“No!” she begged, forcing herself onward. “Wait a moment, and I will be with you.”

Lord Chandra, however, did not care to wait. Turning his attention from her, he forsook her to the sea.

Then Lord Surya rode forth in his chariot, his bold rays scattering the last lingering notes of the night. Gone was the delicate and dreamlike moonstone path. Gone, too, was the maiden’s hope.

Nothing remained but the uncaring surf.

Its waves washed the maiden’s unresisting body ashore. There, on the glimmering sand outside Bhogavati, she wept. Her blood might have turned to brine, for the sorrow that trickled from her eyes found no end.

The tears pooled and pooled until they formed a lake, and it soon drew to it all the tears of all the lost lovers in all the worlds. Eventually, sunlight itself could not resist the pull, and where it touched the surface, it splintered into innumerable golden gemstones.

Sometime later, the moon, too, looked down upon the lake, curious to see what had so fully absorbed even his celestial counterpart. In that instant, his own radiance was ensnared.

Every night since, the moonlit path appears without fail.

It is rumored that any who venture onto its silvery stream risk being swept away by Lord Chandra, perhaps for rapture, or perhaps for revenge, while those who keep to the grief-suffused shore will learn the song of their own lonely hearts.

—FROM THE NAGA PURANA:

A FLORILEGIUM OF FOLKTALES,

PROPERTY OF THE OFFICIAL ROYAL

LIBRARY AT BHOGAVATI

16

Tanvi balled herself up in the back of the cramped rideshare car. Her body ached for her bracelet. Next to her, Asha fiddled with her phone.

As they pulled away from the curb, the driver turned and smiled. “Beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

I have a twin sister, Tanvi thought in reply, and a mom and a dad, and now they know I’m alive, and I just want to turn my brain off, please and thank you.

One glare from Asha, and the driver shut right up. Tanvi was pretty sure she glimpsed fangs and slit pupils. The driver must have, too; he blanched and nailed his gaze to the road.

Tanvi squeezed her own eyes shut and retreated into the haven of the bracelet. Once she got home, she’d never have to think about today again.

Golden warmth enveloped her, erasing everything else. The frenzied knocking in her chest faded. She could already feel the occupied dreamstones in her cabinet, ripe for trading in.

Asha elbowed her. “You are missing the view.”

Tanvi reflexively opened her eyes just enough to take in the concrete-and-glass buildings and sports team logos flying past. A blue sign announced they were heading east on Interstate 76—the Schuylkill, her jerk of a mind noted—into Center City.

She knew this view. She’d seen it more times than she could count, driving downtown from the house with the red door. Nitya’s house.