Icebreaker Piece : Desert Flowers
Blueberry Yogurt #4. A Promise and Soft Serve 11/50 : Chocolate #2. Rivalry
with Whipped Cream
Story : Desert Flowers
Rating : PG
Word Count : 3959
So I kinda cheated and brought back an old canon, but it's soooo old no one but Falootin remembered it. I am thinking about continuing it now. There are a handful of ancient pieces in the index linked above (which I should probably clean up a bit). This was supposed to be a binge to Mulberry, but I gave up on that halfway through.
“Catch!”
Skirt spread between her small hands, Narda waits for the quarfruit that comes tumbling through the air. The fat pink bulb with soft orange spines lands in the outstretched fabric with a soft thump. She grins at her brother up in the tree, with his legs curled round the trunk like some overgrown monkey, as he reaches for another.
Beside her, Tahj claps his hands and Chandra hops from foot to foot, the three of them inseparable as always.
“Throw one to me!” Chandra cries.
“And me!” echoes Tahj, a toothy grin splitting his dark face from ear to ear.
“Patience,” Jai calls down from his perch. He winds a hand around the next plump, pink fruit, carefully angling his arm under the spikes from the first. He slides his fingers up under the broad crown of leaves at its peak, gives it a sharp twist, and swiftly jerks away, fruit in hand, as a fresh mass of thorns emerges in its place.
With a giggle, Chandra holds out her own skirt as the quarfruit sails her way. Tahj is so busy pouting that the next nearly hits him in the nose before he scrambles to catch it.
“I want to pick too,” says Narda.
Jai shakes his head. Another grab, twist, and dodge, and he’s got another juicy, pink quar to throw down. “Mother would skin me if I bring you home full of thorns!”
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
Laying one foot carefully in front of the other, Chandra tries her best not to roll her eyes up to peer at the bowl atop her head, not to flinch or wrinkle her nose at the occasional bit of overflow that splatters her shoulders. She’s almost to the end of the line when Narda’s sudden fit of giggling stops her.
She manages to catch herself before the urge to spin around and snap at her wins out and makes a bigger, and wetter, fool of her. “What is it?” she says, freezing in place. “I haven’t spilled a drop!”
“Well… that’s very good of you,” says Narda. “But your arms…”
Her arms? Her arms! She’s been thinking too hard about the water. Now she catches them awkwardly spread to either side of her like the wings of a big, ugly buzzard and pulls them in with a squeak.
Sighing, she plucks the bowl from atop her head. The water laps at her fingers as they curl over the rim. “How does she do it?” she asks. And she doesn’t really want an answer, so before Narda can remind her that Jaya has had three years of practice and she’s only copying what she saw that morning, she’s already straightening herself back up to try again. The truth, she tells herself, is that Jaya is a candidate because she was born to be one, and as Chandra was most certainly born to be a Queen, she simply must have it in her to perform the simple exercises leading to the Dance.
Slow, graceful, she tells herself. Gliding like a serpent, not reeling like a vulture. One does not become Queen without a lot of poise and a little venom. Her arms are in tight to her sides, and she can feel the bowl wobbling this way and that, so she wobbles with it. Before long she’s lost the line, swaying this way and that, and she swears now she must look like a great lumbering tortoise that can’t quite make up its mind where it wants to go and isn’t all that keen on getting there anyway. For a oment, she’s wondering if that’s better or worse than swooping like a buzzard, and then she’s too busy trying to catch the bowl as it’s tumbling from her head.
“One more try,” she says, frowning as the water quickly seeps into the ground between her feet.
“Maybe without the water,” says Narda. “It’s not good to waste.”
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
They’re settled on a blanket at the edge of the grove, with a plate of biscuits and a game of marbles set out between them, when Chandra pops the question.
“Narda,” she says. “When I’m Queen, will you be one of my temple maids?”
Narda looks at her long and hard and wrinkles her nose. “Well, I was going to join my brother tending trees. But if you need me, you know I’d never say no to you.”
Chandra sniffs. “Picking fruit and pulling weeds indeed. You know I’ll need you for something better than that!”
Tahj makes the saddest face one can around a mouthful of biscuit. “What about me?”
“Well, of course I’ll need you for my court. The Queen deserves the best after all,” she says sweetly, reaching over to ruffle his hair. And it seems to please Tahj well enough, but the thought makes Narda’s stomach twist for reasons she can’t quite manage to put a finger on. “Just make sure you wait for me and don’t let anyone else take you first.”
“I won’t,” he says solemnly.
Narda frowns at the trees. The sand has risen up over the roots, blotting them out, and somehow that thought just adds to the queasiness she’s already feeling.
“What are you looking at?” Chandra asks her.
“The sands are rising.”
“With the sands rises the Queen,” Chandra recites.
Narda nods. “Jaya will be leaving soon.”
