Page 53 of The Legend of Meneka
“That you care for this Kaushika,” she says. “That you have fallen in love with him.”
The blunt declaration is so bizarre that I am shocked into speechlessness. My tears dry. A denial bursts to my lips.I am not in love. I simply understand the mortals better now.I want to hurl this at her with coldness and certainty.
Instead, I freeze.
Because I cannot lie to Rambha.
And I cannot lie to myself.
She’s right. It’s ridiculous that her icy words have finally made me see it when there was so much other evidence, but this finally is the truth I have been looking for.
I’ve come to care for Kaushika.
I’ve fallen in love with him.
My eyes grow wide, and a dozen questions flood in me. Is it truly love when I am sent here on a mission from Indra, with little choiceabout what I am to do? Is it love when Kaushika has responded to my despair, when he doesn’t even know who I truly am? WhenIdo not know all ofhim? Freedom pounds in me with her declaration, a secret finally out in the open. A prison clutches that freedom, at what this love means and what it is showing me about myself.
Rambha watches the churn of emotions on my face—the horror, confusion, and sorrow. Her own expression grows pitying. “I knew you weren’t prepared for this,” she mutters. “This is why I volunteered to do this mission instead of having you sent. You are too young. Too inexperienced. Too naïve. Meneka, sages have intrinsic power. This is why they are such daunting enemies to seduce. It is not just their magic that rivals ours, it is their ability to veer us from our own path that truly makes them treacherous. I thought I warned you. I thought you were stronger. That I gave you enough reason to want to return.”
Her last words are nearly a whisper. I glance up at her, and just for a second, I catch a flash of deep hurt on her face. It sends a pang through me. I have seen that expression on her before. I caused it when I accepted the mission.
Her lips tremble, and in my mind’s eye I remember the shade of a promise she gave me. I feel the brush of her lips against mine. All the emotions it stirred in me had kept me hopeful for days, but was she simply being Indra’s most devoted apsara even then? During our last meeting, when she told me to lay with Kaushika … Did she seduceme?
“Was it real?” I ask quietly.
“Does it matter?” she shoots back. “For heaven’s sake, Meneka, I told you to sleep with him, not love him. I thought you were wise enough to see the difference. I thought you were anapsara.”
Her words score my skin like blades. My heart clenches in tight pain. I move slowly like I am taking ill. With effort, I curl my hand into a mudra: Heart’s Desire, an attempt to know what shape it will take, to see if it will tell me my own mind. A faltering illusion formsat my fingertips, a broken butterfly that dissipates. I catch a sob in my throat, seeing my own longing for freedom in the creature, seeing how I am not ready for it, notworthyof it.
Rambha’s mouth thins, watching the cracked illusion. “Your celestial magic is already suffering. You do not see that Kaushika is simply another seduction of the mortal realm. You have fallen for a man who would destroy you if he learnt of your true nature. You have said yourself how Kaushika is attempting to rile other sages against Indra, attempting to usurp Indra’s rule in the lord’s own city. You have his admission from his own lips. I thought you would be clearheaded,rejoicingthat he is smitten by you and that you have nearly finished your mission, yet you stand there talking ofreasonwhen a single dance, a final few illusions, could cinch everything. You could get your freedom from future missions. You could come home, honored as a devi. You could become Indra’s most celebrated apsara. Why do these things not matter more than this childish love?”
I lift my eyes to study hers. “Then your advice to me is to deceive Kaushika?”
Rambha meets my gaze levelly. “My advice is to think of what will happen should you disobey Indra.”
Tears blur my sight. If I refuse to dance for Kaushika, Indra will exile me from Amaravati. He will force me from my home, my power no longer fueled by the city except in inconsequential drips that would barely make a full illusion. Without my magic, I would become a wraith, neither of the mortal realm nor of the immortal, a wisp on the wind, an unheard whisper, forgotten until I can prove my devotion to the lord again. For such an egregious blunder … what form would my redemption need to take?
And what if I do dance for Kaushika? My mission with Tara drove me to desperation. Knowing I have destroyed Kaushika, this man I now understand I love, will ruin me.
Rambha glitters at the edge of my vision, and I look up at her wretchedly.
“If you want peace,” she says quietly, “you will seduce Kaushika using your magic the way you were meant to. I will have to report to the lord everything you have told me, and he might consider Kaushika’s very actions at the Mahasabha an act of war. He will be compelled to attack him. Who do you think will win in such a battle?”
I do not have to think. I know the answer. Indra would win any battle if it occurred now. Kaushika is powerful, but he has no support from the other sages. He has only his hermitage, and after the halahala, everyone is sorely depleted, including Kaushika himself. He could renew his magic again, it’s true, but that would take months of tapasya, if not years. What havoc would the lord of heaven wreak in that time? Already, Indra has tried to flood the hermitage, if Kaushika’s account is true. The sage would not be able to keep himself safe, let alone any of the others. Sobs lock in my throat, and Rambha nods as though I have said all this aloud.
“If you want Kaushika to live,” she says, her voice soft, “then you will use the full force of your power. You will carve such a deep illusion for him that it will last through his lifetime, that he never again thinks to trouble Indra. You will avert a battle from happening, and you will save both your lord and the man you love. And then you will come home to your freedom.”
I stare at my hands, but they shake through the prism of my own tears. My mission, my emotion, my very identity trap me. I love this man, but what does that make me when he is so wrong? I cannot help but be devoted to Indra in my own way, a compulsion even I fail to fully understand. What does that make me, when my lord is cruel and unjust?
The truth is that regardless of Indra’s injunction, Iwantto dance for Kaushika. I’ve wanted to since the first time I saw him. I want tocontrol his desire, but more than that, I want to test it—to see if heisas strong as I am made to believe. What does that makeme?
My hands tremble, the mudras I want to create unborn so far. The last time I was in Amaravati, I bent under the kalpavriksh in Indra’s garden, seeking to stay true to myself. This is who I am, then. A fool, caught in this trap of my own making.
Rambha moves, and I blink rapidly. Tears fall down my cheeks and I watch her as she removes the beaded parcel belt from around her waist. She holds it out to me wordlessly, and I take it out of habit. I open the silk packages contained within only to see that she has brought me the same things she gave me when I first embarked on this mission: clothes I buried near the hermitage, which I told her about the last time, the jewels I disguised by the forest floor, and among them, a crown unlike any I have seen before sparkling on a small cushion.
I do not have the will to question her. She brought these to me before hearing my latest report. Whether she did this in order to please me, bearing me gifts, or to remind me of my duty matters little. She gives them to me now for only one reason—tousethem.
My fingers brush over the crown, the only jewelry within these packages that did not accompany me from Amaravati. It is a simple crown wrought with the most delicate gold. It is too big for me, but even as I watch, it begins to shrink until it becomes exactly my size, a headpiece that would sit like a deva’s halo, like sunlight made molten. The gold membranes of the crown feel liquid to the touch. They glint in a thousand colors, catching the moonlight and Rambha’s jewelry, turning gold into turquoise, emerald to sapphire.
