Tara
Perhaps it would have been wise for each city and town and village to fortify themselves, but they were not used to living as islands.
Instead, they sought to strengthen their ties to each other.
Tributes went out and came in from every direction, and so did people.
Those with demon-granted gifts accompanied the caravans, seeking to persuade, or predict, or stir up trouble, according to their interests.
“We must go, uncle,” she said. “Now.” The chief had known her since she was a small girl, and so he did not argue. They left that same day.
“What is it?” he asked as they approached their home.
“Plague,” she said. She hadn’t recognized it right away, but now she knew it with horrified certainty—the gods’ hand of death ready to fall over them. It did not matter which Gupta emperor took the throne next, for they might not be alive to hear about it.
His face paled. “Are you sure?”
“I am sure.”
“Stay close, then,” he said. “You must speak to the council.”
The elders were convened that same night.
The chief had seen Tara’s panic as well as her resolve, and he believed her.
But he could not outvote the others. Tara explained herself with a shaking voice.
She was still nervous about what she had seen.
Her family had produced many physicians and midwives, but she did not have the stomach for it.
Seeing suffering affected her too strongly.
“Are you sure?” an elder probed. She did not know Tara well but had always been kind in passing. “Perhaps you overreacted. We know you have a weaker constitution. The city can be overwhelming. There is no shame in admitting it.”
“I am sure,” Tara said. She did not sound sure, even to herself.
“We cannot afford to close ourselves off. We will make ourselves a target. People will think we have something worth protecting.”
Tara took a breath to steady herself, remembering the pranayama her grandmother had taught her. She pulled a breath into her stomach before releasing it, and raised herself to her full, substantial height.
“I assure you all, there will be no wars when the plague comes. Only death. We have a chance to protect ourselves. We have walls, we have a gate. We have stores of food, and farms within the walls. This chance will not come again. I am sure, already, it is spreading in the dark parts of the coastal cities.”
She could tell that she had managed to convince them with the firmness of her words, and she enjoyed the way they listened to her. Sometimes, in her dreams, she saw other women, strong and powerful. She felt their touch as the vote came in unanimous. The town closed.
For the first few days after the announcement, the townspeople walked with their heads bowed in fear, flinching away from each other as though their friends and neighbors might carry the illness.
Then they seemed annoyed at this new regime.
Everyone could still live and work, but they had enjoyed regular passage through the gates that were now closed.
Ten days later, a messenger came to the gates. The guards would not admit him.
“So you have heard,” the messenger said, shouting so those on the wall might hear him.
“I come from the coast. An illness is fast spreading, and your people should be on watch for it. At first it seems like any illness, then it takes an awful turn. Black growths sprout from the body, and no Ayurvedic treatment can heal it. Even the best physicians, those who have been blessed to close wounds with their bare hands, cannot do it. They say it is the work of a mighty demon, here to destroy us.”
“How is it spread?” the chief called, having been summoned.
“Nobody knows,” the messenger replied.
“So you would risk this town, coming from an infected city?”
The messenger shook his head. “It is everywhere. It must already be in your town, even if you don’t know. And I am healthy, at least.”
“Thank you,” the chief said. Supplies were lowered to the messenger, and he was gone.
That night, the townspeople checked each other anxiously for fever, for growths. They all looked at Tara like a blessing. Like a woman of power.
Messengers began to arrive from all directions.
It was as though a black wave of death was sweeping across the empire, stopping only at the walls of the town.
First it was scores dead, then hundreds.
Then thousands. Then the messengers stopped coming, and the refugees arrived instead.
They were fleeing the plague and thought themselves healthy, had come to beg for admission.
Although it pained the town to turn their own cousins away, they did.
Surplus food lay untouched in the fields beyond the wall, and they offered it in shouted words from a careful distance. Then the refugees stopped coming, too.
A month went by like this, then another.
The people began to wonder whether the outside world might be safe.
Whether the plague might have passed. They grew weary of eating rationed stores and asked to return to their normal lives, to leave the walls of the town.
The council refused, arguing that if the land was safe once more, there would be messengers and convoys and celebrations. But no walls hold forever.
One day, a young woman disappeared from the town in the middle of the night.
She had been Tara’s friend, but since the town closed its borders had not spoken to her.
The woman’s sister had left the town when she had married some years back, and Tara knew with a sinking heart that she had run away to check on her.
Every day, Tara walked the perimeter of the wall, searching for her friend.
Five days later, her friend returned. She looked as though she had aged ten years in her short time away.
“It’s horrible,” she called up to Tara. “My sister survived, but her children and husband are dead. My nieces and nephews are dead.”
“I am sorry,” Tara said. “I am so sorry.”
“It seems to be getting better. But you are right, it’s not yet over. I am sorry I doubted you.”
Tara swallowed. It was hard to look at her friend. The chief approached, touching Tara gently on the shoulder.
“I do not know what to do,” he confessed. “She is one of ours. Should we admit her?”
Tara knew. She knew. But still, she looked, because she had to be certain. The disease hung over her friend. It was faint, a haze that her eyes wanted to glance away from, but it was there. Her friend saw the verdict in Tara’s face.
“No. No! I feel fine. I’m fine!” she pleaded.
Tara’s eyes pricked with tears. She could not bear to think of her friend going through this disease—and alone.
She wanted so badly to admit her into the town.
Some people survived. Perhaps her friend could, too, after a period of isolation.
But when she looked behind her at the town she loved, and thought of the hundreds of people who depended on her to keep them safe, it was not possible.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Give her food and water. If she remains healthy for a week, we can admit her.”
“Tara!” her friend called. “Please!”
Tara came back the next day, because she had made the choice and had to bear the consequences. Her friend was fine. The next day, she was still fine, though angry. But the next day, her friend’s eyes were bright with fever.
“I’m sorry,” Tara called, but her friend did not know who she was.
The following day, her friend was gone. The guards said she had become lucid in the night and walked away toward the forest to die. She wanted Tara to know she forgave her.
Tara would never forgive herself. She went home, where the chief was waiting for her, having already heard the news.
“You made the right decision,” he said. “Whatever regrets you might have—”
“I don’t regret it.”
The chief did not look surprised. “You will make a fine chief one day.”
Tara looks right at me. She nods as though she knows I’m there.
We are unyielding, she says. Choose hardness.