Star-Touched Stories

by Roshani Chokshi

  Standing in the army training grounds, Gauri examined her left hand. The henna had darkened overnight to the color of charred wood. She brought it to her nose, inhaling that curious scent of spiced licorice. She traced the design delicately, as if she might disturb the intricate lattices and checkerboards, the maroon blossoms fashioned into the shapes of mango leaves and trellises of jasmine.

  The artist had left something special in the design.

  “Your future husband’s name is concealed in the patterns,” her friend Nalini had said with a sly grin. “He is a handsome one, my dear. I do hope he finds his name.”

  Gauri laughed. Among Bharata’s wedding traditions was the test of the sharp-eyed groom. If the intended husband could not find his name hidden in the intricate pattern of his bride’s henna, then he was not allowed to spend the night in her bed. Gauri suspected the tradition had been devised so that the groom would not be tempted to drink during the festivities and thus squander his chances.

  “Reading is Vikram’s favorite pastime,” Gauri had said. “He’ll probably find it instantly.”

  “I would not be so sure of that, my friend.” Nalini leaned close and whispered: “Trust me, Gauri. When he sees you, he will forget all about reading. He might even forget the power of speech.”

  Gauri rolled her eyes. So many of Bharata’s wedding traditions seemed foolish to her, although there was no harm in their fun. Besides, the test of the sharp-eyed bridegroom was far better than Ujijain’s wedding traditions.

  As Gauri was yet unwed, her unoccupied bed had become a matter of scrutiny. Many of their joint councils were curious. Just how, exactly, had she spent her time with the emperor of Ujijain while she had been away on her “mythical” adventure? To solve the problem, her council had suggested that different ladies-in-waiting would sleep alongside her, an Ujijain pre-wedding custom among royalty. Abiding another court’s custom might have been fine had it not been for the fact that each wife of a courtier selected for that evening insisted on furthering her husband’s agenda. The night before the henna ceremony, one woman could not help but talk in her sleep about the value of divesting treasury funds to a building project where her husband had played chief investor. She spoke … all night.

  Maybe it was the sleeplessness that was affecting her so. In the past two days, something restless had grabbed hold of her between morning and night. There was a needle-sharp panic in her chest, something that she was not sure belonged to the anxiousness of a new bride or something … worse.

  Ever since they had come back from Alaka and fought in the Tournament of Wishes, Gauri imagined that sometimes she could still see magic. A ripple in the air, like staring above the flames of a great fire and watching the sky warp from its heat. Or a rip, at times. A door where there should have been a wall. A glow in the trees that did not belong to the strange shine of creature eyes blinking open in the dark.

  Perhaps it was exhaustion, she thought.

  For the past three months, fatigue had sunk its teeth into every bone. Aasha and Nalini assured her that it would pass after the wedding, but judging by her planning experience, she doubted it. She was a girl pressed beneath glass. Even her dreams felt thin and transparent. She could keep nothing to herself, not even sleep. Every day, she and Vikram were placed under more scrutiny. Even in the moments where they could steal away from everyone else, the overwhelming emotion she felt was exhaustion. Not ecstasy.

  Just last week, they had stolen a rare hour together. One precious sunlit afternoon where the music of the fountains and the birdsong from the menageries might have muffled out other sounds. Vikram had kissed his way down her jawline only to start snoring once his head dropped to her neck.

  “In my defense, you are very warm and soft and inviting,” he had said once Gauri had shaken him awake.

  “You make me sound like a bed.”

  “If you were a bed, I would not wait a week to marry you.”

  She smiled at that. But even that smile set her nerves alight.

  Would it always be like this? Would he always know what to say, and would she always know what to do? She had watched enough couples around her to know that there was a secret choreography to love. She was newly in love. Loving Vikram was startlingly easy.

  It frightened her.

  That afternoon, the rest of their hour together had not been unpleasant. He had tucked her against his chest, and even though she had loudly insisted that she was not tired, she had fallen asleep the second she closed her eyes. She could not remember when she had last slept so well.