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
“Jai! Look! Look!” Chandra calls, as the two girls come tumbling into the kitchen. She stumbles to a halt, nearly dropping the dress folded across her outstretched arms as Jai turns around. “Your face! What happened to your face?” She twists around to face Narda and hiss at her, “What happened to his face?”
Narda’s frozen stiff, gaping in disbelief at the fresh scratches that lace their way across her brother’s nose and cheeks.
A blush creeps over the parts of Jai’s face that weren’t already pink as he mutters, “I had an accident.”
Narda frowns. “But you’ve been harvesting for years,” she says, softly.
It seems no one heard her. Chandra’s clucking her tongue and shaking her head at the older boy. “You can’t go to the ceremony tomorrow looking like that!”
It’s then that Aunties Palma and Maya come bustling into the room, ostensibly looking for pots and pans. “He’ll be watching with us,” says Maya, with a hearty squeeze to Jai’s shoulder, for which he musters a meek smile.
“Saved by quar thorns” mutters Palma, and Narda is sure the words aren’t meant to be heard, but that doesn’t stop her from responding.
“I thought it was an honor to serve a Queen?” she says, cocking her head at Auntie Palma.
A look passes between the women that makes Narda want to squirm, and Auntie Palma’s gaze settles on the gauze and ribbons stacked in her arms. “Oh, it is,” she says. “It is.”
“I think I’d simply die if I couldn’t stand before the victor tomorrow!” Chandra declares, cradling her dress against her chest.
Narda looks to her brother and swallows hard against the tears welling in her eyes. “This means you won’t be going away,” she says, suddenly understanding.
Jai offers her the same thin smile he’d given Auntie Maya, and she can see the unshed tears in his eyes as well. “No,” he says. “I suppose I won’t.”
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
She’s standing before them. And it’s not really the whole congregation of little girls she’s looking at, Chandra is sure of that. It’s the two of them. And she looks like a creature sent straight from the Heavens, like a great gauzy butterfly. Forget that she’s dusty and tired and the kohl beneath her eyes is smudged. She looks like...like a Queen.
Her own staff rests against her shoulder. That of her fallen opponent she extends before her. She’s tipping it, surely to tap Chandra with it and make a future Queen of her as well. Chandra straightens herself as tall as she can get, puffs out her little chest, and...watches the staff sink towards Narda.
No, no no! This is not the way it happens! One small hand snakes out as, beside her, Narda calmly reaches for the staff. As one, their palms strike the shaft and their fingers curl around the metal. As one, they turn to face each other, their eyes and mouths wide. And Chandra is sure Narda feels the same zing from the staff, the same tingle that’s worming its way down into her middle, carving out a place in her belly amongst the butterflies and her breakfast.
She only half hears the first temple maids’ cries of outrage. The hands that catch her shoulders and pull her back might as well be from a dream. The would-be Queen is clutching both staffs tightly to her breast, shaking her head as she backs away. “It’s too late,” she says.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
The grown-ups are fighting. The two of them are supposed to be quietly sitting to the side, pretending not to hear a word. Chandra’s still staring at her hands as if she’s never seen them before, as if they might decide at any moment to cease to be. But Narda’s listening, the cold weight in her stomach growing with every word.
“You don’t need another staff,” she says, and then she stops, disbelieving that she’d found the nerve to speak, shocked that both women have turned now to stare at her. She looks down at her hands, clenched in her lap in the twisted and wrinkled disarray of her skirt. “Chandra can keep it, and I can go back to tending trees.”
The older one’s glaring at her now, or at least the set of her jaw and the tilt of her brows leads Narda to assume it’s a glare. She can’t see a thing of her eyes through the dark glasses perched on her nose. “It’s not that easy, child.” There’s an edge in her voice that makes Narda want to sink down through the floor. “You have a Queen’s magic now. It‘s not something you can just give back.”
“I… could be a temple maid…” She twists her hands till they hurt, venturing another timid look up. “Like you.”
The woman’s face twitches, like she’s fighting back a laugh. Behind her, the younger maid does laugh. “No, dear. A Queen’s magic is a Queen’s magic. On the bright side, you will have someone to train with.”
Narda looks over at Chandra, still gaping at her hands, and sighs.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
Tahj is standing there with a big pink bloom in hand, and Narda’s trying not to look at him like he’s a complete fool, and she’s not quite sure what message he is getting from her because he keeps bobbing the flower in her direction like she’s being a fool for not taking it.
“It’s an offering,” he says.
“Things are different now, Tahj.”
“I know,” he says, cheerfully. “That’s why it’s an offering.”
Narda takes it from him stiffly. “Thank you,” she says. “Blessings on your house, and…and all that.”
Tahj laughs. “Chandra’s right. She'll be Queen, you’ll be her temple maid and I’ll come serve you both.”
