Page 123 of A Thousand Painted Hours

Talwarpur, India

—64—

The train station was the same one where we’d arrived for the maharaja’s birthday so many years before, and for the first time I felt true joy. “No elephants?” I said as a car was brought around.

“Elephants?” Gurdaya asked.

Tanveer grinned. “The party forBaojiwhen everyone came. Elephants brought everyone from the station to the palace.”

“I had forgotten! What a spectacle!”

“My mother was so thrilled,” I said and remembered Rocky’s lover Grayson, long ago at the picnic, asking Tanveer about riding elephants. Grayson, who’d been a boor, but now was a dead one. He’d been one of the first to die in our group.

I brushed the memory away. A rising sense of possibility filled me as the desert passed by the windows. The siblings chatted back and forth in their mix of languages, perhaps making plans, perhaps something else. I caught a sentence here and there but mostly let the mingled languages wash over me, bringing with them sunstruck memories of childhood. “Do you ever go to Nainital now?” I asked.

“I haven’t been there since we were children,” Gurdaya said.

“I have been. We still hold the house there for summer. Channan has not been able to make the trip for some years, but I have been a few times. Would you like to visit? It could be arranged.”

A dangerous place in my current state. I lifted a shoulder in pretend disinterest. “Perhaps. I just thought of it.”

“The swimming,” Gurdaya said, and sighed.

I dared not look at Tanveer, but felt the heat crawl up my neck. He banged my knee with his, and I looked up to slam into a bland expression, a quick, sidelong glance. I banged him back and scowled. “Is your husband’s palace far? I should love to swim in your pool.”

“It is a journey,” she said with a sigh. “And I will not linger long at Talwarpur, only a day or two. My children will want their mother back.”

“And their mother wants them back,” Tanveer said.

“It was good of you to make the trip.”

“It wasn’t good of me,” she protested. “I couldn’t bear to wait until you could come visit me. This way, I will have a little taste of your company, and you might come in a few months to stay with me. They can’t have you all to themselves.”

A few months! When I’d fled Cairo, I had not considered how long I would be here. I covered her hand. “I shall.”

As we approached the village outside the palace, the car slowed. The driver said something I didn’t quite catch.

Tanveer muttered under his breath, peering out. “It’s a small group. Carry on.”

“Protesters again?” Gurdaya asked.

“Yes.”

“What are they protesting?”

“The British, the wealthy, the laws.” He shook his head. “Legitimate, but dangerous. Last month, they attacked a car outside of Jalandhar, and the family barely got away. They set the car on fire.”

As we passed through the crowd, it parted, but a rock hit the car, and then another. Nothing else. We made it to the palace, and the gate closed tight behind us.

The palace was as massive as I remembered, but shabbier. How thrilled I had been that first visit to have a sketchbook in my hand at all times, drawing the various forms of tile work, the arches and the hallways, courtyards with their tinkling fountains and bougainvillea. Ablaze of flowers still climbed the walls, and as we stepped out into the blast of heat, I heard a fountain nearby.

And there, waiting for us, was a small woman in a soft blue sari. Tanveer took my hand and drew me to her realm. I towered over her—she could not have been more than five feet tall—and she’d draped her face with her veil. As I came forward, she pulled it away and held out her hands.

I’d been afraid of what I might see—burning and scarring and misshapen features. All of those things did exist. One eye and her mouth pulled toward each other in a web of scarring, and long white scars marred the other side of her face. Even her hairline had been shifted by that injury long ago.

But she held her chin proudly, and there was such a glow of joy and welcome in her expression that all the rest was swept away. “Dear, dear Elsie. I am so glad you’ve come.”

I bowed my head, offering anamaskar. “MaharaniSahiba.”