The secret names carved themselves into her chest. For no reason, her mouth kicked into high gear. “Do you—do you even still have the bracelet?”

“What bracelet? If this is part of your story, that’s fine. It’s okay that you have a story. Just don’t go,” Nitya begged. “Please. Please don’t go. Not again.”

Stop, Tanvi ordered her throat, her tongue, her lips. “The charm bracelet Dad gave you. With the daisy charm.”

Where was this coming from? Of course the bracelet wasn’t here. Tanvi hadn’t bought it yet.

Her temples throbbed, and her vision blinked in and out. Like a lamp being switched off and back on—click, click. Her thoughts turned to static, fading around the only one that counted: the bracelet.

Nitya blinked a few times, then smiled nervously. “Oh! The one from when we were kids? Gosh, I don’t know. Dad was supposed to fix it, I think, but then you disappeared, and everything turned upside down.”

An entire universe yawned open between the two of them. Nitya dwindled into the background, taking the hallway with her, while the bracelet towered larger and larger in Tanvi’s vision. It was so gold, so bright. Seven charms, all for Tanvi. All for her.

Nitya could say what she wanted about it. Tanvi knew better. She reached past Nitya for the doorknob.

“If you like bracelets so much,” Nitya babbled, “I’ll find you another one. I promise. All the charms you want.” She glanced at the hallway clock. “Crap, my ride will be here any minute. You know what? I’ll tell her I’m too sick for school. Please just stay.”

Asha’s tongue flicked in warning, but Tanvi didn’t care. The bracelet was waiting.

Ignoring Nitya calling her name, Tanvi grabbed her shoes and left.

Part Two

Once, long ago, so long that the nagaraja and his brothers themselves might startle at the sheer expanse of unspooled time, there lived a nagini maiden. Her slithering hips were swift, her cobra scales shining, her amaranthine lips rich and round as any swollen jewel-currant. When she combed the fragrant waves of her tresses, they gleamed black and liquid like hematite, an invitation to bury one’s fingers in their depths.

She had many sisters, this maiden, and while they were content first to frolic and then to seek lovers among their people, her own heart grew restive. It lies in the blood of a naga to care for precious metals, yet even in that the maiden felt alone: the cyclical waxing and waning of Lord Chandra in the sky above captivated her far more than all the gold and silver in all the wondrous palaces of Nagalok. It was the silver of the night, not the earth, that crooned to her, the song of the moon on the surf, and she often fancied she was a whispered spell of the star-speckled heavens mistakenly fallen into a serpentine body.