by Varsha Ravi
Her eyes slitted. “Kiran—”
“You know,” he interrupted, mouth curved in a too-sharp imitation of a smile, “One day, you’re going to look back on all of this and it’ll be like a bad dream. Like a nightmare.”
“I won’t forget you.” Hands curved over the back of her jacket, thumbs on her collarbones. “Because you’re going to come back.”
His expression shuttered. “Are we still discussing this?”
“We are,” she said. Her skin burned where he was touching it, but anger had already set her aflame everywhere else. Selfish, whispered a small voice in the back of her head, but she was past caring. “The symbol? A dead end. And if whoever bound us was so dead set on ruining your life, wouldn’t they have returned by now?”
Kiran gave a choked sort of laugh. “That doesn’t mean they’re gone forever, Suri. It’s too much of a risk.”
She reached out, grasping his face in her hands and turning it toward her. It was not a soft kind of touch, and still she marveled at the fact that she was allowed it. His skin was feverish under her hands.
“If you give me one good reason,” she said, so calmly it felt as though her voice belonged to someone else, “If you give me one good reason, I won’t ask again. I promise.”
He didn’t meet her gaze. “Everyone I have ever stayed with has suffered for it. And I don’t want that for you, and I don’t want that for your friends. It is better that they all think I left early, so that you can all move on and live better lives.”
Suri exhaled, an uneven sound that betrayed everything she’d meant to keep hidden. “Okay. Can I ask you something, though?”
“What?”
“How long has it been since you let someone stay beside you?” he stiffened under her hands, but she held him steady. “You let me into your heart. Is it too much to ask to be allowed to stay there?”
He didn’t answer, and she let out a breath. I guess that’s that. The tension melted from his frame, hollowing him. “I don’t know. You’re terrifying and wonderful and I’m not selfish enough to want you so much that I would doom you for it.”
“But I am,” she said, and in that moment, she felt like a wildfire. Her grasp on his face was bruising; she pulled him toward her, knocked their foreheads together until they were close enough that she could see the clear shine of his eyes, smell sugar and smoke.
And when she spoke, it was little more than a whisper in a world that still spun with the distant sound of music and chaos, but it carried, and she knew he heard every word. “We make our own happy endings; I don’t care if catastrophe lives in your shadow. Even if you set this world on fire, I will build you a new one out of the ashes. From death to life, Kiran.”
“Suri,” he said, just her name, only her name. The way he always had, dark soil and wood ash, but entirely different. As if he was saying it for the first time, holding it in hands seared by a prayer flame and born anew. “You’re speaking of miracles.”
“Rebirth was made for miracles,” she said. “Gods were made for miracles, and humans are made of them. What’s one more?”
Everything, she knew. But she felt like perhaps this love was a miracle worth dooming herself for.
“’What’s one more?’” he repeated, soft and musing. In the distance, a countdown built. He bit his lip. “You’ll regret this before long.”
“Maybe,” she murmured before leaning in. “But I don’t think so.”
It wasn’t like their first kiss, faint and brief in a world she’d thought she’d left behind. This was harder, without kindness or softness. It was sour wine and bitten lips, and the desperate, futile attempt to leave behind an imprint on the heart of another, knotting threadbare strings so they would never unravel.
They pulled apart and he rested his forehead against hers, breathless. The countdown finished and exploded into noise. Five, four, three, two, one! There was a certain irony to this, she knew. They were celebrating the new year in a stranger’s bathroom, dried blood on his knuckles and under her fingernails. But she couldn’t bring herself to care.
“Happy New Year,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to his cheek. She could feel him smile against her, and it felt like a miracle all on its own, the chance to have this and hold this and not have it disappear in her hands.
He kissed the crown of her forehead, and tucked her hair behind her ears. “Happy New Year.”
