Praise for

Ink Honey Blossom

“Ink Honey Blossom is a fun read with a surprising take on psychedelic medicines. The story raises so many relevant questions about women’s empowerment, enhanced longevity and, of course, psychedelic medicines. The book challenges the reader to see these issues from an entirely different perspective. We have much to consider as psychedelic medicines enter our culture—how do we benefit from the healing they provide and, at the same time, honor the sacredness of the worlds they open.”

—Rachel Harris, PhD, author of Listening to Ayahuasca: New Hope for Depression, Addiction, PTSD, and Anxiety and Swimming in the Sacred: Wisdom from the Psychedelic Underground

“Losada’s clever, well-crafted dystopian debut novel, Ink Honey Blossom, cunningly captures Atwood at her best, revealing a Gilead-like existence. Her exquisite use of thematic metaphor transforms disparate literary elements such as prostitutes, plagues, and prisons of the mind into a psychedelic joyride, a looking glass of sorts, where captivity becomes freedom and condemnation, salvation.”

—Robert L. Koffman, MD, MPH, Military and Veteran Advisor, Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research, California Institute of Integral Studies

“Liza Losada works magic on the reader in her page-turning novel, Ink Honey Blossom, rich with symbolism, unforgettable characters and themes that are both timely and ancient. This novel is at once tender and incendiary, captivating and unsettling, a page turner that demands we look difficult truths in the face but doesn’t allow us to give up hope.”

—Jordan Rosenfeld, author of Fallout and The Sound of Story

Sibylline Press

Copyright © 2026 by Liza Losada

All Rights Reserved.

Published in the United States by Sibylline Press,
an imprint of All Things Book LLC, San Diego, California.

Sibylline Press is dedicated to publishing the
brilliant work of women authors ages 50 and older.

www.sibyllinepress.com

ISBN Trade: 9798897400249

eBook ISBN: 9798897400232

Library of Congress Control Number: 2025948166

Cover Design: Alicia Feltman

Book Production: Aaron Laughlin

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.

HUMAN AUTHORED: Any use of this publication to train artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited.

Para mami.

The best way out of intractable terrain is to keep marching.

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The Nectar House: Sonagachi Courtyard

diagram credit: Lucien Prospero Schor

The Nectar House

The Nectar House, a SonaHouse, frequented by men afflicted with the Blight disease.

House Girl, administers healing drug to Blight customers in SonaHouses.

Blight or Full Blight, male customers, acquired disease by genetic mutation.

Half-Blight, man or woman sick with Blight disease inherited from Blight father.

Procuress, acquires Girls for work in SonaHouses.

Mynah, current owner and procuress of The Nectar House, a Half Blight.

Batis, Mynah’s dead sister, former owner and procuress of The Nectar House.

Goon, works in House as wardens and bouncers or Parlor Goons, are all Half Blights.

Parlor Goon, host of The Nectar House, receives guests, customer service.

Key Girl, maids.

First Floor Girl, generic House Girl, heals Blights but without a trance, cheapest.

Specialty or Top Floor Girl, House Girl who trances with Blight customers, most expensive.

Specialty Top Floor Girls of
The Nectar House, Sonagachi Wing

Ink Girl, reads to Blights.

Honey Girl, feeds Blights honey.

Blossom Girl, charms Blights.

Bird Girl, sings to Blights.

Apple Girl, dines with Blights.

New Girl, new arrival.

Key Girl, maid and House seamstress.

Chapter 1
The Nectar House

We haven’t seen Bird for three days. Her room has been silent and empty until a new Girl arrived this morning. The Girl sounds young, maybe seven or eight; she hasn’t come to the window, but I’m always right about these things. She’s been locked in Bird’s room all day delivering a wild-disheveled wailing that could wake the dead buried under the Sonagachi tree outside. I consider looking out my window and across the central courtyard to catch a glimpse of this hysterical child banshee, but my curiosity loses the battle with the weariness in my limbs. It wasn’t much of a fight.

I push my face into the satiny pillowcase. The unrelenting anguish of her cries is familiar, but the power behind them is impressive. Keening. A vocal lament for the dead. If it’s rescue she’s calling for, she can scream until she’s hoarse, no one will come for her or for any of us. If its comfort she’s after, neither sound nor song will inspire it; there’s no pity for us anymore. We are Nectar House Girls. Captive and caged, we abandoned pity somewhere beyond the walls of this place.

I didn’t carry on like that when I was brought here, but I had Bird that dark day when I didn’t know where I was, when I had lost my sister forever, when betrayal threatened to unravel my sanity. That was four years ago. Perhaps more. I’ve lost track. What use do House Girls have for calendars?

Bird would have had the crying Girl giggling by now. Instead, the child’s screams echo off the four walls of the interior courtyard, amplified by the enclosed space and my explosive headache. Her voice is a battering ram. It barrels past the bars on her windows, bludgeoning its way through the thick branches of the Sonagachi tree to bore into my skull. This kid is going to be tough to tame. She has the lungs of a fighter.

My hip hurts from lying in the same position all day, but it’s too much effort to roll over and my left cheek is sore. I pressed it against the bars of my room all afternoon and stared across the courtyard, wishing, willing Bird’s heart-shaped face to appear at her window and sing us through the day, but there’s been nothing from her window until the screaming. The twin sensations of relief and dread weave around my spine and make a braid of my backbone. It’s not Bird who’s crying, relief. It’s a new Girl, dread.

All our windows face the square yard and the lush Sonagachi tree dividing us does nothing to dampen her cries or the noisy chaos of evening rush hour. How a living thing can thrive in this smokestack of a city is a marvel plucked from a fairy tale. Most of the books in my bedroom are about the Sonagachi tree and its vile fruits, which is fitting; the Sonagachi is the center of our universe.

Axis mundi. The sacred tree that connects heaven and hell.

The jagged silhouette of the tree’s top branches hangs over the locked door of my room and tells me the sun is setting somewhere. The view from my window is limited to the flat roof of the third floor and the small patch of sky the tree’s crown allows me. The shadow of the Sonagachi stretches across the wooden floorboards, eventually clawing its way up the bookshelves. The day has slipped by me again. No matter, the Sonagachi keeps charge of the hours.

I sniff the air for the scent of food making its way up to our third floor from the kitchens two wings over, but I only catch a faint aroma of cedar from the chips inside the box commode in the corner. Mynah had new bookshelves put in yesterday, conquering yet another parcel of my precious wall space. The smell of the fresh wood shavings also lingers, mixing with car exhaust and diesel from the cargo ships in the harbor a few miles away.

I check the table for the evening dinner tray. I sleep a lot, when not being acoustically accosted by the howls of kidnapped children, and I sometimes miss when the harpy brings my food and water. I’m never truly hungry, the Sona robs us of appetite, but I can never get enough to drink. My throat is gritty like I’ve been swallowing sand, and my pitcher of water has been empty since last night.

I should try to get more sleep before my customers come, but the child continues to wail, pausing only to draw a breath before unleashing a fresh barrage of noise. Each time she pauses to inhale, I hear Blossom call my name—my House name of course. She doesn’t know the real one.

“Ink!”

Of all the Girls on the top two floors, Blossom can project her voice the best. Her window is on the adjacent wall to my left. She’s at least fifteen feet from me and partially blocked by the thick limbs of the tree, but I can hear her as if she is in the same room. Too bad she can’t carry a tune. With a voice like that she could have been a Bird Girl.

“Ink!” Blossom will summon Mynah if she gets any louder. Blossom wants to make sure I’m alright, that last night’s Blights have behaved. She services four times as many Blights as I do, yet she worries. I’m younger than she is by a few years, but far more experienced. I had already been at The Nectar House for three years before Mynah bought her. She is my third Blossom.

I catch a lingering whiff of last night’s Blight, chicken coop and burnt feathers. It’s coming from the brocade chair in the corner. The reek of a particularly sick Blight can linger in my stuffy room for days. I always sit as far away from the Blights as my eleven-by-eleven cell allows. This geographical arrangement suits us both. Touching a House Girl is forbidden. The taboo is centuries old, going back for as long as there have been Blights and House Girls to treat their sickness. Occasionally, a very wealthy Blight will request I sit at their knee so they can look over my shoulder while I read to them. For an obscene amount of jaspers added to triple my usual fee, Mynah will allow this.

Blossom calls again. She knows better than to call me at this time of day. Any minute now, Mynah will be skinning her Sonagachi tree in preparation for this evening’s Blights. We’re like paddocked livestock, enjoying her passive neglect, but she doesn’t want an early bird customer to hear us chattering. If she hears us this late in the day, she’ll board up our windows, which is worse than denying us meals. Like all House procuresses, Mynah cultivates the allure and mystery of her Specialty Top Floor Girls with as much care as she tends to her tree.

The new Girl’s voice catches mid-keen and evolves into a low moan. At last, she has tired herself out. Blossom has given up on getting my attention for the moment, leaving only muffled sounds of late-day traffic to seep past the courtyard walls. I pull the top sheet over me and search for sleep and hope that the new Girl will settle down for her own good. If I can hear her across the courtyard and one floor down, then Mynah can too. Where did Mynah find this marvel? The child’s volume defies what can be expected from one lone voice box.

Bird’s singing is just as powerful. She can make the metal bars on our windows shake. Her voice is a force all its own. Volcano big and desert wide. The cries of the Girl in Bird’s room belongs to someone small. Too small even for The Nectar House. Mynah collects them younger and younger each year.

I wrap the pillow around my head. I’m so tired; last night’s Blight was a first-timer, not one of my regulars, who are tedious but less work than newbies. The Nectar House was his first stop on an international House Girl tour that will span two continents. The Nectar House is one of the most iconic Houses in this part of the world, and it is often the first stop. This is a shame. Every once in a great while, a Blight will tell me something of the outside world, a transgressive and forbidden act, and other times I manage to get a Blight to feed me a crumb or two about the other Houses, which I am very curious about. Aside from the traditional and mandatory Inks, Honeys, and Blossoms, what other kinds of Girls do they have? Do their rooms differ from ours? How do they decide who can SonaScape and who is ill-fated to be a First Floor Girl? Last night’s Blight was hard to understand between all the coughing and his thick accent. He claimed to be a powerful general in his home country, which I had never heard of. My Blights tend to be important something-or-others. He paid for me to read from a fat book of military history while he reaped the Sona’s benefits and stole months off my life.

Military books are a popular Blight pick, second only to the Sonagachi tree poetry. I have three shelves full of books on warfare and armory, but he brought his own, which the Blights seldom do.

When I’m not sleeping, or listening to Bird sing, or arguing with Honey, I’m reading to myself or to the other Girls across the courtyard. My favorite books I’ve read many times; others haven’t been opened in so long they’re sealed shut by silverfish and mold. The heat and the years have warped their spines and faded their covers, but some have outlived over a dozen other Ink Girls before me.

The book I read to last night’s Blight is still where I left it on the gaudy chair reserved for customers. He propped up the cushions to help him breathe, and even still he wheezed and coughed all night. His sickness had deformed his body. After years of labored breathing, he had the rounded pigeon chest that hallmarks the end stages of the illness. I’ll never see him again, but I know, in a few months, he will barely look like a man at all. His own mother won’t recognize him. I like it when Blights are that sick. I like it that without me, or the aid of a House Girl, they would be dead already.

Last night’s Blight stumbled out of my room a healthier man. My three-hour trance earned him about three months of life and cost me the same. He was so shaky and dull-eyed after his SonaScape trance that he forgot his book. I was glad. Military strategy books are by far my favorite.

“Ink!” Blossom sounds different this morning. A thin vein of panic runs through her voice. I know what she wants. She wants to ask me about Bird, but I have nothing to offer her, except maybe a well-crafted lie. Lying to Blossom isn’t easy; she’s the smartest girl Mynah has ever stolen, and I’m too tired to rally a suitable deception.

Blossom is scared, like we all are, that Bird may be dead or dying somewhere in another wing of the House, soon to be buried under the courtyard tree. The ugly truth is that I don’t know. Bird Girls are allowed to leave their rooms. Mynah makes our Bird train the newer House Girls in the other wings. Bird is especially helpful with the hysterics, and often busy, but she has never left the Sonagachi Wing for more than a night or two.

My bones feel heavy. Full of sand. I have to negotiate with the muscles of my arms to sit up. My legs also need convincing.

I wait for another ambush from the shrieking kid. Only the squawking of swiftlet birds fighting for a spot to roost on the Sonagachi tree fills the courtyard. It’s later than I thought.

Blossom grows more insistent. Passersby on the busy street outside the courtyard will hear her. People sometimes call to us from the sidewalk, especially if they hear Bird singing. Most are lewd catcalls, but some, the women, ask us our family names. They could be arrested for trying to help us, or the House Syndicate will string them up along the city wall as examples. Nothing makes Mynah more murderous than complaints from the outside, and if Blossom doesn’t stop yelling for me, she’ll go hungry for a week.

I’ll go to my window in a minute. I want to enjoy one more moment of quiet and pretend Bird is at her window like she always is and that Mynah hasn’t dug a fresh grave and filled it with the body of my missing friend.

My bed is pressed against the only wall without a bookshelf, underneath the only window. I run my fingertips over the words I’ve scratched into the paint to make myself feel better and rally my reserves. Scratching the words onto my walls was Bird’s idea. They were her gift to me, my way to survive here, and reading them makes me feel close to her.

Entheogen, psychopomp, propaganda, menagerist.

Bird is a talented singer, even among other Bird Girls. Angels would hack off their wings for a voice as beautiful as hers. Yet, her true gift, what makes her extraordinary and beloved, is how she helps a Girl find the thing that keeps her spirit alive, the mantra, the memory, the habit that will help a new House Girl endure the tedium of captivity and the terror of the Blights. To me, she gave the gift of words scratched into the plaster wall with a spoon. I quickly learned that words were better than people, for they are loyal and unchanging. I thought it was a dumb idea when she first suggested it, but I owe her and the words my life, what little there is left of it.

Lily pad, tide mill, blow torch, turbine, cactus, koi.

I get to my knees on the bed using the bars of my window to help pull myself up. The thick bars are cemented to the sill, so I can put all my weight on them—not that there is much weight to test them these days.

The four walls of the courtyard are painted a bright ochre. At this time of day, they appear as if on fire. I close my eyes to save my retinas and to steady myself. After a long night, I’m often weak and woozy. Blossom, on the other hand, sits at her window looking as fresh and lovely as her namesake except for faint dark circles under her eyes. Hers are a hearty desert people, and the heat cannot wither her, nor can House Girl work diminish her beauty. Among the many injustices of the world is that so few people will ever see how exceptionally pretty she is. That right is reserved for the Blights that can afford such a pleasure, and the eight Girls in the Sonagachi Wing whose windows all face the same courtyard and who will be her only company for the rest of her brief life.

Silently, I vow to keep my eyes on Blossom and avoid looking at the ground below. It’s only three floors down to the base of the tree. Not far. Not far, but impassable. No man’s land, kill zone, fire bay, trench.

A slight breeze from the harbor carries the stench of brine and burning trash. The branches of the umbrella-shaped tree creak and twist in response. The white flowers shiver like a shaking fist. Its limbs grow upward and close to the trunk, so it can grow with abandon and not overtake the dimensions of our courtyard. Every year the vile arbor grows a foot as it’s nourished by the rotting corpses of little girls.

Blossom is the only one at her window. The others are sleeping, or eavesdropping. The harpy’s room is opposite mine, and dark. Key may not be at her sewing machine but could be squatting like a toad under her windowsill, waiting to hear something worth reporting to Mynah.

Blossom flashes me a tight smile when she sees me, or what I assume is the familiar smudge that is me. Her eyesight is so poor she can barely see me less than twenty feet away.

Key has yet to braid our hair for the evening, and Blossom’s chestnut waves tumble over her day clothes, a saffron-colored tunic which gets tighter across her chest every day. The metal bars on Blossom’s window are painted gold and filigreed unlike my plain iron ones. Today hers have been freshly wrapped in yellow and orange marigolds. The flowers frame her face and make her look like a goddess painted on a temple wall. Marigolds mean a big-shot Blight is coming to see her and likely to stay all night. Fresh flowers this far from the country are expensive, and Mynah runs The Nectar House with the stranglehold of a miser. That woman would walk on her elbows just to save the wear on her shoes.

“Blossom,” I hiss, “keep your voice down. Mynah and the entire House will hear you and that screaming kid won’t be the only one getting the strap.”

Blossom tilts her head and listens to the sounds of the House. All Top Floor Girls are acutely attuned to every thud, groan, and creak of The Nectar House, no matter how faint. If one of us sneezes in the night, we all know exactly who it was, but Blossom’s hearing is exceptional, probably because her vision is so poor.

I prick my ears for the presence of Mynah or Key’s clumsy limp in the corridor outside my room, which is closest to the stairwell. I hear nothing through the locked door but the empty, hollow silence of the hallway and the occasional squeak of the Goon shifting in the folding chair on the landing as he keeps guard.

The House has a heavy silence. Only the usual street sounds seep in over the courtyard rooftop. A taxi horn, a vendor hawking artichokes, the whine of a truck braking at the intersection. The narrow alley between the Sonagachi Wing and the Garden Wing the next building over, amplifies every sound. This small gap, too small for a person to slip through, is the closest we get to the outside world. For four years, I’ve heard every street brawl, smelled every fried fish, and blindly catalogued and predicted the rhythm and flow of life that happens thirty feet from my bedside without having set foot outside this room.

Another squeaky complaint from the metal chair on the landing. Must be the fat Goon with the patchy mustache shifting his weight as he keeps a bored, drunken watch of the third floor.

Blossom cranes her neck to get a better view of Bird’s room on the floor beneath ours.

“Bird?” she asks.

I allow myself a peek at Bird’s window, careful not to drop my gaze to the ground below. My view is less obstructed by Sonagachi’s leaves than Blossom’s view, though that barely matters; she can’t see beyond her hand. She was fourteen when Mynah stole her from her father. He was a gentle, educated man, a leader of his nomadic tribe who brought his only daughter to the city to get fitted for glasses. That was the last time he saw her.

The lump on Bird’s bed has the shape of a little kid. I knew it. So young. I’m never wrong.

“Bird’s still not in her room, is she, Ink?”

“Not yet.”

Blossom climbs onto her window seat. Her long legs take up the entire casement. Since she was brought here almost a year ago, she must have grown a few inches, but this is hard to imagine; we’ve never been in the same room. She’s sixteen, only a year older than me and among the eldest of the Top Floor Girls, but she seems so much older lately. Too old for The Nectar House. The dread along my spine turns like a screw.

“Are you alright?” she asks.

“Fine.”

She squints at me. “You sound tired, like your own sheets could crush you. The Blights complain if a Girl looks worn out.”

“Blights don’t notice anything as long as they’re getting theirs, and I feel fine.” Only half of that sentence is true. My room doesn’t have a window seat like Blossom’s, but the sill is wide enough for me to lean heavily on it. Blossom is right; I can barely keep my head up.

“How many nights have you worked without the help of the SonaDrops?” she asks, annoyed because she knows I’m lying.

I shrug, though I know she can’t see it. A couple of months ago she was able to see me at my window, not clearly, but enough to make out if I was sitting or standing or waving. Not anymore. This is the toll the Blights have taken on her health. If Blossom lives out the year, she’ll be blind as a mole.

“You can’t keep giving your SonaDrops away,” she whispers. “The next Blight, and not even a very sick one, is going to drain you dry if you keep it up.”

“I can handle the Blights with half my dose of SonaDrops.”

“You don’t sound like you could handle a baby sneezing on you. And if Mynah finds out her only Ink Girl is giving away her drops, you’ll get the strap, or worse.” Her eyes flicker to the base of the Sonagachi tree.

The waning light is too bright, and for a moment I shut my eyes against it, against Blossom, the ground below. I rest my head in my arms and say, “The Ink Girl from Aeolian House died two weeks ago, making me the only Ink Girl in the entire city. I told Mynah to triple my going rate. She won’t risk that kind of profit for the joy of punishing me and certainly not with the busy season right around the corner. I’m fine with only half a dose.”

“Honey doesn’t need two extra SonaDrops. Not every night.”

“You’re wrong, Blossom. She’s wasting away.” Honey is the only House Girl I’ve ever known to put on weight after arriving at The Nectar House. Honey’s small for her age and has no memory of living anywhere but the street; Mynah found her eating out of dumpsters. She’s been here over a year. Without my extra SonaDrops added to her allotted two, she would not have lasted six months.

Blossom says, “Bird wouldn’t want you giving another Girl your share.”

“Bird gives her drops away all the time. Only difference is that she wastes hers on the First Floors, who are half-dead or hopped up on the Oxmed Key gives them. Bird shared her own SonaDrops and went without for weeks while she trained me, and she did the same for you.” I press my nails into my palm to chase away the thought of Bird buried below with the others. “You can’t see how thin Honey’s gotten lately.”

“She’s stronger than you think. At the end of civilization, it will be Honey and the roaches thriving among the ruins.” Blossom plucks a marigold petal, places it in the palm of her hand, and blows it to me like a kiss. “Key says she doesn’t know where Bird is either.”

“Key’s a liar.”

“You can’t be right all the time, Ink.” She plucks another petal and readies another missile, a peace offering perhaps. She and I don’t argue or disagree on much except about Key.

“I’m always right about Key,” I say, “and leave your bars alone. Mynah will have at the soles of your feet until they’re pulp if you ruin those flowers. Blossom Girls are just as pretty seated.”

Blossom screws up her face but does what I tell her. Her green shawl slips off her shoulder. It’s her favorite because it used to belong to Bird. She re-drapes it, tossing one end behind her back and tucking the other end under a shimmery, mustard-colored crop top. Her middrift is flat, and her smooth skin is a light brown layered over gold. After a night of soul-sucking Blights, she still looks like a movie star.

“Bird has been gone for too long.” She said this yesterday and every day for a week. It’s her way of asking if I think Bird is lying in the House morgue, laid out on a slab next to the crematorium ovens, her body being prepared to fertilize the Sonagachi.

“I’m sure she’s fine.” This is a lie. One of many I predict I will say today, but it’s a big one. “Mynah has her training a fresh batch of Girls in another wing. Getting ready for the House Girl tours and the busy season.”

A warm breeze stirs the air, revealing the golden underside of the Sonagachi’s leaves; the tree shiverers like it’s about to set itself on fire.

I make myself a deal. I can go back to sleep once I check under the tree.

One, two, three …

Soil. Caked and cracked and speckled with white bird feces. Same as yesterday. Same as the day before and the one before that, except that there’s a splatter of swiftlet droppings defiling the spot Mynah buried the poor Apple Girl weeks ago. My hatred of those birds is second only to my hatred of Mynah.

Blossom bites her bottom lip. “What if you ask Mynah about Bird?”

“Mynah has been busy. Hardly comes to my room these days. Out collecting Girls. Business is booming.” Thanks to me.

“So, ask when she does come to visit you.”

“Visit? Blossom, I can’t ask Mynah anything. She wouldn’t tell me out of spite anyway.”

Blossom looks like she might push the subject but decides against it. In The Nectar House, saying less is best. Words are what get people into trouble.

“You heard the new Girl?” she asks.

“Astronauts circling the globe heard her.”

“She sounds really little.”

“With a set of pipes worthy of Notre Dame.”

“Notre Dame?” Blossom’s brow furrows.

“An old church. Far away. Built about five hundred years after the Blight Plague. The gutters are all shaped like Garuda. I have a whole book on it. I’ll read it to you when Bird comes back.” Blossom smiles a little. Blossom’s is the most curious mind I’ve ever known, and Bird loves all nonsense to do with gods and heavenly devotion.

I peek at Bird’s window. The small lump on the bed is gone. “The little siren is gone. She may be under the bed.” I did that for a while, too, when I first got here.

“What do you think,” Blossom says and peers toward Bird’s window, “was she sold or snatched?”

“Sold. No question.”

Blossom nods: she knows I can divine an origin story within seconds. The cries of this new Girl were for someone she believed truly loved her; only betrayal can conjure them. Ululations. A loud cry, a lamentation delivered.

“And Honey?” Blossom asks.

Honey’s window is empty. “Still asleep,” I say. Honey is a child of the streets. Before she arrived at the Nectar House she slept under an overpass. She can sleep through an army invading the city if she chooses.

“Why do you think Mynah put the new kid in Bird’s room?” asks Blossom.

“With lungs like that? Bird will train the kid to SonaScape with song, then Mynah will sell Little Bird to another House. So young and trained by the best Bird Girl, from the best House in the city? She’ll be worth her weight in jaspers if she can get herself together.” I’ll counsel Mynah on how to froth up desire for the Little Bird Girl and start a bidding war. The sale of this kid to another House will put Mynah in a good mood, and if Bird isn’t back in her room by then, I’ll try to trick Mynah into telling me why Bird isn’t in the Sonagachi Wing.

Blossom presses her finger to her top lip. “Maybe Mynah wants a second Bird Girl? What if—” Her eyes widen. Then she hooks her thumbs together, flaps her fingers, and disappears into her room.

The door to the interior courtyard is directly underneath my window, my only blind spot, so I never see Mynah coming, but Blossom must have heard the rusty hinges on the screen door.

Only Key and Mynah, accompanied by her attendant Goon, are allowed near the precious tree. I lean away from the sill, as far as I can without losing my view. Is there a Goon behind her carrying a shovel?

I catch the shimmer of sequined purple. Mynah is already dressed to greet the Blights in the front parlor, all of whom expect to see her in deep shades of gentian violet, Mynah’s signature color. Heliotrope, indigo, Byzantium, phlox. She never wears anything but, and any other procuress in the district daring to sport even the palest lilac could wake to find her House on fire. Procuresses are a vain lot, and Mynah has a reputation to uphold.

I sneak a better peek. My spine relaxes. It’s only a large knife in Mynah’s hands.

She examines the bark, one hand holds the knife, and the other rests on her narrow hips, her back to me. Across her shoulders, embroidered in sea silk, are two hawks flanking a Sonatree with their talons outstretched. Key is responsible for the fine embroidery, but the silk thread is mine to boast. Garments embellished with sea silk are the mark of power and prestige of a Blight House procuress. Every inch of that thread is a symbol of the ruthless acumen it takes to spin gold out of little girls. Mynah would pull out her own tongue before she’d admit to it, but she has me to thank for her closet full of finery.

Yellow house sandals on her disease-ridden feet stick out from under a floor length dress. The sandals are the plastic, dime store kind that flap when she walks. Before she welcomes her adoring customers, she’ll cram her flattened arches and extra hind toe into slim stilettos to hide her deformities; it must be excruciating. I love the thought of this so much that I think about it before I go to sleep. I risk another peek, hoping for any evidence that Mynah has gotten sicker, but she looks no worse than a week ago. Pity. Mynah’s father was a Blight, making her a Half-Blight. This is the only way a woman can get the deadly disease, but they live longer than Full-Blights. The disease will eventually kill Mynah, but not soon enough.

Once she chooses a spot on the trunk, she presses her knife against the bark. Dangling from the wooden handles bookending the sharp blade are the removable leather straps that rarely leave her person. She wraps the straps tightly around her wrists so she can keep a tighter, more controlled grip on the knife.

With slow, measured strokes, she scrapes off slivers of bark thin as a sheet of paper. Cream-colored patches pockmark the trunk where she has flayed it many times before. One night, after several cups of SonaDrink, Mynah explained that too many wounds to the wood face can make the tree sick. She kept me up until dawn and told me how this tree had been in her family for a dozen generations and any babies born to them would know less tenderness than this tree. With each sip of alcohol, she grew more maudlin and sobbed as she claimed to love the Sonagachi more than she has ever loved anything or anyone. What does it say about a person who ritually flays what she loves most?

Heavy footsteps echo in the courtyard along with the tinny chime of bells. One of Mynah’s Goon henchmen lumbers toward Mynah carrying a metal bucket. Belled tassels dangle off the edges of his shirt and the cord cinching his waist and ankles. Mynah is a strict traditionalist and makes her Goons wear a uniform that goes back centuries to the very first SonaHouses, when people believed the drawstrings could keep evil spirits from entering the body. Like Mynah and most Goons who work for the Houses, he’s a Half-Blight. Only Full-Blights can have children, and these half-breeds are barren, ugly, and not to be trusted because they have a foot in each camp. Minion, myrmidon, bruiser, brute. The one next to Mynah must be new: I don’t recognize him.

He scratches at the tufts of yellow fuzz sprouting above his ears. He has the doughy countenance of a mama’s boy with puffy lips and slightly down-turned eyes that give him the look of someone about to bore you with their sob tale. The red skin tags under his neck indicate that his disease is still at an early stage. Symptoms don’t manifest until puberty, so this young man should last Mynah another year or two if he can save up enough to buy a few nights with a House Girl. A cheap First Floor of course. Two years’ salary couldn’t buy him a night with one of us, the Specialty Top Floor Girls. He looks only a couple years older than me, about seventeen. He’ll die young, but he’ll outlive me.

Mynah orders him to fill his bucket with leaves. The alcohol used for SonaDrink comes from the waxy leaves and is as potent as rocket fuel. It’s expensive and the Blights love it, and the Goons are addicted to it, but the real currency comes from the hallucinogenic healing SonaDrops distilled from Sonagachi bark. Without Sona and a House Girl to catalyze and administer it, dead Blights would line the sidewalks.

Mynah’s tree is worth more than entire countries make in year, and she employs an army of Goons to make sure it stays in her family. The Nectar House is the only House in the region with its own SonaTree and while Mynah and her family own it, the House Syndicate controls how much The Nectar House gets and distributes the rest for their own profit reimbursing Mynah by allowing her to keep most of the profits she makes off the House Girls. Most House owners work their Girls too hard shortening and already shortened life span. If every House owned its own Sonagachi Tree, they would get too greedy and end up killing the rare and delicate trees, but not Mynah. She’s a precise monster, knowing exactly how much to take and still secure tomorrow’s profit. She’s the Goldilocks of The Nectar House, so skilled in the sweet spot of flesh peddling. I dream daily of her murder.

Immolation, excarnation, evisceration, blitz.

The young Goon gawks at the third floor, trying to catch a glimpse of us. From below, I imagine we look like we’re in a shop window like the Girls on display in the cheaper SonaHouses in the District. Currently, on offer at The Nectar House: The Blossom, a lovely young lady of sixteen with jade eyes and curls that caracole to her waist. In the window to her right: The Ink Girl. A skinny girl with a long, plain face, often described as pinched and surly, bordering on the equine. Small for her age, with a sharp nose and edges to match.

The Goon must have just started working for Mynah because he has yet to discover that she’ll cuff him with her leather knife straps for a lot less than gawking. Goons aren’t allowed to have contact with us unless it’s to haul heavy things into and out of our rooms, or to help Mynah hold us down if Key isn’t strong enough. I sigh in relief because he isn’t carrying the body of my missing friend, only a bucket. He’s here to help Mynah collect bark, not carry a lifeless Bird.

Mynah grunts with effort as she scrapes at the trunk. Harvesting Sona takes honed skill. She culls the bark of the tree like her mother taught her, and her mother before her. This Sonagachi has replenished the Life Force of Blights for generations. This same tree has extinguished the light of countless House Girls, and I want to set it ablaze with Mynah’s Goons hanging from the branches like flaming garlands.

Mynah stops scraping, her knife poised in mid-air before the next slice. She angles the blade carefully, rocks it back and forth until she catches the sunlight. The steel blinks and the beam bounces off the blade and hits my face.

Mynah’s laugh echoes against the four walls of the courtyard as I scramble away from the window.

Mynah doesn’t spend much energy on petty torments. However, should the opportunity arise, she loves to remind me how easily she can end me and mine. I’ve made her a very wealthy woman, and I suppose her displays of intimidation help restore the imbalance in our relationship that has evolved through the years. If word got out that an Ink Girl with an eighth-grade education was the confidant of the most powerful procuress in the city, a House war would ignite over which Syndicate faction would usurp her House and take command of her tree.

Mynah is a monster, probably a murderer, but I’m less afraid of her than I once was. I brush the fat pads of my fingers over the words on my wall as a form of meditation on the cunning required not only to survive Mynah, but to maneuver her. To emerge victorious, the art of war advises caution, watchfulness, strategy. Fortunately for all the Top Floor Girls, I’m excellent at all of these.

Tinderbox, flashpoint, Greek fire, powder keg.

I keep these words just under the sill and touch them every time Mynah’s in the courtyard. Worried thoughts return to my missing Bird. The feeling of dread tugs at my chest. A spider on a signal line. I remove the books from my headboard shelf. This is where I keep my secret words, the ones I read when I need to slow my racing thoughts. It was Bird who wrote them.

She carved each letter with solemn, deliberate intention as if they would one day be read by mystics at the end of civilization. In her silky, serene voice, she said, “Ink, my dreamlet. Collect words that will allow you to trek across continents, conquer queens, vanquish armies, and never leave this room. Say a word aloud and it’s gone. Write it on your wall and it will live inside you forever.”

My forever. Maybe two or three more years. That was so many Blights ago. By now, I’ve inscribed every spare inch of wall. Mynah will paint over them before my body is cold, but for now the words are better than food. Detonation, incineration, fusillade. Sustenance in a trio of syllables.

The little Girl billeting in Bird’s room must also discover what will help her survive House life or she’ll be worm food. She’s young and scared, I get it. My first days were marked by wordless terror under the very bed I’m sitting on. Bird lured me out with a cup of mango juice and a summer song about snapdragons. One more day of noncompliance would have earned me a pallet on the First Floor. As Bird wiped my sticky face with her sleeve, I decided that if a creature this pure and gentle could survive this place, then so could I.

Trestle bridge, pitcher plant, matador, cenote, shikra bird.

Bird.

If she’s not buried under the Sonagachi tree, then where has Mynah taken her and how do I get Mynah to bring her back?

Chapter 2
Little Bird

I don’t bother to turn my face from the wall when I hear someone at the door. My Blights prefer a later evening, and I’m not dressed yet, so I know it’s only Key. Maybe she’s brought water.

I’ve been flitting in and out of a gray and restless slumber. The new Girl has been mercifully silent, and I told Blossom to get some rest. Honey hasn’t made an appearance all day as she sleeps off the extra SonaDrops I gave her.

After a few years and a few hundred Blights, experienced Girls like me and Bird can work without the protection of the powerful hallucinogen, but Mynah is a shrewd businesswoman and more generous with her SonaDrops than most procuresses. She chooses to sacrifice a thimbleful of costly Sona to keep trained, popular Girls healthy a little bit longer and ultimately protect her investment. Her strap would shred the soles of my feet if she found out I have gone a single Blight without the allotted two SonaDrops. I’m not sure what she would do to me if she found out I’ve been SonaScaping on half my nightly dose for weeks.

The lock clicks. A second set of footsteps follow the tap-slide patter of Key’s limp. She’s brought me another girl. I bet it’s the loud one from Bird’s room. Fourth Girl she’s brought this week. Mynah’s latest shopping trip to the country must have been fruitful. This won’t take long; all I need is two minutes to decide the kid’s fate. Clothos, Lachesis, Atropos. I glance over my shoulder.

The girl’s face is tear-stained and scared, but she’s calm. Too calm.

A tiny arrow pierces my heart. No pitcher in Key’s hands. Water would be infinitely more welcome than either of them. I don’t hurry to get myself out of bed. Most girls aren’t worth the trouble, but those lungs hold promise.

The kid shows little interest in my room and only stares at me with glassy eyes heavy at half-mast. Hers is the unmistakable waxy countenance of someone doped up on Oxmed.

I shoot Key a murderous look. Perhaps the kid thinks it’s aimed at her because she tries to hide behind Key, who gently pushed the kid to me like an offering. The girl lists slightly to one side, thanks to the Oxmed tablets Mynah tells Key to push in order to promote this dull compliance. The drug was designed for cattle but is used liberally in the Houses to make underfed girls gain weight quickly and foster the illusion of thriving health with the added bonus of a pacifying, narcotic effect. Oxmed is as good as Mynah’s strap when it comes to submission, but it’s a lot less effort and leaves no marks. After what happened to the Apple Girl last week, one would think Key had learned her lesson and kept her poison to herself.

I shift my weigh to sit up. The herculean effort this takes worries me. My sheets are soaked through again and smell sour, as does my flimsy day dress. The night sweats are a new thing. Key will have to bring me fresh linen when she dresses me for tonight.

Pins and needles sprint up my legs as I step onto the polished hard wood of the floor. The soles of my feet have dead zones where I can’t feel anything, so I have to watch my balance. Nerve damage from working too long with the Blights. Typical end stage House Girl symptom. I push that out of my mind. That’s tomorrow’s war.

The room swims when I stand. Pitchpole, capsize, cowp.

I make one, two slow revolutions around the kid to confirm my suspicions of humble origins. She’s about seven, or a small eight. Country girl. Not well fed but there’s some length of bone. Corn flatbread at both meals, maybe sorghum rice or casava, a bit of palm oil or peanuts have plumped up those baby cheeks.

Her lip quivers. Barely holding on to the silence she’s been warned to keep. Her eyes shift to Key. Unsure what to do next.

I snort. “Look to that one for advice”—I tilt my head at Key— “and you won’t last long here.”

I don’t bother to look at Key registering any of that. I try not to look at her at all, ever.

The child looks tired and in need of a nap as well as a bath. She draws her shoulders back, trying to look tough. This is the resolve I’m hunting for. She’s smart enough to understand that I’m someone she must impress. Top Floor Girls must be mentally strong as well as smart. Meddlesome Key must have coached her.

“Her voice is powerful, Ink,” says Key, “and beautiful. She’ll mar, mex.” She takes a slow breath to try and tame her stammer. “She’ll make an excellent Bird Girl.”

I glare at Key to shut up and immediately her antsy fingers twist and tighten a red cord bracelet tied around her wrist. The skin underneath the cord is bruised purple and matches the ugly welt blooming across half her face. Smudges of indigo-blues and sickly yellows spread across her sharp cheekbones all the way to her ear. This is Mynah’s handiwork; she is quite accomplished with her knife strap and can bust open a lip with a flick of the wrist. Key is quick to inspire anger because she’s slow and doltish, prone to error and clumsy to boot. The face injury is new, but the one on her wrist is from an irritating habit of self-harm. It drives me to distraction, and she knows it. Her constant state of injury is among the many reasons I choose to ignore her. It hurts to look.

I lean into the new girl’s face, confirming her need of soap and water, and say, “You’ve been bought as a House Girl.” I made sure to land hard on the word “bought,” and the kid did not flinch. Good.

I pinch the girl’s sleeve. Baft fabric. Square collar, embroidered with the ornamental motifs of the highlands. Wild cats, lilies, cloudy mountain peaks. Across her chest is a geometric design over a snakebird. Heaven, earth, hell. All hand woven. Exquisite. The blouse is paired with a simple wrap skirt down to her ankles. These must be the same clothes she wore when she got here this morning. She’ll soon be relieved of them and fitted with a finer, proper uniform befitting a House Girl. Mynah won’t abide such a provincial costume to tarnish her House aesthetic or the mystique that her Girls are ethereal creatures beyond the trappings of history or family and devoid of culture or people. Shame. Such fine needlework.

One more revolution. Twice the girl yawns and when she rubs her eyes, something catches the light. Sewn over her heart is a silver disc no bigger than a penny. The stitching here is not as tidy as the seams of the rest of the girl’s clothes. Peasants are just as superstitious as Blights and will add shiny objects to their clothes to dazzle and distract the evil eye. Someone loved this kid enough to stich, although hastily, a ward against harm. Mynah’s arrival was probably a surprise to the mother or the aunt or an older sister. They could have dressed the kid in a suit of gleaming armor, but it will not protect her now.

When I push her hair away from her face to get a better look, I smell the neem oil and camphor Key uses to kill fleas. Remote village for sure. I’m never wrong. “Do you even know what a House Girl is?”

The girl bites her lip. Maybe she can’t understand me. Mynah scavenges the remote villages where there are two dialects for every shade of skin.

Key watches us and releases the nasty string tied to her wrist and lets her hands crawl up and down a lock of hair next to her face, raveling and unraveling her braid with nimble, arachnid fingers. She does this whenever she’s uneasy or confused, which pretty much means that she does this all the time. Her hair is a dark sepia just like mine if it were not dyed. She wears it longer than me in intricate braids she cannot leave alone. Fiddling with them is another habit which makes people want to punch her. When it comes to Key, it’s a familiar tug-of-war in my chest. Pulling at one end of the rope is my rage, volcanic and just under the surface, kindled by hurt. At the other end, holding on with an unrelenting force, is an ancient tenderness which I fail to extinguish no matter how many years pass and how much suffering I have endured alongside her.

“How about Blights?” I ask the kid who waits for me with blank eyes. “Do you know what a Blight is?”

She swallows hard and nods, perhaps wondering if she’s going to be fed to one. SonaGirls can only be found in large cities, where they can be regulated by the government and controlled by the House Syndicate. Misinformation about Blights and the Girls who service them runs rampant in rural areas. The Syndicate keeps it this way, capitalizing on ignorance and isolation and brute force to maintain political power and control. Blights sometimes tell me of the latest nonsense to grace the tabloids, so I’m hardly surprised at how clueless the general public is about the Blight House world. Little girls yanked from backwater villages know even less.

“I want to go home,” the girl says. Her voice holds the promise of a loud, intolerable wailing.

“This place is called The Nectar House,” I say, like I have hundreds of times before.

“I already have a house, and I don’t like it here. When can I go—”

“We don’t talk about sis, hiss, we don’t say this.” Key stops, sighs. Begins again, moves between me and the kid. “Those words aren’t for here.”

I give her another hard glare to convey I don’t need or want her help. Unless she is dressing me, I try not to stand too close to her. Neither of us moves, an old game to see who will be the first to step back. Key is my same age, but I’ve always outweighed her because she’s been sickly her whole life and came into the world as blue as one of her bruises.

Neither of us blinks. We’re identical in height, making it easy for me to bore my eyes into her weird pupils, which are overly large and oblong from a deformity that makes them spill into the brown irises. They look like two tiny keyholes. They’re not her namesake, only a happy coincidence that gives Mynah the added conceit of a Key Girl with irises to match her job description. Key Girls don’t service Blights. They’re little more than maids but having a Key Girl with such a singular deformity is yet another draw to The Nectar House. This little nuance was my suggestion, of course.

Key starts a fresh fish braid from a handful of hair over her brow, half-covering her face as she does so. I decide to get back into bed, as my stamina for being upright and out of bed is waning. Never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lie, never lie when you can sleep. Exhaustion is a soldier’s greatest foe. The sooner I finish with this kid, the sooner my head can fall on that pillow.

“This is a Blight House,” I start again. “A lady called Mynah owns it and everything in it. Her family has owned this House and the SonaTree out there since the Blight Plague.”

Blank stare. A swiftlet would show more understanding than this bumpkin. The Blight Plague changed the course of history, and not a corner of the world was spared. How can this kid know so little of a global phenomenon that killed millions and enslaved so many? The isolation of the rural provinces is often accompanied by a mighty ignorance that is generations deep. My village was a dump, but at least we had a bus stop and a moldy cinema and a highway close enough to the city to know all about Blights.

The kid’s lip trembles.

Steady now. The rest of your short life depends on the next few minutes. She meets my gaze dead on. Good on her. “Blights need House Girls—”

“—because Blights are sick.” Her accent is not from the city. Boondocks, sticks, wilds. I’m always right.

“The Blights are sick,” I nod. “They need House Girls to administer the SonaDrops.”

“Which cures them!” she says.

Leave it to Key to explain it all wrong. If it were up to Key, all girls would be made Top Floors, we’d be swimming in cadavers, and the Sonagachi would be twice as tall. Sickly Girls, weak Girls, suicidal Girls, they all take Blights with them when they die. This is bad for business, and nothing makes Mynah more liberal with her strap than risking the reputation as a House that kills its customers.

This is what happened to the hapless Apple Girl. Key pleaded for clemency, begged me to make her a Specialty Girl and spare her the short, cruel life on the First Floor. I was surprised I managed to train the girl at all or that she survived her First Night. Mynah must have picked her up for cheap: she was dangerously malnourished, and no one knew what language she spoke. She was prone to panic and had a terrible time learning to SonaScape. In the end, the Apple Girl got hooked on all the Oxmed Key gave her and died overdosed and SonaStuck along with her miserable Blight.

Whether her death was volitional or a mishap, no one will ever know. It was a mistake to make her one of us, but I relented. The other Girls think I’m cruel to condemn so many to the airless rooms and the brutal Blights below, the rough men with rough lives who can’t afford better than First Floor Girls. Mynah works First Floors like farm animals from dusk to dawn, which is the quickest death available in a Blight House. Misplaced compassion brings death to your company. Neither Blossom nor Bird can see this. In the long run, the Top Floor Girls suffer less. No one seems to understand these scales but me.

The girl interrupts my reverie by saying that her stomach hurts, and she needs to use the outhouse.

I’ve zoned out again. Happens more and more. Need to catch up on some rest.

“We don’t have outhouses here, but every Girl has one of those.” Key points to the box commode next to the door.

The kid looks at the wooden cube as if a Blight is hiding inside the commode and is about to jump out any second.

Key demonstrates by opening the lid on the top, then holding the side door open to display the chamber pot stashed inside. The door is made of fine maple, carved with birds soaring over rushes and riverbanks. Thunderbox, necessary box, night commode, crapper. Whatever you call it, however you decorate it, the birds blazoned all over our clothes, rugs, cutlery, and hair combs serve as a reminder that our entire existence revolves around the Blights. Even this.

“Smell that?” Key tilts the chamber pot.

The girl looks dubious but sniffs.

“Cedar chips,” says Key. “It’s my job to switch them out. Makes it not hell, sell, smell.”

“Why can’t we go outside instead?” the kid asks. “Why are all the doors locked?”

“To protect you,” Key says.

“From what?”

This is taking too long.

“Blights,” I tell her. “Other Houses who want to raid The Nectar House and steal Girls, but the Goons are here to make sure that doesn’t happen. You’ll be safe—fine here.” I try not to stumble at that last part. “As long as you follow the rules and do what I tell you.”

“What will the Blights do to me?”

“Nothing,” I lie. “They can’t touch you.” This is true. The only good, true thing about the Blight Houses. Inviolable, inalienable, immutable, sure.

“If ever a Blight dies, tries,” Key adds, “then yell out for a Goon. There is one on every floor. The Blights pay Mynah to spend time with any House Girl they choose. All Girls are different, but the hole, role of the Top Floor Girls is the same.”

The kid balls her fists against her colorful skirt. It’s almost endearing when she says, “I don’t want to be a Top Girl.”

“Fine.” I’ve no time for milksops and snowflakes. My pillow beckons. “Then you can go to the First Floor.”

“Oh no, you should give up, live up here.” Key kneels before the Little Bird Girl, straightens her collar, and says, “The First Floor is not very nice.”

“Do you live there?” the kid asks.

Not anymore.

Key says, “Not anymore.”

An image of Key fresh from the First Floor flashes before me. She looked like a shadow wrapped in a dress. Revenant, eidolon, chimera, wraith.

Key says, “My room is on this floor, but I’m different from the other Girls. I fake, make our clothes and fring, bet, fetch things for the Girls on the top two floors who are very special. Like you. That’s why Mynah chose you out of all the little girls. Your voice makes you special.”

Your voice makes you prey. Your voice got you sold. Your voice shortened your life.

My vision goes fuzzy along the edges. I’m queasy with fatigue. For a second, I can’t decide if I’m standing or sitting.

Key is explaining something about the SonaScape. My head feels like it’s floating in the corners of the ceiling. I’m so thirsty.

“Top Floors don’t cry or scream,” Key drones on, “and aren’t afraid of the Blights or the SonaScape. That’s the trance, remember?”

More lip quivering. The girl’s hold on her nerves is fraying. She’s exhausted too, I can hear it in her voice as she asks, “When I escape with the Blight, will it hurt?”

“It’s called a SonaScape and, no,” I answer. “It makes you tired.” So tired.

“Is it scary?”

“Can be,” I reward her with an honest response because her questions have moved away from thoughts of home.

Her eyes water.

“It’s like being asleep and following someone into their dream.” Key pauses to see if the kid is getting any of this. “So, it’s strange.”

The girl’s mouth opens. “Is it magic?”

“Yes,” says Key as I say, “No.”

Our eyes lock. There is no end to the ways in which we are different.

My head is pounding. I imagine a battalion of tin toy soldiers thumping their rifle butts against my cranium. I have to hurry this up or I’ll pass out. “Listen kid, the SonaDrops we use on the Blights come from that tree out there. Just a boring old tree. The House Girl takes some SonaDrops along with her Blight customer. They both have a dream at the same time. The same dream. His dream. Girls just watch. When they wake up, the Blight is less sick. He pays Mynah a bunch of jaspers and goes home. Then we get to rest quietly in our beds tucked away in our own rooms. That’s it. No magic trick.”

The girl steps away from Key. “What about me? Will I get sick?”

Loaded question I’m too tired to answer.

“No,” says Key quickly, wondering perhaps if I’m going to terrify the child with the truth. “The Girls get two SonaDrops every night, before the Blight gets here or with the Blight if he prefers it that way. The SonaDrops help the girls start and stop the Blight’s dreams, but the SonaDrops also keeps the Girls from getting too weak all at once. Protects them. I told you that.”

Little Bird nods. “Sona cures the Blights.”

Country Girls. So dense.

“No,” Key says. If she’s growing impatient, I can’t tell. Years ago, a fist mangled the right side of her face, making it easy for her to mask what she’s thinking. Dissembler, hypocrite, phony, fraud.

“The Sona can’t cure them. Nothing can,” Key says. “It only makes them less sick.”

And hastens our death. I hold my tongue on this part. Too much information too soon will only prolong this and unleash more howling.

Key’s explaining it the way Bird taught it to me, and I wonder if Bird gave Key the same speech. Key started as a First Floor Girl and was never trained to SonaScape. An image of Key lying on a pallet serving twelve Blights a night morphs into Little Bird. Emaciate, wither, languish, fade. Bird tried to teach Key to SonaScape, but that almost killed them both. Key’s gift at the sewing machine was what ultimately saved her. I was the one who suggested it to Mynah.

“The SonaDrops will protect you,” I say. Bird’s face pops into my mind and I push it aside. “But not as much as your wits will. If you don’t work hard and learn fast, you’ll get stuck in the Blight’s SonaScape, his dream, and you’ll die and die gruesome. All Blights are greedy. Once we give them their SonaDrops, they try to take as much energy from you as they can and try to stay inside the dream and resist as you try to pull them out. Even though staying inside will kill them.” And us.

“It’s like a tug-of-war, and they’re greedy, just like Ink said.”

Although the girl looks confused, tug-of-war is a good way to describe what it’s like. Key must have gotten this metaphor from Bird too.

Key tucks a stray strand of hair behind the girl’s ear. “Ink will reach, teach you how to use the SonaDrops and find the balance. Give enough of yourself so the Blight can have some of your health—”

I interrupt before she fumbles the rest, “But not give too much of yourself or—”

“I will die.” The girl says with a nod. She knows she’s doing well. Good on her.

“Yes,” I tell her. “You learn to use the SonaDrops, or you will die.”

“Of gruesome.” The girl nods again with more confidence. The Oxmed may be wearing off; she’s more alert and keeps turning her head to the locked door.

“Nothing will happen to you if you fake, take your SonaDrops every night”—Key’s eyes dart at me— “and if you’re careful and earn, leach, learn everything Ink teaches you. She’s going to train you.”

Me? Why me instead of Bird?

Key reads the question on my face. “Mynah said this one’s yours. She’ll be a Nectar House Girl if you can teach her to SonaScape.”

The finality of Key’s statement seems to resonate because the girl’s breath quickens. Mine does too. Bird trains most of the Girls, especially the Bird Girls, all of whom get sold to other Houses. One Bird Girl per House. It’s how it’s done, how it’s always done. Key is confused.

The kid sighs. I wait for tears, for panic, for the full-on frantic pull on the doorknob.

Instead, she swallows a sob. “I won’t do it.” Her voice is even. Clear and clean as a ringing bell. I lie down on my side, head in my hand, elbow on the bed, curious to see how far her bravado will take her before she breaks or I lose patience and send her packing downstairs. Either way they leave, so I don’t much care which.

“I won’t sing for the nasty Blights. I’ll leave this place.”

“First Floor it is.” I lie down. All sorted. Back to sleep.

“No.” Key kneels in front of her. “There are boons, Goons at every exit. And one on every floor. You’ll get hurt if you try to run.”

“I don’t care. Put me on the First Floor,” she says, steady as an archer. “I’ll be closer to the street.”

There it is. Top Floor grit. Pugilist, prize-fighter, gladiator, grunt. First trial over. If she survives her training, I give her two years. Maybe three, if she can sing half as well as Bird and whoever Mynah sells her to is wise enough to invest in a few extra SonaDrops per week. We don’t need another Bird Girl. We have our own.

“You have to behave—be brave,” urges Key.

Through the sliver of an eyelid, I see the girl pursing her lips as if considering this. “You said if I sing and do the dreaming for the Blights, then I can go home. After I make enough jaspers for my father’s debts.”

This is a lie. A real whopper and for once it didn’t come from my mouth. Key glances at me over her shoulder beyond her ugly bruise and her weird eyes and begs me to stay quiet. I comply only to save myself the nuisance of a bawling child. I wonder if the screaming will resume once the Oxmed wears off some more. Another dose too soon for someone so small can be fatal. I consider terrifying her, and Key, with a cautionary tale about the Apple Girl, but my headache, born of thirst, is now a white halo of pain.

“Now, we’ll go to my loom, room to take your measurements. Let’s see how big you are.” Key puts a gentle hand on the small of Little Bird’s back and leads her to the door. “I’ll make you a dozen new fresses, drocks, dresses. What’s the color of your favorite bird?”

As Key unlocks the door, Little Bird stops, turns to me. “What about you? When will you sing enough to go home?”

“Ink doesn’t sing,” Key says. “Ink can read.” A book idles at the foot of my bed. My fingers twitch as I consider chucking it at Key. Keep my name out of your mouth, Harpy, or I’ll blacken that other eye.

“I can’t read,” says the girl.

“Only Ink Girls read to the Blights. See all the hooks, books.” Key opens the door halfway, eyeing the heavy hardback on my bed and trying to read my face. “Bird Girls sing to the Blights as they enter the SonaScape trance. Honey Girls spoon-feed them honey, Apple Girls serve them fancy meals, and Blossoms . . . Blossoms just sit there. They’re very pretty. You’re a Bird Girl, and you’ll live on the Top Floor.”

“Except you’ll go screech somewhere else,” I say, “because we already have a Bird Girl.”

“Can I go to my room now?” asks the girl.

“It’s not your room!” I let the book fly across the room. It hits the door frame, then falls to the floor with a dull thud and a broken spine. Key hurries the girl toward the door. She knows it’s a warning shot because she knows I never miss. The Little Bird is barely ruffled by my projectile. Thick skin. Accustomed to unpredictable domestic aggression. Good again. It will only serve her. “Ink, your fight is waiting—your night is—Blight,” Key says at the threshold. “Your Blight is waiting downstairs. I’ll be back to dress you.”

Fresh air smelling of lavender wafts into the room from the corridor. Key likes to use castile soap to mop the floors. It’s one of my favorite scents. I breathe deep. As they step out into the hall, Little Bird asks Key, “I sing, and she reads. The flower sits and the Key Girl holds the keys, and we don’t die?”

The creak of the door closing muffles Key’s response. The Little Bird was not really asking a question, only trying to make herself feel better. Knowing how to soothe and self-regulate is vital. We all had Bird to teach us and so will she.