She doesn’t have the heart to remind him as he goes skipping away that it doesn’t work that way.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
“This way, this way!” Aylin nudges the girl’s foot with her own. “Point your toes.”
The child bites her lip and complies as best she can. She looks as if she might crumble into a weepy heap on the floor at any moment.
“Now the other.” Aylin angles her other foot between Chandra’s to prod her into place. “Back. Like this. Goodness, child! Straighten up before you fall on your face.”
Devri shakes her head and wonders if she should bother tracking down her own student, who is likely up a tree by now as it seems she always is.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
“How do you do it?” says Chandra, who’s nursing a twisted ankle and a scraped knee and watching Narda prance up and down a line, gracefully twirling her practice staff. “It’s not as if you even spend half the time I do practicing.”
Narda stops her posturing to give her a shrug and a guilty smile. “I just do,” she says.
She just does. It’s as if…as if it’s in her blood, Chandra thinks bitterly, and she wonders if the fates have ever gotten anything so dreadfully wrong as they have this.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
Tahj has started coming every day, with an offering for each of them. Most days he’s the first one at the door. The years have been kind to him, and he is no longer the awkward little boy they once knew but a tall and well-muscled young man who turns the heads of the village girls whenever he passes.
Chandra plucks the flower from his fingers, bowing her head and uttering a blessing of the river to his family. She gives him a wink before sauntering back to the altar with her prize as she always does.
Narda pauses this morning, her hand brushing his as she slips it around the delicate stalk.
“Why so sad?” she whispers in place of the ritual words.
He blinks and tries to force a smile, but it’s too late. “The sand creeps up along the groves. There’s little left of the roots.”
“It is the dry season,” she offers, her throat growing tight.
“It has been a long dry season,” he answers softly, his hand slipping away from hers.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
“They don’t know us anymore, do they?” says Narda.
They’re lounging on the narrow patch of grass outside the temple, giving their aching feet a break from the endless dance practice their attendants have insisted upon as of late, watching their former peers take a break from their own labors to play a ball game. No one ever invites them. Devri won’t even let Jai come visit them anymore. Narda’s gotten into too much trouble for climbing trees when he’s about.
“They adore us,” Chandra assures her.
Tahj has just scored a goal, and his whole team crowds around him. Calli’s pressed rather close, flipping her dark hair and batting her lashes as she congratulates him, and Narda feels her stomach clench. Calli’s family are weavers. She lives on the ridge with a half dozen brothers and sisters, an excellent place to raise a half dozen more. She wonders if it’s a thought that’s crossed Tahj’s mind. Of course that’s exactly when he chooses to look her way and smile.
“It’s hardly the same.” Narda looks to her friend, but she has that distant starry look she often does now that says there is just no talking to her. She tries anyway. “Have you noticed the sands are rising?”
“With the sands rises the Queen.”
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
“So is it still just the dry season?” They’re seated, cross-legged, just outside Tahj’s door, neither daring to look the other in the eye.
Narda opens her mouth to speak the words that brought her to him and finds it dry. She gives her lips a slow, thoughtful lick and takes a breath. “Devri says the time is short.”
“How short?”
Narda shrugs. “A week at least, a month at best. There’s been no summons just yet.”
He catches her hand between his own. “Stay with me tonight?”
She looks at him, the beautiful dark eyes that haven’t changed a bit since they were carefree children, the sharp nose and square jaw he’s only now grown into. In just the space of a breath she can see herself tending roots and picking fruit, raising children and growing old, his hand in hers all the while, and suddenly it’s hard to draw another breath.
“I can’t” she says. That’s all it takes to get her back on her feet.
“You mean won’t,” he says, sullenly.
“What would be the use?”
“I could see you smile for a night. Or for a week’s worth of nights,” he adds with a grin that leaves her blushing.
“And spoil you for anyone else,” she says with a grin of her own, that feels as fake as can be, as she walks away.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
“You need to mean it,” says Devri. “You won’t be Queen without some force to your steps.”
“But the form is all right,” says Narda. “You’ve always said no one could match it. Why, Chandra practices day and night and her feet are not half as well placed-”
“Chandra wants it,” Devri snaps. “Don’t underestimate the weight a will carries.”
With a sigh, Narda lets her staff fall to drag in the dust. She gives the twirling target she’s been envisioning as her opponent a sideways look and can’t help but think of Chandra and the inevitability of finding herself in the ring with her. “What if I don’t want to be Queen?” she says, sullenly. “Why did no one ever ask me that?”
Devri lowers her dark spectacles to glare at her over their top. One eye is dark and penetrating, the other clouded with a milky film and frozen in place, and when they’re fixed on her Narda always finds her stomach clenching. “The staves don’t ask,” the temple maid says, sternly. “They choose. Like it or not, you can be Queen, or-” she turns, gives the dummy a push, and watches it tumble to the floor “- you can be dead. Whatever he other shortcomings may be, Chandra understands this much. It’s time you behaved as if you did too.”
