The Braid
Written for Snowy.
Hansika is brave. She is small and dark, but her face is proud and beautiful, and she always keeps her head up, even when their father beats her. Nakshatra watches her as they work; her hair is long on one side, and cut short below her ear on the other, and raggedy because that's where she tried to bite it off the last time they tried to run away. She tore it and broke it, too, and their father thinks it's funny to see her, still there, still his child, half a girl and half a boy, working for him and marked with the humiliation of it. Their father doesn't realise that Hansika isn't ashamed. Hansika is proud of her hair, more proud that she ever would be of having it beautifully arranged, like some of the girls they sometimes see. Hansika holds her head up high and then when it's night and their father isn't watching them Nakshatra strokes the short part and braids the long part for her. He remembers that their mother used to stroke and braid, and it made Hansika glad and sleepy and warm, ready to curl up and close her eyes and rest; he knows that Hansika never does any of that any more, but he strokes and braids anyway, because perhaps it will make her happy.
Nakshatra isn't brave. He's afraid of running away, afraid of being lost, of being hungry, cold, tired, homeless. He's afraid of being dead. He's afraid of frightening people, spirits, kind ghosts, tree nymphs, demons, and gods. He's afraid of falling, hurting himself, bleeding to death, starving to death, being alone, being with no home. The only thing that doesn't frighten him is their father: he would kill their father. He would kill their father, but he is afraid of being punished for it.
Sometimes their father beats Hansika, sometimes does worse things, and Nakshatra, a very small thin sallow boy with eyes the colour of elaichi, is so filled up with hate that he wants to take the first thing he can find and hurt their father so badly that he could never touch her again--but Nakshatra always stops, always imagines someone finding out, their father telling someone, their father being dead and someone finding out about that--and then maybe being taken away from Hansika, maybe being put away somewhere, maybe being killed. Maybe they would kill him if he killed his father.
So he doesn't. He knows he could, but he doesn't. But to be able to kill a person isn't to be brave. Only Hansika is brave.
For as long as he can remember, she has been promising him they must run away. She promises they won't die, she promises they won't be hurt, she promises that they won't be cold and hungry and tired; but Nakshatra doesn't believe her. It can't be true. Out in the jungle somewhere, alone, they will starve to death miserably, crying, with only each other.
Nakshatra doesn't want to die.
Once in a while, Hansika convinces him, and they make plans to go, but every time their father catches them and they're punished, and it takes her even longer to convince him again. It's always a disaster. It always hurts. Nakshatra is still afraid, Hansika is still proud and brave, and they're both still slaves of their father. This time, there's also her hair, uneven and raggedy and braided badly by Nakshatra's clumsy work-hardened hands.
It takes Hansika a year to convince Nakshatra to run away again. While she tries to make him agree, she begins to hide things. She is always making ready; she puts things into hidden caches all around their father's house, fills tiny pouches she's sewed herself out of scraps of cloth and the thread from the seams of her clothes. She puts things everywhere. He notices, and when he asks her what they're for, she smiles mysteriously and tells him stories.
All the things she hides, she promises, they'll use when They sweep them off and take them away. Nakshatra doesn't ask what They are, but he believes her, he really believes her, and it makes him unafraid, for a little while. It makes it so that when she comes to him one morning and says that They have come, and the two of them will run away to-day, he gets up, and for the first time he feels brave. They wash in the cold little stream by their father's house, and the cold hurts Nakshatra's hands, but he is brave and doesn't fear freezing, or falling in and drowning, or being bitten by something in the water.
They gather up the things Hansika has hidden, put them all into a sack she's also hidden, and Nakshatra is brave and isn't afraid of being caught, or falling over and hurting himself, or not finding all of Hansika's hidden things. They leave together, he carrying the sack, she leading the way with her head held high--they left so early that she never bothered to unbraid her hair, and he, behind her, watches the one long braid swinging past the short ragged part, trailing down her back, curving around her neck. Nakshatra can't help thinking how beautiful his sister is.
How brave she is.
How proud she is.
How high she holds her head, how wise her ideas are, how much she takes care of him, how many times she's done his work for him. Nakshatra isn't brave, and he isn't strong, especially not after being beaten. Hansika always is, though.
How strong she is.
How brave she is.
Nakshatra follows after her, and they walk all day. He gets tired, and Hansika stops, gently, and pets his hair, and promises that they're almost there.
"They have to find us in a special place," Hansika says. "We have to get to Them, first."
"What if they're not there?"
"They will be. They won't forget about us. We'd better keep going if we want to get there in time, though," she adds, smiling at him. "We'd better go."
So Nakshatra begins to walk again, even though he's tired; gets up to follow her, and they keep going. By the time night comes, they still aren't there yet, and he realises he doesn't even know where there is meant to be, and he begins to cry. Hansika stops again, and holds him close, and whispers in his black hair that it will be all right. They will find them any moment now.
Nakshatra cries. He is not brave.
Suddenly they both hear the crashing in the bushes. They freeze, still as deer hiding from hunters with arrows, still as stones waiting for for-ever between the roots of trees. Hansika does not breathe; Nakshatra cannot feel her breathing.
