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“WHERE IS SHE?!” I yelled to the court. I advanced and drew my sword as the guards rushed towards me.
“Salim!” My mother tried to hurry over to me however the guards reached me first and I slashed at their hands gashing one of them. In that moment it was as if time it slowed and they gasped, watching in horror as the blood fell upon white of the floor in the midst of the flower petals.
“HAVE YOU NO SHAME?!” My father, the Emperor, rose from his seat at the head of the hall, and all rose with him. “YOU DARE SHED BLOOD IN THIS HALL? MY HALL?!”
“Akbar!” My mother dropped to her knees in front him kneeling until her head touched the white titles. “Forgive my son! Our son! He has been hexed! He is blind! That is the only sense for this madness.”
“Anarkali!” I yelled over her. “Where is she?”
“Do you not see your mother pleads for your life?!”
“I have no life without my wife!”
“The one you call your wife put poison upon my table!”
He walked down the steps, his hands behind his back, until he stood beside my still kneeling mother.
“I, your Emperor, gave NO blessing of such a wife!”
“I needed no such blessing!”
All among the Great Hall gasped while my mother sobbed. Not only had I broken the law and cursed myself by shedding blood upon sacred ground, but I’d forsaken the Emperor, my own father.
“Lufti!”
“Yes, Father!” My younger brother dropped to his knees.
“From this day forth you shall be Salim, Prince of Hindustan, and MY HEIR!” He declared to all the world, and Lufti looked to me wide eyed as he continued. “Woman, rise and embrace your son. Salim rise and embrace your mother!”
My mother would not rise.
Lufti, rose and walked over to the woman who raised me, who loved me, who wept for me even now, and in my heart I was sorry, but I could not go to her. I could no longer be her son.
“Guards, take this…this…man…to his wife! Let them die together!”
I threw my blade, the tip of which was stained red, along with the turban upon my head and all the jewels from my body upon the bed of flower petals. Outstretching my arms for the guards—men I’d trained with, men I’d went to war with—to take me. As they pulled me back gently, as if to not hurt me, I looked into my father’s green eyes, eyes that were glazed over with rage and pain. Lufti held my mother as she covered her mouth to silence her sobs.
“GET HIM OUT!” My father bellowed for all to hear.
They said nothing as they took me through the halls of the palace towards the pit of the forsaken. It was the one place I’d never seen in all of my life. Within the chamber there was nothing, the walls and ground were devoid of any color and life. There was nothing but the dark pit that had been dug into the ground. Even the sun was only allowed through a matching circle in the ceiling directly above her, a circle meant to scorch when the sun arose, and drown when it rained.
“How long has she been here?” I whispered as they released me at the edge of the pit.
None of them answered. Instead, Rashad, my General…no Salim’s General said. “You’ve given up the world in exchange for a woman who is leaving it.”
She was still alive. I held my chest. Turning back to him I smiled.
“Rashad, returning from war, as I sat by the King’s side, Love came to me and asked: ‘Will you die for me? Will you walk through fire for me? Would you forsake the sweetest of wines and the greatest of feasts to never let go of my hand?’ And I said yes.”
He took a step back from me. “Love was cruel to ask such of a Prince.”
“Love did not care that I was a Prince. And so goodbye my friend. Protect Lufti as he is now the prince you once followed.”
He gripped the staff tightly but was unable to push me into the pit. None of them seemed able to and so I stepped back. The sun blinded my eyes as I fell into the darkness towards her, the woman, whose face was like pomegranate blossoms…my one and only love in this life and all lives.
7. MOURNING
ESTHER