Swallowing hard, Narda picks her staff back up and resumes her dance.
“I know it’s hard,” says Devri, still watching as Narda continues to swoop and spin. “But it must be done. The sands are rising. And without a Queen, we all die.”
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
Narda has given in and taken to lying in Tahj’s arms at night. Chandra still insists he’ll serve her on her throne, oblivious as always of anything Narda says or does. Tahj still brings them both flowers, still wishes them both well. He’s the only one outside the temple that still treats her as a person and not as some distant idol, and when she’s with him sometimes, just for a little while, she can forget the endless dance and the impending trials that will leave her Queen or dead. And sometimes he doesn’t make it quite so easy.
“If we had a girl, what would you name her?” he asks one night, and Narda is suddenly quite glad it’s too dark for him to see her.
“If we had a- What sort of foolish question is that?”
“One you’ve already asked yourself enough times.” His tone is as gentle as the slow rise and fall of his chest beneath her head.
“I have not,” she says, trying to distract herself by twining her fingers in the long, loose hair spread across her breast. It‘s no good, she can feel the lump rising in her throat. “What would you do with a name if I told you one, give it to Calli?”
Beneath her, Tahj stiffens. “Narda, I’m not-”
Narda swallows hard and sighs. “There’s nothing wrong with Calli. But maybe you like Uma better?”
He rolls away then, leaving her to fall among the cushions. A hand curls around her arm and she can just make out the dark shape of his head as he’s trying to catch her eye. “Do we have to do this tonight?”
“Just promise me you’ll do something when they come. A few quar thorns to that pretty nose of yours, eat pashi seeds until you give yourself a rash. Get Rana to punch you. I don’t care, just…don’t let yourself be taken.”
Tahj’s hand slides up around her cheek, and his lips find her forehead and then her nose and then her lips. It‘s a long moment before he speaks again, and she wishes they could just stay there in that moment, softly pressed together. “No one is taking me but you.”
“Good,” she says, and this time it’s her turn to roll away from him. “Then you’ll have a nice long life and lots of babies with Calli.” She’s feeling about alongside the mat for her clothes when he catches her arm again. “Or Rin,” she says, shrugging him off. She hooks a finger in the folds of her dress and snatches it to her chest. “Or whoever you fancy.”
“I thought it was an honor to serve the Queen,” he says, laying back against the pillows.
She finds the bottom of the dress and slips it over her head. “I thought it was an honor to be the Queen”
“Narda?” She doesn’t look, but she can hear the rustle of the sheets. He’s sitting up behind her now. She stretches a leg out to feel for her sandals as she slips her arms through her sleeves.
“I’ll have to duel them first -- all of them, even Chandra -- if I’m to be Queen. If I’m to live.” She’s glad again that he can’t see her, because tears are beginning to well in her eyes. Not that it matters, they’re in her voice as well, and the next thing she knows his arms are around her shoulders and he’s got his cheek pressed to hers.
“Narda…” He’s soft and warm and all she can think about is falling back onto the cushions with him and staying there forever, or at least until morning.
Kicking the shoes away, she wraps her arms around his and squeezes him tighter. “Meena.” He pulls his head up off her shoulder to seek her out in the dark again. “I always wanted to call her Meena.”
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
One foot in front of the other, Chandra’s tracing the route she used to take ages ago, when they could still truly call themselves children. She’s been turning it over since she crept out of bed and she still can’t put her finger on why she should need to see him. After all, he’ll be at the ceremony and he’ll give her a last blessing and a gift then. She doubts Narda is being such a fool, It’s likely she’s still asleep and not even packed.
Tahj’s family lives at the edge of the village, where the quar trees grow. The sand is rising around the walls of their tents, choking out the grasses. The leaves of the quar are drooping, growing brown around the edges.
What will she say to him? Goodbye? She’ll have to say that this afternoon. I’ll miss you? Just thinking the words brings a thickness to her throat. She’d certainly mean it, but would it be enough. I love you? She’s not sure she’s ready-
She stops short as his door comes into view. Narda is not home in bed. She’s outside Tahj’s door, with rumpled hair and flushed cheeks and his arms around her, kissing him.
All the words she thought she had for the man dissolve into one swift grunt of anger and frustration, and she turns on her heel and marches back to the temple.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
They’re strapping on their sandals, shouldering their packs. The whole village is gathered outside the temple. Even Jai is in the crowd, ready to see his sister, perhaps for the last time, and send her off with a blessing. The temple maids are at the door, Devri stern and stony as always, Aylin a nervous wreck.
“I wish you luck,” Narda tells her friend. She’s not sure what else to say, torn between the thought that seeing each other again means a duel to the death and that not doing so means one of them will already have perished.
