A Crown of Wishes

by Roshani Chokshi

  “True war isn’t philosophical.”

  “All war is philosophical. That’s why we call it war. Strip it of its paint and it’s nothing more than murder.”

  “Aren’t puppets supposed to have heads made of wood?”

  “I’m not very good at being a puppet,” said Vikram. “Hence, my desire to fling myself at a supernatural tournament and hurtle toward certain death.”

  “Sound logic.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a crown made of wood though. I might throw it at people for entertainment.”

  I shook my head. “Why are you like this…”

  He swept a mocking bow and together we walked down a vestibule lined with glass birds. The moment our feet hit the floor, the birds took flight. Darkness choked the end of the hall. We walked slowly, our only guides the fire-dipped insects. Vikram moved closer.

  “In need of protection?”

  “I prefer to stay beside the monster I know,” he said.

  At the end of the hall, dark gray rock reared up to meet us.

  “I thought this was supposed to be a feast,” I muttered. “Does he expect us to eat away the shadows?”

  “Oh no, dearest. We are far too glutted on such things,” said a silky voice.

  The small hairs on my neck rose. Someone in the darkness clapped their hands. Light dripped like blood down the walls, thick and slow. I squinted. This was the kind of light that made you crave the dark. It was lurid and almost bruising, as bright as a sun but empty of warmth.

  When the light dimmed, I could finally see what was in front of us: an empty table. At the end of it sat the Lord of Treasures and his consort, the Lady Kauveri. Kubera was the size of a child, with a generous belly, heavy lidded eyes. His smile was graceful. Radiant. But it was the kind of smile that belonged to power. Not joy. You could only smile like that if you possessed the kind of invincibility that let you sharpen your teeth on the world. Warning flared through me. Around his neck curled a golden mongoose. The creature yawned and an opal dropped from its mouth. Beside me, Vikram inhaled sharply. I shot him a look, but his gaze was fixed on the mongoose.

  The Lady Kauveri smiled at us. She wore a sari of rushing water, and in her elaborate braids, small streams and pebbles, tortoises and crocodiles no larger than a thumbnail clambered through her hair. No immortal being betrayed any flaw, but there was something restless about her, a kind of anxious energy that belonged to someone expecting tragedy.

  “Welcome, contestants,” said Kauveri, sweeping her arm before the feast. “Please. Eat.”

  When we sat, a lavish feast appeared on the table. I eyed it suspiciously. There were fragrant biryani with saffron rice, hard-boiled eggs white as moonstones in a thick curry, apple and mint chutneys in glass bowls, globes of gulab jamun drenched in cardamom syrup and bright orange jalebis coiled like gold bangles.

  All the while Kubera eyed us, his gaze growing wider. He watched intently as we reached for naan, broke it and dipped it into a bowl of curry. I couldn’t afford to give offense. The moment I placed the food in my mouth, Kubera leapt from his throne.

  “Finally! Our food has passed your lips! Now that guest and host hospitality has been satisfied, I may finally speak. You had us both so curious. At the edge of our thrones! As I knew you both would—”

  “Patience, my love,” cautioned Kauveri.

  I exchanged a look with Vikram. What did he mean that we made him curious? Nerves pebbled my arms. The day we escaped Ujijain, I felt the Otherworld reaching for us. It wanted us. But maybe it wasn’t the Otherworld that had wanted us so badly but Kubera himself. Why? Did he want the other contestants here just as badly or did he intend to use us for some purpose?

  Kubera climbed down from his throne and circled us like a merchant examining his goods. He reached for my hand and I extended it with as much grace as I could muster.

  Kubera clucked approvingly. He dropped my hand and leaned toward Vikram. “Ah, what a hungering heart you both have. Delightful. I suspect both of you will make excellent storytellers. And king and queen, no doubt. Then again, that depends on which one of you will be allowed to leave. And now you are wondering whether that means one of you will die. Not so! One of you may stay here forever. You could be my new throne. That man—” He glared at his golden throne, which was shaped like a human on all fours. “—has a perpetual lower-back ache and I can’t stand hearing him groan on and on. The other option, of course, is death. Oh, and no. You may not use your wish to grant an exit to the other person.”