Chapter 3
Ghoul

Key creeps back into my room carrying a dress I’ve never seen before, along with a sweating carafe of water. Hyaline, crystalline, lucent. Automatically, I wet my lips with a tongue made of sandpaper. She hangs a sateen gown on a hook behind the door. “A witch, a wraith, a wealthy Blight is downstairs. He paid for the whole night.”

That explains my new clothes. Mynah works us like mules but dresses us like princesses. A dozen shades of ink swirl over the glossy fabric in a spectrum ranging from opaque India black to a dove gray so light it could be powder. Master calligraphers could apprentice for a lifetime, and they could not reproduce such fluid designs. Key makes our clothes and creates these chromatic masterpieces in her dyeing vats. She has outdone herself this time.

She sets my water on the chowki table used to serve the alcoholic SonaDrink. Sheer willpower keeps me from lunging at the carafe. Key brings us all our meals; provides all our drinks; tends the commode and most of our needs. I hate reminding her how much I depend on her.

The dress she’s wearing is also new, a heavy cotton twill dyed a dusky black. Key Girls should be invisible, silent, without embellishment. Key is perfect for the roll, an ink stain moving through the world. She’s always been this way because I taught her that silence would keep her safe. Her silence could have kept me safe as well, but a single word of betrayal can speak volumes and has a voice all its own.

She tucks her keys into her long braid. The first time she escorted a Blight back to the parlor, she dropped her keys and sent them clanging down the stairs. Later that evening, the soles of her feet enjoyed their first kiss from Mynah’s leather strap. Jangling keys interfere with the illusion that the Girls are happy to be here.

Bird suggested Key weave them into her hair so they wouldn’t rattle and earn her another beating. Since then, Key wraps her head in looped braids to keep the keys close to the nape of her neck. Anyone with a mind to steal them would have to yank her hair out by the bunch or brain her and wrench her head up to the lock. Either feat is impossible for a weak House Girl still foolishly dreaming of escape, but Bird wants even the lowest among us to be safe. Loving the undeserving is Bird’s only flaw, one I no longer share.

Key picks up the book I threw earlier.

I’m supposed to keep the books in order, have them ready when a Blight requests something specific, but lately I can’t rally enough energy. Mynah’s beloved sister was an obsessive bibliophile and built the famous collection. In my dreams, I’ve set the books on fire one by one, along with the Sonagachi, this House and everyone in it. Kindling, tinder, cordwood, fire starter.

Key shrinks away from me as if she can hear my thoughts. Key is the type of person who always looks like she’s about to make or recover from a mistake. She was moved to the Top Floor three years ago but has hardly put on weight. The stutter she’s always had, probably always will, but it lessens the more nights she puts between now and her ordeal as a First Floor Girl.

Key sits next to the chowki table next to my bed with her back against the wall. Her shoulders drop and she pauses to rest, as if getting to the floor has taken all her reserves. She becomes so still she could be a painting of a dead child sinking into a pool of writing ink.

A sharp cough rips through me. Like the night sweats and the unrelenting dizziness, the cough is new, too.

Key takes out a bristle brush and an ink bottle from her waist apron as she waits for my fit to be over.

I groan when she unscrews the jar of black ink. No more ink. It’s black enough.

I pull myself to the edge of the bed. More spins. When I sit between Key’s knees with my back to her, the floor seems to keep dropping under me. It’s like falling down a well.

Key finger-combs my hair away from my face with hands cool and nimble against my neck and ears. Part of me expects her to yank at my scalp as she dyes my hair with the writing ink, but she never has. This ritual has become the easiest thing between us since we both arrived at The Nectar House. The metallic, almond tang of the ink mixes with the argan oil she uses on her own hair. The memory of Bird bathing me in the copper tub, applying the same argan oil, tempts me to ask Key if she knows anything about Bird. I scrape my palms down my face to chase the memory away and resist the urge.

“Hit, fit, sit still.” She pours the ink onto the brush.

The bristles catch onto my hair at the crown of my head. She slides the brush down my back until it releases with a crisp, shushing sound at the base of my spine. She will do this until my hair lies slick and straight. Her fingers flutter along the edge of my face like doves. Thistledown, gossamer, velvet, fleece. I’m glad there aren’t any mirrors in my room so she can’t see my face. Hers is the only touch I know, and I would drink the entire jar of ink before I’d let her know how much it calms me.

She has been doing my hair most of our lives. I suspect she enjoys this exchange as well because she doesn’t rush it. My nightly ablutions take the least amount of work compared to the rest of the Girls. Key sculpts magnificent creations atop their heads, but all she has to do for me is keep my hair the color of squid ink.

My natural hair color is cuttlefish brown, a watery sepia like Key’s, but an Ink Girl’s hair has to be the color of writing ink. This is a tradition going back 800 years, and my Blights tend toward the orthodox. The hair, the clothes, the first edition gilded tomes, shutting us away from the world to keep us pure, it’s all part of the illusion they’re paying for.

Mynah is strict about upholding the old traditions, a lot more than the other procuresses, but will bend a rule or two because she can’t resist a lucrative gimmick. Last year she pioneered a novelty Mermaid Girl inspired by a kid she found in a fishing village who could hold her breath for three minutes. Four Goons hauled up the tank the Girl soon drowned in, taking her Blight along with her. I had begged Mynah to reconsider the tank, told her that water and trances don’t mix, that it would be too dangerous. Now the Mermaid Girl composts the Sonagachi and Mynah heeds my advice on novelty Girls to greater financial success and fewer fatalities.

“Only one Blight for you,” says Key. “He laid, paid until morning.”

Only one? Slow night.

The glass stopper of the SonaBottle clinks behind me. I bend my head back for her to administer a drop of Sona into my eye. First the left. Then the right. Tips of fingers so light. Falling petals, eyelashes, butterfly wings.

Tink. Plunger back into the bottle.

Tink. The plunger comes out again.

I crab-crawl away from her.

Her hand hovers in the air, the dropper poised to administer the second set of Drops to give me my full dose.

“No, Ink,” she says. “I’m not giving any more of your SonaDrops to Honey. If Bird could see how much you sin— how thin you’ve become, she would not allow it.”

Tears threaten at the mention of Bird, but I won’t let them loose.

Key looks close to tears too, but hers won’t come either. We’re Nectar House Girls, well-practiced in the art of holding them back.

Neither of us blinks. Key waits as if I am about to say something. Her look is hopeful, pathetic, willing me to talk to her, like she wouldn’t even care if all I did was scream. I won’t even do that. Silence is my only weapon against the pain of Key, and words are sacred armor.

A man’s laughter floats into the courtyard from somewhere in the House; a Blight is enjoying a glass of SonaDrink at the bar while he waits for his turn with one of us.

“We weren’t that much older than Honey when we were brought here,” Key says. “She doesn’t need so much affection, affliction, protection.”

A note of pleading plays in her voice. Key is the one that needs protection. She’s gotten so bony; my hands could circle her waist.

I stand up way too fast; the floor lists as I take off my day dress and put on the new one she has brought. The dress is made out of an organza fabric so light it could be made of gossamer, but the underskirt that gives it shape is heavier than a tapestry. The outfit goes on forever and ever with my head and torso lost within endless yards of cloth.

For a moment, I’m lost in a dark cloud until Key’s hands find me. Quick, able. She relieves the heaviness, slips the dress over my shoulders, slides it over my hips until I’m left standing in a sea of gray and swirling black. The gown is cut simply, but the marbled effect of the dye is breathtaking. She’s paired it with a sleeveless wrap-over jacket and a wide sash the color of river rocks. As she ties me into this tent of cloth, she mumbles that she’s had to take in my clothes a third time this summer.

She steps back to look at me. “You book, hook, look like a First Floor.”

Not wrong. My wrists stick out of my sleeves like pale brown twigs, and the veins of my hands pop out because there’s so little fat to pad them. Again, I’m glad not to have a mirror.

“You’re so weak,” she says softly. “Like you couldn’t undo a button. Half the mine, time I can’t tell if you’re asleep standing up.”

This is the one thing she’s right about. My days melt together. Catalepsy, torpor, lacuna, daze.

“Maybe if you held me, met me, loud me, let me … I could give you some Oxmed, just one pill.” She fishes inside an apron pocket. “Only hon, ton, one tablet. To give you some energy, put some pink in your cheeks.”

Pink in my—what am I? A Blossom? My face hardens. If Key comes anywhere near me with Oxmed, if she sprinkles some in my food, I’ll throw another hardcover and not miss.

Lash, thrash, pummel, trounce.

She flinches. All animals, no matter how simple, can recognize threats.

I hate the Oxmed and would never take it. Key knows this. She has convinced herself that she’s helping the Girls by giving them this poison, as if these illiterate, petrified Girls can know what’s good for them. Watching Mynah bury the Apple Girl wasn’t enough for Key. Apples are supposed to be plump, and Mynah made sure the sweet Apple got plenty of Oxmed. All the Houses use the drug, even though it’s toxic to people. If the House Girl lives long enough or consumes enough, her bones become brittle and hollow out like a bird’s while her marbles wander off and never come back.

The Apple Girl died while SonaScaping with a Blight, SonaStuck, but we’ll never know for sure if it was an accident. Key is a fervent defender of wishful death, be it slowly by Oxmed addiction or suicide by Blight or a bed sheet tied to a pipe, so I suspect Key had a hand in the Apple’s death and several others. We are deeply polarized on this opinion and if I ever spoke to Key again, we would argue about this for days. I am sure Bird has told her how I feel about House Girls and their death wishes, although Bird has a foot in both camps. Sometime the depth of Bird’s compassion and understanding is a mystery and nuisance. I’m in the business of helping the Top Floors live longer, or at least better. I have my own methods, most of them unpopular and misunderstood by the others. Key’s incessant meddling in the guise of charity makes my life harder and by extension, does the same for the Top Floor Girls I am devoted to protecting.

“Your Blight is downstairs. There’s something sod, range, off about him. Be extra careful.”

I press my head against the headboard bookshelf and run my hand along the spines, ignoring her spurious concern and unwanted advice.

“Maybe watch—”

I hurl A History of Incendiary Weaponry: Volume One past her head.

I keep my hand on Volume Two until she unlocks the door with my day dress dragging behind her.

Slither, sidle, skulk.

Key always looks smaller, more shrunken when she leaves my room than when she enters it. That’s my doing. A twinge of pride pinches an ugly place inside me. It’s followed by guilt, a yank on the rope in the endless game of tug-of-war that is Key, and I feel like a monster. Ghoul. A malevolent creature who feeds on the living, a demon.

I drink straight from the mouth of the carafe, careful not to let a drop stain the sateen of my jacket. The sun has long set, but it’s sweltering inside the cocoon of fabric Key has shrouded me in. Dozens of swiftlets squawk outside, swooping like suicide bombers and gorging on moths before they roost for the night. Feathered vermin. Defecating disease everywhere. If I had the energy, I would lure one onto my sill with the breadcrumbs I cache behind the geographies. Once past my bars, the swiftlet and I are cellmates. They slam themselves against the shelves trying to find a way out while I fling hardbacks at them.

I check Blossom’s window. The silhouette of a fat Blight is cast against her back wall. She’s always booked until sunrise. Key will bring my big spender Blight any minute. A knot of rage tightens in my gut when I think of Key haunting the halls of the Sonagachi Wing. Her room isn’t locked, but she has access to the courtyard and all three floors and all our rooms. Our food and sundries are delivered through a turnstile window that leads to the rest of the house. Even she can’t see who is on the other side, but she can hear them, ask questions. She must know where Bird is, or if Mynah has Bird wrapped up in a death shroud in the cellar, waiting for a spare moment to feed her tree a fresh corpse. If Key had any care for me at all, she would have told me about Bird, or at the very least told Blossom, who would find a way to tell me, even if a Blight were in her room. She’d tie a shawl to her bars. Red for emergency, white for action needed, orange for all is well. I take a peek, but her bars only have those silly marigolds. I allow myself a moment of relief.

Salve, balsam, elixir, philter, balm.

Bird’s room is dark. The Little Bird Girl might be in there lying on Bird’s bed, in a dreamless narcotic slumber. Mynah got fined for the Blight who died with the Apple Girl, and the sale of a trained Bird Girl will recover the loss. She could advertise two Bird Girls at The Nectar House, but it’s a waste of jaspers to take up a room with the same kind of Specialty Girl.

Last season was her most lucrative, thanks to my ideas for three new kinds of Specialty Girls the Syndicate had never seen before. With my pinky toe, I tap the wall where I scratched their names into the wall at the foot of my bed.

Bata Girl. Animated and tireless, their drums and ancient rhythms will quicken your pulse into deistic trance.

Ladybug Girl. These dainty, delicate creatures with ebony hair and carmine lips will ensure good luck on your next endeavor.

Sadhu Girls. While in mystical connection with the divine, these pious children of the ineffable hold fast their bodies in meditation to usher you into Sona and closer to God.

For three years, The Nectar House will enjoy exclusive rights to them, and then other Houses can bid to buy the gimmick. Generous kickbacks line Mynah’s pockets each time these Girls SonaScape, and when Mynah dies, the Syndicate will profit. A second Bird Girl is redundant, leaves money on the table. I’m sure I can convince her of this. We already have our Bird Girl.

If the Little Bird can sing half as well as she can scream, she’s also a money spinner. Mynah can sell her to another House whose owner will have her warbling to the tune of six Blights a night. The Little Bird will have to learn to hold back, not give it her all, or she’ll sing herself into a shallow grave. She’s tiny, only comes up to my chest, but hopefully she’s as strong as the voice that imprisoned her. How she uses her gifts and conserves her energy will decide how long she stays alive. Bird will teach her to find the sweet spot, or I will. Everything in The Nectar House is about balance. The Goldilocks scale of how much to give, how much to take, who is worth saving, who is best left for dead. Mynah taught me that, and it’s kept her in jaspers and me and mine alive for a little longer.

Footsteps in the hallway. A man clears his throat. I fluff up my skirts, pinch my cheeks for color. Just like I do every night. No different. Bird will be back by morning.

Chapter 4
Zoonosis

The Blight is so thin I could stick my fist into the hollow of his collar bones. The bare lightbulb in the ceiling highlights a sallow complexion not unlike oat porridge.

He’s looking at my books as if they’re food, like he’s considering taking a nibble. He’s positively fluttering with excitement. This happens all the time with the book connoisseurs who travel continents to have me read from one of the obscure editions.

He’s young, not yet twenty-five, but the Blight disease has riddled him with crow’s feet and made his nose grow thin and long. It’s so curved it almost touches his chin and has stretched his nostrils into slits. His ridiculous pince-nez may slide off his face any minute now.

I stand with my hands clasped on my right hip, left palm over right. This is the customary gesture of deference and waiting. House Girls have greeted their Blights this way for over eight centuries.

The Blight barely glances at me and walks along the shelves, moving with the indolence of a man accustomed to idle pursuits. Dandy, coxcomb, popinjay, fop.

I lift my gaze an inch to get a better look at him. He is a very sick man. The Blight disease has ravaged him, making his body look more avian than human. Avian, from the Latin avis, or bird. Tick tock. Your time on this earth is almost up, cuckoo bird.

I bow my head to hide a smirk.

“The great Nectar House Library!” His voice proves as nasal and irritating as I predicted. “What a fortunate House Girl you are.” He motions to the courtyard. “Among such noble tomes, while bathed in the shadow of a venerated Sonagachi tree!”

“Nectar House Girls are a fountain of abundance,” I say to the floor.

This one’s a talker. I bet he’s a poet. Poets are the worst, almost as bad as zealots. If he has brought me his penned verses to read for his SonaScape, I may not last the night. One more quatrain of bad Blight poetry on the splendor of the Sonagachi tree and I’ll trap us inside his SonaScape. I might kill us both and take us out of our misery.

“All SonaTrees are sacred,” he says, “but this particular dulcet arbor of three hundred and seven years has extended the lives of many worthy men of note, and I would spend a lifetime lauding its grandeur.”

This dulcet arbor has erased countless, nameless Girls, and I would see it reduced to embers and then spend a lifetime dancing in its ashes.

He’s a twit but spot-on about the tree. The age of every Sonagachi tree in the world is known and obsessed over by everyone in the Blight Community, from billionaire Syndicate Warlords to the tacky procuress of the cheapest House in the District. Everyone knows: the older the tree, the more powerful the SonaScape and the longevity it offers. Mynah’s Sonagachi is legend.

The Blight clasps his hands behind his back and rocks on his heels. “The Sonagachi is especially sacred to us poets.”

I am never wrong.

“By trade I am a lowly bookseller but blessed”—he drops his head dramatically — “or cursed with the heart of a bard.”

He goes to the gilded copies of A Conquest of Birds, the jewel of Mynah’s library and, as she is fond of telling me, worth about ten of me.

“I have first editions too, illustrated by all the great calligraphers.” The tip of his tongue sticks out of his mouth as if he is about to lick the cover. He’s trying to impress me, so I pretend to be impressed. This cachectic Blight is so worthless that he cares what an Ink Girl thinks of him. Simpleton, dullard, halfwit, dolt. My muted but loyal headache will be the greatest stimulation of the evening.

“I’ve always wanted to get my hands on this edition, but Batis snatched it out from under me at auction.”

Batis. I haven’t heard her name in years. Mynah only refers to her as “my sister.” Mynah took me from my home, but Batis was the owner of The Nectar House when I first arrived. Mynah was second in command. Batis has been dead for three years, and I only saw her once before Mynah took over. Mynah is striking, but Batis was a wattle-eyed beauty who stopped traffic. Sharp, too. A true intellectual. Batis loved her books like Mynah loves her sea silk.

“My own work is very well received.” The Blight flips through the magnificent book as if it were a gas station magazine. “My devotionals are especially celebrated.”

I place a palm over my heart and surrender a small gasp but say nothing. A House Girl waits for the Blights to talk first. This is to draw out their conceits. Patience will reveal the man he pretends to be, then the Girl appeals to that persona, not the trifling one before her. I’ll make sure to tell him he is the best Blight I have ever had. They eat that up because it’s what every man longs to hear. All my Blights claim fame and importance, but they are all liars. Their biggest lie is to themselves. They pretend that I am not a prisoner and they are not the bad guy.

He clears his throat. “Sonagachi flowers are vespertine. That means they bloom at night.”

I know what vespertine means, you ass. I’ve met a hundred Blights like this one. Unlike the grocers and used car salesmen who frequent the First Floor, my customers are educated, influential men, unfailingly pompous and self-important. Fancy or plain, all Blight want the same thing: to fetter the virus that’s killing them by siphoning days off my life and adding them to theirs. I bet he’s been saving his jaspers for years, snubbing the remedial treatments of a plain First Floor Girl for the vanity and efficacy of a Top Floor experience at the only House in the country with its own Sonagachi tree. Tonight will cost him a small fortune and me about a month of my life.

The Blight lifts his gaze to the ceiling in what I assume is his version of inspired erudition.

“Blessed Sonagachi,” he recites, “your fruit fortifies us. Your sacred Sona is a salve to my suffering. Between your bowers I dwell in wonder, where I am touched by your inviolable grace.”

Between its branches I build gallows, where you can swing from your neck until you are dead.

I smile. “Our Sonagachi is the mother tree of all the SonaBearing arbors from here to the coast. It connects them through an extensive root system and an intricate mycorrhizal pathway.” I pause. He may know this already and it’s important I offer ample opportunity for him to feel smarter than me.

He looks away, fussily straightening the white linen shirt which hangs loose over his shoulders. A gust of wind could carry him away. I imagine pursing my lips and blowing him out my window and over the cramped skyline. I’d hurl him across a valley, dash his brains against a snowcapped mountain, drop him into the mouth of a hungry volcano.

“This tree”—I wave my hand at the courtyard, eager to hurry up and get this Blight over with— “rooted and thriving at The Nectar House is nourished by soil 800 years rich with House Girls. With every fruiting generation, the plant strain grows stronger and the SonaBark exhibits properties far superior to the mother tree, fortified by the SonaDrops ingested by each Girl buried underneath.” While the next generation of Blights will enjoy Sona more potent than yours, you pig, thanks to the hair, teeth and eyeballs that were once House Girls. “The body of the House Girl will gladly perish, but the Sonagachi lives forever.”

I think I see him shudder with delight. The quality of the SonaDrops is in proportion to the age of the tree and the number of House Girls buried in its soil. He must expect a lot from this evening and has been longing for years.

He removes another book from the shelf, sighs, and tries to look bored, as if he’s heard this all before, been with a dozen House Girls. Yet his hands shake as he flips the pages. I can spot a first timer as soon as they darken my doorway. Neophyte, novice, amateur, rube. They require more handholding, more explanation. It’s going to be a long night, and my head and mouth still feel stuffed with cotton. I should have drained the pitcher of water Key brought me after she did my hair, but she took it away before I got the chance. Girls are forbidden to eat or drink in front of Blight. That would make us human.

I lift my chin a bit, not too brazen, not too demure, and launch into my hackneyed recitation. “Tonight, as the Sonagachi curates your SonaScape, the neural networks of the Blight and his Girl will intertwine, mimicking the symbiotic connection of this ancient tree with an infinite universe. The quality of the plant entheogen culled from this singular, ancient tree yields SonaDrops unparalleled in purity.”

Bird taught me to nuance every version of my script. This one is reserved for the uninitiated, meant to calm the nervous and pious Blight and make my night easier. “Your SonaScape experience will be without equal. The sophistication and wisdom to heal at this illustrious House, within this renowned library, will not go unnoticed among the Blight Community.”

He gives me a condescending smirk, but I can tell he is loving my bloated complements and pandering. This ninny is going to flail around my mind like a hysteric. He’ll burn through his SonaDrops in a panic before I build the SonaBridge from his psyche to mine. It doesn’t happen often, but some Blights are too anxious to give themselves over to the Girl and relax into the trance state. If this idiot Blight fails to SonaScape, he will leave, relieved of thousands of nonrefundable jaspers, but rich with complaints. All his friends know where he is tonight, and when next he sees them, looking just as sick as before, he’ll save face by grousing that The Nectar House has weak Sona and mediocre Top Floor Girls. Mynah will serve me a beating paired with her strap if I don’t harness his mind like a donkey.

He’s too tense, in need of some liquid courage. The shiny, copper SonaDrink serving set is laid out on the chowki table. I kneel, then pick up the SonaPot in a manner I hope is willowy and graceful. I’m not good at this part. Blossom can sell gallons of SonaDrink, but I never peddle enough liquor and Mynah rages if we don’t meet our quota. I have to try to loosen him up, so I say, “You’ll be hard-pressed to find a finer SonaDrink than the one distilled here in The Nectar House. Would you care for a glass?”

“Never touch the stuff.” He holds his palms out. “SonaDrink is the stuff of drunks and peasants. Hawk that bilge water to the First Floor thugs. Pure SonaDrops and the written word are all I need.” He waves a limp hand at me. The tiny bells sown throughout his cloths jangle with every gesture.

Encircling his neck and the cuff of his pant legs is protective embroidery fine enough to be Key’s needlepoint. Blights are plagued by fears of malicious envy and the evil eye. I’ve had Blights so covered in coins and bells they resemble a bride on her wedding day. Even men of science, who have studied the chemistry of Sona, whose names are followed by a train of letters, foster daft notions that Sona will stop working if a House Girl looks at them too long or flicks her hair in their general direction. As if these half-dead, confined Girls need supernatural forces to protect full-grown men. Yet, lately, the Blights seem more brazen, less cautious of me standing near them. Last week, one tried to touch my sleeve.

He resumes his study of the shelves. I wish he would pick something for me to read and get his SonaScape over and done with. My legs are rubbery, and I feel spent, spread thin from working so many days with half my dose. Blossom is right about this.

I’ll wager ten jaspers he’s going to choose a passage from A Conquest of Birds or an ode to SonaDrops. At the moment, he’s pontificating, yammering on about words and beauty. I take this opportunity to sit, making sure to adopt an expert mask of fascination.

As for the SonaScape he has paid for so dearly this evening, I bet I can predict that too. Most Blights suffer from an Olympic lack of imagination. Their SonaScapes tend to go one of two ways. Most are trite, played out fictions brimming with accolades and the bitter jealousy of competitors. Amid a cacophony of applause, they accept awards and ovations. Sometimes they relive their fondest memory or paltry triumph over and over. I’ve seen more shiny medals pinned to starched uniforms than I have swiftlets.

The other kind of SonaScape is much darker, where a regret or a loss or a tragedy is relived. Their SonaScapes can be allegories played out symbolically or directly culled from the memory of their darkest hour. The death of a doting nanny, the time they found their young wife pinned by their gangster brother and did nothing, the summer they paid thugs to beat their best friend and academic rival the day before national exams. These animated spectacles of misery are my obvious favorite. Even if I had any power to influence or change the SonaScape, what their foul minds conjure up is better than any torture I could devise. Only in the privacy of our own guilt and shame can we learn exactly where to stick the knife and just how to twist it. Aside from Bird’s singing, and the words on my wall, watching these bastards torture themselves with their own psyches is my greatest pleasure.

Often, the Blights experience a mixed bag of both types, thrashing from mania to misery like a knob on a radio. Either way, Sona knows what the mind needs to add to their longevity, and the Girl curates the set and the setting for the miracle healing to happen, safely guiding them in and out of their experience. Without us, they could never access this part of themselves. Without us, they would indulge in their SonaScape fantasy over and over, stuck inside an endless psychic loop until their bodies waste away. Men the world over consider Sona divine medicine, a mystical gift from whatever god to whom they bend the knee. Girls are a means to these miraculous ends. It’s all very majestic. I stifle a yawn.

He coughs loudly, snapping me to attention. “You have your own little Library of Alexandria here.” He examines me over his eyeglasses. “You have no idea what I am talking about, do you?” He half smiles. Canary yellow streaks tinge his thin lips. “You might read about it in a history book. There’s a fine one just over there. No matter. I don’t expect an Ink Girl will live long enough to read all the books of the House library.”

Blossom can make herself blush on command. I cannot, so I try to look docile, vacuous, trained only to respond to him. “The Ink Girls of The Nectar House are thoroughly acquainted with all words offered.”

“Reading the words perhaps. Yet lacking any understanding of their meaning, their nuance. Talking heads that retain no true knowledge, no ability to enlighten or interpret. Like a well-trained parrot, but not as colorful.”

Buffoon.

“What are those words on the wall?” He takes off his glasses and presses his face to the wall next to my bed, his lips inches from my pillow.

The nape of my neck grows hot. I hate it when they mention the words.

“They’re etched into the plaster.” He sticks a fingernail into the letter a in the word ethereal. “Did you do this? Of course! Even Ink Girls are denied pen and paper!” He seems tickled by this. “I’ve a hundred jasper bet going that this was so. That Mynah . . .” He waggles a bony finger in the air. “They don’t make them like her anymore. Holds true to convention like no other.”

He looks so satisfied with himself, like he’s just figured out the origin of the cosmos, as if it weren’t common knowledge that prohibiting all distraction or comfort is another way of ensuring we spend our focus solely on the Blights. Keeps us clear-eyed, empty headed as gourds. If Mynah could find a way to keep me from reading, she would, but Inks have to be cloistered in their library.

“An Ink Girl’s only manner of expression is sacrifice,” I say, hoping to get him away from my words. “The only thoughts worth pursuing revolve around the great minds of their betters. Ink Girls, Honeys, and Blossoms remain forever untouched, untarnished by the influence and detritus of the outside world. Once entombed within our rooms, our physical body is as in death, neither human nor divine, only an empty vessel, a soulless conduit between the orphic Sona and your body.”

“Do all Ink Girls have words on their walls? Why write them?” He cleans his glasses with the edge of his tunic as he reads. “Funicular, telescope, hellebore? They don’t make any sense. There are so many of them. Must have taken years.” His fingers graze the writing above my pillow. “Bellicose, antelope, armadillo, salt dome, tide mill.”

My skin breaks out in gooseflesh.

He snorts. “What a futile affectation.”

My hands are hidden in my giant sleeves; my nails are buried in the flesh of my palm. If he reads one more word aloud, I will draw blood.

He strokes the dangling pom poms along the frill of his sleeve, then flicks the coin of his earring three times to ward off evil, as if words carved into plaster with the spoon of a skinny fifteen-year-old girl could curse him.

Inyanga, palera, theurgist, sibyl.

He turns his head to me without moving his shoulders, looking more birdlike than ever. “You’re a bit old for a House Girl? I hear Ink Girls live the longest.”

I’ll outlive you.

He’s stalling. He’s stalling because he’s scared. Inexperienced Blights are a hassle, sloppy and aggravating, but these are the ones a Girl has to be wary of. They grope around their SonaScape desperate as a drowning man out of fear of entering the powerful, mind-bending trance. Sometimes they hold onto their SonaScape too tightly, too scared to leave it in case another memory awaits him, one that might be worse than the one he is reliving, wrestling with the Girl trying to pull him out and save them both from being SonaStuck.

“What a privilege to read all day,” he says, “every day, unburdened by the mundane, nightly graced with erudite and urbane companionship. It would take an army to drag me out of here.”

“The Nectar House is a fountain of abundance.” Wait. I said that already. “An infinity pool of pleasures.” I thought I had traced the limits of how insufferable he could be ... I drop my gaze and count to ten in Latin.

“Mynah says her Ink Girl was imbued with true vocation.”

I count again, this time trying to get to twenty, but seventeen always trips me up.

“Mynah claims that even if her Ink Girl wasn’t anchored, she wouldn’t abandon her calling, that no other existence could offer such … private delights.”

Swine, cob roller, peccary, pig.

I rid my face of expression, still my hands at my side. Reacting only encourages pervy Blights who like to flirt and skirt the boundaries.

Unflappable, stoic, stony, serene, sangfroid.

“A Girl’s only home is her House,” I say as evenly as I can. “Girls are empty of experience and self, past or present or future and need no domicile. Innocent of desire or want. Skin-covered bridges. Nothing more.”

This Blight is cockier than most and may try to take liberties despite his ridiculous talisman-laden outfit. Happens very rarely, but it can. Mynah’s lazy Goons take their own liberties with SonaDrink, especially on nights she’s away and leaves the Parlor Goons in charge. This Blight can fit under the bed as easily as I can, so there’s no escape from him if the Goon posted on the stairs is too drunk to hear my cries.

I move closer to the Blight chair imagining I’m Blossom gliding across the room and barely allowing my bare feet to pat the floor. Blithe, bonny, winsome, disarming. After fluffing up the back cushion, I extend my hand to him in hopes that he’ll finally sit down, but he just stands there, like an oaf, too scared to get this started.

“Ours is an archaic and worthy ritual,” he says loudly, as if addressing a crowd. “A short, irrelevant life sacrificed for one full of academic promise and contribution.” He licks his lips. “If tonight proves fruitful, the Girl worthy, I may grant this House the honor of a second SonaScape.” His hand shoots to his chest as if struck by a muse. “Anon, I will put pen to paper and capture the perfect words to immortalize this night.”

I coyly cover my mouth with my hand and add a giggle as if the thought of him writing about this night inspires a humbled glee. Into my palm I whisper, “Zoonosis.” The perfect word your disease-addled brain is looking for is zoonosis. You can wax poetic about this night, solicit all the adjectives your mediocrity can beckon, but tonight’s only descriptor is murder. A slow one. One with many accomplices. I whisper into my fingers again, cast my eyes as low as they will go, and linger over the o’s. Zo-o-no-sis. A disease transmitted from an animal to a human host. Birds gave you this plague, and soon you will die begging for a full breath. In my dreams, I laugh and watch the crows dine on your liver.

“Please,” I say, “take a seat. Expanded states await.”

His eyelids drop to slits. He hesitates, then sits down trailing a mélange of oily feathers and offal. He fumbles with the buttons of his tunic, undoes the top three. For a moment, I think he’s going to remove his shirt, but he only digs inside the collar, revealing a splotch of blue on his chest.

My heart sinks. These stains are called moribund blue and they’re the undeniable stamp of a dying man. He hasn’t got long, six weeks, perhaps eight. This pleases me beyond measure, but Blights this ill have little to lose and lack self-control. Their desperation makes them resist leaving the SonaScape more than most. They’re also the quickest to rage if tonight doesn’t go exactly as they imagined. All Blights secretly hope they will be the miraculous exception, the one Blight who will walk out these rooms completely cured. It’s happened to me a few times, when a Blight has been angry or disappointed enough to threaten me after his SonaScape failed to rid him of his hind toe, or if his lungs still sat heavy with phlegm in his pigeon chest. Many a Girl has been beaten to their Sonagachi grave for failing to meet the dashed hopes of a dying man.

My Blight buttons up his tunic after fishing out a small scroll. A string of mala beads the color of dried blood is wrapped around it.

I take this pause to move back to the center of the room, not as far as I would like but as far from him as I can and resume the posture of waiting. Right hand over left, two pale brown doves softly resting on my hip bone, head down, mouth shut.

The Blight kisses the beaded necklace and places it carefully across his lap, making sure the golden tassel hangs over his knobby knees. This must be an article of his faith, like a chanting rosary or a holy relic. He lifts the scroll into the air ceremoniously.

He unfurls the scroll. “Are your hands clean?”

I extend my arms to him, palms up, flip them over for inspection.

“This is not made of cheap paper pulp, but vellum,” he says. “Do you know what that is? Uterine vellum? From still-born lambs?” He sucks his teeth in frustration at my presumed ignorance.

From the backboard of my bed, I fetch an ancient anatomy book filled with obsolete drawings of the human body. I turn to the chapter of women’s anatomy entitled, “Matrix, The Forbidden Tree.” On the page is a series of detailed woodblocks of a rotund, nude woman. Her womb resembles a tree. The following page renders a series of images where her womb leaves its cavity, crawls up the ribs, and overcomes her mind in hysteria. The page is ear-marked to save me time. These are often requested pages.

I rest the book on my forearms with the text turned toward the Blight. “Uterus, from the Latin uteri meaning ‘belly.’ If it pleases you.” Resume the waiting gesture. Be tame, better yet, be empty, become gray as a river rock.

I feel him study me for a moment. Hear the scritch, scritch of his nails against the dry, mottled skin of his neck.

“Mynah said her Ink was a clever one. Ugly, she said, but clever. You’re dark and shrunken. Like an officious, smarmy grackle.” He side eyes me, perhaps trying to taunt me into reacting to his mockery.

“An Ink Girl’s grasp is constricted and scant.” I return the book to its shelf. “Her psyche a virgin slate for others to enlighten.”

A bird chirps insistently from a branch next to my window. The Blight opens his mouth in delighted surprise. “That’s a swiftlet! I could identify its euphonious chirp amongst thousands. How auspicious.”

His hand dives back into his tunic, and he pulls out his bottle of SonaDrops.

The round bottle is smaller than a plum but holds enough for ten individual doses.

He taps the bottle against the metal charm on his earring.

A cold bead of sweat slides down my spine as the pearly, lavender liquid sloshes against the glass. This is the largest quantity of Sona Mynah is legally allowed to sell. He shouldn’t even be allowed to bring so much into my room.

I look at the cadaverous Blight before me. Two drops of Sona will conjure visions and cause his reality to whirl away in spoonfuls. Three drops and his senses will abandon him in titanic gulps. Four and he forgets how to walk on two legs and greets God. And with five? He will gift himself a universe, and a universe, once possessed, is hard to relinquish. He will kill me in conquest if he were to take them all at once and overdose us both. He is naïve and cocksure and arrogant. This is a deadly recipe of faults, yet he must know better than to expect a twenty drop SonaScape his first time out of the gate.

My hands are shaky, so I grip them together as if awestruck at his extravagance. “All night with an Ink Girl and a twenty-drop vial of pure Sona! What an honor for Mynah’s vaults to house your remaining drops and welcome you to The Nectar House again and again.”

I pause, consider more convincing wheedling, but he’s not listening to a word. He’s lost in thought or prayer or delusion, caressing the beaded necklace on his lap, reciting something about the grand elixir of life. Each sentence is followed by a breathy “amen.” Energumen, idealogue, fanatic, zealot, devotee.

None of those words inspire moderation.

Mynah will sell her Blight customers twenty drops, allowing them to gloat and show off their largess to the other Blights while in the fancy, downstairs parlor. She only permits them to hold onto a modest dose when they come up to our rooms, tucking the excess into her safe, for a price, of course. At most, she allows regulars four doses. Six with an experienced Girl. The only way this guy has managed to get to the Top Floor with such a large amount is if Mynah is not here tonight and he has bribed the Parlor Goon in charge in Mynah’s absence.

Two drops are all the First Floor Girls are allowed or able to work with. Two drops are plenty for a basic SonaBridge, enough to allow for the transfer of life energy from Girl to Blight. More is overkill and gilds the lily, but a disciplined and veteran Blight may insist on an extra dose or two. The more SonaDrops, the more intense the experience, the more health they can take, but it’s expensive and dangerous to both Blight and Girl. First timers never go for a heroic dose. No way this Blight can handle more than two.

“A quote from The Conquest of Birds,” I say, “Two drops of sacred Sona ignite a brazier of psychic illumination. Two drops provide a cornucopia of experience so vivid—”

“Two drops? No, I paid for twenty, I’ll have them all.”

Omen, portent, presage, harbinger, knell.

He uncorks the SonaBottle, leans his head back, raises the bottle over his face.

“I’m supposed to administer the drops,” I say, a little too loudly.

He scowls, perhaps startled at my tone or my forbidden use of the first person.

My hands go immediately to prayer pose. “Gentle scholar. Allow this night to unfold as it has for a hundreds of years, as dictated by hallowed praxis.”

Before he can argue, I squeeze myself into the space between the bookshelf and his chair. “Soon, the sacred Sona will transport you to exceptional, exalted states. A bespoke encounter with the self. Permit this Ink Girl to catalyze SonaDrops into that which her Blight loves most … words, music, beauty, culinary delight, dance, song or”—I bring my lips close to his ear— “for the intrepid sensualist, injury or restraint.”

For a second I think he is going to touch me, but he only taps his warding charms. “Mind your distance, Girl, and get on with it!” Elbow, earring, ankle, wrist. He repeats this, each side twice. He looks like he’s having a fit. I press against the shelves, book spine to my spine, and say, “In this sealed chamber, a bridge will form from your fine thoughts to the empty shell of another psyche. There, the Sona will bless you with a two-fold kiss: a Girl’s youthful vitality and a profound insight into your true self. Prepare for continued revelation, a secret inspiration, a forgotten memory, a warning that will well serve you.”

When I wet my lips, they taste like fear and salt. Terror and brine. Horror and sea.

Now I’m the one who’s stalling. I have to lure him away from a ludicrous dose. He’ll tailspin. He’ll be stiff and toes up by morning, and I’ll be compost in a week.

“Tonight.” My voice sounds strained and tinny. “The Sona bequeaths longevity but it will also deepen your intuition, open the floodgates to sacred reality, induce a state of gnosis. Your SonaScape will be the experiential embodiment of your core self. It can manifest your heart’s desire or intensify your sweetest memory. The Scape may also reveal hard truths meant only to further your creative path. For a talent such as yourself, the SonaScape may inspire verses never assembled—”

“You’ve said all that.”

He looks at the door, a sure sign that he is losing patience and considering to whom he should take his grievance. He erupts into a wet and phlegmy coughing fit so violent he almost drops the SonaBottle as he hands it to me.

When he settles, I tell him to lift the stretchy skin of his eyelids and I say, as sweetly as I can, “The drops will rob you of vision. Do not be alarmed if everything gets cloudy.”

“I’m aware of how it works!” he squawks.

I squeeze the bulb of the dropper. Into his twitchy eyeball I let fall a single opaline droplet.

His hands fly to his face, his mouth twisted in surprise. “Is it supposed to burn?”

First time. Never wrong.

I dose the other eye. His pupils dilate, and then an iridescent film clouds his eyes until they’re the steely color of mother of pearl.

“Now the rest,” he hisses.

I lean over him, hover my face over his, and collect saliva in my mouth. I poise myself to spit in his eyes.

“Wait!” He slips the mala bead necklace around his neck. Lariat, ligature, choker, noose.

“Go.”

My spittle falls into each eyeball, delicate as summer rain.

“Ah,” he moans.

I can hear Bird and Blossom’s voice in my head begging me to take my full dose tonight, the one designed to keep me safer, stronger against the wear of the SonaScape. Their pleas are silenced by the memory of the Apple Girl, who I should have done more to protect. Surely I could have spared some of my SonaDrops instead of letting Key ply her with Oxmed. While the Blight whines of burning corneas, I pour the remaining drops into a teacup which I stash behind the biographies.

Stay two squares ahead. Right, Blossom? That’s what she always says. As I return to the bedside, the floor undulates under my feet either from fatigue, nerves, or the first sensations of his SonaDrops reaching out for mine, the two meager drops Key administered what seems like hours ago. Tomorrow. I promise myself that tomorrow I’ll resume my full dose of Sona.

The Blight rubs his torso. “Something is happening.” The veins at his temples pop out like fat worms scrambling for escape.

“The Sona stimulates cerebral circulation and dilates the blood vessels in preparation for all the health you are about receive.”

“And you?” he gasps. “Are you feeling the same sensation? Are you weakened?”

I draw a loud breath. “My life’s light fades by the moment.” This is the most honest statement I’ve made all night. I’m lightheaded. It’s hard to think straight. I flatten my hands on the bed for balance. “The medicine coursing through you will create a SonaBridge to your consciousness. Once crossed, your thoughts will be my thoughts.” I make my voice quiver as if with great emotion. “I am no longer a House Girl but a vibrant, living bridge. Take of my life energy, pure and young, and renew!”

He runs his hands over his arms and swats the air at the imaginary bugs brought on by the Sona. Formication, the tactile hallucination of bugs crawling on your skin. The bugs signal the start of the next phase of the SonaScape.

The edges of my room go wavy. “The prickly sensation means our migration into your SonaScape is about to begin. Take heart, beloved psychonaut! Soon your mind’s eye will envision your Sona landscape, inspired, informed, fashioned out of the words you command me to read. A divine sculptor of your own experience. You are as a God.” I let the pause hang a bit for effect.

“Where will you be?” He’s perched on the edge of the chair. “You are not to leave this room!”

“An Ink Girl lives a vow of stability and won’t leave your side. Her body is static and obedient. A human form dissolved in Sona, a drop of ink in the ocean of your intellect. Nothing of the Girl will remain but the bridge she has built for you to enter and exit your glorious tranceworks. This is only the start of renewed vigor. By morning, you will be resplendent.”

He smiles stupidly, then claws at his thighs and ankles.

“Resist the urge to scratch if you can,” I tell him. “The Sona comes on quickly. Let me do the work, do not try to control or resist it. The Sona knows what to do.”

He’s not looking so good; the skin of his face has gone puke yellow. I knew it. Two drops of Sona and he’s melting down. He looks ready to faint. My legs feel the familiar sandbag heaviness of his Sona swirling around mine, pushing me down. “It’s best if you sit back.”

Best if I sit too. My chest feels like there’s a swiftlet banging around inside it.

“Don’t order me around, Girl … oily grackle. What’s that smell?”

Why is it so bright in here? The light bulb overhead radiates like an exploding sun. Nova, novae, superstar, void.

“I’m so hot. I smell”—he sniffs— “paint thinner?”

“Resin from the drops. The bark of the Sonagachi is terpene rich. Volatile and highly combustible and why SonaDrops are stored in glass.”

Thuja tree, juniper, maiden grass, dittany, pine. All flammable.

“I know all that. Now, take it!” He waves the scroll at me. “Exactly as it’s written. I have it memorized and will know if a single syllable is altered.”

When I take the scroll, I run my palm over the smooth vellum. It’s badly watermarked with burnt umber splotches. It looks like a page ripped from a book. “Welcome stillness,” I say, “I will read to you.”

He clenches his trembling fists around his beaded necklace.

My ears have the stuffed, drum-tight feeling of being held under water. Instinctively, the Blight’s mind flails around for the closest consciousness it can find, urged by the greedy SonaDrops in his veins. I feel his Sona congeal at the base of my neck, semi-solid, with the consistency of warm wax, then it pools at the base of my spine. Waves become flat plains become cilia, fingers, tentacles, proboscis as his thoughts follow his Sona reaching out of his mind to mingle with my own.

His breath comes out in short gasps. Prelude to a panic. This is my favorite part, when the Blight is terrified and sifts around like sand, untethered and alone. If I don’t extend my consciousness and create the SonaBridge, he dies in that hideous chair and so do I and for an instant, that doesn’t matter. A choice is offered to every House Girl. This is where it resides.

A memory of Bird, Honey, and Key from a long time ago, when we were girls, forces the choice and I return to the present, to the sweating Blight and The Nectar House. I imagine my inner eye open wide, locate the SonaDrops Key administered with her dove hands. These drops, my Sona, yet to metabolize, wait for me to call upon them. Another breath invites my SonaDrops to show me the calm and open palace where I will catalyze his Sona and create the connection between us both.

His Sona … now our Sona … begins a course through my neural pathways, slow and molten like lava.

I prefer my final thoughts before the SonaScape to be of Bird or Blossom. I imagine Bird singing me a lullaby between the golden leaves. Blossom’s eyes glistening like the mirrored sequins of her shawl, Honey tossing her head in haughty laughter. They need me. Even Key … I let go, allow my consciousness to step aside, only a tad, take it slow.

“I feel sick,” says the Blight. He doesn’t sound right.

I feel myself, my self, wither as I am overcome, the borders of my thoughts breached.

His mind is lazy: like water it takes the path of least resistance. I let him loose inside the quiet castle walls of me. He wriggles like a hungry maggot. Rapacious, voracious, edacious, gulp.

. . . and we are bridged in Sona.

Chapter 5
Entheogen

The Blight’s mind is all over me, and my own consciousness pleads for me to claw my way out from under the weight of him.

“I can’t see!” he croaks.

The sinews of his neck are taut as he twists his head side to side looking for me. “Are you still there? How will you read to me if you can’t see?”

“House Girls are too feeble of mind to experience the enlightened effect of Sona and are not blinded by it.” Breathe through the nausea, infuse your script with convincing grandeur. “Sweet Blight! Act as hallowed aegis, protect me from Sona’s powerful effect. Without you, my meager intellect would be overrun. Without you, Sona is poison to me. A psychic prison.”

He grins, pleased as a pasha, and leans heavy into the cushions, half collapsed on the arm rest. “I think I can feel it,” he cries. “I can see the flickering edges of your vitality … It is so warm, it’s like firelight.”

Firelight? He should not be able to see or sense me at all.

“Fly to it. Fly to the light,” I say. He should feel the rush of euphoria, hardly able to recognize me as “other” at all. Our minds have linked, but the SonaBridge feels weak, brittle. I try to get better hold of it, but it’s like braiding smoke.

“They said it would be … Mynah guaranteed,” he gasps, “like dipping my quill into an inkwell.”

A wrenching feeling at my temples makes me wince. The chair, SonaDrink set, the sagging shelves, the Blight’s tunic with the dangling talismans—the entire room is lit in a stark blue and white glow as if struck by lightning.

A filmy, fishy taste coats my tongue. This has never happened before. Something, everything is off.

Aura. A perceptual disturbance due to abnormally excessive or synchronous neuronal activity.

I feel a stab of regret; this is when my own SonaDrops would protect me the most. I grip the edges of the mattress. How can his pull on me be so strong on such little Sona? I resist the urge to fight him off. This is the hardest part. Yield, surrender, submit, concede, comply.

The Blight bolts straight up, invigorated by the first flush of my stolen life. First taste. Forever the sweetest.

He grips his mala bead necklace with both hands. “I never knew … I never knew.”

He hasn’t even begun to hallucinate and already his voice sounds half in love with the pleasure brought on by the SonaScape. The rest of his life will be measured against this feeling.

His Sona-steeped mind feels soupy and thick, threatening to smother me deep, deeper than with any other Blight. Viscose, viscid, clotted, curdled, clabber, gum. How many drops did I give him? I can’t remember. He brought ten full doses. I spit in his eyes. Was that tonight? Did I lose count? Is this a trick?

“Read, girl! Gamey grackle, eater of fireflies.”

He stands and waves his arms in front of him as if trying to grab me, but he’s too unsteady and collapses back in the chair.

Maybe if I just read, press on, things will right. The words swim all over the vellum. I blink to steady the small print of the scroll. “At the edge of a dark Sonagachi forest lived a scholar who believed that the secret to eternal life was to read every book that had ever been written. He lived in a tower piled high with books, the highest building in all the land.”

A musty, dusty smell of old books wafts from his SonaScape into my consciousness.

“I see them! The stacks! So high I can’t see the top!” His eyeballs swivel in their sockets. “Continue, continue!”

My throat is desert dry, the air is hot inside my nose, like I’m breathing in smoke. “The scholar had a pet bird, a swiftlet, powder brown and twice the size of a man. It nested in the trees of the Sonagachi forest that grew outside the scholar’s tower. Every day the bird brought the scholar a fat sack of books that the scholar would read before nightfall. He read and read, page after page, day after day until the months became years, years became decades.”

It’s a fairy tale, a children’s book. These are my thoughts, not his thoughts, and why, why in the name of all the Sona trees in the world, is he still so aware of me?

The Blight screams at me to keep reading. He sounds far away, farther than the other side of the room.

“The scholar’s eyes became rheumy with age, and his spine grew crooked, and his heart became fettered by failure and bitterness, for books were being written every day and faster than he could read them. He grew to hate the written word and the bird that delivered them. One day he realized, down to his brittle bones, that he could never outpace the inexhaustible paradox of the written word. Desperate, he told the giant swiftlet to fly to a woman’s cloister famed for its ancient library. It was rumored to house a book, a children’s tale that held the secret to eternal life. The scholar had dismissed this claim as nonsense born of the soft minds of women and thus, bereft of meaning. Now, sick and soon to die, he commanded the bird to steal the book. To ensure that the nuns never wrote another, he ordered the bird to burn the library to cinders with the women locked inside.”

A charred smell fills my nostrils and I look up. The ceiling darkens and the edges curl like a photograph set on fire.

“The faithful bird did as it was told. When it returned to the scholar’s tower, its wings were scorched but it held in its talons a book whose words were written on vellum pages. The library had only housed a single tome, but it revealed, as promised, the secret of eternal life. The bird told the scholar that the women had put up a good fight but died smoldering and entombed inside their library. The devoted swiftlet would never fly again and could have survived its wounds if tended to, but the scholar turned his back on the creature who had served him so well for so long and left it to die against the trunk of a tall Sonagachi tree.”

“The book was feather-light and silken soft, made of the creamiest of vellums with instructions on vitality eternal. To evade death, the scholar was to steal a girl, any girl would do, as long as she could read. So, he went to the neighboring village and found the daughter of a silk merchant. She was rumored to be cunning as a raven with quick wits and sleek tresses to match. He dragged her deep into the forest with her braids in one hand and the stolen book in the other.”

My muscles tighten across my chest, my throat feels caught in a vise like a giant hand is squeezing me.

“He bound the girl to a Sonagachi tree and ordered her to read to him while he made a beaded necklace from the seeds of the tree just as the book instructed. All the while, the dying swiftlet watched and sobbed bitterly, for it knew that the scholar would have his way with the girl then wring her neck. In return for burying her body alongside its roots, the Sonagachi tree would grant the wicked scholar life everlasting as long as the necklace hung around his neck.”

When I look up, the Blight’s cheeks are ruddy and round and his nose no longer looks like a beak. He worries the mala beads. I feel for the SonaBridge. Still there, but I am no longer its creator or controller. If not me, then who?

I try to grab hold of his mind. Harness, jess, oxbow, yoke. He wiggles away.

He is not in a SonaScape, I am not observing from afar.

A wave of Sona washes over me. I’m floating and drowning at the same time. I can’t tell Blight from Girl as our SonaDrops find each other and clasp hands.

Sonatree, morning glory, spirit vine, story, Girl.

Powerful entheogens all.

The blue splotches on the Blight’s chest have faded while his necklace glows with the red-orange alarm of molten rock. Amber light blankets the room as if set ablaze. Suddenly I get it.

Cognition, intuition, epiphany, ken.

The necklace. It’s not a religious object at all, but a magical one that has somehow become the SonaBridge instead of me.

Carpet, ring, spindle, lamp.

A toothy smile loosens across the Blight’s face as he recites, “On the edge of a dark Sonagachi forest.”

… and I slip into the words I hold in my hand.

Chapter 6
At the Edge of a Dark Sonagachi Forrest

The woods at night are either beautiful or dangerous, your salvation or the setting of your final hour. It all depends on who you are.

Wise woman, bawdy crone, trickster, heroine, fey.

I’m in a dense forest, well-lit by a fat moon. Next to me, a giant Sonagachi punctures a starless sky. If this is a SonaScape, then why am I part of it, and where is the Blight hiding and how is this happening? A twig snaps behind me.

I whirl around. Freeze. Listen. 

The rustling stops.

It smells of pinecones. Loamy fungi. Mud and moss. It doesn’t smell of my musty books, or cedar chips from the commode or sick Blight. It doesn’t smell of me, either. I look down. This is not my body, but a heavier, better fed version of a girl my age, one burdened by a peasant skirt and a white apron embroidered with pink flowers. This is—I am—the daughter of the silk merchant from the story as the Blight imagined in our mind’s eye.

I sense neither the Blight, nor the SonaBridge. No Bridge means no way out. Nothing tethers me to him or to my room.

A nightjar swoops down from the canopy. It had something in its mouth.

The forest tightens around me, taking a sneaky step closer each time I look away. The trees are both separate and part of me just like everything else, the air around me, the lichen on the dead logs, the watchful leaves, my black farm girl boots. Very much like a dream, but not my dream. This is what it is to be in SonaScape, not a spectator as a House Girl should be, but part of a whole world as imagined by someone else. If this is the Blight’s mind, how am I able to smell and touch—

Something flutters overhead and lands with a dull thud: a book of fairy tales, splayed open to a woodcut of a girl tied to a tree.

Beyond the dense curtain of trees someone screams my name. It sounds like Bird.

Hands seize my shoulders, and I fall hard onto the damp earth. The Blight flips me onto my back and straddles my chest. He’s now a healthy young man with bushy eyebrows and the pert upturned nose of a dandy. Around his neck the beads of the mala necklace glow hot like embers.

He’s so heavy, I can’t shove him off me and my legs are tangled in the frills of the skirt. I feel his skin on mine, how is he able to touch me, how can I wrestle free each time he tries to capture my arms?

Through gritted teeth he says, “At the edge of a dark, Sonagachi forest, lived a great scholar!”

When I scratch his face, angry welts puff over his cheeks. For an instant, he looks surprised, like he didn’t think I had it in me to fight back.

“—the secret to eternal life,” he says, his breath coming out in gulps, “was to read every book—”

He catches my wrists and pins them under his bony knees. As he ties me to the tree, he smiles the smile of all conquerors.

Quell, quash, vanquish, take.

Bird calls my name again. But it can’t be Bird because it’s my real name and I have never told it to her. House rules.

The Blight rests on his heels and pants. “He grew to hate the written word and the bird that delivered them … He could never outpace the inexhaustible paradox of writing.”

Blood throbs in my ears, along with Bird’s sweet voice. She’s singing, or is she calling me to her from her burial mound in the courtyard? Are we now dead together?

The Blight is shouting again. “The women had put up a good fight but died smoldering, entombed inside their library.”

I kick him in the ribs. He doubles over, then hits my temple with a closed fist. Church bells peal inside my head. Hammer, anvil, stirrup, malleus, incus. Above the din, Bird chants words I can’t make out.

“To evade death,” he says, “the scholar was to take a girl, any girl would do, as long as she could read.”