Chandra just stares at her for a long while, as if a hundred different responses are coming to mind only to be discarded, before saying “I wish you the same.”
with Whipped Cream
Story : Desert Flowers
Rating : PG
Word Count : 3959
So I kinda cheated and brought back an old canon, but it's soooo old no one but Falootin remembered it. I am thinking about continuing it now. There are a handful of ancient pieces in the index linked above (which I should probably clean up a bit). This was supposed to be a binge to Mulberry, but I gave up on that halfway through.
“Catch!”
Skirt spread between her small hands, Narda waits for the quarfruit that comes tumbling through the air. The fat pink bulb with soft orange spines lands in the outstretched fabric with a soft thump. She grins at her brother up in the tree, with his legs curled round the trunk like some overgrown monkey, as he reaches for another.
Beside her, Tahj claps his hands and Chandra hops from foot to foot, the three of them inseparable as always.
“Throw one to me!” Chandra cries.
“And me!” echoes Tahj, a toothy grin splitting his dark face from ear to ear.
“Patience,” Jai calls down from his perch. He winds a hand around the next plump, pink fruit, carefully angling his arm under the spikes from the first. He slides his fingers up under the broad crown of leaves at its peak, gives it a sharp twist, and swiftly jerks away, fruit in hand, as a fresh mass of thorns emerges in its place.
With a giggle, Chandra holds out her own skirt as the quarfruit sails her way. Tahj is so busy pouting that the next nearly hits him in the nose before he scrambles to catch it.
“I want to pick too,” says Narda.
Jai shakes his head. Another grab, twist, and dodge, and he’s got another juicy, pink quar to throw down. “Mother would skin me if I bring you home full of thorns!”
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
Laying one foot carefully in front of the other, Chandra tries her best not to roll her eyes up to peer at the bowl atop her head, not to flinch or wrinkle her nose at the occasional bit of overflow that splatters her shoulders. She’s almost to the end of the line when Narda’s sudden fit of giggling stops her.
She manages to catch herself before the urge to spin around and snap at her wins out and makes a bigger, and wetter, fool of her. “What is it?” she says, freezing in place. “I haven’t spilled a drop!”
“Well… that’s very good of you,” says Narda. “But your arms…”
Her arms? Her arms! She’s been thinking too hard about the water. Now she catches them awkwardly spread to either side of her like the wings of a big, ugly buzzard and pulls them in with a squeak.
Sighing, she plucks the bowl from atop her head. The water laps at her fingers as they curl over the rim. “How does she do it?” she asks. And she doesn’t really want an answer, so before Narda can remind her that Jaya has had three years of practice and she’s only copying what she saw that morning, she’s already straightening herself back up to try again. The truth, she tells herself, is that Jaya is a candidate because she was born to be one, and as Chandra was most certainly born to be a Queen, she simply must have it in her to perform the simple exercises leading to the Dance.
Slow, graceful, she tells herself. Gliding like a serpent, not reeling like a vulture. One does not become Queen without a lot of poise and a little venom. Her arms are in tight to her sides, and she can feel the bowl wobbling this way and that, so she wobbles with it. Before long she’s lost the line, swaying this way and that, and she swears now she must look like a great lumbering tortoise that can’t quite make up its mind where it wants to go and isn’t all that keen on getting there anyway. For a oment, she’s wondering if that’s better or worse than swooping like a buzzard, and then she’s too busy trying to catch the bowl as it’s tumbling from her head.
“One more try,” she says, frowning as the water quickly seeps into the ground between her feet.
“Maybe without the water,” says Narda. “It’s not good to waste.”
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
They’re settled on a blanket at the edge of the grove, with a plate of biscuits and a game of marbles set out between them, when Chandra pops the question.
“Narda,” she says. “When I’m Queen, will you be one of my temple maids?”
Narda looks at her long and hard and wrinkles her nose. “Well, I was going to join my brother tending trees. But if you need me, you know I’d never say no to you.”
Chandra sniffs. “Picking fruit and pulling weeds indeed. You know I’ll need you for something better than that!”
Tahj makes the saddest face one can around a mouthful of biscuit. “What about me?”
“Well, of course I’ll need you for my court. The Queen deserves the best after all,” she says sweetly, reaching over to ruffle his hair. And it seems to please Tahj well enough, but the thought makes Narda’s stomach twist for reasons she can’t quite manage to put a finger on. “Just make sure you wait for me and don’t let anyone else take you first.”
“I won’t,” he says solemnly.
Narda frowns at the trees. The sand has risen up over the roots, blotting them out, and somehow that thought just adds to the queasiness she’s already feeling.
“What are you looking at?” Chandra asks her.
“The sands are rising.”
“With the sands rises the Queen,” Chandra recites.
Narda nods. “Jaya will be leaving soon.”