  I refused to let the shock show on my face. I knew that the invitation ruby was good for two entries only. But, like Vikram, I assumed that winning the Tournament meant both of us could leave. Not one or the other.

  “We can’t both return?” asked Vikram.

  “Maybe! I don’t know! I make up the rules as I go.” Kubera grinned.

  Kauveri rose from her throne and joined her husband in the middle of the room. Wherever she stepped, golden coins fell.

  “Speaking of play, you came here to win a wish.”

  Kubera’s eyes lit up. “Ah! Yes! Instructions. My apologies.” He laughed. “This is the realm of desire and treasures. And I want to see what you think is treasure. Two trials. One sacrifice. Three things in total. Because three is a very nice number. Exquisitely simple, as are most things that lead you to the greatest happiness or the greatest discontent.”

  “Are we competing against the other contestants?”

  “No. All the things that make us wish for something impossible are different. As are your trials. Everyone could win a wish. Or no one can. It is what it is.”

  “My lord,” I said cautiously, “you mentioned sacrifice. What are we expected to give?”

  “Nothing bodily, physical, animal or human.”

  “That means he has not decided yet,” said Kauveri, smiling.

  “And the details of our trial, my lord?” asked Vikram. “How much time—”

  “Time?” Kubera laughed. “What is time in Alaka but a thing that comes and goes as it pleases? When a century wanes, even Time leaps back and forth in glee. The Tournament of Wishes is a place where all stories may renew or reinvent themselves.” Kubera smiled and ice danced along my spine. “We have borrowed a moon for the Tournament to keep track of ‘time.’ It is a new moon tonight and when it is a new moon again, then ‘time’ is up!”

  A month. We had a month for two trials and a sacrifice. That wasn’t much, but if time worked differently in Alaka, maybe even that could be manipulated.

  “What about in the human world?” asked Vikram.

  I hadn’t even thought of that. I couldn’t imagine emerging fresh from victory only to see the ruins of a time that had forgotten us and moved on long ago.

  “Clever prince,” laughed Kubera. “Only a month of your fleet-footed human time.”

  “My lord, how do we … which is to say what exactly are you asking of us for this trial?” I asked. “Will we fight? Trade riddles—”

  “You seek the wealth of a wish,” said Kubera. “And how does anyone achieve wealth? Do they cut throats and slit the heavy bulges of a merchant’s purse? Do they breed kindness like a plague and collect smiles instead of coins? What is it worth to them? Do as you will.”

  That answered absolutely nothing. How would our trials be judged? Everything that came out of Kubera’s mouth was its own riddle. I’d felt this way before with Skanda every time he spoke around a lie. When I bargained with my brother, I had to know exactly what he wanted or the price I paid would be too great.

  “May I ask you something, Your Majesty?”

  Kubera tilted his head. “Yes, little jewel, go ahead.”

  “Why do you want us to compete in this Tournament? What do you win?”

  “I win a story,” said Kubera, smiling slowly. “And that treasure is infinite and will change and grow wings. The world is entering a new age. After this game, there will never again be a Tournament of Wishes. The Otherworld will close its portals. It will smile
at the human realm, but nothing will pass its lips. Those who play our Tournament and live to tell the tale will let us breathe in that new age. With a tale, we will not simply exist as figures in stone temples, all our myths static and told and fixed. We will live. Passed between mouth and mind and memory.”

  Kauveri clapped her hands. “You sound so ominous, my love. I think you’re overexcited.” She spread her hands and a thin mirror of water pooled and widened between her palms. “The key to immortality is in creating a story that will outlive you. Each tale is its own key, hiding in plain sight beneath all the things we want and all the things that eat away at us.”

  A ruby flashed in the water mirror, glinting and bright as the invitation to the Tournament of Wishes.

  “Your first task is to find one half of the key to immortality,” said Kubera.

