by Varsha Ravi
Suri knew too well how nightmares carved their way into a heart, cut through connections hidden too deep for human hands to touch. They left wounds that never healed, struck bleeding flesh over and over until all that remained was numbness and the memory of pain.
Kiran wandered there, held between agony and apathy, in the deserts of dreamlands, sand ground from jagged black glass. She could not reach him—he was as lost as a ghost, as dead as her family. If she held her hand out, it would go through flesh, like smoke and fire.
After he had regained his power, he had felt nearly tangible—a boy with golden eyes and a smile lit in moonlight who was strange and overwarm and kind. He had integrated into her life with his leisurely, amiable ease—had hung out with her friends, chatted with her grandmother, learned the city and perhaps started to love it.
But now—Suri didn’t know. She couldn’t know. He was made of flame and dried blood, and she didn’t know how to know him, much less save him.
The memories drew him further away from that soft, worn humanity back into shadow and smoke. He felt less and less mortal with every tremor, with every breath. As if one day, she would wake to see him on the balcony, bracketed between wrought-iron rods. He would smile, silhouetted against a bloodred dawn. And then he would fall away into ash and crimson blossoms, swallowed by his own demons.
Her grandmother didn’t ask, but Suri could see concern lining her face as clear as daylight, as clear as rage. She had always been a wary woman, sharp-witted and aged by human horror. But she was too kind for her own good—it was why she had begun her business, why every Enesmati immigrant in the city knew her name. And, though she would never say it aloud, Suri suspected she had seen a little of herself in Kiran, and to see him so clearly shattered broke her in kind.
Her friends didn’t know what he was—his smooth, depthless silence revealed that they knew much less than they had previously thought—but it was not difficult in the slightest to discern that something was wrong.
It wasn’t that he was disinterested in them, or his old hobbies. He would still hold a conversation with Miya over reality television if she prompted him—but he was less inclined to start one, and tired easily. Aza’s conversations on modern music went nowhere. Dai’s mid-class doodles of Kiran’s stories—he would tell them all abstruse, fantastical ones that were compact and meaningless, magic and words but nothing more—drew little more than a faint smile, though she knew he kept them close. Even Tarak’s rants about his reckless, naive best friend never cheered him—if anything, his gaze grew darker, all cracked black glass.
Ellis was the only one who had an effect, if anything. On the infrequent occasions Suri lingered, she heard flashes of conversation about things so mundane they seemed like pretense. The weather, flower languages, the color wheel. But he might smile—sometimes, he would laugh.
Fortunately, though, he never drew away from her. He didn’t tell stories anymore, but sometimes they would sit together late at night, each avoiding their own nightmares. She would drink in that simple, dangerous warmth, and his breaths would come easier for a while, and they would both be okay. In the darkness, it was easy enough to pretend everything was okay.
One evening, on a long shift at Beanzzz, he was curled up in the corner booth in the shop, knees drawn up. His so-called roly-poly position. From the counter, she could only see the top of his face over the edge of the thick book, dark skin split by gold.
Tarak leaned toward her. “Everything okay at home?”
Suri flipped him off casually, steadying herself on the rail of the counter. Exams would be coming up soon, and though she was doing well enough in her classes and keeping up on the material, she couldn’t stop thinking of this, of nightmares half-dead. Finally, she said, “Yeah. I mean, he gets like this sometimes. He just needs time.”
It was a bare-faced lie. Suri had no idea what he needed—she had not known him for long enough to fully grasp his highs and his lows. For all she knew, this was what he was really like, pared down and shattered by the darkness he’d lived and loved, and the boy she’d known for the past few months was a phantasm sprung from innocence, from ignorance.
But Tarak nodded as if he understood. He scrubbed a hand over his face, smudging cocoa powder on the line of his cheek. She didn’t see him often outside of work, even though she knew he and his friend went to the same university as her. They rarely crossed paths, never enough to make idle conversation. But he was nice enough—he was one of those genuinely altruistic people you met once or twice in a lifetime, endlessly willing to help those around him. After a moment, he said, “If I can help, let me know. He’s a bit…” he trailed off, looking for the right word.