I feel the heat of his necklace as he climbs on top of me. His knee finds my knees clenched together. With his weight, he pries them open and whispers, “Come to me, oily grackle. Shame you couldn’t be a Blossom.”

The necklace sears my cheek as he squeezes my neck with one hand and lifts my skirts with the other. “The scholar would wring the girl’s neck as she read, then bury her along with the book under the branches of the Sonagachi.”

My vision shrinks to a pinprick. There is only the weight of the Blight, his strangling hands, and Bird’s voice calling my name.

The beads illuminate his face from below.

“Ink!” Bird calls me by my House name. “The beads!”

I buck with everything I have left, and one wrist slips free of the knot, then the other. A fist to the groin and he loosens his grip on my neck. Another and he slumps off me and rolls to the ground.

Oh, lungfuls of air! Great big gulps of marvelous air that I draw and drag into my chest along with sweet relief. All the while, Bird calls me from far, far away, from once upon a time tales of girls trapped in towers.

“Take them,” she says.

I watch as I kick the Blight in the head with my farm girl boot.

“Start a fire. Follow it out,” cries Bird.

I watch as my hands rip off a piece of my torn apron. When I stuff the wad of cloth down his throat, I’m amazed at how far down his gullet my arm can reach.

“Take the beads. Set us all free.”

One more stomp to the ribs, then I slip the beads over my head. They’re as warm and welcome as sun on a meadow.

The Blight gags, eyes ready to pop out of his head. Life Force. I’m draining the last of his life and it’s like twenty, thirty, a hundred volcanic Drops of Sona—I swim in an underground sea of a Sona. Manna, amrita, datura, haoma. It surges deep inside me, a bubbling molten core, freshly discovered and born of detonation and dying Blight. The beads are hot enough to sear off skin, scorch down to the bone—but not my bones. Balefire, ossuary, sinew, singe. Through my veins is the devastation of a thousand bonfires. I am reborn of fire trapped inside these beads, and flames cannot hurt me. Is this what it feels like to the Blights? No one returns from this feeling. Nothing can be unburned.

A chorus of Bird and bead commands me to burn it all.

Firestorm, suttee, pyre.

The Blight lies curled on the floor, ugly and helpless as a hatchling. His gaze follows me as I rip the pages from his fairy tale and twist them into a torch. When I press paper to the burning beads, I set his world on fire.

Chapter 7
War Brings Ugly Choices

The Goon drags the dead Blight out of my room by his armpits. One of the Blight’s shoes slips off. A coarse, scute-covered heel bumps up and over the threshold like it’s going over a speed bump. From the dim hallway, a second Goon casts a lazy glance in my direction to confirm that I’m still alive, kicks the errant shoe to the hall, and locks the door.

I’m still on the floor where I woke, but I feel fine. Better than fine. I sit up and wait for the familiar cloudy state of post SonaScape: the nausea, the joints that feel like they’ve been taken apart and hastily put back together, the automatic thoughts that calculate how much life this Blight has cost me. Nothing comes. I feel fully alert and alive. The opposite of deficit is abundance.

The sun is about to breach the rooftop over Key’s room. I’ve been passed out and lying beside a dead man all night. The last thing I remember was a fiery halo engulfing the room reflected in the Blight’s shiny good luck charms. I look around the room. Everything is as I left it, everything but me. I feel different.

Rarely do Blights die after the Girl has successfully SonaBridged them back to consciousness. His heart must have burst, or a vein popped inside his head. When this happens, often with the older, sicker Blights, the Goons have two corpses to drag over the threshold. If they resist the Girl’s efforts of pulling them out or panic, or resist as she does so, they emerge from the trance with their adrenaline pumping. By then, if anything physical is going to go wrong, both Girl and Blight are wide awake when it does. But this guy died while in Sona, not after. This guy died in SonaScape because I shoved a kitchen apron down his gullet and then set him on fire. I should be stuck inside his SonaScape watching helplessly as he plays out his murder-violation fantasy, our bodies comatose for days until we starve and stop twitching. But here I am. Telling myself a tale I can’t quite believe.

Last night should have gone off like any other. Read to an imbecile Blight, Bridge him into a dismally boring or rapturously tortured mindscape, watch him replay the scene a half dozen times, bring him out, and that’s show business. He walks out with a spring in his step while I’m a month closer to death and in need of a nap. I take the beads off and tuck them in the wide waistband of my dress. Key will come to fetch my fancy clothes, so I should hide the beads under the bed along with the dead Blight’s scroll, but I want them close.

All morning I’ve called for Blossom. She will know what to think of all this. It feels like I’ve been waiting a lifetime for her to wake up. Eons, eras, epochs, days without end.

I walk the length of my room once, twice, and talk myself out of a third. How much space does it take to break out into a full sprint? All this time in my tower and I haven’t thought of running. I can’t imagine how it feels anymore. Can a person forget how to run? I hop from foot to foot, there are no spins, no gauzy lightheaded need to lie down, as if my body and mind have never known the drain of a single SonaScape. I press the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. My thoughts ricochet inside my skull. I pull out the necklace, measure its weight in the palm of my hand. I tap the words on my wall to calm down.

Maar lake, rollercoaster, kettledrum, cyclone, tsunami.

I’m about to somersault out of my skin when Blossom arrives to her window bleary with sleep. Her eyes still have the steely sheen of a SonaHangover. She squints at Bird’s window, then at me.

“Bird?” she asks.

“Not in her room.”

Blossom says, “I asked Key. She doesn’t know where Bird is either. You sound funny. What’s the matter with you?”

My leg bounces like a jackrabbit. I try to stop it, but I’m too restless and feel absurdly, jarringly awake, tingly like I’m covered in exploring antennae.

Blossom picks at the wilted marigolds on her bars. “How was your night?”

“The Blight died.”

Honey pops up at her window to my right. “Who died?”

I can only see half of Honey’s face because she’s small for a child of nine and can barely reach the windowsill unless she stands on the chowki table.

“My Blight died,” I tell her.

Honey’s face registers relief, then disappears. She’s worried about Bird too. Honey did not grow up in tenderness, and Bird is the only person Honey’s ever loved in her short, ill-starred life. She loves Blossom almost as much. They’ve never been within three feet of each other, but Blossom’s love radiates like a second sun. Honey sucks up to Key because she plies her with extra food, but me, she can’t stand.

All of Honey’s face returns to the window. Despite my extra SonaDrops, the Blights have drained her to the point that her eyes have grown crusty and dull. A year ago, they reflected the light like a cat’s. Chatoyant. Their unique color singled her out to Mynah. The suggestion that she should find a girl with honey-colored eyes to be Honey Girls was mine. Fate did the rest.

“Go back inside, get more sleep,” says Blossom to Honey. “Children grow when they sleep, and don’t you want to grow big, strong?”

She ignores Blossom and gives me an open-mouthed grin. When she does this, she reminds me of a potoo bird, or a nightjar whose wide, malevolent mouth is more froglike than avian. “How did you snuff your Blight, Ink? Oh, tell me it was slow and ugly.”

We all pause when Blossom hold up her hands and shushes us. She cocks her head, listening for whoever might be listening. The House and courtyard are quiet except for the calls of tiffin boys and the din of mid-morning traffic.

“Oh, don’t be such a pansy, Blossom. Everyone’s still asleep.” Honey grips her window bars. Listening to the story of a dead Blight will be the best part of her day. “On with it, Ink.”

“He was the sickest Blight I’ve seen in a while. No skin on his feet, just orange scute.”

“Like Mynah’s?” asks Honey.

“Worse,” I say. “He had already grown a hind toe.”

Honey pretends to gag.

“The idiot bought twenty drops, wanted to take them all.”

“Who let him bring up so much? And he wasn’t a regular?” asks Blossom.

“First timer. But I tricked him into taking two.”

Blossom’s brow furrows. “How did you do that? Did you take your full dose?”

“Who cares?” Honey groans with impatience and climbs onto her sill so we can get our fill of her small body. The honeycomb hair barrette Key used to sweep back the stringy locks last night now hangs askew. This, along with the collar of her torn day dress, could let her pass an escaped lunatic. “Dead Blight?” she insists.

“He had me read him a fairy tale.”

Honey leans out of her bars to her armpits and tries to snatch a leaf off a nearby branch. “Like with talking tigers and magic turnips? Did he have ten thousand league boots in his SonaScape? An evil stepsister?”

“A thousand and one Blights!” Blossom is trying to make Honey laugh, but the smile is fake. She’s worried about Bird but pretends for Honey’s sake and possibly mine. Bird gone this long has no explanation. Blossom hates not knowing things, hates not having the logical response. Soon, I’ll have to explain last night and how good I feel. The beads defy easy explanation; they would confuse anyone, anyone who hasn’t worn them.

Vim, vigor, vitality, possibility, potential.

Potential. Words like this don’t make it onto my wall. I slip my finger into the folds of the sash to touch the beads.

“Ink.” Blossom is snapping her fingers to bring me to attention. “Which fairy tale?”

“He only brought some of the story with him. I think it was a page torn from an old book. It was about a snatched girl who grants a man eternal life by reading to him under a Sonagachi tree and a swiftlet the size of a man who did his bidding.” And a magic necklace, too.

What else should I tell them? I stole some miracle beads, used them to set him on fire, and now I feel better than I have in my whole life? I’ve been thinking about it all night. All I can think is that the beads somehow hold a power to reverse the flow of Life Force from Blight to Girl. It sounds crazy. Blossom will think my mind has gone soft, she’ll be scared these are my last days, and my sanity is leading the way out of this world. We’ve seen that before after a Girl has done too many SonaScapes. The Apple Girl was talking nonsense toward the end too, but Key was giving her so much Oxmed that her brain was turning to aspic.

Honey shakes the branch she has managed to trap between her ankles. “What does the giant bird do? The one in the story.”

“Dies of shame, tied to the tree. Morality tale about not helping monsters. The scholar in the story made a necklace out of SonaSeeds.” I touch the beads in my waistband to make sure they are real, to make sure I’m not dreaming any of this.

“How did the story end?” asks Blossom.

“Didn’t have an ending.”

“But he did.” Honey snickers, displaying her crooked eyetooth that gives her a lopsided grin. Sprite, pika, brownie, imp.

“I don’t know a fairy tale with giant swiftlets,” says Blossom. “What about you, Honey?”

Honey shakes her head. I’m not surprised. She was raised on the grimy streets of this city and had neither access nor exposure to anyone who would bother to put her to bed with a morsel in her mouth, much less a bedtime story.

“And the page with the story, where is it now?” asks Blossom.

I jerk my head toward my room, then remember she can’t see me. “I have it, but I don’t think that’s the important thing.” The words in the story aren’t important either. It’s these beads, these warm, life-giving, magnificent beads better than any SonaDrop or SonaScape or medicine contrived by man.

Blossom’s finger goes to her top lip. She does this whenever she’s trying to figure something out or something doesn’t add up. “If the words you read aren’t important, then what is?”

Blossom is the smartest person I have ever met, which makes her the hardest person to deceive, practically invulnerable to strategic deception. My schemes are revealed to her as fast as I can hatch them, so distraction and delay are the best tactics against her.

“I don’t know, Blossom, the SonaScape was weird from the start. I took only half my dose. It was strange because I never felt fully in control of the SonaBridge. He was too strong, kept pulling on me.”

“Greedy bastards always do that,” says Honey. “Suck on us like a tit.”

“Honey,” chides Blossom, who treats Honey like she would any little girl of ten. Blossom should save her breath. Honey probably learned language for the sole purpose of telling someone where they can stick it.

The sun is at its highest, as is the heat. The skin underneath the thick sash Key bound me in last night is slick with sweat. I take it off and hold the warm, wet beads and fight the urge to press them to my lips, to dance around the room holding them high above my head.

I take a breath, press the beads to my chest. “He didn’t go into SonaScape alone. Somehow”—I hold them tighter— “he pulled me inside his SonaScape. Right alongside him.”

“You mean you were part of his SonaScape vision?” asks Blossom.

“No, I was inside, acting of my own will. In the forest, just like the story. I was the girl who could read, the one the scholar tied to the tree and the Blight was the scholar.”

Silence from both of them. This may be a first.

“Ink.” This is Blossom’s concerned voice.

“I’m fine.” Better than I can ever remember feeling, exploding with energy. I could start another forest fire, fuel a jet, launch a rocket. If I try to explain to Blossom half of what I feel, my credibility will go out the door along with the Blight’s corpse.

Honey breaks the pause. “Bird says Girls can’t go into SonaScapes, Bird says that the SonaScapes aren’t real, only like dreams, Bird says—”

“I could feel his weight on me. His skin bunched under my fingernails when I raked them across his face.”

Honey grabs her bars and bounces on her heels on her sill. “Did you get his eye?”

Blossom looks dubious. “Did anything else happen?”

Almost. “No. He tried to strangle me. I fended him off.” Honey would have loved it.

“How? Why? Kill the Girl, no way back. He dies gruesome. You both do,” says Blossom.

“Because of these.” I hold the beads out the window. “These Bridged us both back.”

Blossom squints. “What is it? I can’t see.”

“Those are mala beads,” says Honey. “Old women at the temples are covered crotch to crown in them.”

“Was he a religious nut?” asks Blossom.

“Poet.”

They groan in unison. Everyone hates poets who are slightly better than novelists.

Honey sticks her skinny legs out of the bars. “Then how did he croak?”

“I think he was trying to recreate the story. In exchange for eternal life, he needed a swiftlet, a girl who could read to him, a Sonagachi tree, and these.” I shake the beads for Blossom to hear them.

Honey shakes her head. “Why do that if it would kill you both?”

“I don’t know, Honey. I did not get a chance to ask him as he was choking me. I think the beads made it possible for us to be together and for him to touch me and the beads would somehow protect him, but I managed to take them off his neck. When I put them on, he couldn’t take any of my Life Force, not a droplet, not a minute from my life, and now he’s dead and—” I lower my voice. “I may have taken his Life Force instead.” I wrap the necklace around my wrist and show them again through the bars.

“What are they made of?” asks Blossom.

“Stones. Polished rocks. I don’t have any geology books. The big one here”—I hold it out again— “is different from the rest.”

“That’s the mother bead,” says Blossom. “It’s so you don’t lose count while you pray. Do they look valuable? They’ll be missed.”

“Let me hold them,” says Honey. “Tell Key to bring them for me tonight.”

“Don’t you dare tell Key about any of this,” I say.

“Was he wearing the necklace when he crossed the SonaBridge?” asks Blossom.

“Insisted on it. But I told you, there was no bridge, not that I made.”

“You should get rid of the necklace,” says Blossom.

“Get rid of the beads? I feel so good.”

“You look it,” says Honey. “Well, not good, but different.”

“I’m so strong, like I could rip the Sonagachi from the roots.” I grab the bars of my window and shake them. “Hey, one of them is loose. If I wanted to, I could wrench it all the way out.” It hadn’t occurred to me to test their strength before.

Honey grabs her bars. “Mine wiggles too.” Grains of cement fall to the courtyard. “Try your bars, Blossom.”

Blossom shoots me a murderous look. It took us weeks to break Honey’s preoccupation with running away and trying to get out of her room.

Honey braces her bare feet against the windowsill and shakes the bars with the full force of her eighty pounds.

Blossom pulls on the shiny metal rods to shut Honey up, but they don’t budge. Blossom’s bars are new, put in after the previous Blossom Girl wrapped her bedclothes around them and twisted the fabric until the bars bent. She made a gap wide enough to slip through the window. With her sheets she made a noose.

Bird begged the Blossom to climb back into her room. I yelled my head off for a Goon, for Mynah, for anyone, but Mynah was in the country buying Girls, and the Goons were legless on SonaDrink and the people on the street like to pretend we’re not real, so no one came. Key was suspiciously absent, later claiming she was with the First Floors, but I always suspected that it was Key who taught the poor Girl how to tie the knots and gave her the idea to tie them to the bars to pry them wider.

“Honey,” says Blossom. “Leave your bars alone.”

Honey complies with a defiant grunt. “I want a try at the magic beads. Ink’s never looked this strong. Like she’s a Blight they dunked in a barrel of Sona.”

“The beads aren’t magical,” Blossom says.

“Then what are they?” I ask.

She sighs. “The baubles of a crazy man.”

“Then explain.” I sneak a peek at the courtyard and lower my voice. “Explain what happened last night.”

“Once lost,” Blossom says and shakes her head, “House Girls can’t get Life back.”

“Do you really think you took his Life Force?” asks Honey. “Because you look almost pretty. Not nice, but not like a boiled potato like always, and you’re talking really fast.”

“Blossom, you have no idea how good I feel. Magic? Luck? Fate? Lima beans? I don’t think I care.”

“The beads are magic,” yells Honey. “I want my turn!”

Blossom leans back and crosses her arms. Her restless mind demands answers, but today I have none that will satisfy her, only more questions. Questions and a desire to climb all over my furniture, scale the walls, clamber all over my words, walk on water.

“All I know,” I say and gather myself, as if my gravitas could convince her that this all makes sense, “is that I could touch him, the Blight, and smell his clabber breath. He felt me, too. The beads got hot, and I burnt him and his SonaScape—our SonaScape—down. Burnt it to cinders. The fire was my SonaBridge and that’s how I got out. Through a curtain of fire.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Blossom says. “We bridge them in, we bring them out. We watch them. We—”

A loud wail pierces the air as a pair of pudgy arms poke out the bars of Bird’s room. It’s the same kid from yesterday, but her howls are different. There’s a hollow center to them today. Closer to acceptance. Sad, but for the best. She’s closer to understanding that this is it. No use fighting. No use resisting. The House always wins. Mynah can slice away hope with the same skill and ease with which she flays the Sonagachi tree.

“Go on,” I yell at the girl. “Keep it up. You’ll be on the First Floor before sunset.”

She hiccups a few more breaths, eventually settling into shallow sobs.

“Hello, there,” says Blossom, adopting the syrupy, insulated tone people use with children and the infirm. “Is there anyone in the room with you?”

The girl looks behind her then shakes her head. The whole front of her pink blouse is wet, stained with tears.

“I’m Blossom. That’s Ink.”

“That street goblin in the window above you to your left is Honey,” I say, hoping to get on with things. The girl looks side to side. “I forget which one is left?”

Honey cackles, “Great, Mynah’s brought us another hayseed. What’s your story?”

The girl runs the back of her hand across her face. “My name is—”

“That’s not your name anymore,” I say.

“Ink doesn’t let us tell our names.” Honey holds her head up, haughty, know-it-all. Establishing the pecking order already.

“Ink,” says Blossom with reproach, “let her say her name, just this once. Don’t scare her.”

“Don’t coddle her.” I turn to the kid, who looks close to tears again. “We’ll call you Little Bird for now.”

Honey presses her face between the gaps of the bars. “Can you sing?” Every syllable of that question is boxed in an envy as hard and solid as a SonaSeed. The swiftlets could feast on the sentence alone.

Little Bird sniffs and nods. “Don’t get too comfortable.” Honey glares at Little Bird, likely licking her fangs, dreaming of pounding the cute out of this kid. “We already have a Bird.” Despite her foul mouth and mood, Honey has been the baby for the past year and a half, especially beloved to Bird. Honey won’t back off if she thinks she’s about to be displaced. “I’ll bet my breakfast you won’t make it here a week, crybaby. There were three Honey girls before me, and I’ve lasted the longest. Isn’t that right, Ink?”

“That’s right,” I say. “You, my little trash fairy, are the toughest of them all.” Good. Let her establish dominance. Let her enjoy a little bit of power in her belly.

Perched on the window, toes curling over the lip of the sill, Honey looks like a four-foot gargoyle. Honeys are supposed to be sweet and pliant. This Honey was a hellcat who, after two concussions and a broken arm, refused to settle. Mynah was about to send her downstairs until I convinced her to advertise Honey as a rarity, a unique commodity catering to “the discerning Blight who likes a sprinkle of salt in their caramel, a dash of chili powder in their cocoa.” I am equally proud and disgusted by how deftly I saved and sold her.

“Honey, be nice, or at least be quiet,” says Blossom. “Little Bird, there’s much to learn, like how to tell the time using the shadows of the Sonagachi so you know when to rest and preserve your strength. This is important because it’s hard work with the Blights and the Sona.”

Honey squats on the ledge of the window. “How did you get to The Nectar House? I was snatched. Mynah’s Goons chased me for hours, all the way to the docks. The Goon that nabbed me was huge, but I fought him hard. Now he only has one eye left in his head.”

I groan. Not this story again. The House will be crawling with Blights before I can get Blossom’s full attention. “Blossom, leave the brat already. Why don’t you go back to sleep, Little Bird? Aren’t you tired?”

“Go on, Little Bird. Tell us how you got here.” Blossom ignores me and won’t stop until she’s earned the Girl’s trust. Like Bird, Blossom possesses perseverance and sympathy in equal measure. Sometimes, these qualities get in my way when we’re at odds, which is not often. Our arena is too small and our enemies too common.

“A woman wearing all purple took me away on a bus,” starts Little Bird. “She had two other girls who were sisters. Twins who dressed the same. The windows on the bus wouldn’t open, it was hot, and I had to use the toilet. They wouldn’t stop, and the woman told me to go on myself, but I wouldn’t until I couldn’t help it, then she made fun of me for stinking.”

She hesitates, possibly expecting sympathy, but she’s landed in the wrong place for that. Not even Blossom bats an eyelash.

“We stopped at a big town by the water. There were flat boats that carried trucks across the river.”

“That’s called a ferry, you lump,” says Honey.

Little Bird starts again, working hard not to cry. “One of the sisters told me drivers stop their trucks there. When they dragged one sister off the bus, she cried so loud I could hear her even after we pulled away. The sister on the bus stared in front of her like there was something far away she could see and wouldn’t talk to me anymore.”

“What happened to her?” I don’t care about any twins or any of this, but the question slips out before I can grab it back. I just want her to hurry up, tell her tale of woe, and then shut up. Part of me wishes Key could give the kid more Oxmed. I need Blossom to myself.

“I fell asleep and when I woke up, that twin was gone too. Then we walked for a long time in the dark until I couldn’t anymore. A Half-Blight man carried me—”

“Those are the Goons, hillbilly,” interrupts Honey.

This kid is a hillbilly. Plucked out of a village clinging to the side of a mountain and a two-day journey to the nearest gas station.

“The—the Half-Blight Goon man carried me over his shoulder.”

“Blossom,” I say, “can we please—”

She shoots me an angry look. Blossom is pretty as a portrait, but everything about the arch of her eyebrows is telling me to leave her alone. I throw up my hands. This is going to take all morning. Full mountain ranges will form. I need Blossom to help me make sense of last night. We can talk it through, like we do everything.

Blossom turns her face away from me and looks down toward Little Bird. “Where did you live?”

Little Bird looks nervously at Honey. She blows her nose on her sleeve.

Hayseed is right. I can see it all now. Seventeen children squatting in a leaky, tin roof shack, each one wasting away in a mine or brick factory.

“What was the name of your village?” urges Blossom.

Little Bird shrugs in confusion. “We live on the mountain.”

“Who did you live with?” Blossom asks.

“My mother, my father and my brothers and Butter. He’s my dog. He sleeps in the bed with me. They all work at the brick kilns, except for Butter because he’s a dog and momma who carries bricks to the firing pits.”

Knew it. I’m on fire today.

“I bet Poppa likes his SonaDrink,” says Honey. “Bet he likes to drink up his earnings. Bet he sold you like a sack of sorghum. No one sold me. Goons had to chase me halfway across the city. I got all the way to the river with an eyeball in my hand.”

Little Bird puffs out her chest defiantly. “We need tin for the roof. A woman loaned us the jaspers. I’m going to work off the loan like the Key said.”

“You’re not worth enough jaspers to buy half a roof. I bet it’s raining on poppa right now while he chugs his SonaDrink.” Honey throws her head back like she’s drinking from a bottle.

Little Bird grips the bars. “I’ll pay it. Then I’ll go home. Poppa will carry me on his shoulders.”

Little Bird has just enough backbone to make this interesting for Honey, who pretends to fall backward with amusement. “They sold you, you idiot! You’ll won’t see your drunk poppa again.”

“No more yelling!” Blossom lowers her voice. “Or we’ll all get our windows boarded up. Let her talk.”

Blossom shouldn’t bother quieting. Parents and a dog? For Honey this is blood sport. Entertainment involving the spilling of blood, especially the hunting of prey.

“Blossom was snatched, too; she’s too smart to let herself get sold.” Honey preens as if this gives them both more status. Snatched or sold both would seem just as bad, but it’s not. If you’re snatched, you were once wanted. If you’re sold, you weren’t worthy enough to stay, and no one is looking for you.

“Bird got sold by a man who promised her work. I bet Ink was—”

“Shut up, Honey,” I tell her. She’s going to make this Little Bird scream again and my brain is buzzing.

Blossom is doing more harm than she knows, encouraging this kind of talk. It’s best if Little Bird forgets how she got here. There’s an ugly difference between something happening by accident and the deliberate betrayal of a business transaction. Girls sold by their families realize too late that there are no safe pockets in the world, and this fuels their hysteria. I knew Little Bird had been sold the moment I heard the tenor of her desperation. I’m never wrong.

Little Bird looks to be on the brink of another ear-splitting tantrum. Blossom will have to soothe the girl all over again, and we will welcome a new ice age. Or, this late in the day, Mynah might have Key plaster her with Oxmed.

“Honey, stop it,” I say, “or I’ll make Key hold your lunch tray.”

Honey launches a lump of phlegm at me. Despite her frequent practice and the fact that her ability to produce sputum borders on religious, the gob falls short by half a foot. I’m not taking sides; she can have at Little Bird until she tastes feathers, but some other time.

“Key is the one with the limp?” asks Little Bird. She grips her bars. “Will she bring food?”

We go quiet. The threat of starvation is how Mynah likes to break the new ones.

“Yes, Key brings the food and does our hair. Her room is the one above yours.” Blossom points to the window on her left.

Little Bird cranes her neck. “It doesn’t have any bars.”

“Ugh, what a rube!” says Honey. “Key can come in or out. Do you know what a lock is? Or did you live in a cave?”

Little Bird juts her chin out and ventures, “You the one that’s dumb. I go in and out of my room all the time. I don’t need any stupid bars.”

Good, Little Bird, push back.

“It’s not to keep us from escaping, stupid,” says Honey, “it’s so we don’t jump or try to hang ourselves. And that’s not your room! Mynah will sell you away and then you’ll get anchored like the rest of us somewhere else.”

Little Bird looks down to the courtyard, as if accessing these possibilities. She sets her jaw. “If these bars weren’t here, I would climb down this tree. I can climb anything. I’m not afraid.”

“Oh, yeah,” says Honey, “then what would you do?”

“Go home.” Little Bird peers into the courtyard. “I would escape through that alley there. That goes to the street. I can hear the cars.”

Blossom returns to her candy-coated tone. “That alley is very narrow, Little Bird, you wouldn’t fit. Best to forget all about it.”

Honey says, “Sometimes stray dogs come into the courtyard. If they crap on the Sonagachi it’s good luck, but if Mynah catches them, well,” she says and pretends to look crestfallen, “it’s doggie stew for you, crybaby. Mynah will feed it to you with lots of butter.”

Little Bird takes a slow, sobering breath as if to collect herself, but only jettisons a shriek loud enough to rouse the dead buried under the Sonagachi.

Honey clamps her hands over her ears and disappears into her room.

I leave my window to squat down low under the sill and put my pillow over my head. Shame to waste a set of pipes like that on the First Floor. I did what I could.

Outside, Blossom tries to quiet the child with entreaties and a string of “sweethearts” and “darlings,” but babying her is as useless as it is cruel. Blossom thinks my blood runs cold and my heart is cast in iron, but she can afford her altruism. Blights are her sole burden. She plays games with the Girls to break the dullness of the day and keep them from wasting away from boredom. Bird makes up silly songs and gets to see them in their rooms as she teaches, maybe even rocks the lucky ones to sleep. All I have are my wits and my schemes, but my methods are kinder in the end. Conflict should be quick to minimize carnage and loss of resources. Blossom doesn’t understand that unchecked charity is akin to murder in the theater that is The Nectar House. My strategy leaves fewer bodies on the floor.

So, what if the Girls hate me? They know I have Mynah’s ear, and some don’t trust me, afraid I’m not on their side, but they don’t see the bigger picture and they’re as blind as Blossom. The general that best understands the art of war is the one suited to lead. No one knows how I grovel and connive to get them more protective SonaDrops, or fewer Blights, or convince Mynah to put down the strap when our SonaDrink numbers are low. To them, I’m the ugly old woman of fate. Spinner, timekeeper, and sorter of scared little girls. Unlike Blossom, I have to make all the hard decisions. Then I have to live with them.

“Ink!” yells Blossom.

I press my forehead against the wall until my head aches. What more does she want from me? It’s the same each time, with every new Girl. It’s maddening. She knows how this has to play out. The first days in a House are the hardest, when existence is too catastrophic to accept all at once. A Girl must tie a tourniquet around parts of herself, let that part die, and then breathe life into others. I scratch words into a crumbling wall. Bird sings. Blossom plays her dull games and daydreams of dunes while Honey paces the length of her room until she vomits. Key has her needle and her loom. This morning Little Bird’s fate offers only one hard choice if she wants to survive. Accept, acquiesce, concede, capitulate, surrender.

I open my hand holding the mala beads responsible for the half-moon grooves in my palm. The beads feel alive, able to harness their own life force. Anima, brio, elan vital, essence? Honey called the beads magic. Blossom called them useless baubles. And me? I scan my walls. None of the words are right. The beads are something special, something entirely new. Novel, newfangled, unorthodox, anarchic.

I hear another voice in the courtyard.

I look out. Key is at Little Bird’s—Bird’s window.

Honey has decamped behind cushions she has squeezed between her bars. She does this when she’s mad at us or to escape the ear-shattering screams of new or dying Girls. She can garrison like this for days inside her own little bomb shelter.

“Mynah or Key?” Blossom asks in a whisper. She relies on my eyes to relay whatever she can’t learn through sound.

“Just Key,” I answer back. Key hands Little Bird a bowl. “She brought you-know-what.” I stick my arms out the window as far as I can, flap my arms, then make an exaggerated circle in the air.

I feel ridiculous every time I do this, but the system of covert signals Bird taught us had to be modified to accommodate for Blossom’s bad eyes.

I just told her that Little Bird is about to receive a bowl of bird nest soup. This dish is Key’s special treat and Honey’s favorite. If she sees Key giving some to Little Bird, there will be no living near her because she’ll pitch a fit and poke at Little Bird without ceasing until we have two screeching children. The uproar will reach the street, and Mynah will board up our windows for a week.

Key catches my eye across the courtyard as she hands the steaming bowl to Little Bird, and I pretend to throw up. Nest soup is the signature dish of The Nectar House, and the Blights are wild for it. To make it, Key braids rags into rope, lassos a branch of the Sonagachi, and collects the swiftlet nests which they build using their solidified saliva. The cook soaks the nests in salt, picks out the feathers and excrement, then adds broth and onions. No matter how they dress it up, it’s essentially eating a bowl of bird spit. I’d rather eat my own foot than the gelatinous goo, but Little Bird doesn’t seem to mind because she shovels it into her mouth without pause.

This is likely the first bite she’s had in a couple of days. Mynah’s is a war of attrition. The first few days of captivity are designed to elicit helplessness and break the will. Little Bird’s existence now depends solely on Mynah, who controls food and water and access to the window courtyard and any sort of contact with the rest of us. Little Bird will soon come to see her captor as savior, the Goons as protectors, and Key as the ally armed with poison happy pills and vile soup.

Bird’s bed is just under the sill like mine. Key sits behind Little Bird brushing out her mousey brown hair in swift strokes until it lies to her waist and flat against her slim back. Little Bird up-ends the bowl to get the last drops as Key twists and braids Little Bird’s locks into two loops resembling fairy wings at the back of her head. Key is already practicing styles to go with Little Bird’s heart shaped face. Little Bird pats the back of her head and gives Key the only smile I‘ve seen from her.

Key can choke on her soup; I will teach this child how to survive this House. That’s more important that any Blight-pleasing puffery Key can offer her.

Little Bird tries to climb into Key’s arms. Key shoves her off, not so gently, and Little Bird looks ready to blubber again, but they disappear from view and don’t return.

Blossom says, “What’s happening?”

“I think they left,” I say.

“Why would Mynah get another Bird Girl? They’re big earners, like Blossoms, but rare. Hard to find and hard to train.” Blossom’s brow furrows. “Mynah wouldn’t get a second Bird Girl unless our Bird was really sick.”

Blossom scrambles up to her window, which is wide enough for her to use as a seat but probably not for long. She collects her thick skirt and some of it slips between the bars and hangs down the wall. The fabric is a bright forest green with a brocade of silver tinsel thread along the hem which captures the light like tiny sparks. Her Blights expect this kind of finery. The raw silk fabric of her blouse is tight around her budding chest. Too tight. Too tight for a Blossom Girl.

I ignore her comment about Bird. Nothing we can do but wait. “I wish you could feel what I feel now, after the SonaScape. This must be what the Blights feel after a night with us.” Auspicious, opportune, vantage, windfall, boon.

Blossom presses her finger against the groove above her upper lip. Philtrum, from the Greek, meaning love charm. Blossom loves nothing more than a riddle to unravel. The biggest threat to her well-being is not Mynah or the Blights or the deadly exhaustion of the SonaScape, but monotony. The dull sameness of every day is a mind killer.

“Mynah wants me to help train the Little Bird,” I say.

“Why you?”

“Mynah must have a slew of new Girls and Bird is training them. Maybe she hired Bird out to another House as a trainer. She did that once. I’ll teach the Little Bird the basics, get her used to the Sona, and then our Bird will return. All will be the same as before.”

“I think you should get rid of the beads; someone might be looking for them.”

“They don’t look like they’re worth much. The kind of thing you get at a tourist trap. And I can’t give them up. Not until we learn more about them. Figure out their full potential.”

Blossom’s finger returns to her lips, her mind to her puzzle. She looks particularly pretty when she does this. Calculations, computations, ciphers, sums. The Blights treat her like a doll. For an exorbitant amount of jaspers, they gawk at her using her lovely face and body as their SonaBridge, ignorant to the fine jewel of her mind. Blossom remembers everything anyone has ever told her and then extrapolates meanings and connections that perplex me even after she’s explained them. She can even play chess without a board, keeping track of the pieces in her head. I have no patience for the mind-numbing game, so she plays against herself. She could have been an Ink Girl but for her vision.

“Ink, I know what you want to do, and you can’t. It’s too dangerous.”

“Can’t what?” I twirl the beads between my fingers.

“You want to try the beads on someone else. Maybe the Little Bird. Try to figure out a way to harness their power for yourself, use it to help us. You don’t know what they are yet, or if they work the same way twice. What if you accidentally—”

This had not occurred to me. I hadn’t gotten that far.

I hold the beads close to my chest as if Blossom could take them away from me.

This is a grand idea, inspired and well worth trying. “I can give Little Bird more SonaDrops if she needs it.”

“What if you lose control like last night? Two drops of Sona are hardly enough to protect the new Girls while they train and the Little Bird so small.”

“I have nine doses worth. Dead Blight bought ten. I only administered one.”

“And you kept the rest?” She lets her head fall back and shakes her head at the sky.

“Oh, Blossom. When will you and Bird ever learn? The gods are deaf as the Sonagachi.” I say this to make her laugh, but her mouth is a grim line.

“Ink. We don’t know where the beads came from, or how they really work. Or if they work. I’m still not sure you’re thinking straight.”

“They can replenish a sick body; that’s how they work. This is what Sona is meant for, to give life.”

“Yes, Ink, but not for us.”

“Why not for us? Maybe the tides are turning. Maybe the beads are our miracle, just like the Sona was for the first Blights. I have to try.”

Blossom has no riposte. The satisfaction of winning an argument with Blossom is better than a SonaHigh.

“If the Little Bird can’t handle the Sona—”

“Girls die all the time during the training,” I say. “She may die anyway. But not because of me. Don’t worry, Mynah won’t think I’m to blame.”

Blossom’s eyes narrow. If they could shoot the daggers assembled behind her green irises, I’d be pinned to the wall. Bodkin, poniard, stiletto, dirk.

“Ink,” she says and puts her head in her hands. “I’m not worried about Mynah blaming you for killing the Girl. I’m afraid you will kill the Girl.”

Shame washes over me when she says this. Bilge-water, effluence, slop, slurry, sludge.

Blossom doesn’t understand the House like I do. Little Bird is expendable. What if I could learn to use the beads? Then I wouldn’t need any SonaDrops. Honey could have all of mine. She’d gain some strength back, live a while longer. I could live longer, help more Girls. Even animals know that sacrificing the runt saves the litter. I consider saying this, but sometimes Blossom can be half-deaf as well as blind.

Blossom reaches through her bars and yanks a twig off the Sonagachi. She stripes the stem with her fingernails, letting the bark drop into the courtyard. If Mynah catches her doing that, she will beat her bloody, even if she would lose money. Scrape off the bark and the tree becomes vulnerable to disease. No Sonagachi, no Nectar House. We all do it when we can; the risk of this small act of rebellion can’t compare to the satisfaction of destroying the tree even a little bit.

Blossom has skinned her third twig when she says, “Last night a Blight asked me my age.”

“They’re nasty. All part of their fun.”

“He said I was old for a Blossom.” She wraps her long arms around her knees. “Soon I won’t look young, Mynah will double, triple my customers, use me up, move me to the First Floor—”

I move as far away from the window as I can and sit on the floor next to the Blight chair. A whiff of dead Blight lingers, so I crawl into the tight corner between the shelves and the foot of my bed. My spine rests against the last bit of blank wall untouched by my words. I’ve been saving this space for a series of words I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

Exsanguination, strangulation, excarnation, evisceration.

These are the perfect words when death results from the rapid expenditure of forces vital for life. But what is the word for when your life is stolen one minute at a time? That’s the one I wait for.

When I take the beads from the band of my skirt, I feel my hip bone poking out. I’m so thin, I’m made up of angles, but soon, Blossom will be all curves. Blights say that Blossoms are like peaches; they must be consumed at the right age because their window of ripening is so narrow. The Blights will complain about this to Mynah. They’ll say she’s too old to be a Blossom whose SonaBridge is the beauty teetering on the cusp of womanhood.

Outside the courtyard, the morning traffic jam swells into a crescendo of honking taxis and the prolific profanity of tuk-tuk drivers. Blossom has given up on me. It’s past noon already. Time behaves differently at The Nectar House; it slips by unseen or spans lifetimes in an instant. This Blossom, my Blossom, has been here almost two years, which is a long time for this kind of Specialty Girl, but she’s petite, shapely without being buxom, and this bought her some months.

My time with Blossom has felt like a minute, the quickly-filling bottom bulb of an hourglass. I can’t explain why my heart knows the mala beads will buy me time to figure out a way to help her, to help Bird. Moonshot, longshot, fat chance, fluke.

Little Bird’s arrival is another boon. Perhaps she and the beads are a gift from the Fates, who saved me from the dead Blight’s prying knees. The Apple Girl was too sweet for Top Floor life. I should have predicted that, I should have insisted she live out her days downstairs instead of risking her dying in agony for all to hear. Little Bird is sweet, too, but she’ll linger for a long, vociferous time if she gets SonaStuck. Blossom will be in agony if she has to hear Little Bird waste away.

I can’t think like this. It’s inefficient. Decisive engagement is the true face of mercy. The Little Bird has promise, but this morning’s caterwauling will not go unnoticed. She’s hysterical, already a poor fit. Unintended consequences, risk reward, cannon fodder. This might be the best use of her life, and choices must be made. Bird would understand.

I twirl the necklace on my finger, make it spin until it becomes a garnet-colored wheel. Rota Fortuna.

All House Girls are unlucky girls, some simply more than others. Fate is faceless. No one chooses their faults. No one chooses their gifts either. A Blossom’s beauty, a pair of yellow tiger eyes, a voice that can shatter glass. Fate thrust these gifts upon them. But there are loopholes, blind spots when dame Fortune’s gaze is turned away, when one can take the reins from her hands, if only for an instant, like when I wile and con my way into Mynah’s good graces. Sometimes, I finagle a treat for Honey or spare a Girl a Blight or two a night, earn them a few more months of life. Top Floor life, but life.

I reach for a book to strengthen my resolve and chase away the ghosts of Girls gone past. Books of war and armory are housed on the shelf above my bed, so they can watch over me the hours that I sleep and quell the despair all the hours when I can’t. My favorite book was abandoned by a Blight who boasted a descendant in every great world war. My lineage boasts no soldiers, only silkworm harvesters and factory workers, but I like to think it’s my own quiet rage that’s chronicled inside the worn leather cover. The book is slim, not even a hundred pages, but it’s fat with stratagem and discipline.

Chapter One: The best way out of intractable terrain is to keep marching.

Suddenly the beads feel warmer. Maybe it’s my imagination, maybe it’s fever. Today, anything feels possible.

I lay the beads in the trench between the pages and read aloud, “War brings ugly choices. Survival is inextricably linked to the decisive ability of the leader.”

Somehow, I know the beads know this is my only truth.

Chapter 8
Live Fire Exercise

“The first taste of Sona changes him forever. For the rest of the Blight’s life, nothing else will matter as much as the SonaScape. Not his wife, not his lover, not his children. Once they’ve tasted our life force, the only word that matters to them is more. As in, more Sona, more minutes off your life. Are you listening to me?”

Little Bird snaps to attention. She searches my face, perhaps trying to decide if what I’ve said was a question or a request or a threat. The soup, or perhaps her hunger, pulls her attention from my boring lesson. The last time I saw her was two days ago when Key did her hair. The way she keeps swallowing down the watery contents of her mouth each time she looks at that bowl of bird mush, I’m convinced she hasn’t been given anything to eat in the days since.

I move to block her line of sight to the soup. “The SonaScape feels so good to the Blights, they don’t want to leave, sometimes it’s a memory they like to relive, or something that looks ordinary to us but means something to them, like a picnic party by a river or an old lady shucking peas in a rocking chairs if they’re having a really nice dream. That’s when it is the most dangerous for House Girls. Blights will fight to remain in their fantasy, and they can trap you in there with them.”

“They come here to buy our life.” Little Bird feigns a sudden and somber interest in my lesson.

“Our Life Force, yes, which makes their body feel good, restores some health, but what they’re really buying is time. Our time on this earth. They will take our numbered days and add them to theirs. That’s what you’re here to learn today, how to stay alive and give the Blight as little of yourself as possible. Survive the night and have him walk out of The Nectar House feeling like an emperor, like an empire unto himself, a squawking, strutting Atlas.”

“Is that a kind of bird?”

I hate teaching. The room feels too small to hold us both. How can such a small child take up so much space? The beads have made me unsure of how to hold my body, which feels new and too big for the tight envelope of my skin. House Girls are trained to conserve their energy, but I’m the opposite of tired. Spirited, animated, kinetic, spritely. I’ve been flitting around all morning and barely slept in two days, but I feel powerful enough to break the back of ten Goons across my knee.

There’s danger in my newfound confidence, but the beads feel so fine. Too fine, like being under the influence of too much Sona and high on the illusion of invulnerability. I’ve seen it in the Blights many times. Last month, one left Honey’s room so full of himself he went down to the parlor boasting he could outrun cars. Later that evening, my Blight told me a yogurt truck flattened him like a frog.

The beads have done little to help my daydreaming, and Little Bird waits for me while fidgeting impatiently with her new outfit. Key’s made her a cobalt blue dress out of soft jersey cotton with a pinafore apron the color of ripe persimmons. The apron is a lurid hue that washes out Little Bird’s already wan complexion. She can’t stop messing with the apron strings.

“Don’t tug at your clothes. If you soil or rip them, Mynah will cook you in a pot.” Tucked away in my own waistband are the mala beads, which I check every few seconds. Touching them, knowing they’re there, makes me calm even though my blood pulses like a turbine.

“Is it only little girls here? And the women who are Blights, do they come here too?” When Little Bird asks a question, she tilts her head to the side. She reminds me of a nanny goat my sister and I had when we were her age. Both have the same defenseless face that could temper tyrants. I push the memory away. My lily-white goat wouldn’t shut up either.

“Children have more Life Force to give, and it’s stronger the younger the Girl,” I say. “Women can only be Half-Blight, and only if their fathers were Blights, and they can’t SonaScape at all.”

“So, they die of Blight?”

“They all die of the Blight Disease. Half-Blight men and women and Full. Half-Blights live longer though.”

“Do we, the Girls, have our own dream SonaScape?”

“Girls can’t have a SonaScape, only build the bridge in and out of the Blight’s SonaScape visions.”

“Why can’t they?”

“Because they would get stuck in SonaScape and meet a terrible end.” I shift my weight from one foot to the other, clasping my hands behind me to keep them from floating to the beads again.

“How do you know the Girls can’t see wonderful things like the Blights of their SonaScape if they have never had a dream with the Sona?”

“No one knows because no one has ever done it.”

“Then how do you know it’s bad? Maybe it’s good. Maybe good things come after we’re dead.”

“You die, that’s how you know it’s bad. A Girl inside a SonaScape can only end in her getting stuck and then being dead.”

“Is that worse choice than staying in this place?”

Key’s been talking nonsense again. Filling Little Bird’s head with notions of choice and the relief that comes when this life is done. Bird believes in a mythical afterlife, too, and holds onto the useless notion that a just reward will come after all the needless suffering. Sounds like the Little Bird may have also had some religion back home. Maybe that’s how Bird will help her, give her something to hang on to when the Blights come. Bird can numb her up with god. I have no room for a god that would allow little girls to be trapped in towers.

“Why is it like this?” Another head tilt.

“Like what?”

“The Girls and the Blights and all of it?”

I’m about to tell her to stop wasting my time, but her question seems so earnest, her face so inquisitive and sharp. “It’s been this way ever since The Blight Plague.”

She cocks her head in confusion, or perhaps she’s trying to catch a glimpse of the soup.

“Sit down, button your lip, and I’ll tell you the story of how we came to be House Girls.”

“I love stories—” She crosses her fingers over her lips to show me she will be quiet, then plops down and sits cross-legged in the middle of the room and stares up at me.

Her hair is now washed and neatly wrapped around the crown of her head. Key styles the little ones like this, following Mynah’s orders and my covert suggestions, in order to enhance the look of the ingénue, but it only succeeds in making Little Bird look like a spooked horse. She folds her hand demurely on her lap, waiting. She takes a sudden inbreath, as if she’s remembered something, and assumes the posture of waiting expected of a House Girl, the one I taught her a few days ago, left hand over right delicately resting at her side, except she’s placed her palms on the wrong hip.

“A House Girl waits like this.” I show her where to place her hands. “Right hip. Left over right.” After a moment’s hesitation about which hand is which, she mirrors me.

I adjust her hands and murmur, “Close enough,” then sit side saddle on the floor, as far away from her as I can, pressing my back against the shelves, adjusting the beads. “Do you know what a century is?”

She shakes her head no.

“Can you count to a hundred?”

“Yes!”

“Good girl. Many, many hundreds of years ago, there was a sickness. Some men were born with it, some men got it later, and no one knows why some got it and some didn’t. Did no one explain this to you?”

“It’s bad luck to talk about Blights, and everyone knows if you say ‘Blight’ after sunset and don’t spit facing east, you’ll wake up with a beak. And if a girl goes into a city alone, the Blights drain her blood then fly around looking for dreams to steal. I know that once all the birds were sick with a disease, and they gave it to us.”

“Horse manure. Except the last bit. The illness didn’t make the birds sick. They only carried sickness and passed it on to humans. Some say it was a kind of swiftlet, but men have killed each other arguing which bird is guilty.”

“Why didn’t they just kill all the birds?”

At last, a worthy question. “They did. Slaughtered them by the truckful but then the crops started to fail. First the flowers, then the fruit trees, wheat, potatoes and casava went next. Half the world starved. Wars started. Birds help pollinate.”

More questions writ on her face, then another quick peek at the soup. Pollination is too long an explanation. I have to dumb this down. “Did you have feast days in your village? The kind about birds?”

“Yes.” She claps her hands. “When we’re only allowed to hunt birds because it keeps the Blight sickness away. The man that kills the most birds gets a prize. The mayor won an ox.”

I bet the mayor was the one who did the counting. If I try, I can almost smell the open sewers of her backwater town. Crooked rows of shanties held up with wormy wood and willpower. Kids playing in mud, chewing on corn husks to keep their mouths busy until their watery supper of milk made from calabash seed, maybe half a cup of dal. Two girl children aren’t worth the price of an ox in places like that.

“It’s bad to kill the birds because they help things grow,” I say. “If they die, we die. We need them.”

“Like the Blights need us.”

She says this perhaps expecting to be rewarded for being smart, but she’s not getting a spoonful. I have a lot to get through tonight. “By the time they stopped killing the birds, it was too late. Too many men were sick. Then they discovered how the bark of the Sonagachi tree has an unexplainable power to make two minds connect for a while.”

“How?” Her brows come together like twin furry caterpillars about to butt heads just like mine. “How did they know about the magic tree?”

“No one agrees on that, either. And it’s not magic.” Lie? “There are too many stories about all that and it’s not important. We have work to do.”

“Tell me one story. A short one. Please.”

I turn away, in case she looks at me with wet eyes that I now recognize as the same burnt brown color as our little nanny goat. His buttery coat was like a sweet confection made from melted sugar and eggs. My sister named him Canelo because she couldn’t pronounce his name.

“Tell me your favorite story of the Girls,” Little Bird begs and scoots closer to me. She smells of meadow rue and the violet water Key must have added to her bath.

I’m not sure if she’s trying to soften me into giving her dinner, which has congealed and is no longer hot. I realign the beads, so they rest flush and pleasant against my ribs. Coincidentally, Little Bird’s belly growls like something is trying to escape. Sitting this close to Little Bird, I can appreciate how small her frame is even compared to mine. She’s going to need a lot more bird goo soup if she’s going to last the month.

“The first House Girls were temple dancers,” I start.

She looks like she is about to snuggle closer to me, thinks better of it, and rests her chin in her hands, elbows on knees.

“Temple dancers were sacred. Married only to the temple. They tended giant hearths and fed the fires with strips of SonaBark. Sonagachi bark contains an oil that’s very flammable. That means it takes to fire very quickly.”

Her eyes open wide. “Like the dittany bush! We use the leaves in the brick ovens. Linseed is the same! We’re not allowed to keep it inside. We use that too. The oil protects plants from bugs.”

So, the country girl knows her plants. I feel a flicker of sadness at the fact that she won’t see groves or grassland ever again. I’m surprised by my sentimentality. This kind of mawkishness is a dangerous luxury I forbid in myself and the others; it only eats time and energy. Chronovore thoughts. Is that a word? I need to try to sleep tonight, my thoughts are scattered.

“Please keep going, Ink. I won’t interrupt. I like the way you talk.”

She wraps her arms around her legs, as if sealing her vow to be quiet. This makes her look even smaller.

“One day, a temple dancer was filling the oil lamps with SonaDrops, only back then they thought it was just oil. The dancer spilled some onto the floor. A jealous acolyte had been spying on her. He hated the dancers because they were higher in class even though he was the son of a scholar, or a merchant, or an army general, depending on who’s telling the story. Anyway, he saw the spilled Sona and tried punishing the girl by making her swallow an entire lampful of Sona. As she fought him off, the oil fell into both their eyes. They hallucinated together all night. That means they saw visions, but the same visions. Like a shared dream. This was the very first SonaScape. When they came out of the trance, he had lost the scute that covered his ankles and could breathe without wheezing.”

“And the dancer girl?”

“She was so depleted, so tired, she could no longer strike a spark to light the fires.”

“And she was the first House Girl?”

“Yes. Sort of. It took some time and a lot of wars and countless dead Girls and dead men too, but powerful, money hungry men found a way to take charge, as they always do. Eventually, the Houses became like we know them to be now, although they haven’t changed too much in the way they run things. It’s always the poorest of Girls, and no one ever chooses this life.” I decide to stop. Too much, too soon and I’ll lose her. “This was a long time ago and no one bothered to write much about the Girls. Most of history is really Blight history. Some scholars say it was a teacher who figured it out it while punishing a servant girl for learning to read, and merchants claim it was a rich man who fell in love with the beautiful princess. Some believe the oil from the Sonagachi fell into a honeypot, and a Blight and a hapless kitchen maid drank the same sweet tea.”

Her eyes flicker to the soup then back to me.

“All we know is that Inks, Honeys, and Blossoms were the first Girls. Traditional. That’s why we get to live in the wing with the tree in it. Other Girls are money making tricks, and procuresses, those are the women like Mynah, who are always coming up with new kinds of Girls, but it’s the same story in the end; a Blight, a Girl, and an eyeful of Sona.” Co-evolution. The evolution of two species which reciprocally affect each other, sometimes creating a mutualistic relationship between the species.

Little Bird seems to be considering all this. The soup, momentarily forgotten.

“And you’re an Ink Girl? That’s why Mynah puts all the writing on your walls?”

“Those words are mine. She lets me keep them because the Blights think it’s quaint.”

“What’s a quaint?”

“Blights like to see the words on the wall, and they can’t be too choosey. There aren’t many Ink Girls. Just understand this, kid: Blights don’t really need the honey, or the reading, or the pretty faces, or chubby girls to feed them fancy foods, none of these silly extras are necessary to enter their SonaScapes. All of this”—I twirl my finger in the air— “is mostly for show. It entertains the Blights and helps them relax, gives them something to talk about and collect and fetishize. That means they are particular about things—”

“Like having a favorite!”

“Exactly. Some return to the same Girl over and over, others are collectors who like to try every type of Girl there is, and there are hundreds of different kinds. Those come from all over, but it’s the same for all of them; the trance is made more powerful if fueled by their vanity. Lots of money to be made in narcissism. That means being a showoff, prideful. This is why they think they deserve a longer life than us. There are lots of Houses like this one. All over the world. They work more or less the same way. The reason they dress us up to play a part and match any skill we might have, in your case singing, is to get them to visit a House and spend their jaspers on us or drinking downstairs.”

She gets up onto her knees. “They chose you because your hair is so black. Like ink! And I like the swirls on your dress. It looks like the dye spilled, but in a pattern that’s so pretty.” She flats her palms against her dress. “My dress has stupid birds. My own clothes were better.”

She flattens her pinafore so I can get a better look. Gone are the jungle cats and winged snakes of her people. Key has replaced the power-laden symbols that have been around longer than the tallest Sonagachi tree with miniature birds—silly songbirds of course, hand-sewn along the hem of Little Bird’s pinafore. To the Blights, they’re another avian homage, but Key’s embroidery always conceals hidden codes, a personalized pattern of words and symbols that, in her soft skull, help keep the Girls from harm. She’s as superstitious as any Blight.

Little Bird’s hem has a robin, the emblem of new beginnings, a blue jay whose song can alert danger, bordered by twin nightingales with yellow beaks sending messages to the divine. Sticked around her collar is a choir of skylarks. A small but mighty creature who can sing for hours without tiring. Little Bird got here less than two days ago; how Key can create something so intricate that quickly and yet think and move about so slowly is worthy of study.

Little Bird cups her hand over her mouth. “Can you keep a secret? Look.”

She undoes her apron to show me the seam under her ribcage. Hidden by the pinafore sash is a quetzal the size of an orange pit. Ten, perhaps fifteen stitches of turquoise, and red, and the girl is connected back home to her people, to her former life.

My fists clench. This is Key in a nutshell. Meddlesome and dangerous. Indulgences like this only sow melancholy, noncompliance, useless fantasies of sedition. Every day, she makes my life harder.

Little Bird squeezes her shoulders together and giggles at our shared secret. “But the skirt is nice.” She twirls around to show me.