  The image disappeared. I didn’t know whether to bow or run, thank them or scream. Find a key? It wasn’t even clear whether that was an actual tangible key or not. Kauveri reached forward and cupped my face. Her eyes flickered from smoky quartz to brackish brown, like a drained riverbed.

  “We find you through your hearts, you know,” she said softly, stroking my cheek. “So bright and earnest. I almost envy you, for there are so many things I would wish for.” Her eyes flashed. “Or maybe I just wish to want as you do. Perhaps I shouldn’t. Desire, after all, is such a poisonous thing.”

  She drew away her hand. Where she touched me, my skin felt icy and damp. Vikram’s expression sharpened.

  “Enjoy the amenities of the palace, dear contestants,” said Kubera, his teeth unsettling and sharp in the bright room. “And please indulge in the festivities of our Opening Ceremony. On the new moon, we like all manner of enjoyment.”

  19

  THE FEAST OF TRANSFORMATION

  GAURI

  The light faded. Once more, Vikram and I were left staring at an impassive rock face. I looked down the hall to see people laughing and singing on their way to the Opening Ceremony festivities. Vikram’s touch on my arm jolted me back to the moment. Pale lights had sprung up along the walls, illuminating our faces. Gone was the usual lilt and mischief in his eyes.

  “I didn’t know,” he said, his gaze intense and unwavering. “If I had any idea that only one of us would be able to return, I would never have kept that from you.”

  “I believe you,” I said. “But we have a month, Vikram. We can search for a way out even as we try to win. You heard Kubera. He likes to break his own rules.”

  A smile flickered on his face as he let go of my hand.

  “I think you’re right.”

  “May I have that in writing?”

  “I’ll write whatever you want if we win and get out of here.”

  “Fair.”

  The sounds of the Opening Ceremony called to us from beyond the hall.

  “The first half of the key to immortality,” I said, sighing. “How much of that is just a riddle, or a symbol of one thing standing in for another?”

  “Magic likes to be philosophical,” said Vikram.

  “Magic should consider being less pretentious.”

  “Hiding in plain sight beneath all the things we want and all the things that eat away at us,” he repeated.

  “Yes, I know. And desire is a poisonous thing. I’ve heard that—”

  We both stopped talking. We had heard that before. Hadn’t the vanaras said something similar when they captured us and took us to their kingdom? And hadn’t those exact same words been written on the invitation?

  “It was a hint this whole time,” breathed Vikram.

  “And if it’s hidden in plain sight, we already know where to start looking.”

  By now, the steady stream of contestants had emptied into the courtyards of Alaka for the Opening Ceremony. My hands prickled in anticipation. When Ujijain had kept me as a prisoner, I had stopped fighting, and my body ached for it. War was savage, but it was the savagery that coaxed my blood to the surface. It wasn’t just the physical movements. It was that feeling of infinity. Only my bones pinned me in place. Everything else was a blur of light and life and hope. This was a fight. I would fight to win and fight to return. And that hope, to have something to fight for once more, grew wings inside me.

  There was no guarantee that the first half of the key would be somewhere in the revels of the Opening Ceremony. With an entire month for the trials and sacrifice—the idea of a sacrifice made me shudder every time I thought of it—we might just be whittling away our time until the final days. Kubera wasn’t an opponent, but he wasn’t an ally either. He held the game in his hands. His excitement seared my memory. He wanted to play.

  And so did I.

  The music of the Opening Ceremony trembled through the ground. The same courtyard that we had walked through to get to the palace of Alaka seemed to have expanded and changed in a matter of hours. Three large feast tables stood to our right. Down the center path, a mass of silk erupted before our eyes—moon-pale wings shivered into existence, a slender neck arced into the night. Before us unfurled a tent in the shape of an enchanted swan, large as a small town, and pale as frost save for the blue star nestled at its breast. To our left, a large banyan tree cast its gnarled branches over the beings swaying and dancing beneath its limbs. Lights as delicate as spun sugar drifted through the lattice of the tree’s fingers. Alaka’s beauty felt unsettlingly precise, as if it had torn out one of my childhood daydreams and slipped it on like a mask. I didn’t trust it. Even the air smelled shrewd. I caught a whiff of a blanket I’d kept since infancy and tensed. This magic was a dangerous seduction of comfort. We walked through the crowds swarming the courtyards—tall and short, slim and stout, fair and hideous. Some had wings; others glided above the ground, surveying the world.

