I Barely Spoke to My Wife Until We Were Trapped in the Wilderness

The hall of Indraprastha was a cage of gold and marble, its pillars carved with serpents and lotuses, its air thick with sandalwood and the rustle of silk. Arjun sat beside Bhima and Nakula, his back straight, his hands resting on his thighs in the posture of a warrior at rest. The court was gathered for the spring tribute ceremony, a ritual of bows and gifts and carefully worded flattery. He had performed it so many times he could recite the order of offerings in his sleep.

Across the dais, Subhadra stood with the other royal women. Her sari was the color of turmeric, the border embroidered with peacocks. She held her hands folded at her waist, the gold bangles still on her wrists—she had not removed them even when Abhimanyu was small and grabbed at everything. Her hair was pulled back in a tight braid, not a strand out of place. She did not look at him. She never looked at him during these ceremonies. That was part of the protocol: the queen of Indraprastha must appear self-contained, a vessel of alliance, not desire.

He watched her greet a minor princess from Panchala, bending slightly to receive a garland. Her smile was small, correct. He tried to remember the last time she had smiled at him like that—softly, without calculation. He could not. Even in their bedchamber, her expressions were measured, as if she were always being observed. Perhaps she was. Perhaps she had learned to live as though the world were always watching.

A herald announced the gift of horses from the king of Kashi. Arjun shifted his gaze to the animals—black-maned, high-stepped—but his peripheral vision held her. The way her throat moved when she swallowed. The way her fingers tightened briefly on the edge of her veil when the horses neighed. She disliked horses. He had learned that only after their wedding, when he had offered to teach her to ride. She had declined, politely, and he had not insisted. That was the first time he understood that being married did not mean being known.

He felt the familiar ache then—not sharp, but dull, like a bruise that never quite healed. It was the ache of looking at someone who was his and not his, who had given him a son and yet remained a stranger. He had married her because Krishna asked it, and because the Yadavas were needed. She had married him because her brother wished it, and because a princess did not refuse. They had both done their duty. They continued to do it, impeccably.

The herald called for the next offering. Arjun straightened his shoulders and fixed his eyes forward, the perfect prince once more.

The ceremony ended with the usual distribution of alms and the ringing of bronze bells. Arjun left the hall before the final conch sounded, slipping out through a side passage that led to the royal apartments. He needed to remove the heavy court earrings, to wash the sandalwood from his neck, to breathe.

Their wing was quiet at this hour. The servants moved on soft feet, and the only sound was the distant splash of water in the courtyard fountain. He rounded the corner toward Abhimanyu’s small chamber and stopped.

Subhadra sat on the low stone window-seat, her back to the light. Abhimanyu stood between her knees, his small hands on her shoulders. She was braiding his hair—not tightly, as she did her own, but loosely, the way children liked. Her mouth was close to his ear, and she was speaking so softly Arjun could not catch the words. The boy laughed, a small, breathy sound, and leaned back against her chest. Her arms closed around him automatically, as if he were still an infant.

Arjun had never heard that tone from her. It was not the voice she used with servants, or with Draupadi, or even with Krishna when he visited. It was lower, unguarded, almost sleepy. He felt suddenly that he was watching something private, like a deer drinking. He almost stepped back.

Then Abhimanyu saw him. “Father!” He wriggled free and ran, bare feet slapping the marble. “Mother says you shot seven arrows through one ring at the age of seven. Is that true?”

Arjun looked down at the boy’s eager face. The eyes were his—dark, slightly long at the outer corners—but the mouth was Subhadra’s, full and decisive. He touched the top of Abhimanyu’s head. “Six. The seventh struck the rim and split it.”

Abhimanyu’s mouth rounded. “Still! Will you show me the Gandiva? Just to look. I won’t touch.”

“It is strung too heavy for you.” The answer came automatically, the same words he had used the last three times. He felt Subhadra’s gaze settle on him, steady, unreadable. He glanced at her. She had risen, her hands now folded again at her waist, the mother-voice gone.

“I could draw a lighter bow,” Abhimanyu pressed. “Mother says I must begin soon. Uncle Sahadeva says a prince who delays is like a fruit that ripens too late and falls rotten.”

