Three Times

by Laini Taylor

  She turned fifteen, and still Mahzarin did not come.

  Mihai became like a ghost. He sat for hours on rooftops and church spires, traveling through visions of an ancient time. Fog swam round his still shape and sometimes rain sluiced down his hair. Birds ignored him and went about their own rooftop lives, sometimes even perching on him for minutes before he realized it and shook them off.

  And then came an evening in winter when the sky was starless black and as cold as Druj flesh. He was resting against a stone steeple with his chin on his chest when he felt the riffling draft of wings and then a weight settled on his knee. He jerked his leg to dislodge it, but it only hovered and beat its wings and settled on him again. Mihai lifted his head to look. His eyes widened. It was no pigeon or crow perched on him. It was an eagle, its vast wings half spread, its talons thick as fingers, and its eyes blue and pale as ice. Around its feathered neck hung a moonstone amulet and, tied to that, the last remnant of the persimmon-red braid the Druj Queen had cut from Mab years ago.

  Everything in Mihai tensed and clenched and froze, his heartbeat, his breath, his sore and dwindling hope. He just stared at the eagle, and it stared back. A moment passed like that before Mihai’s mind unfroze and began to spin. The eagle fanned its wings once more and then folded them.

  It was waiting.

  It had been more than five hundred years since Mihai had whispered another Druj back to human cithra, but he remembered the words. They caught in his throat as the enormity of the moment choked him. The Queen of the Druj did not shift cithra. Ever. She did not leave her fate and flesh to the whims and whispers of others. This cithra was an offering.

  Mihai took a ragged breath and readied himself to voice the ancient words. He lifted his arms. They trembled. Even after all these centuries, his arms remembered the curve of Mahzarin’s body, the weight and the warmth of her, and when she shimmered forth from the feathers of her eagle cithra, he would be there to catch her.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  My long fascination with the remarkable poem by Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market,” has previously resulted in paintings, goblin masks, and—in a roundabout way—a stage adaptation at Stanford University! Now it has flowered into a story that gave me great joy to write. Likewise, my fascination with the British Raj, other cultures’ concepts of Hell, and the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism were seeds of inspiration, but only seeds—I am no scholar, and have plundered tidbits of history and lore to build something new, using only the parts that light my mind on fire.

  Some readers may wonder why, in “Spicy Little Curses Such as These,” innocent children and even babies are ending up in Hell. The answer is that, to my understanding, the Hindu concept of Heaven and Hell is not nearly so simple, nor so black and white, as the Judeo-Christian one. I can’t begin to try to encompass it, but in my creation I was drawing on the idea that the attainment of Heaven is a very long and rigorous process for a soul, and only accomplished after many, many lifetimes of virtue. The “Hell” that fits into this cycle of reincarnation is not, here, solely a place of punishment for the wicked, but a place of remaking that everyone, even the innocent, must pass through. Likewise, Yama is not the devil, but a god of judgment, and the Fire is a place of purification.

  In the Zoroastrian faith, the word “druj” signifies the opposite of “asha,” which is the truth and order of God’s creation; “druj” is chaos and deceit. There is some demon lore associated with Zoroastrianism, but the demonic Druj of “Hatchling” are entirely my own creation. Pillaging the dead Avestan language to invent Druj-speak was great fun, but if you happen to speak said dead language, please forgive the liberties I have taken. Like a magpie, I am a scavenger of shiny things: fairy tales, dead languages, weird folk beliefs, fascinating religions, and more.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Without two particular people, it is highly unlikely this book would exist.

  Meg Genge, my fabulous Canadian cohort in Sunday Scribblings. We started a writing-prompt site to get ourselves (and others) writing, and it worked! (All welcome: www.sundayscribblings.blogspot.com)

  Jim Di Bartolo, who convinced me these kissing stories could be a book, and whose beautiful art adds a whole new dimension to them. Thank you!

  Thanks also to first readers Alexandra Saperstein, Chary Deutsch, and my mom, Patti Taylor, and of course to my wonderful agent Jane Putch, for boundless enthusiasm.

  Massive thanks to the folks who really turned these stories into a book: Arthur Levine, whose praise makes me feel like a genius; Rachel Griffiths and Cheryl Klein for liking the manuscript and passing it on to him; Emily Clement for all the things in between; Elizabeth Parisi and Chris Stengel for art and style; and the rest of the team at Arthur A. Levine Books and Scholastic.

  Copyright

  Text copyright © 2009 by Laini Taylor

  Illustrations copyright © 2009 by Jim Di Bartolo

  All rights reserved. Published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC and the LANTERN LOGO are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Taylor, Laini.

  Lips touch : three times / by Laini Taylor; illustrations by Jim Di Bartolo. — 1st ed.

  v. cm.

  Summary: Three short stories about kissing, featuring elements of the supernatural.

  Contents: Goblin fruit — Spicy little curses such as these — Hatchling.

  ISBN 978-0-545-05585-7 1. Kissing — Juvenile fiction. 2. Supernatural — Juvenile fiction. 3. Children’s stories, American. [1. Kissing — Fiction. 2. Supernatural — Fiction. 3. Short stories.] I. Di Bartolo, Jim, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.T214826Li 2009

  [Fic] —dc22

  2009005458

  FIRST EDITION, October 2009

  Jacket Illustration © 2009 by Jim Di Bartolo

  Jacket Design by Christopher Stengel

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

  E-ISBN: 978-0-545-23178-7