And then the creature was gone.
4
Asha took a few stumbling steps out of the brush, waist deep in ferns, scanning for the little bird, but it was gone. Out of sight and out of hearing. And that was the most troubling part. Even when she had the tiny peacock right in front of her, Asha still had not been able to hear the animal’s soul. If anything, there had been a ripple in the background noise of the rest of the garden and palace, a warble in the sounds of vegetable, insect, and human souls singing together in accidental harmony.
When she finally stopped studying the ground and looked up, Asha saw the guards on the far side of the garden frowning at her. She smiled and retreated to the corner where she snatched up the still-warm egg and slipped over the wall onto the tiled walkway. The egg was a dark golden hue, glowing dimly with citrine blemishes like an orb of ancient amber. She considered the egg only for a minute before striding off in search of the prince.
The lone guard at the west end of the palace confirmed that she had found the prince’s bedchamber, but he refused to allow her to disturb his sleeping lord and master.
“This is important. I need to speak to him,” she insisted.
“I’m sorry, madam. I have my orders. No disturbances before dawn.”
“I don’t care about your orders.” She tried to push past him, but he blocked her way and gently but firmly pushed her back. She tried again, and again, but each time the armored man proved just a bit faster. She never came close to the prince’s door.
“All right.” Asha chewed her lip for a moment. “The moment that he comes out of there, you tell the prince to come see me. Immediately. Tell him I know what happened to his wife.” And she returned the princess’s chamber to check on her patient.
An hour later a few soft rustling sounds murmured under the door, and a few minutes later Pratap Singh burst into the princess’s room with his red sherwani jacket unbuttoned and flapping around his white silk shirt. He stared at her. “Mistress Asha, good morning. My man said you had some news for me.”
“Tell me about the peacock.” Asha held up the amber egg. She grit her teeth and glanced at the grim-faced guard behind the prince. “Please. Your Highness.”
The prince took the egg, studied it briefly, and returned it. “The peacock was a gift for my wife. I found it in the bazaar one day. A traveling menagerie. I’m sure you’ve seen such things. I certainly have. Usually just an assortment of common monkeys and snakes and beetles, but I found this little peacock among them. The seller claimed the miniature breed was quite popular in Maharashtra, and would never grow any larger, so I bought it for her. But that was over a year ago, long before she fell ill.”
“Did you know that your wife has been eating the peacock’s eggs?” Asha asked.
The prince frowned. “No. But such things are not unknown.”
“Don’t you find it odd that a male peacock is laying eggs at all?”
Now the prince blinked in surprise. “Male?”
“Only the male peacock has the beautiful tail feathers, for seducing his mate. The females are brown and much less impressive.”
The prince stared at the egg in her hand. “But how is that possible? How can a male peacock lay eggs at all?”
“It can’t. You don’t have a male peacock, Your Highness. You have a female cockatrice.” Asha took a clean rag from her shoulder bag and wrapped the egg in it. “Your peacock has a second tail, one that is green and scaled like a lizard’s tail. The cockatrice is an artificial cross between our native peacocks and a poisonous lizard from the far west, from a frozen land called Europa.”
“The eggs are poisonous!” The prince covered his mouth and backed away from the wrapped bundle in her hand.
“Quite poisonous, yes. The cockatrice’s venom is a powerful neurotoxin that paralyzes the victim so severely that primitive people thought the victims had actually turned to stone. These unfertilized eggs don’t contain that same venom, of course. Instead, the egg contains a powerful anti-venom to protect the unborn young, but the anti-venom is only meant for the young cockatrice. In any other creature, including a human, the effect of the anti- venom is almost identical to the venom itself, only less dramatic. It probably also helped that the eggs were cooked before your wife ate them. That further reduced their potency. Still, daily exposure over several months has left the princess almost completely paralyzed. If I can’t reverse the effect of the poison quickly, it will seize the base of her brain and her heart will cease to beat.”
“Yes, yes, of course, please, save her!” the prince implored. “You should not have delayed to speak to me. Only her life matters.”
“Well, I need something and thought I should ask permission.” Asha pointed out the door toward the garden square. “To make a cure for this anti-venom, I’m going to need the cockatrice itself. Bring it to me as quickly as you can. Dead, not alive. And tell your men to be careful of its bite.” She paused. “Actually, you need to stay away from its mouth altogether. It exhales traces of a poisonous fume wherever it goes. If it wasn’t for all the ginger I eat, its breath might have killed me last night as I lay in the garden.” She wiped roughly at her nose.
As the prince hurried out of the room, Asha quickly examined the patient once more for changes. There were none that she could find, but the princess seemed as close to death as ever, and Asha busied herself by spreading her tools and supplies across the floor beside the woman’s bed. Priya sat by the window, gazing out across the lake as though her eyes were not covered by a heavy band of cloth. “Asha? Is everything going to be all right?”
“I have the cause. Cockatrice egg anti-venom. Now I just need the cure.”
“Is there a cure for such a thing?”
“Of course there is,” Asha said. “I just need to invent it. Quickly.”
After an hour of arranging and cleaning and rearranging her materials, Asha was still waiting beside the princess’s bed for the dead cockatrice. And it was approaching the second hour when she finally stood and marched back out into the central courtyard to see what was the matter.
Over the short wall she saw a dozen men with drawn swords peering down through the ferns and flowers, muttering to one another, and poking and prodding at the unseen ground. The prince was coordinating the disorganized search from atop the wall itself, pointing here and there, occasionally barking at one man to go this way, or another to dive that way.
Asha called out, “Where is the cockatrice?”
The prince glared. “It seems to be hiding. We’ve spotted it several times, but each time it runs to a new hiding place and we have to start all over again. It’s silent, absolutely silent. Once it hissed at one of the men and a blue miasma wafted out of its beak. The venom you spoke of, I assume. So the men are being very cautious.”
“How much longer?” Asha asked.
“As long as it takes,” the prince replied sharply.
“It’s already been too long.” Asha spun and marched back into the princess’s bedchamber. “Priya? Can you come out here to help us? These poor gentlemen are having trouble finding something. I thought you might be able to encourage them.”
The nun smiled as she came to the door, Jagdish on her shoulder, and her bamboo rod in her hand tapping on the tiled floor. “I can certainly try. Did you think my sharp ears would be of use to them?”
Asha led her companion over to the low wall at the edge of the garden. “No. Not exactly.” She snatched the mongoose from Priya’s shoulder and gently tossed him down into the undergrowth of the garden. Jagdish darted away into the greenery.
“What have you done?” Priya asked, her voice straining to maintain its usual calm.
“I’ve always said a mongoose is a useful thing to have around. It’s time for him to prove me right. Jagdish should be immune to the cockatrice’s venom, and I’m sure he can sniff out that creature, even if he can’t see it or hear it.” Asha stared at the ferns, searching for a flash of brown fur or blue feathers.
“ Should be immune?”
Asha’s mouth hardened into a straight line. “Should be.”
