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“Hello,” he croaked, hoping his voice did not come out watery.

She looked ahead for her mother and found her already getting out of the car.

The little girl wiggled out of his hold and dropped her feet to the car floor between his legs.

He began to take his arms off her but her eyes found his and her smile broadened into a grin.

She had a broken front tooth. He stalled his moving arms, still loosely holding the air that surrounded her.

“You know English?” She asked incredulously, her tiny little hand splaying on his chest as she pushed further back to get a better look at him. Samarth inhaled.

“I do.”

“Aur Hindi?” She tested, her words correct but slightly accented.

“Woh bhi aati hai,” he chuckled, gathering her close as his car door was pulled opened. Ava stood there.

“Mama, are we getting a pony home?” The little girl switched immediately, turning her body and pushing her face into Ava’s chest.

“No,” Ava reached for her.

“We got a knight to go with it. What will he do without his pony?”

“He is not a knight, he is a… kind man who helped us.”

Samarth felt that stake hit deep in his chest.

“Are you a kind man?” She turned to him, her ponytail whipping across her face with the speed of her change of subjects.

“We don’t ask people that.” Ava took her hand, tugging her down the car — “Come on now.”

“Bye!” She waved her hand on his chest. On his chest. Samarth sat fascinated, frozen, as she jumped down and ran towards her house.

“I have called an Uber for you,” Ava pointed at him. “It will be here in 8 minutes. Do you want some water or coffee in the meantime?”

Samarth stared at her. She stared back.

“Mama!!!!” A scream echoed from the garden. Without thinking Samarth jumped out of the car and dashed. His heart in his mouth, he ran and rounded the stone-paved path, only to gape at the little girl. She was half bent over some flowers, eyes popped open wide.

“Shhhh,” she warned without looking back. “It’s the fat black bee. He is back. See he is doing that poliing thing you told me, Mama…”

“Polli-nating.” Ava corrected from behind him. Samarth panted, eyeing her walk past him and to her daughter, her bag and bottle in hand. “Now open the door and go set your things in their place. Let him pollinate in peace.”

Samarth gaped as she handed her the keys and the little girl took her bag, bottle and keys and skipped to the backdoor, trailing her free hand through the bed of lavenders and pulling it back to her nose for a whiff.

Then, like a pro she picked the right key from the bunch, jammed it into the keyhole and twisted it open.

He wasn’t allowed to be proud but he was so proud.

The door swayed behind her and he kept absorbing the idyllic scents and winds and the birdsongs and bees.

“You can wait here,” Ava said. He glanced at her, her arm extended out to a small pergola in the garden with a white picnic table and colourful chairs around it. “I have a call I cannot miss, so please see yourself out. There is security at the gate so don’t worry about anything else.”

With that, she turned around and walked to the back door.

She stepped in, bag and all, and shut the door with a quiet click without looking back.

Like a parched beggar he stood there, seeing through the crossed window — the little girl dancing around, Ava handing her a plate of food.

She jumped up and down, said something then disappeared from his view.

Ava picked up a laptop, grabbed something that looked like a sipper and disappeared behind her too.

Samarth kept looking through the windows visible to him. But they never came back into view.

A car honk broke him out of his search. He glanced over his shoulder.

“Bonjour, monsieur…” Samarth stumbled at those words accompanied by a car honk.

He turned, and found an Uber waiting for him.

He stared at it a second longer, then gained gumption — striding towards it while reaching for his wallet and pulling out a wad of cash — “ Veuillez annuler mon trajet. [88] ”

————————————————————

“Hi! Are you our new security guard?”

Samarth knocked his elbow on the table as he whirled at that voice in his ear. And there she was. The little girl with a big grin, her round eyes curious. Even when curious, her eyes laughed.

“Eh, where did you come from?” He demanded playfully. He had, like a certified creep, kept his eyes on the back door, waiting for Ava to finish her call and make an appearance. An hour… or more had elapsed but she had not passed. Her mini-me did.

“I have secret tunnels,” her head cocked at right angle and came so close to his.

Samarth laughed, holding his hand out. She had fallen into his lap out of need earlier.

He wouldn’t breach that line again unless she wanted him to.

And he was prouder of her when she glanced at his hand, thought for a moment, and then only gave him a low-five.

She did not take his hand. He wanted her to, but he was also glad that she hadn’t yet.

“Can you share some secrets with me?”

“Why?”

“Because… I was a kind man.”

“Mama said not to ask people that.”

“She is right,” he nodded. “But since you asked me, and I heard you, it’s alright.”

“So are you kind?”

Samarth opened his mouth to say yes, then stalled. He had been kind to the whole world except one girl. Two girls.

“I try to be,” he answered honestly. “Are you kind?”

“Always. Except when somebody is mean to me.”

“Who is mean to you?”

“So many people!” She side-walked her way from between his chair and the table and came and stood in front of him, her hand automatically finding its way to his shoulder as she babbled, counting names, mostly her ‘friends-but-not-friends’ from either school or the polo club.

He found his body leaning in to let her hand rest more comfortably on his shoulder.

“…but not Aniket. He is my cousin. He is a hogger if we have to share a drawing book and my crayons but he is a baby so we let go.”

