“Neeti.” I clasped her wrist, stopping her from pinning my blouse. “Will you tell my father I am ill and cannot attend?”
“Are you ill?” Neeti asked, her thick eyebrows furrowing in concern. She was shorter than me, and one hand worried her braid as she reached up for my forehead with the other. I ducked out of her grip.
“No,” I said. “But please, can you do this for me?”
She looked uncertain. “I could get in a lot of trouble,” she said. “Please, Yuvradnyi, can you not just go?”
I entered the Binding Plane, the mantra racing through my mind. It was becoming easier each time. It’s a small lie; you can do it, I told the dark orange bond between us. “You know everything that has happened,” I said to her, trying to make myself look as small as possible. “I only want a bit of time.”
At this, her wide mouth softened in sympathy. “It must be very hard,” she said. “I am so sorry. I suppose this is a small thing. Yes, I will do it, Yuvradnyi. Do not worry.”
My heart warmed at her affection, and I wondered if I had even needed to use the Binding Plane. Neeti was my friend, after all.
Neeti turned to go, and only when she reached the door did I realize I had not even thanked her. “Wait!” I called. I reached into my secret stash of sweets and offered a handful to her. “Thank you,” I said. “Perhaps you can tell me about the goat next time?”
She popped one in her mouth immediately, the dimple in her cheek flashing in delight. “Of course, Yuvradnyi.” She took a small step toward me. “You… you can come and find me if you would like,” she said. “If you are ever lonely.” She bowed and took her leave.
I stood where she had left me, my eyes feeling hot. Nobody else had thought about whether I might be lonely, a girl in a family of men.
I scrubbed at my eyes with my hands. I had a task to do.
The corridors were deserted and dim with shadows. I made my way to the library quickly and tore through scroll after scroll, searching the shelves for any mention of the Binding Plane or the strange, shimmering threads.
I found all sorts of stories, tales of the gods granting wondrous powers and even bringing mortals to the brink of immortality—but always in exchange for great penance. The more I read, the more my heart sank; it seemed unlikely the gods had chosen to grant me a boon when I had done no such thing. But I could find no example of my own experience either, of anyone discovering such magic in meditation, and unaided.
In the end, I took with me several more guides on the practice of meditation, hoping that the exercises in them might contain more hidden secrets.
I was to be disappointed as far as further secrets, but the meditation instructions helped me in another way: They taught me to focus my mind. It became easier and easier to use the Binding Plane to get what I wanted. Not only could I enter the Plane more smoothly as I practiced, but I could stay there for longer spans of time.
All of us children spent our mornings seated in a small chamber on flat cushions before low wooden desks, where tutors instructed us in reading, writing, and basic mathematics, which I enjoyed well enough. But only I was forced to endure weekly instruction in the arts, for princes were not expected to learn such gentle crafts—embroidery and weaving, painting and so on. My instruction was overseen by a number of minor noblewomen, women who had attended to my mother and would one day attend to the new radnyi. I never felt they much liked me, and now, with my mother gone, I was even more uncomfortable among them. I was useless to them, too young and unimportant to have attendants of their status, and they barely tolerated my clumsy efforts at the arts I cared little for.
Could the Binding Plane be put to use in my favor here as well? If my mother had been here, I never would have attempted it, knowing how important she deemed these skills. She was an excellent painter, her renderings joyful and unrestrained, marked with bright splashes of color that delighted even my untrained eye. While I thought her work beautiful, I had no desire to follow in her footsteps, though I doubted any magical manipulation would have altered her resolve.
But had she still been here, I would not have found the Plane at all. Now I had to move myself through a world that did not contain her.
“I do not wish to do this today,” I said, putting down my brush.
The woman—Medha, or Megha, I could never remember her name—did not even look up from her sewing. “Your father says you must, so you will.”
“My father does not know if I come here or not,” I said, finding a thin gray cord between us in the Binding Plane and sending the same sentiment to her.