Daughter of the Sun - Shveta Thakrar

Daughter of the Sun

Shveta Thakrar

For the enchanted Sisterhood of the Moon,

glowing ever bright, growing ever bold

Savitri Mehta’s parents had named her for light. For sunshine and ingots and all things gold. Above all, for the sun god Savitr, or Surya, whose blessing marked Savitri at the moment of her birth: behind her ribcage, she carried not a beating heart but a ball of Surya’s own blazing yellow light.

The Mehtas served as caretakers for a museum on a former rani’s secluded estate, palatial in its wealth of flourishing trees, rain-summoning peacocks, and even a lake surrounded by a pine needle–sprinkled sandy shore, and it was there they retired with their unusual child. Though they and their small staff strove to keep her from sight, the occasional visitor caught Savitri slipping around corners, clothed all in black. Child-sized onyx chaniya choli, frilly frocks, and little bows. Later, when she grew, charcoal minidresses with locks of purple streaking her inky hair. Black with dragon’s-blood-red lipstick against her rich brown skin. Black with silver studs lining her earlobes and a bindi to match.

Black, always black—surely, whispered those adult patrons year after year, she was troubled, despairing, in need. Why else would any girl be so consistently drawn to shadows? The visitors her age were more candid, more cruel: Oh, look, a baby goth. She just wants to be sad. What a drama queen.

Year after year, her parents laughed these comments off. Without black, they reminded her, how could she disguise her glow? In reply, Savitri’s merry laugh, too, rang out. Yet once she was alone in the forest, her chuckles faded. Even a radiant heart could not burn away loneliness.

She spent her days far from the secured tourist walkways, tucked instead beneath the bowers of branches where she had once discovered a curtain of honeysuckle vines in perennial bloom. With dessert spoon and jar of homemade honeysuckle syrup in hand, she roamed, listening always to the buzzing of the honeybees.

Yellow and black like her, they droned profound secrets for those who knew how to hear them, and Savitri did. She learned all manner of things this way, such as how to be loyal for the greater good, that the sky changed colour because its attendants continually traded out the different silk saris it wore, and, best of all, how to sing.

She sang for her parents, for the hue-switching heavens, for herself. She read fairy tales, epics, and legends and imagined performing them on a stage draped in velvet. But it wasn’t enough. She longed for a friend.

“What makes my heart so scary?” Savitri asked the honeybees one summer afternoon. She was now old enough to know the way she lived wasn’t normal, that most people had companions who spoke in words, and that most people’s parents didn’t isolate them from what they insisted was a harsh, intolerant world.

Few nowadays care for magic, daughter of the sun. The bees paused in their inspection of the honeysuckle vines to flit around her. Your kind often fears what it does not understand.

The miniature sun in Savitri’s chest ached. It flared, sending warm golden beams out her collar and along the straps of her ebony top. She crossed her arms, but still the luminescence spilled out.

Sensing her distress, the bees gathered around in a halo. Hers, they promised, was a heart meant to be shared with one who could not only bear her light but would even reflect it back at her.

One day, whispered the fairy tales, the epics, the legends all, one day, there would be such a person.

In gold, added an eavesdropping dragonfly. Everything in gold, in silver.

Before Savitri could press it for details, it had flown away, a burst of blue-green stained glass on the wind.

Years passed, and Savitri’s well of patience had run dry. She was tired: tired of hiding, tired of only ever witnessing the outside world through movies and television and snatches of tourists’ conversations. She dreamed of birthday parties with girls her age, of trading confessions like clothes, of dancing on a stage. What would it be like to sing her way down a crowded, mica-speckled street, to wear black only because she chose to?

She yearned for someone who didn’t fear her brilliance. She yearned, she yearned, oh, how she yearned.

Even the gardens with their bowers of honeysuckle and their bees grew smaller and smaller, overfamiliar, until Savitri could barely breathe. Her sun heart threatened to break through her skin and limn the entire estate if nothing changed. No amount of black, whether pitch or raven, would be able to suppress it.

On the night before her seventeenth birthday, when the yearning had grown too strong to dismiss, she resolved to sneak out and sample the world for herself.

