Ah. That made more sense.
“How will we rectify this, Raja?” Kaushalya murmured.
“I have arranged to perform a great Yagna in a fortnight. We will sacrifice our best animals, offer our best foods, and pray that one of you will bear a child.”
Sumitra clapped her hands together, but I had her measure well enough by then to know without checking that she only feigned enthusiasm. She believed herself fully barren, despite evidence it might be Dasharath’s fault.
“What should we do to prepare?” she asked.
“I have consulted the city’s sages. They tell me there are purification rituals you must undertake. Our court sage will instruct you. And you must fast for the next fortnight.”
Despite knowing such rituals were unlikely to work for me, I was willing to try, not only for myself and my kingdom, but for the promise Dasharath had made me in my father’s throne room.
And so, I forced myself to observe every preparation for the Yagna. I fasted for two weeks, subsisting on water and the occasional fruit, hiding my irritation that Dasharath, as a man, was allowed to eat freely. It was another inequality that I had been ignorant of. How many poor women had undergone similar rituals, forced to go about their days with only a few sips of water? How many were forced to fast during their cycle? It was a small indignity, not as bad as the laws that prohibited women from speaking in public or forced illegitimate daughters into a life of poverty, but it rankled me.
By the day of the Yagna, none of us could contain our irritation. Dasharath had promised us an enormous feast afterward, but that seemed so far away when servants woke us before dawn to bathe.
“Sage Rishyasringa better move quickly,” Sumitra griped as we began dressing. Her usually sunny disposition had fully faded in the face of the court sage’s potential long-windedness.
“I might eat whatever animals they sacrifice,” Kaushalya added, pulling on her shift with more force than strictly necessary.
I groaned. “I might eat Sage Rishyasringa himself.”
They both stared at me, and I thought I had gone too far—but then the room echoed with their peals of laughter.
“Not nearly meaty enough,” Sumitra joked.
“Well, he has those horns and a little tail. Perhaps he would taste like goat meat,” Kaushalya said, her voice remarkably even for someone speaking so ludicrously. It was common knowledge among the court that Rishyasringa’s mother had been an apsara, a dancing spirit in the court of the gods, who had been cursed to live in the form of a deer. The gods liked to remind apsaras of their place, lest they get too arrogant in their beauty—Brahma had fashioned Ahalya to humble the apsaras too.
Born of a human father and a divine deer, Rishyasringa was a renowned sage, even if he took after his mother in some respects.
“Just a few more hours. When the sun sets, we can eat.” My stomach rumbled agreement.
“You know what I want?” Sumitra asked. “Kheer. I want kheer.”
I made a fake gagging sound. “I hate kheer. I don’t think even now I’m hungry enough to eat it. It’s so… grainy.”
Kaushalya flicked my shoulder. “If you can eat Sage Rishyasringa, you can eat kheer.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” I said. “But there will be many other desserts at the feast. Gulab jamun—I could eat one hundred of those.” The delicious fried dough soaked in rose-flavored sugar syrup had been my favorite dessert for as long as I could remember.
“Only if there’s a hundred for me too,” Kaushalya said. “Otherwise, I will fight you for them.”
I laughed. “You would lose.”
“Would I?” Kaushalya asked, voice cool, and I worried again that hunger had loosened my tongue overmuch. Then Kaushalya dissolved into a fit of giggles. The hunger had turned us all hysterical. We struggled to dress ourselves. When our handmaidens entered the preparation rooms, the sun had barely risen over the horizon. Their deft fingers undid and redid our clothes, fastened jewelry.
Asha snuck each of us a small peach, and despite the fact that we were not supposed to eat until the feast, we devoured them as if they were the choicest dish in the entire kingdom.
“That just made me hungrier,” I groaned. When no one was looking, I quickly licked a drop of juice from my finger.
Asha only grinned at me. “You’re welcome.” She acted far more familiar toward me than a servant normally would. She had become a friend, and the thick braid of green between us proved that.
A sudden pang of sorrow shot through me, for the way she treated me made me think of Yudhajit. I missed him dearly. He had been wrong to send me away, even if he had been right about my life in Ayodhya. I might have swallowed my pride and apologized for the chance to get my brother back. But the door was closed, and the bond broken.