“We?” Samarth cocked an eyebrow, amused at that magnanimous declaration.

“Yes, Gopi Masaji and me. He is in my team. Always.”

Samarth’s eyes squinted, feeling weighted — “Is he?”

“Is anybody ever mean to you?” She asked, stepping back and pushing her hands behind her back. Samarth’s breath stalled. It was exactly like Papa. And him sometimes…

“Brahmi!”

His mouth opened and breaths entered in gulps. With his recent recovery and today’s breathless moments coming on the heels of each other, he would be lucky if he survived until sunset.

“Brahmi?” Ava hollered, her head popping at the window and stalling. Her eyes met his and the easygoing light faded. If there was a question, an accusation or rage there she hid it under her holler — “For the last time, Brahmi. come inside and talk to Naniji.”

“Ooh! It’s my Naniji-talking time! Do you know what? My Naniji calls me in the evening and Nanaji calls at night after he comes home from office and they come here for weekends…”

“Brahmi, the video call is on!”

“I’ll be back bye!”

She dashed. Samarth didn’t even get a chance to say bye as she disappeared inside her house.

He kept sitting there, not expecting anything except her coming back.

Her mother came out instead, closing the door behind her.

He pushed to his feet. She was now dressed down in a pair of cream lounge pants and a sweater, her hair piled up in a high ponytail.

Samarth got his first good look at her full face.

Age hadn’t touched her. Or if it had, he couldn’t tell.

Maybe because he had seen her every morning behind his closed eyelids… and maybe seen her grow with him.

“You cancelled the ride?” She held her mobile up.

“Yes.”

“Is a car coming to pick you up?”

“No.”

“I cannot lend you my car, I need it…”

“Tell me it’s true.”

She stilled. Her words trailed to silence. It was a flicker of shock before she went back to the courteous stranger she had never been to anybody in her life, forget him.

“It’s true.”

She said those two words so easily, like they did not break the hinge his life had been rocking on for a decade.

“You did not tell me.”

“I came to tell you.”

Hatred. For himself. He had never hated himself. Pity. Self-pity. He had never pitied himself.

“To Nawanagar,” he calculated. “To my palace. To tell me.”

“Yes. Lucky for you, she is a girl and not in line to claim your stepmother’s precious throne. Now don’t make this what it is not…”

“What it is not?”

“Some soap opera reunion. You helped me this afternoon as an old friend, thank you. Forget you saw any of this and go back.”

“Go back?” He pronounced. “Forget I saw any of this… saw her ?”

She began to open her mouth and he scoffed, on the verge of breaking into a sob or a laugh, he didn’t know. He had never been so out of control of himself. His head dropped back and the sky came into view — the perfect fleecy clouds and fairytale birds pitying him too.

“I have a daughter.”

Birdsong.

“She is… so grown.”

Wind.

“I did not get to know her.”

The sound of her laughter from inside the house.

His head shot straight and bent to get eye to eye with her — “I have so much going on inside me that I haven’t been able to move from this place all afternoon,” he pointed to the chair.

“I held her for a fraction of my life. She is mine and I got to hold her for a second. She rides like me, better than me at that age. She stands like my Papa and commands like my Dada Sarkar. She looks like you. She feels like everything I have ever adored in my life rolled into one…” Samarth choked.

“She grew up just like that? Not knowing…” a realisation dawned. “Does she have somebody?”

She did not respond.

“A… father?” He stuttered, the words like poison on his tongue.

Ava blinked slowly, her mouth pursed. His body plunged into panic. What if she had? What if she had and he had lost that chance? What if she called another man her father and slept on his chest and held his shoulder…

“No.”

“She knows about her father?”

“Listen” Ava sighed. “She thinks her father is a very big horseman who needs to take care of the horses far away in South America.”

Samarth’s eyes squeezed shut.

“Does she never ask why he doesn’t come home?”

“No. She knows it’s just the two of us. It’s ok if she has to let her father go to care for the horses.”

He turned his back to her, his face screwing up as a tearless sob rattled his body.

“Not here, Samarth.”

“Mama!”

“Yes, baby?”

“Naniji wants to talk to you!”

“Coming!” She hollered back. Then to him in a low whisper — “I understand this is a shock for you. But you have a life. Go. Don’t mingle with her now. It’s better this way.”

He did not turn. Heard the noises. Her retreating footsteps. The opening and shutting of the door. The bolting of windows. Cutting off of Brahmi’s little sounds. And then silence. Samarth broke into a run. Away from her house, her and… her .

He ran, ran, ran, then walked. Then broke into a run again.

Through the idyllic lanes of that small town he ran.

His oath. The kingdom. His promise. The throne.

His debts. His life of nothing but strengthening the throne for Sharan.

All the milestones plotted for his colourless life now bursting into these fuchsia bougainvillea and lavender shrubs, blue skies and multi-coloured butterflies.

All the dreams he had annihilated with his own bare hands after Paris having lived a life of their own for eight years.

Everything he had ever held on a pedestal now dust in front of a tiny hand on his chest.

Where was justice now? In holding on to Nawanagar and his promise or leaving it all behind for a little girl who had given up her father for the horses of South America?