Two men come out of the trees. They are white men, dressed in white men's clothes, with bristling beards, and eyes Nakshatra cannot see in the dark. At once they begin speaking to each other in the language of white men, which neither Nakshatra or his sister understand. The taller one comes over and takes Hansika's hand. There is an Indian with them, Nakshatra realises, a dark Indian man who fits into the shadows like a tiger in the jungle. The Indian man comes over as well and speaks to the tall white man in white men's language. Then he turns to Hansika and says,--
"Are you lost?"
"No," Hansika says. "We're running away. We were looking for you."
"For us?"
Nakshatra quivers. These white men are They? These white men are going to save him and save his beautiful brave sister. For a moment, he is almost not afraid any longer.
"Yes, sir," Hansika says. "We're running away from our father. He hurts my brother, and I don't want to live with him any more. We were looking for you because I knew you would save us." Hansika really is beautiful. The white men are already smiling at her and touching her braid, murmuring over the side where her hair is cut short. They look at her torn clothes (they do not look at Nakshatra) and speak with one another in sorrowful, indignant voices.
"Where do you live?"
"You won't take us back! Oh, he nearly killed Nakshatra! I am afraid! I don't want us to live with him any more. Please save us. Please don't take us back."
Her eyes are dark and tearful. The white men murmur at the Indian man as they wonder why, and Nakshatra supposes they are asking what he has said to make her cry. Nakshatra can't help looking at Hansika admiringly. It is Hansika their father has nearly killed, but the men will feel sorrier for her if she isn't worried about herself. She's clever. She understands things like that. She understands white men, and Nakshatra doesn't know how she can.
"We won't take you back," the Indian man says. "The sahibs will take you back to ----- and find someone to take care of you." He gestures at Hansika's hair. "Did your father do that?"
"Yes," Hansika says. Nakshatra tugs on her sleeve and clings to her, and the white men suddenly see him too. They murmur again.
Then one of the men picks Hansika up, and the other takes Nakshatra. Of course they are not going to hurt them, Nakshatra thinks, but he is still frightened when Hansika's sleeve pulls out of his hands. The white men begin to follow the Indian man, back through the trees, far away from their father's house. After a little while, Nakshatra stops being frightened because he is so tired, and he falls asleep.
When he wakes up again, they are in a city, and it's the noise that wakes him up. Hansika is wide awake, and he wonders if she ever fell asleep. She sits with her back straight, riding on the tall white man's shoulders, smiling and turning her beautiful face to look at everything. There are market stalls and animals and thousands of people, and so much noise that Nakshatra is frightened again and hides his face in his arms. The white man who carries him pats his head and says something Nakshatra can't understand. For a few moments, he keeps his eyes shut, and then he begins to look around, at all the colours and people and animals, at all the things being sold, things he's never seen before in his life--he listens to all the sounds he's never heard, people and animals and things being sold. The people laugh and argue and bargain and shout. They talk. Sometimes he understands, and sometimes he doesn't. Mostly he doesn't. The Indian man who leads the two white men takes them to a big house, much bigger than anything Nakshatra's ever seen before. He guesses that it's a palace.
Inside the palace, the white men take him and Hansika to a room with two beds, and set them down. The white men give them water, and when they wash their hands, the water turns grey. It is warm water, not like the cold stream that runs by their house. Then Hansika sits with him on one of the beds, and tells him stories, and tells him how They have saved them at last, until Nakshatra falls asleep.
In the morning, Hansika wakes him up by stroking his hair the way he usually strokes hers. She makes tiny little braids in his black hair. She is laughing.
"You slept a very long time. I've found out all about everything by now. Want me to tell you?"
"What's going to happen to us?" Nakshatra isn't afraid. Hansika knows everything, so there is no reason to be.
"This is a hotel. Those two men are going to take us to England. We'll go to England! We'll never see Father again. We're going to live with a phi-lan-thro-pist and he's going to take care of us until we're much older, and then we'll go to live with someone who will teach you to do whatever you decide you want to do. You could be a--a teacher, or something, they said, or a priest, I don't know. Anyway, that's what they said. I only have to learn how to be a lady. We'll learn English and we'll have nice clothes and no one will ever hit us again." Hansika is still laughing. "Aren't you happy? We're going to live in England with a man named Mister Honeythunder. I think it's a silly name, but we won't ever have to see Father again. I told you They would find us."
It's been years and years since Nakshatra saw Hansika laugh.
"And we won't be named our names any more! I told them our names, but they said since we'll be English we'll have new ones. I'm Helena, and you're Neville."
"Helena," Nakshatra says carefully. It is a beautiful, proud name, he thinks. It is a brave name. It is a good name.
Nakshatra loves his sister more than anything in the world.
"When do we go to England?" he asks.
"As soon as they go back. They're going back in three days. We'll be allowed to live in the hotel. Aren't you happy?"
Nakshatra nods. He reaches out and begins to unbraid her long braid, and then braid it up again; and he strokes it as well, just as he always has. Hansika curls up on the bed close to him, glad and warm. For the first time, he realises, she is happy. She is the one who is happy. It's been years and years.
He braids and unbraids, and strokes.
Nakshatra is happy, now, too.
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