Young Warriors

by Tamora Pierce

  Estella stared at her. “You’re the jadu?” she said, sounding disbelieving. I could have pinched her. It’s folly to quarrel with magic—just as it’s folly to seek it.

  “If you like.” She didn’t seem to care whether we were there or not. “What do you want of jadu, chota-mem? Go home, seek shelter. The wind blows.”

  Her words seemed oddly familiar. “Some day a wind will rise and blow you all away, you and the English—”

  So the youthful lout had chanted in the bazaar. It means nothing, I told myself. Yet a chill slid over my skin, like a cold invisible serpent.

  “What wind?” Estella demanded.

  “The Devil’s Wind. It blows. It brings death and destruction. Go home, baba. You are needed there.” The jadu’s eyes stared past us, into some future only she could see. We waited, but the witch neither moved nor spoke again.

  At last Estella and I looked at each other. “Come on,” I said, and took her hand. We backed carefully away before turning and walking swiftly toward home. We did not run— what good would running do, from a jadu who could fly through the air or send a cobra after you to strike like lightning? But we walked as fast as we could; the effort took all our breath. At the bend in the road we stopped and looked back. All we saw upon the old burning-ghat was the round reed hut. The witch had vanished.

  “What kind of skulls do you think those were? Do you think she shrank human skulls? Was that blood on her hands?”

  “Birds,” I said. “Birds, and perhaps monkeys. And henna on her hands.”

  “A wind—what do you think she meant? A storm?”

  “I don’t know. But we must go home, Estella. We must go home now.”

  But even had we known what the witch meant, it was already too late for us to carry a warning. For the Devil’s Wind had already broken free and even now blew fire and death across the land.

  Halfway from the crossroads to the lines of bungalows, we smelled the smoke. Then we heard the screams.

  A party of sepoys ran past us, and at first we thought they hurried to aid at whatever disaster had struck. Then we saw that their swords were drawn, and that red liquid dripped from the glinting blades. “Maro! Maro!” some shouted, “Strike and kill! Strike and kill!”—and others “Din, din! For the Faith!”

  They ran past without seeing us, blinded by bloodlust. A horseman followed, galloped past on a lathered horse. A woman’s head bounced at the horse’s side, tied to the saddle by long light-brown hair.

  Stunned to silence, Estella and I stared at each other. Then, wordless, we began to run.

  By the time we reached the bottom of the garden, the Humbolt bungalow was burning. As we ran towards the house, we tasted smoke upon our tongues. We saw no flames as yet. But once inside the darkened house we heard them, a fierce crackling growl that raised the hairs upon my nape in deep, instinctive fear.

  Nor was that all. A body lay sprawled across the hallway, a huddle of pale cotton cloth streaked with red. Fatima-ayah. And beyond her a larger form. Manoj.

  As Estella stood still as salt, I sidled around Fatimaayah’s body and sank to my knees beside my husband. He was still alive; I do not know why, for blood wept from a wound in his breast, a red hole the size of my hand. There was blood on his hair as well. I touched his head gently and the bone sank, soft beneath my hand.

  “Husband,” I whispered, and Manoj opened his eyes. It seemed hard for him to see, but he knew me. His hand moved, slowly, to touch mine.

  “Wife.” The word was a mere sigh. “Run. You and Miss-sahiba. Run. The sahib—”

  The last word faded out on a long breath; life dulled from his eyes. He was gone.

  I rocked back on my heels and stood. Run, Manoj had said; his last order to me in this life. I must obey.

  I turned to Estella, who had not moved from the doorway. Her eyes stared past Fatima-ayah, past Manoj—past me, to something beyond that turned her eyes to stone. I looked and saw Humbolt-sahib coming toward us. He carried a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, and when he saw us standing there he stopped.

  “Estella.” His voice slapped flat upon the air. He looked at his daughter as if she were a stranger. His eyes passed over me unseeing. At the two bodies on the floor, he did not look at all.

  “Papa. Papa, where is Mama? Where is my mother?” When her father made no answer, Estella ran forward, past Fatima-ayah’s body, past Manoj. I tried to grasp her arm as she pushed by me, but she twisted away like a mongoose to flee to the back of the house. Not knowing what else to do, I followed her. I glanced back to see if Humbolt-sahib would come after, and saw him bent over my husband’s body.