  “Plain sight,” I said. “There’s nothing plain about it.”

  We started with circling the feast tables, searching for any clues that might leap out at us. A vial of poisons? A cachet of rubies? Kubera’s instructions were more or less useless. And on top of that, I had to keep my eyes and ears open for information about other exits from Alaka.

  At the end of the first table hung a small sign that read: “A Feast of Transformation—if you take from us, you must trade your hurt.” The table had nothing edible. There were glass amphorae of dried wings, a finger bone, a braided circlet of hair and a straw doll.

  Floating orbs of ice hovered over the second table. A lace of piled snow rolled off the edges. Its sign—a pane of ice—read: “A Feast of Cold—if you take from us, you must trade your warmth.”

  Silk-pressed singing birds hopped across the third table. Songs fell from their beaks. Its sign read: “A Feast of Song—if you take from us, you must trade your thoughts.”

  “There’s nothing here,” I said. I grabbed Vikram’s arm before he could get too distracted by the shiny bottles and headed down to Alaka’s gardens.

  Beneath the banyan tree, a disjointed and listless dance had begun. Forest beings with bright green leaves for hair and vines twisting about their wrists leapt and swayed. I was watching them closely, wondering if I would recognize anything from Kubera’s task, when a whispered hush broke over the crowd.

  “They’re back,” whispered one of the Otherworldly beings beside us.

  “Who? Oh!” returned its friend. “I hadn’t realized they’d even won at the last Tournament.”

  I turned to see who they were talking about and found three young women moving solemnly beneath the banyan tree. A ragged blue ribbon hung around each of their necks. They walked strangely, as if their limbs bore the memory of movement but not the instinct. I glanced at the ground and bit back a shudder. No shadow moved over the ground.

  “If the Nameless are here, then the Serpent King must be here too.”

  The other being laughed. “I can’t imagine the Lady Kauveri liking that at all.”

  “If it wasn’t the last Tournament, he would never have been allowed.”

  The Nameless drifted away fro
m us, disappearing straight into the banyan tree. I watched the empty spot where they had stood and turned the new names over in my head. Who was the Serpent King?

  Vikram touched my arm, shaking his head. Nothing here. The only thing left to explore was the giant tent. A line had already formed, sprawling out across the grounds and even winding its way between pools.

  Voices flew at us from every direction.

  “The Lord of Treasures has hired them!”

  “But the line is already—”

  “—surely one of them will be available.”

  “—the tent, over there.”

  A slow wind stirred the swan tent, and smoke poured out from the top. The crowd cheered. Tendrils of smoke shot into the air, taking the shape of a winged beast and a glittering serpent, a tree strung with lights and even a flickering crown. At the end, the smoke gathered into the hazy silhouette of a woman. The shape folded into a star and the color deepened from gray to blue. A blue star. Just like the one that was on the throat of every vishakanya.

  Vikram grabbed my hand, his eyes shining in excitement. “That’s it. The first half of the key has to be inside the poisonous courtesans’ tent. It’s the only thing that would make sense. The vanaras said the same in the Night Bazaar. Remember?”

  “Not really. If you recall, I was fighting the urge to eat you at the time.”

  He grimaced. “Right. Well. It fits with what Kubera said anyway—all the things we want and all the things that eat away at us. At first I thought when he said ‘us’ that it included you and me. But a vishakanya has a different effect on Otherworldly beings. She shows them desires. Maybe that’s what he meant!”

  Vikram was so excited he couldn’t decide between tenting his fingers together or making small shuffling movements between his feet.

  “Could you not…” I started.

  But he was already pulling me down the line and straight to the tent. Half of the people who had been waiting patiently in line turned and glared. At the entrance, shadow tigers prowled, snapping and growling. One of the beasts cut his eyes to us. It blinked, and then threw its head back.