Everyone agreed it was the worst New Year’s Eve celebration ever—on account of Andrew’s broken nose and subsequent tirades directed at Dai, and at Aza just because she had stood too close. After he’d exhausted himself, face swelling to truly astounding proportions, the time after the countdown had gone relatively smoothly, until someone had spilled their drink on the television, and it had sparked and caught fire. Then the host had kicked them all out and put out the flames with a sand pail.
Suri and Kiran listened to the others review the night’s laundry list of faults the next day—sprawled across the floor, as they always were—and agreed, mindlessly, that it had been a horrible night, even though they’d left long before the television had caught fire. She had always wondered how exactly he’d managed to return to the balcony without wings, and had been pleasantly surprised to find out he was willing to show her the process.
In the glow of early afternoon, winter sunlight streaming through the open glass doors, it felt like the past few days had been a strange, elaborate nightmare. She couldn’t remember what it felt like for the apartment to be so empty, hollow through to its bones.
That morning, after Kiran had fallen asleep—another kind of miracle, but one she was slowly beginning to acclimate herself to—she’d texted Aza and Miya, the way she’d promised, and explained everything. At least, she’d explained it to the extent she could, stopping short of magic and catastrophe. Miya, hooked on her every word, tired of replying in full sentences around fifteen minutes in, and began to speak exclusively in shocked emoji faces. Aza spoke only once, at the very end. Ask him if he’s willing to mess up Andrew’s face again. It’ll be more fun if there are two of us.
Suri hadn’t dignified that with a response, but Miya had sent a string of fist emojis.
“Let’s have a redo,” Dai said abruptly. He was leaned against the side of the armchair, his rough draft of the graphic novel open on his thighs. From where she laid curled up against the side of the couch, Suri could make out eraser marks and the outline of several planets.
“Of what?” Kiran said, ducking back into the living room. He took a seat beside her, handing her a mug of coffee before sipping from his tea. She moved her left hand a few centimeters to the side, so it just barely brushed his. A smile flickered over his face and disappeared. How greedy she was for these small indulgences.
Miya’s gaze tracked their hands, and she arched a dark eyebrow, pulling her knees toward her and wrapping her arms around the fleecy pajamas. “New Year’s, I’m guessing.” At Dai’s nod, she added, “I think it’s a good idea. We could have it here, if you two are cool with it.”
They’d all agreed it wasn’t a half-bad idea, coming to a consensus on everything but the champagne itself, at which point Kiran called her grandmother on her cell phone when she wasn’t paying attention and had her scold them all. In the end, she relented to bringing it for them, since she had some lying around and ‘no good use for it’. Suri knew that was just grandmother speak for ‘I’m going to go out and buy some, but if you see the price tag, ignore it or face the full force of my wrath’. But she’d had enough wrath to last her through the winter, so she was willing to submit to her grandmother’s kindness. If she was going to preach to Kiran about letting others care for him, she might as well follow her own advice.
When the sun set early that night, darkness spilling out over the sky and swallowing all the stars, they were all back again, laughing and joyful and alive in a way that carved itself into her bones. This was the kind of memory that never left, the kind that pushed nightmares back into shadows, inch by excr
uciating inch, until all that remained was light.
There was still darkness now—she knew there always would be, knew the glow of peace was a far-off specter rather than a reality she could believe in. But the notion of it was overwhelming, sweeter than the night-crisp air and the saccharine sharpness of the champagne. It felt like every single star she couldn’t see in the sky above, every single time she’d woken from a nightmare to see the sun beginning to rise against a bloodred sky.
The glass doors slid open, the shrill sound cutting through the soft noise of the traffic. Distantly, she could hear canned applause on the television, Ellis falling to the floor on a Twister mat, the sharp crack of laughter. Joy, as an adjective.
“Aren’t you cold out here?” Kiran asked, handing her a plastic flute of champagne.
Suri took it, tilting it so the moonlight shone through the clear, golden liquid. She allowed herself a small sip before answering. “Not really. And anyway, you’re here now, so it’s not an issue.”
