1
Long ago, the gods took sides and wrestled for the soul of the land, and in their stuggles tossed up a mountain linking heaven to earth.

Pilgrims would travel for years to its holy slopes; starved holy-men, dying kings and expectant mothers all, to drink from the spring born from its summit. A temple straddled the widest point on the trail, where devotees would bathe in the sacred water which burnt away the ills of the flesh and cleansed the sins of a thousand lifetimes. In the shrines which spit-spotted the path to the pinnacle offerings of petals and honey were left to the invisible powers, and as you neared the zenith you might imagine the air filled with soft laughter, and sense a dull yet heady mixture of fear and joy. And at the zenith, among the chill white snow and steam-breathing pools, unseen for ten thousand thousand years by human eyes, lived a goddess. And her name was Ksasnaja.

Every morn she would be awoken by the soft touch of the sun’s rays as they filtered through the dusky silks of her divan, and rise, naked and perfect, to bathe in the milk of she-asses, freshly fetched from the four corners of the earth. As she was dressed by her attendants even the stones blushed at her beauty, and as she walked the slopes the flowers themselves turned to see her, who excelled the most beautiful lotus in loveliness as the sun excels a candle. Between the hours of the hare and the cow she would greet the myriad numen of her mountain, as they jostled to shower her with gifts and blessings, and she would reward whichever pleased her the most with a single kiss from her two lips, rose-red and sweeter than the nectar of soma.

Then from the hour of the cow until the setting of the sun she would dance through the woods, chasing butterflies and drinking the dew from the leaves of apple trees, a giddy, elegant doe amid a throng of worshipful hamadryades and devas. When she came near, the birds of the air would sing a sweeter song than they ever knew in her absence, while her own voice stilled the wrathful tiger and brought the serpent to tears of joy.

If it pleased her, she might slip into the shrine where her gilt statue stood, ten-armed and hung with a garland of fresh lilies each day, her impermanent and uncomparable twin. She might listen to the prayers of her worshippers, and if it caught her whim or flattered her she might salve a leper or divert rivers of gold to the poor. But other days she might become lost in a chess game with an immortal, or in unpicking the web of a spider, and not once think of her short-lived pilgrims.

Her days swam through years of perfect, effortless bliss, coloured bright with phoenix feathers and the rainbow shades of a thousand stars invisible to mortal eyes, until one afternoon she awoke from her brilliant lifedream to the girlish cries of her naiads. She had been bathing in a pool of moon-dew, sung to her by a blinded prophet. He had stopped singing and asked nervously what was going on. The goddess blinked her amethyst eyes and turned her coal black lashes upon the source of the disturbance. Among the twisted vines that screened her bath a tiny, spider-legged shape scuttered to escape while a troupe of fairy eunuchs prodded at it with spears. Ksasnaja reached out a hand, and with the grace of an unfolding lily stretched out a pointing finger to call the intruder before her.

It was a monkey, she noticed in one lazy glance, and turned her gaze languorously upon her own reflection caught in a bubble of soap.

“Why is this ape here?” She asked in a voice like the plucking of heartstrings.

“Why are you here!? It is forbidden to gaze upon the goddess at her toilet!” screeched the eunuchs, menacing the air-suspended monkey with their pikes. The monkey could not answer, screeching in raw fear like a baby chimp.

“Shhh,” murmured Ksasnaja, offended by the ugly sound, and his lungs would not disobey her.

“What should we do to the filthy, horrible tree-rat?” Asked a naiad. The goddess sighed and rinsed her hair.

“Turn him into a slug!” cried a fan-bearer.

“Feed his member to the wolves!” shrieked a nymph.

“Kill him!” chanted the eunuchs.

The monkey might have died happy, for as the goddess climbed from her pool, he caught he slightest glimpse of her heavenly form, as the water slipped from its nubile curves, before her unseen attendants draped her in silk and sheathed her in gold. Ksasnaja thought of the monkey, and her lips curled in the perfect mask of disgust. She would have felt dirty to know it had seen her naked, if she knew how dirty felt. She considered a way in which to turn the creature’s intrusion into an amusement.

