The Dharma Raja’s proposal pushed to the front of my thoughts. At the thought of him, something in me softened. But Nritti’s words unfurled like a bed of thorns in my heart.
I just don’t want to see you trapped.
If there was anything I had learned from the Otherworld, it was that nothing was freely given. Everything demanded a price. And the truth was that I did not know what the Dharma Raja wanted from me. And when I discovered the price for all he offered, would I pay it just to have what I wanted?
I was still lost in those thoughts when I heard the trees creak and groan, as if they had sunk into bows. But of course they would. Every tree was mortal. And every mortal thing knew whose voice they would hear at the end:
“As you asked, I have brought you the moon for your throne.”
Warmth spread through my bones. The Dharma Raja stood tall and imposing, but not nearly bulky enough to conceal a wholethrone. And he stood before me with his hands at his sides, relaxed and handsome.
“Have you?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “I hope I’ll fit in the seat.”
“Not quite a throne,” he allowed. “And it’s not here.”
“Where is it?”
“In the Chakara Forest. It was far too heavy to drag over here.”
“Too heavy? I didn’t realize the Dharma Raja had any weaknesses.”
I was only teasing, but when he looked at me, the taunt died in my throat. His gaze moved slowly from my lips to my eyes, and when he spoke it was from a place shadowed and unused. A place still feeling out its own existence.
“Only one.”
We walked side by side, leaving the grove behind until we had entered the Chakara Forest. I had wandered here many times. Few came here after dark. Even humans could taste the magic coating the air, the way it lifted your hair from the back of your neck and promised beautiful and terrible things. The trees sank into bows, brushing moon-silvered branches against the forest floor. Half-hidden in the loam, a woman’s sapphire necklace glinted a bruised blue. A dead bell chirped in a child’s rattle. A love letter printed on the underside of a leaf waved its secrets to the wind.
And in the middle of it all stood an imposing polished black mirror. My breath caught at the sight of its beauty. Carved alabaster and ivory framed the surface. Moon pale and just as magical. On the edges, small illustrations moved back and forth—a water buffalo ambling through still woods, anaginidiving into the depths of a watery castle.
“You made this?”
He nodded. An image flickered in my head, of the Dharma Raja alone in his cold kingdom, head bent and mind brimming with images he couldn’t wait to unlock from a block of stone. I thought of the other day when I had called him a creator, and the quiet wonder that had lit up his face.
“It’s beautiful. But—”
“—it’s not a throne,” he finished. “But it is, I think, what a throne for the moon should be like. The moon travels the world. And a throne should survey all the lands you touch and influence. You deserve no less.”
He brushed his fingers against the mirror, and the black reflection rippled.
“For someone draped in all the stories of the world, how much of it have you seen?”
Stars flickered against my skin, and I wondered whether they were listening to him, tilting a little farther out of the sky to hear the lustrous dark of his voice.
“Very little.”
His words grasped at a yearning I barely acknowledged. I didn’t want to tell him how dearly I wished to see the world in all its states. To see how the night transformed other cities and landscapes beyond my grove. Or the ocean. Or how much I wanted to see the true sun, and not some torn half of it.
“I thought so,” he said. “Where would you like to go? This will take us anywhere.”
“How did you come across something like this?”
“Hundreds of mirrors fill Naraka’s halls. You could see and visitany world and any city you wished.” A note of pride struck his voice. “In my kingdom, nothing is impossible.”
“I don’t think I’d like to live in a world with no impossibilities.”
He frowned. “Why not?”
“It strikes me as… uninspired. What property is left to dreamers when every idea has been tamed and conquered? What about the poet who dreams of embracing the night sky? It’s utterly impossible. And yet the thought of it sparks song and dance, poetry and philosophy.”
