“Do you like it?”
“I love it,” she said fiercely.
“Then I don’t consider it an undertaking at all. Now. My turn. What do you think of when you dance night into the world?”
She kept her eyes on the board, evaluating her next move. “I could refuse to answer since you already asked a question.”
“You could answer out of the kindness of your heart.”
“Like you, I am not known for kindness,” she said. “But I am known for vanity about my own importance, and your question appeals to that.” I bit back a smile as she braced her elbows on her knees and tapped her lips. “When I dance, I think of … stories. I can’t read any of the tales written in stars and inked across my skin. But I think about how we retell them a thousand times over. And when I dance, it’s like pouring ink over a thousand tomes and letting people start anew.”
“Retelling them,” I repeated slowly. “I understand that. Every day I decide a story.”
I told her about the Tapestry. I told her how a single death could change the outcome of a hundred lives. That duty—to move between the fixed and fated moments—weighed on me, but there was more than just sacred purpose in the responsibility. I didn’t have to walk along mortals to know the weight of their dreams, and even though they did not know what they entrusted to me, I was still honored with the task. When I finished talking, she eyed me like she knew a secret.
“I hadn’t realized we were both creators.”
I laughed. “I am no creator.”
“Are you so certain?” she asked, tilting her head. Violet bloomed around her neck, and for the first time I had no wish to see night. I wanted to stay in these stolen hours between sunset and true dusk. “You created this beautiful garden. You create a new tale with every ending. That sounds like the role of a creator to me.”
I had never thought of it that way. There was something freeing in the way she spoke, the possibility of it all. I envied her. If I stood by her side, how different would the world look? Between us, the shatranj board lay forgotten. Faint stars bloomed across the dusky purple of her arm. She followed my gaze and frowned.
“I have to go now,” she said. Perhaps I was deluding myself, but she sounded reluctant.
“This has been … enlightening.”
“That’s quite the opposite of what I do,” she said, gesturing at the darkening length of her body. I tried to look away from her, but my sight kept snagging on the way her full lips danced on the edge of a grin. Or how I’d never seen hair as dark as hers, lush and starless as an eclipse.
I dragged my eyes up to meet hers and found her stare questioning. Curious.
“Pity our game went unfinished, but I’ll take my leave of you,” I muttered quickly.
Her hand brushed against my arm. Her touch was cold and burning. Just as quickly, she withdrew her hand. But she stayed close.
“Tomorrow, I think Nritti will be keeping me company from sunset to dusk.”
“Who?”
“You don’t know her?”
“Should I?”
She seemed stunned by this. Nritti, as it turned out, was an apsara who had earned the nickname the Jewel of the Heavens. They were friends.
“I see. Then I suppose—”
“Come at night,” she said, the words spilling from her.
“I knew you’d want to see me again.”
She leaned closer, placing a cold hand against my chest. My heart raced. She brought her lips to my ear:
“Or perhaps I just want my other presents,” she said. “If you remember, I did ask for the moon for my throne and stars to wear in my hair.”
She drew away, but did nothing to increase the distance between us. Mischief flickered in her eyes. Cruel queen, indeed.
“I have not forgotten a single word that has passed your lips.”
“Is that so?” She raised an eyebrow. “I’m glad my words were memorable.”
I reached out, my thumb just barely grazing her lip. She stilled as I bent my head to her ear:
“It wasn’t the words.”
* * *
When I left, I left with the taste of her laughter and the sound of her thoughts. I left with the scent of her hair clinging to my skin. I left imagining the world seen through her eyes. A world of stories folded quietly between stars, where the ink of night poured star-touched dreams into the world and whispered to the earth of all the things it could be the next day.
When I left, I understood a shard of human grief. Not the pining or the despair. But that bone-deep craving to spend a moment longer with someone.
4
NIGHT
I would not have you any other way.
Above me, the sky was on fire. The sun’s last rays illuminated the land, but the light stretched thin and haggard. I hugged my bright red knees to my chest. I glanced hopefully at my skin, searching for a telltale stain of blue. Nothing. I sighed. There were still hours left until nightfall. I walked to the glass garden right outside my grove and sat in the middle of its wonder. Around me, flat flames burned inside the translucent petals. Light crested off crystal buds, dancing from flower to flower before breaking on the inside of a garnet lotus. When the light broke, all I could think of was how every piece of this garden had been crafted from a shard of hope. A gardener long dead had hoped that someone he loved would see how every blossom and beauty was for her alone. And the Dharma Raja had remade that. For me. Hope—that colorless light—snuck into the fissures of my thoughts and bloomed. But what that hope wanted to grow into, I couldn’t quite name.
“I have so much to tell you!” hollered a voice from outside the grove.
I leapt to my feet in time to see Nritti gliding toward me. She stopped short at the sight of the glass garden.
“What is that?” she asked, frowning.
“A gift.”
“From who?”
“Not important.”
“Tell me.”
“You’re the one who ran—”
“Flew,” she corrected.
“Flew into my grove about having so much to tell me. You first.”
