10
She was asleep when night brought them back to the city on the shore. The orange lanterns of night-watchmen guided the elephants to the palace, where her guards gently bore her to her quarters, where she awoke the next day, surprised by the sunlight and sudden passage from jungle to civilization.

She lay in her sheets’ embrace until the solar disk was high over the ocean, and the white sails of fishermen caught the midday breeze. At last she rolled out of her bed, and washed in a tub of warm water brought by slave girls at the call of her silver bell. As she rose and let them dry her, she saw on her finger the iron band given to her by Svinvi, the symbol of her own indenture. From the other hand she took the sapphire, tiger’s-eye and ruby, and gave one to each of the slaves.

“Buy your freedom,” she told them, then dressed anew in cotton salwar kameez walked out into the palace, where the queen and concubines hugged her like old friends and pulled her to the king’s table. She tucked into the salads and rice with the hunger of one who has not eaten for a full day.

“We thought you would never come back!” Said the king, kissing her like she was already his daughter. Vrasyati returned his kiss with only a little hesitation. She had lost track of how long she was gone for, but she guessed it had been close to two weeks. The prince had left his chambers twice, since she had left, he said excitedly, and some nights he left the door of the tower unlocked. He had spoken with his old tutors, the first people he had spoken to since his retirement, save the princess herself.

They went sailing that day, the king, the princess and the court. The vizier flirted shamelessly with the lower concubines; the serving girls giggled with coy delight as muscled divers brought up pearls and freshly speared fish whose scales were bright like spring blossoms, and glittered with the suns rays as they flapped their life away. Vrasyati was distracted; the memory of the kiss had been like one night’s dream before, but here, in the court, it woke again, and fluttered in her like a caged bird. Her eyes were drawn again and again to the minaret of the highest tower, where her prince surely dreamed of her as she dreamed of him.

Her stomach would not let her eat that night, and as she stole from her chambers to the tower she was noticed only by the servants of the palace, as invisible and inconsequential as the walls and their hangings. Only tonight did she even begin to see them. The steps were cold on her un-slippered feet; she put her hand on the door, and with a leap of her heart and lungs it swung freely open.

Trishan stood on the balcony, staring through telescope at the blue-black skies. She was halfway to him when he heard and turned. Their eyes met, and for a moment there was stillness, the perfect calm before a summer rainstorm. They each grinned at the other, and as they fell into an embrace their fates were sealed. There were no words. They kissed and kissed, and soon hands slipped below cotton cloth and the laws of gravity pulled them onto the bed. No-one had ever touched Ksasnaja so before, and a sensation like pain’s bright twin danced through her. They kissed more, and a hungry desire possessed them. He pushed inside her, held her, and as she gasped the strange pain mutated into a fierce joy that burned until it blushed her cheeks and wrung sobs of pleasure from her kiss-covered lips.

And then, as for a moment a white light blossomed like a chrysanthemum in the base of her self, it was over, and they were two once more, wet flesh against wet flesh, two lovers united by a magic older than man and young as green grass.

Trishan pulled the sheets over them, and held Vrasyati, feeling her fit against him like his missing half. She shut her eyes, and bliss overwhelmed her like sleep.

“I don’t understand,” she heard Trishan say. “Why is there suffering? Why must we die? We are like sailors crossing the ocean; am I the only one who sees where we are heading, breakers of unavoidable pain that are our destiny, that will rob us of everything? And what is worse, I cannot escape it, though I see it. It is like trying to sail against the wind, Vrasyati. Sometimes I fear so much I wish I had never been born. Why do we bring children to this? Do we really believe it is worth it?”

She let her lips blow a lazy “shhhh”, and turned to kiss him, on his lips, his cheeks, his lids. His eyes stayed shut, and a peace like that of a child took him, a cherubic smile warmed his face. Under the painted stars, in a bed warded by veils of mist, Vrasyati listened to his breaths, savouring them like the honeyed chords of a bard’s harp.

Gently, she slipped out of his embrace, and though the effort of leaving him ached, she still glowed with his warmth, from her toes to her fingers to her hips, every inch of skin where he had touched and kissed and licked her vividly alive. She looked at him in the dusky candlelight; so beautiful, dark eyes and hair and skin, eyelashes thick and lips full with the promise of further pleasure. The moon overhead neared the end of its cycle. In the recesses of her mind she remembered her purpose with Trishan, but she swallowed it back.

On the balcony, the sleeping kingdom below and the heavens above, she called to the djinn of the amber.