Once her parents were asleep, Savitri packed a small bag with a shawl, some cash, and a jar of syrup with a spoon. A small section of the former rani’s manor was available for rent to visiting historians, yet all the rooms but one sat vacant. She checked to make sure the visitors, a family of travel-weary researchers and their teenage son she’d only seen from afar, were snugly settled in. They seemed to be. That left only the evening receptionist at his desk in the lobby, where an ancient fan whirred overhead almost loudly enough to cover the clatter of his keyboard. The back door it would have to be.

But just as she reached the exit, the door clicked shut.

Had someone else been there? Savitri shivered as she murmured a quick prayer to the marble murti of Lord Ganesh, remover of obstacles. Then she followed on tiptoe.

Outside, the sky had donned its sari of smoke and stars, the bees and hummingbirds and dragonflies slumbered, and the crickets’ choir had begun its nocturnal serenade. Savitri’s skin tingled with the thrill of being alive, of surveilling a stranger in the dark, and of course she needed no flashlight to make her way through the gloom, not when all she had to do was unbutton her collar.

Feeling dangerous, she stripped down to her tank top, tied her shirt about her waist, and ran.

The rush of sunlight dazzled even her own eyes, so it took her a minute to notice the surface of the lake. It twinkled with stars and with swans. Swans? She’d never seen them here before.

The swans shimmered in the darkness, as if lit by their own inner radiance. Graceful necks arched high, they formed a semicircle. Savitri crept closer. They were singing!

And at the edge of the water, his attention on the swans, knelt a boy.

Savitri very nearly missed him at first, for he blended into the night. He even sported a scrap of it, a beautiful black sherwani trimmed with silver that set off the warm brown of his cheeks.

“Satyavan,” sang the swans, the words like the dulcet strum of sitar strings. “Satyavan, come home.”

Satyavan. Savitri caught her breath at the name. She shouldn’t have unveiled her sunshine. Any second now, he would turn and spot her.

Any second. This was foolish. She should run.

Yet she stayed put and studied him, trapped in an eternity of anticipation, as the swans sang on, their voices melodic and enchanting, summoning him.

Satyavan slipped the tunic over his head and tossed it to the ground. Savitri must have made a sound, because in the next moment, he spun around.

The boy from the manor! The boy she’d thought asleep in his room.

His stare met hers, fitting together like a riddle and its answer.

Something opened between them, a bejewelled path. The future glittered there, mapped out in brilliant-cut precious gemstones, green and purple, orange and blue, and soldered in promise. This boy. She saw him there, in that future where she knew the taste of his mouth, the shape of his soul. He was hers, and she, his.

Who was he? This boy with eyes so dark they were almost black. Black like kajal. Black like mystery. Why was he here? Her heart flashed, highlighting the lake and the handsome boy standing before it.

“Satyavan,” called the swans once more, “Satyavan, come home.” One left the water and gleamed, and where a web-footed bird had been, on the sand now glided an apsara. The celestial dancer’s lovely face twisted in irritation. “Leave us, foolish girl. This is not for you.”

“What’s not for me?” Savitri asked, more intrigued than insulted. Not even the apsara’s otherworldly, beguiling beauty could wrench her gaze from Satyavan’s.

Instead of answering, the apsara glared at Satyavan. “Come now. My tolerance for this game runs low.”

But Satyavan smiled at Savitri. “Your light,” he said.

Her heart beat fiercely, sending golden rays over the lake until it was bright as day. A breath later, his bare chest began to glow, too—a soft silver like moonbeams.

The winged creatures’ prophecy: When the time was right, she would find the one who would reflect her light back at her, in gold and in silver. As if, she realized now, the moon harnessed the heat of the sun and returned it as a cool caress.

By the combined glint of moon and sun and the stars above, she saw confusion, then recollection, cross his features.

The apsara grabbed Satyavan’s shoulders and shook him. “Fool! I’m trying to free you!” She turned a pleading face to Savitri. “Enough. Time grows short. Let us go.”

Satyavan extricated himself from her hold. “Just a minute, Rambha.”

“You do not understand!” Rambha cried. “There is no time.” She gestured wildly toward the water. “Come now, or your brothers and I must leave without you.”