“Stop playing, we have work to do.”

She stops and looks around the room. “My room is different; they’re making me a new bed that hangs from the ceiling, like a swing, and there’s nothing on the walls but rugs with birds all over them. The Key Girl—”

“Call her Key.”

“Key is weaving the ropes for the bed. I like your walls better than mine. I like your words. I know how to write my name. I can show you.”

If she places a pinky on my wall her soup will water the Sonagachi. The look on my face must convey this because she quickly sits back down and stretches the apron skirt over her knees. She says, “And the Inks and the Flower Girls—”

“Blossoms.”

“Blossoms, and all the Girls here, they SonaScape with the Blights and the Blights live longer.”

“One night with a specialty Top Floor Girl can mean an extra month of life, maybe more.” And one less for us, but that math is for another time.

“What about the ones who don’t SonaScape, the ones on the First Floor where I don’t want to go?”

“Little more than batteries. You know what those are?”

She nods proudly.

“A night with a First Floor shaves a day off their death bed or maybe some relief from back pain that comes as their chest gets bigger. One SonaScape with a Top Floor Girl can give as much as three months, but that depends on how sick the Blight is. Most people can’t afford a Top Floor so they have to save up for a long time. The most expensive is the First Night, that’s the first time a Girl is with a Blight. First Nights bring more health. A First Night with a Top Floor Girl can add a whole year to his life. First time with a First Floor only gets them a month.” Again, she looks bewildered, but I’m not explaining any further. She’ll learn about the horror of her first time with a Blight soon enough. Excess explanation will only scare her, and tranquil psyches are less work.

“You’re older than some of the Girls I saw downstairs,” she says. “Older than the others, except the one with the keys and the pretty one.”

“Ink Girls don’t work as much as most Girls. We live longer.”

“Who works the most? Is it Bird Girls?”

“Blossoms work the most. Blights may look like birds, but they’re all pigs, like most men. Men love young, pretty girls, so most Houses are full of Blossoms whose only requirement is being very beautiful. Birds work a lot and are popular. Not as common because what they do requires a talent like Ink Girls, who need to be clever and able to read.”

“The Key Girl—Key explained that we never leave our rooms once we’re locked up. Not even the garden? Why not?”

“Inks, Honeys, and Blossoms aren’t to leave their rooms. Ever. They’re anchored. That’s tradition. Remember the story I told you. Mynah locks all the Girls in so no one tries to run away, but they can switch rooms or be lent out to other Houses, but Mynah prefers we stay put. She says it makes us seem more pure, ethereal, like from another world. That’s why she makes sure our clothes are so nice. We must dress nicer than movie stars or models.”

“That Girl named Honey; she wears pajamas.”

“She’s careless with her clothes and only wears fancy dresses for when she sees the Blights. She leaves those outfits alone because she knows what’s good for her.” Honey won’t tolerate anything that binds or impedes or scratches or drapes. She’s Key’s greatest fashion challenge and would go naked and often does after a tantrum where she rips every stitch with her teeth.

“What do Honey children do to the Blights?”

“People used to believe that honey has curative powers—that means people believe it can heal sickness. Honey Girls feed the Blights fancy clove or lavender honey with a dainty silver spoon. Charm them with their sweet disposition.”

Her eyebrows shoot up again in disbelief.

“Our Honey is none too sweet, I know. Mynah had to … make her a … special chair. Our Honey Girl feeds the Blights their honey from a silver spoon five feet long and clear across the room and through a cage.” I lean into Little Bird and whisper, “She bites!”

This makes her giggle the way my sister would when my nanny goat chucked her under the chin.

Little Bird scoots her bottom closer to me, and I let her.

She scans the shelves. “If you wrote all these words, you must be very smart to know what they mean. Have you read all these?”

“Many, but not all. Some books were written very long ago, and the things inside them aren’t around anymore. Lots of books don’t come with pictures, and I have to guess what they’re talking about. I was very young when I came to The Nectar House and hadn’t seen much of the world. It’s like trying to imagine a glove if you’ve never seen a hand, but that can be part of the fun of reading.”

“That’s a strange thing to say.” She purses her lips, thinks for a second. Then rests her head on her knees as if she has just decided something. “I like the way you talk. Like everything you say is in a story.”

Her stomach gurgles again. Maybe just a sip of broth. I decide against it. Excessive compassion only breeds weakness in times of war.

“Is it hard to read?” she asks.

“No, but it takes practice.”

“Can you teach me?”

“I’m not sure you’re smart enough and Bird Girls don’t need to know how to do anything but sing.”

“Maybe you can make me an Ink Girl, after I become a Bird Girl. Then I can be both and have books on the wall instead of those ugly bird carpets.”

My hands fly to the beads, as if summoned. I’ve never imagined a House Girl could switch species. We don’t live long enough to become anything but Sonagachi dirt. What if a Girl could serve more than one function? They’d increase their value in the House, improve their lot. Lengthen their life. It would take some planning, a lot of cajoling Mynah, but there might be a way. Bird could use the beads all over the House. When she comes back, I’ll see what she says. Blossom will know how to manage it.

“Well,” says Little Bird, touching my shoulder.

Her touch makes me jump, and she inches back, fearful of my reaction.

Touch is foreign and unwelcome here. I feel my face harden. Her chest heaves with a pending sob, so I say, “We’ll see how you do tonight before there’s any more talk of books. If you’re good, I might read you one. A fairy tale.”

She flashes a toothy grin. I notice she’s missing an eye tooth.

“How did you learn to read?” she asks.

“My aunt taught me.”

“How many books do you have to read to the Blights before she comes to get you?”

I’m about to spoil her rescue fantasy when we hear a deep, wet cough coming from somewhere in the House, by way of the courtyard. Probably a dying First Floor Girl. It’s the familiar rattle that heralds eminent interment.

Sepulcher, tumulus, barrow, mound.

If that cough is loud enough to reach me, it will be any day now.

The walls here are thin, and even though the First Floors don’t have any windows to the courtyard, I can hear muffled voices if the back door is open. Even if they could, they wouldn’t talk to me; the only person they trust is Bird, who always tries to help them. Bird would help a Goon if he asked.

“Enough talk.” I get the SonaBottle Key left on the table, hold it up, and swish the pearly liquid. “There are four drops in here. Two for you, two for the Blight. I’ll be taking the Blight’s dose tonight, so I can make a SonaBridge that connects your mind to my mind. The SonaBridge is made by both our SonaDrops touching. Like holding hands but in our minds.”

“I haven’t seen a bridge.”

“It’s not real bridge, it’s like an invisible string, your brain tied to my brain.”

“Like the tug-of-war Key told us about?”

“Stop interrupting. After we take the SonaDrops, we go deep into the Blight’s mind, relaxing them by using the thing they love the most, like singing or reading from books. The Blight’s mind makes images that we can see, but they can’t see us or know we’re there. Got all that?”

She nods but looks puzzled. It’s a lot for an eight-year-old.

“Now, this is the tricky part. Let’s say the SonaScape is really nice. They won’t want to leave it, and the whole dream will start over and over, until you pull them back out using the SonaBridge.”

“What if it’s a nightmare?”

“When that happens, we say they visit the Hell realms. That’s when you have to be twice as careful. The more scared they get, the more they try not to see what their brain and the Sona have decided to show them so they can be less sick. Once they take the Sona, that’s it. No turning back. The more afraid they are, the more they loop. This is where the House Girl must be cunning and strong. We have to let them have their experience, but not take them out too soon or they won’t get any benefit and then they leave mad and tell Mynah and she … Just make sure you let them see their visions, then you bring them out.”

A look of controlled panic settles on her face.

If I need to give her more drops to protect her, I’ll use some left over from the dead Blight. I would hate to dip into my supply, but she’s of little use to me dead and she is so young.

“Remember, these drops are the only thing that will protect you. The Blights may try to talk you out of yours or try to take it. If they insist, scream for a Goon. They only get what they pay for. Never, ever take less than two drops.”

“Or I’ll be dead.”

“Yes, but don’t be scared. I’m only going to teach you how it feels to SonaBridge today.”

“Does it hurt?”

“It stings and you’ll be sick in your belly, maybe hot in your chest, but then you’ll be in charge because you have control over the Blight’s mind and his experience. Like holding a dog on a leash. I bet your dog Butter has a leash?”

“How do I know when to get the Blight out?”

“Remember, a SonaScape always repeats itself. Like a film, played over and over.” I pause to see if she knows what I mean.

“I know what a film is.” She huffs a little as she says this.

Her sassiness makes me glad, which surprises me again. I hesitate as I take out the beads, hoping she’s stronger than she looks. The beads are an unknown, I’m not sure if I can control them or how much Life Force they pull. One dead Blight is not enough to go on.

“What are those? Do I get beads too?”

“No, and if you tell anyone about them that soup will be the last thing you taste for a week.”

Her head returns to her knees. “I don’t think ... I can’t build anything in my head. I don’t even know all my letters.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll practice together. I’ll be here the whole time. It’s like you said, a tug of war. See how—feel how I do it and do what I tell you. Today is only a practice, so you can get used to the sensation, so you don’t pee your pants when we practice for real.”

She giggles.

Am I trying to make her laugh? No, only putting her at ease like I would with a fainthearted Blight.

As I open the SonaBottle, all of Blossom’s entreaties to wait run through my mind. First exposure to Sona, a psyche so young, the mystery beads. For the past two days she’s pleaded and argued for me to abandon my plan until we know more about how they work, until Bird comes back, in hopes she could somehow find out more about them because she has more contact with the outside world than any of us and could ask around. When a Blight dies, the Blight community gets spooked, so I haven’t had any Blights, but Blossom has asked every customer about fairy tales and magic beads and giant swiftlets, and all she got were puzzled looks and irritated Blights.

Little Bird’s eyes are locked onto the SonaBottle. “So … you’re going to make a bridge and I’m going to watch you make it, like the SonaScape dream place?”

“You can’t see the SonaBridge, only feel the connection to me, and Girls cannot SonaScape. You’d know this and have a full belly if you listened. One more time. We will meet in Sona, in the in-between place created by the SonaDrops, but you won’t see anything, and neither will I. Next time, you’ll learn to create the SonaBridge for yourself. Today, just get used to having someone else’s mind connected to yours. You won’t see or hear or smell anything. You’ll sense the SonaBridge, and the SonaBridge will be my SonaDrops tied to your SonaDrops. Yes?”

She bites her lip. I look away. This is not going as smoothly as I had hoped. She’s too young for all of this.

“Lean your head back,” I say, then make a cup of her bottom eyelid and gently release the drop. “Don’t rub.”

She puffs out her cheeks and fat tears roll over them.

As I do the other eye, I ask, “You like stories?”

She nods and balls her small fists.

Another lusty cough floats into the courtyard. There’s only one Girl whose lungs are powerful enough to be heard so clearly from so far away.

My heart sinks, Little Bird whimpers. Fear is not far behind for both of us.

“I’m going to read you a story. You’re going to get itchy. Don’t scratch.”

Something flutters in my gut. Panic? Or her Sona alerting my body to an eminent shift in awareness? Maybe the beads signaling the start of something.

The dead Blight’s scroll is under my bed. I unfurl it, put on the beads, and begin, “At the edge of a dark, Sonagachi forest, lived a great scholar.”

“Everything’s fuzzy.” She shakes her hands like she’s trying to shake something off them.

“There’s nothing to look at, so it doesn’t matter.” Part of me wants to reach out, hold her hand, squeeze her shoulder. The way Bird did. But that was Bird, and she has her own way of doing things and this is about the beads, not some brat. All wars are won on strategy, and the mitigation of losses, and Little Bird is the live fire exercise that may help so many.

Another cough from somewhere downstairs. Death Rattle, rasp, rale.

I could pick out Bird’s voice in a crowd of thousands. She’s downstairs. Downstairs and dying. The beads could help her.

If the only way to learn how to wield the healing power of the beads is to practice on an eighty-pound country girl, then here we go. War brings ugly choices.

Little Bird wipes the sweat from her face. “I’m too hot.”

“That’s normal. Just listen to me read. ‘Every day the bird brought the scholar a fat sack of books.’”

I concentrate and search for the familiar-unfamiliar tingle of another’s mind reaching for mine, but I sense nothing. Blights feel sticky, unctuous, their minds covered in reaching anemic tendrils that wriggle all over me. When I train the Girls, they feel pasty and semi-solid, like thinking my way through wax. When I reach for Little Bird, I feel nothing at all.

I slide over to sit directly in front of her, both our knees touching, then grip the beads and will them to help me as I finish reading the page.

Little Bird’s breath quickens. “Keep telling the story. Then what happens?”

“That’s it. That’s the whole story.”

“But there’s no ending. What happens to the girl? She can’t die under the tree—” Suddenly, she gags then dry heaves. The tendons of her neck stick out like they’re trying to rip themselves out of her body. I touch her arm, a wave of her Sona hits me; it’s scorching, like a furnace blast.

“Can you feel anything now?” I ask.

“Worms.” She presses her knuckles to her temples and curls onto her side. “Worms, wriggling.”

“That’s good. That’s me, my Sona. Trying to get you to play tug-of-war, remember?” Except that there is no Sona to grab onto because I didn’t take any. Because I told Blossom I would but lied. Because I’ve never done this before. Because no one has ever done this before. Because two Girls cannot Sona.

More dry heaving, uneven breaths. I don’t know what to do, so I read the Blight’s story again. Then again. Turn it over as if more text could magically appear. I wait for the spark that is Little Bird’s unconscious, but I’m met with a roiling white-capped wave of Sona instead.

Little Bird’s foot flexes, then shakes, accompanied by a soft, metallic hiss. Around her ankle is a cheap, belled anklet country girls wear. My sister had one. Our aunt gave it to her. Key defied Mynah and let Little Bird keep it.

Her Sona seems to be coming on strong. Too strong for only one dose. This must be the effect of the beads. Two drops are the same as a hundred. Just like it was with the dead Blight. Another wave of Sona, then calm. Warmth. Memory.

A lazy meadow, my sister and I are lying on our backs, cattails sway.

The first gush of Little Bird’s Life Force spills into me. Candy from a baby. How much life was that? When she wakes, if she wakes, I’ll know. Will she understand how I betrayed her? Will her eyes reflect how I shattered her trust?

Doesn’t matter. Feels too good. I steal hours off her life … and it feels better than freedom.

I hear something. Shac-shac-shac.

The rattle of a snake, the strike of a match, the chimes of the anklet as Little Bird flops onto her back in convulsions. I put my hand under her head to keep it from banging on the floor until she stops shaking. Spittle slips out of the side of her mouth. Blossom knew. Blossom knew this was a bad idea. Deep down where I stockpile all the things I won’t say aloud, I knew she was right, I knew it would play out like this.

Another flush from Little’s Bird’s mind, but not as strong. The beads grow heavy in response to Little Bird’s stolen energy. I can feel their power on my chest, so full of promise and potential and death.

Quicklime, mortar, thermite, pitch.

Maybe that’s all the beads are, weapons. Deadly ones waiting for a match. Brilliant ones that fill me with the confidence of conquerors. I want to rip them off, pull Little Bird out and into safety, I want to wear them for the rest of my life.

“It will be fine,” I whisper. More to myself than to Little Bird. Lots of Girls have seizures the first few times under Sona. Maybe she’s resisting me. Not letting me in. I could always take the SonaDrops. It may not be too late. The coughing from downstairs grows more ragged. I’ll wait. Just one more minute, then I’ll take some Drops, pull her out. I’m sure it’s not too late.

My vision gets filmy. The shelves ripple then ooze onto the floorboards. Uncrystallized, dissolve, deliquesce, solute.

One more shudder from Little Bird’s body, then she lies still. Flaccid, torpid, pendant, lax. Spit bubbles collect under her nose.

When I lift Little Bird by the shoulders, her head falls back and her mouth opens to reveal a row of surprisingly pretty, pearly teeth alongside her missing canine. I almost laugh at the shock of this. Beauty found in unlikely places is one of Bird’s favorite things. Dandelion fields across railroad tracks, meadowlarks nesting in bomb casings, poems written on the eve of execution. Bird would love this moment.

I want to lie down next to Little Bird feeling like I could float away and dream a dream of Bird. One more violent spasm from Little Bird makes me sit up. I turn my head; our foreheads are touching. Her breath smells like bile.

Little Bird. Little Bird? My mind reaches for hers, stretches into corners, leans over balconies and around internal bends until it feels like I’m spinning. She doesn’t respond, but her anklet clangs loud as cathedral bells. I try to imagine the swinging clappers like a battering ram trying to break through to her, but this doesn’t help. Her mind is unavailable to me, and my thoughts remain singularly my own. No Bridge. No connection.

Where there should be Little Bird, there is nothing.

She is in Sona, and she is most certainly alone.

Chapter 9
Solus and Solace

Girls die all the time.

But not because of me.

Blame the Syndicate. Blame the men who sold them. Blame the men who buy them.

Girls die all the time.

Because of me.

… But not so quickly, not so young, not when I can help it and not on the floor of my room. Collateral damage, friendly fire, combat casualty, grunt.

The Blight’s book lies between me and Little Bird’s body. Her chest lifts with uneven breaths, gaze locked somewhere far beyond the confines of my room. I’m not sure how long she can last, untethered, unauthored. Hell realms. Mythological, psychological, spiritual state of intense suffering and disconnection, laden with torment.

I won’t let her go out like this. If this kid is going to kick it on my watch, the last words she hears won’t be an idiotic story furnished by a Blight. She deserves words that are worthy of her.

When I stand, nausea hits me hard as I stumble onto my bed to the shelves in the headboard. The book I need is small, composed of only thirteen chapters. It fits in one hand and weighs less than a dead swiftlet but carries wisdom that has tilted the scales of innumerable battles, altered the outcome of countless realities. The pages keep my words for solace. Strong point, redoubt, bunker, pillbox. On the deckled pages live the best parts of me and all I have to offer Little Bird by way of aid and mercy.

I return to her side, kneel, and press my palm to her face. No reaction. My hands haven’t touched another human being in tenderness in years, and when they do, there’s no response. My capacity to comfort has atrophied like an unused muscle.

Little Bird has proved herself a warrior thus far, so I read her the words that have safeguarded me and countless soldiers from fear and death.

“The best way to win a war is not to fight it. Waging war diminishes forces and brings a steep toll paid in squandered life. A leader must know when to attack and when attack makes for vulnerability. The time for advance may not come, and a company’s fate is doom, but this will lessen carnage and safeguard resources.”

Another shock wave of warmth from the beads. They could ignite a dozen pyres, illuminate a city, combust an epoch. Strange thoughts slither all over each other as I slip deeper into what should be the waiting room of Little Bird’s mind, but I’m still alone. Little Bird on her side of consciousness, me on mine. The solitude brings new meaning to misery.

This doesn’t happen with the Blights. Blights are easy, their minds soft, their inner lives so simple and frivolous. To tarry inside a Blight’s mind is tedious and dull. At best, their psyches fill me with vengeant joy as they relive past tragedy and injustice, and I get to watch and relish. But to be all alone in Sona does not happen, and my brain is on fire, covered in burning velvet hairs. For the first time, I yearn for a sloppy Blight to tether. Solus and solace.

Little Bird’s skirt is crumpled. As I gather her in my arms to straighten it, I whisper in her ear that a House Girl should be neat and well-groomed at all times. I flip to another passage in my book. “The dignity of battledress cannot be measured. Even the mangled frame of defeat is made majestic if wrapped in a soldier’s uniform.”

The creases of Little Bird’s dress eddy and ripple.

“Be it cavalcade or camouflage, street parade or death shroud, this cut cloth proclaims, ‘I belong,’ and ‘I am not alone, for there are those who will die to save me and won’t leave my body behind.’”

The azure fabric of her dress slips between the wooden floorboards; the blue stretches across my mind like an ocean.

Her cheek is clammy against mine. I whisper into the whorls of her ear. “You may find yourself entrenched in intractable ground, your company beset by marsh and briar. Keep moving toward my voice, Little One. Only way out of this is to keep marching.”

My lids are heavy. Can’t keep them open. Little Bird slips off my lap.

The smell of sulfur and burning flesh heralds the silent black.

***

Pillars of smoke stretch into a sunless slab of gray. Even the mud where the soldiers lay dying has lost all russet and cinnamon and ochre, for these are colors reserved for living things.

Strewn over a field of scorched earth are the slain I’ve sorted and sacrificed. Hundreds of House Girls lie at my feet. Their faces kaleidoscope from sister to soldier, seven-year-old girl from the fishing village, street urchin pickpocket, then back to infantry men with faces too young for war. Bodies blanket the smoking terrain behind me. As far as the horizon, the ground bubbles red-orange where bombs have irradiated the earth into molten rock. There are only two colors in war. Panzer gray and burning.

My understanding of this place, at once so alien and fabricated by my own mind, tells me, without doubt, that this smoldering place is my SonaScape.

When I dream, I dream of carnage.

The landscape is barren and without signs of life or standing structures. Rubble has replaced everything. I don’t remember this place. It doesn’t matter. I could be anywhere because the geography of war is edgeless.

In battle, I am also boundless. I can burn forever without walls to contain me. My Life Force is limitless.

And if this is my SonaScape, where is my House Girl?

Little Bird is just a memory child, left behind and ill-equipped to get me out of here. Perhaps she, too, rests among the dead who lie here. Her Life Force is the only living feeling and I have taken it.

I smell sulfur. My sister and I always loved the smell of a freshly lit match. Is she here somewhere? For the Girl I once knew as sister is dead, the one I see every day is a different animal.

Somewhere, everywhere, an inferno, an explosion. Wind blast parts the haze and reveals the outline of a ravaged countryside.

A hand grabs my ankle. At my feet, a soldier calls for his mother. With the same breath, he curses me for having put him and his twin brother in the brigade that led the first wave. He is right to spit at me through bloodied lips. I marched them into a killing field to make way for a second band of fighters of greater skill and armament. Somehow, I know that this man’s twin lies limbless on this same field right on the edge of no man’s land. Decisions must be made to keep us all marching.

Girls die all the time.

But not because of me.

Blame war. Blame the world and its greedy handlers. Blame the fickle Fates.

Girls die all the time.

Because of me . . .

. . . they unravel sooner or later, but I decide how much to let the thread out.

The land is tiger-striped, laced with ash and ember. I march and march and soldier on, one fight, next fight, one-night, next Blight, it all blends together. One by one, the soldiers become the many House Girls I have known. The Apple Girl’s face is blown off, the former Blossom, the one with the pretty mole by her mouth, has lost an arm, a Bird Girl gurgles from a gash across her neck.

When I reach the twin brother in no man’s land, he’s alive but mangled in a foxhole. His brother died, praying for my murder, secure with the knowledge that he deserved better. Yet the twin in the foxhole accepts his fate with the dignity of marble sculpted warriors. He understands this theater, accepts my battle strategies without question, neither turning away from me nor extending a hand for me to hold. Those innocents of recrimination are the hardest to walk past. These are the First Floor Girls. These Girls are the ones who knew, or were told from the start, that they were nothing special. Sometimes the one who told them this was me.

Girls die all the time.

But not because of me.

Blame war. Blame envy. Blame famine.

Girls die all the time.

Because of me . . .

. . . they sleep in silence or in screaming.

I weave the rope that ties them to the bed.

A world that can do this to little girls merits only burning. Behind me I leave a balefire wake. Every swing of my arm welcomes an apocalypse, and kerosene flows in my veins. Each act an accelerant. Fire is outside time, just like I am. Extent across all warfare, no matter how primitive. In a ring of pewter smoke, I stand alone in cold command, assailed on all fronts by the burning hut, the shelled cathedral, the chemical flames invulnerable to water.

Girls die all the time.

But not because of me.

Blame ungifted fortunes. Blame the poor providence of geography. Blame gender.

Girls die all the time

Because of me . . .

. . . they walk along my length of rope.

I draw the lots they cannot turn from. Tied tight around my neck, the beads glow golden and victorious. Their glory emblazoned on my chest. My medallions. The mother bead is the fairest of them all. I have earned the right to carry her, but she is heavy and hard won. Her flames lick my chin and tell me this is where she belongs. She entered this world through a curtain of fire and glass. Here is her mineral origin story and here she is happily returned.

Carrion birds circle. They warn me to retreat and leave them to their repast. 

Move away, death mongers, for there is nothing left to pick. Betrayal has left me for dead, guilt has bleached my bones.

As for my fallen, the First Floor Girls I sent to die on a dirty pallet, the Special Girls I deemed deserving of a longer life in lush fabrics, all their bodies have been scavenged and desecrated. I saw to that myself the moment I told Mynah which Floor should kill them.

“Why not me? Am I not special enough?” cry the First Floors. “Was I not worthy of these gifts?”

Smoke curls into a sky streaked in scarlet, fire commands me to stand my ground. Surrender nothing.

Cat birds, cuckoos, grackles, and gulls flock and mob me with their chatter. They have, long ago, been displaced by my cannonade and now demand an end to occupation. “This is deadlock terrain,” they cry out. “One side has to withdraw.”

The beads flood my chest with welcome and bid me to stay forever. They promise aid, beseech me to forget sister soldier country girls Mynah and trees that serve as burial mound. “Stay in Sona and set aside the burden of command.”

Puff brown wrens, song sparrows, larks the color of gemstones burst into the muted sky and sing, “The city is leveled, the harbor’s on fire, refugees head for the coast. There’s nothing for you here, Ink.” An opposing chorus of orange-bellied bluebirds chant, “Come, fly away.”

I press my hands to my face and let my feet follow their music. I haven’t heard songbirds in so long. Now they’re as relentless as drum fire. Trills and chirps deafen the boom, cover the crackle of things set ablaze. The birds are no bigger than my finger, yet throats the size of thimbles catapult melodies violent enough to span a meadow, a battlefield, a courtyard. Every note is a blast that shatters it all.

Chapter 10
That Spells Little Bird

Something tickles my nose.

It’s the end of Little Bird’s braid. It spills over her shoulder as she strokes my forehead. We’re on the floor in the middle of my room with my head on her lap. For a moment, I think it’s Key.

“Was that a SonaScape?” Little Bird sounds excited, neither scared, nor worried.

“What did you see?”

“Someplace terrible. Lots of sick girls and fire and smoke and you stuck in the mud.” 

I sit up onto my elbows expecting to be dizzy but only experience the bolt of energy and power of the beads and whatever life I have looted from Little Bird.

I examine her head to toe, looking for evidence of my theft of her little girl Life Force. Oval sweat stains ring the underarms of her blue dress. Aside from this, there is no sign of exhaustion, or depletion, no cloudy-eyed trace of post-SonaScape fatigue. In fact, she looks better than the day I met her. Gone are the dark circles and crusty cracks at the edges of her lips. She looks like a ruddy farm girl, fed on goat cheese and mung bean.

I grip the beads with both hands. If they work on Little Bird, then they’ll work on the others. Panacea, catholicon, theriac, mithridate. Miracle?

“What?” says Little Bird.

I may have spoken aloud. I can’t tell.

“Do you feel alright? Do you feel sick?” I ask her.

“No. Not now, but at first it was bad. Something squished my head and wouldn’t let me breathe. I almost drowned in the river once, it felt like that.”

“And now?”

She stops to think, turns her head side to side like a real bird. “I feel nice. Like me.”

I tuck Little Bird’s braids behind her ears, flatten the creases of her pinafore. Her cheeks are flushed and full, so pretty she looks like a doll. She could be a Blossom with that face.

I weave my fingers around the beads. The smaller ones can start as Honey Girls or Ladybugs, transition into Blossoms, and then into Apples! Apples can be older, even into their twenties. The beads will preserve their vitality for years beyond childhood. What about the poor Gavage Girls who never last the year because Mynah gorges them on cream and bread drenched in olive oil? The Blights like to watch them eat themselves to death, and the bigger the Girl the better the bragging rights. Their suffering is unbearable. I could restore their health if I convince Mynah to give me access to them or send Bird to do it. With the beads, I could ease the pain of their distended stomachs. Our path to death in these rooms is unalterable, but I can grant the Girls a better life remaining. Rota Fortuna.

“You’ve done very well.” I take Little Bird by the waist. “What else did you see?”

She hugs me around the hips, and I let her.

“Tell me what else you saw?”

“You were walking in circles, dragging bodies of dead girls into piles and yelling out like you were saying a poem or reading from a book you knew by heart.” Her eyes land on my precious war book sitting between us, the one I read to her. “You wouldn’t answer when I called. I didn’t know what else to do but sing. I used the song to lure you out.”

“What did you sing?”

“The only song I know that has a bridge in it. Bridges and birds.”

“You made a SonaBridge. How did you know to do that?”

She shrugs, palms up. “I don’t know how to do anything else but sing and cook dal on a dung cake. The sick girl was supposed to teach me how but was too weak to try for real and only explained it. You explained it better than her because she kept falling asleep, and you tell better stories. None of it made sense until I saw you in the smoke and fires and all those horrible hurt girls in the mud. I called you but you didn’t hear, so I sang.”

“What sick girl was supposed to teach you?”

“The one in the room by the garden gate.” 

“When did you see her?”

“Key took me after we—”

 “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

“Key said not to.”

“Key said? How sick was the girl?”

“Her hair is falling out in patches, and she coughs a lot.”

Relief. Bird is alive. Dread. Bird was the one with the cough. Sometimes being right is a mouthful of ash.

“Tell me more about the girl.”

“I sit on her bed while she teaches me songs the Blights like.”

The acid flash of jealousy makes my face burn. I haven’t been within five feet of Bird in three years and would barter a year of my life only to sit beside her for five minutes.

“Was that place with the explosions and black vultures a SonaScape?” Little Bird rocks excitedly on her heels.

“Yes.”

“Whose?”

“Mine.”

“But you said I wouldn’t be able to see anything, you said girls can’t SonaScape, and I had to learn first, you said—”

“Shush and let me think.”

The beads will work on Bird if I could get them to her. I don’t trust Little Bird to hold them or conceal them or explain any of this to Bird when I have more questions than explanations. Key only has access to the courtyard rooms, but she’s been allowed to take Little Bird into the garden wing for the past two days and said nothing. Perfidy, treachery, duplicity, rat.

Blossom will help me. She’ll be up soon. I order Little Bird to eat her soup.

“I’m not hungry anymore.”

“Eat anyway.”

She marches over to the soup but takes her time, no longer rushed by hunger. Without bothering with a spoon, she slurps the broth until she empties it, belches as she sets the bowl down. Maybe it’s the beads, maybe it’s my SonaScape, but it’s like I see her now for the first time. She’s passed through a ring of fire and came out rude and rosy, but also disciplined and able to do what I tell her.

I pick her up by the armpits, spin her around. “From my fiery hinterlands a creature gifted with the fate of a heroine is returned. Once a baby, now a battle angel.”

She laughs as I toss her onto the bed. Feats of strength, playing with a child. So many hidden powers inside my magic necklace, for if this is not mysterious magic, then what else could explain these wonders.

I climb onto the bed next to Little Bird. Under the windowsill, just below the loosened bar, I scratch out new words. Instead of an old spoon, I use the mother bead from the necklace to scrape the plaster. White letters emerge against the mustard yellow of my walls.

Little Bird moves closer. Her sweat smells slightly of onions. “Are you writing my name on your wall because I did a good job and did not die of gruesome?”

“Correct,” I lie. Combatant, conscript, conspirator.

“I don’t recognize all those letters.” Then her breath catches with glee. “You’re writing my new name, aren’t you?! Little Bird!”

I confirm her excitement with a weak smile and then, on a whim, in a moment of faith or superstition or instinct, I tell Little Bird to kiss the mother bead.

With it, I write Ally.

Chapter 11
Murder Hole, merlon, brattice, arrow slit

Late morning sun sears my face. The sunbeams, filtered through city smog and the constant smoke of temple fires, make the daylight look brighter than nature intended. A Blight once told me the city’s pollution is what makes the days so much hotter and the sunsets more spectacular. He was among the less boring Blights, and I believed what he said. This morning, it’s as if there are two suns beating on me, like in a silly film I saw long ago with spaceships and desert planets.

Key must have come to collect Little Bird sometime before dawn. We both fell deeply asleep soon after Little Bird finished her soup. She drifted off in the crook of my arm with a watercolor book of Greek goddesses open on her lap, while I sat drumming my fingernails on the bars, trying to formulate a plan, and thinking of Bird.

The ferrous scent of little kid sweat infuses my pillow. My sister and I shared a bed our whole lives and the dent she left behind in our shared pillow smelled the same. During the rainy season, she would get up at dawn to surprise me with steaming horchata she’d make with calabash or sesame seeds. I shake my head to chase the indulgent memory away, too much work ahead to waste time on silly sentiment. Since the beads arrived, my memory churns up unbidden recollections I had walled off for years. Children playing in the street will trigger the sound of my sister’s laughter. Earlier this morning, I heard a woman singing a song I remember Bird teaching me when I first came here. What a strange miracle, these beads. Mystical like Sona, also keepers of memory, makers of meaning, but bringers, not takers, of life. So many mysteries to consider, how did they get their power, are they a charm of sympathetic magic, can anyone use them to heal, or are they like our SonaDrops that can only to be wielded by someone with a special knowledge or gift? Sympathetic magic. Two objects or people once in contact can afterward influence each other; the relationship can equally facilitate blessing or curse.

A tingling sensation ripples down my arm, numb from Little Bird sleeping on it all night. The look on her face was so peaceful I didn’t have the heart to remove it from under her softly snoring head. My sister would do the same, and to this day the feeling of pins and needles reminds me of her.

I lay the beads on the slate gray sateen bedspread, then poke and prod them into the perfect letter “O.” The shiny black beads catch the sun; they wink at me as if we are now co-conspirators. Each bead is no bigger than a blueberry, but inside them lurks a power I have yet to understand.

They look so benign, even unremarkable.

Knives, hammers, datura flower, hanging rope. Untouched by men, these items are also innocent.

Sewing needles, ladles, matchsticks, ink. It’s the same with all things perhaps. No seamstress, no wedding dress; no housewife, no soup; no accelerant, no fire; no ink, no Ink Girl. Power lies in the hand that wields it.

They look like the kind of bauble sold to tourists, strung together by a wrinkled beggar woman who relieves herself in the street. How can a simple mala bead necklace obtain the power to make a Girl SonaScape? Who put it there? Where did the dead Blight get them, and how much did he know? Again, too many questions. When I wrap them around my wrist, they go around three times. Each time I chant: Ink, Honey, Blossom.

I press them to my forehead asking why the Fates have decided I should hold them. Like a living thing, they’re warm to the touch but disclose nothing of their origins, offer only half-truths, misers of information. I barely know the date or the year or what happens in the world unless a Blight wants to tell me. Newspapers and magazines are forbidden, and the Parlor Goon inspects all Blights, crown to deformed toe, in search of contraband. The books of my library are plentiful, but once again I’m limited to what they want to share. What does the ocean smell like? Can you really feel the vibrations of a church organ inside your chest? Does cotton candy feel like ice or butter melting on your tongue or is it altogether different? I’ll add the creation story of these magic beads to the list of curiosities never to be sated. No matter. I have them now, and they’re of more interest to me than anything on my wall.

Merry-go-round, horseshoe crab, abacus, mourning ring, lava lamp. What use are they to me now?

The beads have brought another mystery in the night. No longer dormant, in a tiny place in my gut resides a sense of safety and security that goes beyond the post-SonaScape hubris and invulnerability.

Querencia, citadel, oasis, alcazar, bolt hole.

This feeling came to me as I watched Little Bird sleep. In the years since Mynah dragged me off the front steps of my home, I have only felt so free from harm one other time. It was the first day of my captivity when Bird proved that a person could survive the horrors of this place with their humanity intact, that kindness dwelled in prisons, on enemy battlefields, in slums, everywhere.

My memory of the long, hot bus ride to the city is foggy from the elephantine dose of Oxmed Mynah gave me to quiet my hysteria and still my gnashing mouth. I vaguely recall a mountain range slipping past, a narrow tunnel with neon lights streaming along the ceiling, a trestle bridge, then a sweaty Goon depositing me onto a velvet divan in the front parlor of The Nectar House. That divan was the softest piece of furniture I had ever sat upon and the prettiest man-made thing I had ever seen. I tore at it with my teeth and bare hands until it bled white stuffing all over the floor.

A second Goon arrived, armed with a dripping syringe of mighty Oxmed, and had orders to deliver me to the First Floor, but Bird floated in and stopped him. She wore her signature white gown which I soaked with my despair while she held me until I spent myself screaming and writhing in anguish and fury.

Agony can take many forms, but the pain caused by someone who claimed to love you has a signature all its own. This pain alters your mind irreparably; it makes the world and your place in it unrecognizable. You doubt everything anyone has ever told you, question every tenderness, and become secure only in the knowledge that your path forward has been irrevocably altered without your consent. Amidst my vitriol and oaths of vengeance, most vile, Bird gave me the words to understand the war that was raging inside me, for I still loved my betrayer with the same intensity with which I hated them.

As Bird dried my slobber with her shawl, she convinced me I could learn to exist with these irreconcilable feelings, but unless I channeled them into survival, they would destroy me. The schism of love and hatred would eventually eat away at my sanity. That day, among Mynah’s antique vases and Mughal rugs, Bird spoke of a core deep inside me, so distilled in self, so uniquely my own that no Blight, no betrayer, no slave master could access or alter. At that moment, she both armed me for war and freed me from harm. Somehow, in a way I have yet to understand, the beads I wrapped thrice around my wrist have done the same.

Voices ring across the courtyard and pull me from disorienting thoughts both old and new.

When I look out, Blossom sits lotus at her window. Her face is careworn and turned toward Little Bird at her window one floor below. I can’t imagine Blossom can see anything more than the golden smudges of the leaves. Her back, usually stick straight and regal, slumps against the window frame.

Little Bird is dressed in a fresh smock of lilac linen, and her hair is braided and topknotted. Framed as she is by the tree branches, she looks like a picture postcard. She could be an advertisement in a travel magazine boasting summer fun, if it weren’t for the fact that she’s standing behind bars. She’s talking animatedly to a sleepy but patient Blossom. “Blossom, why are my bars different from yours?”

“They’re not your bars, hick.” Honey picks her teeth with a fingernail.

“All our rooms are different.” Blossom sounds tired. House Girls always sound tired, but there’s a weary lilt to Blossom’s speech that wasn’t there yesterday. “Our rooms are different because we all have a different job in the House.”

“And we work for Mynah?” asks Little Bird.

“Work? People who work get paid,” says Honey, spotting me at my window. “I don’t get paid. Do you get paid, Ink?”

“Ink?” Blossom squints in my direction. “What happened last night?”

“Ink did a SonaScape, and I pulled her out all by myself,” says Little Bird.

“Liar,” says Honey, climbing onto her sill.

“It’s not a lie. Ink taught me to do a SonaScape, didn’t you Ink?”

“It’s true.” I lower my voice. “I had my own SonaScape, not just creating the SonaBridge and watching. A real SonaScape.”

Blossom knits her eyebrows. “Not possible.”

Honey’s exclamation of disbelief is not as polite. Ordure, feculence, excreta, dung.

“Blossom, you said it wasn’t possible when my Blight died, and I took his Life Force, and here I am. Only took two SonaDrops, and the beads. When the Blight’s fairy tale didn’t work, I read from one of my books. Little Bird got me out with a song. Like a proper Bird Girl.”

“And I saw it all. I was there.” Little Bird puffs up, full of newfound bravado. Backbone, mettle, valiance, grit.

“Girls can’t SonaScape, cowpat.” Honey sticks her feet out of her bars to hang over the courtyard.

“Ink can. I saw her in a field of—”

“Quiet, Little Bird.” I steal a glance at Blossom. “It’s mine to tell.”

“Ink,” Honey yells, “tell her she’s lying!”

“I’m not!” says Little Bird. “Ink needed to leave that horrible place. Have you ever gotten your feet stuck in the mud? It was like that, but in my head. Ink didn’t want to leave, so I pulled her out with my singing, like the sick Girl told me to do. Except she’s too sick, and now Ink has to teach me.”

“Who’s sick?” asks Honey.

“Bird. She’s in the Garden Wing,” I say. “Sick. Key knew all along.”

Little Bird pouts. “I don’t want the sick Girl to teach me. I want Ink do it, I want to be an Ink Girl instead.”

“You can’t pick!” Honey rocks on her heels, her shoulders sinking between her knees. She looks like a feral temple monkey. “You’re not so special, crybaby, Mynah’s going to let a Blight dry you like a prune on the First Floor. See how nice you sing when you’re pissing yourself, SonaStuck and screaming for your drunk poppa!”

“Honey, that’s ugly.” Blossom sounds like a schoolteacher, but Honey is bulletproof to censure of any kind.

“Why does she get to see Bird?” says Honey.

Key appears at Little Bird’s window, “Stop yelling, all of you.”

When she hands Little Bird a bowl of food, Honey emits a screech louder than any sound Little Bird and Bird could make together. Street vendors two blocks away will wonder why someone is skinning a live cat during the mid-morning rush hour.

“Honey,” Be quiet and get away from your window,” says Key through a freshly busted upper lip. She looks like a cadaver. “If you take a hap, slap, get some rest, I’ll bring you an extra bowl for dinner.”

“Why is she first? You’re lucky you’re behind bars, cupcake. I’d make you wish that you never left your shit-stain village.” Honey says this through gritted teeth, but does as she’s told; she prefers food over being nasty. After a few months on the SonaDrops, Girls lose much of their appetite, except those hooked on the Oxmed and the street urchins whose bellies are never full. Honey will always behave for food. Starvation was how Mynah finally broke her.

Little Bird and Key disappear from view. The courtyard goes quiet, and I try to hear the click of Little Bird’s door, but the blare of an ambulance or a fire truck fills the air instead.

“Ink?” asks Blossom.

I grab the silver runner from the foot of my bed and wave it through the bars, our signal for quiet. Key could be eavesdropping, although she can only hear out of one ear.

“Little Bird?” I call out a few times. “Key may have taken Little Bird for a bath or maybe to delouse her again. She was scratching half the night.”

“What else did she say about Bird?” Blossom lowers her voice.

“Sounds like a Blight drained Bird almost to death.”

“That was her coughing yesterday?”

I don’t respond. When someone knows what you’re thinking, there’s not much to say. Blossom has been privy to the wasting away and grisly demise of three Honey Girls, two Gavage Girls, and the unfortunate Apple. Blossom mourns them all like sisters, but Bird’s death will break her. I won’t let that happen even if I have to squeeze the Life Force from an entire village of cute, country girls.

“Did you take life energy from the Little Bird?”

“Not even a little. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her. You can’t see, but she’s better than when she got here. The SonaScape was a benefit to both of us, not only the one wearing the beads.”

“Didn’t benefit the Blight.”

“Must be different for them.” I make my words sound so sure, as if I understand much more than I do.

Blossom’s finger floats to her lip in private meditation.

“Key knew where Bird was all along.” I’m trying to sound neutral, to keep my anger at Key from spilling onto Blossom, but I want to scream at her, show her how Key hides duplicity with victimhood. “Key knew and didn’t tell. Remember that next time you want to defend her.”

“Or Mynah must have threatened her not to tell.”

“Key would never tell me, but why keep it from you? If she really loved you, she would have told.”

“Maybe she’s trying to protect us. Keep us from worrying.”

“You’re a marvelously clever girl, Blossom, but this blind spot for Key will be your downfall.”

“As will your cruelty to her.”

Her tone stings almost as much as it shocks me. We’ve had some version of this conversation many times, this endless game of tug-of-war over Key. Blossom’s words are firm but never volleyed with precision, or intent to damage. I didn’t think she had it in her. I blame Key who brings out the worst in people.

From the street comes the bang of a car door being shut followed by the fleeting sounds of what might be a lover’s quarrel. Alternating accusations of another woman and groveling man’s pleas slowly fade away. Betrayal is in the very air we breathe.

Blossom pulls a tree branch to her bars and wrenches off a thin stalk. “Are you sure last night wasn’t some sort of dream?”

“That we both dreamt? Little Bird described my SonaScape as if she were watching it unfold. Just like a Girl bridged with a Blight. She saw and smelled every detail, every move I made. I went into SonaScape by myself, and Little Bird brought me out, and please don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m SonaDrunk or dreaming. No dream is this real.”

“What did you see?”

I hesitate. She doesn’t need to know about the soldiers, each one the emblem of every Girl I’ve led to the charnel house. “My SonaScape was a giant library where I read my war books next to a fire.”

Blossom lifts her eyebrows. “That’s it? Even the dullest Blight has more elaborate SonaScapes.”

She doesn’t believe me. I don’t care. I refuse to spill my dirty conscience all over the courtyard. This deceit is easily exposed; I’ll be sure to browbeat Little Bird into quiet during our next lesson.

“What did it feel like?”

“I didn’t feel anything.” Lie. “But now I understand why the Blights need us so much. These trappings—the flowers, the honey, the dancing, the food, the whole nonsense of reading their favorite books, they have power because the Blights believe they do. These things, these symbols bring them closer to themselves, or at least who they think themselves to be. It’s like the SonaScape taps into something deep, deep inside you, something, the thing, that makes you you.”

I pause and remember the blood of my battlefield. What does my SonaScape say about the nature of my true self? That I’m a killer, a leader of lambs to slaughter, that the inside of my head is an ossuary of dead girls whose fate I roll like dice.

“Did you feel Little Bird at all?” asks Blossom.

“Yes. No. Both. You’re all alone in Sona. Yet, you know that there are others with you somewhere in the world, but you can’t feel them or their love or attention. Sona isolates your essence in your mind, or rather, it distills your focus and then, this is the scariest part, the Sona takes control. It’s free to play with you however it wants, but it also forces you to play a single, repetitive game of its choosing, whether you like it or not.”

“So, it is like a nightmare.”

“A dream feels unreal when you wake up; the SonaScape is the most honest moment of your whole life. When you wake, there is nothing more certain. The scene plays itself out in a loop, but it’s different than a memory. Like the Sona knows what it needs to show you, or you tell it what you need to hear. I’m not sure about that last part, only that the SonaScape is who you are at the core, and it manipulates your own language and the things you love or remember to explain yourself to yourself.” And it doesn’t let you lie.

“And you read books in your SonaScape, what does that explain?”

“That I read a lot.”

“And you wanted to stay and read?”

“More like I was compelled to stay. My SonaScape is the distilled, pure version of who I am. To leave it, to shatter the moment, even if it’s terrifying, feels like death.”

“Then it felt good?”

“No, just accurate. There’s a twisted comfort in that or maybe in the reassurance that you are who you really know yourself to be. Whatever the SonaScape shows you, you know is true.”

“I’m not sure I get it.”

“Me neither.”

“Why didn’t you drain Little Bird like you did the Blight?”

“With the Blight, I was inside his Sona, both of us aware of each other. Little Bird witnessed my SonaScape—”

“As you read quietly before a fire?”

“Yes, Blossom.” She’s not buying it. No matter. Lies, my language of love. “I was all alone, with my war book, until I heard birds.”

“Songbirds then?”

“Songbirds that became Little Bird’s voice but forget about the rest. Little Bird and I are both healthy. I feel like I can rip the Sonagachi by the roots. Little Bird looks like a teeny Valkyrie. That’s a lady warrior. Like the Amazons I read to you about. A scrawny baby Valkyrie in a homemade dress. She sang and saved me like she was born to it.”

“You’re a good teacher.”

“I had Bird.”

We sit in silence for a while until Blossom begins to cough. It sounds wet and croupy and doesn’t quit her until her face is pink. Her cough is not so new.

“How was your night?” I ask. “How many?”

“Only one of my regulars. The really sick one with the purple eye rings. For months he’s been on and on about asking Mynah for exclusive access to me this season. Last night he didn’t, so I asked him if he had already put in his bid. Mynah refused him. He said it was just as well because I was soon to ripen and not worth half the jaspers of her original quote.”

My heart skips a beat. Then another. Mynah and I have a deal. “What else did he say?”

“Nothing else.”

“In the entire history of human deception, there has never been a worse liar than you, Blossom.”

“He said Mynah had other plans for me.”

“What plans?”

“He fell asleep and snored up to the minute Key let him out.”

She looks into the courtyard in the direction of the alley that leads to the street. I’ve seen her do this when she tries to track the noise from the world outside.

“What if the beads could cure Bird?” I ask. “What if they could help all of us?”

“How?”

“Apple Girls can be any age, right? And it’s not hard. Just feed the fat Blights cakes and canapés until they SonaScape, keep the purge bucket handy. What if Mynah makes you an Apple Girl? You’ve had a waiting list since you got here. Blights are mad about you. A Girl already trained to use Sona saves time and trouble.”

“No one becomes another girl.”

“Only because we don’t live long enough to become anything but mulch.” I chuck my chin at the roots of the tree. “If I can convince Mynah of the merits of recycling us, her most profitable Specialty Girls will last a decade.”

“And why would she agree to this? You know how she is, that’s not how it’s done. Ever.”

“I’ll spin it, like I do everything with her. With the right plan, she’ll have the entire Blight community convinced that The Nectar House Girls hold the gift of longevity. By the time I’m done, she’ll think it was her idea. She’ll own half the House District in five years.”

“It won’t work, and she won’t agree. She’d only take the beads for herself.”

“We’ll find a way to do it in secret.”

“We’d never manage it. She’s too sharp.”

“Lately she’s so sauced on SonaDrink, she can hardly remember why she came into my room. Leave her to me. Mynah will do whatever brings in the most jaspers. We’ll reshape your image. Whip up the anticipation in the Blight community, let the bidding last for months. You’re so beautiful, Blossom, it’ll be a feeding frenzy to SonaScape with the juiciest Apple in the city.”

She looks unsure, weary.

“But first, Little Bird will have to take the beads to Bird. Then we can figure out how to get them to you, then Honey.”

“Honey?”

“Yes, Blossom, Honey too. She can transition into a Blossom. She’s pretty enough. Her teeth are pretty scraggly, but a Ladybug perhaps or—I’ll think of something by then, make up a new kind of Specialty Girl to match her disposition. Some kind of demon or fallen angel or— hell hound puppy— I’ll come up with something. Honey can live four, five more years.”

Blossom grabs a leaf off the Sonagachi. “Is this really the life you want for her? For any of us? Maybe Honey has made peace with her fate.”

“You sound like Key. It’s disgusting and beneath you.”

I dispatch these words with anger, but the force that fuels them is fear. Sheet drenching, cataclysm on the horizon if I don’t fix things, fear. The beads have to work, and I need Blossom to help me figure out how. I wouldn’t survive The Nectar House without the others. I wouldn’t want to. If my SonaScape showed me anything, it’s that I’m done with this courtyard of the dead.

Another well-crafted argument is assembling on Blossom’s face.

“Blossom, Bird is dying. Do you want to do nothing? Do you want to watch as Key gets Honey hooked on Oxmed? Wake up one morning to learn that she’s taken herself out one night along with her Blight in a fit of rage?” I let my words sink in for a moment. Incursion, onslaught, raid.

“Sounds too risky for Bird, and for you, if Mynah finds out about any of this.”

“What Honey said before was wrong. She’s not my fifth Honey Girl. She’s my seventh. Two died on their First Night. Another bashed her face on the Sonagachi when she jumped from her window. Happened before you got here. That’s why Mynah put up the bars.” This is a lie. The bars were already here and rusting by the time Key and I came, but I’m desperate. Disinformation is the linchpin to every prolonged conflict. “I can’t watch them die anymore.” Not a lie.

Blossom’s finger finds its spot on her lip, and she looks into the distance, her resolve wavering.

I hate to do it, but my next strike must be precise. Murder hole, merlon, brattice, arrow slit.

I press my face to the bars. “If Bird dies, will you dishonor her by not helping yourself or the others? Would you pass up a chance to save her?”

Blossom drops her shoulders.

Victory.

“What about Key?” she asks.

“What about Key?”

“How can the beads help her?”

“Wha—who cares?” I stutter.

“Make Key healthier, then she could specialize. Weave at her loom, sew, knit, macrame. Call her a Knot Girl or Spinner or … you’re great at naming them. Mynah loved the Strap Girl idea, and now every House has one.”

“Bird tried. It didn’t work.” Rage broils up inside me. I got the strap three times begging Mynah to let Bird train Key to SonaScape. When Key almost killed Bird in the process, I got a fourth.

“I didn’t know that,” says Blossom.

“Lots of things you don’t know about Key. She got Bird SonaStuck for four days trying to train her.” Half lie. It was only two days, but I aged a year for every one of them, as did Bird, worse than any Blight customer ever did. Beads or no beads, I will never risk that again. I take care of Key in my own way, and I have done more for her than she deserves.

Blossom climbs onto her knees on her windowsill. “If the beads can really heal like you say, why refuse her? Maybe make an ally out her?”

I say nothing. Arguing with Blossom is like trying to water a desert.

Blossom folds her arms over her chest. “We all know you can be hardheaded, maybe hard-hearted, but I never imagined how much.”

Repeat strike, volley, barrage. This slap stings worse than the one before, but I don’t have time or patience, and Blossom didn’t hear Bird screaming like she was being boiled alive while Key filled the courtyard with animal-like cries when they were both SonaStuck. That day, I learned how words can fall short in their description of torment.

“Ink—”

“No more debating. Honey loses weight by the day. You look exhausted, and what’s worse, you’re looking older, and Bird is dying. I have to do the impossible and—no, I have done the impossible. I’m a House Girl who has had her own SonaScape and lived to tell the tale. This will work.”

“And Little Bird will SonaScape with Bird while using these strange beads? Can she do it?”

“Yes, maybe, I don’t know, Blossom. You’re so sure of everything and everyone. Come up with something better.”

“Lower your voice.” She puts her finger back onto her lip to think. “Key loves Bird and can be trusted.”

“Blossom.” I run my hand down my face in frustration. “Have you gone deaf now? Are you listening to yourself?”

“Are you? Key was a First Floor. She can SonaBridge, at least. Maybe the SonaScape isn’t even necessary.”

“She’ll botch it.” And she’s not strong enough. Key can barely put body and soul together. This time she’d kill them both. “How can she SonaBridge while controlling the power of the beads when she can barely get through a sentence without stumbling?”

“You underestimate her. Key will find the strength because she loves Bird.”

“Like she loves you when she lies to you. Like she loved Honey when she helped Mynah starve her. How many times does she need to betray us to Mynah for you to see that she doesn’t love anyone?”

“Key does her best to get by, like the rest of us.”

“Not like the rest of us. I don’t give Girls the means to kill themselves. I don’t teach them how to tie nooses out of their pajamas. I told you about the orange slices. How she did nothing to help us. The entire Floor didn’t eat for five days.”

“She told me Mynah locked her in a pantry. The Oxmed is all Key has to offer these Girls and she only does it—”

“—because it serves her, because she has the selfish heart of a betrayer. She’s made her choices, and she chose Oxmed and murder. She can call it A Good Death, a Wishful Death, Merciful Release, she can call it Cherub Kisses and name each capsule after all the angels in paradise for all I care. She’s responsible for every Girl under that tree that died as a result of her meddling. Just as responsible as Mynah. Lay down with monsters and you become one. My plan will work. Little Bird will take the beads to Bird. She brought me out of SonaScape, she can do it again.”

“What if you have a Blight tonight, or every night this week, or they don’t bring Little Bird to you? How long do you think Bird can hold on? Just give them to Key. Let her try.”

I leave the window and sit by the door. A phantom pain shoots up my ankles when I think of the Blight that gifted me that orange. Honey begged me for it. I didn’t trust Key to deliver it, so I split it in half and tried to toss it to her. I didn’t even come close and it fell to the ground. Honey kept whining until I made a sling out of my bed runner and managed to get her the other half of the orange by swinging it to her.