11
And nothing happened. There was no coruscation of power, no chill ripple passing through the night air. The birds still nested in their nests, and the city lay still as death under the stars. A murmur of doubt crept into Vrasyati. Trishan’s words haunted her, echoing in the spaces of her anxious mind “There is only matter and void.” No djinni, no magic. Was she only a woman who had dreamed of being a goddess, like the butterfly which dreamed itself a human? I am going to die, she told herself before she could
restrain her mind’s tongue, and there is nothing I can do to prevent it.

Then a soft hand touched the back of her neck, and Ksasnaja turned to see a ghillanah, beautiful as a forgotten dream and softly shedding white stars. Her face was a mask of white wood, and on it was a smile so subtle it was hardly there. Her eyes were dark like the dark jewels of the forest. A tangled mane of viney hair was like a mass of ferns, the frill of a lizard, and ephemeral robes and scarves swirled about green flesh born from empyrean fire. Ksasnaja forgot her tongue, caught in a riddle her mind could not form.

“Lady?” Said the ghillanah, and she laughed gently, though the lips did not move.

“I wish to command you,” said Ksasnaja, struggling to remember herself.

“That is how it works,” there was another soft chuckle. “Your wish is my command.”

The once goddess turned, so that she did not have to look into those uncanny eyes.

“Do you know of Garrash?” She asked, finally.

“I believe so. Remind me if you please.”

“The demon king of the sixty-nine rakshasas, terrible demons of lust. They roam the lands, hunting for the scent of anything female to violate. There is no evil they have not conceived, no depravity they have not committed. Nymphs, women, girls, goddesses. All these they take without asking, hearing “no” as “yes” and giving pain and humiliation where pleasure and honour are due. Seeds of evil they leave, that grow to spiny weeds of self-loathing and doubt, leaving mental scars that may not heal, terrible lurching fear than haunts their backs. What I need from Garrash is a fitting reward for his virtues; his ogrish oysters, and in taking them the pleasure will be all mine.”

“His oysters?”

“His testicles.” It was a sign of her growing mortality that Ksasnaja almost blushed to say it, for goddesses are not shy of carnality.

“You know, lady, that I am a marillah,” whispered the djinniyah in a voice like running water. “My powers are not such that I may easily stand against seventy rakshasas, as may my more powerful kin.”

“That was not my intention,” said the ex-goddess. “I plan to use cunning against their brute force. They are an army of demonic strength, and there is little chance even a marid could seize Garrash’s most prized possessions. All I ask of you is to provide me with an enchantment, whereby I may make myself into and out of a hideously foul and odiferous ogress, and a sickle of sufficiently sharp edge and durable steel that it may harvest the oats from the golden bough.”

A gentle scent of roses filled the air, and from her empty breath the djinniyah plucked a curved blade and a bottle, blown from delicate glass and gilded like a perfume receptacle. Before handing them over she hesitated, and spoke, with uncertainty misting her tone for the first time.
“Before you release me, mistress, I crave of you a boon.”

“Yes?”

“Seven centuries ago a sorcerer caught me while I dreamt of past glories and bound me in a tiny stone, my body drawn tight into my heart, without room to form half a thought or speak half a sound. I was slave to whoever might possess my ring, mistress, and I prayed sometimes for death, such was my suffering. Now I pray you to free me from my bondage, give me the ring that I might be at liberty at last, without fear of further enslavement.”

Ksasnaja drew the ring from her finger, and placed it on the sill. The marillah smiled, and with the band on her finger was borne away by a gentle breeze, curling her robes in elegant shapes and leaving a faint smell of perfume. In her place, the vial and the sickle sat on the floor.

She went back to the bed. Trishan still slept like a dormouse, his face untroubled by cares. The mortal goddess left a kiss for him, and felt a pang of desire to be in those arms, safe against the night and without care for demon rapists. But as she left him she felt the bonds that linked their hearts and bodies, which promised he would be there when she returned, and with her still in his absence, though they were bonds invisible to all but lovers.

The marillah’s potion smelt foul, but she had expected as much. Sorcery was rarely pleasant for mortals, though it was as free and easy as drawing breath for djinn, and simpler still to gods, whose essence was limitless divine power. She choked back half the poisonous fluid, and felt the bile rising in her throat. She hacked and hacked, her vocal chords deepening as she did so, her teeth growing obscenely huge and pointed to tusks that would not permit her mouth to close. Her eyes burned, reddening, glowing like hot coals. Muscles twisted themselves huge and powerful, her skull cracked open and three horns fell out into the air. Hair became dank fur, nails became claws. Her spine cracked like a whip, stretching itself into forked tail and becoming bent and hunchbacked. Her breasts, no longer like firm mangos, grew long and distended as melting cheese. Her skin was scaled and pitted with sores and pimples. She was foul, she was hideous. She was an ogress.