Satyavan’s face contorted as frustration, dread, and excitement all warred there. “You’re right,” he said at length, his voice oddly detached. As Savitri watched, he swam out into the lake—and vanished beneath the dark surface.

Her curiosity corroded into panic when he failed to reappear. One minute passed, two, then three. He was drowning! Why was the apsara just sitting there on the shore, calm as the lake that had swallowed him?

Savitri flung off her shoes, dropped her bag, and sprinted after Satyavan.

“Stop!” cried the apsara. “This boy is no boy but a devata, one of eight divine sons of Chandra, our lunar lord, cursed by a rishi to be reborn as a mortal to a family who cannot properly care for him.”

But it was too late. Savitri held her breath and dove into the lake, tracking the silver trail of light through the murky waters until she located Satyavan’s suspended form. The apsara’s words registered only as she emerged into the air, Satyavan safely in her grasp.

The apsara herself loomed over the water, hands fisted at her sides, her ethereal splendor no less seductive for her ire. “I begged to soften the curse,” she hissed. “At last the sage compromised: After seventeen years, each devata might drown, thus giving up this mortal form, and find his way home. The others ride with my sisters now; this one was prepared to join them.” Her spite coiled like a snake into her next sentence. “Until you ruined it.”

The remaining swans had already ascended into the clouds, and now the shades of the seven devata brothers could be seen mounted on their sleek, feathered backs. They melted as one into the moonlight.

“I was to bring him back,” the apsara spat, each word a bitter barb. “He cannot survive in this world of tears and tragedy. He will last perhaps a year, his suffering growing each day, and then expire. I hope you are pleased.” She raised both arms, feathers sprouting down their lengths, and once fully avian, took flight.

Savitri dragged Satyavan’s dripping form to the shore, where she let the warmth of her sun heart dry them both. Soon he opened his eyes. “You saved me.”

In that moment, she forgot her dreams of performing onstage. She forgot her urge to flee. She forgot everything but an end to her loneliness. A son of the moon for a daughter of the sun. Surely it was no coincidence.

“Stay,” said Savitri, and the single syllable sounded of longing, curiosity, and wonder. Now she would learn the taste of his mouth, the shape of his soul. She fed him dollops of her honeysuckle syrup. “You can’t die. I won’t let you.”

“Keep feeding me whatever that is,” agreed Satyavan, licking the spoon clean, “and I’ll stay here forever!”

When he gazed at her, humour giving way to something deeper, the moon in his black eyes illuminated the bejewelled path they would walk together.

They spent the remainder of the night talking and passing the jar of syrup back and forth, until the spoon became their fingers, and licking their fingers became feeding each other. They spoke of stories, of favourite movies, of fashion. They argued and agreed and argued again, until the sky changed its clothes once more, and then they hurried back onto the estate.

Satyavan, it turned out, remembered nothing about the apsaras who had come to claim him and his brother devatas or even why he’d gone to the lake in the first place; he knew only that Savitri, who lived in the former rani’s manor, had rescued him from a lethal midnight swim.

Savitri, however, hadn’t forgotten anything—certainly not the apsara’s warning—but she kept it to herself. After all, she had a year to find an answer.

And a year to get to know this boy she’d instantly recognized.

After breakfast had been served and cleared away, Savitri took Satyavan to her private arbour and read him fairy tales and illustrated volumes of myths. In return, he recited bawdy ballads and built her a sword out of twigs. At last, even adrenaline wasn’t enough to keep them up, and so they napped, curled around each other, heads cradled on a bed of moss, and watched over by the nectar-hunting bees, who continued to buzz confidences for those with the ears to hear.

A week passed in this way. It took little to convince Satyavan’s parents to extend their trip another fortnight. The shift in his mood from gloomy to gregarious was all the impetus they needed. When at last they left, they made arrangements for Satyavan to stay on as a guest of the estate, provided he study for his board exams while there. “I don’t know what you did,” Satyavan’s mother said to Savitri, “what magic you used, but I’ve never seen him so happy.”

Savitri only smiled. I chose him, she thought. It was what she’d told her own parents.

