Chapter Thirty-One: Asha

“—you believe how tiny she is? Thought the feeders were using clever camera angles.”

Cold.

Head hurts.

I am on the paddock floor and the dirt is chilly against my back because it is morning. Mani and I woke up early so he could train me without anyone knowing. He thinks that if they see how good I am they will let me try and fit in more. No one but he and Mama know how good of a hunter I am, or how well I can sing and dance. They try to ignore me but it is hard for them to do that when they are glaring with their minds. It is getting harder to shut them out as I grow older, and the elders have started looking at each other pointedly when I am near. One of them should be training me because I am so strong. But neither of them want to because I am a half-breed. And so my head hurts and it becomes hard to walk down the center of the village when everyone is awake and resentful.

Mani stretches his hand out and smiles. “Most people get thrown from horses, not fall off.”

I scowl and rub at the back of my head. “Did you see the butterfly?”

“Yes, Asha-na,” he chuckles, pulling me to my feet. “But pay attention. Everyone else will be awake soon.”

I nod and vault back onto the mare like he taught me to yesterday. She snorts, but does what I tell her with my knees as my fingers bury into her mane and I inhale her life and feel her breathing beneath me. We settle into a rhythm as we circle the pen, and soon I am leaning over, cheek pressed to her neck, eyes shut. Mani tells me what to tell her to do, and soon she and I are responding as one. I want to make her jump the fence and run with her, but I cannot leave my brother.

Father would find me if I did. And he would not be happy I had tried to steal a village mare.

“—ould that bag be empty like that?”

“Not sure. Doctor will come by in an hour or so, anyway, and dope her up again. Looks like she's out cold, regardless.”

“Shouldn't she have a blanket?”

“Does it look like she's feeling much of anything right now?”

Cold. I want to shiver but I cannot. My body will not obey my mind.

Father is standing over me, glowering down to where I am collapsed on the floor. My lungs burn and my back hurts because he has punished me for being rude to one of the village children. I want to get up and stare back into his eyes but my muscles will not move anymore because they are sore. Tomorrow I will be bruised and Mani will give me a back rub when everyone else is out on their hunt to make me feel better but for now I have to stay on the floor.

“How many times do I have to tell you what your place is, girl?” he growls, and Mama lowers her eyes. She knows. She wishes I would give up and learn.

“—believe how long her hair is? Look at those braids!”

“I'll bet it's even longer loose.”

“Probably, but none of us have seen it. Doc refuses to brush it. Says it would be impolite or something. He's Midbaran, you know.”

Mama runs a comb through my hair gently and hums. I listen for a few moments, then hum along in harmony. She rubs at my shoulder happily and keeps brushing. The beads are drawn across the door. Mani used to sit and sing with us but Mama says I am too old now and will not let him in.

“I do not care if he sees, Mama. Why do you?”

She sighs at the back of my head. “You are too old to be running around with your hair loose. It is improper.”

I frown. “I am never going to marry. Why should I bother?”

Her face falls, and I feel bad for hurting her. “Asha-na... we do not do this for other people.” Her fingers braid my hair deftly, and soon it is hidden again, and tied off at the end.

I turn to look at her but I still do not understand. Words are making less and less sense as I get older. “It is a reminder, Asha-na. It is not you trying to fit in. That would be unfair. It is you reminding them that they should respect you because you have done nothing wrong.”

Not like I have, she thinks.

“—never have seen it loose, now that I think of it. She's always got it braided on the feeds.”

“Been on Kiran long enough to have modernized a bit, don't you think? I wonder why she keeps pretending she's a Native.”

There is something about his voice that I do not like. The town was too loud today, and so I took my knife and went to the woods where my head would not ache as much. No one was supposed to be hunting today, so I could not understand why I opened my eyes and found the elder's son and three others standing over me. Their minds hit me hard and I curl in on myself.

“Sanjay, leave her alone. Your dad says she is going crazy.”

“Can you feel how confused she is? How did she even make it out here?”

I shake my head and try to sit up, but he shoves me over and straddles my thighs. He is three years older than I am and heavy with muscle. His hands press on either side of my face and force me to open my eyes.

“She would be pretty if those eyes were not so blue,” he laughs, and the others close in around us. I try to pull away but his knee is on my braid. I hiss as my scalp burns, and he looks down to see why I am in pain.

“—want to see it.”

“Stan, if anyone walks in—”

“No one is going to care. She's a seeder.”

“We're still not supposed to—”

“Let go,” I gasp, but then I lose words inside of their emotions. He sits back and looks me over, then pulls my braid free from under his knee.

“Sanjay....” says one of the boys, but he is cut off.

“What? Nobody is going to do anything about it. Her blood father is gone, and dad says Dev wanted to let her die of exposure but was not allowed.”

Sanjay undoes the tie and threads his fingers through my hair, loosening it slowly. I want to struggle and glare but they have too many emotions for me to feel too and so I am useless. Mani!

“She is calling for that brother of hers.” The shortest boy shifts from foot to foot and feels sick to his stomach.

“What, the one that is in love with her? He probably wants to see as much as I do,” Sanjay mutters, and his fingers reach my scalp and then fan my hair out around me. He is leaning too far forward and I can feel his breath on my face.

