Endgame Novella #2 (8 page)

She whirls on her heel and kicks her heel into Pravheet's face, but he is already somewhere else—behind her, pinning her arms behind her back.

Shari goes limp in defeat, and Pravheet lets go. “I'm sorry,” she says. “I suppose my mind is elsewhere.”

“You're supposed to be beyond such problems,” Pravheet points out.

“I know,” she says, ashamed.

“Shari, why do you look away from me?”

She is staring at the floor, trying not to cry. She is soon to be the Player, after all—she is far beyond the weakness of tears.

“Shari,” he says again, quietly insistent.

Shari looks up to meet his fierce gaze, steadying her breath and calming her nerves. She draws strength from the look in his eyes, which suggests he knows more than he's saying, and understands.

“You don't have to worry,” Shari tells him. “I'm distracted, yes, but I'm dealing with it. After today, there shouldn't be a problem. There will be nothing left”—she won't let her voice catch on the words—“nothing left to distract me from what matters.”

Pravheet takes her hands in his. They are large and calloused and strong, and make her feel very small. “Shari, you know that no two Players are alike, do you not?”

“You've told me many times,” Shari tells him. Pravheet is the only one of her trainers who has been sympathetic to her desire not to kill, at least not until it becomes absolutely necessary. Pravheet himself swore never to kill again, after he lapsed. He defended her choice to the other Harrapan, and has always encouraged her to stand up for what she believes, to Play the way she feels she should.

“There are some Players who feel they need to purge their lives of everything beyond the game,” Pravheet says.

“Of course,” Shari agrees. “Absolute focus.” That's what she's always been taught, and, until recently, it's what she has always practiced.

“But you have to find your own way.” Pravheet gives her a strange, kind smile. “Do you see what I'm getting at?”

“Honestly? I'm not sure.”

His smile widens. “Don't worry. You will be.”

She shows up early; Jamal is already seated and waiting for her. He has ordered her a mug of chai, prepared just as she likes, with milk and three spoons of sugar.

Shari has spent the last two hours meditating. She's ready for whatever Jamal has to tell her.

The session with Pravheet has convinced her that she will be better off without Jamal. This relationship has been a distraction from her training, from her duty.

The fact that she actually let herself think she couldn't live without him? That was melodrama and weakness that should have been beneath her.

There's only one thing she can't live without, and that's her responsibility to the Harrapan line.

She reminds herself of this unshakable truth, then sits down.

“So,” Jamal says.

“So.”

They watch each other.

Even now, under these circumstances, it's good to see him. Her eyes have been thirsty; now, in the long silence, they drink.

She likes to imagine he is doing the same.

“I believe you,” he says.

“Okay.”

“About all of it. The things from the stars, the game, the Player, your weird secret superhero life, the thousand-year conspiracy, my . . . my dad, all of it.”

She sips her tea. “I said okay.”

“You don't want to say anything else?”

“Like what?”

“I don't know, don't you want to ask me why I believe you? Or what I think? Or what I want to do?”

She sighs. If he thinks he can sucker her into breaking up with
herself
, then he doesn't know her at all. “What do you want from me, Jamal? I told you what was true; I told you why I lied to you before; I told you I was sorry. I told you I loved you. I told you everything I had to tell. I came here because you said you had something to tell me.”

He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. Shari readies herself. This is it.

“Not tell you, exactly,” he says. Then he puts a small cardboard box on the table and removes its lid. The thing inside sparkles. “Ask you, really.”

Shari reaches for the box, takes out the sparkly thing.

“What . . . what is this?” It's a stupid question; it's obvious what the thing is: a ring.

“It's not real,” he admits. “I mean, it's not exactly from a gumball machine, but . . . close enough. Best I could do on short notice.”

“Is this what I think this is?”

“Marry me,” he says. “Please?”

It's the last thing she expected, and without thinking, she bursts into laughter.

Jamal grins. “Not exactly the answer I was hoping for.”

“Is this a joke?” she says. “
Marry
you? Why?”

“Why not?”

“Now,
that's
romantic.”

“Give me a break, it's not like I've done this before,” Jamal says.

“That's comforting, at least.” She could banter with him like this all day; she could banter with him like this for the rest of her life.

And with that thought, her laughter vanishes, because she realizes: This is real. Jamal is asking her to marry him.

And everything in her wants to say yes.

Jamal's mood shifts back to serious right along with her. “I know it sounds crazy, but I've thought it through. I know what I want, and it's
you
, Shari. It's always been you, even before I met you. How's that for
romantic? I always thought that kind of thing was cheesy garbage, the sort of thing you said to get girls to like you, but it's actually true. I want you now, I want you forever, and I don't want to wait. Especially now that I know about this Player thing—if you're going to be running around the world risking your life, I want you to have a reason to survive. To come back.”

“Not wanting to die isn't reason enough?” she says, but the joke falls flat.

Jamal's not laughing anymore. “I know what you're going to say,” he says. “That we should wait until we're older. Until you're not the Player anymore, and you're ready to start the rest of your life. But why shouldn't the rest of your life start now? Why shouldn't you be a Player with a husband, with a
family—
”

“You mean . . . ?”

“Yeah, I mean kids,” he says. “I mean, if you think you want that?”

“Of course I do,” she says, and it's true, even if it has always seemed impossibly out of reach. The Harrapan often marry young. Many of her siblings married when they were 14 or 15, and had children quickly after. But Shari's never considered the possibility of that kind of life. For her, a husband, children, they're all part of some unimaginable future, after she lapses, and something else she suddenly realizes: there's a part of her that doesn't believe in a life after. Her time as a Player is like Mount Kanchenjunga—a towering reality that's always been there, looming over her life. Too large to see beyond.

