Chapter 21

"Can a tree grow without roots?"

“…and left, one, two! And right, one, two!”

Golden afternoon sunlight, cut into ornate patterns by high windows of carved stone, fell on the floor of the royal dance hall as delicately as if through the leaves of a forest canopy. The princess had seen the artisans cutting and shaping the stone for those windows when she was small, but even so she could hardly believe her memories; it seemed impossible that human hands and chisels could have worked the density of solid rock into something so light and natural. As she moved her head to the rhythm of her dance teacher’s insistent voice the Sun flashed through one diamond-shaped hole after another, as if the light wanted to tell her something. The diamonds and rosettes of cut sunlight painted her body, shimmered over her skin, sparked on her painted finger and toenails. The music of veena, drum, and flute wove itself into the light and her limbs so that all became one warp and weft — the music shone, the light danced, and she felt herself become a melody.

“Stop!”

The dance teacher’s voice snapped the thread of the music. The princess stumbled and almost fell to the floor. Her feet robbed of the rhythm, she felt herself suddenly and wretchedly human again, all condensed mass of flesh and bones and small humiliations.

“Princess Uttara,” said the teacher, striding toward her, her bare feet slapping the smooth stone floor, “You must focus! Head straight, shoulders back, chin up!”

As she spoke, the teacher prodded each body part so that the princess was forced to reposition herself accordingly. Uttara felt so bereft in that moment that she could have screamed. Her face flushed and, to her intense shame, she felt hot tears running down her cheeks.

“What is it?” asked the teacher, as if noticing with a little annoyance that her pupil was a human being and not an ornamental shrub to be trimmed and trained as she pleased.

Uttara looked into her teacher’s eyes and tried to draw her tears into her body, to retract her shame, to keep her voice steady.

“Why do you break it every time?”

“Break what, princess?” asked the teacher.

“Every time I start to… to… to feel something you stop the music. I feel that I am just beginning to dance — to really dance — and then you break the music and come and poke and prod me and make me feel as if I’ve done everything wrong! Why?”

The teacher glared at her pupil with hawk-like eyes.

Uttara always felt small under that gaze. It did not help that her teacher stood almost three heads taller than her. Brihannada, for that was the dance teacher’s name, was not a woman like Uttara or her mother, the queen Sudeshna. She was taller than any woman or man in the palace and stronger too, with wide muscular shoulders, arms like sal saplings, and a neck like that of a prize white bull. For all she was huge and robust, Brihannada was also the most graceful dancer Uttara had ever seen—when the musicians set to their instruments Brihannada’s robust body became somehow as light as a songbird in flight and her every movement flowed like river water, each hand gesture an eddy in the current.

Even to call Brihannada a woman was not quite true, for she was one of the third gender, neither woman nor man. When she had first arrived at the palace almost a twelvemonth ago and presented herself as a new dance tutor for the young princess, King Virata had displayed some uncertainty about allowing such a virile-looking person to spend such quantities of unsupervised time with his treasured daughter. For all that Brihannada dressed and behaved like a woman — her long black hair was always scented and oiled and tied in a braid, her eyes lined with black kohl, her hips swayed beneath voluminous silk skirts, and her movements and glances had all the delicacy and flaunting shyness of a lady steeped in palace manners — there was something unmistakably masculine about her broad back and angular jaw, the way her muscles bunched beneath her blouse, the subtle musk that lingered beneath all her perfumes. Uttara never found out what Brihannada had told or shown her father to convince him to take her on as dance teacher, though she had a vague idea that it involved things she was still too embarrassed to think about, let alone speak aloud. Whatever had transpired between them, she was glad that Brihannada had entered her life. Most of the time. She was the best dancer and the best teacher the daughter of a noble warrior clan could hope for — she was precise, learned, agile, wise, and her rare flashes of humor always shook Uttara’s whole body with giggles. But she could be so bullishly strict! And she always always always stopped the music just when Uttara felt that she was beginning to touch something true and expansive and luminous, just when her body began to merge with the dance.

Why?

“Because you forget yourself,” said Brihannada, setting her many-ringed hands on her hips.

“But isn’t that…” Uttara began. She had something to say, something she had thought around in circles for a long time and was only just beginning to be able to push and press into the form of words. She gulped and went on, “…isn’t that what dancing is for? I mean really truly for — to forget yourself, to-to-to make yourself into the dance? When you dance it doesn’t even seem like you’re there anymore, it’s just the dance… dancing itself! I want that. Why can’t you let me have that?”

To Uttara’s surprise her teacher smiled.

“Let’s walk together in the garden, princess,” said Brihannada. “The day will grow old soon, and the time is over for lessons.”

With a wave of her hand she dismissed the three musicians, then turned on her heel in a gyre of red silk skirts and made for the door which led out from the dance hall into the pathways of the palace’s inner garden. Uttara followed, completely uncertain what to expect. Brihannada rarely ended a lesson before sunset.

