The adaiman trilled contentedly from Matanta’s chest.
The little girl with big brown eyes nodded and looked back up to the sky. She pointed to a pair of stars. One was undoubtedly brighter than the other, but their close proximity and shared light made them stand out in the sky. “Like those two. You can see their light better because they’re close together.”
She lowered her voice. “They help each other shine. Just like me and my sister.”
Matanta neither agreed nor disagreed, but his brows pulled together.
“Ektha is to be the rani of Ullal,” Abbakka explained. “She must always shine brighter. But I can stay by her side. I can make sure she shines brightly, even when a light threatens to flood her.”
Matanta’s thunderous laugh shook the hillside. Abbakka sprang to her feet in surprise, and the nearby adaiman swirled into the sky. But he didn’t stop. He couldn’t.
“I am not asking?—I’m just telling you?—I would like to know what’s so funny.” Abbakka tapped her foot impatiently. The lion waved her off, swinging his enormous paw through the air as he continued to laugh.
Finally, he turned onto his belly and faced Abbakka, who was still standing. His bright yellow eyes searched her dark brown ones for any hint of dishonesty. “You mean to tell me you think you are the smaller star? That dim little thing over there?”
Abbakka stood behind his paw and followed his line of sight past his raised claw. She nodded when she saw which star he pointed to.
The winged green lion lowered his paw and turned back to her, shaking his head and making his mane shush through the air. “You are not a small, shy star. You are not a speck in the night’s sky.”
The entire hillside went silent and waited for him to finish.
“Little one, you are the sun.”
Chapter 20
The next morning, Chaaya woke me. “Forgive me, but Parushi says you’re needed in the council room.”
I blinked away the bright flashes that streaked across my eyes. My room was flooded with sunlight, but I was still on the floor with Ektha’s bangle on my wrist and my mother’s payal bells clutched in my fist. Just seeing the bangle made me want to close my eyes again.
Chaaya helped me sit up and get ready to stand, but she stopped short. “What’s that?”
She pointed to the turmeric root and adaiman feather; I must have fallen asleep with them by my side. Although the turmeric was slightly worse for the wear, thankfully the adaiman feather was still pristine.
“I had a visitor last night.” I held the feather up, and it shone in the light?—somewhat less brilliant than the way it glowed at night, but admittedly still beautiful.
Chaaya began to pray. I put the feather in my lap and picked up the turmeric. It seemed unremarkable no matter how many times I turned it in the sunlight. Why had the adaiman left it for me?
After finishing her prayers, Chaaya gestured to the feather. “It’s a treasure. Where do you want to keep it?”
She was trying to urge me to get moving. The sun was so bright that I knew it was well past dawn?—perhaps even almost midday?—and the rest of the fort was already buzzing with activity. I needed to get up and act as rani.
As if I hadn’t just laid my uncle and sister to rest.
As if I was ready to do this.
Gently, Chaaya took the feather and turmeric from me. She put them on the table beside my bed and must have noticed my mother’s payal bells were missing because she turned back sharply. She came back to my side and took my fist in her hand. I didn’t fight her when she opened my fingers. Chaaya gave an understanding nod upon seeing the bells, but she said nothing. Instead, she rummaged through some drawers and came back holding a long piece of thread. She held her other hand out to me and waited.
At first, I didn’t want to give the bells to Chaaya. I was determined to clutch them every moment of every day, until their imprints were as much a part of my hand as the lines that crisscrossed my palms.
“You needn’t hold them to keep them with you, Rani,” Chaaya said, but I only dug my fingernails into my palms harder.
“Raniji,” she murmured. “Trust me, Ji.”
I stared at her when she used the pet name she’d given me as a child. When I was far too young to understand the importance of my name and the weight of my title, I’d begged her not to call me “rajkumari” and to use “Abbakka” instead. Chaaya had refused, her eyes alight with a mixture of amusement and pity as I pleaded for her to use a name of love instead. Any trace of mirth disappeared as I, a precocious five-year-old, explained that my title was a wall. Every letter was a brick, and every time someone called me “rajkumari”?—or, even worse, “Rajkumari Abbakka”?—I could feel the space between us growing. Eventually, she came up with “Ji.” Using the honorific as a name showed the necessary respect, and I rejoiced in having one less person call me by my title.
But the time for pet names had come and gone, and Chaaya had stopped calling me Ji long ago. So when she called me by the name she used to whisper in my ear whenever I needed comfort, I listened.
I handed her the payal bells and the bangle when she pointed to that too. She accepted them reverently, whispering a prayer for my mother and sister as I dropped them into her palm. She used the thread to attach the bells of the payal to the bangle, going round and round until she’d formed a bump. After tying it off and tugging the bells to test them, she slipped the bangle back on my wrist as she said, “If you always keep this on, then we can stack your other bangles in front of it, and you will never have any cause to remove it.”