“To kill it would be premature,” she declared, and her voice was joy to those who listened. “This simian has entered my most sacred domain; he would not have come if he thought himself unworthy.” The monkey’s chest pounded with what might have been ecstasy or terror as she wet her lips with mischief. “Let him go. Tomorrow he will return, before sunset, and repay me for the liberties he has taken. He will bring me the most precious thing in all the world. If he does not return, or if his gift proves but the second most precious, let him be hunted by a thousand harpies, and torn to shreds to be scattered throughout the seven hells.” She turned away, and the monkey fell to the ground, prostrated himself and threw himself four-legged away from the goddess and her bloodthirsting retinue.

That night, and all through the next day a tiny serpent of uncertainty danced in Ksasnaja’s immortal heart. When the four winds brought her the unformed eggs of simurghs served on nests of steamed rice from the fields of the arctic she had no appetite. When the souls of dead children trouped up outside her tent to sing her to sleep she found no rest. When the Ocean’s daughters came to her with a hundred chests of newly woven saris to try on she found the silk chafed and that not one of them would fit. Into her mind the monkey had climbed like a speck of dirt into an oyster, and with an anticipation unknown in her life older than the hills she wondered what gift he would bring to her that dusk.

As the sun slid on its last rung to the
earth, she gathered a thousand of her followers about her throne, and sat waiting, her lips parted, as they plumped her cushions, fanned her and played music so marvelous the winds paused to listen. As the last blood-red light poured over the horizon, a silence swept upon the court, and each felt the swiftly softly beating heart of the goddess echoing in their own chests like the pangs of infatuation, and a spindly shape, bushy tail aloft, loped into Ksasnaja’s presence. She caught her breath, and all eyes were turned upon what the monkey clutched to its tiny chest.

“A mirror!” Guessed one voice. “For what is more precious than the self?”

Ksasnaja narrowed her eyes, and spoke, “So you returned, monkey. Have you brought this thing, the most precious gift in the world, to me?”

The ape scrawked a reply, and knuckled his way closer, eyes turned to the ground. He was before the goddess, his little fist still clutched with its present, to his heart. With his flat, wrinkled nose close to her ringed toes, he turned his deep, oak-coloured eyes to look on her glory, and reached a tree-swinging arm out to her, a single red apple between black-nailed fingers. A jade green lizard god darted to the arm of her throne and took it from him, and passed it to Ksasnaja. She regarded the fruit; deep scarlet as blood, scented gently with morning breezes, skin firm and unblemished. Her teeth, whiter than clouds or pearls, revealed themselves, and kissed the apple, tenderly teasing its flesh into her mouth so that the juices dribbled down her throat and played their flavours on her tongue. The faces of all, fairies, nymphs, elves and yakshas were on her as she delicately chewed and swallowed that bite.

“An apple,” she pronounced. “Underripe and with an unpleasant aftertaste. This is not unique, not precious.”

The crablike eunuchs dived forward, blades held against the monkey’s quavering fur. Above, the sky turned to a furious blue, and the earth rumbled. Ksasnaja did not look, but rose and turned away. The seed of excitement had grown into an ugly weed, and inside her was bitter resentment. Rain began to fall around her, and as she was about to say the words “Kill it”, something happened that made all gathered pale with fear: Ksasnaja, the goddess of the mountain, she who felt neither hot nor cold but always just right, shivered to the wind. She took a step back with fear, and the muddy drops that splashed from her step spotted her legs, and she who never perspired nor was anything but immaculate, was dirtied. Her feet fell from under her, and on her knees the apple rolled from her gripless fingers. Her hair tangled itself in the breeze and her eyes began to well with tears.

The gathered demi-gods scattered, covering their faces, tossing away their spears, unable to look upon Ksasnaja. Only the monkey still watched her. “What have you done to me?” She croaked.

The monkey replied to her in the speech of apes, “Yesterday, I played with my brothers in the forests, and we played tag among the foothills, but I ran too fast and got lost among the mists. Through the whiteness I heard a singing, as of a man who paints colours yet has never known them, and followed it for it joyed my heart. Around a screen of lilies caught in intricate vines I saw dance the most beautiful creatures I had ever seen, shining like the moon from under their woman-smooth skins. But as I pressed my snout between the lilies I saw the sun they reflected, for as the air was filled with waltzing bubbles and the honeyed laughter of earth gods, in her bath was the goddess herself, and no she-monkey I had chased or sweet pomegranate I had tasted filled me with such wonder as she did.