“Sanjay, we should just go.” They like the feel of him against me as little as I do.

“Go on if you want. We were not doing anything fun, anyway.”

“—Stan, she's crying. I think she's awake.”

“The doctor would be here if she were. It's the only reason why we have him.”

“That's my point. He's probably on his way now.”

“How hard is it to redo a braid?”

Head hurts. The other boys are not leaving and Sanjay feels too warm against me. I close my eyes but that just makes my stomach ache more. Sanjay lowers his face even with mine and laughs in that way I have hated since I could remember.

“It really is too bad no one will train her to keep her mind. She is going to be as pretty as her mother.” He smells my hair and I try to sit up but he shoves me back over into the dirt. “It is a waste.”

I find his mind and see what he is thinking, finally, and grow angry. “I have done nothing wrong!”

He laughs. “True. Just because your mother is a whore doesn't mean you will be. Maybe I'll take you, Asha, if you keep your eyes closed so I don't have to see how hideous they are.”

“—Stan, redo the braid. She's awake.”

“She's dreaming.”

The others are upset now, and so they realize that Sanjay is kissing me before I do.

My knife is at my hip. My hands are not pinned. He sits up in confusion as he feels me move beneath him, and when I slice his cheek open the blood ruins my leathers in seconds. I think that I am screaming, but it could be Sanjay. Birds make angry noises in the trees and my hands are being pinned by his friends as he clutches at his face and stares at me in rage.

“I will kill her! Crazy bitch!” He lunges for me, and so I use the weight of my captors to help me kick him in the nose.

“—ose, my fucking nose! Am I bleeding?”

“Stan, let's just go! Fix her fucking hair and let's go!”

Cold. Head hurts. I am sitting upright in a strange metal bed and there is a tube in my arm. An angry man with black hair is clutching at his face and glaring at me. I want to rebraid my hair but cannot because of the tube in my arm but when I take it off I am bleeding and my eyes water. Something is wrong with my head because I cannot focus in on the people in the room. My vision goes black and I am falling—

“Asha? Asha-na!” Arms around me, but not Mani. Ashok, my eldest brother. He hates me. Why is he so worried?

“I do not hate you, you silly—whose blood is this?” His hands run over my face and feel for cuts as he thinks of Father and why he has no choice but to ignore me.

“Why can I not see you?” There is something wrong with my voice.

“Because it is dark out. Mama is worried sick, and Father has been at Sanjay's since—” Suddenly he understands, and his mind grows hard with anger. I close my eyes and drift as he carries me back to town with my hair politely twisted and hidden under me so no one will see that it is loose.

“—an you hear me, Ms. Indrani?”

“Nanda is not here,” I mutter. But Ashok should not even know he existed. Head hurts

“Who did this?” My arm burns at the elbow and feels suddenly stiff.

“Sanjay.”

Ashok sighs and shakes his head but is thinking that it is nice that he can be on my side for once. He has never liked Sanjay.

Mama has just finished re-braiding my hair when Ashok tells her there is someone at the door. Bala, Sanjay's younger sister, is standing in our living room. Mother feels as surprised as I am to see her because she is not allowed to associate with our family. She is so nervous that I almost vomit.

“Father wants you to see to Sanjay.” She does not meet mama's eyes.

She sighs and takes a battered case made of a strange material out from the storage corner. “Come with me, Asha-na. Elder Chande will want to see you.”

“I am not sure—” Bala stutters, but mama silences her and walks to the Elder's house. They are sitting by the fireplace where it is light. Dev stops inspecting the wound on Sanjay's face when I come into view.

“Aditi, how dare you bring her in here after what she has done to Sanjay?” His voice is so cold that it makes me flinch, but mama pushes me further into the room. We ignore his thoughts of how we both will pay later for embarrassing him. Elder Chande should have known better than to offer him rice wine.

“I will need help to see to Sanjay's face, and no one else knows how.”

Sanjay's father stares at me coldly, then pales. “Girl, what happened to your leathers?”

I stare at the floor, but he is in my mind, and can feel Sanjay on me. His roar of rage makes me lose my balance.

“You lied to me! You said that she attacked you!” I feel him dig through the jumble of thoughts in my head, but his rage has me so shaken that it takes a long time for him to piece the scene together. He does not like what he sees, but the look on Sanjay's face makes me know better than to be pleased that it is he being punished instead of me like they had all thought.

Hands are at my shoulders and there is pressure at my back. When did I fall over? “Asha.”

“I did nothing wrong!”

“I know, Asha. Open your eyes.” I do, and there is blinding light. Head hurts. False light. Elder Chande had no false light.

“You have been dreaming. You need to tell me who attacked you.” He is not the Elder. He is a Midbaran and he has no place in my village even though he is speaking in Native.

My eyes water. “I told you. Sanjay!”

The man sighs and shakes his head. “They are making me up your dose, Asha. It is not going to make you less confused. I am sorry.”

He is a doctor. I am in a hospital! My elbow burns again, and I am about to ask where Reid-Desmond are-if Seamus is okay but the room spins and my voice fails me. I feel a hand close in mine and hear someone singing softly and drift back down away from the false light and the pain in my arm and head.