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
“Jai! Look! Look!” Chandra calls, as the two girls come tumbling into the kitchen. She stumbles to a halt, nearly dropping the dress folded across her outstretched arms as Jai turns around. “Your face! What happened to your face?” She twists around to face Narda and hiss at her, “What happened to his face?”
Narda’s frozen stiff, gaping in disbelief at the fresh scratches that lace their way across her brother’s nose and cheeks.
A blush creeps over the parts of Jai’s face that weren’t already pink as he mutters, “I had an accident.”
Narda frowns. “But you’ve been harvesting for years,” she says, softly.
It seems no one heard her. Chandra’s clucking her tongue and shaking her head at the older boy. “You can’t go to the ceremony tomorrow looking like that!”
It’s then that Aunties Palma and Maya come bustling into the room, ostensibly looking for pots and pans. “He’ll be watching with us,” says Maya, with a hearty squeeze to Jai’s shoulder, for which he musters a meek smile.
“Saved by quar thorns” mutters Palma, and Narda is sure the words aren’t meant to be heard, but that doesn’t stop her from responding.
“I thought it was an honor to serve a Queen?” she says, cocking her head at Auntie Palma.
A look passes between the women that makes Narda want to squirm, and Auntie Palma’s gaze settles on the gauze and ribbons stacked in her arms. “Oh, it is,” she says. “It is.”
“I think I’d simply die if I couldn’t stand before the victor tomorrow!” Chandra declares, cradling her dress against her chest.
Narda looks to her brother and swallows hard against the tears welling in her eyes. “This means you won’t be going away,” she says, suddenly understanding.
Jai offers her the same thin smile he’d given Auntie Maya, and she can see the unshed tears in his eyes as well. “No,” he says. “I suppose I won’t.”
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
She’s standing before them. And it’s not really the whole congregation of little girls she’s looking at, Chandra is sure of that. It’s the two of them. And she looks like a creature sent straight from the Heavens, like a great gauzy butterfly. Forget that she’s dusty and tired and the kohl beneath her eyes is smudged. She looks like...like a Queen.
Her own staff rests against her shoulder. That of her fallen opponent she extends before her. She’s tipping it, surely to tap Chandra with it and make a future Queen of her as well. Chandra straightens herself as tall as she can get, puffs out her little chest, and...watches the staff sink towards Narda.
No, no no! This is not the way it happens! One small hand snakes out as, beside her, Narda calmly reaches for the staff. As one, their palms strike the shaft and their fingers curl around the metal. As one, they turn to face each other, their eyes and mouths wide. And Chandra is sure Narda feels the same zing from the staff, the same tingle that’s worming its way down into her middle, carving out a place in her belly amongst the butterflies and her breakfast.
She only half hears the first temple maids’ cries of outrage. The hands that catch her shoulders and pull her back might as well be from a dream. The would-be Queen is clutching both staffs tightly to her breast, shaking her head as she backs away. “It’s too late,” she says.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
The grown-ups are fighting. The two of them are supposed to be quietly sitting to the side, pretending not to hear a word. Chandra’s still staring at her hands as if she’s never seen them before, as if they might decide at any moment to cease to be. But Narda’s listening, the cold weight in her stomach growing with every word.
“You don’t need another staff,” she says, and then she stops, disbelieving that she’d found the nerve to speak, shocked that both women have turned now to stare at her. She looks down at her hands, clenched in her lap in the twisted and wrinkled disarray of her skirt. “Chandra can keep it, and I can go back to tending trees.”
The older one’s glaring at her now, or at least the set of her jaw and the tilt of her brows leads Narda to assume it’s a glare. She can’t see a thing of her eyes through the dark glasses perched on her nose. “It’s not that easy, child.” There’s an edge in her voice that makes Narda want to sink down through the floor. “You have a Queen’s magic now. It‘s not something you can just give back.”
“I… could be a temple maid…” She twists her hands till they hurt, venturing another timid look up. “Like you.”
The woman’s face twitches, like she’s fighting back a laugh. Behind her, the younger maid does laugh. “No, dear. A Queen’s magic is a Queen’s magic. On the bright side, you will have someone to train with.”
Narda looks over at Chandra, still gaping at her hands, and sighs.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
Tahj is standing there with a big pink bloom in hand, and Narda’s trying not to look at him like he’s a complete fool, and she’s not quite sure what message he is getting from her because he keeps bobbing the flower in her direction like she’s being a fool for not taking it.
“It’s an offering,” he says.
“Things are different now, Tahj.”
“I know,” he says, cheerfully. “That’s why it’s an offering.”
Narda takes it from him stiffly. “Thank you,” she says. “Blessings on your house, and…and all that.”
Tahj laughs. “Chandra’s right. She'll be Queen, you’ll be her temple maid and I’ll come serve you both.”
She doesn’t have the heart to remind him as he goes skipping away that it doesn’t work that way.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
“This way, this way!” Aylin nudges the girl’s foot with her own. “Point your toes.”