“But when I was spotted, innocently caught in worship, I was threatened with death, and sent off to find ‘the most precious thing in the world’. How was I to find this thing, I a simple monkey of the forest, to understand the heart’s desire of an immortal goddess, when I could not even find my way off the mountain? I roamed till my legs and arms ached, and as the sun began to fall I found my way at last to the temple, within sight of which my mother gave birth to me. I climbed in the roof window, and stole the offerings of fruits left for my goddess and her spirits. Then I heard a sound- the gabbling of humans, and hid before they saw me.

“A priest and a woman spoke, the woman weeping, the priest’s marked forehead uncrinkled. ‘Do not grieve,’ said the priest. ‘Death is the gift of the gods; the most precious thing in the world, for it frees us from our cares.’ And I had my answer. I ran to the forest and danced through the branches, to where an apple tree grew, alone in a clearing where not even grass grew. A voice coughed to me from the dark among the leaves ‘Do not eat this fruit monkey, for in the beginning the gods cursed he who eats my apples, that they will surely know a swift death.” And I ignored the voice, and plucked a fruit from its twig, where it had grown fat and unplucked since time began.

“And sunset brought me to you, and as you ordered, the most precious thing in the world is yours: death.”

Ksasnaja grew cold, colder than even the rain or wind or night could make her. Her court was gone, dead leaves blew about her throne. Death, she whispered, reminding herself of the meaning of a word stranger to her than sorrow. It reached dark fingers into her brain, and in her future she saw a blackness more terrifying than anything possible, an emptiness, a nothing which she could not escape. Death.

With a fanged grin the monkey bounded away, and she was truly alone. Her pointing fingers followed him, to still his sinews and heart into unlife, but her power was gone. She stood difficultly, slipping once or thrice upon the gathering mud, and fell through the night down her mountain, a woman, more beautiful than any in the world, yet achingly mortal.

2

As the sun poked its golden head above the sky and turned the milky sky pink as roses, a noble girl staggered into the temple, with eyes like amethysts, her fine silks wet and filthy and her gold ornaments caught up with weeds and dirt. The priests ushered her in, and the old cook boiled her a bath. The staff exchanged glances as she walked humbly to the sanctum, limping on cut feet, and knelt before the goddess of the mount.

Ksasnaja faced herself, ten armed and beautiful as only deathless gold can be, smiling with the confidence of limitless power. Having wept herself dry, she could no longer weep, so instead she turned her eyes to the deity on her left, a bronze rendering of the wind raja, aloft on a chariot pulled by eight winged serpents. The priest watching over her saw her kneel as if in prayer, and bowing her head touched the foot of the raja’s idol. He did not hear her whisper the god’s secret name, taught to her by her mother in the days before words.

In a thunderclap, she was gone, her borrowed sari left in a shredded mess on the temple floor by the elemental wind. Among the clouds she rode in a chariot carved from the bones of garudas dragged by dragons. The wind tore, cold and barely thick enough to breathe, into the mortal Ksasnaja, and vertigo spun her mind as the earth spun far below in a delicate tracing of green and blue. The raja laughed deeply and caught her as she swooned, pulling her close. He smelled of ozone and summer rain. She stared into his face, majestic in her tragedy. His black moustache curled like scimitars, and his eyes were blue as the sky.

“What happened to you, goddess? Why did you call to me, why do you ride the clouds instead of playing free on the crags of mountains?” He rumbled like tender thunder. “Your eyes are tear-stung red. What cause have your sacred eyes for weeping?”

She whispered her story to him, and though the wind caught the words before they reached him, he could read her mind like she was born of mortal stock, and it made him deeply uneasy.

“Your immortal life was stolen by this fruit of death,” he breathed, pulling her close to him as a father might. “And gone are your powers, your worshipful nymphs, and your endless centuries of bliss. Child, you are a woman.”

“Help me,” she whispered to his ear.

His azure gaze pierced the clouds, reading the wisdom in his serpents’ coils. “In the south, in the land where the first woman was made from clay, lives an old witch whose years even the gods have lost count of. Somehow she keeps death from her, though her fate was to feed the worms. I will take you to her; if any can help, it is she.”

The chariot fell as lightning to the hot savannah of the south, and as the thunder in its trail shook the leaves from the trees, it drew up outside a hut of sun-baked clay, painted brightly with the symbols of gods without faces. Ksasnaja, draped in the raja’s cloak, walked to its door, and stepped into the dark inside.