“I can't stand the idea of you sacrificing yourself for the Harrapan, or for this stupid game, or for anything,” Jamal says. “I want you to have something to live for.”

“I live for myself and my people,” she points out. “That's always been enough.”

“Don't you want more? Don't you want . . .” He rests his hands on the table, palms up, and she appreciates that he doesn't reach for her. He waits for her to lay her hands on his. She does. They're warm, and she
can feel his pulse beating at his wrist. “Don't you want me?”

What she wants is to fling herself across the table and into his arms. She wants to slip on the ring and never take it off.

She wants Jamal, but she also wants to be the Player that her people deserve, and she doesn't see how she can have both.

“I have to think,” Shari says. “I need some time. Is that okay?”

“Of course it's okay. But can I ask one more thing?”

She squeezes his hands, holds tight. “Anything.”

“Don't do all your thinking alone?” He smiles. She missed that smile. She wants to wrap herself up in its warmth and fall asleep. “I missed you.”

They spend the rest of the evening together. They spend every minute they can find with each other, and it's as if nothing has changed. Except that he knows the truth about her now. And he loves her anyway.

A week passes, and another, and Jamal doesn't pressure her for an answer. She can't give him one. The answer she wants to give doesn't make any sense, and the answer that makes sense is the opposite of what she wants. So she meditates, and asks the Makers what to do, and breathes, and waits for clarity.

It comes to her in a dream.

She dreams of a child.

A toddler with dark hair and bright eyes—Shari's eyes.

The little girl has Shari's hair, Shari's laugh, and Jamal's smile.

She stands in a field of golden grass, her head tipped back and her arms open wide, as if to embrace the sky.

Mama,
she says, in a voice like a flute. It makes Shari's heart flutter.
Mama, I'm waiting for you.

“Why?” Jamal says, after he's managed to stop kissing her, after he's slipped the ring onto her finger, after he's swung her off her feet and through the air and thanked the gods for his fortune. “What made
you so sure all of a sudden?”

It was the dream, and it wasn't.

It was the little girl, their daughter—Shari knows as surely as she's known everything that the girl is out there somewhere, waiting to be born—but not just their daughter.

It was Pravheet's prescient reminder that every Player must forge her own path.

It was Jamal. It has always been Jamal.

“I love you,” Shari says. “I simply decided that was enough.”

Other than the decision itself, there's nothing simple about it. They marry in secret, so no one can stop them. Jamal continues to live with his mother, Shari with her parents, even after they've been joined in holy matrimony. She wears her ring on a chain around her neck, keeping it beneath her clothes, close to her heart. They steal time with each other in grassy knolls and the backseat of Jamal's rusting Honda, which barely runs but has wonderfully soft leather seats. Shari continues to train, to wait for the current Player to lapse, to study and meditate and let her elders believe her life is empty of anything but thoughts of Endgame.

Jamal, at least, stops flirting.

They keep the secret between them until the marriage becomes something no one can question, until they've passed a point of no return—until Shari finds out she's pregnant.

“You did
what
?”

“Are you out of your
mind
?”

“How
could
you?”

The questions are fired at her like artillery, each angrier than the last. Shari and Jamal called the Harrapan elders to her family's house to hear the news. Her parents sit quietly beside her as the room explodes. They don't agree with her choice, but they will not argue with her now that it's been made.

The others have no such compunction.

“This is extremely irregular,” says Jovinderpihainu, the eldest among them.

“Shari has always been irregular,” says Pravheet, giving her a wink so she knows it's meant as a compliment.

“I know it's irregular,” Shari says. “But it's happening. There's nothing to be done about it now.” She will have the baby two months before she's due to become the Player. There has never, at least in recorded Harrapan history, been a Player with a husband and child. It is unheard of, perhaps unthinkable.

There are some who think it unacceptable.

“I can think of something,” Peetee says angrily. “We can find someone else to be our Player. Because you've proved you don't care enough to do it.” There's a roar of support for this sentiment.

“She's proved no such thing,” Helena snaps, and the room falls silent.

Even Shari is shocked.

Helena was a Player herself, more than 40 years ago. She is the second most respected of the last two centuries, and she has never had much respect for Shari. It was Helena who called Shari a coward for not wanting to learn to kill, Helena who time and again has questioned Shari's readiness and commitment to the cause. She is a fearsome woman, still strong enough at 64 to fend off almost any enemy single-handed—if anyone would dare attack her.

She also, Shari now remembers, married her husband at midnight on the day she lapsed. Shari has always known this, but never gave much thought to what it implies: that Helena was once young and in love, that she spent her years as a Player waiting for her time to come, waiting until she could finally put her duties aside and give herself to Boort.

“We are a line that values tradition, but we need not be imprisoned by it,” Helena says. “Simply because a thing has never happened before, does that mean it
may
never happen? Simply because a woman has a family, does that mean she cannot serve her people, fulfill her obligation to the greater good?”

“Doesn't mean she
can
either,” Peetee mutters.

“The Makers chose Shari for a reason,” Pravheet reminds the assembled Harrapan. “Perhaps this was the reason. Perhaps this was all meant to be.”

Jamal has stayed silent throughout the meeting, tensing when Shari came under attack but keeping his mouth shut. Now he rises. “Meant to be, not meant to be?” He waves the question away. “This is what is. What
will
be.”

Shari rises to her feet beside her husband, who, for the first time, seems less like the boy she knows and more like a man who will be father to her child. “My husband speaks true,” she says. “I asked you here not to gain your permission, but to tell you what will come. Thank you for listening.”

She takes Jamal's hand, and together they stride out of the common room and back into the private bedchambers of the house, without looking back.