“I want to be immortal,” Mahishasura said.

“I can’t do that,” Brahma replied. “All I can do is make you so powerful that no god or man can kill you.”

Satisfied, Mahishasura accepted the gift. No god or man could kill him.

So when the whole destroying-Mysore thing happened, the gods were a teensy bit annoyed. They went to Brahma and demanded to know how they were supposed to defeat Mahishasura while he was protected by such a powerful boon.

“Well,” said Brahma, “I said no god or man could kill him. Perhaps you should send a goddess.”

So the gods combined their power and created the warrior goddess Chamundeshwari, who was every bit as awesome as she sounded. She rode into Mysore on the back of a great lion and, at the foot of the hills, she and Mahishasura had a long, bitter battle. In the end, she won. She killed the demon king and saved Mysore. Yay!

To show her how grateful they were, the people of Mysore gave the hills a new name in her honor. They called them the Chamundi Hills. (“The next time we visit Granny and Gramps,” Mum said, “I’ll take you to Mysore to see the real Chamundi Hills. You can even see a statue of Mahishasura and a temple for Chamundeshwari at the top!”)

It was a fun story. Just a story. Much like Zeus and Thor and Osiris, Mahishasura had never really existed. I sometimes liked to think they had all been around once, because mythology was so cool, but I was eleven years old and I kind of knew myths were just myths. Jackals didn’t talk, the sun wasn’t pulled across the sky by a god in a chariot, and Asuras weren’t real.

And the totally amazing idea I had right then, with the yellow sketchbook open in front of me, was to create a Kiki version of the old city of Mysore and retell the story of Mahishasura my own way.

I sketched quick, sharp lines with my pencil, went over them in black ink, and filled the shapes in with shades of cream, white, gold, and red. Mysore Palace sparkled back at me from the paper, almost exactly like the one I had seen in the real city the last time Mum and I visited India. It was so warm and alive that I could almost hear the birds and feel the heat of the sun.

I drew outward from there, taking pieces out of the story Mum had told me and jumbling them up with my own whimsical ideas. I drew palaces and clockwork trains, outdoor markets and rainbow houses. Red London double-decker buses and jackals in deep, dark woods. Cobblestone streets and lush green hills. A circus that never stopped, a castle in the sky. Sketch after sketch after sketch. Black ink and vivid colors. My hand cramped and my neck ached, but I barely noticed because I was so excited about the world growing right in front of me. My world.