Fortunately, she was still naked, for her clothes would not have survived the transformation that doubled her size. Attempting stealth, yet still noisesome and clumsy as a drunken rhino she ventured into the room, and found carpets to wrap herself in a crude sari and veil. She was used to making herself beautiful for every hour, being perfect without effort, and every time she noticed her scabbed, rough hands she felt an odd horror, but also a freedom. On the balcony again, she set her hooked proboscis in the sky and sniffed for the scent of other demons.
She caught a stench of testosterone to the north-west, sour like cat-piss, burning her nostrils and setting her ogress-heart thumping. The sickle she tucked into her sash, and clambered awkwardly into a cloud ladder.

It had been a long time since Ksasnaja had ridden the heavens like this, and in that lumbering form it was hardly easy, yet she managed to catch the drift of the cumulus herds so that they carried her close enough to the source of the scent, and then fell to the desolate waste that waited for her. Only the slightest bruises bore evidence of her graceless descent, and they went unnoticed among the many blemishes on her unhappy hide.
By the time she reached the borders of the raksasa’s camp, she had learned to walk with enough ease on her hooves that she did not attract the suspicion of the sentry, but only his disgust at her hideousness, extreme even for an ogre.

“What do you want, old bitch?” He grunted, trying not to inhale her salty stench.

“I’m here to see Garrash, my handsome lad,” she said, surprising herself with her voice, harsh and hoarse with a hint of cackle.

“He’s a rapist, not a necrophiliac,” snorted the sentry, looking at the shrunken reptile before him.

“Listen, my sweet boy,” she screeched, and pressed her cracked lips close to his ear. He drew away at the smell of her funky breath, but had heard enough to cause a wide, ugly grin on his demon’s face.

“See the red tent, there in the middle?” He asked, pointing with one claw. “That one belongs to Garrash. He’s alone, but enter at your own risk.”

She pecked his cheek, and he screamed and scratched at his skin. She walked through the camp. Rakshas told each other filthy tales, or else larger ones pummeled smaller ones into their place. Great fires roasted whole mammoths, and smaller demons, castrated and walking with difficulty, stirred vats of beer large enough to intoxicate mortal armies.

It was dark in Garrash’s tent; and before she could make out shapes he had pounced from the throne and knocked her to the ground. She whimpered, he was close to her, tiny eyes boring her with cruel inspections. Her face, her breasts, her hips, her legs. He spat on her and drew away, moving with the smooth power of a pard. He is evil, thought Ksasnaja. There had never been a living being, in all her millions of years, who terrified her as much as he.

“Get up, hag,” he growled in a low voice. “Why the fuck did they send you here? Whose balls will I have for this?”

She pulled herself to her hooves; in a mirror she caught her reflection before it shattered. “I am a demoness,” she reminded herself. “I feed on pain and suffering. Even this lustful fiend shrinks before me.” She hobbled near enough to Garrash that he drew away, and grinned with sickening toadiness.

“Prince Garrash, fine prince of the flower of ogre-hood, let me tell you who I am. Until a week ago I was the maid of the mother goddess Sinfer, wet-nurse to her twenty-one daughters. But imagine my horror to discover that their parents wished them to graduate into full earth-goddesses, and not remain child-divinities forever. The cheek, to put me out of a job!”

Garrash’s eyes narrowed at the thought of twenty-one virginal earth goddesses, fat-thighed and heifer-breasted. His member, spined like a blowfish, grew hard and began to leak white venom.

“Bring them here, shit-stinker,” he ordered.

“Oh yes! What better reward for Sinfer’s constancy than the violation of her beloved daughters!”

“Yes!” The pig-like eyes were closed now, and Ksasnaja shuddered with disgust at her own deceit.

“But I fear, Garrash, for your safety.”

“What the fuck do you care for my safety?”

“If I am to be properly revenged, you must perform your job thoroughly. And Sinfer is no demi-god; she is a powerful divinity with friends in high places. Her daughters too have their own powers. Do you have the means to subdue them?”

Garrash opened his eyes, and they flicked from side-to-side as a cat’s tail might, thinking vile thoughts. “Chain them up,” he hissed, fishing out a set of manacles from a chest of accessories he kept. “Chain them down.” He licked his lips and for a moment considered Ksasnaja a second time, hungry to immediately satisfy his lusts. But she was truly hideous, even to him.

“Will they be strong enough to hold the goddesses? They are feisty lasses and will surely struggle.”

His pulse quickened at the thought of their struggle. “Yes, yes. They will hold. You want to test them?”

She cackled out loud. “No, no! I test them? Any chains can bind an old lady! We speak of goddesses here, who fasten each season to the next with unbreakable spells and give birth to dragons.”

“Lead them here and I will show you how we treat goddesses.”

“Not until you prove to me your manacles work.”
He was beside her in a leap, and snarled with the fury of a lion. “I will show you! They will bind me! Is that proof enough?”

