Free The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

estimation of my lessons.) I was interested in seeing what she had to offer.
    “Who sent you?” I asked. I had a suspicion it was Vyasa the sage. He, too, came from fisher-folk.
    She grinned. Her teeth were very white in her dark face, their edges sharp and serrated. “Your first lesson, princess, is to knowhow to sidestep questions you don't want to answer. You do it by ignoring them.”
    The rest of that week she taught me how to dress hair. She taught me how to wash it, oil it, comb the tangles out of it, and braid it into a hundred different designs. She had me practice on her and rebuked me sharply if I pulled too hard, or snagged a tress. Her hair was kinky and unruly, difficult to handle, so I received many such admonishments. I took them with unaccustomed meekness.
    Dhai Ma puffed out her cheeks in disapproval. “Ridiculous!” she said emphatically (though not, I noticed, in the sorceress's hearing). “Whoever heard of a queen braiding someone's hair—or even her own, for that matter?” But I felt the sorceress had her reasons, and I worked hard until she declared herself satisfied.

    The sorceress taught me other unqueenly skills. She made me lie on the floor at night, with only my arm for a pillow, until I could sleep under those conditions. She made me wear the cheapest, most abrasive cotton saris that chafed my skin until I grew used to them. She made me eat what the lowest of my servants ate; she taught me to live on fruits, then water, and then to fast for days at a time.
    “That woman's going to be the death of you!” Dhai Ma wailed. “She's wearing you down to skin and bone.” But this was not true. The sorceress had taught me a yogic breath that filled me with energy so that I needed no other sustenance. The breath made my mind one-pointed, and I began to glimpse subtleties that had been invisible to me before. I noticed that her lessons went in opposites. She taught me adornments to enhance my beauty. She taught me how to make myself so ordinary that no one would spare me a secondglance. She taught me to cook with the best of ingredients and the most meager. She taught me potions to cure illness and potions to cause them. She taught me to be unafraid of speaking out, and to be brave enough for silence. She taught me when to lie and when to speak the truth. She taught me to discover a man's hidden tragedies by reading the tremor in his voice. She taught me to close myself off from the sorrow of others so that I might survive. I understood that she was preparing me for the different situations that would appear in my life. I tried to guess what shape they might take, but here I failed. I failed also in this: though I knew all that she taught me was important, in my vanity I only learned the ones that flattered my ego.

    Toward the end, she taught me seduction, the first role a wife must play. She demonstrated how to send out a lightning-glance from the corner of the eye. How to bite, slightly, the swollen lower lip. How to make bangles ring as I raised my arm to pull a transparent veil into place. How to walk, the back swaying just enough to hint at hidden pleasures.
    She said, “In bed you must be different each day, sensitive to your lord's moods. Sometimes a lioness, sometimes a trembling dove, sometimes a doe, matching its partner's fleetness.”
    She gave me herbs, some for insatiability, some for endurance, some for the days I might want to keep a man away.
    “What about love?” I asked.
    “The stalk of the blue lotus, ground into honey, will make a man mad for you,” she said.
    “That's not what I meant.”
    She gave me the name of an herb to arouse my own desire.
    “No. Teach me how to love my husband, and how to make him love me.”
    She laughed out loud. “I can't teach you that,” she said. “Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you're lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you'll spend your life yearning for a man you can't have. I advise you to forget about