  Which was how she found herself here, running through the military drills on the eve of her wedding. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes as she felt around the grooves of her old practice sword. The tip was blunted. Rust striped the steel. It was the same sword that her father had caught her practicing with when she was a child. Back then, it had been so heavy that her fingers would cramp for hours and her whole body would feel bruised and tender after a day of practice. Eventually, the weight lessened. Her body adjusted. When she returned from Alaka with a glass hand, her body had adjusted again.

  Gauri breathed deeply, slashing the sword out with her left hand. When she breathed out, she forced out her fears … this weight upon her. These whispers that seemed to creep in from another world and fill her with a sense of wrongness. It was all just a weighted sword. Her body was merely untested. She would adjust. For the next hour, Gauri spun through the empty army barracks. There was no chance of someone coming inside because the entire militia was outside, participating in a pageantry of joined armies. This space belonged to her.

  When she had finished running through her drills, she threw the sword across the arena. Sweat ran down her back. Her hair had unraveled from her braid and her lungs ached from breathing. But she smiled as she dragged her arm across her mouth. She was physically exhausted. Her limbs smarted, thighs burned. It was the kind of exhaustion that seemed to bring clarity to all her thoughts. Whereas the exhaustion she felt at the hands of the court made her thoughts resemble blown-out candle stubs.

  Behind her, she heard the air part from the low whoosh of a blade.

  Instinct took over. Adrenaline snapped through her veins, and Gauri felt all her senses buzzing. She stilled, gaze flying to the practice sword she had thrown just out of arm’s reach. She could get to it in less than half a minute. But what if the intruder had an arrow? Without turning, Gauri cast about, looking for something, anything that could be turned into a makeshift weapon when she heard a low, familiar laugh.

  Vikram.

  He whistled, dragging a sword behind him. A dark blue silk kurta had been thrown over his night tunic and pants. He must have tumbled out of bed and come straight here.

  Her heartbeats tripped and tangled at the sight of him.

  “You smile when you see me, do you know that?” he asked, strolling toward her.

  She had not noticed. She tried to pull back her grin, but a single smile from Vikram just tugged her lips into a wider crescent. He bent down to kiss her, but Gauri stepped out of the circle of his arms, looking about her.

  “Someone could see us,” she hissed.

  “Who cares?”

  “It is not proper.”

  He raised an eyebrow, gaze flicking from the practice sword, to the henna on her hands, and then to her face.

  “That’s different,” said Gauri primly.

  “It’s the day before our wedding, my beastly princess. After that you will be my beastly wife, and then it doesn’t matter who sees us.”

  “Beastly wife?”

  “Beastly queen?” he asked, tilting her face up to meet his.

  A vulpine grin lifted his lips. Up close, he looked as tired as she did. There were dark presses beneath his eyes. A wild shadow of stubble along his jaw. Usually, his eyes were bright. But today the light in his eyes had been thrown into shadow. Perhaps like her, he was just tired. Yet when he reached for her, she couldn’t help but notice how hot his skin was to the
touch. But then his fingers trailed up her spine, and her thoughts dissipated into the air.

  She smiled. “Beastly queen is only a marginal improvement. I am wounded.”

  “Are you?” he asked. But the tease from his voice disappeared, replaced with something rougher. “Let me make amends.”

  His hands went around her waist, pulling her body to his. Gauri’s eyes drifted shut. The sun had risen higher in the sky, warming her face. Her back had arched against his hands, and her whole body was ready to melt into a kiss …

  … that was not happening.

  She opened her eyes. Vikram watched her, his face dangerously close to hers. His eyes looked touched by fever.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Drawing out the inevitable.”

  “Yes, I can see that,” she said. “May I ask why?”

  “Because you are thoroughly spoiled. You expect to be kissed when you wish for a kiss, and you should be denied every now and then. Trust me. It will make them sweeter. Like a victory.”

