In the Old Land of Kings, along the Chambal river, a town became busy with travelers and traders after Independence from the Angresi Invaders had swept the nation into celebration and chaos. The town, though small, had been favored by the Angresi because of its proximity to the river, much like the princes of the kingdoms before. Angresi upstart architecture vied with the splendid palaces of the old Ranas, making the town a place of romance and wonder. Gardens, shops, shiny cars, streets dotted with vendors, and mosaics of blue and red, all seemed overcast in the uncertainty of the town’s future.
The monsoon was upon them, and In the outskirts of the town, in a small house surrounded by towering guava trees, lived a man who appeared to be of thirty years or so. He spent his days somberly, for he was the carrier of a particular and insidious condition.
He had lived as he was for over a hundred years now. The passing of each season meant nothing to him, except that each summer he could stand to face the sun less and less. . He had seen the town grow and change over generations of funerals - sometimes as a distant uncle, or a quiet clerk, or an inconspicuous delivery man.
He had forgotten the look of his own face. His hair dark and long, and he would bring his hands up to touch his skin. He imagined his eyes glinting gold and red, his long cheeks like a hound, his nose like the snout of a bat.
To become a different person every year, in hopes to remain unseen for what he was, he visited a tailor in town to find a new suit to travel the quiet nights with. The tailor and his family were reliable, discreet. A strange sickness had overtaken the town, and with so many traveling in and out of it, he was determined to stay with what he trusted.
When entered the store, he saw the mother of the family at her station, and another woman at the large table in front. He ordered a suit of dark hand-embroidered cotton. As he began to collect himself to leave, the new woman frowned and interjected, “I remember you.”
He frowned as well.
“I remember you from a long time ago, you have come here before.”
He looked at her, a young woman who was confident as she stood there. As he looked into her downturned eyes, he remembered the daughter of the family as a teen, still fumbling with threads and needles that tangled around her as she worked.
“You have a funny way about you,” she said lightly, and he smiled.
Her name was Svaha, and she began to recognize him in the streets as he did his daily errands at dusk, and the two became quickly familiar with each other. When Svaha took her breaks from working at the shop, she would walk to the nearby step well - one of the only peaceful places in town in the evening. She could spend hours looking at each intricate flower carved into the criss-crossing stone around her, and would throw small pebbles across the water to hear their echo. She wondered how many thousands of years had passed in this well, and imagined herself as someone else in the past, and what it would be like if she had been born in another time.
They saw each other one evening as Svaha sat on the edge of the step well, under a waning moon. They spoke about the townspeople, the funny secrets they knew about each person, and how her family was preparing for changes in the town’s government.
“Chota Bhai is worried that we will send him to military school. But I said, we would never do that! He’s not even strong enough to carry the bolts of fabric. He’s good at wearing them though. He’ll make a much better tailor than me!”
Time passed, and in the blue light Svaha noticed how shiny his skin was, and then how cold his hand was. She did not see that in the water below her, her reflection rippled alone.
One night, Svaha ran through the road wailing and crying. She was a banshee in the dark - her father had passed away. He had been struck by the sickness, but they hoped, by some miracle, that he would eventually recover.
“What’s happened?” he ran up to her and asked.
“My father is dead, his cough took him away. And my mother is going to be laid down on the pyre with him! They say that she doesn’t want to be here, not without him, and I keep pleading, and they won’t listen, and I will stop them, I don’t know what to do!”
Torn with the idea of losing two people at once, of being an orphan grieving forever, she cried in his arms.
In that moment, he knew what he had to ask her.
“If I knew a way to save her, would you let me tell you?”
With wide eyes she listened as he told her about a trick–rather a prayer–where she could remain unscathed under the fire. And that if she were quick, she could hide her mother and take her place.
He then explained the way he had lived all these years, how his body had changed, and how she could choose to save her mother’s life if she wanted to.
Without question, Svaha repeated the prayer and ran home. That night she tossed and turned with a strange fever. At dawn, she dropped a small vial of datura essence upon her sleeping mother’s lips, quietly pulling the door lock shut. She disguised herself in the white funereal shroud, a white scarf veiled around her head; and she sat on the edge of her mother’s bed in this disguise, waiting to be collected by the priest.
Together they walked down toward the edge of the river, and in the mist she could see her aunts and cousins knee deep in water, surrounding the small boat where her father lay on the pyre. The bank of the river had transformed - hundreds of orange, red and, white flowers sat at the top of the gray water, incense smoke and the droning of prayers clouded the air, with the noise of metal pots and crackling lamps.
She was laid down next to him - both of them swaddled like ghosts, one dead and one alive. She noticed how she could not hear her own heartbeat, and Slowly the boat was pushed into the current, flames rising up around her. Her skin remained cold, like a stone; the fire couldn't touch her.
The boat started to break apart, and she dropped down into the water, swimming underneath to stay hidden. The river was murky - she had never swam so deep before, and she could see all the things that had sunk to the river floor over time. Gold jewelry and coins, bicycle wheels and extra car parts. The horn of a phonograph, broken glass picture frames, and bits of roof from the riverside huts. There was enough down there to make a whole new town, she thought, and wondered if the bottom of the step well held a secret world like this beneath. As she approached the shallow end of the river, a small scarf became trapped around her ankle. It was black and embroidered, identical to the pattern she had cut for the man at the tailoring shop.
Gasping for air, and far away at the other bank, she wrung the water from her dress. She waited for sunset, when the townsfolk turned indoors, to make her way home. There, she found her mother safely waking out of her deep sleep.
“Listen to me, we have to leave this place.”
“I don’t understand what is happening,” her mother said, “They will be expecting me soon.”
“No they won’t. Everything will be alright.”
Her mother was a statue, silent and willing. They walked to the house hidden among the guava trees to find a welcome refuge.
A few months passed. Shaken by the chaos, and tired of having to disguise herself to leave the house, Svaha’s mother decided to go live with her cousin in another district.
Svaha continued to live there with the cursed man. One year passed, two years passed, and she grew stronger in her new way of being. She found that she could lift bags of rice much easier and go days without feeling hungry.
One evening Svaha entered the parlor, and saw him crumpled on the floor in front of his reading chair. She noticed how much the wrinkles in his face drooped, his hair shedding on the marble floor.
She shook him, softly at first, then more and more frantically, “Are you alright!”
His eyes opened, slowly. With a slight grimace, “Don’t worry about me. I am fine.”
“But look at your face, your skin, your hair. I know you are struggling. I don’t understand….”
He sat down and looked at her with an empty gaze.
“That day, I told you about my curse and you saved your mother. I did not tell you that the prayer itself was the curse. When you made the choice to take her place, and the fire didn’t hurt you, I passed the curse to you. I am finally free of it.”
He did not tell her that he trusted her family, and helped them so, because she was his great-granddaughter of five generations, and her mother the fourth. He had stayed here on the outskirts of the town so long only to see his descendants change, grow, and prosper while he was frozen in what he was. It was the only way he could bear to live so long.
“You tricked me!” She was shocked. “You did not want to help us! You wanted to use me! You are a monster.” Flustered and angry, she ran down the stairs and out of the house.
Into the forest she ran and ran and ran, the red dirt on her bare feet. The sun set over the tall canopy. And as she ran through the night, her dress tearing on the undergrowth, she felt her legs become nimble like a fox, her hair grow coarse like a boar, her eyes begin to shine yellow like a snake.