Star Daughter(14)

“In a manner of speaking.” He stepped back to offer her a small package. “For you.”

The star opened it to find a mangalsutra, the gold-and-black necklace a bride wore once wed. “How lovely! But I cannot accept it.”

“Why not?” asked the man. “Don’t you want to be with me?”

Sorrow infused her words. “If only I could.”

“You’re everything to me. My life has color now.” The man pressed each word into her throat with a kiss.

“Your life has always had color. How else would you make art?”

“Not like the colors I see now.” He unclasped the mangalsutra. “Won’t you stay?”

The star’s voice quavered. “I cannot. You know I cannot.”

Dropping the necklace, the man reached for the red cloth. He thrust it aside to expose a giant cage with iron bars. The star had no time to speak before he shoved her through the open door and slid the latch into place.

She blazed with shock. “What are you doing?” she cried, grappling with the thin bars. “What sort of game is this?”

The man smiled, but it was a mournful thing. “Don’t you understand?” he asked desperately. “I can’t let you leave. My paintings will turn to ash. I will turn to ash.”

The star was silent for a minute, and her luster dimmed. “You planned this, did you not? That is why you asked me to return today.”

“I can’t let you go,” he repeated. “But you’ll see. Now they can’t take you back, and we can be together.”

“Release me,” she said. “You know this is wrong. I would never choose it.”

“I can’t,” he told her a third time, his voice like stone.

Days passed, and the star clung to the back of the cage, weeping. She refused any food or drink the man offered and shied away when he reached through the bars. “You’re here for your own good,” he asserted. “Can’t you see how your court only tries to control you? Regardless of what they claim, you haven’t hurt me.”

The star turned her face from him.

More time passed, and the man attempted to paint. First the brush was wrong. Then the paint wouldn’t mix properly. When he couldn’t get the undercoating right, he tossed the canvas away in disgust. “Help me,” he urged, but the star remained curled up in a ball, her back to him. “I thought you valued my art. Or was that another lie?”

The star paid him no heed.

Over the next few weeks, the man tried and tried to paint, yet nothing came forth. “What have you done to me, you stupid woman?”

The star remained withdrawn, only glaring at him through her tangles. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen, and tearstains marred her face. The corona limning her frame seemed a faint mockery of what it had been.

One morning, after another failed attempt to create, the man approached the cage and unlocked the door. “Enough,” he said. “Come here.” The star cowered. “We’re meant to be together. You’re meant to inspire me. Why are you doing this?”

When she didn’t answer, the man brutally pried her from the cage. “If you won’t be with me, at least you will inspire me.”

The star stared at her bare feet, now caked in grime. The man jerked her chin up so she had to meet his wrathful eyes. “Speak!” She swiped at him with her nails, but that only enraged him further. He beat her with a wooden broom handle. “Why won’t you talk to me?”

The star fought back, scratching and slapping and even scorching the man. Yet in the end, he was well rested and nourished and she was not, and so she capitulated beneath the broom’s onslaught, folding into herself and shielding her face with her arms.

At last the man stopped. Blood, silver and viscous as mercury, coated the handle of the broom.

The star spat at him, but the man stood entranced by the blood. “What manner of light runs through your veins?” He scraped every drop into a clay dish.

“This,” he told the star, herding her back into the cage, “must be the source of your power. I’ll let you go once it’s mine. I just want my art back.”

Then, disregarding the burns on his wrist, he dipped his brush in the blood and waited for the outpouring of inspiration.

When nothing happened, he swore. “Why isn’t this working?”

He hurled the dish at the wall, where it splintered. A sliver of red-brown clay rebounded and punctured the side of his thumb. Cursing, he ripped it out.

The lips of the cut grazed the silvery blood on the shard, and the man drew in a loud breath when the cut not only closed but vanished altogether. The burns on his wrist, too, were gone, the skin whole as if they had never been.

“So your blood does have power,” he said, his mouth contorting into a slow plague of a smile. “Just not the kind I thought.” The star made no reply, but it was too late. He knew.

The man left without another word, abandoning the whimpering star in her cage. When he returned, he carried a clinking satchel. “You stole my vision from me,” he hissed, “and now I must find another way to make a living. There are many who would pay for what your blood can do.”

“No,” she begged. “Just let me return home. I will say nothing of this to anyone; you have my word. Only let me go.”