Arjun heard the echo of Subhadra’s phrasing in the proverb. “You will begin when your shoulders can bear the string without bruising,” he said. “Ask me then.”

The boy’s face fell. He mumbled assent and wandered to the window, humming under his breath, already chasing another thought.

Subhadra stepped forward. “His tutor proposes the Puranas after the monsoon. I thought the Ramayana first—less war, more duty.”

“He is Yadava on your side. He will hear war soon enough.” Arjun kept his voice level. “Let him have the stories of kings who keep their word.”

She inclined her head, the small gesture she used in court. “As you decide.”

The silence stretched. He could hear Abhimanyu tapping the window lattice, counting beats. Arjun’s palms felt empty. He wanted to say—what? That he had noticed the boy’s left shoulder sat lower when he drew a reed bow? That he had carved him a practice arrow months ago and never given it?

Instead he said, “Evening drills begin at sunset. Send him to the yard.”

“I will.” She turned away, already bending to gather the scattered hair ribbons, her back a straight, bright line.

He left before the ribbons were all picked up, the door curtain falling softly behind him like a drawn breath.

The messenger’s sandals left damp prints on the marble, each step a small betrayal of the forest he had ridden through. Arjun watched the scroll pass from those clay-stained fingers to Yudhishthira’s clean ones. The wax broke with a soft snap, like a bone reset. His brother’s eyes moved along the lines, pupils dilating the way they did when odds were counted.

“Duryodhana invites us,” Yudhishthira said, voice even, “to a friendly game. The stakes—” He paused, looked up, met Arjun’s stare. “—are left to our discretion.”

Discretion. A court word. It meant nothing here.

Arjun’s tongue found the back of his teeth. Across the hall, Subhadra’s sari border had shifted half an inch, exposing the hollow of her throat. He saw it bob once—swallowing—and the guard she wore like armour cracked. For that blink, she looked directly at him. The message travelled between them faster than any courier: We are about to be destroyed.

Yudhishthira folded the parchment. “We leave at dawn.”

Formalities dissolved. Servants appeared with lamps though sunset was an hour away. Arjun remained planted, hearing plans form in low voices—how many horses, which road, whether the queen-mothers would accompany. Words floated past: honour, precedent, elder’s blessing. None touched him.

Subhadra moved first. She crossed the floor, the sound of her anklets swallowed by the thick weave of carpets. Abhimanyu waited at the threshold, small hand in hers. She did not look back.

He followed moments later, distance measured by heartbeats. Their corridor smelled of burned sesame oil from the evening lamps. She had already disappeared inside the nursery; the door curtain swayed, still settling. He lifted it.

Inside, dusk light fell through latticed stone, striping the floor and her forearms. She was packing. Not clothes—those would be done by maids—but small, impossible things: the reed arrow he had carved, a copper toy chariot missing one wheel, a palm-leaf booklet of bird names Abhimanyu had collected. Her fingers shook enough that the pages rustled.

“He can’t take that,” Arjun heard himself say. “It will cut his fingers.”

“They are only leaves,” she answered, not turning. “They weigh nothing.”

“He will cry when they tear.”

“Then he will learn what can be replaced.” Her voice held no scolding, only fact. She tied the bundle with a thread from her own loom, knot neat, final.

Arjun stepped closer. The air between them was warm, dense with milk and child-sleep. “Subhadra.”

She faced him. Light caught the side of her cheek, showed a muscle clenching, unclenching. Her eyes were dry, wide. Waiting.

He spoke the length of one breath. “Whatever happens tomorrow, he stays with Krishna’s envoys. I have arranged it.”

A nod. Then, lower: “And me?”

“You are his mother.”

“That is not a post.”

“It is the only one I can guarantee.”

Her chin lifted. “Then guarantee nothing. Promise instead.”

The distinction struck him like a physical blow. Promises could be broken; guarantees were only words. He lifted his hand, paused, set it on her shoulder. Cloth, skin, bone. She did not flinch. He felt the small motion of her breathing, the heat of it through silk. His thumb moved once, involuntary, tracing the ridge of muscle that had carried their son, held court, borne silence. He became aware of his own pulse, thick in his wrists.

“I promise,” he said, the words strange, intimate, “to bring you back a kingdom, or not return at all.”

