Sitara

Chapter 12

Vigilance

This is the point where my story began, not the end, but the point where I saw the Eagle and my sister together, though at first they didn’t see me watching them, or at least Padmini didn’t, so focused was she on the Eagle. The Eagle I am sure knew, as he knew so much more.

I had seen him as a child of five and much had transpired up to this point from then. He was the link if you saw it now, putting into perspective everything I have chronicled up to this moment. If he hadn’t come the first time, Padmini would not have been warned, then tasted despair in her struggle to save Astara, thus strengthening her resolve to never take ‘no’ for an answer where protecting us was concerned.

He was the reason for the sureness in her step, the resolute glint in her deceptively gentle eyes, the absolute conviction of purpose in her actions. He was the reason she made us train fanatically these twelve years past, to up our strength, mental and physical, and our abilities, so they would not fail us when the time finally came. She had become the person she was now, because of his first visit.

It was also that very visit that had revealed me to her, all of five, but a sister she could count on to share that burden of knowledge. And to explore that other world of possibilities, test limits, the abilities that not many had access to. Or if ever they did, mostly want for such wisdom as was required for this manner of responsibility, the wisdom and grace and generosity that my eldest, most beloved sibling possessed to such extraordinary degree.

The Eagle appeared and I was distraught because I had newly discovered that it was possible to lead a fairly content life despite the turmoil churning around, snatch it even, to feel a little normal. I had my ripening romance with Aum, and my recently acquired Familiar, the wild, demoniacally loyal Tir. Then there was also Leila, who in the midst of our rising anxiety levels had managed inexplicably, a bit of a calm spell. So much better than the terrible moments just weeks earlier when she was so hysterical, so crazed that both Padmini and I, we feared the worst and our father seemed to shrivel into himself from despair.

In the past and worse for a while, she would get incoherent, babble, from the pain Padmini warned me, she couldn’t help it. Padmini understood Leila as I never really could. For she would scream things that were not to be shared with ma and papa, how people were restless and awkward around me because I knew what they were thinking and I judged.

Luckily for me our parents didn’t pay any attention or pretended not to. She would say nothing about Padmini, not once. Maybe she respected her so much even her unconscious impulses were held in check, but I, being the youngest, was not exempt. Perhaps she resented that I never understood her as my father or Padmini did. Whatever it was, it had stopped over time, to my relief.

She seemed better these past days, we were playing out a fairly calm period in the rockiness of these dozen years past, it was the closest I had come, since the age of five, to feeling carefree. And now the Eagle was here and it would all be gone. I resented him furiously at that moment, and as always in my intensity, my thoughts projected laser-like and Padmini caught them, thus discovering my hidden presence behind the terrace wall, in her interaction with her Familiar.

As she caught my thoughts, I caught hers too, before she could close her mind, before her defences could slide into place as they had over time in these 12 years. I saw for the first time in vivid clarity just what the Eagle foretold. The utter horror and misery of it, only fed to me in small doses, because Padmini was shielding us from its full impact. In that split second I read her foreboding, the screaming, tearing fear she wrestled with, had been wrestling with every day for 12 long years. With it, an enormous wall of pain, as great possibly, as the one Leila grappled with and couldn’t endure most days (no wonder she understood her).

Clearest of all I saw Padmini’s will, resolute, indomitable, to not give in to the fate the Eagle foretold. It shone, luminous and heartbreaking in its valiant determination. And a shadow of some sort of half-hope, that I, incredibly, would somehow get us through this. But of this I wasn’t certain, for I also caught behind that as if shrouded, deep and layered with meaning, what she felt for the Eagle. It confused me enough for Padmini to get her act together and draw an all-obscuring veil over her thoughts.

But she couldn’t undo what was laid bare to me in that shimmering insight just before she managed to block our connect. The closest my idolised eldest sibling would come to showing anger glinted in her eyes for one moment, then was gone, dissolving, as if ceding to her higher self.

I understood she did not want me to access her bond with the Eagle, but with the impulsiveness that was so in my nature I was irritated too. How could she feel for this harbinger of destruction as her thoughts showed she did? I was aghast, torn with righteous anger, my loyalty to my eldest sibling intact for all that. Still there were so many questions surrounding all I had just witnessed, I wanted Padmini to help me understand.

But if she had heard my thoughts, she did not bother to enlighten me, she had already become as we would know her everyday till the end finally began. Tight-lipped and purposeful as if driven by something other than herself, paler, because of the effort it took out of her. Contained, as if holding her energy in, for the right moment.

“I need to find Aum, let him know all that we now do,” she communicated, as she slipped by, unworldly-seeming, almost febrile, in the glow of her unflinching determination, the static that clung to her now. “He will be meeting the Panchayat soon and he needs to be prepared…”