Bird asked Key to pick up the lost half from the courtyard before Mynah discovered it. Nothing is supposed to interfere with the soil under the tree. An army of horticulturalists tends to the Sonagachi and its dirt, and Mynah would not appreciate pesticide-ridden fruits tainting her root system. All day we waited for Key to pick them up. She never did. Mynah delivered seven sound lashes to the bottoms of our feet with the strap of her drawing knife, one for every orange slice she found. That day I swore on the Sonagachi that if I ever got hold of an orange ever again, I would shove it down Key’s throat. Even thinking like this, I’m filled with shame. That’s what happens when someone you love so deeply turns against you. You want to hurt them, and you want to protect them from everyone, sometimes even yourself. It’s an endless game tug-of-war you will never win. Trust them and you’re a chump. Hate them and they’re lost to you forever.

“Ink?” calls Blossom. “Are you there? I can’t see.”

I have nothing more to say, but I hate the idea of her talking to an empty courtyard so I return to the window. “I’m here.”

“I have an idea. You may not see Litle Bird today or tomorrow, so you should SonaScape me.”

“How? What for?”

“Swing the beads over to me. Like the orange. Then SonaScape me from your room.” Her face is hard to read. Perhaps she’s trying to be brave. “We’ll see how far the Girls have to be in order for the beads to work. If they amplify the connection enough, I can SonaScape Bird from here. Mine is the closest room to the Garden Wing.”

My mouth goes dry. “I’m not sure.”

“I don’t know any other way except to give them to Key or wait for Little Bird to be brought to you, but I don’t think our Bird can wait.”

“Where will Bird get her Sona from?”

“If this works. I can convince Key to slip her some SonaDrops.”

“She cannot be part of this.”

“Then we’ll give some of your stolen SonaDrops to Little Bird.” She puts her palms up to quell my arguments.

Through the golden leaves of the Sonagachi, I see the alley in the corner of the courtyard kitty corner to my window. The Garden Wing is so close we can smell the night jasmine blooming. We’re divided by the interior walls of each building and the narrow alley between, no more than ten feet, but it might as well be on the other side of the moon. I shake my head, “No, it’s too dangerous.”

“Ink, could you live with yourself if Bird dies, and you didn’t try everything?”

Marksman, crack shot, deadeye, sniper.

Well done, Blossom.

Chapter 12
Pendulum

“Go on,” Blossom says. “I’ll swing them right back when we’re done.”

A cold unease runs through me as I realize I don’t want to give up the beads. What if they only work because I have them in my possession? I could get sick again.

Blossom gathers her skirts and tucks them into her waistband. “Tie one end of the sheet to your bars so it doesn’t fall to the ground.”

I check the stoppered bottle of Sona twice to make sure it’s sealed along with the beads inside a pouch I’ve made with my top sheet. I consider using a third shawl to pad the glass bottle.

“Be careful not to catch the sheet on the branches.” Blossom moves to the very edge of her window seat.

I listen for footsteps, Key’s or anyone else’s. I hear only the sounds of the loathsome swiftlets whose shrieks jab into my ears and unnerve me. I stick my hand out of the window as far as my armpit. “Here I go.”

A car backfires and I fumble. The pouch bounces against the wall underneath my sill. I regret not using the extra shawl.

Blossom stretches her arms out as far as she can through her bars, as if cradling a baby. “I can’t see it.”

I reel in the sheet. “It slipped. I’m going again.”

The bundle misses Blossom’s window by several feet, then swings like a pendulum along the wall.

I’m sweating through my dress. I wipe my forehead with the sheet before flinging it again. This time it goes farther, almost catching on a twisted branch. The swiftlet birds cry out like their heads are about to fall off, enraged that I’m disturbing their tick-ridden nests.

“Try again, Ink. Hurry.”

I hurl the sheet just as the wind picks up. The Sonagachi sways and snags the fabric. It billows between two branches like a sail.

Neither of us say a word. I think of Mynah’s strap. This beating will be prodigious. Blossom has never been beaten with the strap; Key will have to make Blossom a floor length gown to hide the carnage.

I flap the sheet to dislodge it. This only manages to tangle in a neighboring branch. There goes our chance, there goes Bird’s chance. Talking, singing, as long as it’s quiet and during the day, doesn’t ruffle Mynah’s feathers, but this offense is First Floor worthy.

Sweat on my lips. Wipe. Jiggle the sheet. Gently. Side to side. A pointy twig rips a hole with a sickening snick.

Blossom is talking to me, but I let her voice and the rest of the world melt away. Helicopter, velociraptor—no, concentrate. Air balloon, parachute, luft, wingsail. I wait for a breeze, listen to the branches creak as the wind wends its way through the bowers. The four freedoms of flying objects, power, pitch, yaw and roll.

The wind rustles the leaves, and I flutter the sheet free with a crisp snap. Minutes pass as I wait for the perfect breeze … fluff the sheet. It opens like a parachute and untangles with ease. As I reel it in, I vow to move the yellowed manual on airplanes to a favored spot on the shelf in gratitude and almost bless the Blight that bored me to tears with his expiations on the physics of flight.

I shake my shoulders out, crack my neck, toss.

Blossom reaches, the sheet slips through her left hand, but she catches it with the other.

I let out a sigh so deeply held it could take a ship across the sea.

She unwraps the beads, holds them close to her eyes. “These aren’t beads.” She rubs one against her front teeth. “These are SonaSeeds.”

“No they’re not.”

“No mistake. They pass the tooth test. SonaSeeds have a crease down the length with a whorl at one end. Easy to miss if you’re not looking for it.” She scrapes them across her teeth again. “My people call them yoni, as in the womb or the source of life. The head of my clan had a single seed made into a bracelet that was his daughter’s entire dowry. There are—”

“Thirty-three in all.” When I counted them, I could have sworn they were made of stone.

“Someone will come for these. I can’t even calculate how much they’re worth. I don’t like this, Ink.”

“You’ll like how you feel after you SonaScape. I promise. Go get the Blight chair. If you stay at the window seat, you could hit your head when you go limp.”

“Now?”

“Would you like me to ply you with SonaDrink and compliments?”

She nods slowly, then turns from the window.

Blossom’s bed is in the middle of the room and too heavy to drag. I’ve never seen it, but she describes it as a canopied metal monstrosity made of wrought iron and copper piping coiled into flowers and hanging vines. I’ve told Mynah a million times that it’s a hanging risk, but she got it when our Syndicate faction successfully raided a rival House and considers it a trophy. This Blossom wouldn’t try to hurt herself, but the next one might. I try not to think about that.

Blossom returns flushed and panting from pushing her armchair across an eleven-foot room. This has to work. She doesn’t look like there is enough of her to last the coming season.

“Don’t worry, Blossom. It’s like taking Sona with the Blight. I just took my drops.” I feel the burn. “You’ve many SonaScapes under your belt.”

“But not on my own.”

“You’re not alone. I’ll be with you.” I feel a blush coming on. Somehow, the thought of experiencing Blossom this way makes me embarrassed. I’ve SonaScaped twice as many Blights as any of the Girls I’ve known except maybe Bird. But Blights don’t matter. Nothing more than diseased meat sacks. Their desires, their memories, their faults on display are nothing to me, but to be so intimate, so close to someone I love, triggers something new.

“What if it’s too powerful?” Blossom loops the beads around her neck. “You said you almost got stuck in your own SonaScape, that you wanted to stay.”

“Only because Little Bird was untrained. I’m an experienced House Girl who’s seen it all. Twice. From utopian SonaScapes to lands of mayhem. Hundreds of lily-livered and uncooperative Blights.”

“But no Blossoms.”

“I’ve worked with fourteen SonaDrops at a time.” This is a lie. Campaigns are won on deception but falter with delay. “Now, take your SonaDrops. Only two.”

I wait for her to administer them.

“Remember, Blossom. You’re a Nectar House Girl. Best of the best. Cream of Mynah’s crop.” The certainty in my voice impresses me. “There is only one thing left for you to do.”

“What’s that?

“Sit back and let me read to you.”

Chapter 13
Entangling Ground

“What if I go mad?”

“You won’t,” I reassure Blossom for the twenty-fourth time.

“What if I get stuck inside the SonaScape?”

“I’ll be there to yank you out by your fair tresses.”

“And if my heart gives out?”

“Then you’ll have left a pretty corpse.”

“Don’t be funny, Ink. You’re never funny. It’s terrifying.”

Gallows humor. Grim humor in desperate or hopeless situations.

A nervous giddiness gels in my gut. “Hurry,” I coax. “Before the whole House hears and Mynah comes back.” I sneak a peek at Key’s room directly across from mine. At this time of the morning, she’s tending to the simple yet tasteful couture of the First Floor Girls, but who knows.

“Do you think I could die from the things inside my SonaScape? Like if I were trapped inside a sandstorm or a sinking ship?”

“I don’t think so.”

The blood drains from her face.

“I mean, no,” I backpedal. “Probably not. The Blights don’t seem to be in any danger.”

“Your Blight died.”

“Well, we’ll find out soon. Try not to do anything dangerous in your SonaScape.”

She’s not amused. Her rose bud lips, renowned all over the city and the toast of the Blight community, are pressed together. “What if the Goons hear us and come up?”

“It’s so hot today, I bet half the House is still asleep or too hot to move or care.”

A tugging feeling, a kind of restlessness churns inside me. I think it may be hope. I can’t be sure. Maybe hope is like running, or navigating a crowd, or walking down the stairs; I’m not sure if I remember how to do it.

Blossom extends her hand to me through the bars, and I do the same. My heart quakes and melts in equal measure when I say, “Any terrain we cross from now on is unknown, my beauty. Our geography outgrows its confines. Today we travel from a courtyard to continent.”

I don’t know why I said all that, but it makes Blossom laugh. This is all I ever want, for Blossom to laugh and play her games, for Bird to sing outdoors, to watch Honey devour a pastry filled with cream.

“Ink, you’re waxing poetic. Your Blights must love that.”

“Sorry,” I grumble, embarrassed. I don’t say what I want with the Blights, only what they want.

“Never be sorry for your beautiful words.” says Blossom, “I like them.”

Her tone fills me with sad longing, as if I’ve already lost her. Last time I SonaScaped while someone else wore the beads, I killed them.

“Now read to me.”

The botany book on my lap is open to Blossom’s favorite flowers. “Nepenthes, from the Greek meaning ‘without grief,’ is a meat-eating flower, sometimes called pitcher plant, or monkey cups. Their sweet nectar lures winged insects and small birds into champagne flute bodies that facilitate the slow, acidic ingestion that is their fate.”

The words sway. For a split second, I see a girl in an ombre gray dress, sitting at a barred window. The courtyard she overlooks is our own, and the girl in gray must be me. I blink and check on Blossom, who looks woozy. “How are you?”

“My stomach … You?”

“Only dizzy.” And possibly hallucinating. I decide not to share this.

“Keep reading.”

“Misled, winged creatures, enticed by the vibrant hues and succulent scent, alight on the cupped petals. The slippery lip of the flower is a trap door.”

Blossom’s face has turned a drab olive green. “I can’t see anything at all. Where’s the SonaBridge?”

“Won’t be long now. This is how it starts.”

“Something’s wrong.” Her voice catches in the wind, like she’s fading, slipping through my fingers like sand. Perhaps this dingy courtyard is too big to span?

Entangling ground. Risk high. Gain unsure. Can be abandoned, but hard to win back.

She knows it’s too late to turn tail now. I keep reading, “The flower’s walls are slick with a waxy coating. Once the insect prey succumbs, escape is impossible.”

I can’t see her anymore but hear her moaning under the sill.

Sona throbs at my temples, signaling for me to initiate the SonaBridge. I press into the sensation to locate Blossom but only smell smoke. The air burns my nostrils as if I was standing at a bonfire. An unmistakable awareness rushes through me. This is the start of my own SonaScape. Battlefields feel close, molten, and murderous, flames course along neural nets. Flint, candle, lantern, blow torch, bomb.

I scan my room as if Blossom’s SonaBridge hides somewhere on the crooked shelves. Perhaps flowers are not enough. What else does she like? What does she love? Me, Bird, Honey. Useless Key.

Something occurs to me. I wobble like a drunk, across the room to the magazines. I tear apart half the wall before I find what I need, and I scramble back to the window.

Blossom groans like she’s in pain. I have to get to her, but the temptation to return to my SonaScape is a thing of fire demons. Urgent, enticing, irrevocable. Maybe I go into my own for a short while. Then it will be Blossom’s turn. She has the beads; she can go after me. There’s plenty of time. The edges of my thoughts curl like burning paper. Blossom can pull me out, like Little Bird did … but then she’ll see. She’ll see my dreadful SonaScape. Everything and everyone I have burned will be laid out for her to witness. I slap my cheek to bring my room back into focus.

No one in the courtyard, no Girls behind bars. No Blossom sifting through my mind.

My hands are sloppy and hard to control as I flatten the tattered magazine. The cover is faded with age and sooty black mold dusts the masthead; both the Blight who left it behind and his Ink Girl are long dead. In bold black and red letters, the title reads, The Game of Kings. I’ve read it to Blossom, cover to cover, over and over until she memorized it and Honey was driven to distraction, eventually running out of spit trying to get me to shut up.

“Stay with my voice, Blossom.” I read as loudly as I dare across the courtyard, “The white queen is a fighting piece. In the opening and middle game, keep her safe from attack.”

No sign of Blossom. Outside or inside.

“Do not underestimate your pawns. These small but daring henchmen are mighty siege engines. But be wary, a pawn too far from her fellows is easily taken.”

Blossom waves a checkered silk shawl from between her bars. Every other square is the color of poppies on a field of black. So smart. The shawl serves as the board for her chess games and her way of telling me that I have chosen the right words for her SonaScape. Flowers be damned.

“Your opponent will try to force your white queen into passivity. Be bold. A queen should not be confined to rear ranks.” I read and mine my memory for anything that will help connect me to Blossom’s consciousness. You need the queen to win, or if she dies then the game is lost. Everyone must get out of her way for her to eat the others. The king is the slow-moving piece, she should attack him first? I can’t remember. I should have paid better attention. How she begged me to play. I feigned impatience but the sad truth is, I couldn’t keep the pieces straight.

Maybe I should try the flowers again; at least I understand those better. I read down the index of the botany book, hoping to happen upon one she likes. Magnolia, hyacinth, clover, day lily, rose. I picture the flowers in my mind as I chant. The words echo off the courtyard walls and between my ears.

The first flush of Blossom’s mind brushes the hollow of my neck. She whispers back: “Pink phlox, desert sage, spike grass, brittle brush, thistle.”

It’s to be flowers then, but not any flowers. Those all grow in hostile climes. Blossom is there, I can hear her but she’s beyond my reach. Why won’t she come closer?

“Move two squares,” she laughs.

The sound of her joy moving through me is culled from myths. Vedas, cycles, the codex of gods—none of these can light a candle to the beauty of her giggling inside me.

Another warm rush from Blossom, who says deep inside my mind, “Milkweed to queen’s pawn four, agrimony to bishop five, the desert aster is sacrificed as the thistle takes the knight. Your move, Ink.”

I don’t understand.

I extend myself to Blossom. In my hands is a fistful of flowers whose petals have been replaced by bright orange flames. She recoils when I offer them.

“Wrong move,” she says.

Is it her stupid game she wants, or more angry flowers? She sounds farther away than before. Untethered, unsung, unaided, alone.

A page titled “Endgame for Masters” slips out of the magazine.

“Read to me, Ink.”

I’ll replace the words just like she did. “Purslane will be lost if stitchwort attacks rook five, the assault will continue until the eel grass retreats to board’s edge.”

My head spins, and when I rest it against the headboard, an explosion of colors blinds me.

“Is this it?” I say aloud, although I know she can’t hear me. “Are we SonaBridged? Are we close?”

Splotchy colors melt into jasmines and amaranths, ripe red roses and carmine tansies. I reach out to touch them and hit a wall. The flowers aren’t real, but made of fabric finely embroidered on a tapestry that spans the walls floor to ceiling. Each petal is so finely executed, each leaf so delicately veined, I could be standing in a garden. Even the bees would be duped.

I’m seized by a hefty surge of Sona from Blossom. Magnolias give way to clematis, the chickweed chokes a columbine, begonias smother the bluebells while the morning glory unfurls all over the allamandas with reckless abandon. I know these flowers. Many are my favorites. Especially the summer snapdragons that dominate the gorgeous panel. This is Key’s work. Blossom looks at this explosion of peach, pink, red, magenta every day. Her fine mind has memorized the angle of every pistil and stamen of the tapestry on her wall. We are SonaBridged, and this is Blossom’s room, but where is Blossom?

The sudden rush of Blossom’s thoughts overpowering mine turns my stomach. The sickly-sweet scent of decaying flora makes me gag. I look around for the culprit bouquet but only see a giant canopied bed and the low chowki table almost identical to the one I use to serve the Blights their SonaDrink. Draped over the table is her checkered shawl. Blossom has laid out a chess set made of salvaged bits of garbage. The pieces are arranged in two parallel rows. These are their starter positions, this much I know.

Olive pits serve as bishops, dried dates are rooks, paint chipped off the wall makes up an army of pawns while a bottle cap is king. The white queen is her favored piece. Blossom made her out of the handle of a bone China teacup she broke not quite on accident. That treasured bit of detritus could cost her the strap.

Is this her SonaScape? Can’t be.

Blossom pulls at me, but gentler, like a tap on my shoulder. “Your turn, Ink.”

I focus on her chess set and imagine my Blossom as a tiny queen carved in ivory. She wears a crown of desert peonies and prickly pear.

This pleases her and she reaches for me again as if I too were a game piece. Beloved to her but made from garbage.

This makes her laugh. I am undone with pleasure.

Beneath my feet the ground is sun-warmed and yields to my weight. I’m standing on sand. Pastel peach and powdery sand and no longer in Blossom’s room.

She picks me up by the base of my neck as if I were a kitten.

“Plucked like a flower,” she says.

I exist only in the palm of her hand.

She guides me deeper until I’m inside a dreaming Blossom.

Chapter 14
No Lies in the Desert

When Blossom dreams, she dreams of desert sands.

We climb along a crescent dune. Sand surrounds us in an endless cascade of butterscotch and saffron. The cornflower blue sky feels precariously close, and its vastness gives me vertigo.

I’m not used to this much room. Not even my life before The Nectar House could boast such expanse. Nothing parallels the honesty of this landscape, where everything is laid open without places to hide. There are no lies here. The horizon seems impossibly far, the vantage points too generous to my eyes so long constricted, but Blossom opens her arms to the sea of lion-colored sand. Euphoria. A profound feeling of elation. She tilts her face to the sun with a smile wider than this desert.

Blossom marches across her homeland. She knows I’m here, tucked away inside her thoughts. She turns her pretty head to watch me step in her footsteps.

At the top of a dune three times the height of The Nectar House, she pauses, looking for something. The monotony of the terrain is disorienting, maddening in its sameness. For Blossom, each rise and fall of sandscape has a direction, a purpose, an origin story.

Reversing dune, coppice dune, star dune, dome and lunette.

With whispers deep inside me, she teaches me the tones and textures of this arid, featureless place.

“A dune sea is called an erg, the tallest dunes are known as draas, and sharp-crested ones are seifs, from the Arabic word meaning sword.”

She explains how dunes are in constant motion. They migrate as much as the people who live here. She—we—scan the sunbaked contours of the desert for something, anything that breaks the ceaseless sand. We march for what feels like a long time, until we see it. Before us, a marvel.

My geography books didn’t have any pictures, only words that fell too short.

Oasis. A fertile spot in the desert where water is found.

It’s more beautiful than I could have ever imagined. An unknown desire, fulfilled. The azure blue of the lake burns into my retinas. Wonder is such a singular feeling. I had forgotten. Thank you, Blossom.

We spy small figures under a grove of date palms at the shoreline. More elation radiates from Blossom.

Babies slumber in cradle hammocks as men and women along the streambed collect water or rest in the shade.

Blossom points to a demoiselle crane with velvety gray wings and a stripe of black along the breast that looks drawn with an ink brush. “That’s you, Ink.”

I tell her I know this bird from my war books. “Their flight pattern inspired infantry formations as well as the first human composed, divinely revealed, verses of the ancient world.”

More bliss from Blossom, who loves my words and mind so purely as only the curious can love the pedantic.

With an outstretched hand, she tells me her people are the ones clad in cream-colored tunics. She’s been looking for them. Her tribe roams across sandy plains as they have for centuries. I’m filled with sadness. Even if she could escape captivity, could she find her people again in such vastness?

Wearing robes the color of oxblood is a neighboring tribe watering their animals. Both tribes converge here, sharing resources and honoring a treaty that has lasted a thousand years. When they spot us cresting the giant dune above their basin, they shield their eyes and wave.

Blossom sits lotus on a ridge overlooking a valley. The beads hang from her neck. She touches them lightly, then raises her hands, palms out, to those in the basin below. Her tribesmen, the ones in white, arrange themselves into two tidy rows of eight. Heeding her silent command, those dressed in the same deep dark red of the beads position themselves across from Blossom’s family. Between them, and underneath their bare feet, sunshine and dune shadow have made a checkered pattern on the sand. I don’t understand what’s happening.

Blossom grows restless, impatient for me to grasp what we’re doing here, and I’m gripped with shame. If I can’t grasp the nuances of her desert, how will I bridge her back to the safety of our rooms when it’s time?

Blossom ties her checkered shawl around my waist, and I figure it out. Her SonaScape is one giant chess board made of light and silhouette across the sand.

Relief fills her along with the rapture of being seen and understood. My own joy at having made her feel so good could fuel a thousand SonaScapes.

A woman standing in the back row wears a white veil as a headscarf. It trails ten feet behind her in the wind. This is Blossom’s white queen, but she is also Blossom. SonaSense.

Blossom moves her pawn first. A child in a center square moves forward two dune shadows before him. He’s very small, smaller than all the rest, but he holds himself like a soldier. Blossom grins even though she knows she will threaten his safety again and again.

She moves the others around her sandboard quickly, decisively. She sacrifices her bishop for a knight, then delights in taking a rook, then the opposing king’s pawn in quick succession. Her unseen opponent tries to pin Blossom’s queen and force a win, but she deftly moves her out of danger. The valiant pawn who opened the game is taken. He happily steps aside, honored to be of service.

The beads around her neck hum with their own power. I realize the beads are proving themselves her worthy opponent. They play her game and serve at her pleasure, enthralling her with each white piece they capture. Blossom puts her finger to her top lip as she waits for the mala beads to study the players and take their turn.

Excitement emanates off her like a current as her knight, once so errant and unstoppable, is marshalled into a corner. Her queen lies vulnerable. Check is inevitable.

This is how we will leave the SonaScape. When she plays the final moves of her endgame, then she—we—can return. I only have to wait until the game is over.

Her thoughts are canon blasts between my temples as she works out seven different ways to win from this board configuration. Too many thoughts, too much to track. The effort makes my head split with pain and pressure. Blossom does something called castling and I almost have a seizure. When she queens a lowly pawn, a searing pain behind my eye assures me I’m about to have a stroke. Her endgame is her weakest, but her middle game is a thing of pharaohs.

An intellect this powerful, I did not expect. I try to keep up, but her thoughts move too fast, and I can barely keep track of the names of the pieces. Squares are retaken, the knights attack and then, at last, the king on the opposing side has mated her.

“No, silly,” she says, “not mated, it’s a conquered king, not a camel!”

Shame spirals. My mental prowess is identical to Key’s, who can’t learn her letters. There’s no place to hide in the desert.

Blossom brushes past these pitiful reflections, barely attending to them.

The sun is close to the horizon. We have to leave. I tell her this, but my words are lost among her stratagems. She refuses to leave until she wins, but the mala beads play with the prowess of reigning emperors who have never tasted defeat.

“You’ve had your fun, Blossom. Time to leave. Follow me, my dearest.”

She doesn’t blink. I’m obliterated from her consciousness and have long ago ceased to matter. She loves the game more than me, than anyone. This is the truth of her SonaScape. The beads are a gift, the beads are a curse. There are no lies in the desert.

I look to the west, expecting to see the last sliver of daylight, but the sun hangs high in the sky and refuses to slip under the horizon.

She will fight to remain in her desert, with her people, solving the puzzle. Our physical bodies will perish before she works through a quarter of her cunning devices.

I remove the beads from her neck and put them on.

Blossom says, “I will follow you out, Ink, but you must beat me first.”

The King’s Game is an honest one. Solutions laid out for only the clever to see. She knows I could never beat her, and she grins, but without malice or mockery, only elation. She gets to stay, or more importantly, she gets to never go back. I slump down next to her. My stupidity will kill us both.

I dig my feet into the scorching sand. Against the hollow of my throat, the beads burn just as hot, kindling the memory of their fire inside me. I could stand on the surface of a star unscathed, command a burning sun to go nova, but I can’t play a game mastered by twelve-year-olds.

“Nova?” asks Blossom.

“Nova is a word on my wall.”

A corner of her mind flickers with curiosity.

“What a lovely word. I will name my white queen Nova.”

Nova. An astronomical event intensifying the brightness of a star, precipitated by intense heat and pressure when one star steals the energy of its companion.

Her concentration waivers as she imagines an astral phenomenon of fire and force. The beauty she imagines leaves me breathless. When someone you love dreams of beauty, it changes the universe and your place inside of it. It’s almost enough to distract me. This is my chance. Draw out the enemy, derail them with chaos.

“Blossom, wisdom is knowing when the battle is won, when powers are too great.”

She hesitates. I feel her shiver.

“Blossom, surrender to stalemate. No side benefits from a drawn-out conflict.”

The players scatter over the sand, disoriented and unsure.

“Blossom, think of Honey’s eyes, so golden they mock your dull sands. Think of Bird, whose voice can carry a grain of silt across a continent. Think too of sunless, desolate Key.”

As the sun dips under the horizon, I take her hand and pull.

She offers no resistance, and we tumble down the side of the dune. Our collective consciousness severs. The loss of her is replaced with an amalgam of love and regret that is as intangible as the clouds and as real as rainfall.

We land hard on the floor of her room, a tangle of limbs and hair underneath the flower tapestry. Her warm breath is against my neck. She hangs onto me for an instant until I’m jettisoned out of her Sona, out of her room, and into my own empty one.

Chapter 15
Land mine, caltrop,
tiger pit, trench

Blossom has barely spoken since we came out of her SonaScape hours ago. I begged her to stay at her window, but she only stood there the time it took to assure me our experiment with the beads was a success, that her body felt better than it had in all her life and that she had no desire for company.

Indeed, her eyes have lost their dark rings, and her skin is the rich copper of pennies, yet she has the flat, faraway look of someone lost in a crowd. In her SonaScape, she was free and with her people, her nimble thoughts infinite as the grains of sand in her desert. Now she’s trapped in a sunless tower, condemned for the rest of her days to contemplate fake, flat flowers made of thread and silk and a tree feeding on the flesh of her friends.

An oily feeling of unease fills me toe to crown. It’s topped off by a film of guilt because part of me knows Blossom would have been happier left to perish in her desert. I shudder. To imprison a nomadic people is itself a crime. To limit a mind such as Blossom’s is carnage. What have I done?

It’s been a long day and eerily quiet. Honey must be sulking because she hasn’t made an appearance, but I can hear her talking to herself using different voices. She does that sometimes. I think she’s playing. Key sewed Honey some baby dolls out of rags. Honey would never admit to playing with dolls, so no one ever mentions it. She would spit at us if we did.

If I don’t catch Blossom before her first customer, I won’t see her until tomorrow morning. We’ve never gone a day without talking. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s been angry at me, but she’s never ignored me. We don’t do that. Not to each other.

Perhaps she wants to remember her time with her family in peace knowing we don’t abide talk of the past. Memories are a kind of trap. Bird taught me that. She warned us not to mention our families most of all, forbade it, she said it did more harm than good. It was—is the only thing she is ever adamant about and the only time she ever rebuked me. That hurt, like a second betrayal, for what I had a desperate need to tell her were the words she refused to hear. So, while Bird gives me succor for my wounds, the story of how I lost the girl who was once my sister goes untold, and the reasons behind my conflicted and cruel silence go unheard. Long ago, I added this to my list of inequities, but I don’t dwell or hold it against Bird because what would that get me in the end? It’s my tale of woe and her knowing it can’t turn back time; she can never make it so that it did not happen. If every story of injustice in the world were chronicled, no one would write about anything else. The only trees left standing would be the Sonagachis, for the forests would be decimated for the book pulp it would require.

I wonder what Bird would say of the Blossom so enamored of her game of sand. Would she have predicted Blossom’s obsessive love of stratagem and conquest? Bird’s own SonaScape will be full of music. I wish I could be the one to SonaScape her. I imagine her mind is a chorus of angels. Seraphs on opiates. Bird would like that. She likes my metaphors while Blossom, who loves me well, mostly tolerates my purple prose. For all the frill and adornments that are the trappings of a Blossom Girl, her mind has the serious and analytical bent of spectacled scholars, not starry-eyed poets. I know that now more than before.

I look down at the dirt. Not for the first time today. The soil is undisturbed. I haven’t heard any coughing for hours. Again, I bounce between relief and dread. Maybe Mynah has moved Bird from the Garden Wing to the room all House Girls go to once they become too weak to work, where they’re fed enough Oxmed to fell a horse.

Mortuary, necropolis, Golgotha, charnel house.

A giant oven burns hot inside that room. I’ve never seen it, but Mynah has described the oven’s orange maw where the ashes of the First Floors are collected and dusted over the roots of Mynah’s tree to make it stronger.

Urnfield, columbarium, death niche, dust drawer.

When Mynah dies, she will be buried in a family plot somewhere, for her remains would taint the soil. Only Top Floor Girls are buried under the tree. Their mouths are stuffed with nutrients on which the Sonagachi gorges.

Undercroft, polyandrium, potter’s field, vault.

There is something cannibalistic about these funerary rites. Blossom could probably find the right words to explain it; she has a head for philosophy. My mind savors the beauty of single words. I’ve yet to find the one for working a field horse to death then using its carcass to fertilize the field it died plowing. When I do, that one will get a prized spot on my wall.

A rude gurgle interrupts my thoughts. When was the last time I ate? I should probably put something in my stomach, but I don’t feel hungry and the flatbread on the tray resembles plaster and a mucosal sheen coats the uneaten lentils.

Key didn’t mention Bird being sick when she brought my dinner, barely spoke as she did my hair. She didn’t even try to give me my full dose of SonaDrops correctly, assuming I would give half to Honey, and left the remaining portion for this evening on the table for me to administer myself when tonight’s Blight arrives. Some like to watch us take the drops in front of them when they take theirs. It’s one of the services on offer and at Blight discretion.

The dress Key brought was not my finest by far, a middle grade charmeuse the color of a battleship and reserved for a Blight of more modest means. She paired it with a belted duster dyed to create a time-stopping effect of ink suspended in milk. Even our mediocre outfits are wondrous; watercolors hanging in museums around the world would die of shame if they could see our clothes.

The smell of roasted almonds seeps in from under the door. Mynah smothers them in sea salt to make customers thirsty and hawk more alcoholic SonaDrink. I expect my Blight to show up any minute now. I wish he’d come and go already so I can return to my plain shift. So much cumbersome cloth for a Blight of limited funds. I bet he’ll be the favorite son of a civil servant or a schoolteacher, the first generation to make it to university. I can see it all. When the beloved boy fell ill (happens in the best of families), the entire household toiled for years, dropping jaspers into a jelly jar every week until they had enough for a Specialty Girl. Perhaps this same father sold his only daughter to a procuress in the District, or to the madams of Crimson Street, hoping to extend the life of his only son. I know every kind of Blight. Nothing surprises me anymore.

Business must be booming if I have a Blight so soon after killing one. Mynah must have spun something, advertised a new Girl, offered a discount, because there’s been no fallout, no consequence from the night of the dead guy, not a peep. Peak tourist season is about to begin, and she needs her House full of Girls. That means week-long trips to the provinces to replenish our numbers. Punishing me would be a waste of resources and perhaps no one misses the dead Blight or his beads. A man that annoying could not have had that many people who care to look for him.

It’s almost dark and the courtyard is empty but for the swiftlets nose-diving into the eaves. Killing one would soothe me, but the Blight will be here soon. A male perched on a gnarly branch outside my window watches me curiously, as if our kingdoms were reversed, and I’m the one who’s supposed to live in a cage. He takes off in pursuit of an insect, but not before gathering himself haughtily, showing off his ability to leave me behind.

The doorknob clicks. I spread my long, square sleeves to either side of my hips and assume the waiting posture.

Key ushers in the Blight. She shows him to the chair, bows to him, to me, once more at the threshold, then locks us in.

Without meeting my eyes, the Blight flattens his tunic over his knees a few times as if not knowing what to do with his hands.

Marvelous. Another fledgling. Let’s hope this one isn’t armed with twenty drops of Sona.

The Blight folds his hands on his lap waiting for me to break the silence. One word out of him and I’ll know which script to use. After hundreds of Blights, it’s not hard to know how to flatter them into predictable, calm conformity. The scholars like their intelligence lauded, the bureaucrats their influence, but the Blight currently sweat-staining Mynah’s antique chair is a hard read.

I sniff the air to see how sick he is but smell nothing but a spicy blend of clove and comfrey. His face is blotchy with the pink papules that are standard for the first stages of the disease, but his nose is enormous. Long and beaked like a Blight who is way more ill than this guy looks. In fact, he still has most of his hair, which is shiny and thick. Wren-brown curls complement a linen tunic layered over an undershirt the bright orange of persimmons. Not fine quality fabrics, but his harem pants are neatly tailored and skillfully hand-dyed the color of creamed milk.

The Blight squirms. I say nothing. Mynah always says the most anxious person in the room will be the first to talk. I can out-wait them all.

The embroidered protective wards on his outfit are stitched subtly, so you can’t see them unless you try. A sea of scalloped diamond patterns stretches across his vest, meant to protect his vital organs. The dead Blight was covered in trinkets and flashy metal coins meant to confuse evil spirits and draw their attention away. This guy’s seamstress was way more sly, camouflaging talismans over the vulnerable parts of the body with deft embroidery.

I suspect he has yet to grow a hind toe because instead of sandals, he’s wearing closed shoes. His nose doesn’t match the rest of him. Curious. Sometimes new strains of the disease evolve; his might have a staggered progression.

With a hooked finger, he pulls at his collar. “Warm in here.” Then a nervous cough. “Those are swiftlet birds outside?”

“They are!” I say. Here we go. “Swiftlets make their home in the Sonagachi tree, which is the oldest in the city and has been here even longer than The Nectar House. Mynah’s family has been its genteel caretakers for generations and built The Nectar House around it.” I pick up the SonaPot. “One would be hard-pressed to find finer SonaDrink than the one distilled from this tree. Will you indulge in a cup?”

He moves forward suddenly, and I take a small step back, but he only cranes his neck toward the window. “Swiftlet birds can live their entire life without touching the ground. They even drink on the wing. Do you know what that means?”

A teacher, maybe a novelist.

I play dumb. “On the wing?”

He screws up his face as if trying to figure something out. He grins at me, showing too many teeth. They’re white and neatly rowed, by far the nicest dentition I’ve ever seen.

“Swiftlets are also highly migratory birds, and an invasive species,” he says as his grin fades. “They don’t belong here anymore than you do.”

This is an odd thing to say. This is also a test. Swiftlets are not migratory at all. He’s using big words to see if I’m as smart as Mynah advertises. He wants to play games, to see if I correct him, and he hasn’t shown any interest in the library’s collection at all.

Landmine, caltrop, tiger pit, trench.

“Swiftlets are exceedingly social,” he says and clasps his hands behind his back, “assembling in colonies of over a hundred.”

I cup my chin in my hand. Sigh. I’m going for an air of profound fascination, while inside I cringe at having to endure yet another lecture on birds. Blights never tire of feathers, and this one doesn’t know what he’s talking about. A group of swiftlets is not a colony, you dolt, collectively, they’re called a scream of swiftlets. Why so much effort to trick me?

He points to my war book lying open on the bed. “Is that an interesting book?”

Ah. I’ve figured him out at last. He’s making conversation because he wants me to pretend tonight is merely an evening among new friends, not a transaction that leeches my Life Force. This might be the rarest of Blights, the kind cursed with an ounce of conscience. They take forever to start. I almost prefer the poets. If I don’t hurry him along, I’ll sweat the dye out of this straightjacket of a dress.

“Ink Girls must read a lot in their spare time,” he says. “Is that a book of poetry? A geography? Do you like geography?”

I gather the edges of my thick skirt, fluff them out, and fan them delicately at my side while I sit at the edge of the bed. When Bird or Blossom performs these dainty affectations, it must be to the delight of their customers. When I do it, I bet I look like a goose in a ballgown. The skirt is scratchy and there’s way too much of it, but it’s useful in blocking his view of my book.

He sits, tucks his knees under his chin to study me for a moment before saying, “What they say about the clothing worn by the women at The Nectar House does not do justice. What you are wearing is exquisite. So was the dress worn by the Girl who brought me upstairs. Simple design, but the weave on her jacket alone must have taken months.” He gives me an embarrassed, almost shy glance. “She told me she is your seamstress. Such a meek thing to harbor such talents. Did she dye the fabric as well?” He squints. “I’ve never seen its equal. The black swirls over the white silk could be a living thing. Each time you move, it’s as if the ink is dancing in response.”

There are strange Blights, half-crazy really sick Blights, eccentric Blights, even goofy Blights, but this one is cagey. In all my days at The Nectar House, and all my customers, I have never heard us referred to as women, if we are referred to at all.

I fold my hands on my lap, making a pillow of the poofy fabric on my lap. When you don’t know what to say to a Blight, say nothing. Bird taught me that too.

“When the cloth catches the light”—his voice drops, he adopts a dreamy expression— “the glaucous grays and blacks take on a metallic sheen. A green shimmer. Makes you look like a starling. Mynah birds are in the starling family. Sleek, elegant creatures. Excellent mimics. Songs like arias. My mother had a pet starling she called Aria. Have you ever seen starlings in flight?”

He’s about to tell me that a group of starlings is called a murmuration. I can feel it. He’s too chatty for a scientist, too eloquent for a merchant. Some kind of artist trying to come off as sensitive and sophisticated, an aesthete. I wish he would shut up and take his SonaDrops like a good Blight.

He clasps his hands, elbows on his knees. “Starling, meaning little star because they look like stars when they fly. Do you know that the collective noun for starlings is ‘a murmuration’?”

Never wrong.

“Lovely word, isn’t it? I bet you like words. Is that why they’re all over the walls? Did you write them?”

“Collective noun?” Look confused, distract him from the words.

He smiles, eager to teach. “That’s like a pride of lions, a flock of birds.”

A tower of giraffes, a siege of herons, a syzygy of stars, a mirror of twins, a fatality of nightshade.

“You honor an Ink Girl with such fine erudition!” I say. “If you will permit a compliment.” Try to flutter your lashes. Think of an ostrich. “Fine words to match a fine mind! Kindly know, Mynah revels when our garments please. Every seam, every fold, is tailored with you in mind. Only The Nectar House can claim such a bespoke experience. The evening will bring these and many more charms. A feast for your senses. Is there preference of literature, or will you grant your Ink Girl the honor of choosing?”

He makes a face I can’t interpret, somewhere between suspicious and annoyed. Bespoke might not have been the best word choice. Charming them is like walking a tightrope. Make them feel smart because they have chosen a smart Girl, but not too smart because Blights are oversensitive and easily aggrieved. Keep the conversation lively, congenial, but not overly familiar, or they will think we consider ourselves people and where is the fun in that?

“Perhaps from the illuminated manuscript of A Conquest of Birds,” I say. When I move toward him to get the book, he doesn’t flinch away like most Blights would.

When I hand him the heavy book, I catch a flash of color. Sewn into the underarm gusset of his tunic is a diamond shaped patch that country folk call the Eye of God. It’s meant to protect the wearer from attack with weapons of the spirit as well as war. I’ve read about placing wards under the arms, but I can’t remember where.

I return to my place on the bed; he returns the book to the shelf without flipping through it.

“A distinguished man of letters must have a favored theme,” I say. “Allow me to hazard a guess.” Or pick a book already so I can bridge you to some Elysian Field where you can gaze at your navel with a lyre up your backside and you can leave me to my Girls and my beads.

“Your accent is not from the city,” he says. “Where did you live before you came to The Nectar House? You sound from up north. Did you live near the school where the poisonings happened? You’re about the right age.”

The sudden screech of a truck makes him look to the window; he misses my jaw drop and I fuss with my dress again to hide my surprise. Do so slowly, do not fluster.

Mynah won’t abide an Ink Girl with an accent because their Blights are pretentious, and people associate accents with ignorance and a lack of sophistication. I’ve worked hard at erasing mine, so his guess at my hometown is a wild coincidence. This Blight is cunning but not clairvoyant. The story of the mass poisoning was famous the world over. It was an election year, and twenty-seven dead kids is big news. News trucks and reporters blocked the roads into town for weeks. Maybe he’s good with accents and mine slipped. His mentioning it is only happenstance. Even a blind squirrel can find an acorn.

“So many schoolgirls dead,” he says somberly. “Shook the whole country, not only the province. The Girl who brought me upstairs, the one with the sunken face, also spoke like a Northerner.” He waves his hands in front of his cheek as if asking more about Key’s smashed-up cheek, but I won’t tell him a thing. Not about me, or any of us. “Are you both from the same region?”

“Our realm is where your SonaScape takes us. Our only provenance, where the Sonagachi blooms.”

He looks like he actually expects a reply, a conversation. Most Blights only want an audience.

“I know Ink Girls are anchored,” he says, “but have you ever left the room? What about the others? Is the Key Girl allowed into the courtyard?”

And they rarely ask questions. If they do, House Girls are taught to deflect back to them; few Blights take it this far.

“A House Girl has no need of space,” I say. “They are empty of experience and self. Devoid of past or present. Skin covered bridges. Nothing more. Needing no domicile or hearth.”

“How long have you been here?” he insists.

“Rest assured; the Girl you have chosen tonight is well-trained.” I fan my fingers before me, trying to sound endearing, encouraging, earnest. “The Ink Girls of The Nectar House cultivate and hone their craft through years of diligent study. Let’s begin your experience here tonight. Have you brought anything for tonight’s pleasure? Some writing of your own perhaps? Ink Girls can sense a lauded man of letters.”

He’s not falling for it. What’s this guy’s story? Hunting pit. Deep holes dug into the ground then camouflaged; unsuspecting prey may survive the fall only to be killed later.

“The writing on the wall,” he says, ignoring my questions, “no other Ink Girl has them. Mynah advertises it, the Blights talk about it. I was so curious to see. Moor, adder stone, Alhambra, fjord. Are these your favorite things? Or your favored words perhaps? I love words. I have favorites too. Dancing fountain, starfish, spiral staircase, tuba! I like those also, or are these all things you’re curious about? Smart people are curious.”

When he reads my words, it’s like his hands are moving all over me. Odium, enmity, bile.

He wants to trick me into thinking he’s a “nice guy.” Tapeworm, hookworm, pinworm, fluke. He wants me to trust him, taking this farce of friends who chat all the time too far.

His face grows serious. “I hope I didn’t offend you with my questions or my flattery.” He sounds sincere, possibly misinterpreting my stunned silence.

“It’s not possible to offend a House Girl. It would be like offending a rock or an ant.”

“You can stop now,” he says. He sounds almost bored.

Stop? “Do you wish to enjoy a glass of SonaDrink? An elixir so fine they named The Nectar House after it.” Did I say that part already?

He sighs.

We wait for someone to fill the uneasy pause.

One more long, tired exhale fills the space between as he fiddles with his nostrils. In a slow, careful motion he peels off his entire nose revealing a smaller, normal one of a healthy man underneath.

Chapter 16
Wing

The SonaPot is in my hands and ready to smash his face in an instant.

Before I can scream my head off for a Goon, the false Blight begs.

“Please!” He stands and puts up his palms to stop me.

A few drops of SonaDrink spill onto my shoulder when I back away and climb onto the bed.

“Don’t worry. It’s fake, see.” He shows me the rubbery stump. “It’s a prosthetic. Do you know what a—”

“I know what a prosthetic is! Why are you pretending to be a Blight?”

“Please don’t yell, don’t call out until you’ve heard what I have to say.”

“If it’s a different kind of Girl you’re after, you’ve come to the wrong House, pervert. Crimson Street is on the other side of the city. This is a SonaHouse. Touch me and Mynah’s Goons will rip off your real nose.” I aim the pot a little higher.

“Listen.” He moves toward me. “You have the power here, you’re in charge. I’ll be the one in trouble.”

“Mynah will have you thrown in jail. Deviants who interfere with House Girls have it especially bad in prison, the House Syndicate makes sure of that.”

He stands behind the chair. “I’ll move as far from you as I can.” He tries a smile meant for me to lower my guard. “I’ll even sit on my hands and knees if you want.”

“Why are you posing as a Blight? Sona won’t work if you’re not sick. It’ll kill you. Is that it? Is this some bizarre suicide thing? Death by House Girl? Murder by Goon?”

“Nothing like that.” His hands go up again in supplication. “I’m sick, but only Half-Blight.” He pulls at his collar to show me the start of his waddle forming at the base of his throat. The ruddy patches of red look real enough.

“Half-Blights can’t SonaScape either, mongrel.”

“What can I do to convince you I mean you no harm?”

“Leave.”

“I will. Soon. Remember, you’re in charge. I don’t want any trouble. For either of us.”

He’s shady and off, but my gut believes him if only a little. I’m not letting go of the SonaPot. There’s too much at stake with the beads to court trouble with Mynah. I pull the bed runner off the foot of my bed and throw it at him. “Tie it around your ankles then tie yourself to the chair.”

Miraculously, confoundingly, he does exactly as I tell him.

“One more knot,” I command.

“There, I made it tight. Now, please listen, I only paid for two drops and the shortest SonaScape, so I don’t have much time.”

“Who are you? Aside from a miser and a liar.”

“My name is Simurgh, but everyone calls me Wing. What’s yours?”

Wing is a stupid nickname, and every other Blight is named ‘Simurgh’ from the classic book, A Conquest of Birds, so he must need a moniker. “What do you want?”

“Just to talk.”

I summon my best glare. Basilisk, gorgon, cockatrice.

His nose, the real one, is thin and suits his face, which some might consider handsome. He has a broad chest and strong forearms. This throws me. I haven’t seen such a healthy man in over four years.

“Which was it, cur?” I say. “Half-Blight mother? Full-Blight father? Or was it an acquired mutation? Do you know what that means?”

“Ink Girls.” He smiles, a real smile with mirth in it. “Always so shrewd. My mother was a House Girl, a Blossom.”

Lie.

“My mother escaped her House when she learned she was carrying me. One of her Blights was the father.”

“Blights don’t lie with House Girls. It’s forbidden. There are low, depraved places for men to behave like savages in this way, but that wouldn’t happen in a SonaHouse.”

Hazel eyes meet mine. “Sadly, I’m afraid it happens. No one talks about it, but it happens. More and more each day. Things have gotten much worse for House Girls, for all girls in the world the past few years. That’s why I’m here.” His face softens into what I’m sure he imagines looks like benevolence and humanity. “I help House Girls escape.”

Bird told me this could happen one day. A Blight might try to trick me into leaving with him.

“How many?” I ask.

“How many Girls have I extracted?”

“How many jaspers will you get when you deliver me to a fat Blight who will slowly suck me dry on stolen Sona? Or maybe the plan is to sell me to the international market. How much are Ink Girls going for so early in the season?”

“I’m part of an organization. We work underground. We’ve freed dozens of Girls in the southern provinces already.”

Just talking about escape could earn me the strap. “I should yell my head off.”

“Then why haven’t you?”

Because you might be a lunatic, but a breed I’ve not met before, because you have a kind face and clean hair and you tied yourself up when I asked. Most of all, I need to keep you yapping, because grousing brings unwanted attention, because it would bring Mynah to my room for all the wrong reasons. I shrug and lower the SonaPot.

“We’ve gotten off to a bad start.” When he runs his fingers through his hair, the curls bounce back. “Ask me anything you like. I want to show you I can be trusted.”

When you don’t know what to say to a Blight, say nothing. Open ground, when both sides have liberty of movement. If you find yourself on open ground, wait for the enemy to move.

“I really do think the words on your wall are magnificent. The ones you’ve chosen say so much about you. Fata morgana, tide mill, aye-aye … obsidian?” His face lights up as he shows me a beaded bracelet of polished black stone. “This bracelet is made of obsidian. The beads are obsidian, except this big one.” He holds out an orange-yellow bead. “This one is citrine. I was a soldier in the Rebellion.” His brows furrow, “The Orange Rebellion?”

I try to wipe any hint of interest or expression from my face. Lithic. Of or pertaining to stone.

“You don’t know about the Orange Rebellion? It was only three years ago. How long have you been here? So many fought for the rights of House Girls.”

It’s hard not to blink when faced with the absurd. The thought of anyone taking up arms in our defense is as preposterous as using the words “House Girls” and “rights” in the same sentence.

He shakes his head with his mouth half-open. For a moment, I think he might cry. His lies are a masterpiece. They should be framed and hung up somewhere, but this is a fumble. Big lies are hard to pull off. I should know, but a rebellion in our defense is a whopper. Novice mistake. I’m almost disappointed.

“It’s astonishing how isolated they keep you Girls. You probably don’t know who the prime minister is.”

Why do I need to know who is Prime Minister? I’ve never heard of any Orange, Purple, Pink, or Chartreuse Rebellion. I would know if this were true. We would have heard about it from Blights or Mynah or her niece, the old Key Girl. She had a big mouth and was as dumb as a sack of hammers; she made Key look like Mozart, and she would have let something slip out.

“In all this time,” he says, “not even a peek at a smuggled newspaper? A magazine? If you were anywhere near the city, anywhere near a radio, you must have heard that the city was on fire. Blackouts, martial law, citywide curfew at four o’clock? Surely you heard about the Syndicate’s raids. No House in the District was spared.”

Less than three years ago? Business was slow then; that was around the time Mynah first started coming to my room. She would whine into her SonaDrink about The Nectar House being in the red, blaming warring Syndicate factions. Lean times. The soup was watered down, mostly vegetables, and the House closed for a while. Bird thought it was another plague surge. Mynah’s niece went missing around then too. I sit on the bed but keep the SonaPot in my hands.

“Surely Blights visiting the Ink Girls had something to say about it? Don’t politicians and military men have a penchant for Ink Girls?”

I remember talking to Bird across the courtyard in the darkness of a power outage that lasted a week. Key was already off the First Floor then and could only sew during the daylight. The streets were eerily quiet, except for sirens and at night we thought we heard explosions. Bird said one of her regulars came with a suitcase because he was abandoning the burning city and wanted a final song.

“I’ve offended you,” he says, misinterpreting my silence. “You’re not the Ink Girl. I shouldn’t call you that. You must have had—have a name?”

The Blight’s question is as rude as it is unprecedented, beyond poor taste, or taboo. This is an entirely different trespass. My tongue hasn’t made the shape of my dead name since I left my father’s house kicking and screaming. I don’t think I could wrap my mouth around the necessary vowels even if I chose to.

The false Blight fidgets with his bracelet. Still waiting politely for me to say something. “There is so much power in a name. You should be able to say yours out loud. Not forget who you are.”

My fingers pull at my sash, seeking the beads for reassurance, until I remember they’re with Blossom. I wish more than anything they were pressed against my ribs.

I feel lightheaded all of a sudden. The dress sash compresses my diaphragm, and the heat, I never did eat today … Memories flood my thoughts. Old, dangerous memories heavy with the earthy scent of the mud banks and the roar of the twin rivers that met outside our town. The Nandani and the Yamuna. Sacred tributaries that span a continent. My sister calls my name from one bank; I do the same from the other. The taste of cheese bread is still in my mouth from our picnic on the bridge that spans the churning brown water. We ate and dangled our legs through the railings, defying the current. Those days we called each other by our names. We were the same person and as impossible to separate as the amalgam of waters beneath.

I’m startled by the false Blight’s coughing politely to get my attention. He caresses the black beads of his bracelet with the pads of his fingers. Still waiting for me to decide the next moment. We’re at an impasse. Temporizing ground, terrain in which neither side has the advantage, neither side gains by making the first move. If your enemy tempts you to engage, refrain.

A tap-tap-tap from above makes us both look up. A moth slams against the naked bulb overhead. The room seems overly bright, as if the bulb has been secretly replaced by a stronger one.

How long has he been here? Sunbeams filter through the bars; the last-ditch effort of the day illuminates him in a soft peach light. Six illustrated copies of The Conquest of Birds sit on the shelf behind his head. The book spines are embossed with filigreed goldleaf that catches the light, making him look like a crowned prince. Crepuscule, gloaming, eventide, dusk. Bird says this is her favorite hour of the day. If Mynah is keeping her in the Garden Wing, I hope she can see the flowers in this light. I need Bird back. I need Blossom to talk to me and tell me what this Blight is trying to do. I need Key to come back and take him away.

The Blight lifts his sleeve and takes off the bracelet. “The soldiers who fought in the Orange Rebellion all wore these bracelets. We named it ‘orange’ for the fire that will one day torch the House Girl system. Each unit was named after a different orange stone. Agate, aventurine, carnelian, fire opal. My company was citrine, which is this mother bead here.” When he holds the mother bead to the light, it’s like he’s captured an explosion inside a marble. Bird would love that too.

He stares into the fiery orb. “The rest of the beads are obsidian, which brings good luck on the battlefield because it’s forged in fire. A symbol of the soldiers who brave the front lines where everything is fire. Transformed, but intact. Strong as stones.”

It’s a lazy liar who doesn’t do their homework. Obsidian is not a stone.

“But it’s not rock at all.” He stares meaningfully at the bracelet. “It’s volcanic glass. Made by explosion. Do you know what a volcano is?”

Volcanoes are the geological architects of the planet. Their explosive force crafts mountains and valleys, laying the foundation for all life to flourish. I bite my tongue to keep from engaging. After books on warfare, volcanoes are my second favorite subject.

“Here, you can look at it.” He offers me the bracelet like someone would offer food to a wounded animal. “Have it if you like. It’s very dear to me, but I want to show you I can be trusted.”

He slides the bracelet over to me, and I kick it back.

I lower my voice. “I can’t be bought with a cheap bauble.”

“This isn’t a trick. I want to help you leave here. I’m part of the same organization that once helped my mother escape. There are many factions around the world now. The work has been going on long before The Revolution.”

“The Syndicate wouldn’t allow it. Any of it. They would hunt you down along with any Girl who’s been removed from her room.”

“We take the Girls away from the city, far away where there are no SonaHouses.”

“All places have SonaHouses.”

“Not all. A lot of people, all over the world, want to help House Girls. We had a candidate for Prime Minister who was sympathetic to the plight of House Girls, but he was assassinated. That’s what started the rebellion.”

“Plight? Plight implies that we’re considered human beings. Swiftlet droppings matter more to me than who is prime minister because they’re all the same. Most government officials are of the Syndicate members. No one could tell one group from the other. Like evil twins.”

“You’re right. The Syndicates are better connected, better armed, half the populace supports them, and yet, it took them four months to crush us, and not before we freed dozens of SonaHouses along the southern coast. The Orange Revolution started a fire that can’t be put out. Once we’ve replenished our numbers we’ll rise again.”

A snort escapes before I can curb it.

“You don’t believe me.”

A flock of pterodactyls could land on the Sonagachi, and I would not believe you. Again, I bite my tongue. His time will be over soon. Almost as if reading my mind, he looks at his wristwatch.