  And I saw him bring up the sword he carried, and swing the blade down across my husband’s throat. If Manoj had not lain already dead, the blow would have slain him.

  I found Estella in her mother’s bedroom, clinging to her mother. Like my husband, the memsahib lay—not dead; her attacker had been too hurried to grant her swift death. But she was dying; dying as her life flowed away in a slow crimson tide. As I came up beside them, I saw the memsahib’s lips move; she wished to speak, but had no more breath for words.

  “Mama,” Estella whispered. “Mama.” I stared down at Mrs. Humbolt and said nothing; I did not yet know the full horror of what had befallen today.

  Again the dying woman’s lips moved soundlessly. Too stunned to weep, Estella bent close. “What is it, Mama? Tell me.”

  “The sepoys. The bloody damned sepoys.” It was Humbolt-sahib; he stood in the bedroom doorway, swaying as if drunk. “They’ve mutinied. Run amok. Killing everyone. Everyone.”

  His voice was slow, his words slurred. His eyes were flat as a cobra’s. “The sepoys killed them,” he said again, and as he spoke I felt a cool touch upon my hand, light as a dragon-fly skimming water.

  Memsahib Maud had lifted her fingers enough to brush the back of my hand; I looked, and saw a fearful light flicker in her dying eyes. Her lips formed words, and this time I understood what she wished to say.

  No, he has done this.

  The knowledge flowed through my veins, cold as venom. The memsahib saw that I knew, I am certain of it. For the spark faded from her eyes and she let herself go, now that she had passed on the truth to another.

  Shocked as I was, I knew Estella and I must flee this house and Humbolt-sahib both. I laced my fingers tight through Estella’s and backed away from the bed and its accusing burden.

  Once we had stepped through the windows, I pinched Estella sharply. “Wake! We must run!”

  That roused her. She began to struggle and cry out; I grabbed her and pressed my hand hard over her mouth. “Silence—and run. Now come!”

  I had to half-drag Estella across the verandah, but once we were down the steps she came more willingly. We fled across the back garden into the jungle beyond. There we stopped and looked back.

  Fire had caught the Humbolt bungalow in hot red teeth; flames began to gnaw through the thatch. Soon the roof would burn, and then crash into the rooms below, burying the bodies lying there in rubble and ash.

  As we watched, a figure emerged from the smoke. Humbolt-sahib. “Estella!” he called. His head turned from side to side, his eyes seeking. “Estella! Come back!”

  Clinging to Estella’s hand so hard I could not feel my fingers, I dragged her on, into the jungle brush with me, away from the burning bungalow and her father’s mad eyes.

  Later I learned that the Devil’s Wind blew indeed, just as the witch had said it would. The sepoy regiments had risen in rebellion, slaying and burning and looting their way across the land. And in that horror, that disaster for English and Indian alike, Humbolt-sahib had seen only one thing: his own chance to strike.

  That day the air itself burned hot, too hot even for May; too hot for anyone of any race to venture safely under the sun. Heat slammed down upon us like a tiger’s paw, raging and deadly. Even I suffered, and I was not a pale English miss. Estella could not bear it; by the time we reached the ancient deserted temple,
fever glazed her eyes. Once I had half-dragged her into the darkness beneath the rocks and vines, I laid my hand upon Estella’s forehead.

  Her skin scorched my hand as if she were made of fire.

  Sunstroke. The word etched itself in the white-hot air. Sunstroke, and no water within a mile of us. All I could do for Estella was lay her down upon the hard stones of the broken temple, and fan her with a bunch of leaves that wilted as soon as they were plucked, and pray.

  No god heard. At last I was desperate enough to risk slinking off through the jungle to the river; if Estella did not have water, she would die. As I shifted, readying myself to leave her, I felt a touch on my hand, soft as owl-wings at twilight.

  “Estella.” I bent over her; her eyes opened, gazed into mine. Sun-madness burned within her; her eyes blazed like twin pyres. “Estella, I go for water. I will return soon.”