Ksasnaja put her head to one side, stuck out her lip, sucked in air through her teeth, and at last said “Yes.”

“But show me,” she said. “How will you do it? They must be utterly humiliated. Utterly.”

“Oh, yes,” the demon king gave her the hand and foot-cuffs and gleefully led her to the throne. “I will bend them over, first, like she-dogs. Over the throne like this…” He bent over to show what he meant.

“I see. And the cuffs go here?” She snapped them about his wrists.

“Yes! Oh yes! Then the legs, well spaced, for I am a big boy. The cuffs would go round the back of the chairlegs.”

“Like this?”

“Yes! Exactly! Now is our little slut not immobile?”

“Is she? Try to break free.”

Garrash strained and pulled and writhed until he sweated with stinking perspiration. “I cannot get free. Happy?”

“Yes.”

“Good, now unfasten me and let’s get on with it.”

“No, I don’t think I will.” She drew her scythe and advanced on Garrash. He bleated and threatened, called out obscene curses and promises of humiliating suffering. She laughed in his face, and seized his scrotum with one hand. Great biting lice swarmed from his bushy netherparts to her fingers and chewed on her, but she ignored him, and with a slice of her sickle Garrash was no longer a man. How he howled!
She left him there, his arse in the air, and you can be sure that when his men found him he tasted his own bitter medicine, sixty-nine times.

12
She was elated; four of the five ingredients were in her possession, and in her heart she was sure Trishan loved her, though she preferred not to ponder to consequences of what lay in her own heart for him. And then, as she snuck from the camp, a strangely sweet smell among the acrid camp-stink made her ogre-senses jump. She turned, and saw the marillah there, white-mask face half-lit by the bonfires.

“I freed you,” said the ogress Ksasnaja. “You owe me no further service.”

“No, I do not. And more, you gave me the ring. You are not even immune to my sorcery. Foolish, but nor surprisingly so, for one who has lived without care for so long, the world handed her on a silver plate, Ksasnaja.”

“What do you want?”

“The same as you: immortality. We beings of star-fire are long-lived, but the aeons take their toll even on us. I want your soul, that I may taste the joys of divine bliss, if even for only half of eternity.”

Ksasnaja’s fingers went to the last ring on her finger, the black obsidian where a skull face watched the proceeding with cold interest. The marillah laughed.

“Summon a ghul?! How you underestimate me! I will turn his own necrotic flesh against him, make his ribs pull each other apart and give his two wings such aversion to one another that they split him in twain.”

Ksasnaja decided to run. Her legs fell away from her, the marillah’s powers more intimate to her sinews than her own desire. The graceful djinn stood over the ogress, and pressed her smooth face close, smelling for the way to her soul. But the sickle swept out, and in a flash of desperate speed she had scored in the wooden face a word, the name written on the amber band which had first summoned the demon.

The treacherous djinniyah screeched in agony as the words burned like acid, and tore her face off. Underneath was a mass of mandibles like the jaws of a hundred maggots. “Oh Ksasnaja,” they chattered. “I will hurt you for this.” The sickle burned red hot for a moment, and she had no choice but to let go of it. Desperately the ex-goddess searched her mind for some secret escape, a last gambit to save herself from final extinction.

The disfigured mask was back on the face, but now a pair of black, nibbling teeth poked out from where the smile had been, teasing her with the prospect of being eaten alive. Pure, white fear hammered in her heart, telling her to despair. And yet the memory of Trishan filled her, a warmth underneath her skin that made her feel that if you could peel her open you would find him there, as much a part of her as her own soul. The marillah came close, and Ksasnaja knew what to do. With the last magic of the ogress she was she pulled Garrash’s oysters to her chest. They were powerful talismans, and she felt their vile male power saturate her lungs and rise into her throat. “BOYS!!” She bellowed, in the voice of the rakshasa king.

Pandemonium descended on the fighting she-spirits. Sixty-nine demons came running, sixty-nine randy, evil sadists who saw in the middle of their camp a beautiful djinniyah whose diaphanous wraps showed more flesh than they concealed. They fell on her, and she rose in fury to resist them. Ichor pumped from opened wounds, the djinniyah danced through them like an angel of death, desperately calling on all her cunning and enchantments, but they were many, and all knew it was only a matter of time, that the battle would be decided by a razor-thin slice. And thus Ksasnaja left them, limping from the camp, walking the clouds back to the palace. She fell, exhausted onto the ledge of the tower as the first shades of red warned of the coming morn, and swallowing down the remnants of the potion, Vrasyati was beautiful, and a human, once more. She hid the demonically-scaled scrotum under the bed, to put in its own case later, and returned to her lover’s arms.