“Scrawny,” she says, prodding her this way and that, pinching her ribs, sparse as sitar strings. “Far too scrawny. But your hair,” the Grieving Mother touches the end of her braid, long and dark, the last remnant of her mother. She shies away, afraid the Grieving Mother might chop it all away. But the Grieving Mother only shakes her head, drawing the ends of her white odhni over her bald head. “Well. I can do something with that.”
Her grandmother’s house tugs at her. She doesn’t know if it’s nostalgia or a way of missing her mother and even her grandmother. Ankita longs for familiar skin, the sheen of sweat behind their ears, hair glistening with sweet hibiscus oil. The heat-and-lotion smell she’s grasped for all her life.
It is a Friday again and the citizens of Kala Sagar have gathered for the local Kavi Sammelan, the Festival of Bards. The townspeople chime in with their own stories, lore passed by time that has been picked up by the wind. Curses are everywhere, they proclaim loudly: in cotton-eyed flowers that lull kids into drowning, in false moonlight that conjure images and lead one to waste away, and in shoes that can swallow someone’s whole being.
The questions grew louder, yet never quite sure of what they were asking. They were taunting, confused, angry – and perhaps frustrated by their own inability to define themselves.
It nestles close to the heart of the city, where the lord rests. Spun in silks and truths that taste of lies, in the storyteller’s market which is Samudhrapura’s glory. You’ve always found it ironic that a lord who never gave his tale away had fostered the silken market where all stories can be sold.
He wants to fold his body flat, make little cuts with scissors and unfold it into a paper–doll chain like a magician. This silver-streaked fritillary beast that is standing in his room covered in shadowed scars that look like barbed wire.
Write “In transit” in capital letters in answer to “Current Relationship Status.” Failure to do so will result in auto-rejection of your form.
The Circle has a gutter cap tight in the middle of it, and beyond that a ladder that descends to the ground. Around the first steps of the ladder the couple have placed a mattress, a steel box filled with odds and ends, and a broken wooden crate that could be considered their cupboard. In the shadowy corner is a small metal box that is Nina’s alone and Kaz stays well away from it.
That is how the Green Man finds you, a sprite like himself with petals in your hair, weeping to the rose bush about an older sister married and sent off to a distant land where there are no trees for miles around.
The gods have always flitted in and out of my dreams, their words never making any sense to me – a lowly human. They never seem to detect me listening in the dark or, if they are aware of my presence, they do not care. Only on that hot, humid night did any of them try to speak to me.