Venkat squeezed her fingers, and his appreciative smile was the sweetest thing she’d ever seen. “Good question.”

As the wave receded, delicate script came into view on either side of the carving. Tanvi reluctantly dropped his hand and bent to look closer. “It’s a poem. ‘The Nagini’s Night Song.’”

Venkat knelt beside her, not seeming to care that the water was soaking into his nice clothes, and read the inscription aloud.

Silver-stained surf my robe

Liquid silk, my tears

Trimmed in foam, so delicate

A maharani’s discarded pearls

I wear them well

How bright, how alien

This sea breathes

My skin, salt and seaweed

Aphrodisiacs from other days

I inhale

At the mention of silver stain, Tanvi could see another body of water, this one beneath a star-strewn sky, its waves all grays and blacks except for a slight overlay of lunar lacquer.

Weave my breath

With crashing tides

O my heart,

Strum your sitar strings,

Call out the moon

Another ocean, each of its waves an unfurling sari of dark swells edged with foam-pearl lace. They lapped at her feet, at her ankles, in search of the night bride who would swathe herself in them and be claimed by Lord Chandra, the moon.

Venkat’s voice came from far away, an incantation excavating the memory. The words of the unnamed poet wove in and out of the vision, a braid of light and shadow against a nocturnal seascape. Tanvi only caught fragments of the verse, but they were more than enough.

My skin alone stretched too tight

Over this cage

Each bone a steel bar

A pause between crashes

A pause between breaths

A pause between lives

A single sigh—

I pray the ocean swallow me whole

Drowning is the sea’s way to fly

Two groups of charcoal rocks bordered the expanse of sea. There, the nagini paced, waiting for Lord Chandra to appear. And as the half-moon emerged from his cloak of clouds, silvery beams splashed down onto the water. They turned to shards of moonstone, creating a silver-white path leading to the sky.

Kohl-dark ocean kisses my knees

Thief! You who steal my breath!—

Who stroke my sari with bold, wet fingers

Who seep, unrepentant

Into my flesh

Her palms grew hot and prickly. The nagini definitely wasn’t rejecting Lord Chandra. She wanted to be his night bride.

“I think he has something like twenty-four consorts?” Venkat said, frowning. “No, twenty-seven, all sisters. And he loves Rohini best.”

Tanvi laughed. “It doesn’t sound like he had room for anybody else.”

“Oh, that never stopped him. Before he married these sisters, he ran off with Tara, who was already married to Brihaspati, got her pregnant, and almost started a war in the heavens. And later, favoring one wife among all twenty-seven got him in big trouble.”