A retelling of the legend of Ranakadevi.
The potter’s daughter gathered clay from the banks of the Bhogavo, and watched the funeral pyre burn.
The funeral procession was long gone by now. Their elegant horses and gleaming armor had made quite a sensation in the small river village. But the men hadn’t even lingered long enough for the flames to die down, or to disperse the ashes. They had disrespected the dead, in Hadma’s opinion.
She had more than enough clay gathered by now. Soft and scented sweet by the river. Hadma had purposefully squatted upwind of the funeral pyre and all of its voluminous smoke, but now as she stood, the wind changed direction and she caught the smell of burning flesh.
Hadma had thrown her dupatta over her shoulder to keep it from dragging in the mud, and now she draped it across her face against the stench. The funeral pyre had been lit in the morning, and now it was nearly dusk. Whatever corpse that lay there should have been ash and bone long ago.
She hid her basket of clay in the grass, covering it so that no ash would land in it, and went to the pyre.
Everyone in the village had different theories as to whose funeral it had been. Oorja thought it was a disgraced general. Vaani suggested a prince, killed in battle by his brother. Sujal, beating her wet laundry against the rocks, told them she had seen a woman climbing to the top of the lit pyre and kneeling there.
Sujal must have been right. As soon as Hadma approached the funeral pyre, a woman stood up out of the flames.
The first thing Hadma noticed about her was that her skin gleamed in the sun like she was made of gold. Then the gold began to run in rivulets, down her face, out of her nose and her ears, down her neck and breasts, and Hadma realized that it was her jewelry, and it was melting off of her.
“Are you a yaksi?” asked Hadma. “Only we’ve had yaksis here before, and the holy men always kill them.” This was a lie. Their tiny river village was not important enough to have a holy man, but Hadma decided it was best to scare this yaksi off before she decided to eat anyone.
“I’m not a yaksi,” said the woman. She was completely naked, apart from the gold dripping off of her, enough gold to feed the entire village for a year. In her hands she held a red turban. By some miracle, it was unsinged. The woman was unsinged too, even though flames still licked at her ankles.
“Then what are you?” asked Hadma. “And whose funeral pyre is this?”
“King Jayasimha killed my sons and my husband, even though he too was a king, and then burned them,” said the woman. She looked down at her feet, at the ashes laid there. “So I climbed onto their funeral pyre to burn with them.”
“It didn’t work,” said Hadma. “Now what will you do?”
The woman looked around. She looked utterly lost, utterly desolate. “I don’t know.”
Hadma decided then that this wasn’t a yaksi after all. Yaksis didn’t take husbands, or have sons. They lured people into wild places and ate them until there was nothing left. And they burned when set ablaze.
“You can start by coming down from there,” said Hadma. Before she could think twice, she held out her hand.
The woman took her hand. Hadma expected it to feel like hot clay straight out of a kiln, but the woman’s skin was cool to the touch. Hadma helped her down from the pyre.
Now that the woman was out of the flames and the gold had melted away, Hadma saw that she looked quite normal, nothing like the fearsome statues of yaksis that she had seen. She was older than Hadma, long brown hair to her hips, her thighs and belly streaked with silvery stretch marks. She looked entirely like a person, except for the way her eyes looked like molten glass.
“Well, you can’t go back to the village dressed like that,” Hadma said, and began to take off her dupatta.
The woman still held a man’s turban in her hands. Up close, Hadma saw that it was made of beautiful crisp cloth, not like the simple pagri the men wore in the village. It still held the shape of a man’s head, like it had been plucked off of him instead of untied.
The woman untied it now, untucking its knot and unwinding it into a long red swath of cloth. She tied this around her body, covering herself. When this was done, she turned her glassy eyes onto Hadma.
“I think I have to kill a king.”
The woman’s name was Ranakadevi, and she was a queen.
Hadma took her back to her little house on the edge of the village. Ever since Hadma’s father passed, she lived alone, making earthenware for the village. Her father used to work the wheel and the kiln, and it would be her job to paint the finished pieces. But now, she did everything.
Hadma gave Ranakadevi clothes to wear and a cup of warm milk, like she was a child who needed to be soothed. Ranakadevi’s eyes were unsettling to look at. An immeasurable grief seemed to light them from within, and Hadma thought that if any of that fire ever decided to pour out, their tiny river village would never stand a chance.
Ranakadevi walked around the small house, her feet leaving trails of ash behind her. She examined the pots and bowls that Hadma had made with a critical eye, before sitting on the ground across from Hadma to finish her milk.
“Did you make this?” Ranakadevi asked. She held the cup in her hands like it was a jeweled goblet, but it was only a clay cup that Hadma had made and painted a few weeks ago.
Hadma nodded. “I made everything in this room.”
“Show me,” said Ranakadevi.
But Hadma’s arms still ached from carrying clay back from the river, and she had no wish to turn out her pottery wheel now. “Just because you’re a queen, it doesn’t mean I’ll do what you tell me,” said Hadma.
“I’m not a queen anymore,” said Ranakadevi. “My husband is dead because of me. I was the one who opened the doors for our enemies, thinking they were our guardsmen. When I was born, the astrologer told my parents I would be the death of a king, and yet they couldn’t bear to drown me, as they should have done.”