“Please, there’s little time. You wouldn’t know because you’re locked in here, and most of these pretty books were written in the last century. Times are changing. People can no longer look away from Syndicate bloodshed, can’t ignore the escalation in violence because it’s reached their doorstep. They’re scared for their daughters, tired of the Goon Syndicate conscripting their sons—do you know—?”

“I know what conscripting means.” I rip off the thick sash at my waist because it is suffocating me and I no longer have to impress anyone. I have the upper hand: he could go to jail for saying half of this nonsense. Ravings of a lunatic, a delusional do-gooder, the most dangerous liar is the one who believes their own story. Bird told us these guys really exist. Best to humor him until he leaves quietly.

“Pockets of rebellion spring up every day. The House Czars wage war for territory, and we take advantage of the growing chaos.” The chair scrapes the floor when motions with his hands imploring me to listen, understand, believe. “Police on every corner, bomb threats to tourist sights, riots, metal detectors at the temples. Do you know what those are?”

I give him a steely look. How could I not know what a temple is? Oh … he means metal detentions, detectors? I have no idea what those might look like, or that there was such a thing, but don’t let on that this is so. The upheaval he’s describing sounds too convenient to be true, surely things would be different. “Even if you’re not lying, it wouldn’t matter. World Wars have come and gone, and my life is the same as an Ink Girl from three hundred years ago.”

He presses his palms together. “I know you’re afraid and only trying to survive. But you’re not surviving, you’re dying by the capful. Can you understand that? Listen to my plan. You could have a life outside these walls like the other Girls we’ve saved.”

“What life would that be? Most of the Girls in here were sold by their parents. Can you understand that?” I catch myself raising my voice, my words coming out in gasps. I shouldn’t be saying any of this, but the words tumble out. “You wouldn’t understand, not with your nice teeth and collective nouns. For so many Girls, this is the best life offered to them. Mynah may be a monster, but she saves us from a society that lets babies sleep on sewer grates. She keeps us from being exploited and abused to death in factories and away from harvesters who would scoop out our kidneys and sell them like oranges.” Mynah saves us from being sold to brothels. Cat House, bordello, bawdy shop, crib, kota. I can’t bring myself to say this last bit. The thought that Honey, or the poor dead Apple Girl, or Key, or any of us have narrowly evaded this fate makes me sick.

“I know you can’t see it,” he says and rakes his fingers through his hair, “but procuresses, Blights, the Syndicate—you’ve been tricked into believing you’re protected by the very system that exploits you. You believe that this is all there is, that this is the way the world works and will always work. Some Houses don’t bother with locks after a few years of bondage. Have you even tried to escape?”

“Lower your voice, or we’ll both get it.”

He tucks his bracelet under his sleeve then runs his hand across the back of his neck in frustration, giving me a better look at the twin Eyes of God sewn into his armpits. Then I remember. Somewhere in my library is a book on battle dress. Protecting the ribs without compromising mobility has been a challenge since men were killing each other wearing only animal skins. The heart can be easily skewered with a sword of crucible steel or the tip of a bayonet right above the ribs, and a soldier would wear the Eye of God here as well as over his heart. Sure enough, there is the faint outline of the ward on the left side of his chest, and two more peek out from the sides across his ribs to cover the kidneys. Maybe he is a soldier, maybe he is telling the truth, maybe he’s a lunatic with a brilliant mind and a believable smile.

He gives his neck one more rub, then clasps his hands in front of him. “Did you know there’s an alley in the courtyard that leads to the street?”

Not the alley again. I curse it for the thousandth time. “I know every blade of grass and bird shit stain in that courtyard.”

“The alley leads to the street. For the next week, we’ll have a boy across the road. Day and night. He’ll be wearing a tunic like mine but orange.”

I can’t believe I’m listening to this. Blossom will never believe it. What a week for him to show up.

“The boy will take you to a safe house.”

“No such place.”

“If you can get to the street—”

“The street? I can’t even get to the hall! I’m an Ink Girl, anchored.” I’ll die not five feet from where you’re sitting.

“Can you bribe the Key Girl? She doesn’t look like much, maybe knock her out, steal the keys.”

“This is The Nectar House. The only House with its own SonaTree in the entire country. An armada of Goons guards the entrances, not to mention the Goon on the stairs down the hall. You’ve met him. Big guy, meaty hands, smells of cheap vetiver cologne and SonaDrink? He’ll just hold the door open for me as I leave.”

“Have the Key Girl slip him some Oxmed. I saw a vial of it in her apron pocket. Mix enough Oxmed with SonaDrink, and he won’t wake up for three days.”

“And why would she do that? Why would anyone?”

“Promise you’ll get her out too. We’ll help you. We’ve infiltrated Houses before, posed as Goons. Does the Key Girl trust you? Do you trust her?”

That would take a miracle greater than any string of beads. Key can’t make it out there, she’s safer in here. Did he try to convince her too? He’ll make trouble for both of us. I’m dizzy already, my heart is still going way too fast to be normal.

“The alley in the courtyard is completely unguarded—”

“It’s not big enough,” I spit out. Every Girl to set foot on the Top Floor obsesses about this alley. This line of thought only leads to beatings and broken arms. “We can’t leave the room. It can’t be done even if the alley were wide enough for a convoy of tanks; the alley is useless.”

“The passage is wider than it looks from up here. How much can you possibly weigh? Ninety? A hundred pounds?”

He sounds so sure, so convincing. Would Blossom believe him? She would put her finger on her lips, consider strategy. And Honey? She would run at any chance, even if it were slim.

“You deserve better than this.” He points to the box commode.

Shame rises like bile.

He takes another glance at his wristwatch. “Don’t you want to see these things on your wall, or are those empty words, a way to pass the time? There’s a dancing fountain in front of a hotel by the harbor. Every Sunday a music concert plays in a park not two blocks from where you sleep. I’m sure the band has a tuba. All these things don’t have to be pipe dreams.”

It’s been a long time since I thought of my words as anything more than solace. Charging them with potential, kindling them with hope, is a luxury I can’t afford, like remembering our real names, or getting attached to every Girl. Caprice, mirage, air castle, myth. I have the beads now. My plans for them are my biggest bargaining chip. If I waste my time with false promises and fairy tales of freedom fighters, I’ll squander our best chance at better. “I’ve made it this far without anyone’s help.”

He takes a measuring look at me, then points his chin at my war book on the bed. “Fail to recognize your allies and you’ll taste only defeat.”

That line, or one very similar, is straight from my book of war. He holds himself like a soldier. Alert, straight-backed, confident. Anyone can be a soldier or pretend to be one.

“You’re a liar,” I say.

“Yes,” he says and puts his rubber nose back on, “but not about this. Things are about to get worse for House Girls. Worse than you can imagine.”

“You’re trying to scare me into running away with you.”

“You should be more scared of what will happen if you stay. This room isn’t a library, it’s a coffin. You must believe you can do better than this. Believe you can cheat the fate you’ve been handed, or you’ll never walk out that door.”

I know I can do better. I think about the beads hiding somewhere in Blossom’s room. My fate is my own. This meddlesome imposter has nothing to do with it.

“Give me the Sona you bought,” I say. “So they won’t be suspicious.”

He looks hesitant.

“The Houses will only let you use what you buy from them, and if the police catch you trying to sell it, you’ll go to prison where you’ll wish Mynah’s Goon had killed you first.”

“I wouldn’t sell Sona, or use it even if I could, and I don’t facilitate or condone its use by anyone. Ever.” To make his point he daintily balances the tiny ampule on the floor next to him with an exaggerated pincer grasp and unties his ankles from the chair.

“Rub your eyes,” I say. “Make them look irritated and red, as if you’ve really been in a SonaScape.”

He takes a swipe at them.

“Keep going,” I goad him.

He scours them some more.

“Put some effort into it or you’ll get me in trouble.”

He keeps at it until his face is all wet. He did not need to scrub so hard, but I enjoyed watching him do it.

He checks the prosthetic, then goes to the door to knock and signal to the Goons or a skulking Key that he’s done here.

“Wait.” I stand up. Blossom won’t believe a word he’s said either, or she’ll have a million questions. I only have one. “Why me? Why an Ink girl and not a Blossom or a Bird?”

“We’ve had more luck with Ink Girls.” He tests the seal of his fake nose with his index fingers. “I figured you’d be the smartest among you. Smart enough to find a way to the street. You seem bright enough, but I fear your bars are on the inside.”

“That’s how little you know. There are girls in here who could run you in circles.”

“Maybe so, but of all the rescued girls, Inks are the least capture-bonded. Perhaps their books inspire them to dream of a different fate. They also have an employable skill, and they’re less likely to return to the House.”

“No Girl would return to a House. No one is that stupid, no matter how badly Sona has scrambled their brains. If you value your life, you’ll leave and not bother with any of the Girls at The Nectar House. Make sure to leave the Key Girl alone. She’s—”

“Didn’t even consider her.”

“Why not?”

“Might need to run. She’d couldn’t keep up with her lame leg.”

“Ah, so only the healthy and whole ones deserve freedom. There’s the limit to your altruism right there. Convenient. Only SonaScaping Top Floors are worth the risk.”

His shoulders drop, and I think he’s about to launch one more entreaty.

He says, “The boy will wait a week. Day and night. Please take good care, and I say this for your own good: you’re not as smart as you pretend and it’ll get you killed one day. World wars have been lost because of hasty tempers and ignorant arrogance. I pray you’re not saddled with both.”

My insides harden. I hate him for this more than for anything he has said or done tonight.

He stands and checks his nose once more. “If you care about anyone in this House, please believe one thing: you can help them better from out there than in here.”

He knocks on the door three times to be let out, and I turn my back to him.

A rustle in the hall, Key at the door. Open. Shut. Click.

I grit my teeth until my temple hurts. Arrogant Half-Blight liar. Escape, outside, sympathy; these words are fire starters and don’t belong here. He thinks we’re all stupid sacks of meat, Sona slaves he can steal away like chickens in the night. How many House Girls has he fooled into running away? Hot tears prick my eyes, but I shake them away. I have my own girls to look after. Talented girls, all worthy of saving. There is sympathy for the plight of House Girls. If there were people trying to help us, wouldn’t we know?

He may go to Mynah, claim that I was rude, or that I failed to SonaBridge. A disgruntled customer and a dead Blight in the same week would warrant the strap. I press my ear to the door, to listen out for Goons, then feel ridiculous. Hearing their footsteps down the hall would buy me enough time to what? Hide behind a paperback?

The seam of light under my door is cut by a shadow. The lock jiggles. Key. She may be here to refresh my outfit, refill my SonaDrink for the next Blight.

I flatten the creases of my jacket, retie my sash as the door swings open.

Framed by the wooden door jam, backlit by the brash light of the hall sconce, is Mynah. Draped across her shoulders is the leather strap of her knife.

Chapter 17
Bellwether

Mynah’s dress is the violet color of a bruise. Mine is a swirl of inky black on white, but Key has cut both our outfits from the same satiny charmeuse fabric.

Charmeuse, from the French meaning female charmer, an enchantress, one with the power to compel as if by magic charm.

The false Blight may have left my room and gone straight to her fueled by lies and entitlement, but with a parlor full of customers to tend to and captivate downstairs, what could possibly be so urgent that she has come to my room? Beatings can always wait until the end of business.

Mynah surveys my room carefully, as if looking for something novel or out of place. What could possibly have changed since we had one of our chats two, three weeks ago?

The blade of her drawing knife has been detached and lies idle somewhere in the house, but the leather of the wrist straps looks ready and able. The stained leather clashes with her fancy evening attire; so, she must have made a special detour to fetch it. She arranges the strap so that it rests symmetrically over her shoulder blades like a pair of cream-colored epaulettes.

“Stand up,” she says.

I pretend to get up in the slow, sluggish way of a depleted House Girl fresh from servicing a Blight. This lie is hard to pull off. My veins pump with the power of twenty well-fed Goons and I feel like a live wire. The false Blight and his talk of other Houses and revolution has put me on edge. I assume the waiting posture.

A familiar glint in her eye shines like polished jaspers; she’s up to something. I know Mynah as if I’d had a hand in making her. There have been too many diatribes, too many melancholy evenings with her tongue loosened by drink, seeking the counsel and company of a lowly House Girl who turned out to have a head for the business of exploiting children. If Mynah meant to use that strap, she’d be buttressed by a complement of sweaty Goons happy to hold me down. The strap may only be for show. Artifice, claptrap, subterfuge, feint.

The lock rattles, a ball of fear lodges at the base of my throat as I brace myself for a Goon to walk in—but it’s only Key clutching something close to her chest.

Head down, meek as a mendicant, she puts the small bundle on the Blight chair. Without looking in my direction, she scurries back to the door where she fumbles with the keys. They fall to the floor with a loud clang. When she bends to pick them up, a tortoise shell hairbrush tumbles out of her pocket, bounces onto the floor, and skids under the chowki table. More fumbling as she retrieves the brush, an impatient sigh from Mynah’s direction, more keys jangling until the dull creature finally manages the simple lock and leaves.

Key always cowers, but most people instinctively shrink from Mynah in this way. For a slim, small-boned woman of average height, Mynah takes up all the air in the room. All spaces are more confined with her in them. Strange that so beguiling a creature should inspire such ardent egress.

Mynah inspects Key’s delivery, making a show of keeping her back to me and obstructing my view to it. She doesn’t bring anything into my room but her tipsy grumbling, her fetid breath, and that strap.

She wants me to crane my neck, try to see what she’s got, but I’m only interested in arresting Bird’s harrowing cough and getting her back to the Top Floor with us, where she belongs. Blossom will cure Bird and figure out how to get her some SonaDrops, then I’ll invigorate the others with the vitality I feel in every hair and inch of skin. Bird could use the beads on Girls across all wings of the House. Tonight, I lay groundwork, run reconnaissance for a future where all my Girls fare better. I hold the keys to Mynah’s kingdom of riches in the form of a magic beaded necklace, and one day soon, I’ll be the one making deals impossible to resist. I just need a little more time to put it all in place and Blossom and Bird to help me.

When Mynah feels she’s played coy with the bundle long enough, she turns around. I resist the reflex to peek at what she’s brought. Never seem eager, never reach. Eyes devoid of interest, empty of inquiry. Needless, wantless Ink Girl.

I look away from her and trace the water stain on the ceiling, check on the spider in the web strung above the Blight chair, count the books on the topmost shelf. It’s only after I repeat this circuit twice do I look at what she wants me to see. Hanging on the arm rest is a bag. It’s a small satchel like the kind schoolchildren use except it’s of good quality, like most of Mynah’s things. It’s made of chamois suede just like her knife strap.

Mynah walks over to me, silent as a cat. People think that her lissome, refined gait embodies a natural grace, but her floor-length gowns and measured steps serve only to hide the pigeon-toed feet of a monster. Strix, a bird of ill omen who feeds on human flesh.

Remain motionless. Left hand over right. Chin only slightly tucked.

She takes a long, assessing look at me, absently petting her matte black hair. Today she’s wearing it loose, letting it drape over her shoulders and down to her waist like a pair of velvety wings. Only her bangs are different than the last time I saw her. They perch high on her head in a ridiculous madam pompadour that crests over her face like a cockscomb. This is Key’s handiwork. In a week, all the procuresses and half the women in the city, including the mayor’s wife, will sport the same ridiculous hairstyle.

Mynah draws her nails over the suede of the strap as if it were a sleeping pet. “You’re always uglier than I remember.”

So are you.

This is a lie. Mynah has smooth bronze-brown skin several shades lighter than mine, and stunning, almond shaped eyes almost too widely set. While she’s not beautiful in the way Blossom is beautiful, she’s striking, memorable. Her peculiar prettiness flirts with the uncanny, fluttering just short of unattractive but not quite landing on ugly. Hers is the kind of allure that people think about on the way home.

“I knew you wouldn’t grow into a great beauty, but your skin is so dark.” She clicks her tongue in disapproval. With the fat pad of her thumb, she traces my hairline. Her fingernails are so long, they curl down at the ends, almost touching her palms. I break out in gooseflesh.

“And your cheeks. Sunburnt. Tough. Leathery.” Flashy manicures are a trademark procuress conceit, and when she flattens the unruly hairs at my temple, she almost blinds me with a pinky nail studded with green gems. “You spend too much time baking at that window.” She lets me go with an exasperated huff.

I catch a whiff of the anise seeds she chews to mask her bad breath. As a child I hated anise, but now I like the spicy, licorice scent because it reminds me of the disease rotting her from the inside out.

“Why are you so warm? Like your skin is on fire. Are you sick?” She aims a curly nail at me, as if I would be sick only to inconvenience her. She crumples her nose in distaste then staggers, ever so slightly, to the Blight chair.

She’s good at hiding her intemperance, dipsomania, vinosity, sot, but I could write a book about Mynah. I’ve catalogued her every gesture, learned the meaning of the slightest inflection. Lately, there have been more of these midnight tete-a-tetes. They started three years back, when an opposing faction in the House Syndicate raided the Garden Wing. She came to hide in my room armed with a florid paranoia of a House takeover and a gallon bottle of SonaDrink. She ended up staying the night, confiding all her financial woes. I remember the false Blight and his talk of revolution and sympathetic soldiers. Did he say three years ago? I’m almost tempted to ask Mynah, but direct questions, especially those of the outside world, would awaken her strap resting across her shoulders.

She makes a show of adjusting the hanging bag. I can tell she hit the SonaPot first thing this morning because her pupils are huge.

The movie theater in our town once showed a silent film. The leading lady spoke volumes with her eyes, which bugged out at the camera with exaggerated, dysregulated emotion. The actress was playing a vampire and a madwoman. My sister was so scared she wet herself, and I wrapped my sweater around her waist so the other children wouldn’t poke fun. Mynah’s eyes are twice as severe as the actress’s. Even when she’s not in a rage, they’re the color of an angry sky.

A drop of sweat slides down my ribs. Mynah is easier to handle when her hair is wild and the leather strap whistles over her head on a trajectory for my flesh. Strap Mynah is predictable. Calm, drunk Mynah is a menace. When she’s calm, she’s hatching plans that end in little girls dying.

“What do you think of the Bird Girl?” She’s not really asking for my opinion, only gloating at her discovery of such a rare talent. “Finish her training soon. The girls you trained the last time did very well, still alive.”

“This one is a fast learner but doesn’t know many songs. Not the popular ones. Bird should teach her some.” Hopefully this will get Little Bird to Bird with the beads and get Mynah talking about Bird.

“Three prospects for First Night already. We needed a new Bird.”

New? So Little Bird is staying at The Nectar House, not sold after her training. Now I know for sure, Mynah will have to place her on the Top Floor in another wing. We already have a Bird Girl. Mynah also knows me well and likes to ensure I always need something from her. She knows I’ll be worried about Bird and wants me to ask just so she can deny me. She’s trying to disarm me with a rare compliment about training Little Bird. Perhaps she’s mistaken me for Key, soft in the head and starved for approval.

I sit down on the edge of the bed. “Your last visit may have inspired some ideas. Still ironing out the details, probably rubbish, but you might make something of them like you often do.”

The sides of her mouth twitch. Flash of teeth. The flicker of self-interest.

She takes a book off the shelf, pretending to flip through it, trying not to seem excited in any future jaspers my suggestions might bring her. This can take a while. Even on a bad day, she can out-wait an opponent better than me or Blossom. Mynah will always have the advantage, fight from the higher ground, and it wouldn’t serve her to seem eager to my suggestions. Lately, I’ve been trying to get Blossom a chess set. That’s a tough barter that will require me to invent a new kind of Specialty Girl; I’ve been pitching Mynah ideas for months.

Our partnership goes back before the House raid not long after my arrival four years ago. This was before she was the procuress of The Nectar House, when her sister was in charge. When Mynah stumbled into my room that night, something in my gut, some old reptilian thing, told me that fate was opening a door, presenting a singular opportunity. SonaDrink is not as powerful as SonaDrops, nor is it a true entheogen, but abused in the right amounts, a highly suggestible state can arise. I appealed to Mynah’s vanity, preyed on her fears, and wooed her trust. I’ve exploited this ever since and made many lives better, if only for a little while.

She stayed with me all evening and into the dawn, through the yelling in the streets and the smell of smoke sifting in from over the rooftops. Eventually she fell asleep with her keys in her hand. I could have taken them, tried to make my way out, but Bird was in another wing, and the then-Blossom was new and very frightened, and the newest Apple Girl was only ten years old with a knack for making me laugh. More importantly, I didn’t know if my sister was still in the House or even alive, and I couldn’t leave without her with nowhere to go and no one to go to. I left the keys on Mynah’s lap and found a way to make myself indispensable.

Soon after that, she became the new procuress of The Nectar House amid rumors of foul play. As she told me about her childhood, I remember thinking that I’d never known a lonelier creature as the one telling me stories of jumping rope and weaving cat’s cradles under the covers. Mynah and Batis were twins and their mother refused to tell them their birth order, hoping to motivate an ugly rivalry, stoke backstabbing competition, and strengthen The Nectar House legacy. Let the best sister win. Instead, Mynah and Batis loved each other blindly, like sisters in fairy tales, until the day their mother, also a SonaDrink enthusiast, revealed Batis as the eldest one drunken New Year’s Eve.

Mynah slides an errant strand of black hair away from her cheek, letting her fingers comb down the locks. “Not interested in your ridiculous ideas tonight.”

Lie? Not sure. But you want something, Mynah. Your dress is too pretty to waste on an Ink Girl, and you have SonaDrink to peddle downstairs, Blights to ply with wit and enchanting conversation.

Her lids narrow, flicker with guile, ease back into the reptile stare. She says, “This season will be the busiest one yet—”

“Is that thanks to my—”

Her body at the edge of the chair. Hand on her strap.

My mouth clamps shut. That was a blunder. A small stumble. Lying Half-Blight rattled me. That’s what talk of freedom will do to a House Girl. Dulls her edge. Makes her reactive, incautious. Clouds her judgment. Never say “my idea” to Mynah. Never say my anything. All credit is hers. All success is hers. All of us are hers.

She relaxes into the plush back cushion. “New season, new book.”

“The Book of Ardor.” My words slip out before I can temper the pride lodged within them.

She admires her fingernails. “More Girls will be featured in the catalogue this year; I want it like the first one. Classy. Polished, but mind yourself, the first book was too wordy. Long-winded, flowery. Why use three words when you can say it with one? More pages cost more to print.”

Joy swirls inside my chest. Serious ground. Hostile country is won, fortified cites left far behind. On serious ground, seize and plunder. I’ll gloat later. Business now. “So, your book was a success?” Like I said it would be. “As you said it would be.”

She tries for the cool stare, but this time, she can’t manage it. Undeniable glee resides in those gunmetal gray peepers. A catalogue advertising the wiles of Specialty Girls on offer at a Blight House hadn’t been done before. To this day, I can’t believe she agreed.

Bird begged me not to do it. The first and only edition of The Book of Ardor was penned by me and published by Mynah last year. It listed detailed descriptions of every Specialty Girl in The Nectar House and included their age and their prices along with made-up reviews. Bird was disgusted by the whole idea, but Mynah was making noise about needing a fresh Bird Girl. Our Bird was getting older and had lost her novelty in the Blight community. So, one night, after I serviced a famous author who bored me stupid with talk of publishing, I proposed it to Mynah.

Fervor for The Book of Ardor took off like a house on fire. Profit margins in the black made Mynah amenable to extra protective SonaDrops to all the Girls in the Sonagachi Wing and the postponing of Bird’s replacement for a calendar year. This gave me time to convince Mynah of keeping Bird on as trainer. Better advertising brought more Blights. More Blights quicken the death of me and my beloved. Blossom may argue that my math is wrong, my moral ledger in the red, that helping a purveyor of flesh is always wrong, but Blossom doesn’t always know the right answer. The Book of Ardor was my opus move, brilliantly conceived in desperation and haste and love. Bird never found out what I bartered for her. I never tell the Girls which petty privilege was my doing. Better that way.

“Mynah.” I reluctantly break the silence, but maybe, if susceptible with drink and desire for another edition, I can find out about Bird. “You graciously, so wisely …” My voice cracks. “I’m humbled that the book honored this House, and you, by extension. So grateful for everything you’ve done, and business is so good, you’re the envy of all. Perhaps I can ask—”

She makes a sound halfway between a growl and a groan. “Greedy as a plague of grackles. What more do you want? Over-ripe Blossoms still bloom off my tree. Birds sing. Keys clang in my halls.”

“Key has a fresh bruise every week,” I blurt out before I can help it.

She shrugs.

“And where is Bird?” I can’t stop this from spilling out of my mouth either.

“Fine, for now, but the scrawny pigeon is costing me jaspers by the hour. Half the Blights in the city have heard her warbling, so her appeal has gone the way of the dodo.” She chuckles and flutters her hands like wings.

Bird’s cough does not sound like it inhabits the same universe as “fine,” but I’ve already pushed my limit.

“I’ll be bringing in a new batch by the end of the week and there better be at least three Specialties among them. You’re too picky. One Top Floor Girl out of every three dozen Girls I bring in is not sorting. Too many First Floors cost me SonaDrops and real estate; they’re packed in two to a cot as it is. Their market is flooded. Saturated. Topped off. I’ve always said, the real money is in Specialty.”

Lie. I’m the one who says that. She’s quoting me now. “Yes, of course. Yet higher standards guarantee less turnover, less time spent on transporting and training.” Not a lie.

She drums her fat fingers on the armrest. “Who are you to talk standards in my House? These deals are tiresome, and they cost me jaspers.”

“Deals? Everything is in honor of The Nectar House.” Hand over heart, make it look good. Kowtow, grovel, prostrate, pander, fawn. “Think of Key, who can barely talk but possesses such nimble fingers! You turned the Blight world on its head with our clothing, real couture, started trends, set the bar. You had lines out the door just to SonaScape with a Girl wearing a skirt with a train like the tail of a swiftlet. The Goons had to call the police to manage the crowds—twice. Talent wasted on the First Floor leaves jaspers on the table, yes, but it pays to be picky. Hasty decisions lead to dead Specialty Girls or, even worse, dead Blights. My way has saved us hundreds of jaspers.”

Her chin drops. Deep inhale. Hand on strap.

I cringe, then hate myself for it.

Blunder. Never say my. Never say us. I’m a commodity. An un-person. A blank page. Face-less. Self-less, Ink Girl.

I say, “I only wish to serve the House that is my sanctuary and the woman who is my savior.” Too far? Too far.

She snorts at my flustered brownnosing and releases the strap. Her gaze lands lazily on the bookshelves behind the chair, then she drapes an arm over the backrest. Her fingers slide over the first-edition poetry books. One book pokes out a smidge farther than the others. A gilded edition of A Conquest of Birds.

I hold my breath. Behind the book, inches from Mynah’s bangled wrist, is the vial of stolen Sona. Each drop of Sona is akin to Mynah’s lifeblood, and she would spill mine without hesitation if she knew I was playing fast and loose with her supply.

Her fingernails graze the book spines. Click, click, tap. Each click travels down my vertebrae like a mallet. Click, click, tap.

“These are the treasure of the collection. Wasted here,” she mumbles. “Maybe put them on display in the parlor?”

I can’t tell if she wants me to agree, or if she’s asking me my opinion because the palm of her hand now rests on the book hiding the SonaBottle. Blood pounds in the veins of my neck. I’ve read about something called a heart attack and wonder if I am having one right now.

She turns to face me and rests her chin in her hand, the shelves momentarily, mercifully forgotten.

Her bracelets rattle as she fans her face with a limp wrist. She mumbles something about the room being hot enough to melt wax, how the light off the naked bulb is garish, how she considers installing a dimmer to help hide my ugly face, perhaps a ceramic fixture to cover the naked bulb . . .

She’s all over the place tonight. Boiled as an owl. Tight as a tick. Not sure if that is a help or a hindrance.

When she crosses her legs, still lost in thought, the hem of her dress slips up, enough for me to see the puckered skin hanging loose over her ankles. Embroidered in silk thread along the edges of her evening gown and curling around her torso are golden hummingbirds with beaks plunged deep inside frangipani flowers. This must be Key’s latest creation. Sea silk thread is incredibly brittle and difficult to work with; the needlework is too tricky for most seamstresses. Sea silk fibers are harvested from a slimy sea mollusk called a pen shell. It’s the rarest, most expensive textile in the world, not to be trusted to just any tailor with a needle. Mynah could buy three Top Floor Girls with this dress alone.

She catches me staring at her and slips her dress over her shoes to cover her hideous skin.

“When you said longevity was the best way to cut costs,” I teeter at the edge of my mattress, closer, to invite intimacy. Camaraderie, esprit de corps. “You put this in my head. I think you’re onto something big, really big.”

An eyebrow lifts. She feigns a sudden fascination with the wing of the hummingbird along her thigh.

“Mynah, imagine fewer trips to stinking backwaters while the Parlor Goons mismanage the House. Fewer finder’s fees, less haggling with brokers over stale tea.”

I’ll make you so disgustingly rich, you’ll burn on a pyre in your best dress cocooned in your wretched worm casings by the time I’m done. Transition them all. Honey to Blossom. Blossom to Apple. Apple to ... I’ll figure something out. The Nectar House Girls will be a phenomenon the world over as Girls whose Life Force does not diminish with neither time nor age nor misuse. Every Blight will want a taste.

Another eyebrow arched.

“Triple profits, half the effort. You’ll save hundreds of jaspers.” I’ll save hundreds of Girls. “Try what I have in mind and in two seasons, you’ll have an entire dress made from sea silk. In five seasons”—pause for effect—“you’ll fill a closet.”

She clicks her tongue at me. “Sly thing. Always trying to squeeze me like a lemon. More trouble than you’re worth half the time.” She unhooks the satchel from the armchair, then swings it to the middle of the room where it lands with a dull thump. “No more deals tonight. I’m on a deadline at the printers.”

The picture of a girl about twelve years old slips out of the sack. Her eyes are a deep gold. A Honey.

I don’t ask Mynah why she’s brought photographs because the familiar braid of dread down my spine explains it all.

Looking at the picture and the fat stack underneath it makes the hole in my heart widen like an ulcer. I wrote The Book of Ardor. Every word was mine from epigraph to index. I’m responsible for a catalogue of human misery along with every inch of sea silk it has bought Mynah. I secretly agreed when Bird said a book like this was nothing less than a slave manifest, but it didn’t include photographs, not until now. Canker, fester, suppurate, boil.

Mynah resumes her inspection of the frolicking hummingbirds on her dress and avoids my eyes. “Last season was modestly better than others. I will give you one more chance at another guide for this season.”

Lie. Last season was the best you’ve ever had. Blossom and Bird were so in demand I had to persuade Mynah to increase their nightly SonaDrops. Inks are the least popular Girls, and I saw more Blights than ever. I’ll bet every word on my wall that she sold hundreds of copies, that they flew off the shelves like a scream of swiftlets.

“Color photos will increase the printing cost,” I say, appealing to avarice. “Why bother? Everyone knows Nectar House Girls are the best.” Another shrug. “Blights. Limited imagination.”

She’s playing it cool, but she’s desperate for a second book. I should be elated, but the child in the picture is looking straight at me. She’s missing a front tooth and smiling at the camera. I’m sure the picture was taken long before she was sold. No, this kid was not sold. This kid was taken. Her joy is for no one’s benefit, not the photographer, or a dirty backpacker with a fancy camera on a poverty tour. Hers is a true expression of mirth. Like Blossom and Bird, this child knew love. She was forsaken and sold by her family because her eyes are the perfect shade of amber. Mynah may have bought her, but the idea was mine, and the fate of all Honeys with amber eyes was decided by me.

“The Nectar House doesn’t have this many Girls,” I say to the bundle on the floor.

“Times are changing.” Mynah’s face goes flat, mouth tight. “This new generation of Blights is so hungry for novelty. Entitled brats. Everything has to be customized, follow the trends. They want to see what they’re getting. Pick from a menu.” She pulls out a flat, silver flask of SonaDrink from her bodice.

The stack is thick. Maybe two hundred pictures. At capacity, The Nectar House can peddle twenty-four Top Girls. The eight in our courtyard, eight in the Garden Wing, eight more on the floors overlooking the wading pool. Twenty to thirty First Floor Girls per wing. “Still too many Girls in that sack.”

Mynah takes a hearty swig from her flask. “I’m including the other Houses in our Syndicate Faction. I could buy a hundred of you for the jaspers they’re paying. Start tonight. You have everything you need.”

That must mean she’s leaving the pen and paper in the bag. Last year, she would take them with her each night after drinking herself half-blind while I worked and read to her from a freshly penned menu of delights. I told Bird I hated it, but that too was a lie because I loved it. I got to write for hours and see my words in ink. I’d pretend the Girls weren’t real, wrote charming descriptions that turned imprisoned girls into fairy creatures or beguiling women. Even weird Key was transformed into a chimera. Key can’t SonaScape, but she was included in Mynah’s menagerie because her talents at the loom and dressmaker’s dummy add to The Nectar House mystique.

With the tip of one of her pointy high heels, Mynah nudges the bag as if it contains a snake she’s trying to provoke. Something slips over the photo of the Honey Girl. It’s a book. My book.

I’ve never seen a copy. Some Girls ask their Blight regulars for sweets or news from home or the world. All I ever want is to see my words in print and smell the ink. It’s the only thing I’ve ever asked them for.

“May I?” I take any opportunity to ask her for permission, a reminder that I know she’s in charge. Machination, subterfuge, collusion, cabal.

When she nods, I get onto my knees. Sift pass the pictures, don’t want to touch them. I take out the slim book, cradle it in the palm of my hands.

Deckled edges, my idea. Adds old-world elegance, I told her. Raised bands along the spine, gilded gold of course. Also my idea. Leather binding dyed burgundy, almost oxblood. Nice touch. This was all her. Classy. Mynah didn’t skimp.

The lithograph on the cover is a nod to The Conquest of Birds, the Blight classic. Underneath a Sonagachi tree is a man-sized hoopoe bird wrapping a young woman in his giant wings. The wings fold over her body up to her mouth so only her eyes can be seen. Hanging from the branches are ink bottles, jars of honey, and the Sonagachi flowers. The full title is written on a scroll banner held in the beaks of two swiftlet birds: The Book of Ardor, A Guide for the Discerning Blight about Town.

“This is a marvel.” Not a lie. “Magnificent.”

Mynah forgets herself and whispers, “My sister would have loved it.” She caresses the corner of the title page. Where the author’s name would go is an embossed mynah bird. “International bidding wars for my Top Floors,” she says and wipes some saliva from the side of her mouth. “A waiting list. Considered a ‘must have’ of the international tour market. Already a collector’s item. My name is legend.”

Inside the back cover, tucked into a pocket, is a pop-up map of the House District in full color.

“Everyone loves my map,” she says.

I thought my tongue would fall off from trying to get her to shell out the extra jaspers and include it.

I look up at her from where I am kneeling on the floor. Make my eyes big. Supplicant. Lots of sclera. “Do you think, perhaps, that the pictures would cheapen it? This,” I say and lift the book to her, balanced on my fingertips. An offering. A beggar’s bowl. “This is tasteful, refined. A work of art. Pictures are common, like tabloids with starlets and advertisements selling dish soap.”

“Maybe next year we’ll include advertisements.”

Of course.

She lifts the flask as if she’s making a toast, then sips.

I rest the book on my lap, fighting the urge to flip through it and find Bird’s name, or Blossom’s entry, which is the most beautiful collection of words I could string together. I would trade two walls of words to rip out this page and keep it.

“Include photos and soon every House in the District will put out a cheap, picture book. Street kids will hand them out on corners like carry-out menus. This book is your masterpiece. No one can duplicate it. You don’t need this. Nectar House Girls sell themselves.” I hold out the photo of the Honey Girl.

“New Houses are popping up two to a corner.” She grabs the photo between her pointy fingernails. “Owned by women who can’t run a sausage cart, much less a House. Parvenus. Upstarts. A new gimmick every week.”

With a flick of her wrist, she tosses the Honey Girl to the floor. “In the last month, two new Houses opened within our faction of the Syndicate. Two. One by a foreigner! Women without legacy, without a family name, trying all sorts of stunts to attract business. Opening Houses with ridiculous names like Celandine House, Alouette, Lux, Dovetail, or Tail Feathers, Tail-something. No respect for tradition.” She curls her lip in disgust. “The Nectar House must stay relevant. The market is changing, the House District is changing, the game is changing.”

That’s what the false Blight said. Maybe he wasn’t lying. Not about this. Things are about to get worse for House Girls. No time to worry about all that now. Stay on target, stay on task. Difficult ground. Mountain forests, rugged steeps, marshes, and bog. On difficult ground, steady on the march. Stick to the plan.

The photo of Honey lies facedown. We both stare at the underlined words written in black felt marker: “The Nesting House” followed by a descriptor that makes me feel sick: “Young Girls.”

Suddenly Mynah looks world-weary like when she gets weepy about her dead sister. I think I hear her say, “Too young for Blight Houses,” but I can’t be sure because her voice cracked.

I shudder to think of all the kids trapped in that sack. Young Girls. “I think the pictures aren’t needed.”

She shoots me a warning look. A carnivore flashing canines. “What you think doesn’t matter. And watch your tone. In that pile of photos, you’ll find plenty of Ink Girls. Stringy, raw-boned readers like you, but some are lookers, so don’t forget yourself. You’re neither as cunning nor as irreplaceable as you like to think.”

Not a lie. The look on her face and the false Blight’s visit tells me as much.

She downs the final drops in her flask and screws on the cap. “Look out for your own neck for once. There may be a future outside these rooms for a Girl smart enough to imagine it.”

Also, not a lie. I can tell. She means every word.

Agape, agog, awestruck, shell-shocked.

“When you’re done, celebrate by adding bellwether to your word library. Interesting times ahead.”

She doesn’t ask me if I know what that word means. In her way, she has more respect for me than the Blights.

“And stay away from that window. You’ll char like a patty.”

“You’ll continue to honor our deal?”

From a hidden slash pocket, she takes out a key tied to a thin gold chain. “Everyone is still above ground, aren’t they?”

I imagine Bird languishing in a bed, framed by a window overlooking a courtyard garden. She needs those beads; I have to buy time to get them to her. “If any of us die, or if there’s one more bruise on Key, I won’t help you anymore. You’ll be back to sifting through barefoot peasants and smelling like cow—”

The strap is already making the return trip to Mynah’s neck before my lip registers the pain. Buffet, batter, lash.

Hand checks for blood. Lip not split. Only meant to warn me. A caution.

“I thought you were the smart one,” she says. “Learn from that sister of yours.”

I stare at her through the pain, trying not to give her the satisfaction of wincing.

She lifts her long hair from her neck so it falls behind the strap, which is momentarily returned to its perch on her shoulders.

“Key knows her place. Mouth shut, head down. Your father was dumb as a turnip but knew you would both bend like willows. I was surprised when Key was the harder sister to tame.”

I blink in surprise. Mynah never mentions my father, my life before the House, my anything. I only came into existence when she bought me. And Key? I try not to think of Key at all. I don’t associate this slumped creature, forever dressed in black, with the child who would braid matching ribbons into our hair every morning. That sister is dead. She died on the steps of our father’s house.

Mynah startles me when she bends and snatches the book off my lap. “So you won’t be tempted to repeat yourself. Remember, concise. You like to hear yourself talk. I mean it. Make this book better than the last, and doors might open for you.” She swings the key on its chain in front of my face like a hypnotist I saw in a film once.

She wants me to be curious, hopeful, ask her if she really means to let me out, to change my role in the House, but all I feel is the empty space where my book used to be. It’s like someone I love has left the room. Had I actually believed she would let me keep it? I would have preferred another hit from the strap, ten more for one hour with my words bound in pulp.

Silly, stupid Ink Girl. Soulless, heartless Mynah bird.

“Frowning only makes you uglier.” She steps away from me. “The photographer will be doing this wing next week, but he’s not a magician, so unpin your face. Maybe I’ll let you have the book back once the new one is done.”

“I don’t care if you burn every copy.” Lie. “I’ll write you another book. I’ll make the Girls sound so alluring you’ll need more Goons to manage the mobs. The first edition will seem like a child wrote it. I’ll do this for you and so much more, but not until Bird is back in her room.”

By now my dress feels almost soaked through with nerves, and the spot where the strap hit my lip pulses with every heartbeat.

I’m not sure about my next move. Beg or barter. Which one? If the beads were here, they’d scream for barter.

Seize something your opponent holds dear, then she will be amenable to your will.

Mynah kicks the stack of pictures, scattering little girls all over my room, twirling the key on the chain around and around her wrist. Each time it slaps her skin, I wince inside. She’s considering a beating or a barter. I know what the strap is screaming for her to do.

Come Mynah, this is not such a great concession. Not so big an ask. Return Bird to us, you beast.

She walks across my room to my words by the window. Her satiny gown shimmers in the broken moonlight coming in through the bars. Sleek, sheath dresses flatter her, and she knows it.

She pauses at the foot of my bed. The false Blight was correct; this is where I write the words for all my favorite things, the things I’m curious about, the things I’ve only read about and long imagined.

“Still soiling my walls, I see.” Her fingernails peck at the words as she reads them aloud. One tap per word. “Accordion, pangolin, baobab.” Tap, tap, tap. “You’ve always been a curious thing. Brilliant in ways, despite inadequate schooling and poor nutrition.” Tap, tap, tap. “Armadillo, surfboard, candelabra. You’re lucky I’m so good to you and the Blights find this vandalism charming.”

My skin feels cold. I know better than to move, than to think about moving from my spot on the floor. She wants me to ask about Bird, wants me to beg. I would if I thought it would do any good. In my heart, I know Bird’s not coming back to us. She knows I know it too.

Everything but Mynah and her power over me, over my fate, feels swept away and unimportant. In the end, it always comes to this. The words, the shelves, the swiftlets, every leaf on the Sonagachi, even the prized pen and paper in the sack drift down river and sift the sands of faraway coasts. And the magic beads of our salvation? They’re nothing but useless trinkets if I can’t save Bird. This is Mynah’s particular brand of alchemy. She has the power to make whole universes come apart. My life, that of the other Girls, my sister the girl who she renamed Key, Mynah erased all we understood to be true and rewrote our stories. All that remains is Mynah. Mynah holding my dying friend captive somewhere downstairs. Mynah making not-so-veiled offers of a life outside this room. Mynah’s moonlight shadow smothering my words like a blanket over the mouth of a sleeping baby.

“You have three days to complete my book,” she says.

I scour myself for courage. Force my tongue to move. Brace for the hit that will be worth every syllable. “And Bird will back on the Top Floor by then.”

“Three days.” Tap, tap, tap. “A Goon will come for the book. He’ll have a full can of paint with him. It’s up to you if he leaves with an empty one.”

She doesn’t say another word as she locks the door behind her.

Chapter 18
The Floor Is Lava

Little girls are scattered all over my floor like land mines. I’m trapped on the bed, afraid to let my feet touch the floor. As children, my sister and I would pretend the floor was lava. To escape a fiery death, we had to jump from bed to footstool to sink. We took turns sitting on the wobbly table, imagining ourselves prisoners of a wicked, winged mage who had locked us in a tower. We argued over who would deliver the pitiful captive to the safety of my aunt’s chair in the corner. I remember the adrenaline of this game. The feeling of risk was so great, the stakes so real. Did the girls spread across my floor play some version of this game and did it prepare them for real horror?

It’s very late and the swiftlets, silenced at last, sleep in their bowers. Only the faint grumble of conversation and the occasional guffaw from the parlor downstairs breaks the quiet. At this time of night, few Blights loiter on the First Floor lounge, teetering on barstools, waiting for their pals to finish up and help them stagger home, drunk on SonaDrink or heavy-lidded in a post-SonaScape stupor.

A silky laugh floats in through my window. Honey doesn’t talk to her Blights, much less makes them laugh, so it must be Blossom, who could charm a pirate. Such stillness. Not a breeze to be felt. If only the wind would blow the pictures up and away, or at least carve a path for me to walk through, so I don’t have to touch them.

Some girls seem unaware of the photographer’s gaze. Very pretty girls. The soon-to-be Blossoms. Their images captured in secret as they hang the wash, walk home from a day on the factory floor, step off the bus. These faces terrify me the most because they don’t register danger. So many girls go about their lives thoroughly oblivious to the peril their beauty has put them in. Like all House Girls, they’re the victims of the very thing that makes them special. A Bird’s voice, an Apple’s easy laughter, a Gavage Girl’s plum cheeks, these attributes, so randomly and casually possessed, are the weavers of their ruin. Top Floor Girl or First, dark hair, fair of face, dull, or prepossessing, it doesn’t matter in the end; the true danger is being female.

My room is in disarray. The scattered photos make it look like the aftermath of an explosion. It doesn’t feel like my room. The air is a strange brew of anise, cheap printing paper, and liquor. The pictures seem to have multiplied, like spring rabbits or lice. Some photos are in color, crisp and well lit, others in black and white or grainy. I wonder if some were taken by the family and sent to Mynah for consideration. Atrocity, barbarity, depravity, abuse.

I briefly considered arguing that anyone looking for the Girls would see their pictures, but Mynah and I both know that no one is trying to find Girls like me or Honey—and especially not Key. Blossom’s family is a country away and would need a militia to get her out of the city once Mynah alerted the Syndicate, which discards us like garbage but counts us like diamonds.

I’ll bet an entire wall of words that I can pick which photos were taken right after Mynah sealed the deal that enslaved them. A girl at the foot of the bed looks to the left of the camera lens, probably at her mother or an older sister. The girl’s face begs them questions: what’s going on? Who are these people? I don’t really have to go with them, do I? These girls in these photos share the same aura of disorientation and disbelief; their psyches occupy a kind of hinterland while the film captures the moment the jaspers were pocketed, the tears shed, the mothers and aunties held down.

Behind the girls are fields of sorghum, plantain groves, brick kilns, and truck stops with signs written in what I think is Cyrillic. Most are headshots, but one girl with stick-straight black hair stands in front of a conveyor belt covered in long-stemmed roses. Flower factory. Wretched work. Mynah shops in places where the pay is low and the unwanted children plentiful. An army of buyers is at her command: Half-Blight conscripts from gangs who owe her favors, and plenty of well-paid and willing envoys. New recruits every day.

Mynah can get whatever she wants out of anyone, defeating her adversaries before the battle has started, then plundering with abandon. After two cups of watery tea and a handful of firmly delivered promises, she can convince the most reluctant adult that their daughter, sister, cousin, dead brother’s youngest—will have a better life in her House, one of purpose and meaning, lucky to serve society in this way. The hundred jasper bills she wedges under the teacup and silently slides across the table also improve her arguments. For me, Mynah has left a bribe of pen and ink on the floor. Do a good job and there will be more. As much as you want. There’s a life for you outside these walls.

The bag slumps halfway between me and the locked door. Inside it are my thirty pieces of silver. She’s never needed me more; I’ve never been more replaceable. Which is it, Mynah? Do you even know? I thought myself too smart to be taken in with lies so robust, yet my mind races with full-fledged fantasies of me running the House with an iron fist and a butter heart. Blossom will stand at my side and Bird will retire from service and only sing when she wants.

I suck on my lip. Detect the sharp taste of metal where Mynah’s strap forced my tooth into the pulpy flesh. Ferrous, from the Latin meaning iron. I think of my mala beads which are the color of scabs. I wish I had them with me now. I try to remember how they felt around my neck, how close I was to Blossom when she wore them, and I followed her into the desert.

I want to liberate the pens from the pouch but can’t move from the bed. Somehow disturbing the photos seems hazardous, like an act of contempt for the angry dead. The floor is lava. A lone cicada chirps in the tree, dance music pulses from a passing car. Life outside this room. Bellwether. Now there’s a word worthy of my wall. Bellwether. The leading sheep in a flock, an indicator that times and trends are changing. Instead of a spoon scraped against plaster, maybe I’ll use real ink to write it on my wall.

At the bottom of the bag are cheap ballpoints of indestructible plastic. Pens like these changed the world forever, allowing even the lowliest peasant to print their name. For such a strict traditionalist when it comes to running her House, Mynah loves innovation as much as she loves SonaDrink and new clothes. Once she had me read from a book about inventions that alter the course of human history, like the paperback and the steam engine and the House Girl. Mynah chose these pens with intention, knowing I would remember discussing the book with her. The message she’s sending is not lost on me. The pens are a symbol of my possible future. In many ways, Mynah is a genius. Both she and the false Blight claim it’s a new world out there. Mynah is offering me a place in it.

I need to buy Blossom some time. I’ll collude once more with Mynah, and write this book. She’ll go deaf from the sounds of jaspers falling from the sky. Knee-deep in coin, she’ll be soft, weak to my suggestions, and she’ll agree to make Blossom an Apple. We’d have to fatten Blossom up, maybe a single shot of the Oxmed. It will be so easy to transition her; Blossom’s ready laugh and sweetness come so naturally.

And Bird? Please hold on a bit longer. I haven’t heard a cough all day. Mynah must have moved to another room farther away from the parlor. Nothing can ruin a fuzzy SonaDrink buzz like the gasps of a dying Girl. The next time I see Little Bird, I’ll give her some extra Sona for Bird then Blossom can try to SonaScape her from here. Is that too far a distance? How long can all this take, three days? A week? Bird is strong, I can save her.

With the beads and Mynah’s ear, if she lets me out, I’ll be unstoppable. Intersecting ground. Whoever occupies three adjoining states has the empire at her command. On intersecting ground, join hands with your allies.

The door opens. Key is already locking the door before I register it’s her.

Unless there’s a Blight in her pocket, she can get out.

She must have rushed up the stairs because she’s panting and holding onto her chest as she takes in the mess. “Why are these all over the floor?”

If I ignore her long enough, sometimes she gives up and goes away.

She points to a photo half hidden under the Blight chair. “That one looks like a girl from back home. She sang when she swept the stoop. We would walk, chalk, chat when I would go to the fabric shop. Her name was Sephora, but this girl is too loll, smight, small to be her.”

Every other country girl is called Sephora. It means bird.

“I sold her—I told her I liked her name. She said it was an old family name that meant beauty.” Key stoops to pick up the picture.

My face feels hard. Chiseled out of a rock. Touch her, and I’ll box your ears so hard you’ll hear bells for a week.

Key sees the look on my face, freezes, then twists the red cord bracelet around her wrist, threatening to loosen an ugly scab.

Why is she here other than to disgust me?

“Bird’s no better,” she says.

So now she wants to tell me about Bird.

“I wanted to tell you, but Mynah said not to tell you until after you did the book, but Bird is so weak now. Mynah said—”

A growl lodges deep in my throat.

“Bird is really sick, Ink.” The tiny red rope digs into her flesh. Her light brown skin pinched around the cord first turns cream, then an angry pink. Something must be spooking her more than usual. She’s at that string like she’s experimenting with how hard she can pull before it snaps or slices her hand off. The dangling sleeves of her loose gown do little to hide the bruising halfway up her forearm.

Over her long, shapeless dress, she wears a caplet made from burned-out velvet. She must have made it from remnants of my most famous outfit, an eleven-pound cape that drags two feet behind me like a wedding dress. Key rendered a scene from A Conquest of Birds using the technique of burning off the velvet and leaving behind an image in the black chiffon base. Only a cape provided enough canvas for the image of a Blight floating over a kneeling Ink Girl at the foot of a Sonagachi tree. He wears a beatific expression while rays of light representing replenished health shine behind him like a halo. The passage is a classic Blight favorite, and among the most popular trends of last year’s House season was to have me read from the epic poem cloaked in the colossal cape. Mynah charged double for my services. The whole thing was my idea, down to the fabric. The caplet Key wears is the same material as my cape but decorated in snapdragons growing along a riverbed. I never noticed our matching set before now.

“Bird is so weak,” she says, “What should I do?”

Mash up some fruit and give it to Bird. Make sure she keeps drinking.

“I brought her some of my nest soup with an egg in it, but it all came up.”

That mess isn’t even food. May have made her worse.

“Bird’s got such little Life Force left. Please fell me, hell me, tell me what to do. Talk to me, talk to Mynah. She listens to you.”

What does she think I can do? Ask Mynah to drive Bird to the Bird Girl hospital?

Key looks frailer and smaller all of a sudden. Like when you don’t see an old person for a long time and they look like they’ve shrunk. Her shoulders have always been lopsided, but I can’t remember them being this uneven. When she was on the First Floor someone broke her collarbone; either a Blight grabbed her, or Mynah pushed her into a wall. I can’t keep track of all her injuries. She’s always been a walking bull’s eye, a dead-eyed sitting duck, provoking people into rage with her slow shuffle and sluggish speech.

“Please.” She moves toward the bed. “You always know how to hex, mix, melp, fix things.”

I throw her a warning glance.

She halts mid-step, tiptoes her way to me, careful not to step on the photos, then kneels next to the bed.

Stop bothering me. There’s nothing I can do for Bird except wait for the sun to come up. Get the beads. Wait for Little Bird to come for more training. Blossom’s voice in my head, insistent as a battering ram. Key can take the beads to Bird. But she doesn’t know Key is a turncoat, a traitor, a snitch. Mynah’s stool pigeon. The loom and betrayal are the only things she excels at. Perfidy, fakery, artifice, fraud.

Key clasps her hands, rests them on the edge of the mattress. “She’s going to sell Blossom to another House.” She looks up at me with her strange, keyhole irises, like a crazy beggar woman.

“You’ve seen Blossom.” She points to her chest. “I wove her a binder to flatten her some.”

Blossom never told me this.

“It worked for a while, but the Blights have started to notice. She’s almost sixteen and, Ink, there are other blouces, haces, places now.” She goes after the cord on her wrist, twists and pinches the skin without mercy. “I have been hearing, the Parlor Goons have been braying, saying awful things of awful Houses. New ones along a street called The Alley of Twin Pressures-Pleasures, The Palace of Two Pleasures, I don’t know for sure, but I’m scarred, scared.”

Hearsay, rumor, scuttlebutt, gossip. Gossip as ugly as you are. Leave me alone with my room full of doomed Girls and poison pens. I draw my legs up to my chest. Press my face to the wall. Monitor lizard, salamander, lodestar, lightship, phare.

Key pulls my shoulder and turns me toward her. “I think these are terrible, terrible places where a Girl has two jobs instead of one.”

I can’t feel my fingers, not even when Key takes them in her hands.

She’s confused. Always muddling things up. Or she’s lying.

Tears hang off her chin. “Twin Pleasure Houses are all anyone can talk about.”

Those houses and Sona Houses, they’re not the same, they’ve always been separate. They’re not even allowed on the same street. It’s the way it is.

“Things are different now. Mynah says.”

House Girls are different. Special. Chosen. We’re safe here.

“Blossom is in terrible danger. Ask her if you don’t deceive, reprieve, think I’m lying.”

Blossom?

“She didn’t want to scare you, but she’s sure Mynah will break her anchor and sell her to one of these places.” She squeezes my hand. Warm and solid as the beads.

Key sniffs. “Do whatever Mynah wants.”

Calvary, albatross, scourge.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Key collect the photos of the girls and place them gently at the foot of my bed. My stomach fills with boulders as it dawns on me why Mynah is so insistent on the pictures. She’s now selling a different product, one marketed on comeliness, not on the fetishized ability of a trained Girl to use Sona for the healing SonaScape. Twin Pleasures. Outside on the street, a car door slams shut.

The red cord on Key’s wrist has successfully broken through the thin skin. Key wipes a drop of blood on her black skirt. The fabric is so dark, no one will ever notice. “Please. Do whatever Mynah wants.”

Key mumbles something as she leaves, but I’m no longer listening, only tripping over her words in my head. Other Houses, the binder didn’t work, Bird is really sick, everyone is talking about the new Houses.

