I rose into the air, letting the wind whip my hair around my face. Where did the sky end and I start? I never wanted to find out. I let myself sink into that feeling of being infinite. For a moment, I had neither edges nor emptiness. I was everywhere. Everything. A cut of stars. The shadow of a crescent moon. The satin sand beneath the wave. The bistre loam beneath the land.
I reached out and snatched the darkness, dragging it down to earth with me. It needed to be sewn into the world, tucked beneath every leaf and stone, hewn to every mountain crest and sculpted into the bowl of every lush valley. But the only way to make the night stick to the world was to dance it into place.
And so I did.
Unlike Nritti, I had no gunghroo bells to transfix my audience. But the sound of my feet hitting the forest floor caused the birds in the trees to tuck their heads beneath their wings. When I pressed my fingers into mudras, no crowd roared with applause. But the earth sighed, as if it had finally accepted the weight of darkness and chose to sleep rather than spar. I bent, ready to unfurl the last shadow when I heard twigs snapping underfoot.
Cold pierced my spine.
Whenever I danced, every mortal thing that may have been able to see me would instantly fall asleep. In the mortal realms, everything could die. Not even the trees watched.
Yet, something … someone … was doing the impossible.
I spun around. “Who’s there?”
From beneath the heart-shaped leaves of a peepal tree, something rustled. And a voice, so lush it made ambrosia acrid, answered me.
“Only the lowly painter who tries each night, in vain, to capture evening herself.”
“What do you want? Show yourself.”
The stranger stepped out of the peepal tree. He was broad-shouldered, his features as severely beautiful as a strike of lightning. He wore a crown of blackbuck horns that arced in graceful whorls of onyx, catching the light. But it was his gaze that robbed the clamoring rhythm in my chest.
His stare slipped beneath my skin. And when he saw my eyes widen, he smiled. And in that moment, his smile banished my loneliness. He moved toward me, grasping my hand, and his touch hummed in my bones like an aria. A song to my dance. The beginning of a promise.
Which is just about when I realized that I was wearing nothing.
And also when I realized that he didn’t seem to mind that I wasn’t wearing anything.
I yanked my hand away in the same instant that shadows rushed out of the ground to hug my body. Granted, it was hard to tell what was what when the sky and I looked the same. You had to look close. But this stranger had looked at me the way no one had before, and I wasn’t taking any chances.
Shock forced me to stare at him, and my heart plummeted. The blackbuck horns. The leather bracelet around his wrist that I knew could swing into a noose at any time.
“Gods,” I breathed.
“Just one,” said the Dharma Raja, grinning.
I raised an eyebrow and gestured at myself.
“You specified gods,” he said. “Not goddesses.”
I raised one brow. “I am glad you acknowledged me, oh Dharma Raja. For a moment, I thought you had confused me for a mortal and meant to take my soul.”
“I’m not here for your soul.”
But he was here for something. My eyebrows soared up my forehead. The Dharma Raja never left Naraka unless a pristine human soul had called him to the human world. He never wandered through the Night Bazaar. And Nritti told me that he rarely attended the festivities in the heavenly courts. When he did, he was notoriously somber. The only time he enjoyed himself was when he was tormenting any visiting mortal kings by dropping his noose beside their knees by “accident.”
“What are you here for?”
Without any hesitation, he said: “I am here to make you my bride.”
Shock rooted me to the spot. All I could do was stare. And as I stared, I had the strange observation that he had the kind of beauty made for nighttime. Not because the darkness blurred his features or hid any imperfections. But because the shadows understood him. The shadows silhouetted his impressive frame, so that he looked cut from the sky. And when he grinned, I saw some of the beauty that belonged to night alone. Moon roses unfurling in quartz caves. Midnight rivers swollen with stars. Secret sights that were never meant for sunlight.
I met his eyes levelly and folded my arms across my chest. “Why now?”
He frowned, as if that was not the question he had prepared to answer. “Not ‘why me?’”
“I don’t need a recitation of my virtues and beauty. Although I wouldn’t say no to an epic ballad dedicated to them either…”
“I shall start composing immediately…”
“You wouldn’t be my first suitor, and you probably won’t be my last. So no. I know why you would ask. What I want to know is why you have chosen now of all times to come out of hiding in unmarried bliss…”
“People think I’ve been hiding this whole time?”
“What did you want them to think you were doing?”
“Something more sinister.”
“Brooding?” I suggested.
He considered this. “It would be less insulting than cowering from potential brides.”
“Have you met the women of the Otherworld?” I asked, laughing. “I assure you that no one would find you cowardly for hiding from them. We are fearsome to behold.”
The corner of his mouth tilted up. “I’ve gathered.”
“So? Why now?”
He drew himself up, squaring his shoulders. Had he practiced this? I wanted to laugh, then thought better than to humiliate him.
“I would like a companion. The duty of my existence is to tend to the balance of things and I have failed in that regard toward my own personal life. Besides, I think you and I would suit well. I wish for a queen who would rule beside me and not be afraid of the dark. You wish for recognition. There will be no love between us, but there will be tranquil balance without the complication of passions and I will be true to you and honor you above all others.”
My fingers tightened in my sari. Had a more bland and lifeless proposal ever been delivered? Nritti’s proposals always involved men jumping out of balconies and trying to cut a path through the stars, or women making declarations of unending love and swearing it on every hair of her head.
“I’ve heard about you,” he said quietly. His solemnity broke, and curiosity took its place. “Every night you peddle dream fruit. Every night you ask for someone to tell you a part of their day. Every night you ask if they remember the dreams you gave them. Someone else might think it’s a routine check of your merchandise, but I suspect it is more. I suspect that you feel a flicker of hope every time someone remembers the dreams you gave them. I suspect that you want them to remember and perhaps even act upon it. Why do you do it?”
No one had ever spoken to me like that.
“I thought kings prided themselves on subtlety.”
He shrugged. “Death is not subtle. Death is a slam in the chest, a sudden extinguishing of lights. Why should I be any different?”
Fair.