The child bites her lip and complies as best she can. She looks as if she might crumble into a weepy heap on the floor at any moment.
“Now the other.” Aylin angles her other foot between Chandra’s to prod her into place. “Back. Like this. Goodness, child! Straighten up before you fall on your face.”
Devri shakes her head and wonders if she should bother tracking down her own student, who is likely up a tree by now as it seems she always is.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
“How do you do it?” says Chandra, who’s nursing a twisted ankle and a scraped knee and watching Narda prance up and down a line, gracefully twirling her practice staff. “It’s not as if you even spend half the time I do practicing.”
Narda stops her posturing to give her a shrug and a guilty smile. “I just do,” she says.
She just does. It’s as if…as if it’s in her blood, Chandra thinks bitterly, and she wonders if the fates have ever gotten anything so dreadfully wrong as they have this.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
Tahj has started coming every day, with an offering for each of them. Most days he’s the first one at the door. The years have been kind to him, and he is no longer the awkward little boy they once knew but a tall and well-muscled young man who turns the heads of the village girls whenever he passes.
Chandra plucks the flower from his fingers, bowing her head and uttering a blessing of the river to his family. She gives him a wink before sauntering back to the altar with her prize as she always does.
Narda pauses this morning, her hand brushing his as she slips it around the delicate stalk.
“Why so sad?” she whispers in place of the ritual words.
He blinks and tries to force a smile, but it’s too late. “The sand creeps up along the groves. There’s little left of the roots.”
“It is the dry season,” she offers, her throat growing tight.
“It has been a long dry season,” he answers softly, his hand slipping away from hers.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
“They don’t know us anymore, do they?” says Narda.
They’re lounging on the narrow patch of grass outside the temple, giving their aching feet a break from the endless dance practice their attendants have insisted upon as of late, watching their former peers take a break from their own labors to play a ball game. No one ever invites them. Devri won’t even let Jai come visit them anymore. Narda’s gotten into too much trouble for climbing trees when he’s about.
“They adore us,” Chandra assures her.
Tahj has just scored a goal, and his whole team crowds around him. Calli’s pressed rather close, flipping her dark hair and batting her lashes as she congratulates him, and Narda feels her stomach clench. Calli’s family are weavers. She lives on the ridge with a half dozen brothers and sisters, an excellent place to raise a half dozen more. She wonders if it’s a thought that’s crossed Tahj’s mind. Of course that’s exactly when he chooses to look her way and smile.
“It’s hardly the same.” Narda looks to her friend, but she has that distant starry look she often does now that says there is just no talking to her. She tries anyway. “Have you noticed the sands are rising?”
“With the sands rises the Queen.”
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
“So is it still just the dry season?” They’re seated, cross-legged, just outside Tahj’s door, neither daring to look the other in the eye.
Narda opens her mouth to speak the words that brought her to him and finds it dry. She gives her lips a slow, thoughtful lick and takes a breath. “Devri says the time is short.”
“How short?”
Narda shrugs. “A week at least, a month at best. There’s been no summons just yet.”
He catches her hand between his own. “Stay with me tonight?”
She looks at him, the beautiful dark eyes that haven’t changed a bit since they were carefree children, the sharp nose and square jaw he’s only now grown into. In just the space of a breath she can see herself tending roots and picking fruit, raising children and growing old, his hand in hers all the while, and suddenly it’s hard to draw another breath.
“I can’t” she says. That’s all it takes to get her back on her feet.
“You mean won’t,” he says, sullenly.
“What would be the use?”
“I could see you smile for a night. Or for a week’s worth of nights,” he adds with a grin that leaves her blushing.
“And spoil you for anyone else,” she says with a grin of her own, that feels as fake as can be, as she walks away.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
“You need to mean it,” says Devri. “You won’t be Queen without some force to your steps.”
“But the form is all right,” says Narda. “You’ve always said no one could match it. Why, Chandra practices day and night and her feet are not half as well placed-”
“Chandra wants it,” Devri snaps. “Don’t underestimate the weight a will carries.”
With a sigh, Narda lets her staff fall to drag in the dust. She gives the twirling target she’s been envisioning as her opponent a sideways look and can’t help but think of Chandra and the inevitability of finding herself in the ring with her. “What if I don’t want to be Queen?” she says, sullenly. “Why did no one ever ask me that?”
Devri lowers her dark spectacles to glare at her over their top. One eye is dark and penetrating, the other clouded with a milky film and frozen in place, and when they’re fixed on her Narda always finds her stomach clenching. “The staves don’t ask,” the temple maid says, sternly. “They choose. Like it or not, you can be Queen, or-” she turns, gives the dummy a push, and watches it tumble to the floor “- you can be dead. Whatever he other shortcomings may be, Chandra understands this much. It’s time you behaved as if you did too.”