Key is lying. She was outside my door when the false Blight was here with talk of revolution and escape and changing times. Her tears were convincing, but any House Girl worth her Sona can muster those. The Alley of Twin Pleasures. The false Blight said that too. No matter. Two liars can lie about the same thing.

From the black and white photograph at the top of the pile, a girl with pigtails and the meanest scowl I’ve ever seen glares at me like she’s plotting my murder. An Ink Girl for sure. She knows all the words for traitor. Her smirk spells out recrimination and accusation and spite. She’s daring me to assemble the words that will sell her.

“Let’s see how smug you’ll be when you’re locked in a room,” I say out loud. “I dare you to do as well as me.” The sound of my voice surprises me, then scares me. Maybe I’m finally losing my mind. It’s beyond impressive that my marbles are still in my possession. I imagine obsidian orbs rolling around an empty shoe box and I laugh out loud. Bedlam, bonkers, bughouse, barmy, barking. House Girls often lose it, mostly at the start of their captivity, but I’m not one to do things like everyone else. Madness happens to the best of us. Could be a blessing. The world grows more unreal by the minute and not as I thought it to be. Uncorrelated reality. The defining feature of all lunatics.

Bird’s disappearance, Mynah’s pictures, the beads, the Half-Blight mongrel, and his talk of escape have all confused me. I’m off course, run aground. I push away his words, yet they sound more convincing each time I replay them in my head. The facts around his story match so well with what was happening in the House around that time. It’s even harder to ignore thoughts of freedom. Escape is a capital crime, Mynah might cut her losses, get a fresh batch of Top Floors. Blossom is so spent, Honey, wild Honey, so often more trouble than she’s worth. Me? Another Ink Girl broods somewhere in this city. My replacement could be in the stack on the bed. As an Ink Girl, I’m expendable, but as the ghost writer to a well-dressed monster drunk on ambition, I’m second to none. That may save me if I’m caught trying to escape, but without the others, why bother.

I shiver and swallow a sob. When my weight shifts, the stacked photos topple and fan out around me. Girls destined for The Nectar House. I’ll resurrect each of them with the beads. Every night, I’ll visit their rooms, renew their energy. Create a ritual, incorporate it into House Girl lore. They’ll be fresh as daisies each morning. They’ll live to be a hundred. Mynah can farm me out to other Houses for a price above emeralds. I’ll convince her to let the Girls go to pasture. Perhaps leave open the occasional door. Some, those who can, may even make it back to the hovel they called home.

Bellwether.

Pulp and ink in exchange for my compliance. Peddle flesh with my beloved words, pinch out well-turned metaphors like sausages. I can do that. I will improve the lives of so many Girls, I will safeguard the words on my wall, bring Bird back. The beads will help me, my comrade in arms. I just need to wait for Little Bird to be brought to me again. I’m good at waiting. I have the smoldering patience of volcanoes.

I fetch the sack and dump its contents onto the bed. Something inside me catches at the thought of thousands of words trapped inside the ink. The clear plastic cylinders click against each other, and the sound is more lovely than any aria. Plainsong, canticle, alleluia, ode.

I can do this. I can write Mynah another catalogue, even with the pictures. Don’t see the Girls as a people. Don’t see them as would-be cadavers, emaciated, hollow-eyed creatures with a Blight grunting on top of them.

The girl in the photo by my pinky toe smiles up at me. A yellow daisy is tucked behind each ear. She understands. She wants me to write this foul book for Mynah. Encourages me to write dozens. Enough to fill a library, she screams. Make each entry more gorgeous and tantalizing than the last. Every newsstand and post office, every waiting room and tourist shop will stock them. I will be Mynah’s license to mint jaspers. The beads are the best thing that have ever happened to her, to me, to a generation of Girls. Mynah will let me write on every wall of this house and will never be able to make do without me.

On my bed are the keys to my locked world masquerading as pen and paper.

Bellwether.

Chapter 19
Dirge

In my dream, Bird is singing.

“Ours is a life bookended by Blights.” Her voice is as pretty as it ever was. “On First Night we are born, on the Last we are no more.”

To a barren field studded with wooden stakes, Bird sings of SonaScapes and horror, and somehow, of hope. Nailed to each spoke in the ground is a photograph of a girl. From under the shade of a Sonagachi, her voice rings out beyond the hazy horizon. “This is the crucible of the House Girl. It has been this way for hundreds of years. A lifetime of jaspers will be spent on your body, but in the end, we are the ones who enjoy the treasure of eternal relief. When your last droplet of life is taken, surrender will be easy, as easy as a sigh. For in death, you will have everything you have ever wanted and nothing you don’t.”

In my dream, Bird is as good a liar as I am.

My neck aches. I must have fallen asleep with my head resting on the windowsill after Key left. The heat of the midday sun has plastered my hair to my forehead. I wipe away my sweat and check my fingers for ink stains. If it’s hot enough, the ink bleeds out of my hair and down my face.

I’m groggy and in that murky state between dream and wakefulness. My tongue is leaden with the coppery taste of stale fear following a night of bad dreams. Bird used to call this the nightmare hangover. The unease is all part of the aftermath.

I rub my palms over my face, remembering the last notes of Bird’s song. The dream setting shifted to our courtyard flooded by a heavy, unrelenting rain and transformed into a mud pit studded with the dirt-splattered photographs of the girls. I was at my window watching the water rise and dislodge the bodies buried under the Sonagachi. Bloated Blossoms and Honeys floated outside my room. Arms intertwined as if they were dancing. All the while, from her window, Little Bird looked on and sang and sang. Dirge. A lament for the dead.

My mouth feels dry. The breakfast tray was replaced, and a fresh carafe of water waits for me. How long have I been asleep? I look at Blossom’s window. She’s looking down at the courtyard. Her mouth is open like someone who is about to start screaming.

Look down.

No.

Scan the wall next to Blossom’s window. Reach the corner. Good. Now over to Key’s wall and window. Key’s not there.

I hear the shu-cha sound of a shovel.

Look for the next corner. Stare all along the wall until you reach Honey’s window frame. Only look at the wooden frame, not at Honey.

Look down. See for yourself.

No.

Honey stands motionless, staring at whatever scene is playing out below. Her expression is blank and harrowed and remote at once. It’s as if she’s inhabiting a place no one else can visit, a realm all her own and different from dream, or SonaScape or vision. Hell realms, Xibalba, Gehenna, Abaddon.

“Look down, Ink.”

Who said that? My head is a helium balloon. I let it drift away from the window and deep into the safety of my room. Bolt-hole, anchorage, sanctum, lee.

A shovel stabs the ground followed by the plop-scatter-swish of dry dirt on dirt. A Goon’s voice. Two Goons. Mynah’s giving orders near the base of the tree.

Thump. Something dropped into a deep hole. I pull myself back into my room, press my face against my words. Catacomb, cairn, kurgan, crypt.

“Ink.”

It’s Blossom’s voice.

“Ink.”

She wants me to look down. Did I hear Honey call for Bird?

Death knell. Dakhma. Dolmen.

“Ink,” Blossom begs.

I won’t.

I don’t need to. I know all I need to know.

“We’re too late,” Blossom says.

Our lives are bookended by Blights.

Chapter 20
Sedition, insurgence, insurrection, coup

“You can come out now.”

Blossom is trying to lure me out.

“They’re gone.” Her voice is calm, infuriatingly neutral, and flanked with a measured reassurance I don’t trust.

I sit cross-legged on my bed, not daring to move. If I sit still, stay in one spot, don’t disturb the air around my body, I’ll halt the passage of time. My room is safe harbor, the bed steady underneath me. From this spot, I am dry-docked, protected from the pitch and roll of ugly fate—as long as I don’t look out that window. My room and the books that keep me are as sound and solid as an anchored battleship. In these eleven square feet, I am sure-footed and unassailable, a sailor strolling the deck of a dreadnought.

An ink stain in the shape of a key spreads across my thigh. I guess I fell asleep and left the pen uncapped after I whored out these children for Mynah’s couture. My own dress is ruined. It’s not my finest, but it’s made of lilac mulberry silk and must have taken Key at least a week to get the dye to ombre so delicately.

The photos of pimped Little Girls never left my bed. A Blossom with cornflower blue eyes leans against my left hip. Cornflower blue. Is that the correct shade? Or are they cerulean? Azuline, mazarine, arctic? Finding the right word matters. How else can I do them justice?

“Ink!” Blossom adds more force to her voice, laying siege. Ballista, trebuchet, catapult, sling.

For a Blossom Girl, it is better to use flowers with these shades. Sea holly, larkspur, lupine, fairy thimble. The Blossom in the picture has a pointy chin along with slightly upturned brows which give her an elfin appearance. Her eyes are preternaturally blue and if I did not know better I would think they were dyed. I have to mirror the perfect bloom to describe her. Fairy thimble blue. The obvious choice.

I’m so thirsty, but I’m all out of water. The day is scorching. The sun is as relentless as Blossom, who keeps calling my name. I ignore her. I have work to do. This book won’t write itself.

An Apple Girl with pink, round cheeks is waiting for my ink. Underneath her are at least a dozen more, just as chubby, just as well-fed farm girl pretty. All night I sifted through my words, finding the right ones, writing Mynah’s book, and only the Apples are left. They’re the hardest to write about, that’s why I’ve saved them for last. Apples appeal to the gourmand, to the Blight of delicate palate. Their SonaScape is as dependent on the quality of the House chef as the Girl serving the meal. I hate the vernacular of foodstuffs. How many ways can you say succulent, savory, and toothsome without sounding like the Apple Girl on offer is to be cannibalized? Maybe that’s Mynah’s next gimmick. I shiver. Twin Pleasures. This can’t be true. None of it. There are rules. Mynah is a by-the-book type from an old family tied to tradition, fervently follows the old rules. A collection of mynah birds is called a statutory, as in, regulated by law. I should tell that to Blossom. The dialect of her tribe does not use collective nouns, and she finds them so curious.

“Ink!” Blossom sounds hoarse. How long has she been calling?

I’ll refuse her all day if I have to. Key talked about a binder, about Mynah’s plans for Blossom. Blossom knows, she did not want to scare you. Mynah will break her anchor, sell her. Terrible Houses.

I peek out the window but only at Honey, who is at her window shoving a rice ball into her mouth. Her cheeks are puffed out and full. Honey doesn’t bother to wipe the spit that escapes her mouth as she eats handful after hypnotized handful. She stares down at the spot where they lay Bird down. How long has she been there?

“Ink.” Blossom’s voice is a projectile.

I focus on the street sounds slipping into the courtyard through the alleyway. A car honks as it speeds away, a man curses at the fading sound. Somewhere a child plays with another one, they shriek in delight, perhaps they are playing with water or maybe a ball.

“Ink, look at me,” says Blossom.

No. Area denial weapons. Defensive devices to present passage or entry.

“Please, look at me,” she begs.

I give in, kneel at the window. “What do you want from me?” I have never been as grateful for Blossom’s lousy vision as I am at this moment. I don’t want her to see my face.

“I don’t want anything.”

I look at her at last. “This is not my fault.”

“I never said it was your fault, Ink.”

“You never say anything. You never do anything, except maybe lie. You sit pretty and play your stupid game and let everyone else do the dirty work.”

Her cheeks are wet with tears. Area denial weapons do not discriminate against friend or foe; they make the entire area hazardous.

“What happens now?” It’s Little Bird at her window. Her window. She looks tired and haunted. She’s beginning to look like a real Nectar House Girl.

“Little Bird,” starts Blossom, “this morning Mynah and the Goons—”

I cover my ears and concentrate on the thick branches of the tree. The ones closest to my window are sturdy enough to hold my weight and that of a well-fed Goon. Today the Sonagachi tree is transformed into a freshly crowned colossus as it sucks nutrients from the carcass of my dead friend. This collection of roots and twigs has become an unerring emblem of fealty, an homage to honesty and authenticity. It has no pretense, no affectations, and doesn’t lie.

Blossom’s talking to me. Maybe she’s yelling. Don’t know. Don’t care.

I count the swiftlet spit nests in the Sonagachi. Enough for a feast. The bough underneath my sill is a marvel. It divides in two then three until it reaches the central branch attached to the trunk. The limb is studded with smooth stumps, evenly spaced, like the rungs of a ladder. Such symmetry. How have I ignored this splendor for so long? My gaze follows the bole of the tree to the lumpy roots beneath, and there, sitting on her heels with her back to me, is Key.

Has she been down there since this morning? Inter, entomb, sepulture, inhume. Did she carry the shovel for Mynah as she buried Bird, thrilled to scurry at Mynah’s deformed heel-toe? Key’s shoulders tremble in the wake of crocodile tears. Weasel. Shark. Bottom feeder. Leech.

“Ink,” says Blossom, “you were wrong not to trust her.”

Fratricide, amicicide, friendly fire.

“We wasted too much time.” Blossom looks down at her hands. She can’t face me either. Torpedo, boarding ax, canon, pin. “We should have given them to Key.” She shows me the mala beads. “It was so stupid not to.”

“Put them away!” I say.

“It’s my turn with the necklace,” says Honey with her mouth full. Her teeth are covered in caramel-colored bean paste and her lids are half-mast. Key must have bribed her into behaving today with treats laced with Oxmed. Honey was so high on the stuff during the days the Apple took to die, she couldn’t keep her head up, I thought Key was going to kill her with than much sedative. Once the stupor wore off, Honey had a full belly, so she didn’t raise too much dust, but this is different. The most recent House Girl rotting in the courtyard is Bird. When Honey comes down from the Oxmed, she’s going to … I don’t know what she’ll do. Bird was all she had. Blossom played her game, I read and scratched words on my wall, the Apple Girl ate away the dull hours pumped up like a sow with the Oxmed poison, but Honey? All she’s got is a bed inside a cage in the shape of a honeycomb, bird saliva swill that passes for soup, and her rage. Before The Nectar House, she only had neglect and want until Bird came along to sing her to sleep. Bird was the first and only person to love Honey how she deserves to be loved.

“I said put the beads away, Blossom,” I tell her through gritted teeth.

“Why?” Blossom waves them at me. “What’s the use now? Can’t save them all, can you, Ink?”

“I didn’t promise to save all of them.”

“Then why bother?”

We were wrong to wait. My heart folds in on itself. It shrinks with despair I thought I had already traced the limits of.

“Blame her.” I point to Key, who is so dwarfed by the trunk of the tree, it would take three of her to make its girth. “She probably gave Bird the Oxmed that finished her. Key should be the one in the ground.” Fertilizer, dung, ordure, nightsoil. “This is her fault.”

Key’s face is puffy from weeping. Her droopy eye is almost completely shut. Hookworm. Vulture. Rat. She tries to say something, but her voice comes out like a croak.

“None of this is Key’s fault,” says Blossom.

“If she had the least bit of sense …” Words catch in my throat. “If she could be trusted with anything other than ruin and misery, then maybe, maybe!” I clamp my mouth shut to strangle a sob. I will set myself on fire before I shed another tear on account of Key.

“Bird wasn’t another mouse, House Girl,” says Key.

I’m not sure if she’s talking to me, or to the tree, or to the dead. Either way, she doesn’t sound like herself. Replacing her usual wavering, mealy-mouthed intonation is a naked contempt I’ve never heard before.

Key looks up at me. “Cocksure. Arrogant. Too proud to watch or say goodbye as they lowered her to the ground.” She digs her fingers into brown dirt in front of her.

Honey jumps onto the sill, her housecoat flapping behind her. She likes to wear it tied around her shoulders like a cloak. Key used artichokes to dye the cloth a vivid green. It makes Honey look like a rabid parakeet. She scans each of our windows and Key below with her mouth ajar and giggling like someone watching two trains about to collide and loving it.

Little Bird sucks her fingers and watches us as intently as Honey—but without the psychotic glee. Little Bird is pale, her expression also forecasting cataclysm, while Blossom begs us to calm down, lower our voices, reminds us of what Bird would have wanted. Everyone ignores her.

Key’s face blotches red with anger. “You think you’re smarter than everyone else, Ink, but the only thing you’re good at is leaving people when they need you most.”

Lash, thrash, pommel, trounce.

Key makes tight balls of her hands and beats them against her thighs. “Of all your lies, Ink, the best one is telling people you love them.” Not a single syllable is garbled as she says this.

Conflagrate, excoriate, immolate, combust.

I turn to the shelves of the headboard. The Girls in the photos look nervous as I ransack the headboard shelf for my heaviest books. I find the book I need in the section on warfare. ‘Just and Unjust Aggression: the Ethics of Violence’ is at least four pounds. I shove my arms out the window and let the book fly.

Batter, bombard, broadside, deluge.

I launch book after book at Key. Each strike is a direct hit. The Sonagachi dampens the force, but my aim is impeccable.

Fusillade, volley, broadside, salvo.

Swiftlets explode off the tree in panic. Pages dislodge and flutter frantically through the branches. And yet, the fool doesn’t move! Key sits still as a stone and takes everything I throw at her.

“Ink, stop it!” Blossom is screaming something about Mynah and the books and the strap, but again, I’m not listening to her, or to anyone, because the only thing that exists in our perverse universe is the joy of hurling book after book out of this House at the person responsible for putting me here.

Blossom pleads for Key to go inside, but Key stays hunched under the tree, arms limp at her sides. She’s weighed down by the ballast of her guilt. One can’t run away from the truth. The truth is faster. Faster and patiently waiting around the next corner.

I don’t stop until the headboard is empty and I’m staring at the exposed plaster of the wall between the warped boards of the shelf. Hidden by the books now littering the courtyard, scratched into the cheap wood of the headboard, are the first words I wrote on The Nectar House walls. The ones written on the darkest of days. I forgot about them as the books encased me and walled off my former life.

Pencil, river, snapdragon, sister.

I was a different girl back then, one who clung to things she loved and somehow believed she would have again. The sight of my spindly letters inspires a fresh fit of outrage. I grab at the window bars and shake and shake. A bar comes loose in my hand with a puff of cement dust.

“Now you’ve done it!” screams Honey.

I fall on my haunches, breathing hard and holding the bar with awe like it was a magical object that materialized in my hand.

“Put it back,” hisses Blossom.

I test the bar’s weight in my palm.

“Put it back, Ink. Now.”

Harpoon. That word is on my wall.

“Key.” Blossom stretches out the single syllable of her name. “Get inside.”

Key stands up and starts to pick up the broken books, putting them into a pouch she’s made of her skirt.

My entire torso fits into the opening made by the missing bar, every inch of me set for detonation. I am primed by the fires of betrayal and injustice, her twin. Nothing but this exists for me, now or ever. The iron bar in my hand is my only reality. A part of me screams: Halberd, javelin, pike. Another part, the soft one that resides at the opposite end or my battlefield landscape, whispers: snapdragon, river, sister.

Blossom sticks her arm out of her bars, dangling the beads over the courtyard. “I’ll fling them over the rooftop and into the street!”

Thwart, scupper, foil.

“Drop them, Blossom!” Honey laughs. “Bring them to me, Key!”

Key collects the books and torn pages like she’s in a trance.

Blossom says in a voice I don’t recognize as hers, “Throw that bar and I’ll never forgive you.”

What’s the word? Checkmate.

I shove the bar back into place.

Blossom pulls her hand back in. She flattens her hair, trying to play it cool, but her chest is heaving.

I sink back onto my heels. Photographs pool around my feet. I’m drowning in little girls. I want to toss them out the window, too, throw them overboard and off the sanctuary of my bed, but my hands are made of lead and pinned to my sides. “Sooner or later they—we—will all end up under that tree,” I tell them. “This is no life, I know.”

A beautiful Bird Girl in hair twists looks up at me from under the pillow. She demands an explanation. I tell her that all I ever wanted was for more time to be together. To laugh a bit and to read aloud and be loved by Birds and Blossoms.

A car alarm goes off in the street, and below, Key begins hauling the books into the house. We all watch her in a stupor as she makes several trips. She’s still crawling in the dirt for the last of the pages when someone silences the car siren. A new noise: someone spewing expletives. A fight ensues somewhere in the street. There may be a chase, or an authority that intervenes, because the yelling becomes muffled and far away.

Key moves slowly, deliberately, as if stalling or waiting for something. More of my abuse perhaps, but I am all out. The armory is empty, the canons are shot. She stops as she’s about to go into the house.

“Mynah knows.” She stands under Blossom’s window. “Blossom, she knows.”

“Knows what?” asks Honey, having finished her treat and now licking her fingers. “What does Mynah know? No one tells me anything.”

“Mynah knows Blossom’s gotten her monthlies,” Key says. Her face crumples up, ugly and twisted. “I bid, rid, hid the rags like I do each month, but she knows now and ...” She looks up at Blossom, her face slimy with tears and snot. “She’s found another House for you. It’s happening for sure. One of the new ones. She left for more Girls yesterday, as soon as she gets back, you’re sowing, flowing, going to a House called The Second Sister. Mynah’s sea silk is already on order.”

Blossom’s color drains.

“Are you going away?” asks Little Bird. “Will they send me away too?”

“Shut up, stupid.” Honey launches a glob of spit at Little Bird. She misses, but Little Bird cries out as if struck and retreats into her room.

Honey says, “What other House? What’s Key talking about?”

Key is a deceiver. The best kind. The innocent ones from whom you never see it coming. The Second Sister. She couldn’t come up with that. The mongrel Blight warned me. Still, something about both their claims feels right, true. And Wing, the Half-Blight mutt, if what he says about these Twin Pleasures Houses is true, then Blossom is lost already to a fate worse than slow death by Sona. A sob wells up in my chest, threatens to capsize me.

“Blos-som?” Honey’s voice cracks.

Blossom looks like a mortar shell has gone off in her head.

A brisk wind blows in from the harbor, along with the smell of garbage and stagnant water and diesel from ships leaving port. The Sonagachi barely sways, stalwart and unmoving as a fortress. The ground below seems far away.

“She can’t.” Honey’s voice doesn’t sound like her. “Mynah can’t sell Blossom. Blossom lives here, with me. I don’t want that. I don’t want. I want.” Tears run down her face. If Blossom could see them, she’d be as stunned as I am. I’ve seen Honey rip her bedclothes to rags, pull out her hair by the fistful, take a chunk out of her arm with her teeth, but never have I seen her cry. “I want Bird,” she wails.

She says this over and over, growls and stomps her feet, begs Blossom to deny what Key has said, but Blossom is deaf and dumb. I tune her out, too, until Honey is little more than a face full of snot and a steady stream of profanity. Finally, she retreats behind the bulwark she makes of her pillows stuffed between the bars.

Little Bird’s window is empty. I think I hear her crying, but it’s only the caws of four seagulls flying overhead, making their way to the coast.

This is it. Our ship is sinking, way off course in enemy waters. Assailed by turncoats. Can’t trust Blossom to tell me the truth, can’t trust Mynah to keep us anchored away from greater harm. Wontons, deviants, sybarites, lech.

“I can fix this,” I tell Blossom. The words come out even though there’s little to brace them in truth.

Could there really be a boy in the street? I’m sure I can run if I must. Blossom, too. And Honey? She’s weak but has the heart of a renegade born to bolt. If we can make it to the alley. Do something, Ink! Key’s voice goes off inside my head. Key has access to the courtyard. Wing’s voice: she can’t run with her lame leg. Once the shock waves stop, Blossom and her big brains will help me figure out how to get to the boy outside.

Outside.

Even the word feels dangerous.

Sedition, insurgence, insurrection, coup.

“Blossom,” I hiss.

An Orange Rebellion.

Her face is pale, candle wax.

“Blossom.”

An obsidian bracelet.

“Blossom, we still have the beads.”

Magical objects, djinn in bottles, gifts from maize gods. The stuff of fairy stories and folk tales. Miracles.

“Put your finger on your lip,” I tell her. “It’s now or never. What is your opening move?”

“What?” She squints at me.

“Put your finger to your lip, Blossom.”

“What are saying?”

“A few nights ago, I had a Blight.” I swallow hard. “His name was Wing.”

Chapter 21
Bludgeon, cudgel,
billy club, cosh

“Wing is a stupid name.” The late-day sun beats on Honey’s scabby knees as she thumps her feet against the side of the building.

Blossom’s cheek is pressed against a bar facing where she must imagine the alleyway out of the courtyard is, but her gaze is way off. “Are you sure the alley is big enough?”

“Of course,” I answer, but how can I be sure of anything?

Blossom nods, but her unease hangs on every leaf and twig of the Sonagachi, like the flowers of her namesake.

Honey moans. “I’m tired of all the talking. No more plans.” She points her dusty toes at the courtyard like she’s trying to touch the bottom. How can a child locked in a room manage to have such dirty feet? “Let’s get on with it.”

Plan. I haven’t called upon that word in a long time. Feels odd to use it and it has no place on my wall. Only the free should be allowed to write it. “Plan” implies a future, offers choice, invites opinion and option. Until the beads, until today, until the mongrel Blight soldier, I had none of these.

“Is Little Bird back?” asks Blossom.

“No, no Goons there either.” Little Bird has been gone all morning. In a rare stroke of inspiration, Mynah ordered a macrame bed hung from the ceiling of Little Bird’s room. Key will weave it and layer cushions inside to make it look like Little Bird is singing to the Blights from a nest. The construction was to take place later today, so they must have moved Little Bird to another room. That’s a boon as well as a mercy. Fewer ears to worry about, but the mercy part is for me. I hope I never see Little Bird again; I don’t need to face guilt in the guise of such a gutsy and sweet kid. I’ll add her to the long list of Girls whose fate I’ve meddled with for good or for bad.

Before she left, Little Bird told us she was with Bird her last night and fell asleep beside her. When she woke up, Bird’s side of the bed was still warm, but Little Bird was alone. I was so envious when I heard this, I tasted metal in my mouth before I noticed I was biting down on my tongue. What I would have done to fall asleep beside Bird, even if I were the only one alive when the sun came up. We haven’t seen her or Key for hours.

Little Bird is the smallest, could easily slip away with us through the crack between the buildings, but stopping for one more Girl means one more door to unlock, one more corridor to transit. Her hallway violates the strategy of facile ground. Facile ground, the terrain at the edges of hostile territory, allows for easy extraction of troops. When in facile ground, tarry not.

Blossom bites her lower lip. “Maybe we should wait.”

“For what?” I sigh. “Mynah’s been gone for days. The Goons have probably been hard at the SonaDrink and can’t even see straight by now. And no Little Bird to worry about, tonight is the perfect time for …”

Blossom raises her eyebrows at me as if daring me to say it. After hours of plotting, I still can’t say the word aloud. Escape.

“I want to go over it again.” Blossom’s knees press against the bars. “There must be another way to—”

“There isn’t.”

“I don’t want to hurt her.”

“It’s the only way.”

“We should at least ask Key to help us, so no one gets hurt.”

I throw up my hands. We’ve been arguing for hours. I don’t have to convince her, only coerce her into doing what I say. “We’re wasting time. Mynah won’t be gone forever.”

Blossom grabs onto the bars of her window. If we were in the same room, I think she would grab me, shake me until I agree. “Ink, if you leave Key behind, you’ll live to regret it.”

“I would have skewered her like a pig if you hadn’t stopped me.”

“You don’t mean that.” Blossom’s finger moves to her lip.

“There’s nothing else to think about. They’ll find Key unconscious and her keys stolen. She’ll be fine, I know exactly how hard to hit her. She won’t get punished as accomplice.”

“Then can we at least wait for Little Bird?”

“You can stay behind to coddle her if you want. Oh, wait.” I put my finger over my lip imitating her. “You’ll be leaving The Nectar House soon. It’s either with Mynah or with me. Take your pick.”

“There must be a way.”

“We’ve been through this, Blossom. The second floor Goon is built like a stevedore and posted at Little Bird’s door.”

“Key can slip him some Oxmed like the Half-Blight suggested. He’ll be passed out or, at the very least, sloppy.”

“Even legless, he’d overpower us.”

“But we’re so much stronger than before.”

“Not Honey.”

Honey hears her name. “You better not be planning without me, I’ll scream for Mynah!”

“Quiet!” Blossom and I say at the same time.

“Don’t yell at me!” Honey puts her face between the bars, ready to spit. “I don’t need your stupid magic beads to take on a Goon. I took an eye all by myself, I can do it again.”

“But can you take out a tongue?” I say. “The third floor Goon has to be out cold. Surprise is our only chance.”

The first in the field is fresh to the fight, ensure that the enemy must hasten to battle and will arrive exhausted.

“Blossom,” I say, “keep the beads in your dress, not a moment to waste. Have you moved the bed?”

She wraps her shawl around her shoulders and nods.

“It’s getting late.” I sit up. “Waiting is what cost us Bird.”

“That’s not what cost us Bird.”

Her words hit me clear across the courtyard. Blossom wants me to defend myself, admit that we should have enlisted Key, but I’ll keep my own counsel on this and everything else to do with Key.

“Key should be here with the tray any minute now. Be ready for my signal.” I leave the window and circle the room. I check the position of the SonaPot for the hundredth time. I practice swinging it, executing the perfect arc and angle over and over. I have to Goldilocks this. Too soft and Key might cry out. Too hard and I could really hurt her. I will be quick. Merciful. Blossom will be proud. Key won’t know what hit her.

I go over my plan. Obsess over every detail, predict every permutation. I know I am strong enough to do this. I’ve always been strong, and the beads have made me stronger. I used to carry Key on my shoulders for hours after every rainstorm because the centipedes she was so deathly afraid of would blanket the streets. Our town nestled in the valley of rainforest, and it rained every day. Even back then she was skinny as an excuse, but my legs grew strong as stallions and the beads have restored me and more. I could carry a camel across Blossom’s desert if she asked me to. My plan to save us will work.

I pace the length of the room again. On top of the pile of Mynah’s photographs is a Girl in a thin nightgown stuck to her chest. Sweat or rain create the stark outline of her clavicles and the start of her ribs. She has First Floor Girl written all over her. Mynah will have to take another picture for the catalogue after the girl’s been fattened up with Oxmed. How am I expected to describe such a pathetic creature? How can I entice anyone, desperate Blight or not, to desire anything from her? She looks like the kind of person who’s been afraid her whole life.

Stop. No more thinking. Save the ones I can. Walk past the ones I can’t. The cost of war. Sacrifices must be made on the march. I review our plan again, always pausing for fear fantasies of discovery or failure. If we manage to get to the alleyway in the courtyard tonight, and there really is a boy waiting, who knows what fresh hell awaits. Could be a trap. I will deliver my friends to the false Blight and we’ll end up on the black market. The Nectar House harbors horrors of the familiar kind. There are rules of engagement in this tiny room, but beyond the courtyard is no man’s land.

There’s a flutter in my chest. It turns into a pressure below my sternum. I walk to the door. I can’t remember the last time I touched it, or I considered its dual use. I always think of those who come in, never me walking out. I want to put my head between my knees and gulp for air, try to calm down, like Bird taught me, but I don’t want to be on the floor when Key comes in with the tray.

If we make it to the courtyard, I’ll make Blossom and Honey go through the alley first. Blossom will fight me on that, but I’ll make her take Honey and run. I know I’m right about this, even the parts of the plan I haven’t shared with Blossom. I’m right about all of it.

The smell of cornmeal and chickpeas wafts in from the kitchens. I check the shadows of the Sonagachi for the time. The branch in the shape of a shepherd’s crook will soon reach the bookshelf above the door. Key will be delivering the evening meal. She starts on the first floor then works her way up.

I reposition the SonaPot closer to the end of the table, then consider moving it to the Blight chair. Then I do move it. No, it doesn’t go there, she’ll know something is off.

The lock rattles. I grab the SonaPot, then put it back on the table as she’s stepping into the room. The fat pot wobbles but doesn’t fall.

Key’s carrying a small tray with a bowl of yellow porridge and a sweaty carafe of water. The tray doesn’t look heavy, but the water swishes as she wrestles with its weight.

She walks to the table. “The lot, pot is in my way.”

I take the SonaPot and ignore the panicky flutter in my throat. Do it now. Before she turns around.

“I miss Bird,” she says softly.

My breath catches and I can’t move. I blink and wait for her to say something else but only a whimper comes out, the kind of sound a wounded animal would make.

I lower the pot. Sandbag, anvil, chain.

She turns and puts her arms over her head. “You don’t have to hit me.” She unravels a wad of keys from her hair and offers them to me. “Take them.”

I blink at her.

She jingles the keys at me, but I can’t move.

“Blossom sold me, told me you were going to leave me.”

Blunt force trauma. An injury caused by forceful impact or attack. Worse when unexpected.

“Go ahead. Save yourself.” Key tosses the keys to the floor. Loud as an explosion. “Lock me in. I won’t make a sound. If you don’t, I’ll hang, bang my dead, head on the floor. I won’t make you hit me.”

She kneels and braces herself with both hands then pulls her head back, about to slam her face into the floor—

I grab her wrist. This is the first time I’ve touched her in three years.

“Just go, Ink. Mynah will be back tomorrow. Blossom will be gone in a few days.”

I’m rooted to the floorboards.

“It’s not a trick. Go.”

I’m deadlocked in doubt. When I open this door, Mynah will be standing there with her biggest Goons and the strap. When I look into her keyhole irises, Key looks like she’s made her peace, like she’s already given up, like I’ve already hit her, like I’ve already left her behind.

Her shoulders shake and I think she’s crying but she’s laughing. The palsy makes her smile crooked, and it’s been so long since I’ve seen her laugh, her face looks strange, barely recognizable.

“You thought I was going to beg you to take me with you?” Tears stream down her face. “I don’t heed, welp, want your help and I don’t need you. Not anymore. You abandoned me a long time ago. It should be easy to go.”

She’s trying to flip things around, deny accountability by blaming me for some imagined injury. It won’t work. Clever tactic. Worthy of Mynah.

“I’m going to scream now,” Key says calmly. She takes a breath and howls, “Help! Help! I need he—”

The side of my SonaPot smacks her on the temple. Her body twists with the force of my blow before collapsing at my feet.

Chapter 22
Abscond, decamp, bolt

The swiftlets scream like they’re on fire, the way they do when a predator is near. I’m listening for any Goons who may have heard Key yell, but aside from the screech of the sky rats in the courtyard and the anvil slamming in my chest in terror, all is quiet.

I scoop up the ring of keys and run to the door. Which key is mine? There are at least a dozen, and they all look the same. Replica, doppelganger, simulacra, twin.

Is Key breathing? No time to check. I’ll only leave her alone for a minute, long enough to get the others to the courtyard. Then I’ll come back. She’s so small lying there. She weighs nothing. It will be just like with the centipedes. The alley is not far. I can save us both.

The keys slip out of my sweaty hands. I catch them against my stomach. Calm down. Think. Five Top Floor Girls, five doors, five locks. Key’s room doesn’t need a lock. Doesn’t mean there’s no key. Four of the keys are similar.

The keyhole seems impossibly tiny as my shaking fingers try the lock. I can’t even open a door. How hard can it be, if Key can do it—she’s very, very still over there. I should check.

I’ve lost my place on the key ring. Did I try this one? Have to start over.

My breaths come in ragged gulps, I think I’m hyperventilating. White dots flutter like moths in my field of vision. I grab the doorknob to steady myself and almost fall backward when it turns. Key didn’t lock it.

I leap onto my bed and yell to Blossom, “Now!”

A second later, she calls to the stairwell Goon, not loud enough to alert the House, but enough to convince him to come to the door. I can faintly hear her tell him she’s fallen and needs such immediate assistance that there would be no time to call the Parlor Goon.

I clutch the doorknob and count to ten, then twenty. Did Key just stir? How much time has passed? I count again. Slowly. Is that long enough? Maybe that was a minute. Did Blossom manage to knock him out? I press my ear to the door. Nothing from the corridor outside, only the birds in the courtyard cackling like it’s the end of the world.

I swing the door open, half-expecting Mynah and her strap and every Goon in the House in tight formation behind her, but I’m met with the indifferent and empty hallway. I poke my head out. When I look toward the stairwell, I hit my head on the shelf next to the door frame holding the decorative bottle of ink marking this as the cell of the resident Ink Girl.

The Goon’s empty chair is knocked on its side on the landing. When I step out, I’m hit with a flash of vertigo. The floor undulates, oscillates, ripples, rolls, and I hold onto the walls to steady myself. The hall is only vaguely familiar and much smaller than I remember. The air is cooler here and thick with the farty smell of cooked lentils. I take a step to the left. I’m disoriented. Which way is Blossom’s room? Left, no, right, around the corner.

Footsteps coming closer. A Goon?

Flying around the corner is a whirl of yellow and burgundy. It’s Blossom, still holding her SonaPot. My legs go limp at the sight of Goon blood staining the pot.

She’s so close. “Blossom,” I whisper. She’s like she was in the SonaScape, except she’s taller and smells of rose water.

She takes my elbow. Blossom’s fingers around my elbow and on my skin feel more unreal than the corridor. She leads me away from the stairs. The soft pads of her hands are cool and almost as soft as Key’s.

Blossom is saying our names.

“Key … Honey … Ink, we have to get Honey.”

Her words are all jumbled in my ears, but our footsteps sound remarkably loud. I struggle to locate the direction sounds are coming from. The swiftlets sound off like cadets, a whole platoon seems to surround the House, or maybe they live in the walls.

Blossom leads me around the corner to Honey’s corridor. Hers is the only door; next to it is a small alcove holding a crystal-clear honeypot. A honeycomb and wand are suspended in the amber.

Blossom tells me to open the door.

The keys look like they have doubled in number. I don’t know which one to try first.

“Ink?” Honey calls from the other side of the door.

“Be quiet,” Blossom urges. She registers that I’m stuck, useless, and snatches the keyring. “Check the hall.” I turn away as she tries the lock.

“Ink.”

I freeze. It’s not Honey’s voice.

“Ink.”

It’s not Blossom’s either.

I turn my head and there, standing next to Mynah and a wall of Goons, is Key, holding the side of her head and calling my name.

Chapter 23
Strix

The first thing Mynah did was send Goons to board up our windows. Sunlight seeps in between the nailed plywood slabs and divides my room into uncharted territory. Without the familiar silhouettes of the Sonagachi, I have no idea how long I’ve been lying here. It’s as if our failed escape devastated everything, even time.

Sleep has been replaced by a kind of stupor that’s not quite wakefulness, not quite oblivion. A twilight trance. I watch a crooked shaft of sunlight make its way across my room. The sliver of light began its journey at the end of my bed. This marked the start of Honey’s screaming. Her howls accompanied the sunbeam’s course across my room and up the bookshelves. By the time the pale-yellow scythe made its way up to the short stories, Honey had unleashed an unholy torrent of expletives that must have been heard in every corner of the House and two streets away. With lungs like that, she could have been a Bird Girl. Banshees would hang their heads in shame.

When Mynah caught us at Honey’s door, Blossom and I tried to get away. Why we bothered remains a mystery; three Goons and nowhere to run to does not make for victorious odds. We found ourselves mired on desperate ground, when an army must save itself from destruction by battling without delay or exit strategy. On desperate ground, fight.

Blossom kicked and spat and fought like a fury as the Goons frog-marched her back to her room. I did the same, but Honey didn’t even make it to the hall. Had she stayed silent during our capture, she would have saved herself a savage beating from Mynah’s strap. Honey thought we were leaving her behind, so she revealed her willing involvement as she cursed us, our ancestors, the moment of our birth and every day until we take our last breath. The only mercy is that in her wrath she didn’t mention the beads or the alley.

Both Honey and the House are now quiet, and the wooden boards make any noise from the street muffled and unrecognizable. Even the swiftlets seem complicit in the silence, or maybe they’re elsewhere celebrating our ruin. I rework our botched escape over and over. I should have locked the door behind me, I should have hit Key much harder, I should have ripped out her tongue from the root or strangled the sound out of her where she fell, I should have remembered the first time she betrayed me to Mynah. I neglected to hobble the feet she used to fetch Mynah and now the bottoms of Honey’s feet are pounded into pulp. The betrayed should never show mercy to those who gut them. They will only do it again.

Key was not like this when we were little, or perhaps she had a heart full of worms that I never saw until it was too late. When she left the First Floor she tried to talk to me, begged me for months. A campaign on her knees, blubbering and feigning ignorance of her wrongdoing. Little more than bones and hair. Pencil thin. A hungry ghost I refused to feed with my words. The knife she left in my chest twists at the thought that I let her do it again. Only someone you love can betray you. You never fully believe what they have done, then they do it again. They use your hope to deliver the final blow. Coup de grâce, quietus, death knell.

Honey won’t be able to stand for a month, two months if bones were broken. I don’t understand why Mynah would beat us before burying us. It seems like wasted effort. There’s only one punishment for running. She may leave Blossom alone if she’s already been paid for, can’t blemish that beauty before a sale, but Mynah is not acting like herself. It could be too much SonaDrink or the illness turning her brain into aspic or perhaps it’s the new way of doing business because times are changing. Maybe it will be the strap for Honey and the shovel for me.

Like the birds, Key has also been conspicuously absent, not even coming to switch out our pots or refresh the chips. No need. Nothing in, nothing out. Only a trace of cedar lingers under a blend of stale, musty air and vinegar. The books smell dusty, but the acrid vinegar scent is my own. My skin is tacky, and my hair is stringy with grease and in desperate need of a wash. It seems that we are to be denied meals and water as well as sunshine and each other. I don’t care about any of it. In my stomach sleeps a knot of vipers, and I can’t face Blossom, or Honey, or especially Little Bird, who I didn’t even try to save.

A rustling in the hallway heralds my fate with a shovel or a narrow strip of cowhide. It’s time.

Mynah eases the door open. She glances over at me lying on the bed and dismisses her convoy of Goons with an impatient wave. One of her many talents is knowing when there’s no fight left in a Girl.

Through the wooden boards of my window, an aberrant sunbeam illuminates Mynah as if she were standing in a spotlight. Today’s dress is modest but made of polished cotton so finely treated it could be mistaken for satin. The technique for making this cloth is one of Key’s specialties. Even in textiles, Key is a maven of duplicity. It’s sweltering in our rooms when the boards are up. Fine silk would be too hot and prone to sweat stains if one is engaged in even the slightest exertion. A lightweight, absorbent fabric is the only smart choice for beating the tar out of little girls. Mynah is a monster, but a chic and practical one. The deep Tyrian purple of today’s dress complements the mustard of the leather strap jauntily draped over one shoulder.

My fingers curl involuntarily as I imagine the soft leather in my hands. Garrote. A handheld ligature weapon, well-suited for silent assault, widely used across cultures due to easy adaptation of material.

Without her Goons, I’m sure I can take her, even half-crazed with thirst as I have been for days. I couldn’t kill her but could maybe maim her. How long does it take to pluck out a human eyeball? I should have paid better attention to Honey’s bold tale of enucleation. Even with a Goon in the hall, I’m sure I could manage at least one if I’m quick enough. There’s nothing sharp in my room; I’d have to scoop one out with my fingers.

Mynah comes at me, and I steel myself for the strike. She stands next to me, knuckles on her hip, and crinkles her nose. “You stink.”

She’s close enough for me to smell the anise failing to mask the rotten egg stench of her mouth and surely close enough for me to tear at her face. Maybe too close. I need more leverage or momentum or traction or whatever it’s called; I can’t find the right word.

“Sit up.” She yanks the pillow out from under my head and everything doubles. “We’ve work to do and things to discuss.”

Strix, a bird of ill omen who feeds on human flesh.

Her composure confuses me as does the use of the collective “we,” so I hesitate. Before I know it, she’s walked away. Too late. Too far away. Wait for her to come close again, then I’ll jump off the bed and land heavy as I can on top of her. How well could you procure children with two empty sockets in your head? Honey’s hard-won affection would finally be mine.

I swing my legs over the side. Gravity pools the blood to my feet, and the floor swishes this way and that. Last time I got up felt like days ago, when thirst and hunger started to play tricks on me and the Girls in Mynah’s photos began to talk and have yet to stop. I moved them to the corner farthest from my bed, but I can still hear them from here. They won’t shut up, especially the Inks. They’re insufferable beasts who blame me for the Goons dragging Blossom down the hall by her pretty hair. Their insistence is redundant. I don’t need reminding. The image of Blossom clawing at her head and kicking her feet plays on a loop whether my eyes are open or closed.

When Mynah turns and stoops to collect the photos, I’ll hit her on the back of the head. My metal SonaPot is also missing and replaced with a plastic one, so it will have to be a book. Attack from higher ground affords advantage, so I’ll pounce from the bed, where height will give me heft. Striking from behind also lends the element of surprise. Whatever brings more force. I’m so weak, I have to rely on strategy. The quality of decision is in the well-timed swoop of a falcon.

Mynah lowers herself into the chair, but slowly, hand on her hip. “A Blight once told me you were wasted as an Ink Girl. He said you had a mean streak a mile wide and would have made an excellent Strap Girl.”

Drunk again. Very drunk, judging by the way she stumbled into the chair. She’s massaging her hip. I’ve seen her nurse this leg before. Her disease leeches the calcium from her bones. If she lives long enough, her long bones will become hollow like a bird skeleton. Maybe it’s arthritis or she’s spent from beating a fifty-pound child. Good for me either way. I move to the edge of the mattress with my arms wrapped around my knees. The left hip is weak. I angle my body slightly to the left. “All done?” She glances at the pile of photos and the paper filled with my writing. “You’re a crafty thing.”

Ignore her. Drop your shoulders. Don’t look too eager. I scoot closer to the edge of the mattress, pretending to smooth my dress, and I calm my racing pulse with a chant. E-nu-cle-a-tion-e-nu-cle-a-tion-e-nu-cle-a-tion.

“You always knew how to get by here. Like you were born for this life. Bred for captivity.” She shakes her finger at me, like a dotting auntie to a naughty child. “Except for this recent escapade.”

She’s trying to goad me. I won’t let her. What she says doesn’t matter. Another drunken tirade. My bottom hovers over the bed, my calves are screaming, impatient. Spring, coil, bound, vault. I teeter on my toes, get ready to move.

Mynah lunges out of the chair and delivers two, three, ten lashes—I can’t tell because they fall too quickly.

After the sound of each swoosh, the leather strap lands on my ribs while I try to protect my head with my arms. I fall to the bed on the offended side, then roll over while pain detonates up and down my entire body. Even my scalp is on fire. Death by strap. That’s new. The world is changing. Keeping up with the times.

Minutes pass. How many I don’t know. Throbbing on my skin is the only thing able to keep some sort of time. At some point, Mynah stops. Returns to the chair.

She’s still out of breath when I hear her say, “Come at me like that again and I’ll beat every fancy word out of your head forever. Now, sit up and stop being stupid.”

I need a few more minutes to address the pain and ask for a reprieve, request more civil rules of engagement, wait for word that the hurt’s had enough of me, emptied the armory. I yield I yield I yield. When you are overrun with casualties, surrender. The air is a wool blanket over my head. Somehow, I manage to straighten my back.

“You’re lucky that’s all I have in me tonight.” She coughs and spits on my floor. “You’ve always been lucky. Your town had one working stoplight and no proper school, but you were blessed with a head for business and a good hand at making me jaspers. Aside from your looks, fortune favors you.” She cocks her head to one side. “You were the only schoolgirl in your town not to perish. What made you skip school that day? I’ve always wondered. How many ate school lunch with a side of serin that fateful day? Almost as if you knew there would be pesticide in the swill the government calls a meal. Maybe you’re part witch.” She spreads her fingers and wiggles them at me. Her curly nails click-clack together as she tries her best to produce a malevolent cackle, but it only culminates in a congested cough. More spit, this time, it’s an impressive globule worthy of Honey.

“When, the h-hen,” she slurs, “then after managing not to die like all the kids in your village, you land in the most prestigious House in the country. That’s hate, fate for you!” She wipes her mouth with her hand after a wet burp that was just short of vomit.

This may be the most drunk I’ve ever seen her. Besotted, canned, stewed, pie-eyed, soused. She looks two sips away from passing out on the floor and pissing herself, but her strap has made it so I couldn’t lift my arm to tickle her chin, much less try for that eye.

Right on cue, she pulls out a glass flask from her bodice. She swishes the pearly SonaDrink at me.

Mynah has never offered me anything to eat, drink, or hang myself with, so she’s either gone mad from alcohol poisoning or she’s offering me my final meal.

“You should be a great feast of fountain,” she slurs the next bit, “of gratitude.” She thumps her chest. “I’m the best thing that ever happened to you. Every mother with a dead child in that town would have wrestled for the joy of tearing you to bits if I hadn’t saved you.”

She takes a nip from the bottle, holding it daintily between her monster claws. “My father had a penchant for Ink Girls. He was a great man, a legend among Blights, and my mother prolonged his life with many First Nights, some of which I was lucky enough to witness in this very room. This room is special to me.” She’s told me this story before. Each time, I have to will myself not to be sick.

“I made you what you are. In one fell swoop, I elevated your station!” She swings her arm so wildly, she would have spun herself around if she hadn’t been seated. “Destined to die scalded in a vat of dye before you got your monthlies or choked on the fumes in the garment factory up to your elbows in alum.” She slams her hand to her throat in dismay. “And still you try to run away from Mynah? Your winged angel bird.”

The most astonishing thing of all, more than any fantasy SonaScape, more than any magic beads, and more than the preternatural speed with which Mynah wields that leather, is that she sees herself as a savior. Messiah, crusader, champion, paladin, white hat. Mynah is the worst kind of villain because she believes she is good.

I snort in disgust and end up half-coughing, half-gagging. She may have broken a rib, because each time I inhale, the air doesn’t seem to go in evenly, like one of my lungs is asleep. Between breaths I tell her, “Let me suffocate in peace and quiet in this airless room.”

“You’ll not be feeding my tree today.” She puts the flask to her lips. “There’s more use in you yet. Regain my trust and, in time, I’ll make you a Key Girl.”

My breath catches again, launching another coughing fit.

Mynah leans back and drains her flask, giving me time to recover before she says, “Traditionally, Key Girls are related to the procuress. Daughters, sisters, nieces. My sister’s dead. Word of advice there, if you have a fondness for fungi, learn to identify them on sight.” She’s trying to be funny, but she’s tearing up. “And her daughter so accident prone, leaving me to run this House alone.”

For a moment, I wonder if I’m concussed, if Mynah’s knife strap knocked something loose in my head.

“In time, you’ll accompany me to the villages. Maybe even give you some pocket jaspers to buy paper or pens or books or cantaloupes, I don’t care as long as you find me choice Girls and placate reluctant fathers, becalm any meddlesome aunties. Lure the pretty ones off the bus for me. You’re cunning like that. Like me when I was young.”

“I’m nothing like you.”

“You’re exactly like me. Iron-willed, decisive, heart hewn from stone. You don’t bother with most of the Girls. I’ve noticed that.”

“Why these stupid games, Mynah? I won’t fall for them. Why give me keys when I tried to run?”

“You won’t run. You understand your place in the world. You’re smart enough to know this is the best you’ll ever be. Always knew how to get by here like you were bred for captivity. Browbeat the others to do the same.”

“Why have two Key Girls?”

Mynah tries to take another sip from the flask, forgetting that it’s empty. “Key has as much business being a Key Girl as a giraffe has being hitched to a plow. Blights have no patience for her. I gave her a chance, like we agreed because I’m a woman of honor, but she’s too soft to hold the keys, cringing in corners all the time. I have other uses for Key.”

A current of heat runs though me. “What other uses?”

“My mother used to say all twins are parasites. I was a twin”—she puts her palm over her chest— “but you knew that. Did you know that?” She fans the air. “No matter. One always comes out stronger than the other. One twin always takes, the other gives. Guess we know which ones we are.”

“Return to your aerie, carrion feeder.”

I realize a second too late that I’ve said this out loud, that I’ve gone too far, because the strap wraps itself around my calf and sends a tsunami of pain all the way to the tips of my ears.

She cups my chin. “Stop the foolishness and think of how many Girls you could save from penury and overly fond uncles who would misuse them.”

Bile burns my throat. If there was anything in my stomach, it would be all over Mynah’s shoes.

“I’ll do it. Everything you say. But leave the others alone.”

The throbbing in my leg counts out the seconds as she watches me coolly.

“Good. Keep your Blights happy, write me nice books, stop giving away your Sona, and all shall be well.” Mynah registers my surprise and adds, “The Sonagachi has ears and tells me everything.”

“I’ll build you an empire. Your Girls will be the model of productivity. SonaScaping machines. Even your napkins will be made of Sea Silk, but,” I say and pause, watch her smile falter, find myself listing to the side, cover it up by resting my elbows on my knees, “so long as the Blossom stays at The Nectar House. She’s bloomed, yes, but into a gorgeous creature. Make her an Apple Girl, and Blights will sell their own mothers for a SonaScape with her.”

Mynah shakes her head. “That deal is sealed. She’ll be gone in two days.”

I look down at my hands as if I could watch everything slipping through my fingers. When overrun by unseen forces, when all ground is lost, gather courage.

Mynah waits for me, watches me.

If Mynah is willing to do business with such unsavory Houses, what else would she do? To compromise The Nectar House’s impeccable reputation, to risk the honor of her family name and betray the traditions she believes in like religion, that would be impossible. Then I remember the photos, The Book of Ardor, and say, “Don’t do it, Mynah.”

“Do what? Don’t mumble.”

I can hear the smile in her voice. She knows my agenda before I do. Savvy to every trick in my book because she taught them to me.

“Leave her alone.”

“Who?” She bats her lashes.

“Please, don’t use Key in this way.” She’s going to make me say it. “Don’t make her a Twin Pleasures Girl.”

“You’re too late.” A chisel, sharp as Mynah’s knife, cracks me open. Slice, splice, sever, twin.

She knew I would ask this, and when. Predicted I would save the request for last because it meant the most. Her glee at having me so under her thumb is palpable. Malice comes off her like a furnace. It’s thermonuclear. Capable of vast destruction even though of compact size. Mynah in a nutshell.

I don’t resist as she pushes me onto my back and takes the bed runner off my bed. I don’t resist as she lifts my tender feet, and I don’t resist as she wraps them tight at the ankles.

“Twin Pleasures work has been described as the great equalizer! Doesn’t discriminate between floors. Your sister has finally gone beyond the use of her needle. She’s getting a reputation for herself. The darling among a particular type of Blight, those of … unusual appetites. All my broken Girls are called”—she looks up and waves her hand in the air as if she were reading from a marquee—“Chimera.”

Should the world be split in half by the thunderbolt of a god or laid asunder by the arrogant simplicity of a split atom, the scream inside my head would be louder still.

“Did you hear me, Ink? Chi-me-ra,” she says and drags out the syllables. “Rolls off the tongue. That’s the word you used to describe her in The Book of Ardor. Bet it’s scribbled here somewhere. Gave me the idea. The Nectar House is the only one to boast them. I buy them for pennies, sell them like rubies. Half the price of whole ones, and I charge twice as much. Business move of the century. A magazine wants to interview me.”

My arms won’t move. My legs won’t move. The connection between brain and body is gone. Twin, either of two people born together or to halve in two, to sever.

“Don’t look so stricken, or are you jealous? Your sister’s famous. Garnered her first Blight last week. An international. You should be proud, she has you to thank. She’d be a seedpod on my tree if you hadn’t bartered her off the First Floor. Instead, she’s headlining my grotesqueries. Now, where’s my book?”

She looks around and her gaze lands on the bag in the corner. “My curiosities have no place in the catalogue. I’ll need a supplementary handbook. You’ll have a fun time describing that lot. I’ve already narrowed down the title. Which do you like the best: Carnevale or Rara Avis?”

Mynah knew she wouldn’t need a Goon to hold me down. Terror bombing. Attacks planned to weaken or destroy morale. My poor Key. Why didn’t she say? Did Bird know?