“Weird as shit,” she supplied.
He exhaled a laugh. “I was going to say quirky, but that works too. But he’s always helped us out. He’s good company, and he makes you happy. So I’d like to help, if I can.”
“I’ll let you know.” The words stuck in her throat, and she glanced away. Kiran’s head was tilted strangely, hanging crookedly over his book. She squinted at him in disbelief. “Is he asleep?”
“Maybe?” Tarak said, reaching to push open the small door that separated the counter from the rest of the café. “Is that weird? I’ve never seen him sleep here.”
She couldn’t really explain that this was because he didn’t sleep, ever, so she just slipped through the gap and went to him. His breaths came soft, chest heaving slowly. She was almost afraid of reaching out and touching his shoulder, afraid of disturbing this fragile, ephemeral peace that had taken hold of him.
He looked impossibly young asleep. His memories had aged him, drawing lines of grief and loss across soft, unmarked skin. But now, he looked untested, guileless—as though he were simply a nineteen-year-old boy asleep in a café, halfway through a book of poetry. It startled her a little, and she didn’t hear Tarak until he had repeated his words multiple times. “Suri. Should we wake him?”
“No,” she said, too loud for it to sound natural. She exhaled, rubbing at her eyes, then repeated, “No. He hasn’t been, uh, sleeping well recently. I don’t want to wake him.”
“Then?” He rocked back on his heels. “We close in fifteen minutes.”
Beanzzz was far enough away from her apartment that she didn’t know if she could carry someone that far, even if he was made of gold and god. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “You asked if you could help, right? Are you free after work? I can’t carry him home alone.”
Tarak tilted his head in momentary consideration before nodding. “Yeah, I should be. Do you live close?”
“Not really,” she said absently, kneeling beside the booth so she could examine Kiran further. His lashes looked like fracture lines, dark and thick, on his cheeks. “But it’s not far, either.”
They finished closing up; Suri turned off the lights and the room fell into darkness, illuminated only faintly by the rising moon outside. They were close enough to winter that light was a treasured commodity, available only in achingly small quantities.
The moonlight washed across Kiran’s face, turning him pallid and insubstantial. Suri was suddenly glad Tarak would carry him. She was afraid that if she touched his skin, her fingers would go straight through.
She pulled the book out of crooked, bent fingers and tucked it into her bag as Tarak crouched and scooped him up in his arms. He made a soft sound, one of fear or discomfort, and shifted away, away. His lips were parted slightly, twisted in some long-forgotten specter of pain.
In late evening, Lyne came alive. Groups of youths ran through the streets, arms interlocked and faces bright with humor. Families traced familiar roads, little children pointing up toward the signs of toy shops and nearby theaters. Office workers, coming off a long day, shoved past them tiredly as they thought invariably of home.
Suri walked silently as Tarak told her about a protest his friend had roped him into attending later that week. She let the words wash over her, dulcet and a little hopeful. List
ening to Tarak, it was easy to think of things such as change, such as peace, and not have them be the punch line to some old, forgotten joke.
She unlocked the door to her apartment and led him in. He gently placed Kiran on the couch. He mumbled something unintelligible, curling into the upholstery. It reminded her strangely of when they had first met, when he had been bloody, freshly born. Vulnerability did not come easily to him—he surrendered it only in moments such as these, sleep-soft and sleep-chained.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?” Tarak said quietly, turning toward the door. She smiled and nodded, and he returned it, letting himself out. She locked the door, and sat down between Kiran’s feet and the other arm of the couch.
Suri couldn’t know how much time passed as she sat there, slotted into a dip in the couch, her knees bent under her. She felt a little like she was nearly asleep herself. But still, even as moonlight began to stream through the glass doors, she kept her eyes open and watched him. She didn’t know what for; it was not as if she could protect him, as if she was a goddess herself. But wordlessly, senselessly, she watched him.
