I worried the edges of my dress… this was the part I made different from the stories. But Gauri didn’t need to know that.
“It’s a market for the Otherworld people, the beings in our stories, likeapsaras,who dance in the heavens, organdharvas,who play celestial music. Or evennaginis,who want to buy new scales for their serpent tails. All of them.”
Gauri wrinkled a nose, unimpressed. “They buy dresses there?”
“Much,muchmore,” I said. “It’s a place for purchasing nightmares and dreams sweet asrasmalai. You can buy sleepless nights or trade your full name for a wish. It’s where demon mercenaries lend out their magic like colorful ribbons. There’s memories of beautiful women for sale and a thousand potions for things from a broken heart to a sore tooth.”
“Really?” asked Gauri, her voice barely above a whisper.
I shrugged. “Maybe. But I’ve told you and now it’s time to sleep. No more tales.”
I rolled to the side, feigning sleep, when Gauri poked me.
“How will I find it when I’m done growing up?”
“If I knew, don’t you think I would have tried to get there already?” I laughed. “It’s hard to find, Gauri.”
“I can find it!” she piped up. “Last week, I found slippers beneath a statue. But I don’t know why they were there.”
I tried to stifle my laugh with a cough. I may have hidden those last week. They belonged to Mother Dhina and had the most irritating tassels. And to add insult to injury, they had bells.
“Did you tell anyone?”
“No. I thought anapsarahad left them there. Maybe she wanted them back and she’d get mad if I took them.”
“So you think finding hidden slippers qualifies you to enter the Otherworld?”
Gauri blinked at me as though this were the most obvious conclusion.
“I’ll tell you where to find it, then,” I said, laughing. Truthfully, the folktales never said how to get there, but Gauri looked at me so expectantly I couldn’t imagine any harm in playing up her imagination. “You have to go when the creatures are at their weakest, on the night of a new moon. The Otherworld is on the other side of a moonbeam and inside a hundred lotus petals. It’s in that space of time right before you fall asleep…”
Gauri muffled a yawn and looked sleepily at the door.
“I’m going to go someday.”
“Are you?” I asked, wrapping my arm around her. “You should take me with you.”
“I’ll take you,didi.”
Her voice was heavy with sleepiness, but her body was curled tight and tense. I knew she was trying to keep herself awake, drawing out the minutes where we could lie side by side. But we both knew she had to leave.
“Will we see each other again?” she asked softly.
“Yes.”
Gauri fell silent. “In this life?”
I turned to face her. “What do you mean?”
“Mother Urvashi says that if I’m bad in this life then I’ll come back as a goat in my next life. Which means that there is another life.” Gauri didn’t look at me, focusing instead on tightly twisting the hem of her gown. “So will you see me again before I’m a goat?”
“You’re too good to be a goat.”
“Didi, you’re not answering me.”
“I know,” I said into her hair. “I just don’t know.”
“But if we were sisters this time, we would be sisters again, right?”