They’d exchanged a frown. “Are you sure that’s wise? This stranger? Does he know—”

“Yes,” she said firmly. She didn’t add how once she turned eighteen, board exams or no, Satyavan and she would run away and wear gold and silver and sing for their suppers. How they had already begun to compose their own show. She didn’t want to think about her birthday. There was time for that yet.

And so the months passed, made bright and sweet with lighted diyas, rainbow rangoli, and silver leaf–topped treats for Deepavali; tossed colours and mischief for Holi; and parties and songs and picnics and horror-movie marathons for everything else. Savitri strung fairy lights in their bower, where they shared honeysuckle kisses and debated philosophy and nibbled on the savory snacks Satyavan made in the kitchen.

“I never met anyone I could fight with like you,” he said wonderingly one sunny afternoon as they sat in the bower, notepads in hand, honeybees humming above, and debated adding an extra line to a song in their show. “It’s fun! It makes me think about what I really believe and not just what I thought I did.”

“I like it, too,” Savitri admitted. “But Himanshu still doesn’t need that extra line, sorry.” She nestled against Satyavan’s side.

“Yes, he does. If he doesn’t say anything, it sounds like he doesn’t care Anjali’s just leaving him behind.”

“No, it doesn’t. He’s so shocked that she would abandon him, he can’t speak. His heart’s breaking.” Savitri wrinkled her nose at him. “It’s pathos.”

Satyavan mirrored the gesture. “Extra line. Let me have it, and you can have Anjali’s bonus solo.”

“Fine,” said Savitri, and pouted. But her heart shone, belying her grumpiness.

“I was so bored before you came along; you have no idea.” Satyavan put down his notepad and stroked her hair. “I just wanted to disappear.”

Guilt slid between Savitri’s ribs like a sharp blade. She should tell him the real reason he’d felt that way. But what if once he knew, he left?

She couldn’t stand to be alone again, not after she’d found the person who both reflected her and whose silly jokes never failed to make her laugh and her parents groan, whose knowledge of everything from medieval banana-tree harvesting techniques to obscure regional-cooking lore astounded her, whose intuitive understanding of music stirred her own inner melody.

Not when she still yearned to kiss Satyavan in the rain, the droplets drenching their clothes and making them huddle closer. To accompany him on a butterfly walk at the estate’s newly installed conservatory and choose their favourites. To perform their completed show in public while shining like the sun, while glowing like the moon—to be magic, unfettered, unmasked, for the whole world to see.

Yes, she should tell him. She knew that.

Instead, she watched the calendar and reassured herself there was still time.

The apsara’s warning never came to pass; month after month, Satyavan remained in perfect health. He even maintained his studies as promised. Savitri never saw Rambha again, either. Maybe, she thought, she’d been worried for nothing.

She began to relax. To focus on the last few songs left in their show. To dream again about the bejewelled path.

But one day, while Savitri began chopping onions for lunch, Satyavan, humming a few bars from Anjali’s unfinished lament, went out to the garden to dig up some carrots and cut a handful of coriander. It should only have taken minutes.

When he didn’t come back, Savitri set aside her knife, rinsed her hands, and went outside to call for him. No one answered, and when she reached the garden, it was deserted.

Just in case, she checked the bower. The bees swarmed, busily gathering the delicate drops of nectar within each honeysuckle blossom. Satyavan had not been there, they informed her, but did she know some wild lilacs had sprung up nearby?

Savitri’s heart flared with fear and pain. The sky shared her sentiment, dressed as it was in a sari gray as mourning doves. She knew exactly where he’d gone. The lake.

She ran as hard and fast as she could, certain she was already too late. Praying, feet pounding on the earth, she ran and ran and ran, hurtling past the trees and onto the sandy beach.

He came into view, pensive, searching as he stared out at the water. The longing in the tilt of his head, the pale cast to his cheeks, scared her most of all. Even his black shirt and pants were dull against the dreary horizon. It was as if he had already gone away, and soon his body would follow.

The sun in her heaving chest nearly scalded her at the sight. She wanted to throw herself at him, yank him back, drag him home to the estate where he belonged. He stood so close to the water, as if waiting for a signal. The flutter of a swan’s wing, perhaps, the fall of a single feather.