I still wasn’t sure whether I would tell her about the Dharma Raja or not. I still wasn’t sure what it meant. The garden was a beautiful and thoughtful present, but it wasn’t a vow. And I wouldn’t marry without love. And it’s not like I loved him. I hardly knew him.
Having sufficiently talked myself out of revealing anything, I fixed Nritti with an expectant stare.
“I saw Vanaj yesterday,” she said.
The blind princeling. I nodded.
“He is like … a cold winter breeze when you need it the most on a summer night.”
“Did you tell him that?” I cringed. “If I were Vanaj, I’d wish I was deaf instead.”
Nritti smacked my arm. “I am sharing my emotions!”
“Could you do it without bad metaphor?”
She exhaled. “I like him. He is sweet. Kind. Funny. He listens to me the way no one else has.” Nritti darted a glance to me. “Well. Not no one.”
“I understand that,” I said softly. “I’m happy for you, sister.”
“I thought … I thought maybe you wouldn’t be.”
“Why?”
“Because then we’ll spend less time together and I know that it can be too quiet for you here, by yourself. And what if you’re in the Night Bazaar and I’m not there? Who is going to decipher your foul sense of humor?”
I smiled even though her words stung. “Don’t worry about me. Less time together isn’t no time at all. And besides, we have an infinite amount of time.”
I didn’t tell her the other thought weighing in my head. Vanaj was a mortal, with a mortal’s life span. Many kings lived until they were as old as eight hundred, but they always died in the end. No matter how much she loved him, they were already running out of time together.
Happiness turned her beauty from striking to transcendent. Whatever dying light was left in the sky rushed to illuminate her.<
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“Thank you,” she said, squeezing my hand. “Now, tell me about this person.”
I revealed as much as I could without giving away who he was—the game of shatranj, the ease of our conversations, even his beauty. And at the end, Nritti said nothing.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, sister,” she said quietly. “Sometimes we women are our own worst traps. Our hopes snatch us like quicksand. Our loneliness forges a cage. Sometimes all it takes is one sweet glance and kind word to make us forget ourselves. I just don’t want to see you trapped.”
I bit back any hurt. Perhaps she was right. What if what I felt was nothing more than all my collective loneliness rising up at the first sign of affection?
“You don’t trust him.”
“I don’t know him,” she said. “But it sounds as though you are starting to know him. You have to trust yourself above all. Even me. For your sake, I dearly hope I am wrong. I want nothing more than for you to be happy.”
We spent the rest of the sunset hours talking and watching the sky transform. It looked like any other day between us, but something else had crept into our thoughts. Longing. I could see it plainly in Nritti’s face and the way she kept worrying the ends of her sari and tugging at her braid.
“If you want to spend time with your Vanaj, then go.”
“First, he’s not my Vanaj.” She bit her lip. “And second, if I went to him, don’t you think I would seem too eager?”
I splashed water on her face and she sputtered angrily. I wished Uloopi was here to talk some sense into Nritti, but word had leaked about the resurrection stone she’d made and a handful of mortal demons were after the jewel. She had to come up with demon-proof security measures to safeguard her invention. Queen problems, Uloopi had said yesterday, before tossing her hair over her shoulder and slithering away. I’ll tell you all about them next time, my friend. In the meantime, keep that dream fruit ready for me.
“You’re like a bull fighting with its reflection,” I said to Nritti. “Stop getting in the way of your happiness. So what if it seems eager? Don’t you think he would feel just as eager to see you again? Besides, I’m sure he’s already infatuated with you.”
“You think so?”
“He must be. He’s blind, so your beauty is insignificant. And I can’t think of a single other trait left to recommend you, yet he managed to stay by your side for an entire evening. Thus, he must be in love with you.”
“You’re horrible,” she said, but she grinned widely as she smoothed down her hair and adjusted her skirts. “Will you be at the Night Bazaar later?”
I looked over my shoulder to the silver orchard. There wasn’t enough fruit to sell. Relief flickered inside me. For the first time, I wasn’t eager to run away from my grove.
“Probably tomorrow. I will give the world a rest from dealing with me.”
Nritti eyed me knowingly, but if she guessed my reluctance, she didn’t share it. When she stood, she walked to the glass garden and traced a petal delicately.
“Fine workmanship. Whoever he is, he has the eye of an artist.”
I smiled. “I think he’d be pleased to hear that.”
“Not an artist by trade?”
“No.”
“What does he do?” she asked. “I am assuming he is one of us.”
“He is. But his duty is … unique.”
“Unique enough to tempt you to attend Teej?”
Without answering her, we hugged and said our good-byes. Nritti ran. She turned from a silvery silhouette to a thread of shadow and then … nothing. Even though I knew in my heart that she was not running from me, I still felt like something left behind.
For as long as I had lived, I had always belonged to two worlds. My duties nourished the human world, and there I learned my dances. My life belonged to the Otherworld, and there I learned my duties. But I was Night. And it meant that I was forever a threshold, a space between past and present, yesterday and tomorrow.
If not content, I had at least grown accustomed to not quite belonging. I had Nritti. I had my grove and my garden. And I had tried, endlessly, to change the world around me. I had tried to make dream fruit that would last, tried to craft a story that would last beyond sleep, tried to influence the world. But nothing changed.
