made the day before. The discs of sweet cheese in thickened cardamom milk had turned out wonderfully soft. Pleased, she ladled two portions onto cut-crystal plates and garnished both servings with sliced pistachio and the fragrant flower petals.
Rambha had said Satyavan wouldn’t survive past a year. Savitri would prove her wrong.
By the time he arrived, hair damp from the shower, she had set the breakfast on the patio. “What’s all this?” he asked, taking in the edges of the plates ringed with the remaining blossoms.
Savitri hugged him, drinking in his fresh smell, his warm presence. “It’s been a year since we met. I thought we could celebrate. Comics, video games, puzzles, karaoke! Oh, and finish our last song.”
“Sounds like you’ve got the whole day planned!” He kissed her cheek, then clasped her hands. “Savitri, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you: I owe you everything for saving me. Everything.” He shuddered. “I still don’t know what was wrong with me that night.”
“I’d been planning to go for a swim, anyway,” teased Savitri, refusing to acknowledge the bite of guilt. “Dig in.”
They ate, and Satyavan lifted a lilac flower to his nose. As he inhaled, a bee emerged from its depths and stung him in the hollow beneath his chin. “Ow!”
“Bee!” cried Savitri, appalled. She ran around the table and knelt by Satyavan, whose breathing had already grown labored. “Why? You said I would find the person who reflected me!”
And so you did, but no one told you for how long, said the bee, and ripped itself free. Its stinger remained behind, pumping venom through Satyavan. Silver light pulsed wildly from his torso, and Savitri clung to him. She couldn’t lose him. She wouldn’t.
Seconds tumbled into one another. Just as she decided to run for help, someone spoke.
“I told you to let him go,” Rambha said, though not ungently. She wore a sari the pink and purple of the flowers Savitri had gathered. “I would have spared you this.”
“But—but there’s no water. He’s still here,” Savitri insisted. She cradled Satyavan’s slumped form against her chest. The fading flickers of his moon heart merged into the golden flames of her sun heart. “See?”
Yet she knew he was about to die. Otherwise, Rambha wouldn’t be here.
“Even so.” Rambha cocked her head and listened. “There. He drew his last breath.”
Savitri felt as much as saw Satyavan’s heartbeat cease. He had gone dark, been extinguished. Her grip slackened, and she put up no resistance when Rambha extracted Satyavan’s shade from his body.
“Be content,” urged Rambha over her shoulder. “You enjoyed far more time with him than he was ever allotted in this world. Indeed, rejoice in the knowledge that the curse is finally broken, and that he will resume his place in the lunar court.”
Alone, thought Savitri, her sun heart squeezing in her chest. Even with all the sunshine inside her, all the heat, she, too, was going dark and cold. She pushed aside Satyavan’s dish and tenderly rested his head on the table. Her arms went around herself, but no matter how tightly she pressed, it came nowhere near a hug.
There was no point in fighting. She couldn’t save him again. She’d never even given him a choice the first time.
The guilt stung like bee venom. Maybe she deserved to be alone. He’d tried to leave twice, and she’d stopped him both times.
She dropped out of her chair and onto the ground. When she closed her eyes, something glimmered. The bejeweled path! It should have broken off with Satyavan’s death, yet it continued to stretch out before her. She saw herself onstage, alone. She saw herself in the bower, all dressed in black, swathed in blankets and books. She saw herself with others, without—with choices.
She wanted Satyavan, but he, too, deserved a chance to choose.
“Wait!” called Savitri, opening her eyes, an
d raced after Rambha and Satyavan’s shade. When she passed the arbor, a ring of bees joined her. No one told you for how long, they said again, and this time, she understood their message: It was not destiny but another choice.
She caught up to Rambha at the lake’s edge. “Wait! Let him go.”
Rambha’s elegant features brightened with amusement. “Your determination and foolhardy belief that you can shape any of this charms me. For that, I would give you a boon. Ask anything but Satyavan’s life, and it is yours.”
“Grant me . . .” Savitri considered. “Grant my parents solace when I leave. Grant them peace and assurance that whatever struggles I have, I’ll be fine. Let them know there’s no need to hide anymore.”
