The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019

by John Joseph Adams

  I nodded. The letter seemed to be carefully worded. Maliha came across as thoughtful and practical. Imaginative, but calm and collected.

  Maybe something had happened to her.

  “Tell me more about this stone,” I said.

  “Myth and speculation more than anything else. She was full of stories from her tribal days. She would laugh when she narrated them, watching my face as if she expected me to laugh at her.”

  “Did you?” When he said nothing, I asked, “What stories?”

  “Her favorite was the tale of the Serpent King and his queen.” Hakim rubbed his fingers together. “The Sheesh Naag, king of serpents, ruler of the underworld, asked his wife what she wanted for her hundredth name-day. The Serpent Queen, having grown tired of time’s ravages upon her body, asked the king to grant her youth and immortal beauty. The Sheesh Naag told her he couldn’t reverse time, but he would grant her immortality via metamorphosis. By virtue of the stone’s magic, she would turn into a beautiful woman, a snake-nymph with skin smooth and white as polished marble.

  “The queen agreed. Since that day, on the lunar fourteenth when the moon is at its brightest, she rises from the underworld in human form and gazes upon our world, sighing at time’s cruelty. Those who have seen her claim she wears the serpent pearl on her forehead.” He tapped his own. “It is said that this serpent stone is a gateway to other worlds than ours. That the possessor of the pearl shall rule animals and birds, be immune to all the venom in the world. Even become immortal.” Hakim shook his head. “Oh, Maliha could tell these stories so dramatically.”

  “Yeah, it’s dramatic all right.”

  “Isn’t it?” He smiled without mirth. “And to think we’re in the middle of it, traveling to find a woman who thinks this gem really exists.”

  “Although to be fair, her interest seems academic.”

  “Like I said, my wife rationalized well. By the way, want to guess which species of snake the Serpent King is according to legend?”

  “Which?” When Hakim grinned, I knew. “Ophiophagus hannah,” I cried out. “The king cobra.”

  He laughed, and for the first time in weeks it was open-throated and heartfelt. “By Allah, that’s it. Driver, what is it?”

  The taxi driver had braked and stopped the car. Now he was getting out, muttering under his breath. “Fallen branches, sahib,” he said. “Probably from a dust storm. They said one passed through here a few days back. I’ll take care of them.”

  We peered out. Two large branches lay across the road. Something large and white lay curled near them under a swarm of flies.

  “What’s that?” Hakim called.

  A couple of vultures hopped back, hunching their shoulders as the driver approached, their yellow beady eyes fixed on him. “Hussshhh,” yelled the taxi driver, and waved his arms at them. “Get out of here.” The vultures jerked their way to the gravel roadside, where they paused and waited.

  The taxi driver called over his shoulder, “Roadkill, sahib.”

  My gaze went to the whirling blowflies, then to the carcass. Afternoon was dissolving into dusk, and I couldn’t quite make out what it was. The driver lifted the second branch and heaved it at the vultures. They scattered, casting venomous looks at the intruder.

  When the driver slipped behind the wheel and turned the ignition, Hakim tapped him on the shoulder. “What was it? Raccoon?”

  “Nah, sahib.” The driver looked at us in the rearview mirror. “Just a dead snake.”

  Hakim looked at me, eyes wide, and laughed. I wouldn’t say anything. My heart thudded in my chest. Just beyond the tree line on our left stood a boy, arms crossed and hugging his chest. The woods were dark, and though he was too far for me to make out his features, I was sure it was the child I had seen at Hakim’s clinic peering in from the window.

  As I gripped the edge of the rolled-down window, the boy turned and disappeared into the woods.

  “The qawwals are in town indeed, and tonight they will sing,” said the owner of the guesthouse we were staying at.

  A large musical mehfil was planned for the evening. Hundreds of people would gather at the shrine of Bibi Farida, a female mystic who died centuries ago. The qawwals would sing the nostalgic folklore of her life and the tireless work she did for Uch’s children during a fatal dysentery epidemic.

  “Who was she?” I asked.