  “No. We both go, Taravati. And I will not return.”

  “The heat speaks, not you, Estella. Wait; I will bring water, yes, and ice. Ice, Estella.” She did not even hear my pathetic attempt to comfort her.

  “Oh, do be quiet, Tara. Listen to me.” Estella breathed the words, low whispers in the noonday shadows. “He killed them. Father. You saw.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I saw.”

  “They will blame the sepoys.” Estella’s eyes glittered like a tiger’s. “That’s not fair. The sepoys didn’t kill Fatima-ayah and Manoj. And Mother.” She lifted her hand, clutched mine hard enough to press the small bones together. “Not fair, Tara. Tell them. Father.” I could hardly hear the last word. I bent forward so that I might whisper beside her ear, hoping she could still hear me.

  “Justice,” I said. “Our dead will have justice. I swear it.”

  I do not know if Estella heard; her feet were set already upon the road to Lord Yama’s kingdom. With her last breath, the word “Mother” hung upon the air, ghost-word for a ghost. I kissed my friend’s forehead.

  The air about us still burned, but under my lips Estella’s skin was cool at last.

  By the time I reached the jadu’s hut beside the river it was past moonrise; moonlight flooded the land, laying down shadows like black velvet. In all that dead landscape nothing moved save the river rippling past, slow and sullen, its water glinting hard as iron. As the moon climbed higher, I knew I could wait no longer or my own fears would trap me here when the sun rose, when the hunters once more would roam, seeking prey. I could not risk that. I was prey. A girl, a widow, a memsahib’s servant—any of these creatures was fair game for cruel men.

  I was all three—and one thing more. I was witness to Humbolt-sahib’s murders. That alone condemned me to hide, and to flee.

  No, I would wait no longer. I stepped forward, out of the hot shadows, and walked boldly up to the jadu’s door.

  She awaited me there, sitting cross-legged upon a tiger-skin, letting the little skulls upon her necklace slip through her fingers like a monk’s rosary. “So she comes.” The witch spoke as if she had expected my return; perhaps she had. “Comes begging favors. Beg, little sacrifice. Beg.”

  I knew better than that. Beg, and play her game, and lose. I drew a deep breath and began.

  “I do not beg, great one. I bargain.”

  Her eyes flickered at that, little flames dancing in the night. “What would you offer?”

  “A life,” I said.

  “Whose?”

  My next word would either lose the game or win it. “Mine,” I said.

  I had known that was all I had to offer up—my life. Nothing, and everything. Now I waited to learn if a bargain would be struck. It must be; I had nothing else to sacrifice.

  The witch stared at me with her god-mad eyes. She did not speak again until I had counted one hundred beats of my own heart.

  “And do you think your life worth such a favor as you would ask?”

  “It is not I who set a worth upon my life.” My voice was low but steady; I took a small pride in that achievement. “It is you, great one.”

  “True. True.” The jadu nodded; the little skulls strung upon her necklace seemed to blink and grin at me. A trick of moonshadow, I told myself.

  For a long time after that, neither of us spoke. I waited, patient as a serpent on a rock.

  “And your desire, small one?” The jadu’s words slid into the air like a well-honed dagger into flesh. “Think well.”

  But I did not need to think; my desire had been burned into my bones as the sun had burned death into Estella.

  “Vengeance. Justice. Life to repay life stolen.”

  “You ask a great deal, child.” Now little skulls slipped through her fingers, as gently as if she counted pearls.

  “I ask what is owed. No more.”

  “If what you ask is granted, your own life is forfeit.”

  “If that is the price,” I said, “then I will pay it.”

  The witch bowed her head; the long knots and coils of her hair veiled her face. Her fingers stilled, the bones of small creatures long dead cradled silent and motionless in her crimson hands. When she raised her eyes again, I seemed to look into them as into a dark mirror.

  “Pay, then,” she said, and rose to her feet, the long coils of her hair weaving like serpents in the moonlight. Beckoning, she retreated into the darkness behind her, and I followed the witch into her shabby reed hut.