  She frowned. “That can’t be true.”

  “No?”

  He kissed her.

  And whatever she was about to say was snatched up by his lips. The touch of Vikram’s lips filled Gauri with the same sensation it always did: a sort of drowsy hunger. He filled her with a want so dense she imagined she might sink her teeth into it. Gauri leaned into him, her fingers digging into his arms. Vikram answered by holding her so tightly that he nearly lifted her off the ground. And then, right when the kiss tilted on the edge of something dangerous … he pulled back and gathered his breaths.

  “Was I correct?”

  She said nothing. Which made him grin.

  “Say it…”

  “On my deathbed,” she retorted, even as a smile tugged at her lips.

  “Don’t say that,” said Vikram, his voice raw. “I don’t ever want to imagine that.”

  Gauri didn’t know what to say. What does one say to that? It was too immense. To return it would seem empty. To ignore it would be an insult. To thank him would be worse.

  She loved him. This much she knew. What she did not know were the boundaries of what she felt. Was that good? Was that bad? What was she doing?

  Again, that panic frosted any warmth the kiss brought. She couldn’t see the end of this. Not that she wanted it to end, but love felt like wrestling the sky. It made her feel small and epic all at once, and it … confused her.

  “It was just a jest,” she said, embarrassed. She didn’t look at him. Instead, she focused on something she considered wholly arbitrary. The sword hanging from his hip. “What’s that for?”

  “Ah,” he said, a slight frown furrowing his brows. “Part of my joint-sovereign duties now include sword fighting. Our courtiers seem to think I will be cutting a path to my side of the throne every day.”

  “You might as well be,” she said.

  Plenty of people were eager to see the new sovereigns deposed. Even then, a thread of resentment wound through Gauri. She would have given anything to be at the barracks and training instead of—

  “How was the library?” asked Vikram wistfully.

  “My eyes were so assaulted by history texts that I did not recognize my reflection in the evening.”

  “Don’t make me jealous,” he said. Gauri bit back a wince. Here they were, complaining of the thing that the other would far prefer. “Ah well.”

  He tossed the sword, catching it in one hand and spinning it effortlessly. Gauri nearly pinched herself. In Alaka, he certainly had not been able to do that.

  “What?” he asked. “Surprised I can lift a sword?”

  “No.”

  Vaguely.

  “You must have developed muscles from some activity,” she reasoned. “Though I can’t imagine which.”

  “A bit of running, a lot of reading. Holding up books is difficult. As is turning pages.”

  Gauri crossed her arms.

  “To be fair, they were very heavy books,” added Vikram.

  Vikram glanced at her crossed arms, his gaze lingering on the henna designs winding up to her elbows. His grin dimmed, replaced with an inscrutable expression. Gauri would have crossed her arms tighter at this scrutiny, but that would not have helped. If anything, it would only have drawn attention to the designs. Vikram moved closer, tracing the cinnabar designs with a light finger.

  “Tomorrow,” he breathed.

  She let out a shaky laugh. How did Vikram do it? Bits of wonder and awe always found their way to him as moths drawn to distant light.

  “Tomorrow we are chained to each other’s side,” she said. “I do hope you like the tapestries on the throne room walls. We shall be staring at them until the day we die.”

  No sooner had she spoken did she realize she had said the entirely wrong thing.

  He dropped his hand. “That’s all that tomorrow means to you?”

  A better person, a kinder person, would have spoken of the joining of souls and indescribable love. But she did not owe him such declarations. Everything she had done thus far showed that she loved him. She had spent her time with the Ujijain delegates, studied the history of his kingdom, ingratiated herself to his people. Those things were not demanded of her, but they were her love manifested. She wanted to love them as he did, not simply because it was diplomatically logical, but because she would vow to take into her heart what he did. Including, though it pained her, dull texts on city planning. Even if it did not light a spark in her heart, she would try. Just as, she thought—glancing at the sword on his hip and the new callouses along his fingers—he did.

