“You look unappetizing,” it said. “You would taste dry as a sun-bleached bone. Where is your softness? Your whimsy? Bleh. Too salty. I feel thirsty just looking at you. I do not like it.”
“Thank you,” said Gauri, once more, this time with absolute certainty.
She took one step closer to the gate.
“This has been thoroughly alarming, and now I have to go,” she said, turning on her heel and hoping the monstrous horse would not follow.
Men and women, children and beasts walked down the hall in either direction. Pale cave formations dangled from the ceiling. They glowed, but cast little light, and in the gloom they reminded Gauri of teeth. Perhaps this place was a monster’s skeleton, hauled out, its body now a relic and a hall.
At first, Gauri thought that onyx pillars lined the walls. They were stately and black, flecked with bits of glittering stone. But then,she watched as a thin band of fire unraveled from its top. Light dribbled slowly down the columns. Around her, everyone stopped. Their heads turned to the pillar closest to them.
“The sun is on its way,” whispered one woman.
She was clutching something to her chest: a child’s ragged doll.
“Where are you?” she called softly. “Whereareyou?”
Gauri looked once more to the pillars. She had been wrong. They were not onyx at all, but night poured into columns to create an hourglass of sorts.
When the pillar turned to gold, the sun would have risen.
And she would be out of time.
The sound of hooves clattered behind her. Again, that stench of decay. The horse had followed her.
“Where are you going? Can I come? Actually, I do not care for your answer. You move with urgency. How strange! What is urgency like?” asked the horse. “Does it feel like a fire? And if so, what kind of fire? A fire that flays the flesh? Cooks a person down to the marrow? Or one of those ornamental fires that do not singe the flesh at all? I detest those. If it does not feed you, its purpose is hollow. What are you doing—”
Gauri looked at it sidelong. The horse’s decayed side faced her and she did not like looking at its hollow eye socket.
“I have to get something,” she bit out, hoping it would make the creature shut up.
The horse eyed her. Or maybe not. It was hard to tell when she could not see its eye.
“You are wearing bridal henna,” it said. It huffed, and something red sprayed across its muzzle. A black tongue snaked out from itsmouth and wiped it clean. “It smells too fresh. When was your wedding, inedible thing?”
Gauri grit her teeth. “It is tomorrow.”
“Then what business have you in the space between life and death?”
She could sense, somehow, that the horseknewwhat she was doing. But why was it trying to force out the words? Was it taunting her?
But there was nothing for Gauri to hide. The truth was what it was.
“My bridegroom had a split thread,” she said. “He already breathed his last. And his last breath is at the end of this hall. If I don’t get it before morning, he will die.”
“Everyone dies.”
“It does not have to be so soon,” she said.
The horse nodded once. And then, itgrabbedher. Its blunted teeth closed around the fabric of her sleeve. Gauri tried to shrug out of her clothes. She would run naked down these halls if she had to, but the horse moved with inhuman speed, and moments later, she was on its back. She grabbed the pale wisps of its hair, holding on tightly as it ran through the hall.
“What are youdoing?” she hollered.
The horse’s head whipped to face hers. One hollow socket, one black eye. Its flesh pulled back at the lip in what Gauri imagined was a snarl, but turned out to be a smile:
“Helping!” it shouted.
The hall sped past. Light trickled down the onyx columns, swallowing the stars. Around her, the people moved like shades. The floor was littered with mementoes: scraps of paper with smudgednames written in the edges, children’s playthings, a woman’s silk slipper, and even amangalsutra.The necklace that a groom tied around his bride’s neck. Her heart squeezed.
