“Nope.” Parushi continued with her forceful cleaning. “Foot wounds are dangerous. They’re dirty.”
“You’re right,” Nallini said with surprise.
“I know,” Parushi replied. “Binding.”
Parushi held out her hand, and Chaaya gave her some long strips of white cloth. As Parushi wrapped my foot, the tightness around the wound made the pounding dull to a thud.
“But not about that.” Nallini began to dig through her bag. “It won’t work.”
Ignoring her, Parushi kept up with her wrapping, but even I could see that the white cloth was soaked with blood before the next layer went on. Soon, my foot was dripping again, no matter how fast she wrapped it. Or how many times she cursed.
“Wrapping it now won’t work,” Nallini insisted. “It’s too deep. You need to close it first, then wrap it.”
“What do you mean?” Parushi continued to wrap furiously. “I pushed the edges together before I started.”
“It’s not enough.” Nallini reached into her bag and pulled out a vessel filled with large ants. They crawled all over each other as they clacked their pincers. “Excellent! They’re still alive.”
“What?” I scooted farther away from Nallini, and Parushi put herself between us.
“You’re not coming near the rani with those,” Parushi said. “Their bites are like fire!”
“Yes, but it’s worth the bite so that she can heal!” Nallini gestured at their pincers. “They’ll hold it closed.”
“Don’t be absurd.” Parushi kept looping the cloth around my foot. The wrapping was getting bigger and bigger, but the bleeding wouldn’t stop.
“There’s no time for this.” Nallini tried to push Parushi out of the way, but Parushi held her ground.
“I’m not going to argue with you.” Parushi squared her shoulders against Nallini. “You cannot expect us to?—what are you doing?!”
Parushi jumped as Nallini snatched the dagger off the floor. Without a second thought, Parushi dropped my leg and covered my body with hers, and the bowl Chaaya was holding fell to the ground with a clatter. The world jostled for a moment as my foot hit the floor, and the pain that had retreated came roaring back, searing up through my leg. I couldn’t move to defend myself from under Parushi, and I struggled to breathe, let alone see what Nallini was doing.
I had been wrong to trust Nallini so quickly, and now Parushi would pay the price. I tried to shift my cousin out of harm’s way, but she wouldn’t budge.
“Wait. What?” Parushi sat up a little.
I inhaled deeply and caught sight of Chaaya pulling on Nallini’s hair. The older woman could hardly make Nallini budge, but the healer monk wasn’t even trying to come near me.
Nallini handed the blade back to Parushi. “Here. I’m done with it. Chaaya, you need to let me go so I can show you what I mean.”
Chaaya dropped Nallini’s hair, and I gasped as I realized there was a gash running along Nallini’s left forearm. She hadn’t intended to cut me at all?—she’d cut herself.
Using two long, thin sticks, Nallini reached into the vessel filled with ants and extracted one. The ant wriggled and squirmed in her grasp, but it couldn’t escape, no matter how much it brandished its pincers. She lined up the ant so its head was hanging over the cut. “Chaaya, come here and push the edges together.”
Chaaya stepped away, shaking her head as she held her hands up with trembling fingers.
“I’ll do it,” Parushi said. “But if that ant bites me, I’ll pay you back in pain tenfold.”
“As long as you hold it closed,” Nallini said as the ant twisted between the two sticks. “Quickly.”
Parushi, to her credit, listened and closed the two edges together firmly. She tried not to wince as Nallini lowered the ant down toward the gash, one pincer on each side, and let it bite her. Nallini hissed as the ant clamped its mandible shut, but she didn’t lose focus. In one smooth gesture, she released the ant and then squeezed the two sticks together at the junction of its head and torso, beheading it. The ant’s head was left hanging over her wound with the pincers still gripping tight.
Nallini showed everyone her forearm. She displayed it with the same pride an artist would when revealing one of their paintings. The visual of the beheaded ant clinging to her arm in the throes of death while blood trickled from her wound was confirmation that everyone had different ideas about what constituted beauty.
“I still think it’s absurd.” Parushi had faced down countless enemies and hadn’t so much as flinched, but this left her looking green.
“But effective.” Nallini wrapped her wound with some of the cloth that had fallen from Chaaya’s hands.
Chaaya helped place a knot, and then Nallini turned to my foot, where blood had completely saturated Parushi’s dressing and was puddling beneath it. The throbbing pain resumed as they began their work.