The call of his former existence. The one she had kept him from.

Savitri almost let him go then. Almost.

Yet she wasn’t sorry she’d saved him that night, and she refused to pretend otherwise. Moving slowly, deliberately, she strode up to him and produced a jelly jar from her pocket. She’d forgotten a spoon, but with a syrup-daubed fingertip, she painted his mouth.

Then she held his hand and waited.

Instinctively, Satyavan licked his lips. His gaze cleared, and he smiled, surprised. “Savitri!”

Relief broke over her, forceful as a tidal wave. She leaned in to kiss him, to remind him of what he would be leaving behind. To distract him. Could a kiss truly break a curse? Could devotion? “I came to find you. We’re so close to finishing Anjali’s lament.”

His eyes widened, and the moon in his chest lit up, singing to the sun in hers. “What am I doing here? We have songs to write! Dance numbers to plan.” Still gripping her hand, he loped off. “Entire theaters full of audiences depend on us!”

“I don’t think we have enough people to fill a theater yet,” Savitri said, laughing. “Or even one seat.” In the event that Rambha might be watching, she mouthed, You can’t have him. He’s meant for me.

She dearly hoped it was true.

A year to the night Savitri first found Satyavan with the apsara-turned-swans, she woke with the dawn to pluck pink roses and purple lilacs. Once back in the kitchen, she stripped a handful of their petals, which she then rinsed and set aside.

All she had left to do was slice the pistachios, but Savitri allowed herself a moment just to bask in the quiet. Outside the window, the sky wore its crispest, most vivid cerulean silk, trimmed here and there with a lace of puffy clouds.

Something cracked open in her, fragile as an eggshell—hope. It was her first anniversary with Satyavan. It was the day before her eighteenth birthday, when she would tell her parents she was leaving the estate, Satyavan at her side.

Even Satyavan wasn’t up yet; he had taken the day off from studying. Savitri greeted the sun for whom she was named, then set about decorating the rasmalai she’d made the day before. The discs of sweet cheese in thickened cardamom milk had turned out wonderfully soft. Pleased, she ladled two portions onto cut-crystal plates and garnished both servings with sliced pistachio and the fragrant flower petals.

Rambha had said Satyavan wouldn’t survive past a year. Savitri would prove her wrong.

By the time he arrived, hair damp from the shower, she had set the breakfast on the patio. “What’s all this?” he asked, taking in the edges of the plates ringed with the remaining blossoms.

Savitri hugged him, drinking in his fresh smell, his warm presence. “It’s been a year since we met. I thought we could celebrate. Comics, video games, puzzles, karaoke! Oh, and finish our last song.”

“Sounds like you’ve got the whole day planned!” He kissed her cheek, then clasped her hands. “Savitri, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you: I owe you everything for saving me. Everything.” He shuddered. “I still don’t know what was wrong with me that night.”

“I’d been planning to go for a swim, anyway,” teased Savitri, refusing to acknowledge the bite of guilt. “Dig in.”

They ate, and Satyavan lifted a lilac flower to his nose. As he inhaled, a bee emerged from its depths and stung him in the hollow beneath his chin. “Ow!”

“Bee!” cried Savitri, appalled. She ran around the table and knelt by Satyavan, whose breathing had already grown labored. “Why? You said I would find the person who reflected me!”

And so you did, but no one told you for how long, said the bee, and ripped itself free. Its stinger remained behind, pumping venom through Satyavan. Silver light pulsed wildly from his torso, and Savitri clung to him. She couldn’t lose him. She wouldn’t.

Seconds tumbled into one another. Just as she decided to run for help, someone spoke.

“I told you to let him go,” Rambha said, though not ungently. She wore a sari the pink and purple of the flowers Savitri had gathered. “I would have spared you this.”

“But—but there’s no water. He’s still here,” Savitri insisted. She cradled Satyavan’s slumped form against her chest. The fading flickers of his moon heart merged into the golden flames of her sun heart. “See?”

Yet she knew he was about to die. Otherwise, Rambha wouldn’t be here.

