Kubera grinned. “Watching stories always makes me pensive.”
I frowned. He was looking at birds. Admittedly, they were very strange birds. They slipped into new shapes as they flew, donning new colors with every swoop. It was impossible to keep track of each bird in that writhing mass of wings. Above me, I caught sight of a snowy bird with a crest of diamonds. Gold and bister feathers grew over the white. The feathers crumpled and contracted. In the next moment, the bird had turned into a sparrow. Kubera clapped, and the sound thundered in the darkened hall. Every bird stopped in midflight. Not even their wings twitched.
Kubera hummed and a single emerald hummingbird broke from away from the mass and dived for his palms. He gestured us closer.
“Each of those is a tale being told,” said Kubera, pointing to the birds. “You see how they change in the telling? It reflects the tale. For example, this bird is your story with the vishakanyas.”
He tossed the bird into the air, and the sudden hum of its wings sent a splash of images waving in the air—Vikram at the Feast of Transformation, the ruby sparkling in the tent.
“But this is just one story,” said Kubera.
He snatched the hummingbird out of the air, whispered to it, bent its wings into a new shape and threw it aloft. Now, the bird had a tail like a peacock, the story twisted to show Aasha hiding in the hall beside the ruby, her fingers tracing the blue star at her throat and her eyes wide with want.
“You see,” said Kubera. “Nothing is yours. Not even a story is yours, though you may lay claim to it with the teeth of your mind.”
I watched as the bird spiraled over our heads. It kept changing the higher it flew, to the story of a patron who had bartered a year of his life just to see his dead mate through the vishakanyas’ arts, only to be forced to flee when my fight with the vishakanyas drove him from the tent. I hadn’t even considered the line of Otherworldly beings who had been waiting to visit the vishakanyas. I assumed they were all there seeking pleasure.
“Stories are boundless and infinite, ever-changing and elusive,” said Kubera. “They are the truest treasure and therefore my dearest possessions. Each contestant grants the world a new tale, pours a little magic back into the earth. That’s all that will remain once the world dons the clothes of a new age and the Otherworld seals its doors. You will see. If you survive.”
“Even the ones who die?” I asked, sharpness creeping into my voice.
“What’s a story without a bit of death?” said Kubera, grinning. “I’ve always loved tales of broken lovers who roam through countrysides singing their stories of woe and separation, their honey-sweet longing for the next life when they can suddenly be reunited. It makes other people happy, you see. It makes people grateful that it hasn’t happened to them. I like making people happy!” Kubera clapped his hands. “Well, I should not keep you. Enjoy the celebrations,” he said. “And if you do nothing else, give me a tale worth telling. Worth keeping.”
When we left, I turned his words over in my heart. Kubera might want to harvest a story out of our trials, but he’d let something slip: A story had no ownership. A story could break its bones, grow wings, soar out of reach and dive out of sight in the time it took just to draw breath. It meant we weren’t walking a cut path. We carved it into existence with every step.
22
NO TOUCHING
AASHA
Aasha hadn’t slept last night. Instead, she snuck off to sit at the end of a stone path that connected the courtesans’ tent to a running stream. Bright green grass flanked the path, taunting her. Her fingers ached to feel the ground. Would grass feel hard and cold, like glass? Or would it yield like a gossamer thread, soft and fragile, before snapping abruptly beneath her palm? Experience stilled her hand. Any living thing she touched blackened and shriveled. She didn’t even dare to dip her feet in the water out of fear for any hidden wildlife.
Aasha stood and walked back to the tent. Soon, she would have to meet Gauri and the human boy. Part of her thrilled to spend time in human company. Even last night, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from Gauri. The way she was breathless and brittle and reckless. Aasha wanted to look like that. Like something alive.
Sometimes Aasha strained her memory to the days before the vishakanyas collected her, but all she could recall was a rain-washed field and warm hands rubbing coconut oil into her scalp. Those wisps of the past told her nothing. The other part of Aasha felt nervous about meeting them. Even her sisters seemed worried. Since last night, they had been treating her like a glass doll.
“It can’t be that bad,” Aasha said, when one of her sisters tried, once more, to stop her from meeting Gauri. “We were once human after all, so—”
“Never say that in this tent,” said one of her sisters. “We may bleed and birth the same way, but that is where the similarities end. We are different. Only we carry the Blessing in our veins. They do not.”
After promising to keep their counsel, Aasha hurried to the banyan tree. She caught sight of them as she walked up the hill. Gauri stood tall and fierce. She held herself as if she were made of nothing but knife points, so sharp that Aasha cast a glance at her shadow, wondering if she had torn it to strips just by standing above it. Beside her stood the boy who had disguised himself as one of them. He was handsome, with a face and figure that some of her sisters would have wanted to touch regardless of his desires. He leaned against the banyan tree, easy and graceful, but with a keen brightness to his gaze, as if he could see more than most.
Gauri walked forward. “I was afraid you wouldn’t show up.”
“A being of the Otherworld always keeps their word.”
Gauri only lifted an eyebrow. As if to say, We’ll see. “This is Vikram.”
The boy flashed a smile.
Aasha sniffed the air cautiously, tasting their desires and searching for any threat to herself. But their desires had not been greedy or lust-filled. At least, not lust directed at her.
“You said there was something the Lady Kauveri wants from the Serpent King. What is it?”
“Venom.”
Surprise flickered on Gauri’s face. “Why would anyone want a naga’s venom?”
Aasha had never been one for gossip. She’d always been the one at the edges of the room, listening to her louder and more excited sisters as they traded news from the Night Bazaar. It never seemed wise to talk about other people. But she had given her word to help the humans. And she felt rather proud of herself in that moment. No one wanted her killing or enchanting touch. They wanted information, and it cost her nothing to give. Even better, she had control over what information to divulge.
“It is said that whoever possesses the venom of the Serpent King can control him.”
“Why would she want to control him?” asked Vikram.
Aasha was about to answer when Gauri cut in, her voice low and harsh—