  “You know what I meant,” she said, her shoulders caving.

  “I’m not certain that I do,” said Vikram, his voice a touch colder. “You seem to think that tomorrow is the start of an inevitable drudge toward death.”

  “I do not have time for this,” said Gauri, picking up and sheathing her practice sword. “And neither do you.”

  “Wait. Time for what, exactly?”

  “Time to pick apart words as you do. I cannot. I have been doing it for too long, from the council in the daytime to the strange women in my bed…”

  His eyebrows shot up his forehead. “Can we revisit that last part?”

  “One of your dreadful customs,” she snapped. “To preserve my chastity.”

  “An alternative,” said Vikram, pulling her back against his chest and speaking low into her ear, “is to be very obvious about possessing no such thing. Allow me to be of assistance.”

  “You’re terrible.”

  “Terribly handsome.”

  “That too,” she said, laughing.

  He folded her against his chest, and Gauri breathed in the smell of him. These days, he no longer smelled only of parchment. He smelled of the cut grass in Bharata’s palatial arenas, the sandalwood incense carried by Ujijain’s priests, and, as always, ink and parchment. For one stolen moment, the world no longer spun. Homesickness lifted off her heart. She hardly recognized her home with so many unfamiliar faces crowding the halls. Her home had to make room for so many more that her place within it had disappeared beneath the footfall of strangers. But here, in a universe bounded only by his arms, she found it once more.

  She had only just begun to breathe easy when Vikram began to cough.

  The cough dragged itself up through his body, rattling in his lungs. Gauri stiffened. Slowly, she pulled away, her hand traveling up his chest before stopping at his throat. His skin burned with fever. Gauri drew away her hand as if scalded.

  “You’re sick,” she said.

  “Only with longing,” croaked Vikram.

  He leaned forward, as if to kiss her. But then his legs crumpled. Gauri caught him around the shoulders.

  “How long have you been hiding this?” she demanded.

  Perhaps she should have been kinder, more worried. But Gauri only felt fury.

  “Not long,” he said. “I woke up feeling rather strange.”

  “Strange?” she n
early shouted.

  Vikram frowned. “Where is your sense of nurturing? I thought you’re supposed to become my wife tomorrow.”

  “And where is your sense of self-preservation?” she asked. “You shouldn’t even be outdoors, let alone out of bed.”

  “I will”—he coughed—“get to bed with astounding speed if you join—”

  He couldn’t finish.

  A film of sweat covered his skin. Vikram inhaled deeply, but it shuddered and broke apart in his throat. He hacked again, and then his head fell against her chest.

  Gauri shifted him when she felt something wet against her hands.

  She knew what was on her skin even before she saw the crimson shine of it:

  Blood.

  It was a warm shade of red. As red as the ruby that had won them entry into the Tournament of Wishes. As crimson as the roses that he had planted next to swords in a garden made just for her. As scarlet as his royal Ujijain robes when he had asked her to marry him.

  Vikram’s pulse leapt against her fingers … straining and furious, as if his blood could barely stand to move through his veins. His shadow wavered behind him. The shadow looked as though it were trying to pull itself from the seam of life tying it to Vikram. She knew. That was all it took. The realization pinned that moment beneath its weight, and time itself could not move forward.

  All day Gauri had felt something … something that she recognized, but could not name. When she blinked, she saw a barren landscape running beneath her. She felt the flanks of a skeletal horse and the slow turn of its rictus grin as it dropped her onto the floor of a pale kingdom. She tasted the air of that land here and now, scalding her throat as her fingers tightened around Vikram. Only now could she name what she had sensed:

  Death.

  A single second stretched into infinity. Gauri knew this feeling. It was the infinity that belonged to those who sense the scope of their grief before it hits. The infinity of waiting for the strike that will come no matter what bargain is made, what tears are shed, what violence is wrought. This was what Gauri knew to be true of Death. It may take one life at a time, but that did not stop it from rendering skeletal the souls of the ones who had loved the departed.