Chandini
“You are ruining your life!” her mother said. “You will never marry, and then what? You have never labored in the field or hunched over needle and thread.”
Her mother snorted. “You? You are not learned, you cannot read, you are a woman. If you think running out into the woods—”
“Muya?” The name fell from her lips before she could stop it, even though she knew her elderly parents were hovering behind the doorway.
“Always with the questions,” he grumbled, but then grew serious. “An army is coming to raid this town. If you want to be safe, then we must leave.”
Chandini drew away from him. “I know you do not think much of my people, Muya, but I do.”
“It will do you no good to die with them,” he hissed. Others gathered around them but perceived only a curious buzzing, Muya’s words too garbled to make out. “There are other humans in other places, if that is what you crave.”
“Muya, do you care about me?” Chandini pressed a hand to her chest. He usually spoke to her with a calculated disinterest as he taught her the ways of wielding his magic and power.
“No,” he said calmly. Then, after a beat, “Yes, of course. You’re my… my—”
“Friend?” Chandini asked, laughing when Muya turned even redder. “Then you will find another way.”
Muya stood still for a moment, considering. “I suppose we could hide this house from notice.”
“But what about my friends, and cousins? I would be sad without them.”
Muya rolled his eyes. “This street then.”
“Then my cousins’ cousins will die.”
“At this rate, you’ll have me hiding this entire town,” Muya said, sarcasm dripping from his voice.
“Yes, that’s the idea,” she said, smiling sweetly.
“You—I—” She saw the moment the fight left him. “I’m not sure that’s possible.”
“Are you a demon of ignorance or not?”
“Even the greatest of my kind could not do it,” he said. “But there may be another way. Come, there is little time.” He grabbed her by the wrist and began to pull her along, leaving her parents and neighbors in a confused haze behind her.
Muya took her along the main path out of the town. “I am going to give you more of my power,” he said. “It will take two of us to achieve this. You have to trust me.”
She snorted.
“Have I ever lied to you?”
“No,” she conceded. “It is amusing all the same. How will this power be any different from the other gifts you have given me?”
“I’m not giving you a gift. I’m giving you a part of me. When you die, it will return to me.”
There was no more time to explain further, for just then the promised army came into view, camped in tents around the bend. Chandini gasped when she saw it.
“Follow my lead,” Muya said. “When the time comes, you must pretend to be ill and spread that illness to others. Meanwhile, I will make the town look different than it is.”
“You’re not making any sense!” Chandini felt a sharp pain burrowing into her skull and tried not to cry out as the heat of it settled within her.
She felt a sparking at her fingertips, unusual even among the gifts Muya had given her.
When she looked up, she saw someone approaching, their garb denoting importance.
“Please, help!” Muya cried out. “Thank the gods, the soldiers of the emperor are here. You will aid us, yes? Oh, we are saved!”
Chandini schooled her face into an expression of desperation, and with a light touch of her gift, ensured that all those around her remained ignorant of her true self.
“Where do you flee from?” the man demanded. Soldiers ran to flank him, and Chandini saw cruelty in their bearing. These men would tear the town apart if allowed.
“Supara,” Muya said. “There is a horrible illness overtaking Supara. That is why you have come, yes? To render aid?”
The man squinted suspiciously. “We have heard of no illness.”
“It starts as a cough, and weakness. But then comes the rash of boils,” Muya told him, horror emanating from his voice.
“They do not heal. All who develop them die. Nothing is working, not the old remedies, or the new. They have taken to burning the homes of all afflicted, but my wife and I know there is no safety there. Oh, please, take us to your capital.”
Chandini forced the tears to come, to fall down her face.
“You,” the man ordered a soldier, “go to the gates and tell me if it is true. You two wait here. How fast does the disease progress?”
“Sometimes in a matter of minutes. Other times it takes longer, but it generally spreads quickly,” Muya said.
For a moment, even Chandini was taken in by the sheer power of Muya’s speech.
Chandini coughed. She did not fake it well, but Muya’s power—no, her power—fell thick around her, and when she lifted her hand to her mouth, a boil appeared on the back of it. “No,” Muya whispered. “No!”
Just then the soldier came running back. “Sire, there is smoke rising from the town! There are dead bodies outside the gates. It must be as they said.”
The man flinched away from Chandini and Muya. Chandini coughed again and willed the soldier to be ignorant of his own body, to think himself sick, and in a moment he doubled over, coughing alongside her.
The others recoiled and drew their tunics over their faces.
“Stay back!” one of the men shouted.
Chandini collapsed on the ground and willed the soldier unconscious as well. Muya crouched over her body, pretending to tend to her.
“I can’t believe it worked,” she whispered.
“There is a price,” he said. “What I have given you—you are more like me now. Not a demon, but… you must be careful in the mortal world. You may hurt someone.”
“A blessing and a curse,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “It was all I could think of.” With Muya’s face tipped close and his power now hers, Chandini could see the whole of him. His truth was striking.
Chandini looks right at me. She smiles, as though she knows I’m there. The rest of the scene is frozen, everything else fading away.
We are strong, she says, eyes red and shining. Choose action.