His eyes crinkled, betraying that small bit of embarrassment she knew he always tried to hide. He emptied the champagne flute in one swallow; it would have no lasting effect on him. This was just his way of blending in, but there were worse masks to wear.
She tilted her head back and inhaled deeply. Here, the air always smelled of soil and warmth, even as the stale smell of the city weighed down on them. Tonight, it smelled sweet, from the sugar of the champagne and the open jasmine buds, cut through with the sharp, earthy smell of Kiran’s tulasi plant.
She leaned against the wrought-iron rail, and he stood with her, and everything felt right. There were eternities in this moment, and every single one held a kind of impossible, divine magic. Time was something that bent and broke around them, allowing a taste of immortality.
After she’d finished the glass, she played with the stem, transferring it from hand to hand. When she glanced up at him, his gaze was resting carefully on the horizon, on the crest of the hills where the moon met the earth. There was a sadness in his honey-sweet eyes, but a kind of hope, too.
“You never told me how the story ended,” she said abruptly, nudging him lightly. She’d only just remembered—he’d left off a couple weeks ago, before everything in their lives had gone downhill with such speed and intensity. The last time, the festival of the fire god had ended, and after speaking briefly, the princess and the priest had gone their separate ways early into the night. She still suspected he’d amended that part, since he’d refused to meet her eyes the entire way through.
Kiran looked at her askance. “I suppose I didn’t. Do you still want to know?”
Did she? She’d always reached out to stories to conjure a world of magic she didn’t think she was allowed, a kind of fantastical wonder she figured she would never find in real life. Now, those same wonders were close enough to touch. She reached up a hand and traced her finger across the arc of his cheekbone and considered it.
“Yes,” she answered decisively, dropping her hand from his face. Even if these tales wouldn’t buoy her the way she had once begged them to, she wanted to know how this one ended.
Kiran leaned back, bracing himself against the rail. He spoke without looking at her, eyes fixed on the darkness that laid beyond the moon. “It ends like all those stories end. The princess and the prince realized they were better than the worlds they came from, and put aside their differences. They fell in love, they united their kingdoms, and they lived happily ever after. And everyone in the lands knew prosperity for eons to come.”
“What happened to you?” she asked, the words slipping out before she could catch them. Suri had had her suspicions, of course, but she’d never revealed them. It felt a little sacrilegious, to incorrectly guess at someone’s entire past.
But he didn’t glare at her, or even smoothly correct the mistake. He did something far stranger, and even after her memory of this conversation faded and all that remained was the peaceful silence and the smell of flowers and earth, she would remember this. Kiran tore his gaze away from the sky and glanced down at her, and after a few moments, he smiled. And it was a wound, so it bled. Even when the smile faded, she could see the shape of it curving his lips, could see how fate had taken a knife to his skin and slashed it open.
It was the first time he ever referred to that boy in the story as himself, and in all the days that passed after, he never repeated the mistake. But then, just then, with unseen bandages hanging from his lips and a champagne flute tucked between his fingers, he forgot to fear fear. “I did what I was born to do. I died.”
Here she caught her breath, and he laughed a little, steadying her. Moments after the admission, he seemed to forget he’d made it—as if he’d never mentioned himself at all. It was a careful kind of secret, held between the shadow of knowledge and the reality of it, and Suri tucked it between her ribs for safekeeping.
“It’s an old story,” he said, shaking his head ruefully. “I thought you would like it in spite of that, though.”
“I did,” she said, and found it true. “It’s just that—”
The glass doors slid open; Dai poked his head out. “It’s almost midnight! We’re going to pretend to mimic the countdown again.”
“We’ll be right in,” she called, and he grinned, the doors slamming shut again. Kiran was watching her with a faint, warm amusement. “What is it?”
“We already had our New Year’s celebration,” he said mildly, and her cheeks burned with the memory of it. “Do you want to repeat it?”