To him, she knew, sleep was something to be feared. It held a certain measure of violence, an insidious, jagged pressure. He woke in the midst of a scream, lips parted in horror, a silent cry that twisted inward into a gasp.
For a moment, she saw him laid bare. And he was afraid; so very afraid that briefly, he looked nearly human.
He blinked, and his expression shuttered instinctively, so quickly it could only have been muscle memory. But then he saw her, and though the fear did not return, his shoulders slumped with relief.
“Suri,” he rasped, leaning his head back against the other arm of the couch. His chest heaved, and his cheeks were golden and flushed. “I—I fell asleep?”
His voice dripped with astonishment, too truly shocked to hold any of his casual self-deprecating scorn. She nodded, leaning back. “At the café. Tarak helped carry you back.”
Strangely, he flinched at the name. His shoulders were still trembling faintly. At last, he said, oddly stilted, “I’m sorry. For inconveniencing you.”
If she hadn’t been so tired, she might have been angry. She shut her eyes and spoke with a careful force, a calm she couldn’t feel. “You’re not an inconvenience. You’ve carried me before. This isn’t any different.” Opening her eyes, she examined him. But he’d already lost that sudden, sleep-borne terror. His gaze was careworn. “Are you okay?”
He laughed, and the sound carried in the near-silence of the early night. Even when it faded, his mouth was still carved by it. “I’m fine. Thank you.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Why did you laugh?”
Kiran tilted his head, hair falling into his eyes. They were champagne yellow and thin, a wavering flame. “It is not often people ask that question. I knew instinctively, but my memories have confirmed it.” His lips twisted, faintly. “I am not… I am not the kind of god others worry for.”
“I do.” The words fell from her lips like a confession, the only holy act she had ever performed. “I worry for you all the time.”
He smiled, and it held his old warmth. “Then you will have to be the first.”
13
Enesmat
Suri woke by water.
A cold wind blew through, chilling her bones. It was only then that she realized she was not wearing much—an unfamiliar, thin robe with a chemise underneath.
She was sitting beside a river, strangely still in the night. It glittered an opaque blue, dark enough it could’ve been mistaken as black. Her legs were folded beneath her, hands clasped together in prayer.
At least, she had assumed that at first glance. Her fingers were intertwined, clenched tightly. It was only now she realized they were shaking, soaked in blood that shone darkly in the moonlight.
The riverbank was empty, quiet in a strange, unnatural way. The only sound was the gentle splash of blood as it trailed down her fingers and fell to the grass below, following the soil as it joined the river. With every droplet, the river grew darker and darker, water turned to midnight-black oil.
It was not her own blood—she knew this, the same way she knew she was alone, the same way she knew this river would never run again. And yet it did not belong to any one person, either. It was old blood, rotten blood, and it had drained from every heart she had ever stopped—and now it had come to drown her, too.
Fear began to surge up inside her, swallowing every breath she tried to take. Her chest felt tight with it, as if blood had subsumed the air in her lungs, iron-sour and warm with stolen life. She pushed herself forward, kneeling beside the river and thrusting her bloodied hands into the water. But no matter how hard she scrubbed, how long she waited, the blood would not wash from her hands—they remained coated in dark red, the liquid viscous and tacky against her skin.
Water splashed up from the river in her frenzy, dampening her dress and her face and her arms. But her hands, though they had fallen out of prayer, refused to clean.
Eventually, she acquiesced to the demands of the river. She rocked back on her heels, held her hands out in front of her, and looked up to the sky.
Until this moment, she had expected it to mirror the skies of her memories—of the world she knew and treasured. A sea of blackness brought to life by glittering white stars. But this sky was something entirely different, a relic of days long past.
It was the color of freshly spilt blood, the way she expected her hands would look if not for the shadows that cast the entire clearing in darkness. A deep crimson, unmarked and uninterrupted save for a smooth white sphere—a moon, different from the one she had known.
