Star Daughter(61)

In the other neighboring suite, Sachin and Jürgen started flirting. Loudly. Sheetal’s eyes widened to what had to be shojo manga proportions. She didn’t know any German beyond ich liebe dich and Rotweinkuchen, but like with the Sanskrit in the library, she understood every suggestive syllable just fine, and besides, talking wasn’t the only thing they were doing.

Someone really needed to tell the stars about soundproofing. What was the German word for awkward?

“Some of us need to sleep!” she called, knocking hard on both walls, but the noises didn’t stop.

Sighing in defeat, Sheetal mashed her face against the pillow. The anger that had been driving her yielded to something softer, sadder. With her guard down, Dev’s indifference at dinner, the way he wouldn’t even look at her, came right back, and Sheetal’s stomach soured, as sick as if it had just happened.

Gods, she missed him so much it hurt. It wasn’t fair. She was burning, literally burning, to ask what he thought about all this. To hear him laugh at how seriously everyone else was taking the competition and sneak her a chocolate-covered cherry like he sometimes did at school. To ask him exactly what he’d felt when she’d inspired him.

Pain crushed her heart with a claw-tipped fist. Was he even thinking about her?

She didn’t want to be mad at him anymore. She didn’t even want to be mad at Nani. She just wanted everyone to quit deciding things for her. Why was that so much to ask?

The dam holding everything back since she’d run out of Dev’s house, since she’d hurt Dad, burst, and she cried a reservoir’s worth of tears into the cool, soft pillow. Be this. Don’t be that. Do this. Don’t do that. She’d tried. She’d tried so hard. And she’d still put Dad in the hospital.

Was there no place for her the way she was, star and mortal? Just Sheetal?

If so, no one was telling.

It wasn’t fair. None of it was. She cried, shoulders shaking, until the pillow was waterlogged, until her eyes stung and her nose leaked, until she couldn’t cry anymore.

Instead of being exhausted enough to pass out, she lay like a lump on the bed, alternating thoughts of Dad and Rati’s offer whooshing through her head. Fan-freakin’-tastic.

A few feet over, Minal turned and murmured something, probably dreaming of starry ladies-in-waiting with jasmine blossoms in their hair.

Sheetal thought about waking her up but decided against it. What could Minal do? She knew who she was. She didn’t have to worry about silver hair spitting out dye or silver fire shooting up randomly from tingling palms.

She knew where she belonged, and right then, Sheetal really resented her for it.

Instead, she got up and moved to the window. She stared at the great dark sky that arced over everything like an infinite ocean, taking in the uncountable coruscating stars, and wished as hard as she could. Her palms pressed against the glass, she wished and wished, fiery desires that left her lips as soft song—a call to the sidereal melody.

She swam in the night’s glittering waves, feeling them flow in and out of her with each breath, nourishing her. It felt so good to sing for herself, with no one listening, no one judging.

As she watched, beyond the window, the faces of the stars became clear. Most were from outside the royal court, the commoners, if such a thing could be said of stars, but the court was present, too. Sheetal picked out Nani, Nana, Charumati, Padmini, Kaushal, and even Rati.

She pored over their features, all glorious, all serene. She took in the way they flared against the heavens, both person and ball of flame.

If she reached out, she could almost touch them. . . .

Their song came to her gradually, silence ripening into something more. She could be among them, could ascend to her rightful place in the constellation. In the sky. In the cosmos, where everything was born of the play of shine and shadow, fire and frost.

Here, there was no pain, no disappointment. No estranged boyfriends, no dying dads. No self-doubt.

Join us.

In that moment of dream and dance, Sheetal wanted nothing more.

She lifted a hand to the heavens. Someone, she wasn’t sure who, reached out in return, and once their fingers met, Sheetal stepped through a door dark as night. Her mortal eyes fluttered shut, and when she opened them again, she was the sky.

No, that was wrong. She wore the sky, had wrapped it about her like shadow-stained silk. She danced with it, within it, spinning softly, so softly, a sway here, a slow turn there. She whirled and floated, twirled and dipped, changed places with partners, and changed again.

She breathed her family, sang their story. Their flesh was her flesh, their skin her skin.

Here, there was no question of being liked, only of belonging.

The light, the song, laced itself through her, knitting her to the nakshatra. With luminescent eyes, she saw the spirits of the stars passing over the sky, blazing across millennia. She saw the beginning and the end, and she swirled past everything in between.

Stars were born; stars died. A sun blinked out; a black hole loomed. Below, in the mortal realm, a queen conquered; a fool felled a king. An artist painted; an assassin slew. How fast, how brief, these mortal lives. A twinkle of a star’s lifespan.

Yet they smoldered with a fire all their own, these humans. They raged with passion and creativity, nurtured by the dust of the stars, the glistening marrow of silver bones.

Humans needed stars, Sheetal thought as she watched her mother in orbit, and stars needed humans. They were all part of the great drama, the slow and continuous spiral of creation and destruction, and they all played their roles.