“Even so.” Rambha cocked her head and listened. “There. He drew his last breath.”

Savitri felt as much as saw Satyavan’s heartbeat cease. He had gone dark, been extinguished. Her grip slackened, and she put up no resistance when Rambha extracted Satyavan’s shade from his body.

“Be content,” urged Rambha over her shoulder. “You enjoyed far more time with him than he was ever allotted in this world. Indeed, rejoice in the knowledge that the curse is finally broken, and that he will resume his place in the lunar court.”

Alone, thought Savitri, her sun heart squeezing in her chest. Even with all the sunshine inside her, all the heat, she, too, was going dark and cold. She pushed aside Satyavan’s dish and tenderly rested his head on the table. Her arms went around herself, but no matter how tightly she pressed, it came nowhere near a hug.

There was no point in fighting. She couldn’t save him again. She’d never even given him a choice the first time.

The guilt stung like bee venom. Maybe she deserved to be alone. He’d tried to leave twice, and she’d stopped him both times.

She dropped out of her chair and onto the ground. When she closed her eyes, something glimmered. The bejewelled path! It should have broken off with Satyavan’s death, yet it continued to stretch out before her. She saw herself onstage, alone. She saw herself in the bower, all dressed in black, swathed in blankets and books. She saw herself with others, without—with choices.

She wanted Satyavan, but he, too, deserved a chance to choose.

“Wait!” called Savitri, opening her eyes, and raced after Rambha and Satyavan’s shade. When she passed the arbour, a ring of bees joined her. No one told you for how long, they said again, and this time, she understood their message: It was not destiny but another choice.

She caught up to Rambha at the lake’s edge. “Wait! Let him go.”

Rambha’s elegant features brightened with amusement. “Your determination and foolhardy belief that you can shape any of this charms me. For that, I would give you a boon. Ask anything but Satyavan’s life, and it is yours.”

“Grant me . . .” Savitri considered. “Grant my parents solace when I leave. Grant them peace and assurance that whatever struggles I have, I’ll be fine. Let them know there’s no need to hide anymore.”

Rambha snapped her slender fingers. Minute bells on her rings tinkled sweetly. “Most would have chosen wealth or fame. But it is done. Now be off, mortal child. Go back to your life and leave us to our affairs.” She stepped into the clear water, which somehow did not penetrate the fabric of her sari.

Savitri didn’t hesitate before going in, too. Though it wouldn’t surprise her in the least if Rambha transformed into her swan self and swam until Savitri grew too tired to continue, leaving her to drown.

The water, warm and tranquil, had reached their waists before Rambha turned to face her. “Oh, but you are a pest, aren’t you? Yet I suppose such loyalty should be rewarded. Ask anything but Satyavan’s life, and it is yours—and then you must go. I am hardly your nanny.”

“Let him remember everything that happened. All of it.”

“Even if he blames you?”

Savitri nodded.

Satyavan’s gaze, which had been blank and distant, now grew sharp with comprehension. “You kept me here,” he said. “Because I matched you, and you didn’t want to be alone.”

Savitri held her chin high. “Yes.” Whatever happened now, at least he knew.

Satyavan said nothing. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, and her heart dimmed. It was too much to hope for. Too much to imagine that he would be glad she had kept his true identity from him—and so, his choice—a full year longer than necessary.

Yet she didn’t look away.

Rambha took Satyavan’s arm and continued swimming. Now Savitri could see the semicircle of swans. She should heed Rambha’s advice and go home. She knew that.

Instead, she plunged after Rambha. After Satyavan, who looked back with an inscrutable expression.

The mud beneath her feet had long fallen since away, and Savitri swam and swam. She was already exhausted, but the bees surged above her, buzzing their encouragement. And Satyavan hadn’t told her to leave.

Rambha halted just outside the semicircle. “You are a tiresome thing,” she said. “You have entertained me, but now I grow irritated. Name your final boon and swim home. It is past time for us to do the same. And once more, you may ask anything but Satyavan’s life.”

The swans flapped their wings, clearly impatient for Savitri to be on her way. She needed a sign.