Swallowing hard, Narda picks her staff back up and resumes her dance.
“I know it’s hard,” says Devri, still watching as Narda continues to swoop and spin. “But it must be done. The sands are rising. And without a Queen, we all die.”
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
Narda has given in and taken to lying in Tahj’s arms at night. Chandra still insists he’ll serve her on her throne, oblivious as always of anything Narda says or does. Tahj still brings them both flowers, still wishes them both well. He’s the only one outside the temple that still treats her as a person and not as some distant idol, and when she’s with him sometimes, just for a little while, she can forget the endless dance and the impending trials that will leave her Queen or dead. And sometimes he doesn’t make it quite so easy.
“If we had a girl, what would you name her?” he asks one night, and Narda is suddenly quite glad it’s too dark for him to see her.
“If we had a- What sort of foolish question is that?”
“One you’ve already asked yourself enough times.” His tone is as gentle as the slow rise and fall of his chest beneath her head.
“I have not,” she says, trying to distract herself by twining her fingers in the long, loose hair spread across her breast. It‘s no good, she can feel the lump rising in her throat. “What would you do with a name if I told you one, give it to Calli?”
Beneath her, Tahj stiffens. “Narda, I’m not-”
Narda swallows hard and sighs. “There’s nothing wrong with Calli. But maybe you like Uma better?”
He rolls away then, leaving her to fall among the cushions. A hand curls around her arm and she can just make out the dark shape of his head as he’s trying to catch her eye. “Do we have to do this tonight?”
“Just promise me you’ll do something when they come. A few quar thorns to that pretty nose of yours, eat pashi seeds until you give yourself a rash. Get Rana to punch you. I don’t care, just…don’t let yourself be taken.”
Tahj’s hand slides up around her cheek, and his lips find her forehead and then her nose and then her lips. It‘s a long moment before he speaks again, and she wishes they could just stay there in that moment, softly pressed together. “No one is taking me but you.”
“Good,” she says, and this time it’s her turn to roll away from him. “Then you’ll have a nice long life and lots of babies with Calli.” She’s feeling about alongside the mat for her clothes when he catches her arm again. “Or Rin,” she says, shrugging him off. She hooks a finger in the folds of her dress and snatches it to her chest. “Or whoever you fancy.”
“I thought it was an honor to serve the Queen,” he says, laying back against the pillows.
She finds the bottom of the dress and slips it over her head. “I thought it was an honor to be the Queen”
“Narda?” She doesn’t look, but she can hear the rustle of the sheets. He’s sitting up behind her now. She stretches a leg out to feel for her sandals as she slips her arms through her sleeves.
“I’ll have to duel them first -- all of them, even Chandra -- if I’m to be Queen. If I’m to live.” She’s glad again that he can’t see her, because tears are beginning to well in her eyes. Not that it matters, they’re in her voice as well, and the next thing she knows his arms are around her shoulders and he’s got his cheek pressed to hers.
“Narda…” He’s soft and warm and all she can think about is falling back onto the cushions with him and staying there forever, or at least until morning.
Kicking the shoes away, she wraps her arms around his and squeezes him tighter. “Meena.” He pulls his head up off her shoulder to seek her out in the dark again. “I always wanted to call her Meena.”
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
One foot in front of the other, Chandra’s tracing the route she used to take ages ago, when they could still truly call themselves children. She’s been turning it over since she crept out of bed and she still can’t put her finger on why she should need to see him. After all, he’ll be at the ceremony and he’ll give her a last blessing and a gift then. She doubts Narda is being such a fool, It’s likely she’s still asleep and not even packed.
Tahj’s family lives at the edge of the village, where the quar trees grow. The sand is rising around the walls of their tents, choking out the grasses. The leaves of the quar are drooping, growing brown around the edges.
What will she say to him? Goodbye? She’ll have to say that this afternoon. I’ll miss you? Just thinking the words brings a thickness to her throat. She’d certainly mean it, but would it be enough. I love you? She’s not sure she’s ready-
She stops short as his door comes into view. Narda is not home in bed. She’s outside Tahj’s door, with rumpled hair and flushed cheeks and his arms around her, kissing him.
All the words she thought she had for the man dissolve into one swift grunt of anger and frustration, and she turns on her heel and marches back to the temple.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
They’re strapping on their sandals, shouldering their packs. The whole village is gathered outside the temple. Even Jai is in the crowd, ready to see his sister, perhaps for the last time, and send her off with a blessing. The temple maids are at the door, Devri stern and stony as always, Aylin a nervous wreck.
“I wish you luck,” Narda tells her friend. She’s not sure what else to say, torn between the thought that seeing each other again means a duel to the death and that not doing so means one of them will already have perished.
Chandra just stares at her for a long while, as if a hundred different responses are coming to mind only to be discarded, before saying “I wish you the same.”