“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 standing 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.