  The guesthouse owner, an elderly man with no teeth, shivered with reverence. “An angel, sahib. Personification of Allah’s mercy and glory,” he said in a voice garbled by toothlessness. “Our elders used to say her goodness migrated into her skin. Her forehead shone with Allah’s light. On dark nights it could be seen for miles.”

  “Who built the shrine?”

  “An Irani prince who fell in love with her, they say. In the Mughal days this was a common route for Persian princes and amirs to travel on their way to East Indian cities. The prince wanted to marry her, but Bibi Farida declined, choosing her orphan paupers over the prince.”

  It was our second day at the guesthouse, a small bungalow on the outskirts of Uch. The owner had situated it on the banks of the Panjnad River, offering his guests a glorious waterfront view from the porch that ran around the back. You could sit there and drink tea and gaze into the night-darkened river.

  Hakim had no interest in tea or scenic beauty. His agitation was visible. For the first time in two years he was close to finding out what had happened to his wife, and the anticipation was gnawing at him. He rubbed his forehead, muttered prayers, and gripped his rosewood box—the one with the snake venom tin boxes—as if he’d never let go.

  “Why’d you bring that?” I said.

  His fingers drummed on the steel flip-lock. “It was a present to her from my mother. Maliha used it for her trinkets before she went to the university. The venoms are mine, but the box was always hers.”

  “And what exactly do you plan to do with it?”

  He didn’t answer. A thought occurred to me. “The venom you gave me for the shakes—does that cause visions? Hallucinations?”

  “No.” His eyebrows knotted. “Why?”

  “No reason,” I said, staring over his shoulders. The window was empty. I went to change into something comfortable.

  We left at dusk. Following our landlord’s recommendation, we took the trail that ran along the Panjnad River, a two-mile hike to the shrine.

  The river breathed in and out, a shimmery line trembling below the mud bank. Rocks crouched amid wind-hissing reeds and apluda grass, like men prostrated before a dark deity, their mineral-gleaming humps desolate. They made me think of the floating bodies of my friends murdered by the Poison Men. Waterbirds cooed and flapped above us. The landscape of sand and mud sprawled and tilted into the water, and I saw someone standing motionless in the distance, a dark speck haunting the liquid loneliness.

  “No respite for the seeker,” murmured Hakim. I looked at him sharply, but he was staring at the ground, where mica and water-smoothed pebbles gleamed. As he walked, the rosewood box rattled in his backpack.

  “Are you all right?”

  He gave me a tired smile, a sickly man with sunken eyes. “Never better.”

  “What are we going to ask the qawwals? You know, when we get there?”

  He shrugged and shifted the backpack to the other shoulder. “Whether a lady researcher came here with them.”

  “What if they say no?”

  “Then we ask others.” His smile was gone. “Every fiber of my heart tells me she’s here. Somewhere in this town.”

  How can you be sure? I wanted to ask, but I held my tongue. What use disrupting any man’s illusions? Hakim would leave no stone unturned in his search for his beloved, for it was clear to me that the man was maddened by love and had been for a long time. What kind of love, I didn’t dare ponder. What does it take to raise a child bride, what transformative alchemy must happen between a man and a girl as age eats innocence and the infatuation evolves into its adult counterpart? I didn’t kno
w, didn’t want to think about it. The prospects were too disturbing.

  We turned from the river to follow a winding trail leading up to Uch Lake, an artificial canal created by the dam at Panjnad head. That was where the shrine was located, the guesthouse owner had said.

  “She once told me she loved snakes,” Hakim said, “because when they shed their skins, they live anew. She said snakes are lovelier than butterflies, for a cocoon hides a butterfly’s ugly childhood, while snakes don’t worry about the artifice of beauty.”

  Then we were nearing the shrine, and Hakim stopped. My heart lurched a little as we stood there, gazing at the towering structure in front of us.

  “Holy heart of God,” Hakim murmured, his face full of awe.

  The shrine was spectacular, a dazzling three-tiered octagonal building erected close to the lake on a sand base. The top tier lifted the marble dome, while eight towers of carved timber supported the base tier. The exterior was patterned by many shades of blue and white mosaic tiles, themselves covered with coils of extraordinary calligraphy in cyan and gold.