She met Satyavan’s black gaze, trying to ask with her eyes what he wanted. If he still felt anything for her. If he remembered their kisses beneath the bower with ardor rather than anger. If he still wanted to join her on the bejewelled path soldered with promise.

He frowned and looked away.

No, she thought. No, please. She couldn’t have lost him. Not now.

“Name your boon,” ordered Rambha, “or lose it altogether.”

A minute passed, and Savitri despaired of being able to tread water for much longer. Still, she waited. I know you can hear me.

Just as she lowered her head in surrender, Satyavan turned back. His face had softened, and he pointed to his heart, to hers. When he smiled, his moon heart flared silver bright.

“Grant me that our completed show will be a success. I’ve worked so hard on my songs,” Savitri said, her fatigued muscles loosening, letting the lake support her.

“Done,” said Rambha. “Now come, Satyavan. Your father awaits.”

“But Satyavan never finished writing Anjali’s lament.” Savitri grinned, her delight brushing everything with a patina of gold. “How can our completed show be successful if he’s not here to complete it?”

Rambha gaped. Then she tossed back her head and laughed. “I suppose it can’t. Satyavan? What do you say?”

Satyavan’s silvery shade moved to where Savitri bobbed on the water’s surface. “I choose her.”

“Have him back, then, mortal girl.” Rambha nodded at him. “But Satyavan, know the burden is on you to explain your absence to Lord Chandra.”

The swans and Rambha disappeared, and suddenly Savitri and Satyavan sat on the lakeshore, tucked into each other’s arms, with a sealed jar of honeysuckle syrup at their feet.

The next evening, for her birthday, Savitri and Satyavan wove honeysuckle vines into crowns, borrowed her parents’ car, and drove to a nightclub. There, dressed in gold and silver, amid the glitzy décor and throaty growls of the hired vocalists—and after a hefty bribe to the club’s manager—they claimed the stage, crooning songs of bee secrets and cunning swans. Together, her voice sparkling like diamond dust, his smooth as clove smoke, they ensorcelled the audience as they had ensorcelled each other.

Once they stepped down into the cheering blue-lit crowd, just before she relearned the taste and feel of Satyavan’s lips, just before she ran her fingers through his hair and forgot the rest of the club around them, Savitri thought she glimpsed Rambha in the audience.

Then his hands made their way to her hips, and her mouth found his, and everything else dissolved as the sun sought the moon.

The Mahabharata

A South Asian Epic

The Mahabharata, the longest epic poem in recorded history and one of South Asia’s two greatest epics, consists of stories upon stories upon stories, all intricate and often woven together. One of these is the tale of Princess Savitri and Prince Satyavan; another that of river goddess Ganga and King Shantanu. As I brainstormed “Daughter of the Sun,” I realized I would need the second story in order to properly retell the first, and soon these two age-old narratives fused into something both contemporary and new.

In “Savitri and Satyavan,” Savitri chooses Satyavan as her husband despite learning he is fated to die in a year’s time. When Lord Yamaraja, God of Death (the eastern Hades), comes to claim Satyavan’s shade, clever Savitri tricks him into restoring Satyavan to life—along with Satyavan’s parents’ failed eyesight and lost kingdom.

In “Ganga and Shantanu,” King Shantanu weds a mysterious woman on the stipulation that he question nothing about her—not even when she drowns their first seven sons in the river Ganga (Ganges). But once the eighth is born, Shantanu confronts his queen on the riverbank, where she reveals she is the goddess Ganga herself, the river personified, tasked with bearing and immediately liberating eight demigods cursed to be born into human suffering. Since Shantanu broke his promise and pried, Ganga entrusts the eighth son to his care and leaves.

I love the feminist aspects of both these stories (though of course that’s me viewing ancient legends through a modern lens): Not only do Savitri’s parents allow her to decide whom she marries, but her husband is the one in need of rescue, and she, with her equanimity and ingenuity, is the one to do it. Ganga, meanwhile, knows her own mind. She sets her conditions and sticks to her purpose, no matter how it might appear to others.

“Daughter of the Sun” is my love letter to two heroines I deeply admire and to the myriad ways girls and women can be self-possessed and powerful in a world that so often tells them otherwise.

—Shveta Thakrar