Her eyes closed then, opened. Something passed across them—relief, perhaps, or resignation dressed as courage. She placed her hand over his, pressed once, hard enough that the small bones shifted. Then she stepped back, the contact broken, and returned to her task.

He left before the bundle was finished, the door curtain falling behind him like a drawn breath.

The hall smelled of ghee-lamp smoke and human sweat. Arjun sat on the lowest step of the polished platform, legs folded, spine straight, the way a warrior sits when he cannot pace. Each throw of the dice cracked against the marble like a mace on bone. He counted them: eleven, twelve, thirteen losses. The gold dishes were gone, then the pearl reins, then the ivory chariot that had carried them from Indraprastha. Yudhishthira’s voice stayed level, almost polite, as if he were ordering dinner instead of signing away the lives of everyone in the room.

Arjun’s hands rested on his thighs. He forced the fingers flat, then felt them curl again, nails cutting half-moons into his palms. The bronze lamp behind him threw his shadow across the floor; it trembled each time the dice fell. He did not turn toward the screened gallery where the women sat. Still, the knowledge of her was a pressure against his shoulder blades—Subhadra breathing the same thick air, hearing the same numbers that turned their world into debt. He pictured her spine, straight as his, the way she would hold her neck so the jewels did not sway. She would not look down. She would look straight ahead, as though she could stop this by seeing it clearly.

Shakuni laughed, a sound like wet stones grinding. “One more throw, king of dharma. Your brother Arjun’s famous bow—what price for that?”

Arjun felt the words hit his stomach first, then rise to his throat. He could break Shakuni’s wrist before the man finished the sentence. He could snap the dice in half. Instead he sat, locked by the oath he had given Yudhishthira years ago: You lead, I follow. The oath felt like a leather cord around his neck, shrinking with every breath.

They took the Gandiva. They took the twin quivers that never emptied. They took his name, the way it was spoken in every kingdom from Anarta to Anga, and reduced it to a line on a palm-leaf IOU. He watched the parchment slide across the marble, watched Yudhishthira press his ring into the wax. The seal left a red oval, bright as a fresh brand on hide.

Only then did Arjun let his gaze flick upward. The lattice was carved into lotus petals; behind it the women were pale smudges. He found her by the set of her shoulders—Subhadra, no ornament tonight except the small ruby in her nose, catching the lamp like a drop of blood. Her eyes met his through the tiny holes. He expected fear. He saw instead a stillness, the kind that precedes either prayer or murder. The look lasted the length of a heartbeat, long enough to feel like complicity. Then the dice rolled again, and the moment broke.

They lost Nakula, then Sahadeva, then Bhima. Each loss was spoken like a gift: “Your brother will serve my brother.” Arjun’s jaw ached; he had clenched it so hard his ears rang. When Yudhishthira staked himself, the hall fell quiet except for the soft click of cowrie shells being counted by the scribes. Arjun heard his own blood, a thick rush that made the room waver. He thought: if they take him, they take me next. He felt almost eager, the way a man feels eager when he is tired of waiting for the first blow.

The dice showed one and two, Shakuni’s winning throw. A sigh traveled the hall, part triumph, part relief that the fall was complete. Arjun stared at the back of Yudhishthira’s neck, the tight knot of his hair, the slight tremor beneath the edge of his collar. He could not remember ever seeing his brother’s skin tremble before. Behind the screen someone gasped; the sound was quickly swallowed. He did not look up again. He kept his eyes on the floor, on the shadow that no longer belonged to a warrior who owned anything, and waited for whatever would come next.

Duryodhana’s voice cut the hush like a chipped blade.
“Bring the queen. Let her question her husband’s right to stake her.”

Arjun’s head snapped up. The hall seemed to tilt; the lamps swung though no wind had entered. He heard Yudhishthira’s breath stop, then restart, shallow. Behind the lattice a woman cried out, quickly muffled.

The guards moved. Arjun counted their steps—four, six, eight—before Draupadi appeared between their spear shafts, hair unbound, eyes bright with disbelief. She wore the same saffron she had put on at dawn, now creased from sitting, stained at the hem. Her feet were bare.

