The women elbowed each other. Pressed closer to steal a first glimpse. Was the child stillborn? A great kicking of the infant’s blood-smeared legs startled them and brought a smile of relief to Gold Dust’s lips.

“It must be a girl,” a sultana whispered, before she had seen the child. “She didn’t even cry. Boys have weak lungs. They cry to ease their first breath.”

“Only a boy shows such vigor,” Honey declared.

His head bowed in prayer, Hazel-Boy concealed himself in the corner.

As if she had never been in pain, Gold Dust’s body filled with a delicious calm. Surely she had lived her life only for this moment. The ceiling, inlaid with shards of mirror, multiplied the scene below into miniature festivities. Her arms reached for her son.

The Great Black Eunuch raised the newborn’s legs and held them wide.

The sultanas tiptoed closer.

A murmur filled the hall.

It was a girl.

The ensuing silence hurt Gold Dust’s marrow. She bent, the umbilical cord still hanging from her, and gazed at the baby Narcissus had placed back on the ashes.

On her daughter’s head, her brows, the rims of her eyes, and all the way down her spine lay snowy hair, and the rest of her body was carpeted with a colorless down. She checked her surroundings with wide eyes that changed color under the glow of lanterns, at times turning ashen and at other times pink, revealing the flow of blood under the orbs.

Gold Dust’s screams cracked her heart and sent the slivers flying past the ornamental orbs, past the torches, and past the lanterns that illuminated the palace in preparation for the weeklong celebrations.

“Albino!” “Albino!” “Albino!”

She prayed to God to help her produce tears to wash away the pain. She rubbed her tearless eyes, dry cheeks; her barren sobs hacked at her throat.

Her bones turned into glass flutes that shuddered, exhaling a sigh of resignation. And her body stopped playing music.

The Bibi Sultana stormed out. Honey’s purple lips trembled with fear. Hazel-Boy bowed his head in grief.

Moon Face, who had tired of sewing and unpicking her own shroud one hundred and twenty times in the span of a year in the House of Tears, hid her smile behind perfumed palms. The eunuchs coughed and spat and clapped orders, but locked their delight in the caverns of their hearts.

On a satin cushion embroidered with pearls, Narcissus carried a dagger, the shaft inlaid with gems. He approached the chair of birth, raised the dagger to his lips, pressed the blade to his eyes, and murmured a blessing over it. He cut the umbilical cord. The wet-nurse raised the infant from the ashes.

The newborn’s shrieks shook delicate eardrums. Strange, the sultanas giggled; such a small creature with such a shrill cry, and she had entered the world as if she were mute. They tiptoed closer to take a better look at this eccentric creature who, to their great chagrin, was beautiful beyond belief. Her eyes changed from gray to pink to red, each shade alive and vibrant and embellished with silver lashes. Her skin was settling into the lucid shade of tulips.