I am sick in my room and there are only occasional flashes of light and words from languages that do not exist on my planet. But then mama comes and wakes me up to tell me I need to go to Elder Chande's.

“He has decided to teach you to control yourself.” And so each day I sit and talk with him and try to ignore Sanjay sitting in the corner and staring and waiting for his face to heal. My knife has marked him and he will never forgive me because the scar will not let me forget. The Elder is doing what he can to apologize but it will not fix the problem. He wants me to find a focus but I have nothing to fall back on but the angry pink line crossing Sanjay's right cheek and so I do poorly and do not improve like he is expecting. One day he worries that he waited for too long and that I will go crazy and I start to cry.

“It is too late for her, Father,” Sanjay snarls after I collapse on their floor. He has been staring at me for weeks now and it is making me shake. “Give up and let her die.”

“You do not make decisions for this village yet,” he replies mildly. “Try again, Asha. Keep together.” We are both angry at Sanjay and for a moment I am me even though inside my head the village is roaring.

I can think clearly if I clench my fists. Sometimes my hands bleed but at least I can walk through the center of the village without swaying like Father after a festival. It almost works until the day I feel Mani die. I sob and scream and try to control my body but I cannot and my arm burns again. I have nothing left to hang on to and am pulled under to drown in their minds and voices and loathing.

“Stan, you keep upsetting her. Leave her alone before they get suspicious.”

“It's fun. Did you know she actually starts sweating when I walk into her room now?”

He is everywhere. Sanjay follows me when the others are out on hunts. He has not touched me again but he torments me with his mind and then smiles when I break down and cry. When I see him-feel his mind, I shake and am useless and so Elder Chande and I make no progress. He thinks it is Mani and that I will get better with time, but the way Sanjay smiles at me when no one is looking means he is wrong.

“—ould stop fucking with her before someone gets suspicious.”

“Not until we've passed the message along like we promised. Stop being such a worrier.”

“Almost got us caught last time Stan, you bastard.”

“It will be worth it when you see the figures.”

Elder Chande comes to the house to see me and mama and Dev but I will not come inside until I have been told Sanjay is not with him. I feel clear for the first time in days until he tells me why he is there.

“My son wishes to marry you.”

Dev laughs, then chokes on his drink when he realizes the Elder is serious. “Her? Why?”

But no one answers because I am crying.

“Asha, what's wrong?” No, the words are all wrong. For a moment it is too bright and my eyes are complaining about the false light, but my vision clears when the Elder sends mama and Dev away to speak with me alone.

“I cannot,” I gasp.

“You would be safer under my roof than you are here with Dev.”

“Sanjay hates me!”

Elder Chande sighs. “He wishes he did. Asha, you are a very pretty woman, and you are likely to become smart and capable with more guidance. That will never happen to you here in this house, and my family is the only one that will not lose face by associating themselves with a half-breed.”

“No, no, no,” I sob and curl into a ball. But I am not given a choice. Dev wants me to go away and mama and the Elder believe that they are helping me even though every time I am around Sanjay my hands twitch and shake. I think of his skin against mine again like in the woods and choke when I realize that every day he would do it again and the scar would be thick and close on his face.

“—sha, can you hear me? Try to wake up. It's not safe. He's coming back, and I'm worried about what he'll do but the doctor won't listen—”

Sanjay's friends do not understand, and more than one of them try to warn me. I tell them that I already know and we all feel hopeless. I keep thinking about what Mani would do if he were here and cry because no one else cares enough to help even though many are worried.

“What did you say to her?”

“Nothing, Stan. She's dreaming again.”

Can't dream when you're awake. Reid said that once to me but I cannot remember why. The room is too bright. I see the outline of five people before my arm burns again and I drift away from the false light for another time.

I decide to leave. Mani is gone, and there is nothing else for me here. I would rather be alone where I can think than in this village with all these people with their thoughts that make no sense. I wait until the house is silent before I sneak out, but I forgot that Dev was night-hunting. He finds me at the edge of the village.

“What do you think you are doing, girl?” He growls like a hunter but I keep standing even though my arm burns.

“I am leaving.”

“She shouldn't even be able to move on that much medicine. The doctor was sure we were killing her!”

Pain flares at my cheek. He always hits when I am distracted. I could stagger, but if I did he would pounce.

“Well, that didn't even register. Looks like she's sleepwalking.”

He hits again and pain flares in my ribs. As I fold around his fist, another blow strikes at my face and I feel my lip split open. My eyes widen in pain and shock, and the room comes visible.

Room? I blink, and taste blood as I gasp through the pain.

“Welcome, little one.” A dark shape moves but everything is too bright. A fist darts out and I block it, but cannot stop the kick that brings me to my knees. I smell them as they close in around me like trees.

“I owe you for breaking my nose,” comes a voice. Familiar.

“Stan?” For a moment, my eyes clear and I meet blue angry eyes with my own.

“Shit. Shit. Quick!” he shrieks, and my mind is filled with red and white for a long time before blackness finally retakes my nerves.