“I see you’ve been making friends,” she said, nodding in the direction where the asura had disappeared. Uloopi grinned.
The first time I opened the stand for dream fruit, no one came. No one wanted to pay the price with their own stories and secrets. And yet they all wanted to dream. Uloopi was the first to slither toward the stall. She had promptly scattered all the passersby who refused to purchase anything and loudly proclaimed: “Finally. I’ve been waiting to tell someone all the sordid details of my life.” Most of her sordid details were other people’s gossip, but I reveled in it anyway. Every day since, Uloopi left her subterranean palace to wander through the Night Bazaar, criticize every person’s outfit, reluctantly tell me her secrets and eagerly tell me other people’s, and buy a dream fruit.
“Are you going to Teej?” I asked.
She shuddered. “What would I want with an immortal consort? They live far too long for my taste.”
“You prefer human princes.”
“Always.”
“It doesn’t hurt to love them?”
She looked at me sharply and then her gaze darted to something behind me. “Of course it does. But I’d rather feel that pain than nothing at all. That is always the problem with immortality, is it not? That one day we will outlive our love of life.”
“You may find someone who makes you feel otherwise.”
Uloopi waved a disinterested hand. “That day has yet to come.”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me all about it when it does.”
“If I do, I want your whole supply of dream fruit.”
“Deal.”
“Excellent,” said Uloopi. She raised one slim eyebrow. “Want some gossip?”
“Absolutely not!” I fluttered my hand to my neck before leaning over the counter. “Why? Who’s it about?”
Uloopi laughed. “Did you see that man who grew three other heads last week?”
“I think I’d remember if I saw that.”
“Well, I heard that it’s because he wanted to keep a couple extra eyes on his wife. Honestly, if you want to keep your wife, is your head the thing you should be investing in?”
I swatted her. “Blasphemy.”
She held out her hand: “Dream fruit, please. Or I’ll tattle on you to Nritti.”
“You know you don’t get any dream fruit until you tell me something about yourself. And besides, Nritti wouldn’t believe you.”
“A serpent tail was not the only thing I inherited from snakes, you know. I have hypnotic eyes.”
“That’s just myth.”
“Am I a myth so soon? You’re making me feel ancient. Only thing noteworthy today was that I’ve nearly perfected a resurrection jewel.”
“That sounds useful considering you can’t die.”
“I wanted to see if I could make the impossible and as usual I outdid myself.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Is that exciting enough for you? We can’t all have absurd and tragic tales like the Shadow Wife.”
“Who’s that?”
Uloopi rolled her eyes. “Don’t you know anything?”
“I spend most of my time outside of the heavens and in the human world. I don’t get much gossip.”
Uloopi huffed, which I took as tacit acceptance that she thought I had a point.
“The last scandal I remember was when the Lady Saranyu, the wife of the Sun god, decided she could no longer stand the brilliance of her husband. So she ran away and left her shadow, the Lady Chayya, in her place.”
“He didn’t notice?”
“Of course not! They were twin images of one another.”
“But they were different people?”
Uloopi’s gaze turned sly. “Of course! But men can be fools. And so it was not the Sun god who discovered the deception, but the child that the Lady Saranyu had left behind. The Shadow Wife bore her own children from the Sun god. And she favored them above Lady Saranyu’s child.”
“What happened?”
Uloopi’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “The child knew and told the Sun god. He was furious and went out into the world to bring back the Lady Saranyu.”
“And the child?”
“Cursed by the Shadow Wife.”
“With what?”
“My friend, that is the question. No one knows.”
“What happened to the Sun god?”
“He ended up with two wives.”
I shook my head. “And the child?”
“I have no mind to ask him how he’s faring since that incident.”
“It’s a boy? Who—”
Uloopi jumped back, smiling. “Ah! Look who it is. The Jewel of the Heavens.”
Nritti floated down from the air and sank into a graceful curtsy. “I’ve come to pay my respects to the Terror of the Deep.”
“Is that what they call me?” asked Uloopi, her brows creasing. She smiled. “I love it.”
“Of course you do, monster.”
Uloopi stuck her tongue out. I tossed her a dream fruit, and she caught it with one hand. Nritti summoned a cloud and fell back into it like it was a bed, while Uloopi settled into her emerald coils. I leaned against the table where I’d sold night fruit and surveyed the Night Bazaar. The three of us went through the same ritual at the end of every day. We’d huddle together, watch the beings, and recite all the things about our day that had gone right and wrong.
Nritti took a deep breath. “Something happened today.”
“The blind princeling,” Uloopi said, not taking her eyes off the sky. She had an obsession with the sky, perhaps because she saw so little of it in her sea palace.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“Vanaj,” she said. Sighed, rather. She exhaled his name like it was something precious and teased out of her.
I narrowed my eyes. “Did you have anything to drink?”
In answer, she swatted my arm. “No. We talked for a long time.”
“Talked. That’s a modest euphemism,” said Uloopi. “And for a long time you say? My, my.”
“Don’t be crude.”
“Too late for that.” I smiled. She seemed happy, and my heart welled in happiness for her. Nritti was kind and giving. She deserved joy. “You seem smitten.”
“Perhaps a little.”
“I’m sure he feels the same.”
She smiled. “I hope so.”
Uloopi spent the next hour mercilessly teasing Nritti, while I tried not to laugh. I kept fighting the urge to tell them about the Dharma Raja. But I was still in disbelief. And part of me didn’t want to part with this secret. I didn’t want it prized apart and examined under Uloopi’s harsh humor, or poked and prodded by Nritti’s questioning. So I kept silent.
When a new day lightened the sky, we stood up and made our way to the edge of the Night Bazaar. The market had already begun to shift and gather itself for the next day. Tents turned transparent as glass before spiraling into pillars. Golden motes of pollen fell through the air and landed on the discarded and the spent. Broken jewelry clasps, silk cones full of half-eaten iced fruit, trampled shatranj pieces and bits of paper with predictions of true love. No sooner had the golden dust touched them, and then they disappeared into the ether.
“I met someone too,” I said, so softly that neither Uloopi nor Nritti heard.
The words still felt unfamiliar and impossible on my tongue. I wanted to savor the sound of them, each word a bright candy for me alone. I knew they’d be supportive and teasing, loving in their own way.
But I wanted to keep the secret of him close.
3
DEATH