Rambha snapped her slender fingers. Minute bells on her rings tinkled sweetly. “Most would have chosen wealth or fame. But it is done. Now be off, mortal child. Go back to your life and leave us to our affairs.” She stepped into the clear water, which somehow did not penetrate the fabric of her sari.
Savitri didn’t hesitate before going in, too. Though it wouldn’t surprise her in the least if Rambha transformed into her swan self and swam until Savitri grew too tired to continue, leaving her to drown.
The water, warm and tranquil, had reached their waists before Rambha turned to face her. “Oh, but you are a pest, aren’t you? Yet I suppose such loyalty should be rewarded. Ask anything but Satyavan’s life, and it is yours—and then you must go. I am hardly your nanny.”
“Let him remember everything that happened. All of it.”
“Even if he blames you?”
Savitri nodded.
Satyavan’s gaze, which had been blank and distant, now grew sharp with comprehension. “You kept me here,” he said. “Because I matched you, and you didn’t want to be alone.”
Savitri held her chin high. “Yes.” Whatever happened now, at least he knew.
Satyavan said nothing. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, and her heart dimmed. It was too much to hope for. Too much to imagine that he would be glad she had kept his true identity from him—and so, his choice—a full year longer than necessary.
Yet she didn’t look away.
Rambha took Satyavan’s arm and continued swimming. Now Savitri could see the semicircle of swans. She should heed Rambha’s advice and go home. She knew that.
Instead, she plunged after Rambha. After Satyavan, who looked back with an inscrutable expression.
The mud beneath her feet had long fallen since away, and Savitri swam and swam. She was already exhausted, but the bees surged above her, buzzing their encouragement. And Satyavan hadn’t told her to leave.
Rambha halted just outside the semicircle. “You are a tiresome thing,” she said. “You have entertained me, but now I grow irritated. Name your final boon and swim home. It is past time for us to do the same. And once more, you may ask anything but Satyavan’s life.”
The swans flapped their wings, clearly impatient for Savitri to be on her way. She needed a sign.
She met Satyavan’s black gaze, trying to ask with her eyes what he wanted. If he still felt anything for her. If he remembered their kisses beneath the bower with ardor rather than anger. If he still wanted to join her on the bejeweled path soldered with promise.
He frowned and looked away.
No, she thought. No, please. She couldn’t have lost him. Not now.
“Name your boon,” ordered Rambha, “or lose it altogether.”
A minute passed, and Savitri despaired of being able to tread water for much longer. Still, she waited. I know you can hear me.
Just as she lowered her head in surrender, Satyavan turned back. His face had softened, and he pointed to his heart, to hers. When he smiled, his moon heart flared silver bright.
“Grant me that our completed show will be a success. I’ve worked so hard on my songs,” Savitri said, her fatigued muscles loosening, letting the lake support her.
“Done,” said Rambha. “Now come, Satyavan. Your father awaits.”
“But Satyavan never finished writing Anjali’s lament.” Savitri grinned, her delight brushing everything with a patina of gold. “How can our completed show be successful if he’s not here to complete it?”
Rambha gaped. Then she tossed back her head and laughed. “I suppose it can’t. Satyavan? What do you say?”
Satyavan’s silvery shade moved to where Savitri bobbed on the water’s surface. “I choose her.”
“Have him back, then, mortal girl.” Rambha nodded at him. “But Satyavan, know the burden is on you to explain your absence to Lord Chandra.”
The swans and Rambha disappeared, and suddenly Savitri and Satyavan sat on the lakeshore, tucked into each other’s arms, with a sealed jar of honeysuckle syrup at their feet.
The next evening, for her birthday, Savitri and Satyavan wove honeysuckle vines into crowns, borrowed her parents’ car, and drove to a nightclub in the city. There, dressed in gold and silver, amid the glitzy décor and throaty growls of the hired vocalists—and after a hefty bribe to the club’s manager—they claimed the stage, crooning songs of bee secrets and cunning swans. Together, her voice sparkling like diamond dust, his smooth as clove smoke, they ensorcelled the audience as they had ensorcelled each other.
Once they stepped down into the cheering blue-lit crowd, just before she relearned the taste and feel of Satyavan’s lips, just before she ran her fingers through his hair and forgot the rest of the club around them, Savitri thought she glimpsed Rambha in the audience.
