The older woman claps her hands. “Enough excitement, everyone. Back to the stables. Miss Labhsha, I believe you’re next to ride.” She looks at me. “Parastrata, is it?”
“So.” I clench my teeth. If I had known Soraya was going to have them put down my name as Parastrata, I would have begged her to let me use her name instead. The last thing I need is to leave a trail for my father and brother.
“Dr. Lata said you were coming. I’m Shushri Advani, the equestrian instructor.”
“Pleased to meet you.” Soraya made sure I knew that phrase before she let me out of the house this morning.
“You’ve never handled a horse before?” Shushri Advani asks.
“No.” I shake my head. “I’ve milked goats.” I realize how stupid I sound as soon as the words are out.
“I don’t believe the horses will require that particular skill.” She cranes her neck to look past me. “Chennapragada?”
Two matching skinny girls with black hair cut straight at their shoulders break from the crowd by the fence. Twins, maybe? We never had twins on the Parastrata, but the Makkaram crewe was supposed to be full of them.
“Prita, Pia, show Miss Parastrata the ropes, if you please,” the instructor says.
“All right, Advani-madam,” one of the girls says.
Her sister nods to the barn. “This way. Come on.”
I follow after them, flicking dust out of my skirt and trying to ignore the stares latched on to the back of my head. I’m going to have some nasty bruise on my tailbone tomorrow.
One of the girls turns and walks backward. “I’m Prita.” She nods at the girl beside her. “That’s Pia.”
“Hi.” Pia throws me a smile over her shoulder.
“Are you twins?” I ask.
“No,” Prita says, dead serious.
“What gave you that idea?” Pia asks.
“Truly?” I frown.
The two girls turn their heads to look at each other as one, then burst out laughing.
I scowl at the dirt.
“Sorry.” Prita giggles. “Everyone asks us that.”
“Oh.” I can’t think what else to say. “Sorry.”
“So what’s your name?” Pia asks. “Or should we call you . . . Parastrata?” She draws my family name out in an imitation of Shushri Advani.
“Ava,” I say. “Just Ava.”
“So you really never rode a horse before?” Prita asks.
“No.”
Pia spins around so she’s walking backward with her sister as we pass through the close brick walls of the stables. “Not even your family’s?”
The horses stare at me from their shadowy alcoves. Their glassy black eyes make my skin prickle.
“We, um . . . we didn’t . . . we had goats,” I say lamely.
Prita scrunches up her face. “Goats?”
Pia rolls her eyes. “God, Prita. Advani-madam said she’s not from here, remember? They probably tied them all to a cart or something.” She looks at me. “Is that what you did? Tied them to a cart?”
“I, uh . . .”
Pia doesn’t wait for me to answer. “Want us to show you how to brush one down? Or would you rather start with the stalls?”
“Stalls,” I say quickly. Maybe I can talk Soraya or Dr. Lata into letting me study something else. After all, I’m never going to be rich enough to ride one of these monsters around the city anyway. Not even Soraya has one, and she gets around fine.
Prita looks disappointed but leads the way to an empty stall in dire need of mucking. Pia passes around pitchforks and brooms, and the two of them groan and giggle and make faces at each other as we start scraping the floor clean. I try to breathe through my mouth until my nose adjusts to the horse smell and my heart stops racketing around in my chest. At least this part is something I can do.
“So where’d you move from?” Prita asks, slopping a messy heap of straw into a wheelbarrow parked in the corner of the stall.
“I lived some lot of places,” I say.
“Like where?” Prita leans on her pitchfork.
“I was down in the Salt a while when we first got here.”
“The Salt!” Prita latches onto that. “Chaila, girl, you should have said earlier. We have to go down there together sometime. All the best clubs are in the Salt. Oh, and our brother’s renovating an old warehouse on the hill. He’s going to make it into apartments.”
“Oh, Pri-ta,” Pia sings. She staggers at her sister, pitchfork weighed down by dirty straw. “I’ve got a present for you.”
Prita shrieks and drops her own pitchfork with a clang. The horse in the stall next to us lays its ears flat against its head, snorts and stamps, and rolls its eye down at us. I cringe.
They’re smallgirls, I think. The same height as me, the same age, but even Miyole’s older than them inside.
A chirp pulses from Prita’s pocket.
“Did you bring your crow?” Pia asks.
Prita pulls out a slick blue crow and gives her sister a withering look. “Like I wouldn’t.” She pauses, deep in reading the screen. “Lali’s going to ride. She wants me to catch it for her page.”
“God, that girl’s obsessed.”
Prita shoves her crow in her pocket and makes for the door. “Ava? You coming?”
The stall’s only half done. I look from the twins to the muck-smeared floor. If Modrie Reller saw this, she’d take a wire to the back of my legs, or else make me clean the rest of it with my bare hands. “Won’t we get in trouble?”
“Trouble?” Prita laughs. “Why?”
“We didn’t finish. . . .”
“Oh, the machines’ll get the rest of it.” Prita waves her hand. “All Advani-madam cares about is that we practice so we appreciate the historical aspects of equestrian care.”
“Come on, Ava.” Pia grabs my arm and links hers through mine. “Lali likes a crowd.”
I walk with them back out to the paddock. The girl I saw earlier, the one with the diamond in her nose, sits high in the horse’s saddle, back straight. One of the other girls checks the horse’s straps and stirrups while the instructor looks on, smiling.
Prita climbs up on the fence, pulls out her crow, and aims it at the girl on horseback. “Okay, Lali. I’ve got you!”
Lali kicks the horse into a run. Its hooves beat the soft ground as it circles the paddock and rounds past us again in a spray of dirt. Lali leans forward over the horse’s neck, moving with it as it builds to a full gallop.
I sit on the fence beside Prita and Pia. All around me, the girls laugh and cheer Lali as she brings the horse to a high-stepping trot. I’m surrounded by girls who’ve had horses their whole lives, who’ve had nothing to do but perfect their riding, who don’t fear leaving something half done.