You never forget what it’s like to withdraw a soul. It is an unclasping. Sometimes a soul is tough and hard, surrounded by sinews of memories gone brittle with age. Sometimes a soul is soft and bursting like wind-fallen fruit, all bruised tenderness and stale hope. And sometimes a soul is an ethereal shard of light. As if the force of its life is a scorching thing.
This soul belonged to light.
When the woman looked down, she knew that her husband was gone. The thing she cradled was nothing more than meat soon to spoil. Tears slid down her wrinkled cheeks.
“Come now,” I said, standing from the throne. “I have taken husbands when their wives still wore the henna from their wedding. I consider you lucky.”
“I beg of you,” she said. “Don’t let him move on without me. He would have asked the same.”
I swung the soul into a satchel and the light faded. I headed for the door, more out of formality than anything else. If I wanted, I could’ve disappeared right then and there.
“Please. What would you do for someone you loved?”
I stopped short. “I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure of that provocation.”
“You love no one?” she asked, her eyebrows rising in disbelief.
“I love myself. Does that count?”
And then I left.
*
I had lied when I told the woman I loved nothing.
Standing in front of Naraka—taking in the flat gray lands and stone trees, the crests of mountains like jagged teeth, and the night sky stretching its stars above my palace—I felt the closest thing to love. Night understood me. Night held the promise of secrets slinking in the shadows, of things that conjured fear and bewitched the sight. Nothing was more beautiful than a night sky dusted with stars. Nothing was more terrible than a night sky scrawled with a thousand destinies.
Night was inevitable. Like me.
Yelping and the scratching of paws greeted me the moment I walked inside the palace. My hounds snuffled the folds of my cloak, whining loudly.
“Souls are not chew toys,” I sighed.
They huffed, slinking away to the shadows. If they were upset now, they would soon forget. My hounds were my usual representatives to the worlds above and surrounding Naraka. They fetched the souls too stained to lure me above ground. They’d taken queens from their deathbeds and maidens from the throes of childbirth, soldiers in war and priests at their altars. I was certain they’d find a murderer among the dead to rend and chew with perfect contentment.
I envied them. They could forget what had upset them. But I saw the reminder of what had unsettled me in the empty hallways and silent vestibules, in the solemn and in the eternal. Everywhere.
Envying a mortal and now a beast? Pitiful.
Gupta walked into the hall, his arms full of parchments.
“How was it?” he asked.
“Normal. Less tears than I expected. The wife could see me, though, and she asked for a boon.”
“Did you grant it?”
“I’m undecided on whether I should.”
Gupta stepped back, brows crumpling. “You look—”
“—preternaturally handsome?”
“No.”
“Record keeping is ruining your eyes.”
“Impossible.”
“Well, one can hope.”
“If anything, record keeping has made me more observant,” said Gupta.
We started walking down one of Naraka’s halls. A thousand mirrors glittered around us, reflecting cities and ports and seas. I never bothered to look at them anymore. There was nothing new to see in this world or any other.
“And what do you observe?”
“Emptiness.”
The woman’s parting words flitted to mind. What would you do for someone you loved?
“Don’t let that trouble you. Probably just the reflection of your own mind.”
Gupta primly rearranged his papers. “When you decide to stop being a churlish infant, and talk to me about what’s bothering you, you know where to find me.”
“I am not bothered.”
“You are irritated for some reason,” he said loftily. “But I’m sure you’ll find the answer in the Tapestry.” He glanced down at his parchments, checking off names and underlining cities. “Anything else to tell me?”
“You have ink stains on your nose.”
Gupta shrugged. “Admittedly, I can be too close to my work.”
“Exactly how close? Do you roll around with the parchment afterward, murmur love songs to the paper, and profess your undying love for the written word?”
“I would never roll around in my parchment. It would get wrinkled.” Gupta turned to walk away before pausing. “Oh, I forgot…” He snapped his fingers. Ink splashed on my face. “You’ve got something on your nose.”
And then he stuck his tongue out at me, and disappeared.
*
The Tapestry was a lesson in light and dark. When I stood in the throne room, I felt the threads from a hundred lives pass over my palms, snagging and spinning against one another in an unfathomable web of cause and effect and balance. It was my duty to uphold the balance, to throw dark where there was too much light and sew light where the dark grew too thick. Sometimes the Tapestry showed me a life thread out of place. Sometimes it showed me forest fires approaching a village or a cure for a disease that the world should not yet see. Today it showed me … myself.
The threads shimmered like light upon water. My reflection changed, stretching into the halls of Naraka itself … the stone halls and the marble courtyards. Empty, empty, empty. The reflection quivered: an ivory counterpart to the onyx throne, a shadow curled around mine in the night, a voice that balanced and weighed. A garland of flowers placed around my neck. My heart tightened. I felt that image opening inside me, as if my whole life had been something lopsided in need of righting itself. The Tapestry’s demand knifed through me: I needed a queen.
Once more, the threads twisted, and the sight wrapped tendrils of ice around my heart—the palace of Naraka split in half, the moon hanging in a torn sky. Without warning, the Tapestry fell back on itself, threads looping and dancing until it was still as a pool.
I sank into my throne, staring at the Tapestry. The message was vivid and vague at the same time. It wanted me to fill the halls, not with the dead, but with … a bride. I sat there. Numb. For years, I had considered the possibility of finding someone to share this gift and burden. But whenever I closed my eyes, I saw her. The way her eyes had squinted against the brightness of the Sun Palace. The shadow she left standing in the doorway as she fled. Wearing her smile. Wearing her eyes. Did she think I would not notice the substitute she had left behind? If I had stayed silent, I would have committed a grave injustice.
If I had stayed silent, I would never have been cursed.
The longer I sat there, the more the palace fidgeted. Annoyed. Perhaps it felt neglected in the past few days. Voices grew out of the floor, suddenly taunting and cruel.
Let us show you a jewel that is not yours.
Let us show you a door that will never open to you.
Let us show you a soul that you can never claim.