I buy two fat pastries slathered with pale orange frosting. We sit at a little table outside and eat in complete silence but for the sound of Mani sucking on sugared fingers.
He knows what I am, what Gopal made me. A visha kanya, a poison maiden capable of killing with nothing more than a kiss as a weapon. I explained it to him two years ago, when he had just turned five. Right before we tried to escape. He tilted his head to the side, like a small bird. “Is that why you never kiss me?” The question gave me a lump in my throat and all I could do was nod.
Mani patted my hand. “It’s okay, Marinda,” he said. “They’re bad guys, right?”
“They are,” I told him. But I’ve never been sure it matters what kind of guys they are. I have to kill them anyway.
I finish my pastry before Mani and sit with my chin cradled in my palm and watch him. After he takes his last bite, I slide my chair back, but he shakes his head and holds up a hand. “Not done,” he says, and I laugh as he licks his thumb and presses it against the waxy paper to trap the crumbs. There’s so much I can’t give him—parents, friends, a life free of disease. But I can give him this. There is so little that’s sweet in our life to savor.
We don’t leave until his paper looks brand-new again.
The bookshop is cradled in the elbow of Gali Street, between a butcher shop and flower peddler. The contrast never fails to startle me: one window blooming with bright life, and the other filled with limp geese swinging from the rafters, pink and freshly dead. Life on one side and death on the other, with only stories in between. Little bells on the door jangle when I push it open, and Japa pops his head from behind a stack of books. “Marinda,” he calls, “you’ve just made my day. I’m swamped.” Japa has a full head of silver hair and the kind of eyes that smile even when his lips don’t.
I shrug off my identity at the door and feel lighter as I step over the threshold.
Gopal doesn’t approve of me taking a job here. It makes him edgy, my interacting with normal people, though he would deny it. “There’s no reason for you to work, rajakumari,” he said when he found out about the bookshop. “Do I not provide you with all that you need?” We have enough in the way of money, but he doesn’t come close to meeting all my needs or Mani’s.
“It’s good tradecraft,” I told him. “Haven’t you always taught me I should blend in? Girls my age work, Gopal. Most of them are apprenticed by now.”
He had no reply for that. He just grunted and shook his head. But he didn’t forbid me, so I keep coming at least once a week.
“Good morning, Japa,” I say. “How can I help?”
Japa folds me in a brief embrace, and I turn my head slightly so that the kiss aimed for my cheek lands closer to my ear. No reason to be careless. He motions toward the stack of books. “I could use some help shelving all of those,” he says, and then spots Mani hiding behind my knees. “Ah, and I see you brought the best helper of all.”
Mani’s face scrunches up in confusion. “But I never help,” he says with a hint of a wobble in his voice.
“On the contrary,” Japa says, mussing Mani’s hair. “A boy lost in a book is the best kind of advertising.” Mani gives a shy smile, and a wave of gratitude washes over me. Mani scampers off to the corner of the shop to curl up on a fluffy purple cushion like a small prince; he will spend the day there having adventures in the pages that he is denied in real life.
Japa plucks an ancient-looking book from the top of the stack. “Take extra care with this one,” he says. “My supplier claims it’s from the Dark Days.” His eyes are bright. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
I try to keep the ignorance from showing on my face. I’ve heard of the Dark Days in passing, but my education has been on a need-to-know basis. If it can’t be used as a weapon, it’s not deemed worth my time. That includes history.
“It’s incredible,” I say. I try to sound appropriately awed, but hot shame climbs up my neck and licks at my cheeks.
Thank the ancestors Japa is too entranced to notice. He admires the book a few seconds longer and then pats me on the shoulder. “I’ll be in the back if you need me.”
The book is deep burgundy with a ribbed spine and worn edges. I ease the cover open to find that each page is actually composed of four separate, narrow rectangles made from dried palm leaves and strung together with a slender leather cord. Some of the rectangles have writing in a language I can’t read—probably ancient Sundarian—and some are illuminated with miniature paintings. It’s breathtaking. I turn the pages carefully—the palm leaves feel delicate between my fingers, like they could crumble with the slightest amount of pressure.