Even without looking at her hands, she could feel the blood on them. It had taken her seventeen years to overcome this fear and yet it refused to fade, haunted her from day to day, a specter she could not banish. But she had found solace in the fact that blood would always yield—water would always wash it away. Even if she still felt it underneath—burned into her skin like a brand—she could remove the eerie, suffocating proof of it. She could escape it—she could run.
But she could not run from this. Under this strange, too-bright moon, this wrathful sky, she was trapped.
She wrung her hands out, a futile effort, and then clasped them tight, tilting her head up to the sky. In the silence, the only sound louder than the white noise in her own head was the thud of the blood against the grass—the uneven beat of her breaths.
Suri let her eyes fall closed, and prayed.
Kita had long since gone to sleep.
When they were younger, she would join him on these midnight walks, tracing the hidden paths of the temple over and over. In the darkness, their steps did not echo—the night swallowed them even as they ran through the shadowed corridors, hands clasped tight.
But it wasn’t as if Kiran begrudged her for leaving him for sleep. It was true enough that the preparations for Avyakanth left him drained on top of his usual responsibilities. But the ceremonies performed at Avya’s smaller temple—though more tiring—were ultimately shorter. Kita was responsible for orchestrating the festival after, a night-long series of rites and performances that required meticulous planning. She slept early and rose early.
And so he walked through the empty temple alone, the silence holding him close. He paused in front of the north tower, tracing the carvings. He had been there when Aswathi had them first painted, still remembered when she had told him and Kita the story of it.
“Her name was Nila,” she had said, struggling to steady Kita on her knee. “She was an orphan of a nearby village. This was in the old days, the age of monsters.” She had paused to make a scary face at them, and Kita had twisted her face, turning to hide in her mother’s arms. Kiran had not reacted, already lost within the story—Aswathi had always been able to bring words to life. He had always thought she should’ve been the prophet instead of him, a broken, disjointed peasant boy with fire in his heartstrings.
“Nila had grown up in th
is horrible, frightening world, you see,” she had continued, voice softening. “She thought herself used to these monsters, and dreamed of fighting them so she could protect those she loved alongside the warriors of the village. But one day, the closest thing she had to a father, the blacksmith, was killed by a monster with no legs and two hearts.”
She had paused here, rubbing her hand soothingly against Kita’s back. He’d set his chin on his knees, leaning forward thoughtlessly. “What did she do?”
“What would you have done, Kiran?” she had asked, smiling. But it had held a certain measure of weary sorrow, the same sorrow he caught in her gaze when she thought he wasn’t watching, the same sorrow he saw in the eyes of the king and queen, and in the captain’s. “She sought to kill the beast. Nila went to the river that encircled the village. It was a sacred river, said to have been blessed by Makai, daughter of the sea.”
“She prayed to the goddess, asking her to give her the strength to kill the beast. The goddess appeared to her on the riverbank and warned her that the blessing would not come without a price—if she did not control the strength of the river, it would consume her and everyone around her. But Nila was headstrong and heartbroken—she accepted.”
Already Kiran’s heart had begun to chill. He had an inkling of how the story would end, and longed to ask her to cease telling it. But he had not been able to speak—curiosity had silenced him, curiosity and a strange, bittersweet ache. Aswathi had rocked Kita on her knee in time with her words, but the lull of them had slipped away, revealing the jagged, ugly truth underneath. “The blessing of the river gave her the strength to transform into a bear twice as large as any ordinary human. But it pulled her heart out of balance, made it difficult to think straight. Yet even in that addled state, Nila held enough self-awareness to keep track of her objective—to kill the beast. And so she returned to the village and tracked down the beast, right before it killed the baker. Her claws lengthened, needles tipped with oil-black poison, and she attacked the beast through the side, piercing it through both hearts. It fell and died before her, but her rage was not satiated. Nila ripped it to shreds, and after it was nothing more than flesh and bone and congealed blood, she attacked the baker—and then the baker’s daughter, and the baker’s son. It was only after she went after the blacksmith’s daughter—her adoptive sibling—that she realized what she had done.”