Rebel Queen by Michelle Moran Read Free Book Online Page B

“Well, it’s all over now. There’s not a man in Barwa Sagar we could trick into taking her.”
    I was in too much pain to see Shivaji that day. Instead, I stood in front of my small basket of playthings and ran my hands over each one in turn. When I was a little girl, my father had given me two cloth dolls, a wooden horse, and a small block carved into the shape of a bear. I took out the doll with long black hair and held her in my lap. I could remember how I used to give the doll a voice and walk her around my room, but doing this now seemed silly. I was twelve years old.
    I sat at my desk and thought about other girls my age. The ones who had become women, like me, were preparing to leave their homes, overseeing the packing of their bridal chests and saying farewell to their families. In this way, I was much luckier than they were. I would never have to bid Father good-bye, knowingthat the next time I would see him would likely be on his funeral pyre. I could stay in his home, watch Anuja grow, sleep in my own bed, and eat Avani’s mushy lentils until I undertook the rani’s trial, which might not be called for many years yet. But then, if I succeeded in becoming a member of the Durga Dal, I would also never marry. And I would certainly never have children. I would belong to the rani from that moment on.
    “What are you doing?” Anuja asked, joining me in my room. She was three and always filled with questions, like a lidded pot holding back too much steam.
    “Thinking.”
    Anuja climbed onto my lap. “Can I think with you?”
    She not only had Mother’s delicate face, but her tenderness, too. She always wanted to know why Grandmother yelled at her or why the baby bird outside our window had died. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow, Hamlet says. But there was no explaining that to her. “Yes.”
    She was quiet for a moment. Then curiosity got the better of her. “Why aren’t you practicing with Shivaji?”
    “Because he gave me the day off,” I improvised. “He said, ‘Go and find Anuja and tell her that today Sita is going to teach her how to hold a sword.’ ”
    “No swords.” My sister shook her curly head. “I want to play with Mooli.” This was her toy cat, since real cats weren’t allowed in our house.
    “But we played with Mooli yesterday.”
    She snuggled her head against my chest. “Then will you read me a story?”
    I closed my eyes and imagined having a conversation with someone who understood how hard it was to train so relentlessly and wait for a day you weren’t even sure you wanted to arrive. Certainly there were hundreds of women preparing for the next trial in Jhansi, the city where Maharaja Gangadhar Rao and his rani resided. But in my village, I was unique.
    So when Anuja laid her soft head against my chest, I wished, more than anything else in the world, that she was old enough to understand what my training was like. I rubbed my calf, which was sore from the previous day’s training. “A story . . .” I tried to think of one. “How about the tale of The Peacock and the Turtle ?”
    She nodded and I began.

    I t might have been true that nearly every family in Barwa Sagar had heard Father and Grandmother’s fight after Mother’s funeral, and it was certainly true that everyone in my house knew Father’s feelings about either of his daughters ever becoming devadasis, but so long as Grandmother was alive, there was a very good chance that if something happened to my father, we would end up in a temple anyway. You might wonder how this could be, but if my father died, who would actually step forward to welcome two extra girls into their home? Aunt had children of her own; her husband wasn’t going to work harder to feed and clothe my sister and I for as long as we lived, since that was what would be required. I was too old to be marriageable, and since no trial had been announced I was not even earning money for Anuja’s dowry fortune as a member of the