  “This is where the qawwals come every year.” I exhaled a shuddering sigh. “No wonder.”

  It was a building of heartbreaking beauty, a glittering fortress in the arid landscape around it. It made me feel lonelier than ever. It made me want to flee from it.

  Hakim’s lips had tightened. His eyes glowed in a shaft of bleeding sunlight.

  “Should we go in?” I said gently.

  He nodded, his eyes fixed on the dome. We joined the throng of visitors come for the great musical event. We passed under the arched gateway into the courtyard and crossed a sandy yard broken by rows of cemented graves of sinners wanting the sacred proximity of Bibi Farida.

  The qawwals were gathered in front of the shrine proper, its entrance locked and bolted at this hour. A boisterous bunch, they chattered happily, their glances roaming but inevitably wandering back to their leader, a squat, morbidly obese, bald man, who waddled his way around the courtyard, greeting acquaintances with a wide smile under his handlebar mustache.

  “That’s him. Tariq Khan,” I whispered to Hakim. I lifted my chin and nodded at the maestro as he passed by us. Hakim found us two empty plastic chairs five rows down from the stage and we sat.

  “Do you want to talk to him now?” I said.

  Hakim’s eyes scanned the crowd, his fingers futilely trying to find the phantom ends of the mustache he had shaved. “After.”

  The carpeted stage was adorned with four teakwood tablas, microphone pedestals, rolled silk pillows, and red-velveted bolster cushions for the singers. A harmonium fronted the tablas near a large tray filled with small paan-daans and filigreed spit utensils for the lead singer’s betel-chewing and spitting pleasure.

  Hakim leaned over. “You see the harmonium?”

  I glanced at it, then at him. “Yes?”

  “Look closer.”

  I peered at it again. It was a beautiful hand-pumped instrument crafted from rosewood, its white teeth gleaming in the spotlight. I could see nothing strange about it. “What?”

  Hakim’s hand reached out, took hold of my chin, directed my gaze. “Look at its right corner.”

  I did.

  Even from the fifth row, the large white-and-gold symbol was visible against the dark mahogany: twin snakes coiled around a ruby emitting rays of light.

  Sahib, my throat is dry. May I have some water?

  Thank you for the shawl, Subinspector sahib. The weather must be changing. Your station is so cold. I don’t know how you get any work done. Although I suppose this chill is ideal for what you do here. Must be more efficient to torture and break a freezing body.

  Are they still standing out there, Inspector sahib? The Poison Men?

  Come now, sahib, you can tell me. We both know I’m not leaving this station for a courtroom.

  All right, sahib. As you wish.

  About the music mehfil.

  The shrine rang with the qawwals’ music.

  Dholki thumped, harmonium dueled with the vocal alaap, the background chorus clapped their hands to the thrumming tablas. The lead singer, a chubby, red-jowled man, screamed loudly, his ululating falsetto soaring high in the night.

  Hakim was not impressed. “I think my head’s going to explode,” he whispered. “Where is he?”

  I shrugged. The maestro Tariq Khan hadn’t made an appearance, cameo or otherwise.

  Hakim rose. “I’m going to look for him.” Before I could so much as open my mouth in protest, he turned and disappeared between the aisles of chairs and standing bodies.

  I labored to my feet and combed the crowd: farmers, carpenters, shoemakers, and shopkeepers. They swayed to the music. A strong earthy odor exuded from them, mixing with the sweet smell of the cannabis they smoked. Some had bowls of bhang, which they downed like lassi. Mesmerized by the music, some old men and women had begun the dhamaal, that mystical dance in which the audience aspires to become the music. They jittered and whirled, faster and faster, eyes glazed. A burly man, naked except for a dhoti, looked at me, a beatific smile on his face. He rolled up his sleeve and began to inject a pale liquid into his arm.