Dushasana grinned, grabbed the cloth at her shoulder, and pulled. The fabric tore with a sound too small for the size of the crime. Another pull; another rip. Arjun’s knees locked. The oath he had repeated since boyhood—Obey the eldest—wrapped around his throat like hot wire. He could not breathe without burning.

Draupadi’s hands rose to cover her breasts, then dropped, fists opening and closing on air. She did not beg. She asked the hall what law permitted a man who had already lost himself to wager his wife. No one answered. The question hung, repeated, louder, then cracked.

Bolt after bolt of silk unfurled, piling at Dushasana’s feet like bloodied bandages. Arjun saw the muscles in the man’s forearms cord, saw Draupadi’s shoulders gleam under the lamps, and still he sat. His own bow-hand twitched toward an absent Gandiva. The gesture felt obscene, useless.

From the corner of his eye he caught movement in the lattice. Subhadra had stepped forward; her knuckles showed white where she gripped the screen. The ruby in her nose caught the lamp, a single red point. Her face was stone, but her eyes—those he could read even across torch smoke and shame. They said: If you rise, I will stand with you. If you stay, I will remember.

He stayed.

The cloth kept coming, impossible, endless. Somewhere in the middle of it Arjun stopped seeing skin; he saw only the space between his hand and his brother’s neck, the length of a stride he could not take. When the miracle finally happened—fabric turning to sky, Draupadi clothed in unbroken yards—he felt no relief, only the heavier knowledge that the world had required a goddess to save what five warriors had failed to protect.

Silence followed, stunned, then the scramble of kings pretending they had not just watched a woman stripped for sport. Dhritarashtra mumbled restoration, return of lands, as if property could bandage dishonour.

Arjun found Subhadra again. Tears had tracked clear lines through the dust on her throat, but her mouth was steady, a thin line of iron. She looked at him—only at him—and the shared rage passed between them like a weapon placed in both their palms at once.

Betel nuts were crushed, exile pronounced: twelve years in forest, one in hiding, discovery costing the cycle anew. The words rolled over Arjun unheard. He was still counting the heartbeats it had taken Dushasana to reach Draupadi, still measuring the distance he had not crossed.

When the assembly broke, guards herding them toward the palace gates, he and Subhadra moved on parallel paths that did not meet. Yet the look endured, a cold ember lodged under his ribs, hotter than any shame the court could name.

They were given one night to leave the city. The palace that had buzzed with servants now echoed like an empty drum. Arjun walked the corridor to their chamber, boots loud on stone that had once been covered in silk runners. The doors stood open; inside, Subhadra knelt beside a single wooden chest, Abhimanyu’s small clothes folded in neat squares. She did not look up when he entered.

He carried nothing himself except the Gandiva returned by a sneering steward, and a cloak already smelling of camphor. He set the bow against the wall, the familiar weight suddenly foreign. The scrape of wood on stone made her pause, fingers curled around the edge of a cotton dhoti.

“Pack one warm shawl for him,” she said without greeting. “The forest nights will be colder than he knows.”

Arjun nodded, though she still wasn’t looking. He moved to the corner where his quiver lay, counted the arrows—twenty. Enough to hunt, not enough for war. He felt her gaze rise to his back like heat.

“Will you teach him to use those?” Her voice cut low, precise. “Or will you leave him to learn by watching his father sit still while women are dragged across halls?”

He turned. She stood now, hands at her sides, knuckles white. Dust from the road clung to the hem of her sari; her hair had come free in places, coiling against her neck. He saw the tremor she would not allow to reach her mouth.

“He is six,” Arjun said.

“Old enough to understand silence.” She stepped closer. “Old enough to understand that kings wager mothers and brothers stand mute.”

The words struck harder than any insult Shakuni had thrown. He felt them settle, heavy, in the cavity beneath his sternum. “What would you have me do? Break the oath? Strike my brother in front of every kingdom?”

“I would have you tell me what becomes of Abhimanyu when your oaths demand the next sacrifice.” Her chin lifted; the ruby in her nose glinted like a spark. “Will you stake him too? Or leave him fatherless for the sake of dharma?”

He crossed the space in two strides, stopped just short of touching her. “Never.”

“Promise,” she said, the single word sharp as flint.