“When I was born, the astrologer told my father I would be soft-spoken and honorable,” said Hadma. “But I like to think it was particularly cloudy that night.”
“Honor means nothing,” said Ranakadevi. “I tried to do the honorable thing. But even my family’s funeral pyre couldn’t give me that. I watched their bodies burn beside me, and I couldn't follow them.”
“That’s no way to look at it,” said Hadma. “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”
“I am,” said Ranakadevi. “But for what? What will be enough for the gods? There is only one thing left for me. I have to kill the one who killed my own. If I have to be the death of one king, I might as well be the death of two.”
Perhaps she was a yaksi after all, Hadma thought. In that moment, Ranakadevi’s voice shook with so much anger, it was entirely believable that she could eat a man whole.
“How will you do it?” asked Hadma. “The men who lit that pyre rode away east in the morning. By now, they’re miles away locked in their fort.”
“I’ll march to the gates and tell them to let me in,” said Ranakadevi. She still had her husband’s turban wrapped around her, over her head and shoulders like a crimson shroud.
“They’ll try to kill you first,” said Hadma.
Ranakadevi’s eyes burned in the dark. She knew it already.
But the next day, Hadma woke to the smell of smoke, and Ranakadevi’s nails biting into her arm. Hadma moved aside the blanket, and where Ranakadevi’s feet once were, there was only a pile of ash. She would not be marching anywhere.
“Are you all right?” Hadma asked.
Ranakadevi’s eyes were wide, and her hands, when she finally let go of Hadma’s arm, were shaking. She was in shock, and could not speak.
So Hadma picked Ranakadevi up into her arms and carried her from the bed to the pottery wheel. She was no heavier than a basket full of wet clay, and she smelled like the smoke of the funeral pyre. It was sweeter on her than it had been in the air.
She sat Ranakadevi down by the wheel and lit the kiln, building the fire up until it roared at her. Hadma gathered the ash from the bed, and when she mixed the clay with water and pounded it against the stone to soften it, she mixed in that ash as well.
Ranakadevi set the stumps of her legs down onto the wheel, and Hadma began to shape her feet. She started with one single mound of clay that she molded into ankle, heel, and arch. Then she used wire to cut the clay in half, and then wire again to separate the toes.
“These feet might be bigger than the ones you had before,” Hadma told her. “And you probably won’t dance for any court any time soon.”
“My days of dancing are done,” said Ranakadevi. She was calmer now, and growing impatient. As soon as Hadma finished forming her toes, she began to curl them back and forth.
Hadma clucked at her. “Stop that. You want them to fall off? The clay is still wet.”
Ranakadevi smiled down at her, and Hadma briefly forgot what she was saying. “You’re spending too long making them perfect,” said Ranakadevi.
Hadma dipped her hands in water and ran her knuckles beneath the soles, carving their arches just so. Ranakadevi went still, her toes uncurling.
“I take my work seriously,” said Hadma. “Traders all the way from Wadhwan come here to buy my pottery, you know. I have a reputation to maintain. What would people say if I make you misshapen feet?”
“They won’t have a chance to say anything about my feet,” said Ranakadevi. “Soon, the rest of me will turn to ash too. All I need these feet to do is carry me to King Jayasimha before that happens.”
When Hadma looked up at her, Ranakadevi’s eyes seared. They would make a temple for her one day, Hadma thought. Not to worship her as they should, but to keep her spirit locked inside.
When her feet had dried, Hadma helped Ranakadevi out of her clothes, careful not to disturb the fragile clay. Then she carried her to the kiln.
Ranakadevi lay in the kiln for three days and three nights. All the while, Hadma attended the fire, keeping it burning hot. On the morning of the fourth day, Ranakadevi emerged from the kiln and walked right up to Hadma on her new two feet.
“Will you paint them for me?” asked Ranakadevi.
“If you sit still long enough,” said Hadma.
And though she was impatient, Ranakadevi let Hadma brush her feet with rust-red glaze, and paint them with clean black lines and white dots. It was the same signature pattern her father had taught her, and that his father had taught him.
Perhaps Hadma added a few flourishes of her own. These were the feet of a queen after all.
“You could stay here, you know,” said Hadma, while the paint was still wet.
“I can’t.” Ranakadevi showed Hadma her fingertips. They were turning to ash too.
“I’ll make new hands for you,” said Hadma, grasping Ranakadevi’s hand. “I’ll shape them out of the sweetest smelling clay.”
Ranakadevi shook her head. “I won’t be someone’s clay doll. Not even yours.”
Hadma hung her head, ashamed of herself. Ranakadevi kissed her forehead, her ash fingertips leaving fine trails across Hadma’s cheeks.
“You gave me feet to walk with, Hadma. It’s time for me to walk.”
Hadma let her go. Three villages saw a woman march east. Her feet were glazed red, and they were painted with the pottery marks of Hadma, potter’s daughter. Hadma heard the story later, when people began pouring into her village to buy her earthenware.
But when Ranakadevi left, Hadma put away her pottery wheel, and doused the flames in her kiln. She sat by the banks of the Bhogavo, her face turned to the east. And she waited to see smoke on the horizon.