Happiness turned her beauty from striking to transcendent. Whatever dying light was left in the sky rushed to illuminate her.
“Thank you,” she said, squeezing my hand. “Now, tell me about this person.”
I revealed as much as I could without giving away who he was—the game ofshatranj,the ease of our conversations, even his beauty. And at the end, Nritti said nothing.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, sister,” she said quietly. “Sometimes we women are our own worst traps. Our hopes snatch us like quicksand. Our loneliness forges a cage. Sometimes all it takes is one sweet glance and kind word to make us forget ourselves. I just don’t want to see you trapped.”
I bit back any hurt. Perhaps she was right. What if what I felt was nothing more than all my collective loneliness rising up at the first sign of affection?
“You don’t trust him.”
“I don’tknowhim,” she said. “But it sounds as though you are starting to know him. You have to trust yourself above all. Even me. For your sake, I dearly hope I am wrong. I want nothing more than for you to be happy.”
We spent the rest of the sunset hours talking and watching the sky transform. It looked like any other day between us, but something else had crept into our thoughts. Longing. I could see it plainly in Nritti’s face and the way she kept worrying the ends of her sari and tugging at her braid.
“If you want to spend time with your Vanaj, then go.”
“First, he’s notmyVanaj.” She bit her lip. “And second, if I went to him, don’t you think I would seem too eager?”
I splashed water on her face and she sputtered angrily. I wished Uloopi was here to talk some sense into Nritti, but word had leaked about the resurrection stone she’d made and a handful of mortal demons were after the jewel. She had to come up with demon-proof security measures to safeguard her invention.Queen problems,Uloopi had said yesterday, before tossing her hair over her shoulder and slithering away.I’ll tell you all about them next time, my friend. In the meantime, keep that dream fruit ready for me.
“You’re like a bull fighting with its reflection,” I said to Nritti. “Stop getting in the way of your happiness. So what if it seems eager? Don’t you think he would feel just as eager to see you again? Besides, I’m sure he’s already infatuated with you.”
“You think so?”
“He must be. He’s blind, so your beauty is insignificant. And I can’t think of a single other trait left to recommend you, yet he managed to stay by your side for an entire evening. Thus, he must be in love with you.”
“You’re horrible,” she said, but she grinned widely as she smoothed down her hair and adjusted her skirts. “Will you be at the Night Bazaar later?”
I looked over my shoulder to the silver orchard. There wasn’t enough fruit to sell. Relief flickered inside me. For the first time, I wasn’t eager to run away from my grove.
“Probably tomorrow. I will give the world a rest from dealing with me.”
Nritti eyed me knowingly, but if she guessed my reluctance, she didn’t share it. When she stood, she walked to the glass garden and traced a petal delicately.
“Fine workmanship. Whoever he is, he has the eye of an artist.”
I smiled. “I think he’d be pleased to hear that.”
“Not an artist by trade?”
“No.”
“What does he do?” she asked. “I am assuming he is one of us.”
“He is. But his duty is… unique.”
“Unique enough to tempt you to attendTeej?”
Without answering her, we hugged and said our good-byes. Nritti ran. She turned from a silvery silhouette to a thread of shadow and then… nothing. Even though I knew in my heart that she was not running from me, I still felt like something left behind.
For as long as I had lived, I had always belonged to two worlds. My duties nourished the human world, and there I learned my dances. My life belonged to the Otherworld, and there I learnedmy duties. But I was Night. And it meant that I was forever a threshold, a space between past and present, yesterday and tomorrow.
If not content, I had at least grown accustomed to not quite belonging. I had Nritti. I had my grove and my garden. And I had tried, endlessly, to change the world around me. I had tried to make dream fruit that would last, tried to craft a story that would last beyond sleep, tried toinfluencethe world. But nothing changed.
Many people thought that ghosts filled the night. They were wrong. True ghosts lay in people’s minds, in that space between curiosity and blindness. I didn’t want to be a ghost anymore. I didn’t want to haunt my own shadow. I wanted more.
But how?
