Until the Lions by Karthika Nair

Author:Karthika Nair
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2019-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

When the king decides to take

you, there is nowhere to run.

The land is his, the rivers are his5 – the sky

too, the birds dwelling there bemoan.

When the king decides to take

you, there is nowhere to hide, with earth

and heaven and hell his turf.

When the king decides to take you,

no one comes to the rescue: the gods

are his, myth and legend,

too, his own.

When the king decides to take you, there is much pomp to mark the beginning though not the end. This time, the day and hour must be right, for he must have a child, not just slake his lust. He has waited two years for his pregnant wife to give birth, and he can wait no more. He must have a child, a son, before his brother becomes a father – it is the single goal in his sightless eyes, and so, even a son by a dasi will do. He cannot, this time, grab and ravish you on any given day or night, like nameless, faceless others were ravished in the past: this time, he must be sure his seed is planted right, warn the priests. You have been chosen, iterate the eyes in chorus, from all the virgins in the land – for this time, he will not take the risk of fallow maidens who waste his spore. The priests have named you the most blessed, most fertile of wombs in the kingdom. So you shall bear the king’s infant. Then the eyes grow hands, grow a colony of hands – cold as corpses, swift and sure as cords – to bathe and bedeck, to deck you to be worthy of their king, to perfume your tresses, your wrists, your waist and pastures further south, to rub musk into every inch of skin till you glow with fragrance, with flavour. Anointed, with gold and ghee and sandal. Like a steed for sacrifice, you think, like the prize stallion at an ashwamedha yagna, but for the year of unfettered wandering the equine is first allowed and you are not. But for the pieces of the dead steed offered to the gods, you think, for you cannot be shared: no, all of you must be saved for the king to consume, from navel to nipple to eyelid, insole to clitoris. And to keep you fecund and faithful, to help you stay focussed and fictile, the eyes dilate, your kin – father, brothers, sister-in-law and niece – will be guests of the court, kept in high comfort, though within closed doors. Just in case you forget

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