Rebel Queen by Michelle Moran Read Free Book Online Page A

would be accepted into the rani’s Durga Dal and become a member of the elite Royal Guard. True to his word, he enlisted our neighbor Shivaji to help prepare me for the day when one of the rani’s Durgavasi retired. It could happen in a month or in five years—we didn’t know—but whenever it occurred, I had to be ready, for the rani always had ten women protecting her, and as soon as one retired a trial would immediately be held to find her replacement.
    Although Shivaji had three sons at home, he came to our house for several hours each day to train me. I was the only child in our village rising before dawn to begin lessons in poetry, Sanskrit, English, Hindi, and all of the martial skills the Durga Dal required: swordsmanship, shooting, fighting, archery. Before we began my mind was filled with the swashbuckling tales I had read with Father: The Three Musketeers and ballads about Robin Hood. I wore a new pair of nagraslippers for my first day of training: they were plain leather with simple red and gold lotus designs, but I thought they were the most exotic things I’d ever seen.
    “You see these thick leather soles?” my father wrote, turning the shoes over when he presented them to me. “These will keep you from slipping.”
    “Can I wear these every day?” I couldn’t believe my luck.
    “Yes. Especially when it’s raining.”
    “And what about those?” I pointed to a greenangarkha he’d brought in with the shoes; a cotton, knee-length shirt that was fitted at the waist.
    “Yes. And these churidars,” he said, holding up a pair of green pants. I had never worn pants before. They were tight at the ankles and waist, but loose and airy in the legs for quick movement. With a white piece of cloth, or muretha, tied around my head to keep the sweat from dripping into my eyes, I felt powerful.
    But the truth of it was far different: nothing is less glamorous than being woken from your bed in the predawn chill to set up a target and shoot arrows at it not once, but a hundred, even two hundred times, until all of your shots hit their mark. In the summers, the heat in my village was suffocating. In the winters, when the wind blew like a river of cold air, I could feel it in my bones, no matter how many layers I would dress myself in. When you’re standing in an open courtyard with a frozen scimitar in your hands, fighting against a man who is more than three times your size, there is very little that feels like something out of The Three Musketeers . It is hard, grueling work.
    But I learned how to fight using only a stick. And how to sever a man’s head with a single stroke of my sword. And in case I was ever rendered weaponless, I learned how to defend myself with punches, kicks, choke holds, and shoulder grabs. Day after day I practiced these moves until they came as effortlessly to me as walking or running.
    And over several years, I metamorphosed from Sita the childinto someone else. At first, the changes were subtle. Muscles appeared in my arms and legs that had never been defined before. My hands, which had once been full and soft, grew strong and callused. Then, the physical changes became more obvious. My waist grew narrower, my cheeks more hollow. The roundness of childhood was gone. In its place was a tall, lean girl who could carry heavy rocks from one end of the courtyard to another, morning after morning, and still not feel fatigued. She was a girl who could swing a metal sword, carry a man’s burden of wheat on her back, and lift multiple buckets of water with both arms. Sita the child could do none of these things. She’d been an average girl with average strength. Now, I was probably the strongest woman in Barwa Sagar.
    On the first morning I bled, I told Avani, who let Grandmother know I had become a woman. It felt more frightening to me than anything I had learned with Shivaji in the courtyard, and Grandmother’s rage didn’t help. I could hear her in the kitchen, shouting at Avani,