Meera stepped back from him. Her eyes were full, but her mind was suddenly very clear.
She remembered the clever princess. The princess who saw the magic and did not wear it. The princess who poured it on a rock and destroyed the man who made it.
She broke the wax.
The smell burst out so strongly that the lamps flickered. Kabir’s face changed.
“Meera, no…”
She poured the golden oil onto the big flat stone at the bottom of the palace steps.
The ground shook. The dhol stopped. A deep crack ran through the stone and up the hill, straight towards the figure at the top.
But the figure did not move. It slowly stood up.
And it bowed to her, the way a man bows to a princess.
One by one, the lamps went out. The roofs fell into dust. The bangle seller, the old woman and the little girl with the marigolds turned into grey smoke and drifted away.
Kabir held her hands. He was fading, and he was crying.
“I told you,” he said. “At the bottom of the note. Don’t open it. He didn’t see me write that part. That part was me.”
“I don’t understand…”
“Wear it, and you stay with me. Pour it, and you stay with him. The princess poured it too, Meera. That’s how the story goes.” He pressed his forehead against hers. “Once you open it, it never lets you go.”
Then her hands were empty, and she was alone in the dark.
Leaving Bhangarh at Sunrise
She woke up on the temple steps. The sky was pink. The monkeys were back on the walls. The market was only broken stone again.
The empty bottle lay beside her, cracked down the middle. Her fingers still smelled of roses.
At six, the guard opened the gate. When he saw her, he froze.
“You stayed the whole night?”
She nodded.
He didn’t look at her face. He looked at the ground behind her for a long time. Then he folded his hands and lowered his head a little, as if he was greeting someone important.
“Go home, Rajkumari ji,” he said softly. “Go home while the sun is up.”
She didn’t understand until she reached the jeep. The sun was rising behind her, bright and strong. Every tree and every stone had a long morning shadow. Ghanshyam’s shadow stretched across the road as he opened the door for her.
She looked down.
Nothing.
She went back to Jaipur. She went back to work. After a few weeks, her mother said she looked better and was finally eating properly.
But every evening, just before sunset, Meera smells it. Roses. Sandalwood. Dust after rain. And somewhere very far away, she hears a dhol begin to beat.
She hasn’t gone back. Not yet.
But last night she woke up in her car. The engine was running. The headlights were shining on an empty highway, and a green road sign in front of her said Bhangarh 72 km.
She doesn’t remember leaving home.
On the passenger seat was a small wooden box. Inside it was a tiny glass bottle, full again and sealed with red wax. Under it was a folded note.
Come before the sun goes down.
The handwriting was her own.
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