Rose and Sword

**Rose and Sword** is the third and final story featured in the short story collection, *Star-Touched Stories* by Roshani Chokshi.

It follows the story of Hira, the granddaughter of Gauri and Vikram, listening to a story her grandmother narrates her.

## Overview

*There is a tale whispered in the dark of the Empire of Bharat-Jain. A tale of a bride who loses her bridegroom on the eve of her wedding. But is it a tale or a truth?*

## Plot

The story starts off with a ten-year-old Hira, who can't bear hearing another minute of her sister Meghana's wedding preparations, but she has to, because her parents are the current reigning Raja and Rani of Bharata-Ujijain, which means that she and her parents have to stand for hours at the entrance of the royal palace and greet different people, who Hira has never seen or heard of. But Hira doesn't want to do this job.

What she does want to do is sneak outside and go to her grandfather Vikram's study, who had kept many different stories there, along with little hand-written notes, which made Hira feel like she was having a secret conversation with her grandfather. But unfortunately, her grandfather has been dead for years and Hira never even met him, which, strangely, doesn't make her feel that bad, because she knows that even her sister Meghana never saw their grandfather.

The thought of Meghana brings back a few memories of Hira. Since Meghana had been distracted due to all her wedding preparations, she couldn't play with Hira anymore, despite the various number of times Hira tried to have her sister's attention.

Once, Hira pretended to be a vanara and wore a fake monkey tail and ran around the palace apartments, screaming about the theft and blood deeds, that were soon to be paid. On another occasion, Hira had the cook painstakingly apply gold leaves to an apple (so that it looked like one of the fruits from her grandmother Gauri's stories) and pretended to eat it and turn slowly into a gigantic beast, with the help of a headpiece which one of her nursemaids made her, out of bent pieces of iron from the blacksmith's chambers.

So she had collected her most precious toys and covered them neatly with a gauzy fabric. However, things had not turned out well when Meghna had taken one look at the gifts and thrown away the bridal chest and all the toys. That night Hira had slept in the blacksmith's study.

Thinking about all these memories makes Hira sway a bit, which her parents notice and frown. Her father catches her and asks her about her health, and her mother takes her face in her hands. After some interrogations, her parents advice her to go to her Dadi-Ma and give her some company. This was a thing Hira didn't need to be told twice, since she loved her grandmother's company. Seeing her trying not to bolt, Hira's father sneaks her a candy, and Hira's mother warns her to come before the feast and bid farewell to her sister, to which Hira promptly refuses. She runs out of the threshold, down the hall and darts through the chambers within moments, until she gets near her grandmother's chambers. As she crosses through the Garden of Sweets and Swords, Hira pauses to grab a silver bowl of gulab jamun and then grabs another one for her grandmother.

When she reaches her grandmother's chambers, she requests a story from her grandmother, and her grandmother tells her the story of a bride who lost her bridegroom on the eve of her wedding. Sometimes Hira interrupts and adds her thoughts and voices her questions throughout the story.

Once Gauri finishes telling her the story, Hira asks her grandmother some more questions, after which Gauri hands her Biju, who is a snake necklace which can always identify between a truth and a lie. After talking some more, Hira bids goodbye to her grandmother and races out the door. She whispers to the snake that she'll never live a life of adventure and magic, and she can swear that the snake gave her the tiniest squeeze, and it felt like her grandmother's hand reaching out to her and saying,

> *"Oh, my love, you have no idea what magic awaits you"*
>
>

## Characters

### Main Characters

* Hira
* Gauri
* Vikram

### Secondary Characters

* Kamala
* Aasha
* Nalini

### Minor Characters

* Raja of Bharata-Ujijain
* Rani of Bharata-Ujijain
* Meghna
* Arjun

## Trivia

* At one point, it is mentioned that all the women of the Bharata household are immune to poison. This is because of the star-shaped scar Gauri was marked with, when she fought the Serpent King.
* Hira also makes an appearance in Aru Shah and the Song of Death, where she is later adopted by Mini. But the fact that the two of them are the same person is yet to be confirmed by the author.
* Hira might have rakshasa blood from her parents' side, given the fact that she can shape-shift.