When You Tether Yourself to Stars, Get Ready for The Burn

By Roshani Chokshi
I used to be obsessed with horoscopes. Which seems rather fitting since horoscopes play a huge role in The Star-Touched Queen. But I was obsessed with horoscopes for a different reason. Horoscopes were an easy explanation.
Acne attack? Must be Mars. Couldn’t possibly be the fact that I had eaten Snickers for lunch and dinner. Fighting with my friends? Well, my horoscope said I would. Couldn’t possibly be the fact that I had been unforgivably PMS-y.
You get the trend.
Eventually, the horoscope obsession ended. And little by little, I accepted my own agency in both the good and bad things. I didn’t get an A on a test because my horoscope said “this is the week of academic flourishing.” I got that A because I studied hard. I couldn’t let astrology take the credit for my work, and I couldn’t let a couple of stars take the blame for my faults. Sometimes getting to a point where we’re comfortable accepting responsibility is daunting. But it’s one of the hallmarks of young adulthood. And it’s something we experience in a variety of ways.
For Maya, the main character of The Star-Touched Queen, accepting responsibility and shouldering the weight of her own decisions is a terrifying thing. How do you find agency when everyone else is looking up at the stars for direction? Like Maya, I think we find agency in the gaps of things, in the spaces left undefined.
Leaving things to the stars can be dangerous. In 2000, Indian astrologers predicted natural catastrophes. In response, a sea side village in Gujarat abandoned their homes. Nothing happened. But everybody got burgled.
Did they suffer a catastrophe? Heck yeah. But was it a self-fulfilling prophecy? Maybe. Or did something else happen? Maybe an ice dragon ouroboros choked on its own tail, the stars pinwheeled, and all those horrific waves on the verge of swallowing the entire village kerplopped and became a gentle tidal pool instead. Who knows. I certainly don’t.
I still believe in horoscopes to an extent. But, like Maya, I think we have to interpret everything in multiple ways.
Let’s take this fun horoscope for example:
“Tomorrow, an intoxicated hippogriff on a bourbon-binge will fly out of the sky and cause grave injury.”
If I saw the hippogriff spiraling toward me, I would not stand there because grave injury is written in the stars. I’d try to get the hell out of Dodge. Maybe in my zeal I’d run into a telephone pole (why is there a telephone pole? Excellent question) and cause grave injury. Or maybe I’d stumble into a cemetery and knock over a tombstone. Another grave injury.
WHO KNOWS.
Ultimately, you have to live your life for yourself. Which is to say: don’t embrace falling hippogriffs. Unless you want to. Then, you know, it’s on you. Or maybe it was in your stars.
Or both.
Roshani Chokshi is the author of the upcoming YA fantasy, The Star-Touched Queen, which comes out on April 26 from St. Martin’s Press. You can visit her at www.roshanichokshi.com.
The Star-Touched Queen is available for purchase.