  Never afterward could I truly remember what befell me within the witch’s sanctuary. Sometimes a certain flicker of candlelight will flare into an image of burning bone, or a cat’s cry become a low song of pain and loss. And sometimes I dream, hot black visions; smoke rising from endless pyres that I myself have set ablaze.

  The reed hut reeks of smoke and of ash. And it is dark within its woven walls—at first.

  The jadu sits cross-legged on one side of a cold firepit, and I on the other. Between us lies a bed of ashes, gray and lifeless; not even an ember remains alive to kindle a spark.

  “Light it.” The jadu’s voice slithers through the hut like a cobra questing for prey.

  I stare at the bed of ashes. How can I light a fire that has alreadyburned to ash? I stare, and feel the weight of the witch’s eyes upon me.

  “You promised me justice,” I say, and the jadu laughs.

  “I know what I promised, little sacrifice. Light the fire, if you would obtain what you seek.”

  Again I stare at the bed of ashes before me. “How?” I ask at last.

  For a time there is silence in the witch’s reed hut, silence thick and hot as velvet. The jadu counts the beads upon her grim necklace;I hear the faint click of bone against bone as the little skulls fall through her fingers. At last she speaks.

  “Fire is life. Why were you born a woman, if not to kindle new life?”

  I do not understand; I expect her to chant an incantation, to perform a spell, to summon demons to my aid. The witch does none of these things. She sits and counts her skull-beads. I stare at the heap of ash between us.

  Fire is life—but this fire has burnt out. To rekindle it, I would need food for its flames to feed upon. Wood, or dried cow dung—or flesh and bone. I close my eyes, and behind my lids see hot red teeth eating the Humbolt bungalow, devouring the bodies that lie within its dying walls.

  I open my eyes; the heap of ashes has not changed. I look up at the jadu, whose staring eyes are black as moonless midnights. “Fire is death,” I say, and hear another faint click as another skull passes through the witch’s fingers.

  “So are you.” Click, and again click, a small steady sound of time passing. “Light the fire.”

  “I cannot.” Tears burn my eyes, spill down my cheeks; tears of anger, and of loss.

  “And I can give you nothing you do not already possess. You are like me, little sacrifice; all women are alike in the dark. Light the fire.”

  Her endless serenity before my passion angers me; rage sinks its fangs into my heart. I reach out and scoop up cold ash from the firepit—and the ash glows. A spark—

  Fire.
I hold fire in my bare hands.

  “You are a woman. You are life and death.” In the new firelight,the jadu’s hands shine wetly red against pale bone as she counts her little skulls. “Go now, and remember what you have promised me.”

  Flames swirl between us, the fire in my hands leaping up to catch in the woven reeds, turning the witch’s hut into a funeral pyre. Flames light up the night, and even in a dream, I know the pyre I have kindled is my own . . .

  And when I dream such dreams, I know the jadu reminds me of what I was, and what I am, and what I will become. All I know is that I offered up my life to her magic, and endured what passed that night; endured and survived until the moon set and the sun rose, and its light upon my eyelids burned me awake.

  It was morning, and I was alone. Save for myself, the reed hut was empty—truly empty—and I knew the witch was gone and would not return. I crawled out of the hut and down the bank to the sullen river, and in the sun-bright water I saw what the jadu had created from my craving for vengeance and my vow of payment.

  A face pale as the moon; eyes bright as the sky. I looked upon myself in the river’s uncertain mirror and saw what others would see, when they looked upon me now. A miss-baba. An English girl.

  Estella.

  That was how I became Estella—or rather, the semblance of Estella, the Estella that English men and women would expect to see. To achieve that was not hard, for Estella and I had been close as twin sisters. What was hard was to survive long enough to reach Humbolt-sahib again. For the Devil’s Wind still blew across the land, devouring all in its mad path.

  I walked first back to our station, only to find its dwellings burned and death still lingering in the hot dry air. Standing before the heap of smoking ash that had once been the Humbolt bungalow, I weighed what I knew of the English settlements, trying to decide where to seek Humbolt-sahib.

  No. No more would I call him sahib. For I was no longer Taravati, wife of Manoj the khitmagar, but Miss Estella Humbolt, daughter of Gerald Humbolt, Englishman. And murderer.