He reached for her hand, felt the resistance before her fingers slackened. The pulse at her wrist hammered against his thumb. “I will bring him through this alive, or die in the attempt. That is no oath to my brother. It is to you.”

Her eyes searched his, the flecks of gold in the brown he had never noticed. A breath left her, warm against his throat. She pulled her hand free, but slowly, as though the contact itself had surprised her.

“Then live,” she said, voice softer yet somehow harder. “And keep him breathing. And when they come for us again, remember the cost of stillness.”

She returned to the chest, laid the shawl atop the clothes, closed the lid. The latch clicked like a sword finding sheath. He stood there, the promise settling around him tighter than any armor, and realized the distance between them had narrowed by the width of a single, shared fear.

The Kamyaka had stripped them all down to bone and sinew, to what could be carried on one’s back and what could be killed before sunset. Arjun rose before the birds, the Gandiva a cool line against his bare shoulder, and when he returned the sun would be high and Subhadra would be kneeling by the fire, hair twisted up with a sliver of bamboo, forearms powdered with ash. She never asked what he had brought; she simply took the brace of hares or the single peacock and began the work of turning fur and feather into food, fingers quick and merciless. He found himself watching the economy of her movements—how she slit the belly without flinching, how she saved the blood in a cupped leaf to salt the stew. Court seemed a dream in which people had spoken endlessly of things that weighed nothing.

Abhimanyu followed her like a shadow, repeating the names she gave each plant: arjuna for the white-barked tree, punarnava for the red-stemmed creeper that eased fever. The boy’s tongue stumbled over the syllables and she corrected him without impatience, the same soft tone she used to calm the goat before the knife. Arjun stood a little apart, bow in hand, listening. He had taught his son to notch an arrow, to plant his feet wide as a warrior, but he had never taught him how to tell the difference between the root that nourished and the root that killed. When Abhimanyu proudly held up a dug-up tuber for inspection, Subhadra brushed dirt from its skin the way another mother might smooth a silk sleeve. Something in Arjun’s chest shifted, a small realignment he did not name.

One afternoon he returned empty-handed, the forest unusually silent, prey warned by the crackle of drought leaves. He expected the sharp pinch of her disappointment; instead she merely handed him a bowl of watered lentils and told him to sit. While he ate she mended the torn knee of his hunting dhoti, needle flashing in firelight. The proximity felt illicit. He noticed the sun had browned the hollow of her throat, that a faint white scar—he did not know its origin—cut across her collarbone like a signature. When she bit off the thread her breath grazed his shin; he felt it travel the length of his leg and settle, warm, at the base of his spine. She looked up, caught his stare, and for a moment neither moved. Then she rose to bank the coals, the spell broken but not forgotten.

Night after night the pattern repeated: he provided, she transformed, their son grew. The distance between their bedrolls—hers closer to the child, his angled toward the forest—remained the same measured four arm-lengths, yet he began to feel the gap the way one feels a missing tooth, a space his tongue returned to without thinking. And when he woke on a soundless predawn to find her already awake, silhouetted against the last star, feeding twigs into a newborn fire, he understood that she too kept watch, that survival had made sentinels of them both. The knowledge settled beside the ember of shared rage from Hastinapura, two coals glowing quietly beneath the ash of every practical day.

The rain started at dusk, a thin hiss that thickened to a roar before the cook-fire had cooled. They retreated to the lean-to wedged between two boulders, a structure of branches and deer-hide that had never been meant for more than brief shade. Water found every seam. Within an hour the floor was a slick of mud and pine needles; within two, Abhimanyu’s bedding floated like a raft. Subhadra moved on her knees, shoving their few bundles higher, wedging leaves into cracks. Arjun braced his back against the windward post, feeling it shudder with each gust, and told himself it would pass. It did not.

The first night they sat upright, sharing a single cloak, the child between them. Lightning stitched white scars across the entrance; thunder followed like rocks rolled downhill. Abhimanyu whimpered each time, and Subhadra pressed his face into her shoulder, humming a lullaby from the riverbanks of Dwaraka. Arjun listened to her voice crack on the high notes and felt the failure of every shelter he had ever built. When the boy finally slept, sagging between them, he and Subhadra remained motionless, two pillars keeping the roof from collapse. Their arms touched from elbow to wrist; neither pulled away. The warmth there was the only dry thing left.