Then his hands made their way to her hips, and her mouth found his, and everything else dissolved as the sun sought the moon.
The Mahabharata
A South Asian Epic
The Mahabharata, the longest epic poem in recorded history and one of South Asia’s two greatest epics, consists of stories upon stories upon stories, all intricate and often woven together. One of these is the tale of Princess Savitri and Prince Satyavan; another that of goddess Ganga and King Shantanu. As I brainstormed “Daughter of the Sun,” I realized I would need the second story in order to properly retell the first, and soon these two age-old narratives fused into something both contemporary and new.
In “Savitri and Satyavan,” Savitri chooses Satyavan as her husband despite learning he is fated to die in a year’s time. When Lord Yama, God of Death, comes to claim Satyavan’s shade, clever Savitri tricks him into restoring Satyavan to life—along with Satyavan’s parents’ failed eyesight and lost kingdom.
In “Ganga and Shantanu,” King Shantanu weds a mysterious woman on the stipulation that he question nothing about her—not even when she drowns their first seven sons in the river Ganga. But once the eighth is born, Shantanu confronts his queen on the riverbank, where she reveals she is the goddess Ganga herself, tasked with bearing and immediately liberating eight demigods cursed to be born into human suffering. Since Shantanu broke his promise and pried, Ganga entrusts the eighth son to his care and leaves.
I love the feminist aspects of both these stories (though of course that’s me viewing ancient legends through a modern lens): Not only do Savitri’s parents allow her to decide who she marries, but her husband is the one in need of rescue, and she, with her equanimity and ingenuity, is the one to do it. Ganga, meanwhile, knows her own mind. She sets her conditions and sticks to her purpose, no matter how it might appear to others.
“Daughter of the Sun” is my love letter to two heroines I deeply admire and to the myriad ways girls and women can be self-possessed and powerful in a world that so often tells them otherwise.
—Shveta Thakrar
The Crimson Cloak
Cindy Pon
All the storytellers get it wrong.
Despite how the legend goes, the truth of the matter is, Dear Reader, I saw him first.
Countless years have passed, but I can recall that morning so well. The sun had not yet risen, and the colors of the forest were muted. I loved that time within the earthly realm, when all living creatures seemed to hol
d one collective breath, waiting for the day to begin. I had escaped my duty, fleeing the opulent quarters I shared with my six older sisters. My mother, the Heavenly Queen, had made a surprise visit, and I left them, bickering, complaining and gossiping—all vying for her attention. It was the perfect time to slip into our heavenly gardens and out a side gate.
As the seventh and youngest daughter of the Jade Emperor, I wear the crimson cloak of feathers. It grants me the power of flight and allows me to weave my colors into the earth’s skies: from rose to vermillion, from the lightest blush to the deepest crimson. My six older sisters all bear a cloak and color of their own, but if you ask me, the best was saved for last. I might be the youngest, but I weave the most brilliant colors in the skies for mortal eyes—no dawn or dusk is truly magnificent unless I choose to work that day.
That morning’s sunrise was a pallid, anemic thing without me. I lay in my favorite meadow hidden among silver birch trees overlooking an oblong lake below. Eventually, a gentle lapping stirred me from my daydreaming. I rose to my knees and peered over some wild ferns, curious what creature had wandered over to the waters.
A young man with his hair pulled into a topknot stood by the lake; his companion, an old ox with majestic horns and a golden-yellow coat drank at the water’s edge. Humans did not often visit this meadow, and it was rare that I came this close to a mortal boy. He had a tanned face and pleasing features. From his coloring and the way he filled out his faded blue tunic, he was no scholar or son from a rich family. The young man was speaking, but I was too far away to catch what he was saying. No one else was about—was he talking to his ox?
The old ox lowered its horns and its owner stroked the top of its head, continuing to talk. Intrigued, I leaned forward and crashed into the thick fern, the rustling of the leaves as loud as thunder in the morning quiet. I squatted in a most unladylike manner in the plants, unmoving as a statue. The young man glanced up and seemed to look directly at me, although it was impossible he could see me through the dense brush. He tilted his head and listened.