Her eyes took some minutes to adjust, but soon she saw shapes among the shadows cast by the flickering fire that heated the bubbling cauldron in the centre. All about were the bones of mammoths, hung with shaggy pelts, which in turn were the rest for precious gems and wyrd roots pulled from deep under the ground.

“Who are you?” Came a question from
across the room. In the dark, Ksasnaja saw a woman, as wizened as an old tree. Her skin was sunk deep into the caverns of her bones, and her eyes bulged from their sockets like the lenses of an insect. Her blue veins pulsed appreciably with their load of thick blood, carrying it between that still-powerful heart and that large, infantile head. It was as if Mother Time herself spoke to the once-goddess.

“I am Ksasnaja, once a goddess, tricked by a cruel primate into eating my own mortality. I have come seeking a way back to eternal life,” she said, calling on all the memories of her grandness and dignity to command the respect of this old crone.

“You ate the fruit of the tree of life. That tree was cursed by its creator,” spoke the witch. “It brings death even to the deathless. No body which has tasted its fruit may know eternity.”

A cough coughed itself out of Ksasnaja, but the witch continued. “But I can make you immortal again, with a secret only I know. But this is the price: when you reign again on your mountain, there must be a statue of I, Rshti the Wise, in your temple, to be worshipped as a goddess, and hung with fresh lotuses each morning. Is that too much to ask?”

“No,” said Ksasnaja. The crone grinned, and motioned for her to come closer. Hesitantly she edged her way around the cauldron where white faces swam in bubbling stew, and sat on a furry seat near Rshti. The witch stank of blood and shit, but as she opened her mouth Ksasnaja saw her teeth, though long with age, were perfect, and her skin was a rich caramel, and soft when she patted the ex-goddess’s hands. “Your soul, sweet child, is still the soul of a goddess,” she explained. “Yet your body is mortal, and will wear itself out, poisoned by the very breath it draws, the meat that nourishes it. One day it shall cast your soul out, as if it were mortal, into the mystery blackness which we call death; this is the nature of your problem.

“There is a way to make you live as you once were, immortal and free from care. Within this month you must find a mortal, Ksasnaja. You must make this mortal love you more than herself, more than life, so that she will willingly be your host. Then you shall find the four ingredients for this spell I shall weave, and your immortal soul shall pass into its new body, and burn out the death that was in it. Born again you will return to your mountain, where we shall dance together, you and I, down numberless ages.”

Ksasnaja grinned with mad pleasure at this, and hugged close the stinking old woman. She kissed that brow and those lips, and capered upon her scabbed feet.

“There is no time to waste,” Rshti reminded her. “There is much to do. For the spell you must gather to me five things: the hook of Gunjna the krakana, the giblets of Svinvi, king of the frozen lands, the thoughtstone of Gobbler, the devourer in the sky, the oysters of Garrash, the chief of the sixty nine rakshasas, and the love of a mortal. It shall be no easy task.” The goddess who was a goddess no more bowed her head, and walked solemnly out of the hut. “Return when you have them!” Called Rshti after her.

The Raja of the Winds still waited for her, his winged serpents hissing at each other with impatience. She explained to him what the witch had told her, and finished, “But how am I to gather these things, without my powers, a mere mortal woman?”

“You still hold the wisdom of a thousand kalpas of life as a divinity,” said the Raja. “And your beauty and form are beyond mortal. These things will help you.”

“Will that be enough?” She asked.

The Raja frowned, and from his fingers took five rings, one ruby, one sapphire, one emerald, one tiger’s eye and one obsidian. He placed them on her hand, the magical bands fitting her doe-like digits as if made for her. She looked at them, and saw faces watch from within the stones, living faces made of subtle fire.

“Each of these stones contains a djinn, bound to serve the wearer of its ring,” he said. “When you need to, call them out by the names written in the language of the gods upon the band. They will do your bidding, though each will only grant a single wish before they will leave.”

Ksasnaja hugged the raja, and planted her perfect lips on his cheek.

“I must go now,” he said, almost blushing. “Already the tempests and monsoons misbehave and toss the oceans like rowdy boys, and the coy zephyrs hide in far valleys. The Sky Lords will not be happy. But where shall I leave you?”

“Take me to my temple, at the foot of the sacred mountain, I ask you,” she replied. “There I will find someone who loves me.”

