“Apparently not.”
Teej was the time when the members of the Otherworld selected a consort. Lovers would often arrange to meet and declare their choice in a consort by placing a single red bloom in their beloved’s palm. But there was a strange rule to Teej. A heavy samite curtain separated them from each other’s sight. Lovers would have to identify one another by the sight of their palm. Some didn’t bother with choosing a lover beforehand. They would peruse the line of assorted hands and choose the one that called to their soul.
Foolish.
“You expect me to make this momentous decision by chance and simply show up at Teej and let someone choose me? Based on my hand?”
“You could do that.”
I waited, then caught the smug tilt of his grin.
“Or?” I prompted through clenched teeth.
“Or you could take the two months you have available and find someone. And arrange to meet them at Teej.”
“What if the right one doesn’t come to Teej?”
Gupta scoffed. “Every Otherworld maiden will be at Teej. Trust me.”
2
NIGHT
“You could promise me a palace of spun sugar and I wouldn’t go,” I said.
“What if I—”
“You could hang me upside down and tickle me with lightning and I would not be persuaded.”
“Rather vicious, don’t you think?” asked Nritti. She shook her head, and the small golden ornaments strung through her hair chimed sorrowfully. Three chimes. That never boded well.
I had lost count of how many times I had heard the chiming of Nritti’s golden bells. To everyone else, the bells distinguished her as the chief apsara of the heavenly courts. Everyone else heard the bells and saw the cosmetic appeal—the glint of gold against the black fall of her hair, a trill of precious metal to silver her immaculate dance, a glittering crown that belonged to none else in the court of Svargaloka.
To me, the chimes were something to be translated. One chime meant: Here we go again. Two chimes meant: I am questioning our friendship. Three chimes meant: Once more, I must rescue her from the depths of bad choices.
Three chimes.
I shook my head. She sighed, and resumed kicking her feet in the pale blue river before us. At this hour, the river looked like a shard of sky. The reflection of rose-colored clouds floated down the still water. Soon, indigo would stain their edges. Like bruises. For a handful of moments, the sky would turn monstrous, purpled and marbled as if someone had beaten it senseless. One might call it cruel. And yet without it you’d never notice the stars.
Maybe the horror of dusk made the stars beautiful. You had to prize apart and flay the sky just to notice them. And for that cruelty, they bared their cold and unflinching beauty, their fixed and fervid glory. That beauty held truth—destiny and doom listed in the space between those burning silver infernos.
Nritti hugged her knees to her chest and followed my gaze. “You were the first person to tell me there was nothing violent about the night.”
I smiled. “And you believed me because there was nothing violent about me.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Not entirely violent,” I allowed.
“Not entirely scary.”
We turned our gaze to the heavens and waited. There was beauty in the night, if you chose to see it. Some did. Some didn’t. For some, night was the time of dreams and rest, of balance reasserting itself. For others, the hours crowded between dusk and dawn belonged to the ghosts. I knew what they feared: the uncertainty of nighttime, the lightlessness of those hours that were not the black comfort of sleep but the shadows at the bottom of a monster’s throat. I glanced at my reflection and saw their fear staring right at me. Why could I not be dreams and nightmares both?
Nritti reached for my hand. I looked down to see our knitted fingers. Even though we had known each other all our lives, sometimes I never recognized myself beside her. Her skin—a lustrous gold—paled next to my own violent shades. Almost time, I thought. Vespertine ink bloomed across my skin, spelling the calligraphy of dusk and near-night. Stars winked in the crook of my elbow and a constellation curved around the bend of my thumb.
“Already?” asked Nritti.
“Shorter days.”
“And longer nights.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Of course you don’t,” laughed Nritti. “Self-loathing would not become you.”
Behind me, the strange silver trees of the ashram stretched longingly toward the sky. I understood how they felt. It was only natural to want to feel part of something bigger than yourself. I glanced at my arm. Violet clouds shivered to life on my skin. A storm cloud kissed my wrist. And yet for all that I wore dusk and night … I was not part of the story. It is the price of immortality and eternal youth to never recognize your own fate in the stars. If we must live forever, then we must live blind.
I guarded the stars with my body. I let the constellations dance across my skin as if they could draw sustenance from the air I breathed. I coaxed nighttime into the world and guarded that sacred cusp of time before the world slipped once more into a tomorrow. I kept the past and present divided by a dance.
But it didn’t matter how many days and nights or dusks and dawns passed. The truth was that no one could do what I did. And yet the entire world was as blind to me as the stars were blind to us all. As much as I loved the night, I wanted to break free of it as well. I wanted to be more than a canvas for stars and stories. I wanted to make my own.
Nritti looked behind me to the ashram. “Everyone wants to know where this place is. I bet there’s already a crowd waiting for those dream fruits.”
I followed her gaze to the orchard behind us. When I came here, the ashram became renowned for the strange fruit that sprang from the earth—slender, silver trees where fat purple fruit dragged the boughs to the earth like soul mates inexorably pulled to one another. The fruit always tasted cold, no matter how hot the day. All day I labored on those dreams, on what snippet of reality would be stretched thin and packed inside that fruit. When midnight fell, I came to the Night Bazaar and sold them for the price of someone recounting their day. I learned and listened, and they ate and dreamed.
“Your point?” I asked.
“You know, in my despair of you not joining me for Teej, I may accidentally let the location of this ashram and your famous orchard slip…”
I narrowed my eyes. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would never!” she said, feigning hurt. “But maybe I would.”
“And you call me manipulative.”
“I’m just trying to—”
“—look out for me, do what’s best for me, instruct me on all the ways of living and point out the sun in case I mistook it for an orange.”
She considered this. “Yes.”
“I’m not hopeless.”
“But you are sheltered. And stubborn as a mule.”
“It could be worse. I could have the face of a mule too. I’m counting my blessings.”