Out in the garden the heat of the day still hung heavy on the limbs of the trees, but a soft hint of evening breezes was beginning to stir the leaves, and the birds who sleep through the long hot day were waking and clearing their fragile crystalline throats. Brihannada and Uttara walked side by side along the maze-like stone pathways of the vast garden, in some places more forest than garden, which flourished between the high outer wall which separated the Matsya palace from the city proper and the inner complex of the kings apartments, assembly hall, women’s quarters and servants’ homes.

“It is true what you say, princess,” said Brihannada.

The dance teacher walked with her back as straight as an arrow, her chin lifted, her eyes set on some far point Uttara could not discern.

“It is true,” she continued, “that the dancer must ultimately become the dance. And to do so she must forget herself utterly. Not forget — she must entirely obliterate herself. She must burn herself in the fire of the dance until only the dance remains. But first she must learn the steps. Would you build a house without first laying a foundation? Can a caterpillar fly before she enters her chrysalis and reemerges with wings? Can a tree grow without roots?”

Here Brihannada glanced down at the princess. Uttara’s eyes met that burning look and she felt her body tremble, as if she truly became an unsteady tree without roots to hold her.

Brihannada smiled.

“Let me tell you a story,” she said.

They had come to a place where the king’s workmen were busy constructing a gorgeous new pavilion in the center of a ring of cassia trees. A round floor of beryl-inlaid marble had already been laid and pillars of teak erected; now a domed roof of intricately cut rosewood was being assembled.

“There was once a boy — a prince — who wanted to be a great warrior. Not just a great warrior, but the greatest in the world. He had a weapons guru who trained him every day. One evening the cooks served a late meal and the boy sat down to eat after the Sun had set. His mind was completely occupied by what he had learnt that day, so occupied that he did not even notice when a gust of wind entered his room and put out his lamp. He went on eating in the dark, his fingers lifting the food to his mouth automatically.

“Suddenly he realized what had happened. He noticed how, since his body knew how to go on eating even without his eyes, he did not need the lamp. Then he thought to himself, ‘If only I could learn to shoot arrows like this; if I could shoot accurately in the dark the way I can eat in the dark I would really be the greatest warrior!’ So from that evening the prince began to train at night as well as by day. Eventually he did become a great warrior, some say the greatest of all, and when he fought he lost himself entirely. His body became his bow, his thoughts his arrows. But he was only able to do this because he had trained for years, day and night, to master the art of archery, to make each motion perfect without thinking. If he had lost himself too soon he would never have become such a warrior.”

“Do you mean to say that I must practice dancing in the dark?”

Brihannada laughed.

“Not necessarily, princess,” she said. “What I mean is that you must learn your steps perfectly, with discipline. Then, when the time comes, when you lose yourself in the dance, the steps will go on on their own. There must be a balance, always a balance, between precision and abandon. If you can find that balance, if you can hold it in your hands and heart and hips and feet, then you will dance like an apsara.”

“Who taught you to dance?” asked Uttara.

“Chitrasena, the king of the gandharvas,” said Brihannada with a grin and a wink.

“Don’t joke with me,” Uttara protested, “tell me the truth! You never tell me anything about yourself!”

“Why should I?” said Brihannada, still grinning infuriatingly. “I am only your humble teacher and you are Princess Uttara of Matsya!”

Uttara was ready to scream again; no one could make her as frustrated with so few words. It was something in her teacher’s teasing tone that did it. But the sudden sound of a conch blast and clamor of bells cut into her rising annoyance and drew both of their minds elsewhere.

“What do you think that was, princess?” Brihannada asked.

“Someone has passed through the gate,” said Uttara.

“Uttara!”

The princess turned her head and saw her elder brother, the prince Uttar, striding down the garden path toward her followed by two servants, one toting a parasol and the other a yak-tail fan, both struggling to keep up with the prince’s long legs.

“Sister!” Uttar cried. “Come, Lord Kichaka is back!”

He reached her, seized her hand, and almost dragged her away without so much as looking at Brihannada. Prince Uttar never seemed to notice the existence of anyone who was not a warrior or noble, a habit which drove his sister, who was always scrupulous when it came to acknowledging servants and artisans and brahmanas, to utter distraction.

“Let go!” she shouted, tugging her hand from her brother's grip.

“Calm down,” scoffed Uttar. “Didn’t you hear me? Kichaka is back! Mother and Father will already be waiting for him, we must go!”

Reluctantly the princess followed her brother. She glanced back once, seeking Brihannada’s eyes, but the dance teacher was watching the workmen building the pavilion. Somehow the fact that Brihannada did not follow her with her eyes, did not seem at all bothered by her sudden departure, wrung her heart. She could not explain it to herself.