She stepped up to the chariot, and it tore away from the earth. The winds howled in her ears as she clung close to the Raja, and before she could blink twice she was at the gate to her temple, and she hugged him goodbye. He was gone in a seaward gust.

3
It would be an easy matter to find a mortal who loved her, Ksasnaja thought. Every day for ten thousand years ten hundred devotees had come to sing her praises and worship at her temple. To choose which would be most suited as her new avatar would be the hard part. A girl high-born, loved by all, pious and above all beautiful, Ksasnaja decided.

Among a throng of white-clad women fresh from a bath in the village at the mountainfoot, Ksasnaja walked under the huge gateway to her temple. Golden dragons and phoenixes chased each other up the red-lacquered wood, and words so old the priests had forgotten them warned visitors of the contents of their own souls. As she walked up the seven-hundred and seventy-seven steps, her lilac eyes darted through the crowd, seeking for one. They touched upon a girl, tall for her age, which was perhaps seventeen, her castrated slave holding over her a white parasol, redundant since the white mists blocked any sunlight that might have burned her fair skin. She was lovely, her full lips curved like the petals of a flower, her dark hair like liquid night framing smooth jaws and cheeks. Her sari revealed little of her body, but her ankles were slender and ended in small, though not oversmall, feet which were themselves exquisitely proportioned. Only next to Ksasnaja herself would this girl be anything but divine.

The ex-goddess let the flowing crowd carry her close, and she caught the girl’s eye and smiled. “What is your name, girl?” Asked Ksasnaja. The girl’s answer does not matter, for Ksasnaja forgot it at once. “You came to see the goddess?” Was her next question.

“My husband is getting old and needs an heir. I’ve been to all the other shrines and still haven’t conceived. I hope the goddess will give me a child.”

The goddess was stunned.

She stood there, betrayed as the throng moved past her. Later, as she watched the girl pray before her great statue, she narrowed her lovely eyes in hatred as the little hussy hypocritically sang her praises until tears flowed and her exhausted limbs gave way. As the priests carried her away she took secret satisfaction in knowing her prayers went to a god who was no longer there. All this time, she thought to herself, as they danced before me, as they pledged their souls to my whims, as they poured oils and cut open chickens and newborn lambs; all this time they said they loved me, all they wanted was their own selfish desires. Faithless cheats. Godless ingrates. Selfish, self-centred, deathbound things.

She spoke to the woman next to her, no ink-painting, but still above-average. She played at godliness to win a place in the palace for her son. At the communal feast the old woman next to her was here to scam a cure for her rheumatism, and in the dormitory a woman about to give birth greedily craved an easy labour.

There is not one here who loves me, realized Ksasnaja. She had snuck out to the sanctum, and gazed, not for the first time, upon her golden self. They loved me for my powers, my ten arms with their thunderbolts and fortune wheels, treasure chests and spell scrolls. They loved me for in their egocentric hearts I was their friend in a high place. When I am a goddess again, they shall get what they deserve. As she thought such thoughts, and as the realization came that she might not regain her immortality, death crept on her again, like the shadows cast by the burning torches, inevitable. It is there, she whispered to herself, quietly as if afraid It might hear her. It is here. I shall writhe and fight it and twist and turn, but in the end it is there. I am like the coney caught in a snare, fighting to be free and only tightening the noose.

The slapping of naked feet against stone reached her, and into view drew a sadhu, wild and wise as the forests. His hair was tangled and tied in locks no elf could unpick, and his eyes were like those of a hawk that see much. His limbs were long, knotted like branches, and his yellowed nails were claws. A loincloth he wore, filthy, and his head bore a third eye, drawn in pigment. He threw himself on the ground before the idol, and banged his head on the ground with such force that it might split open the earth.

“Goddess,” he moaned in a keening sing-song. “Unmatched one, keeper of ages, spinner of the heavens. Unsurpassed one, dancer through all seasons, mistress of love and death. Hold me to you. Enfold me. Comsume me. Hold me as a mother her child. Enfold me as the lover his bride. Consume me as the lotus the water. OM!”

All scattered thoughts were gone from Ksasnaja, panicked like doves by the earnestness, the simple power of the plea. The man’s eyes rose, and gazed upon his idol with a love that set caged butterflies free in her heart. She caught her breath, and the hawk-eyes of the holy man flew to her. She walked from her hiding place, without the shame of discovery a true mortal would have felt. She looked at him, a man emptied and filled, seeking heaven yet trapped on earth.