By the second dawn the rain had become a solid sheet, grey as iron. They chewed dried berries and passed the water-skin back and forth, speaking only when necessary. Abhimanyu tried to play, folding boats from bark, but the boats dissolved before they floated. His lower lip trembled; Subhadra gave him a flake of mica to polish, a task that required absolute concentration. Arjun stood at the entrance, bow useless in his hand, watching the forest dissolve into mud. A peepal tree crashed somewhere to the west; the sound was swallowed before it finished falling. He felt the forest shrinking, pressing them into a single breath.

Night again. The storm doubled, as if enraged by their endurance. Wind tore the lashing from one corner; Arjun lunged, shoving his weight against the hide, feeling cold water sluice down his spine. Subhadra dragged their son to the driest corner, a triangle no wider than a chariot wheel. They wedged themselves there, three bodies, six knees, the smell of wet hair and iron earth. Sleep was impossible; they hovered in the shallow dip before it, rocked by thunder.

Then the bolt struck—so close the world flashed blue. Abhimanyu screamed, a raw, animal sound. Arjun turned, heart hammering, and found the child already gathered against Subhadra’s chest. She knelt, rocking, her sari plastered to her back. “I’m here, little fish, I’m here,” she whispered into his ear, the same endearment Arjun had heard her use when the boy had skinned his knee months ago. He reached out, meaning to steady her shoulder, but the darkness misjudged distance; his palm slid across the curve of her neck, skin to skin, rain-cold and yet burning. The contact lasted less than a heartbeat, but the jolt traveled straight to his sternum, a flare that left him winded. She stilled, breath catching, and for a suspended second neither moved. Then Abhimanyu whimpered again, and her hand—still holding the child—shifted to cover Arjun’s fingers where they rested against her collarbone. The pressure was light, deliberate. Outside, thunder rolled away, growling at other prey. Water dripped from her hair onto his wrist; he felt each drop like a small, deliberate drum.

Morning came like a held breath released. The rain stopped so abruptly that the silence felt loud. Arjun pushed the soaked hide aside and daylight poured in, thin and gold. The forest steamed, every leaf exhaling. Water dripped from the peepal in steady ticks, as though the tree itself counted the hours they had lost.

He crawled out first, muscles cramping, and pulled Abhimanyu after him. The boy’s lips were blue; he swayed, then ran barefoot for the nearest puddle, splashing mud up his calves like any child. Subhadra emerged more slowly, one hand braced against the rock, sari clinging in dark folds. Her hair had come free; wet ropes of it clung to her back. She looked at the ruined shelter, the scattered bedding, and said nothing.

They found a fallen log warmed by the first sun. Sat. The air smelled of crushed cumin and iron. Somewhere a koel tested a single note. Abhimanyu amused himself sticking leaves to his arms, peeling them off, sticking them again. Arjun watched the steam rise from his own shirt and felt the weight of the night slide off him in cold runnels.

Subhadra lifted her forearm, turning it to the light. A red weal crossed the skin from elbow to wrist, beaded with grit. “Branch caught me when you held the flap,” she said, voice husky from lack of sleep. “Thank you.”

He meant to answer—some small word, any word—but his throat closed. Instead he reached out, thumb brushing the dirt away. The scratch was shallow, yet the skin around it felt hot. He traced it once, twice, feeling the fine hairs rise beneath the pressure. Her arm tensed, then relaxed. When he realized his hand had stopped moving he pulled back too fast, fingers curling into his palm as though caught stealing.

The log was narrow; their thighs touched from hip to knee. Neither shifted. Steam drifted between them, carrying the smell of her hair—rain and smoke and something faintly metallic, like the air inside a smithy. He became aware of his own heartbeat, stupidly loud. Abhimanyu laughed at a floating leaf; the sound seemed to come from very far away.

Subhadra lowered her arm but left it resting on her thigh, palm up, the scratch now a clean line in the sun. A droplet slid from her elbow and landed on the back of his hand. He felt it cool against his knuckle, did not wipe it away. Somewhere behind them water dripped from the shelter in a steady rhythm: tap, tap, tap, like a finger against a drumskin, counting them into a new measure neither had agreed to keep.