Many people thought that ghosts filled the night. They were wrong. True ghosts lay in people’s minds, in that space between curiosity and blindness. I didn’t want to be a ghost anymore. I didn’t want to haunt my own shadow. I wanted more.
But how?
The Dharma Raja’s proposal pushed to the front of my thoughts. At the thought of him, something in me softened. But Nritti’s words unfurled like a bed of thorns in my heart.
I just don’t want to see you trapped.
If there was anything I had learned from the Otherworld, it was that nothing was freely given. Everything demanded a price. And the truth was that I did not know what the Dharma Raja wanted from me. And when I discovered the price for all he offered, would I pay it just to have what I wanted?
I was still lost in those thoughts when I heard the trees creak and groan, as if they had sunk into bows. But of course they would. Every tree was mortal. And every mortal thing knew whose voice they would hear at the end:
“As you asked, I have brought you the moon for your throne.”
Warmth spread through my bones. The Dharma Raja stood tall and imposing, but not nearly bulky enough to conceal a whole throne. And he stood before me with his hands at his sides, relaxed and handsome.
“Have you?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “I hope I’ll fit in the seat.”
“Not quite a throne,” he allowed. “And it’s not here.”
“Where is it?”
“In the Chakara Forest. It was far too heavy to drag over here.”
“Too heavy? I didn’t realize the Dharma Raja had any weaknesses.”
I was only teasing, but when he looked at me, the taunt died in my throat. His gaze moved slowly from my lips to my eyes, and when he spoke it was from a place shadowed and unused. A place still feeling out its own existence.
“Only one.”
We walked side by side, leaving the grove behind until we had entered the Chakara Forest. I had wandered here many times. Few came here after dark. Even humans could taste the magic coating the air, the way it lifted your hair from the back of your neck and promised beautiful and terrible things. The trees sank into bows, brushing moon-silvered branches against the forest floor. Half-hidden in the loam, a woman’s sapphire necklace glinted a bruised blue. A dead bell chirped in a child’s rattle. A love letter printed on the underside of a leaf waved its secrets to the wind.
And in the middle of it all stood an imposing polished black mirror. My breath caught at the sight of its beauty. Carved alabaster and ivory framed the surface. Moon pale and just as magical. On the edges, small illustrations moved back and forth—a water buffalo ambling through still woods, a nagini diving into the depths of a watery castle.
“You made this?”
He nodded. An image flickered in my head, of the Dharma Raja alone in his cold kingdom, head bent and mind brimming with images he couldn’t wait to unlock from a block of stone. I thought of the other day when I had called him a creator, and the quiet wonder that had lit up his face.
“It’s beautiful. But—”
“—it’s not a throne,” he finished. “But it is, I think, what a throne for the moon should be like. The moon travels the world. And a throne should survey all the lands you touch and influence. You deserve no less.”
He brushed his fingers against the mirror, and the black reflection rippled.
“For someone draped in all the stories of the world, how much of it have you seen?”
Stars flickered against my skin, and I wondered whether they were listening to him, tilting a little farther out of the sky to hear the lustrous dark of his voice.
“Very little.”
His words grasped at a yearning I barely
acknowledged. I didn’t want to tell him how dearly I wished to see the world in all its states. To see how the night transformed other cities and landscapes beyond my grove. Or the ocean. Or how much I wanted to see the true sun, and not some torn half of it.
“I thought so,” he said. “Where would you like to go? This will take us anywhere.”
“How did you come across something like this?”
“Hundreds of mirrors fill Naraka’s halls. You could see and visit any world and any city you wished.” A note of pride struck his voice. “In my kingdom, nothing is impossible.”
“I don’t think I’d like to live in a world with no impossibilities.”
He frowned. “Why not?”
“It strikes me as … uninspired. What property is left to dreamers when every idea has been tamed and conquered? What about the poet who dreams of embracing the night sky? It’s utterly impossible. And yet the thought of it sparks song and dance, poetry and philosophy.”
The Dharma Raja fell silent. “Then I hope I am wrong.”
“There’s always impossibilities in dreams. Dream more.”
He looked at me. “I’m beginning to.”
I reached out to trace the place where his fingers had graced the mirror. “Will you take me to see the ocean?”
“I know just the place,” he said. He held out his hand to me. “May I?”
Sparks of light danced down my spine. His thumb ran over my knuckles. Together, we stepped into the mirror. Black and cold. And then falling. My heart raced as a swoop and weightlessness feathered inside me. On instinct, I clung to him and his arms folded around me. Still, my heart raced.
A moment later, we stood along the shore. I caught my breath, dizzied from the sudden jolt of solidness beneath me.
“You were wrong,” he said.
“About what?”
“I have done the impossible,” he announced. “I have embraced the night sky.”
“You did no such thing.”
“Is that so?” he asked. His voice felt too close, and I realized that I hadn’t stepped out of the circle of his arms. It had felt too natural to lean against him. I looked up to see his brow arched, his lips tilting into a knowing grin. “Then what do you call this?”
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