“That was beautiful,” she said.

“You are beautiful,” he replied. “I see the Goddess in you.”

“Perhaps,” she said, almost flattered.

“There is no perhaps. She is in all women.”

“Some more than others.”

The sadhu considered this seriously.

“You love her,” she said.

“I love Her more than life.” He bowed to Ksasnaja, and then her statue. Rising, he began to walk backwards. “Do not forget the Goddess is in you.” He was gone.

“I cannot,” she whispered to herself. More than life, he had said. A man? She wondered. Not the sadhu, for all his handsome intensity, his passion, he was a wild thing, an animal. A man? She wondered. A man who might love me as a man loves a woman, more than life. Since my mother brought me into an unformed world, for kalpas uncounted and beyond counting I have been a goddess. Why not try being a god?

A smile spread on her face, and she kissed her image, touching the breasts, firm as metal, and the smooth crotch hidden by fine silks, saying goodbye to these. I shall be immortal. I shall be a god, she decided. She raised her left hand to her face, and gazed into the ruby, red as a drop of blood, where a face fiery and fire-eyed watched her anxiously. She rubbed it, and spoke the name upon the band.

Shafts of hot-air rose, sending currents that rippled through the temple as mysterious winds, tossing the paper as the scribes tried to write and ripping blankets from panicked devotees in the dormitory. The afreet stepped out of his ruby prison and onto the stone floor, shedding sparks and singeing the ground with his burning feet. His body was caparisoned like a great beetle of red and gold, and a long ponytail of twisted hair tossed around him like a whip or a tail. Ksasnaja was unfazed, for she had danced on the bald heads of demons like him in days forgotten to man but remembered by her with clarity.

“Speak and command me, for I will obey you once,” it said, and all around the mountain dogs and children began to howl.

The heat from his molten body could not harm she who wore the ring, but the discomfort it caused was still new to her. Ignoring the sweat that gathered on her skin, she spoke and commanded.

“This is my wish: find for me a prince, the most beautiful in the world, and the wisest and the most loved. He will be strong of limb and true of heart, feared by evil men and a gift to his kingdom. Bring me to him, at the head of an entourage extravagant and scented with wealth and power. Do this and you will be free to torment the sons of men in far deserts.”

The afreet grinned with the teeth of a pike. “Who is it that speaks, seems and commands as a goddess yet perspires like a pig? It cannot be Ksasnaja, the joyful one of infinite power.”

The past goddess set her jaw and hooded her eyes, and the leering fiend caught her in an embrace that carried them into the sky where his eyes shone like the flaming stars.

“Look down!” He spoke above the screaming wind. “Where the ocean touches the tip of the land, where the plains shine like living emerald, there the pious king of fishers has his domain. The chieftains of all the islands call him father, or uncle; one hundred thousand men and five thousand elephants wait to kill or die for him. His son is Trishan, whose mother was a princess of the forests and gave him his godlike looks. There is no girl, woman or man who cannot help but stare at his smile, and in all arts, from the hunt to composition, he is without peer. But he will not leave his tower of late, caught up in the riddles of pain, the why of suffering. His father seeks a bride to ground his free-flying mind with soft thighs and thick-lashed glances.”

“Show him to me!” Commanded Ksasnaja, her hair flying all about her in the tides of air. They fell like a doomed star, until the afreet’s tawny wings caught them, and carried them through the window of a tower tall, and white as a seashell. They were in a round room, the roof painted cunningly to mirror the picture of the heavens. In the centre, draped in mosquito-nets of dulcet touch, was a bed, set on a dais and covered with soft cushions that surpassed the rainbow in colours. Ksasnaja pushed her way through the nets, to where a youth lay naked, sweetly vulnerable in sleep. His face was soft yet hard, gentle, but angled and with a hint of beard. His nose curved to lips parted slightly to admit breath, shaped like hearts, smiling in the clutches of a pleasing dream. His body was of a likeness to the face, slim yet soft, shaped but still in the kind reach of youth. As she looked at him, the once goddess fancied she saw time abuse him, turn him into a man old and bent, the glowing skin brown as waxed wood turn wrinkled and pale as paper.

“You shall be mine,” she whispered into his ear. “You shall be me.”

“Hurry up,” said the afreet. “He’ll have died of age before you are ready to meet him at this rate.”

Ksasnaja turned to the demon and nodded. “He is the one."