Her face heated. In her periphery, she noticed the tulasi plant and slipped away from him, kneeling beside it to cut away two leaves. She handed one to him and took one for herself without looking up. Finally, he said, “Is this a gift?”
Suri glanced up at him. “New Year’s wishes. Like resolutions, except these will actually work. If you light them on fire, we each get one shot. Or—I forgot gods can’t wish. I’ll wish for you.”
He passed a hand over the back of his neck in chagrin. “I don’t know actually. Whether gods can wish. Technically, they shouldn’t be able to, but—I’ve never tried, myself.”
She leveled a glare at him, and he ducked his head, chastised. Finally, she sighed. “Okay, so we both get one wish. Are we keeping it secret?”
Kiran tilted his head, and lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Your choice.”
“Secret, then,” she said, faintly relieved. She held up her leaf, and he dutifully set the serrated tip ablaze before doing the same to his own. They gripped the stems of the leaves with both hands, like votive candles. “On three. One, two—”
The amazing thing about wishes was that anybody could make one. There was a simple balance there, an undeniable equality in the worth of all wishes and all souls. The color of one’s skin and the color of one’s heart were meaningless—what mattered was the wish itself, the way it carved out a hollow of its own in the vast desert where miracles were born.
And there was always the chance that a god might not grant it in that moment—it might pass out of their hands if the quota was done for the day, or if they found it useless and unimportant. But the next day, there would be another chance.
Impossibility was a limitation circumscribed around a small chunk of an endless, beautiful world. It was a human word, through and through—there was nothing truly impossible in a world built from the ashes of old miracles into the bones of new ones.
Even tragedies could learn happy endings, given enough light and enough love.
Three.
They closed their eyes and blew out the flames. And, from the smoke of the burning leaves, two new wishes were born and twisted into life.
Epilogue
Viro was in a good mood, which really wasn’t that strange. It didn’t take a lot to put him in a good mood—chocolate, sunshine, videos of small animals dancing to old pop songs. He considered himself agreeable; Tarak called him mercurial. He’d looked it up on the Internet once, drawn more by the warm knowledge that Tarak had his
own word for him rather than curiosity. Prone to sudden or unpredictable changes of mood or mind. He decided to take it as a compliment.
This time, though, he had a reason. It was the first day of classes for the spring semester, and he was ready. He’d packed his laptop and his notebooks and his color-coded pencil pouch, and after he was nearly finished, he wound his lucky charm around the zipper. Tarak had bought it for him in the seventh grade, during a field trip to some amusement park. It wasn’t a particularly fuzzy memory—he vaguely recalled getting nauseous on a rollercoaster made for third-graders and throwing up in the bushes. But the charm—three golden stars hanging from thin metal chains to a hook—had been the definite high point of the trip. He’d gotten him a shining yellow one of the sun, and he knew the other boy still used it as a keychain.
Really, the only thing missing from the first day of classes was Tarak himself. Viro was loitering beside the university gates waiting for him—usually, they walked to school together, but when he’d gone over this morning, his mother had told him Tarak was sleeping off a late night. He wouldn’t be late, of course. He didn’t think Tarak was capable of being anything but perfectly on time. But Viro was half an hour early and his latte was cooling in his hands even as he sipped from it.
He glanced longingly toward the nearest lecture hall. But no—he would be strong. Tarak would show up, and then they’d walk in together, and he could explain why he’d stayed up the previous night, and everything would be fine. Classes would begin, and then he would be in his element.
It was just this in-between area that felt a little awkward, he knew. Lingering between the different circles of comfort in his life, dancing in this gray, muddled cold.
I’m happy, he told himself firmly. I’m happy, and everything’s fine.
Viro glanced up and down the street. He was starting to get a little anxious, just first-day jitters—nothing a walk wouldn’t take care of. It wasn’t as if Tarak would show up in the next three minutes. He pulled his headphones on and turned up the volume, balancing his latte in the crook of his elbow while he chose a song.