  I turned away. It had been months since I’d had anything to do with the white queen, but still the vision of that needle dimpling and piercing his skin left me shaky. My head pounded with the tabla beat, my flesh bunched up in gooseflesh. Men laughed. Someone thrust a cup of bhang into my head. Another clapped my back, whispering. I chugged the liquid. The crowd spun, the sky wheeled, and I glimpsed Hakim. He was slipping through a knot of hard-faced white-turbaned laborers at the back of the crowd. I weaved my way after him, ignoring the listless mutterings in Saraiki and Punjabi. By the time I reached the laborers, Hakim was gone.

  I don’t know how long I looked. Could have been hours or minutes. The smell of bhang, cannabis, and the white queen wrapped around me. The migrainous music swelled and abated, the dancers danced, the colors of the evening changed. My heart fluttered, and little pale children flitted between the legs of the surging audience.

  At some point I stumbled from the grasping hands of the multitude to a narrow, uneven gravel path twisting through the shrine’s outer towers. Night deepened and shadows swiveled, pirouetting to the drumbeat, and I found myself in front of an arched postern door.

  A large padlock hung open from its latch like a broken jaw. I gazed at it. The keyhole stirred. A black threadlike snake nosed its head out, slithered down the door, and disappeared into the gravel. I pushed the door open. Beyond was a black gullet softened by gleams of distant green light.

  I went in.

  The corridor meandered. It came at me with drunken angles, or perhaps I was drunk with the bhang from the mehfil. The qawwali music receded and a strained silence took its place. I lurched toward the green light’s source in this unnerving quiet. Even the earth dreams and murmurs in its sleep, but here I was benighted by the claustrophobic endlessness of that corridor jolting, tilting, and looping back on itself.

  A burst of emerald light drew me out into a vast space. I sensed it more than saw, because my eyes had closed. I blinked rapidly and slitted them. Acid green flickered in the periphery of my vision. The stone floor felt uneven. The dip and rise of the high ceiling, the damp feel of the granite wall I ran my hand across—this was a natural chamber of some sort. Perhaps a cavern under the shrine.

  Again I blinked against the pulsing light, a verdant web that receded and expanded with my breathing. Something moved in the web’s center. I raised a hand and plunged forward. The source of the light materialized: it was the top of a large marble slab. A gravestone.

  Hakim Shafi loomed over it.

  He stood by the grave. His shirt was torn; the rosewood box lay discarded at his feet. He had his back to me, a scarecrow’s relief in the green light, as the portly maestro Tariq Khan leaned and whispered in his ears.

  I stopped. The maestro didn’t turn to look at me. His thick lips puckered like fat slugs near Hakim’s earlo
bes, his chubby fingers gripping Hakim’s wrist. A strange humming came from him.

  Something was clearly, horribly wrong here. But my legs wouldn’t move. Maybe it was the bhang, maybe terror—a bristle that migrated up and down my flesh. My feet were magnetized to the rough stone floor. I leaned forward, straining to hear what the maestro murmured to Hakim, and found that he was singing.

  Sahib, I swear on my mother’s grave, I have never been more horrified, more enthralled in my life. The paunchy qawwal’s stomach heaved in jellylike movements as he whisper-sang strange tunes into Hakim Shafi’s ears. Melodies jerked and slithered in swift tenor across the thrashing web of light. A gurgling song made entirely from vowels, a deep vibrato alaap that lunged and rose and pitched, as if the maestro intended to gut the cavern walls.

  I put out my arms, intending to run and shove Tariq Khan’s massive bulk off my friend. Before I could move, the maestro dropped Shafi’s wrist and withdrew his lips from his ears. Shafi shuddered and let out a sigh.

  The maestro threw his head back and began to sing at the ceiling.

  The emerald light blazed. A torrential luminescence that spun in circles and flooded my vision. The gravestone was shaking and the light source shook with it, throwing juddering shadows of the two men across the ground, stretching them like tar. Hakim shook, as if in the throes of a seizure, then turned around, smacking his lips. His tongue drifted out and receded. His gray eyes shone like moonstones. “My darling,” I thought he said. In the inhuman wails from Tariq Khan I couldn’t be sure. The maestro sang and stepped back, sang and back-trotted, until he stood at the far end of the cavern, his woeful music lapping across the stony distance. It made my head pound, turned my blood viscous.