Yamini. The name pressed a cool hand against my heart, warm as freshly wrought stars flung into the winter-black of night.
The names gave me strength. They gave me history. They gave me one more secret to myself, and I would know them all. I opened my eyes, squinting against the brightness as two images spun around before converging into a single scene.
***
Nritti was dancing in Patala, a part of the sprawling Otherworld that held neither sun nor moon, but remained bright with sparkling, unearthly jewels. She danced in a hundred courts, content. Happy. The pride of all thedevasandasuras. And then she met Vanaj, the youngest son of a mortal king, brought to the Otherworldly court for his role in vanquishing fiverakshaswho had plagued sacred grounds.
He loved her.
And she loved him.
And in such bliss does devastation grow.
***
They spent years in each other’s arms. Wandering groves, living as hermits in an ashram of marble where nothing grew around them but lush fruit trees. No one murmured their discontent but the silver fish in the nearby rivers. Nothing interrupted their lovemaking but the cusp of dawn and the famished growl of their own bodies.
***
Then came the war of the two sundered families.
And Vanaj was called away.
***
Nritti stood before me, her lovely face wasted, gaunt. She stood in Naraka’s palace, facing the thrones where Amar and I sat.
“You must help me, sister. He is dying. I know it. I have done everything I can.” Her voice cracked. “I have performed the severest of penances. I have begged each sage. I can do no more.”
Amar looked at me and my heart clenched. I knew that gaze. Resignation. Already I knew where Vanaj’s thread hovered, flickering, unraveling from the grand tapestry. But there was nothing that could be done. Some threads left no ambiguity for life or death.
And Nritti saw it in my face.
“Traitor,” she hissed.
“What can I do, sister?” I beseeched her. “Even we are powerless. But I can follow his soul, remake him anew. You need only wait and he will be your Vanaj again.”
“I. Want. Him. Back.”
“You cannot,” said Amar softly. “We know your pain, but—”
Nritti laughed, her eyes wide. “You? You don’t know my pain. Neither of you do. You sit there, commanding life or death as though it was nothing but a foolish child’s game.”
Amar stood up, his face stony. “There is nothing we can do.”
“Yes, there is!” she screamed, tearing at her hair. “He doesn’t have to die! Who let you decide? Why are either of you fit to take away life? Death is unnecessary.”
She hissed, hurtling her curses at both of us. She would not listen. Even when I tried to find her, day after day, year after year. I spent hours poring over the tapestry, seeking out her thread, but it was as though she had vanished.
***
I saw Nritti stalking burial grounds and defiling ancient temples. She walked through crowded villages, murmuring under her breath. The moment she touched something—tree bark, cow skin, a boy’s forehead—they burned and burned. She entered in silence and left in chaos. She trailed it, dropping fury like candies.
The golden-skinnedapsarawith the quick smile and eyes like crystal was gone, replaced with an equally beautiful but terrifying and bloodless version of herself. I saw her watching me through the obsidian mirror that we used to summon one another.
I saw her pressing herself against it and snarling:
“One day, your inadequacy will sneak up on you, like shadows upon bodies. One day, your pride will fall like glass. And when it does, I’ll be there to take back what is mine.”