“Think about what I’ve said, and what I’m offering you. Free from distraction. Hunger sharpens the mind.” She taps my forehead with her curved nail. “I’ll take the boards down in a few days. Consult the Blossom, see what she says. She has more sense than you or any Blossom Girl should ever have. I wouldn’t be surprised if she were the one behind your fumbled coup.”

“Mynah,” I beg, “make Blossom your Key Girl instead of me.”

“The Blossom would only organize a mutiny, even make it all the way back to the sandbox I spared her from.” Another grin. “No, you’re my sweet spot between her and Key. Too self-interested to pose a threat, smart enough to do what I need done.

“Now, I’ll forgive you for being led astray after losing your canary to the Sonagachi, but all that noise can’t go unchecked. New Girls are on their way. They’ll look to you to know how to behave. You have a future to consider. Think of all the Girls you will ennoble.” Mynah slips the strap from her shoulder. She winds its end twice around her knuckles. “Once you heal, we’ll start anew. On the right foot.” She laughs at her pun as she lifts my bound feet.

First hit—and I’m watching from above. Dirigible, zeppelin, blimp.

Second—the pain splits me in two. Ringer, replica, clone.

Third—Ink is the inhabitant of two bodies. Syzygy, castor, pollux.

Fourth strike—

Chapter 24
Petrichor

Petrichor, the loamy scent of rain, byproduct of bacteria.

I smelled the rain long before I heard it pounding against the roof. It took Mynah several days to take down the boards, and it poured the whole time. The edges of the boards were water-stained from the storm that tried making its way into my room, somehow succeeding in making my sheets damp, but not sacrificing a single drop to my desperate thirst. At one point, I swore the Sonagachi was singing ballads celebrating how its roots were gorging themselves on rainwater. I broke four fingernails down to the quick trying to pry off the planks, desperate for a drop, before I calmed down.

There was water in my carafe this morning. Not enough. I drank every drop, as well as the cold soup left along with it. Key’s bird’s nest soup. Whether this was Key’s idea or Mynah amusing herself, both knew I’d lick the bowl and wish for more. When Key came in to leave the tray and returned to refresh the cedar pot with fresh chips, I have no idea. I’ve been locked inside a delirium of pain and fever and regret. Fetter, shackle, neck ring, leg iron, cuff.

A velveteen sack, twice the size of the previous one, sags on the Blight chair. I presume it contains fresh pen and paper and headshots of Mynah’s “darling grotesqueries.” This is a new low even for Mynah, who is capable of so much damage. The photos of the unbroken Girls are gone, but I suspect their ghosts cling to spider webs and crouch under the bed. What will they think of the Chimera Girls? Will they be adversaries and lay holy war, battle for territory and resource? Or will they join forces, find a common enemy, and rise up against me?

The overhead light burns bright, but the corners of my once so familiar room are dark caverns where sinister ghosts take up residence. I know these aren’t sound thoughts, but nothing feels familiar or safe. I look to the courtyard, to the Sonagachi, my newfound friend, my north star.

Heavy rain transformed the dry dirt into mirrored puddles and solitary mudflats. Only Honey and Little Bird are out. Honey’s head rests on her sill, deliberately turned away from me. Whenever I try to talk to her, she responds by spitting into the puddles with admirable precision. The ripples she creates disappear into distorted reflections of The Nectar House Girls at their windows as seen from below. These are the eyes of the dead staring back at me. I need more water. My thoughts are twisted and bleak. Woebegone, tenebrious, Cimmerian, lugubrious, and all the words for wretched. There aren’t enough walls to fit them all.

Honey has barely moved from her spot since they took her boards off and when she does, it’s as if she’s moving through molasses and devoid of the chaos and rebellion we’ve come to expect from that side of the courtyard. Honey’s only concession at communication was to show me her feet through the bars. They’re so swollen they barely look like feet. She winced as she lifted them. The soupy blisters look like the inside of a blood orange, and her left ankle droops at an odd angle. She may never walk properly again. I’m sure she blames me for this and for botching the escape, for denying her the quick death of a First Night, for letting Bird die. Maybe she should blame me.

Little Bird and I wait for the Goons to remove the last boards from Blossom’s window. Before the beads, all I did was wait. When they came along everything spun out of my control, time sped up. I let a necklace provoke me into letting my reach extend too far beyond my grasp and look where that got us. So, I return to what I do best: I wait. I wait for the hollers of the new Girl, for the last gasps of the old ones, for the evening’s Blight, for Mynah’s next command. Head down, mouth shut. Learn from your sister, she said.

Little Bird’s planks were the first up and the first taken down. She had no part in our farce, but Mynah did it to scare her and punish me further. To her credit, Little Bird didn’t scream or cry or carry on, bested perhaps by Honey’s shrieks, or perhaps Little Bird is growing used to the atrocity of her situation. She looks tired and haunted but otherwise fine, feet intact. My instincts about her were all proven correct. She even tried to sing to us, but Honey shut that down with a quick volley of phlegm and venom.

So Little Bird waits along with me, wide-eyed and sucking on her fingers like a much younger child. Sometimes the young ones will do that, regress to a younger age. She keeps looking at me as if waiting for me to tell her what happens now, how she should act, what’s next to come. She can look to Blossom for counsel; my understanding of this world is no longer reliable. I have nothing to offer her but a story of remorse and the cautionary tale that are my own mangled feet.

I grab my ankles to examine them. The soles are far from healed but certainly look better now. Days ago, the skin was a lurid pink with blisters threatening to burst if I looked at them too hard. It was like wearing shoes of fire. The bruises still hurt but not as badly as before, and the inflammation is down. I probe my heel with the pad of my thumb and am met with a muted siren of pain up my leg. I brace myself for a second wave, not trusting that this first flush is the worst of it, but none comes. The dull throbbing passes, slowly, but there’s no doubt that I’m better. The last time I got the strap, it was two full moons before I could bear my full weight. Yet, it’s been less than a day since Mynah’s hell visit, and I can almost touch the skin. I attribute this to the healing powers of the beads who were the start of all this trouble. Had I left them and us well enough alone, Honey would be running around her room, playing poppets with rags instead of staring doll-eyed into the Sonagachi.

Blossom’s boards are gone, but it takes her a while to make an appearance. When she does, her face is expressionless and cold as river stones. She doesn’t look like herself, or maybe this is who she really is. Betrayal will do that. It will unveil the true self of the person underneath, the one who will sell your secrets to your enemy and violate the good you’ve both sworn to protect.

How could she keep so much from me? The new Houses, Key’s mistreatment, collusion, and confidences. She doesn’t deserve the beads. In the love language of flowers, which one represents infidelity?

“Honey,” Blossom says, ignoring me, “how do you feel?”

Honey responds weakly, “Hurts. You?” Her voice is hoarse from screaming so long and so hard.

For Blossom, Honey has warm concern. For me, steely silence. Traitors, to the last. Only someone you love can betray you. The more you love them, the deeper the pit they can toss you in.

“I’m fine. What hurts?” Blossom asks Honey.

Fat tears roll down Honey’s face. Blossom can’t see these rare tears. Indeed, Blossom has been denied a phenomenon. Honey blasphemes, sulks, throws her clothes out the window, and tries to bite the Blights, but tears have not been in her repertoire of mayhem until now.

“Honey’s feet got the strap,” I offer. “Honey, I’ll give you my SonaDrops, they’ll help.”

Another salivary missile is launched, startling a cardinal out of the tree and onto the ledge of Key’s window. Songbirds are rare in a city with so many feral cats. The bird has lost its way and is far from home.

“Look, a cardinal!” says Little Bird. “Do you see it, Honey? It’s on your side. Blossom, you can’t see it, can you? Ink can’t see it because there are too many leaves, but maybe it will sing if we whistle. Honey, can you whistle?”

Honey turns farther away from Little Bird, from me and my weak Sona promises.

“You were wrong not to try to bring Key with us, and I was stupid to trust you,” says Blossom.

Strike capability. The skill to defeat the opposition by destroying its arsenal from the start.

“And Key betrayed us like I told you she would.”

Blossom says, “The Goon woke up. It’s all my fault. I didn’t hit him hard enough. He saw Key in the hallway.”

“She alerted Mynah,” I say.

“Not on purpose. You should have locked the door behind you, but you left the door wide open. Key would have covered for us, but the Goons saw her on the floor, and you weren’t in your room. Key played dumb—”

“Not a stretch.”

“She was smart enough to pretend she knew nothing about our plan. What would we have to gain if Key gets the strap too?”

“Satisfaction,” I say. This spite comes from habit. Endogenous, automatic, hard-wired, base.

Honey makes a mean, growly chuckle into the crook of her arm, or maybe she’s sobbing, I can’t tell.

“And you! If you had only kept your mouth shut,” I say to Honey, “you wouldn’t be dragging yourself to the thunderbox.”

“Don’t yell at her,” says Blossom. “This isn’t her fault.”

Here it comes. I brace myself.

“It’s mine.” Blossom climbs onto her window seat. “I shouldn’t have listened to you. We could have made it out with Key’s help. All of us.”

“And you’re still defending her. What will it take to make you see she can’t be trusted?”

“What will it take for you to realize that hurting her won’t help you feel any better? What’s your end game? Does hurting someone smaller and weaker than you bring you the satisfaction you keep talking about? Because you look miserable to me. Is it vengeance? Do you even know what drives you anymore? I’m sick of it, sick of the ugliness festering inside you, and I’m glad I won’t be around to see you, or it, anymore.”

Celandine House, Alouette, Lux, Dovetail, The Second Sister.

I brush away angry tears with my sleeve. I don’t want to fight with Blossom, or anyone anymore. Soon, Mynah will sell Blossom away from me forever. What good is the promise of keys to the kingdom if I can’t use them to save anyone? What use are magic beads if all they bring is ruin?

“Blossom, I don’t expect you to understand. How could you with half a story to go on? I didn’t want you to match my cruelty, only to trust my reasons for it. You couldn’t even do that.”

Blossom is at her window, only a few feet and quarter of a tree away, but it’s like Mynah has already sold her. You’re truly alone when no one understands the choices that made you what you are.

“Why are you so mad at her?” It’s Little Bird. Even Little Bird’s speaking voice is melodic and sweet, pairing nicely with the tweets of the cardinal that has somehow avoided being chased away by the swiftlets.

“I don’t hate Blossom.” My voice sounds very small. “I love Blossom more than I love myself.”

“Not Blossom,” chimes Little Bird. “Why do you hate Key when she brings us treats and fixes up our hair? Aren’t you sad that she can’t she walk straight and her face is pushed in?” Little Bird sticks her fingers back in her mouth, sucking at them with renewed vigor while waiting for my explanation.

For the first time today, Honey looks at me through the branches of Sonagachi. Honey loves gossip. She likes stories of violence even more. A life lived in peril has honed her instincts, and they sense a bloody tale is about to be told. I’ll indulge her. I’ll indulge Blossom, too. Maybe then she’ll get it. Perhaps I’ll satiate a curiosity, vindicate my years of wrath, bestow a gift of truth. What else do I have left to give them? Perhaps the truth will reward me as well. Perhaps there is freedom in unburdening myself, in explaining how it is possible to both love and hate someone in equal measure.

The swiftlets flying in and out of the trees don’t seem to know whether to roost or forage or fly away. The presence of the alien cardinal, now accompanied by its powder-brown mate, has thrown the swiftlets off their game. Why they haven’t mobbed the young couple out of their tree is a mystery. Even the birds have lost their script, improvising and subverting their natural instincts.

“Go ahead, Ink,” says Little Bird. Everyone else seems hypnotized by the scarlet bird, but Little Bird is no longer impressed. Perhaps because she’s fresh to captivity, the bloody specks don’t seem special and she can focus on me, her newest friend, her surly teacher, her would-be savior and endangerer. Maybe her instincts are as good as Honey’s, and can sense a story that needs telling, the kind that eats away at one’s capacity to love the people they claim to love.

Blossom rests her hand prettily on her chin, elbow to sill. “Tell us the story, Ink.”

Chapter 25
Should Have Been
Twenty-Eight

“I was born first and without fuss, but my mother suffered four hours delivering the second twin.” My face feels numb. No, all of me feels numb. The others are looking at me, stunned into silence. Even the swiftlets have settled down.

“Key was contorted inside the womb, and the midwife had to pull her out by the leg. When Key finally wiggled out, limp and blue, she took my mother’s life along with any hopes my father had of a son.”

Honey bolts upright, then winces. Her surprise at my words was powerful enough to make her forget her broken feet.

“Sister?” whispers Little Bird.

“Shut up, stupid.” Honey’s trying to pretend like she’s heard this all before, that my words hold no interest, but the white knuckled grip on her bars says otherwise.

Blossom’s face is unreadable and only nods, encouraging me to continue. She doesn’t know. How would she? Not even Bird knows—knew this. I always thought Key would at least tell Bird. Then again, why would she rat on herself, reveal herself as a backstabber?

“But you and Key don’t look like each other,” says Little Bird.

“Not all twins look the same,” explains Blossom.

“Key and Ink didn’t share a womb. From the beginning, I denied Key fellowship.” Twin (noun), either of two people who shared the uterus at the same time; one who was born at the same time as a sibling.

“Our father hated Key’s strange eyes, saying they would bring bad luck or some other peasant nonsense. Soon the people in our neighborhood started to blame their misfortunes on her. Rain on a wedding day, a port wine stain on a baby, weevils in the cornmeal, an increase in taxes, anything that befell them was attributed to Key. On the night of a lunar eclipse, we had to hide in a meadow until the sun rose because people thought Key was causing it. They said she was cursed.”

“Is that why her face is droopy?” Little Bird pulls at the side of her face.

Honey says, “Curses aren’t real.”

Blossom can’t see Little Bird looking to her for confirmation on this. Curses aren’t real, but neither are magic beads.

“Key wasn’t cursed,” I say, “just a little sickly, a runt. I was ruddy and fat, taking Key’s share from the start. The midwife said Key’s organs were all in reverse, mirrored from their normal position. Even her heart.” Dextrocardia, from the Latin meaning right hearted.

“And the freaky eyes?” Honey asks.

“She was born like that, it’s only a spill in the pigment of the eyeball. Her vision is excellent, maybe better than most, and that’s why she can create marvels with a sewing needle. It’s called a coloboma, from the Greek meaning ‘defective.’ A Blight taught me that word. Said he was an eye doctor to the rich and famous. Once, when Key was setting up the SonaDrink tray after bringing me my Blight, he laughed and told her she looked like a mongrel cat that narrowly survived getting hit by a truck.” I laughed along with him. Of all my crimes, I will never atone enough for this one.

“Does she talk like that from being born blue? I had a cousin who was born blue,” Little Bird says. “He could barely talk and when he did, the words were all mixed up. He used to play airplanes behind the brickworks. One day he didn’t come home. We never saw him again.”

Organ snatchers. They tend to pick off easy prey. The old me would have offered this as an explanation, fulfilled my role as guide, furthered Little Bird’s hard education, duty bound to toughen her up for the days ahead, but this new Ink Girl says nothing, knows nothing, and is unrecognizable.

I pluck a Sonagachi flower growing near my window, getting the attention of the female cardinal who flicks her tail at me. She wants me to hurry up and finish my story, so she can get back to building her nest, or preening for her partner or plotting our death or whatever inspires her avian proclivities. I’ll add bird behavior to the growing list of things I don’t know.

The Girls wait patiently for me to continue.

“Everyone hated Key for something she had no say in. I kept rocks in my pocket to throw at the boys who taunted her. I took the blame for the milk she spilled, the eggs she dropped; said I was the one who left the gate open the night my father’s motor scooter was stolen. Now that was a mighty beating. Mynah could have taken a page out of my father’s book on beatings, but I took it and any other I could by proxy. Key was pitiful from the start, painfully slow, forever underfoot, and she couldn’t remember anything. As if her memory were a two-minute clock that would reset itself a thousand times a day. All this enraged our father. He hated how she shrank from anyone or anything that came toward her, how she had a hard time learning to talk. His left leg was shorter than the other and he used a cane. He beat her about the head with that cane since before she could walk.”

“Might be why she can’t hear out of her right ear,” adds Blossom.

That had never occurred to me. I try not to think about that time.

“One day, Mynah came to our town, which was not very big but was off a major highway and had a bus depot, and a movie theater that smelled like bubble gum and pee. Once upon a time, the town had a school for girls, a famous one. But I’ll tell you about that later.

“Mynah was there to buy an Apple Girl. The father of the prettiest and most buxom girl in our village had made a deal with her. I can’t remember her name, only that she was a year older than us, maybe ten, and she would come up with the best games. Her father wouldn’t let her go to school, and she and Key were friends. Her mother got wind that a woman from the city was coming to procure House Girls. Her husband had already sold off their eldest daughter to a woman who had two front teeth capped in gold and ran a brothel a few towns over. We would see her in the neighborhood with her mouth full of money and false promises of work as housekeepers and nannies, but the girls who went with her never came back, so we knew to stay away from her.”

“What’s a brothrel?” asks Little Bird.

“It’s brothel, you rube!” says Honey, flashing her snaggle tooth, but then her face softens. She cocks her head curiously at Little Bird much like the lady cardinal skip-hopping on a branch between them. Honey adds, in a voice worthy of her moniker, “Don’t interrupt.” Even Honey is unrecognizable.

“The mother of the would-be Apple Girl secretly put her on a train that morning to live with relatives. When Mynah and her Goons made the father pay for her trouble and travel, he beat his wife in the street. That must be how my father caught wind of a woman paying jaspers for unwanted girls. Funny. I hadn’t thought about that until now. He waited for my aunt to leave the house, then brought Mynah and her Goons to our House.”

“Why did he wait for you aunt to go?” asks Blossom.

“My aunt wouldn’t have allowed it. She loved me. She loved Key, too. She was the one who taught Key to weave and embroider and treat fabric, hoping to make her useful to my father, and she was right about this like she was about most things. Key wove and sewed commissioned clothing while my aunt taught me to read, a less valuable skill for a girl from a family of carpet weavers and textile workers, but I was hopeless at the loom. My fingers were like sausages.” I pluck the stem off the flower and tie it into a true lover’s knot, which Key taught me how to make. “Key’s ambidextrous, that made her brilliant at the loom.”

“Ambi-amba-what’s that?” asks Honey.

Blossom says, “Means she can do things with both hands just the same.”

“Key proved herself a prodigy. That means she was good at something naturally, barely having to work at it. Soon she learned to dye fabrics better than my aunt. My aunt loved to wear purple, just like Mynah. Key could reproduce over twenty-five shades of violet using the mulberries and madder root that grew outside town. That was a selling point I exploited mightily to Mynah when I advocated for Key’s expulsion from the First Floor.”

“What has exploded?” asks Honey.

“Ink means that she got Mynah to get Key off the First Floor so she could sew our clothes. It’s how Ink saved her, but she never told anyone.”

“Not even Key,” I say.

Tears are already staining Blossom’s satin collar, and I haven’t even gotten to the good part yet. I look away and grab another bud.

Little Bird is asking more questions, to me or to Blossom, but I’m barely listening, focusing instead on the feisty female cardinal standing her ground against a young swiftlet intent on knocking her out of his tree. Better use those wings, sweet ladybird, this tree is poison and the Sonagachi always wins.

The little girls are disagreeing about something; Honey is winning the argument, of course. Whether they’re listening or not, I’ll keep talking. Now that I’ve begun to string these words together, I’m compelled to finish until I can step back, see the whole story. Like a tapestry or a SonaScape.

“Weavers have to work backward. Some use a mirror in front of the loom to guide their hands, but Key didn’t need one. She kept one there for my benefit, because I liked to watch her make images as if by magic. My imagination, my ability to see things from a weird angle is poor, but her mind can work things back to front. Not everyone has this uncanny relationship with symmetry to imagine things in this way, thread by thread and across and not as they are in reality. So gifted. Show her a dress in a magazine at breakfast and she’ll reproduce it by teatime. She made gorgeous wedding tapestries, the old fashioned kind that look like painted portraits, with knot-work so fine you could see every hair on the groom’s mustache and count every bangle in the bridal party.”

In my hands is a SonaBlossom torn to shreds. I toss it out the window and bits of petals lie like fallen snow on the dirt. Bird would have thought they looked pretty. Can she see them from below? Strange thoughts, well-paired with the look Blossom has on her face, an unfamiliar blend of pity and shock.

“The day my aunt came to live with us, we had a rare snowfall. She was my father’s sister, a widow who lived in the city with my little cousin Zada. Zada was six and we were eight and we became fast playmates. During the winter months my father slept at the silk farm, and the four of us stayed inside and wove and read and played games every night. Those were the best times in my life. My aunt would sing us songs about three girls who went on adventures fighting ogres and storm giants. There was a studious one, a sweet one, and one who could weave magical ropes they used to climb down into an enchanted valley where they had perilous adventures. My aunt’s voice wasn’t as nice as Bird’s, but we loved it.”

“Get to the part about Mynah and the Goons taking you,” Honey rasps irritably. “Did you fight? Did you run?”

Blossom wraps her arms around her knees like she’s cold. “Tell it how you want to tell it, Ink.”

“My aunt lived with us for two happy years when a school, one for rich girls and very fancy, opened its doors to the poor girls from our village. I think it was an election year because the school was famous for being the best in the country, but the people in my town didn’t care about that. They sent their daughters to school, mostly because they served the children a free midday meal. My aunt was a smart lady who could sell the beard off an emperor, so after much negotiation, she persuaded my father to let me attend along with Zada. Key had no head for letters or numbers and the ones she could remember she wrote backward, so she’s never sat in a classroom a day in her life. One morning, Key woke with a high fever. My cousin Zada went to off school, and I stayed home to care for Key.”

Honey moans, “This story is boring.”

“That day, the cook told the director the new oil canisters smelled off. The director had bought the two-gallon jugs from a local farmer for cheap. The director ignored the cook’s warning. Pesticide was found in the corn oil used for the rice served at lunch that day. Twenty-seven girls died, including Zada. It should have been twenty-eight. My aunt never sang or wove or read ever again.”

“What this got to do with—”

“Shush,” says Little Bird to Honey.

Honey must be fresh out of spit because she huffs and puts her chin in her hand.

“I heard about that,” says Blossom.

“Everyone heard about it,” I say. “A town of less than a thousand people, no more than a speck on the map, became famous the world over by the end of a school day.”

“Did you see the dead girls?” asks Little Bird.

Honey sighs. “Finally, a good question.”

“I saw all twenty-seven of them wrapped in their death shrouds and stacked like blocks on a pyre, the smallest body at the top. The funerals were all held at the same time because there were so many and the families were poor. One giant pyre burned for two days with flames so high you could see them from the highway. Honey, you would have loved that day. Cameras, news reporters bribing the locals for gossip, food stands. Five mothers spit at me so I didn’t stay long.”

“Why did they spit?” asks Little Bird.

“Because Ink was the only one not pushing up daisies, dummy.” Honey is carefully slipping her swollen feet through the bars. She’s still wearing her Blight clothes, a plain waffle-weave dress which she has somehow managed to poke holes into even in her weakened state. “If Key hadn’t gotten the sniffles, Ink would have bitten the big one. It was fate. Ink got lucky. People hate that, especially if they don’t get what they want, or lose what they got to someone else.”

“People stopped buying Key’s tapestries, and there were no more dress orders. My father lost his job at the silk farm and was now saddled with two useless girls. My aunt barely spoke to us after Zada died and threw out every book and scrap of paper in the house along with all the pens. At night she’d pace the yard, mumbling over and over, ‘There should have been twenty-eight.’ During the day she’d lie, face down, on Zada’s grave or gather with the other mothers whose daughters died. She was probably there when Mynah arrived.”

“How many Goons did she bring?” asks Little Bird.

“Yeah, how many?” asks Honey. “It took four to bring me in.”

“Yes, yes, and you grabbed an eyeball, you were very fierce,” says Little Bird, also sticking her feet out the bars like Honey.

“Only one Goon. Mynah and our father talked outside the house for a long time. Key asked me to explain what was happening, but I didn’t know.”

“Her hand was so sweaty in mine. Somehow, she knew something bad was about to happen. How she knew, I don’t know, but she’d been jumpy for days. Wouldn’t let me out of her sight, making me stay inside if anyone new came into the neighborhood. I figured she was still shaken about what happened at the school and our aunt was so bizarre in her grief. Days earlier, Key became terrified of her and wanted to run away, worried she would hurt me. She said that she and the other mothers of dead girls cursed my name and were planning something.”

“Ugh, the Goo-ons,” whines Honey.

“We couldn’t make out what Mynah and our father were saying out front, but Key begged me to run out the back, to hide in the meadow until Mynah left. She was hysterical, and I told her that I was sure everything would be fine and if not, I could fix it.”

When I yank a leaf off the tree, the branch shakes and scares the cardinals into flying away. Good on them.

“Then what?” It’s Blossom.

“I didn’t know what to do, and I wanted to get my aunt, but it all happened so fast. It’s hard to remember the order or the details. Next thing I knew, they were all inside the house and our father had a handful of my hair in one hand and the fifty jaspers that was Key’s price in the other.”

“Only fifty?” Blossom grimaces.

“Mynah struck a good deal on an argument of damaged goods.” Bought her for pennies, sells her for rubies.

“When I realized they were taking Key, I clung to her. My father separated us, apologized to Mynah, then clocked me so hard I landed underneath the window. His cane came down on my head and neck. This part is fuzzy. My ears rang, but I could hear Mynah and her Goons outside arguing about the best road out of town. Mynah was angry because she needed to get back to the city but had to go out of her way to pick up an Ink Girl. And that’s when it happened.”

“What happened?” asks Little Bird.

Twin, verb, to separate, to divide.

“That’s when she said it.”

“I’m confused,” says Little Bird.

Blossom lowers her head into her chest. “You don’t have to say, Ink.”

Good, because I can’t find the words.

“What?” says Honey. “Ink, what did Key say?”

“Without the hint of a stammer, clear as a glass of water, she told Mynah, ‘My sister can read.’”

Only someone you love can betray you.

Chapter 26
Overdose

My sister can read.

Four words were all it took to seal my fate. Now, I am sealed in by words. This almost makes me laugh, but it’s been so long since I laughed and meant it. Can someone forget how? Even babies know how to laugh. Words were always hard for Key to wrap her tongue around, and they would slide all over each other, oh but her laugh! Water to a dying man, wind chimes through a mountaintop temple.

I lived to make her laugh and could do so with only the arch of an eyebrow. Key and I shared an understanding that went beyond language. Tiny gestures could narrate the events of an entire afternoon, single words were packed so full of context and history, they could have us cackling and rolling on the floor.

Making a hook with our index finger signaled danger was near, a caning eminent, a paternal rage on the horizon, a pack of boys about to cross the street. The degree of peril could be accurately relayed by the tightness of the curled finger while a tap at the wrist indicated the quickest route to safety. Ours was a relationship no one could penetrate, and for the first few years of our life, we didn’t use any known words because we didn’t need them or made up our own. Cryptophasia, language developed by twins; a linguistic phenomenon also known as twin speak.

The others are still at their window. My story, our story, has left them without words of their own. Honey fans her beaten feet in the air in a rare moment of reflection. Blossom has changed into a light, gauzy dress the color of night jasmine and piled her hair into a high bun. The rainstorm left behind an afternoon heavy with humidity that frizzes her curls. She fans her long neck with the edge of Bird’s old shawl and presses her finger to her lip, deep in thought. She’s either waiting for me to keep talking or considering what to say next. For once, she’s not calling my name to make sure all is well, to see where my head is at, or to see where my heart is at. I could tell her that it lies broken and buried in the courtyard, but that would be a lie. I left my heart outside a rundown house in a town made infamous for decimating its population of girls with a bowl of rice.

“Why didn’t you mention you were sisters?” she asks at last. “Why didn’t Key?”

“I don’t know why Key does anything. My first year I didn’t even know if she was alive until Bird told me about a First Floor with weird eyes.”

I can’t read Blossom’s expression. If she believes me, if she is disappointed or mad.

“Blossom, I want you to know that I never intended to leave her behind. Turns out she’s the smarter twin. I’m an idiot who keeps hoping that I’m wrong, that she’s worth saving, that somehow if I work hard enough at keeping her safe, then it could change everything, and I could love her again. So many years holding out for a fantasy that she is better than who she has proven herself to be, that somehow the past can magically change. But it doesn’t work like that. There is never a story where she doesn’t betray me.”

“What were you planning?”

“I was going to lead you and Honey to the alley and then I was going to turn back for Key. Drag her if I had to. She weighs nothing. I knew she wouldn’t come willingly, and I certainly couldn’t trust her, so I knocked her out. If I got caught doubling back, then I would take the blame. All of it, like I have done my whole life with Key, the thousand-pound albatross around my neck.”

Honey is showing off her blood blisters to an equally repelled and fascinated Little Bird. Honey further impresses her by poking at a shiny, pink bleb of skin under her big toe. When it pops, droplets of blood fall to the ground, giving the Sonagachi its first taste of Honey.

“Did you know,” I ask Blossom, “what Mynah has been doing with Key?” Twin Pleasures House. The thought of saying these words out loud makes me gag. I look over at Honey and Little Bird, glad they are so preoccupied. Some words they shouldn’t overhear.

“Key made me promise not to tell you. She was so ashamed.”

“And why didn’t you tell me what kind of House Mynah was planning for you?”

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this until now? But that’s not how it’s done at The Nectar House, is it, Ink? You make sure of it. You make all the rules and tell us our survival depends on them. You make all the deals with Mynah knowing what’s best for all. Tell us not to look back, tell us not to look forward beyond the next Blight. Rage if we try to mention our families. You’ve never even told me your real name, nor asked me for mine. If you really wanted me to know you and the story of how you got here, you would have done so.”

Tears fall onto my shirt. “Maybe I lacked the words to tell it. I owe you an explanation, before Mynah takes you away to—”

She puts up her palm and looks away.

“You’re not the one who decides what we say and what we don’t. Not anymore.”

Blossom’s angry tone pulls the attention of the little ones back onto us.

“Fine, Blossom,” I say. “Have it your way then. We’ll add this to the list of things we don’t talk about.”

“Like how you were going to abandon Honey and me to whatever fate the boy across the street would lead us to?”

“Like how you told Key about our escape and ruined everything.”

Little Bird and Honey are silently watching us. Little Bird’s fingers are in her mouth again. No one knows what to say. Only the swiftlets seem to have something to add until Honey breaks through the heavy silence.

She says, “My favorite things are hand pies and lemon ice and fried flatbread.” She looks at me, ready to fight. Talk of food is also forbidden, but I say nothing, so she keeps going. “I love how pink rubber balls smell when they’re new, and the taste of crunchy crawfish fried in garlic. I like watching the cargo ships unload and getting chased by the harbormaster.”

Blossom wipes her nose with her shawl. “I have brothers. Six of them. Their names all start with the letter ‘A.’”

The swiftlets chirp sharply, pause, and chirp again. Antiphony, a call and response song. I guess it’s my turn. “When I first learned to read, Key embroidered a bookmark for me with my likeness on one side and hers on the other. It’s the only thing I wish I still owned.”

Little Bird says, “My brother has a goat named ‘Lettuce.’”

I think I hear Honey giggle. The urge to correct them, remind them to speak only in the present tense, rises to my throat, but I couldn’t do that to them any more than I could bend the bars with my bare hands and climb out this window.

“I have one friend. His name is Dumpster Juice,” says Honey. “DJ for short. The best nights of sleep are when DJ and I curl up in spoons. We can sleep anywhere we want. He’s fast as an eel, sleeps with one eye open, so no one ever got the jump on us. He stinks, not even the rats will nibble him, but I don’t mind. His hair is the blackest black I’ve ever seen.”

“Darker than Ink’s?” asks Little Bird.

“Darker than the ass of midnight!” Honey says, making Little Bird laugh. “The day I took the Goon’s eye for myself, DJ and I were supposed to meet at the bins behind the fancy hotels. He always said city center garbage is the best garbage. Once he found an entire tray of dates wrapped in bacon and gave me half.” She drops her head, releasing a gob of spit between her legs. “I wonder if he remembers me. Maybe he thinks the organ snatchers got me, like they did his two sisters.”

“I used to pretend I couldn’t see my way around the cook fires,” says Blossom, “but I just hated cooking.”

“Key and I would hide from my father in meadows overgrown with snapdragons, which were her favorite. She’d braid so many of them into my hair, I could hardly lift my head. Then I would pretend to be a fire-fueled, rage-filled goddess. Patron of all rabid creatures and her loyal servant. Together we would plan the downfall of anyone we didn’t like.”

Little Bird says, “I wet myself on the trip to the city.” She grins ear to ear. “But I made sure I did it on a Goon.”

Between Honey’s belly laughs, Little Bird adds, “When we had to switch buses, I pretended to be asleep. Then I let it all go on the Goon who was carrying me.”

“Was it a lot of wee?” asks Honey.

“A river! He smelled so bad they made him ride on the top of the bus the rest of the way.”

Maybe these are the things I should write on my wall.

Honey grabs a nearby branch, pulls it as far as she can, then lets it snap back. Leftover raindrops shower onto Little Bird, who reaches for a branch of her own to return the attack. They yell and squeal in delight. Again, I’m tempted to chide them, to make them hush, cower in fear. Head down, mouth shut. Teach them how to survive. But what do I know?

“Were you really not going leave Key behind?” asks Blossom.

“I wouldn’t, not ever. I got Key off the First Floor, and all it cost me was a year of helping Mynah kill little girls.”

“You didn’t kill anyone.”

“I killed that Blight. I sent hundreds of Girls to the First Floor knowing they would die before the year was up. I told Mynah which ones were too thick to learn to SonaScape, and I decided those Girls weren’t shiny or skillful. Nothing made them stand out, nothing made them special. The ordinary didn’t stand a chance with me.”

“None of that is your fault,” says Blossom.

“Not directly but by proxy. I wrote that book for Mynah. Doesn’t sound like much, but pretty words about pretty girls hold more destruction than I could have ever imagined. You see three times as many Blights as the previous Blossom. I may not be the cause of your death, but I hastened it while simultaneously lengthening your suffering. I’ve tried to wrap my mind around the justice in this. It’s as puzzling to me as your infuriating game.”

Blossom holds out her hand, like we do when we want to pretend to hold hands, but I can’t lift my arms. All of me is made of lead. “You know, Blossom, you really are awfully beautiful. Your description in The Book of Ardor was the easiest to write. The hardest part was limiting the word count.”

A rumble comes from the street as someone pulls down a rusty awning. Water hits the pavement with a splash, a shopkeeper sweeps his storefront, the growl of a garbage truck. Start of the business day. I listen for sounds of the House and catch snippets of Little Bird and Honey whispering. Honey is teaching Little Bird profanity, the likes of which Little Bird has never heard before.

Blossom says, “I knew about the book and how much you hated it. So did Bird. We just didn’t understand why you did it. I wish you’d told us.”

I shake my head. “Blossom, there are a million stories trapped inside The Nectar House, mine is only one. Not even you, my brilliant bloom, could have figured out how to make any of my actions less vile—or my self-hatred for doing them any less. Same with Key. I’m pulled in two by her. It’s hard to keep someone safe and hate them at the same time.”

Blossom holds her hand out to me once more.

“I couldn’t let you leave thinking I was a monster. That I had no good reason for hating Key.” I look away from her and to my stinking bed sheet pooling at my feet. There must be something I can say to Mynah, some deal I can make to change her mind about Blossom, but I know deep in my gullet that the deal she’s made for Blossom must be too good to pass up.

“Ink?” Blossom’s face is pressed up hard against her bars and squinting through the treetops in the direction of Honey’s window. “What’s going on? Who’s there?”

Key is at Honey’s window. Has she been there all along? Sidewinder, rattler, naja, krait. Venomous all. She’s talking to Honey too low for me to hear. Honey looks at Key, unsure, then nods, and climbs back inside.

“Is it breakfast? Will there be soup today?” Little Bird cranes her neck to see what’s happening on the floor above.

Key’s fishing for something inside her braids. She pulls out a large vial.

I call out to Blossom, “I think Key has Sona?”

“What?”

“A big bottle of SonaDrops.”

“Key, listen to me,” Blossom speaks very slowly, like a person talking to someone dismantling a bomb.

Key pries the cork of the bottle loose. She holds Honey’s head back and administers what looks like half a bottle of pearly Sona into Honey’s eyes, then does the same for herself. There must have been at least ten SonaDrops between them.

“Why is Honey getting drops?” asks Little Bird. “The daytime isn’t time for Blights.”

Honey sways, then buries her face in Key’s neck.

“Key! That’s not how we said to do it,” screams Blossom. “Wait for me, wait for Ink. Not by yourself.”

“Am I next? Will there be Blights?” Little Bird moves from one side of her window to the other. “Is this a practice?”

Blossom’s mouth is set in a grim line. I am about to ask her what’s happening when I watch Key slip my mala bead necklace around Honey’s neck.

Honey is too quiet, too still. Key props her up against the window, laying her head tenderly on a cushion the color of a ripe plum.

“Where is she going?” I call after Key, but she’s gone. “Is she trying to kill her?”

“What’s happening?” asks Blossom.

My hands have the bars in a death grip. “I think she left Honey alone.”

“She’s trying to help Honey heal with the beads.” Blossom’s face has gone very pale. “We have a plan, but she wasn’t supposed to—not yet.”

“Honey can’t SonaScape alone! That’s not how it works.”

Little Bird starts to cry, and I snarl at her to shut up. We all watch Honey’s window. None of us move or breathe, as if this would make Key magically appear in the frame of Honey’s window and take back the last ten seconds. The dull thrum of the afternoon traffic is peppered by the rumble of trucks as they cross the intersection. Honey’s mouth falls open.

“You put Key up to this?” I ask Blossom.

“I wouldn’t, we only talked about it. This was her idea … to do it now.”

“Key doesn’t have ideas! She has spite, she has malice.”

“You were leaving her behind. I had to help her. She was going to use the beads for the First Floor Girls. The beads were the least I could do for her, for any of them.”

My door slams open with so much force it rebounds off the wall. Key stumbles in looking confused and disoriented, like someone who’s forgotten what they came in for.

Her eyes are glazed, virtually swimming in Sona.

“Why did you do it?” I scream.

She stops short, stunned at the first words I’ve spoken to her since we left our father’s house.

“Why did you leave her?” I don’t care if every Goon in the House District hears me.

“I’m so faired, scared … afraid she’ll die.”

“Then you shouldn’t have dosed her with a gallon of Sona!”

“Blossom told me all about the SonaScape with the beads. Blossom looks so well, and so do you, and Mynah, she sent word she’ll be back a day early to deliver Blossom. We have no time, and less time now, and I saw your flee, fleet, feet when you were asleep. They’re helped, healed, they’re so much better and Honey’s feet are so bad. She can’t walk on them. I needed to do something.”

“You have to go back and help her. She needs someone to bring her in and out of the SonaScape.”

“Help me. I thought I could. Tried. She just lies there. Blossom said it was different with the beads. “I thought maybe … but I don’t think I can. I only know how with First Floor Blights, they come to once they’re done with me, but whah—” Her eyelids flutter, and she faints.

I leap off the bed and half-fall, half-stumble my way down as I’m hit with blast of pain from my forgotten feet. Agony, anguish, throe. I roll onto my back with my chin hugged to my chest and wait for the spasms to pass.

Blossom is screaming for me to come back to the window.

I drag myself past Key to the opposite wall. I grab onto the bottom shelves to haul myself up to where I stashed the extra SonaDrops, but I can’t reach it. I’ve no other choice but to put weight on the soles of my feet. I brace myself. Falter. Brace myself again, think of Honey alone in her room. Books tumble to the floor as I grab the teacup. Careful.

My legs tremble. My legs don’t matter. They don’t exist. The soles of my feet send waves of pain up my spine. I crumple to the floor with my arm outstretched and slowly place the cup on the ground before curling onto my side like a bug. Pain rockets through me, not limiting itself to my feet. The pain ricochets between my feet and my armpits and the crown of my head back and forth until it wears itself out into a dull throb. I look over at Key. Her face is turned from me. She’s not moved at all.

Sit up. Key will die. You will watch your sister die overdosed on vile Sona if you don’t sit up. I manage to lean onto my hip, then onto my side, and I peer into the teacup. Don’t spill a single drop. I’m going to die today, and my final moments will be spent safeguarding the poison that did me in. The quantity of shimmery liquid swirling at the bottom seems very unimpressive compared to Honey’s heroic dose. Is this enough to follow not one but two Girls into their SonaScape? And can the beads work with three girls, or only in pairs?

I maneuver myself under Key and cradle her in my shaking arms. Check for breathing. Find her pulse on the side of her neck. Sweat-drenched, slippery hands. Nothing. Which side is it? There’s an anatomy book here somewhere. Focus. Touch the other side of her neck. Thready pulse.

Pink frothy sputum collects at the sides of Key’s mouth. Overdose. Excessive consumption of a substance, noxious and often deadly.

I barely feel the burn of the Sona as I give myself the largest dose I’ve ever had.

Somewhere far, far away, beyond my battlefields, past Blossom’s dune desert, Blossom calls our names.

Ink, Honey, Key.

Chapter 27
Running To and
Running From

Neon lights sail past my head leaving trails of fluorescent reds and yellows.

Streetlights. These are streetlights, and we are running.

Through twisted alleys and whizzing traffic, Honey dreams and dreams of her lost city.

I’m behind her, trying to keep up. The streets are chaos. I’ve never been in this much traffic, and everything and everyone in the teeming intersection wants to rush at me at once. I look around for Key, only narrowly escaping being flattened by a van advertising goat yogurt. No one has ever SonaScaped with more than one person before—or at least lived to tell about it. I’m not sure it’s even possible because all I sense is Honey’s manic energy tearing through the city and no Key. I reach out with my mind again, looking for something, anything, that could serve as a bridge to Key’s consciousness. Nothing. Only a hollow emptiness behind me and Honey’s frenzied zigzagging in front me.

Honey loves to run, can run for days, and I’ll get lost in this frighteningly loud place without walls, without stillness. This is the bridge to her SonaScape, and it will sever if I lose her in all this noise and movement.

The top of Honey’s head pops up inside a swarm of men and women clad entirely in orange pumping their fists and chanting in protest. They lift homemade posters bearing grainy pictures of young girls at barred windows and balconies of grand buildings and mosaic courtyards. The angry red slashes and Xs painted across them make think they’re protesting the House Girl district and the Syndicate. Alongside a counter protest is underway. The crowd pierces the sky with placards of their own proudly displaying the glossy pictures of Blights. Smiling politicians, toothy film starts, an astronaut holding his helmet at his hip. Posters float over the mob extolling the virtues of an ancient way of life. Is this what the streets were like three years ago when Honey was captured?

I panic until Honey’s tousled hair resurfaces halfway down the block. Elbowing through the throng slows me down, so I jump onto the sidewalk. Half-naked toddlers squat on the doorsteps and watch me run past.

The beads fan out behind Honey’s head as she turns a sharp corner and slides under the arms of a man balancing an enormous tray of pump pots over his head. I’m not half as agile or as short, so I slam into the tea vendor. His canisters of milky liquid smash, clatter, and roll all over the sidewalk much to the delight of nearby children. One of them grabs a dented canister and darts away faster than a field mouse. The tea vendor rights himself while making a grab for my collar. I twist away in time to follow Honey, who sprints down a sleepy alley laced with clotheslines of hanging laundry. Ebbing sunlight shines through the brilliantly colored fabrics that wave like flags flying over the palaces of the poor.

Behind me, the bleak feeling of despair struggles to catch up to us. It’s slow and sluggish yet has managed to track us this entire time. Is this what Honey is trying to escape? No, she doesn’t move like someone running away, this kid is running to something, like someone important waits for her around the next bend. But Honey had no one before she came to us.

Down the alleyway she runs and laughs with her mouth wide open, full of pure delight. 

The alley opens to a neighborhood that looks like the aftermath of an explosion. Corrugated iron shacks and dwellings carved out of junk, refuse, and necessity all lean against each other in an attempt to be housing. The neglect, the scarcity, the children whose rib bones you can count—all remind me of Key after her First Floor year. Oh Key, where are you, daft and docile girl? I’ve lost sight of Honey too. There’s a tug on the hem of my dress. A boy with a paint huff stain around his ulcered lip looks up at me. He’s holding a stick skewering a gangrenous looking sausage. He uses it to point me toward the end of the lane to a two-storied mountain range of garbage.

Honey is climbing it with the ease of a mountain goat. I’m a few yards from the base of the heap when the smell hits me so hard it’s like running headfirst into a wall. I slip and land on something that is wet and slimy. This is the very definition of disgusting. My lungs are bursting, begging for more air, but I gag with each inhale. I think my foot is resting in a diaper. I have to stop. I can’t breathe. I’ll stop. Only a second. I’ll go around it. Can’t. Garbage stretches for blocks on either side of me.

I spot Honey. Arms akimbo and on top of a hill of rubber tires. She’s staring up at a billboard strapped to a rooftop. On the peeling billboard is an image of Honey wearing the ratty clothes she wore on the day she came to the House and being rocked to sleep by Bird. Our Bird. My Bird. Enchanted, besotted, jubilate, spellbound. My words are not enough. I can’t tell if this is Honey’s happiness at seeing Bird again, or mine.

The inky miasma of sadness edges closer. Slow like sap but unabating. Could Key be stuck in this ugly void that follows us? Pity pulls inside my chest as my tether to Honey slips and she disappears over a ridge of steaming tires. I have no time for Key. I strangle the feelings of mercy, rip them out by the spine. Key got herself into this mess, she can get herself out, or she can stay stuck in Sona and die on the floor of my room. I am miles beyond caring. Somewhere past the wasteland of garbage Honey says, “Liar.”

Filthy children litter the hilltop, picking through the muck in search of anything they can eat, or sell, or use as weapon or wardrobe. A boy unearths a treasure, a glass soda bottle; nine more earns him a jasper. He must be new to the streets because he holds it up in victory. A scrawny alley cat of a girl, barely three years old, wrestles the bottle from him only to have it taken from her by an older boy with a broken nose. This boy will grow into a Blight. I know this in my bones. Like Mynah says, I have an excellent eye. Today broken nose takes your bottle, tomorrow he steals you away to a House. You better run, teeny garbage girl. A wave of recognition hits me. This scene feels familiar. Not to me, but to Honey. The girl tries not to cry and when she wipes her eyes, they’re the deep yellow of sandstorms. The girl is Honey, and this is her memory I’m sharing.

Swallowing bile, I crawl my way up the stinking mound made slick and soft and warm with the power of decomposition. There is great possibility for combustion here. Decay, rot, infection, blight. Potential energies lie dormant waiting for a match. Conflagration, a large disastrous fire. This feels tempting, welcome, opportune. My SonaScape of fire doesn’t feel far away. Destruction has never felt so possible.

Honey whispers inside my head, “Do it, Ink. Burn it all.”

When I reach the apex, Honey is racing down a rickety pier extending into the gray-green harbor. The cold emptiness trailing us sidles up close, making the hair on my neck bristle. This empty void is Key. She’s coming for Honey. She wants to sever our SonaBridge. Leave me stuck. Key is many things, but now she’s also a murderer. Even in Sona, she’s full of spite. Treachery, a violation of allegiance, faith, or confidence, intentional giving over to an enemy. This is her last-ditch effort to destroy me. I never imagined she would sacrifice Honey to do it.

At the end of the pier are two Goons and broken-nose boy from the trash pile. I watch as Honey holds the hand of a Goon who has given her the lemon ice she is quickly devouring. His other hand holds a red and white striped bag of salted caramels. Honey’s favorite. These are destined for her hollow gullet as surely as she is destined for The Nectar House. Is this how it happened? This is not a viscous fight for freedom. What of the tale full of bravado and wrested eyeballs?

I run down the pier and grab her away from the Goon, but she shrugs me off. When I grab her by the waist, she claws and bites until I let go.

They head south in the direction of the House District. Popsicle juice drips down her chin as she stares off into the sky. I follow her gaze to the rooftop billboard. On it is another scene of Bird clapping out a song at her window over the courtyard. We’re all there, even the Apple Girl. Everyone is smiling but me, although my fingers tap out the rhythm of Bird’s song on my bars. A feeling washes over me, but it’s coming from Honey. It’s relief.

When Honey dreams, she dreams of running to The Nectar House, to us.

The billboard fades into picture after picture: Bird teaching her how to SonaScape, Blossom playing a word game with her and letting her win, me reading to her from a book of scary stories, Key bringing her soup, then Key holding her down while Mynah breaks her arm. It’s followed by a snapshot of her First Night Blight, fat and spoon-fed mouthful after mouthful by a sobbing Honey. A different Blight stands too close to her as she spoons the honey into his mouth. She tells him dirty jokes until he settles into Sona. Another Blight, and another, so many more disgusting men after that … and still she would choose us. Despite it all, the moment she left the lonely streets was the happiest moment of her life.

My weight gives out from under me, and instead of hitting the cracked sidewalk, I land back onto the street where Honey’s SonaScape started.

Once again, I take off after a sprinting Honey.

Honey will loop us over and over, replay her SonaScape until I drag her out or we both exhaust ourselves into coma then death. Catching her is the only way out. My legs cramp and complain and beg me to stop while my pounding heart threatens detonation inside my rib cage. My hair, teeth, and eyeballs will add to the debris of this bombed-out excuse of a city.

Honey leads us full tilt down a different labyrinthine path. This time the tenements are replaced by a cement sound wall skirting the highway. Plastered on the wall are decades’ worth of curling posters piled on top of each other.

The tea man is now a fruit vendor. Honey swipes an apple from his cart. He gives us a good chase, perhaps inspired by the thought of his own children going without. If he has a daughter, she may be ten jaspers away from being a House Girl. I know this like I know it was broken nose who sold Honey to the Goon. Not even in Sona am I wrong about these horrible things.

Honey tips over an oil drum bonfire and we lose the fruit seller. Annoyed, pasty-faced children were using it to cook pieces of meat that looked suspiciously like cat. I move past young girls scratching at scabs and arguing with barefoot boys with broken lips. They all have matted hair and knocked out teeth, each one different, but all from the same family tree. They share a legacy of starvation, an inheritance of squalor.

Their vacant eyes remind me of Key, who I can sense is tiring but still following us, holding on, trying to catch up. Story of her life. She’s always been sickly, and she does not have the benefit of the beads like Honey or the power they have given me. I’ll leave her here. Stuck in Sona. She can die gasping for air like a fish in a bucket for all I care.

Honey stops long enough to mock how slow I am and call me a useless liar, coupling her words with a rude gesture right before going up and over the garbage pile. This time, I know where she’s going, and I catch her before she can reach the pier. She fights me. Her screams for Bird fade into the cawing of gray gulls circling overhead.

Her wrists slip out of my hands. Feral as an alley cat.

“Honey, stop! Let’s go back! To Blossom, to—” I’m about to say Bird but stop myself.

“I want Bird!”

I let her go because I want Bird too. She was our lighthouse, our fortified city, our cloud cuckoo land. Part of me can run Honey’s loop forever, just to catch another glimpse of Bird.

We both turn to the billboard because this is where Honey has stored all memories, and this is what the Sona wants us both to see. The picture scrambles into a scene of Bird washing Honey in the cast iron tub. The colors swirl and rearrange into Bird holding me close the night she taught me to SonaScape; she rubs my back as I throw up. Next comes Bird teaching me to breathe slowly through my fear and putting a book in my hand. In another scene, I’m crying because I have no paper, no pen. With a spoon, Bird carves out the first word on my wall. Sister.

“Traitor! You stay up all night, whispering to Mynah, making deals, and you never helped me!” Honey balls her fists. “You think you’re helping? First Night, every night! No difference!”

“Honey’s right. You’re wrong about all of it.” Key’s voice slips into my ear, muffled as if we were talking under water. “First Night, Last Night, it’s the choice in between that matters.”

Key presses close behind me. She takes the beads from Honey, who offers no resistance. In one quick motion, Key slips the beads over both our heads, tethering us together, then folds her arms around me, pinning mine down. I can’t move. Her arms multiply—two, four, eight arms that weave me into a sprawling web, trapping me inside a design only she can see through her keyhole irises. She brings me deeper inside her, and we fade into blackness.

Honey is here too, cocooned inside a gossamer ball of silk, forgotten in sleep, and hibernating from the sorrows of the world.

Chapter 28
Chirality

Rust brown machines, whose purpose is long forgotten, lay half-buried and crumbling across a treeless landscape. Many were orphaned before construction was completed, as if their utility was suddenly called into question and made obsolete. Some machines have writing along the side, but the letters are upside-down and backward, punctuated by undecipherable glyphs.

Key’s SonaScape has no sun in the sky, no clouds, no green, no sidewalks, and no sloping dunes. This is a place best defined by all the things that it lacks. Just like Key.

When Key dreams, she dreams a wasteland.

I run as far as I can until I have to stop from exhaustion, hoping this will rouse a hidden Honey. Hope. Rope. Help. My thoughts are as jumbled as the landscape.

I have to find a way to Honey, then a way out. I try to run, but it’s hard to move. The ground is neither soil nor sand. Some parts are spongy, only to crunch like gravel two paces away. Every step is unpredictable. Yet, I know what is beneath my feet is fallow. Nothing can grow here. Nothing good. This is an untilled and abandoned place. Forsaken, shunned, discarded, marooned.

The sky—if this could be considered sky—is the muted gray of tanks and bullets and devices made only for massacre. It’s the same Panzer gray sky as my own battlefield SonaScape, and this saddens me almost as much as the unresolved feeling of grief pressing down upon me.

Identical. Tentacle. Twin.

A mating pair of birds circles above in perfect symmetry. They have the heavy bodied outline of vultures and buzzards. Carrion eaters. They remind me of Mynah when she wears her hair loose. She is also a bottom feeder, feasting on detritus. One bird takes off, leaving the other bird to swoop down for a better look at me. Its feet are too big for its body or appear so because they’re webbed. Not a bird of prey, a cormorant perhaps, but those are waterfowl. There can’t be a coast nearby. Water implies life.

The bird’s shadow soars over me: it’s larger than I thought, twenty times the size of a swiftlet. Instead of scute-covered feet, it has paws that end in the sharp claws of a badger or a wolverine. The beak is shaped like a cleaver and large enough to swallow a ten-year-old.

It flies off, perhaps in search of smaller prey. Honey would be the perfect morsel. I have to find her, but there’s nothing of Honey here. Honey is mean and often wicked but carries the spark of love. If she were here, I would sense it, if only faintly. Part of me is glad. Even if it means her lion heart has given up at last, I don’t want her to live this. Key’s mind is a wretched place, the mental universe of someone born to mourn alone and endure without fellowship. Greek tragedies would tremble here.

I make my way through discarded objects strewn haphazardly along the ground: a barrel organ missing its crank, a toy top spinning without a hand to start or stop it. A procession of legs without torsos walking themselves. I trip over a silent metronome clicking out of sync as I avoid them. There’s no internal logic ruling Key’s SonaScape, as if the basis of understanding, the agreed upon order and patterns we all share, was deserted long ago. How can she navigate the world with a mind such as this?

Creatures scuttle past me dragging spiked tails and oversized knuckles. The ones with eyes look straight though me, as if they’ve given up their lot to pitiless fate and lost all interest in discerning whether I’m friend or foe. A salamander chases after a braying animal with the bearded head of a goat stuck onto the body of an ox. Stupid, crazy Key doesn’t even know her animals.

“No, not animals,” I hear her say from somewhere to my left. “These are chimeras.”

Her voice came from the direction of a gray smudge in the distance. As I approach, it becomes the outline of a small house with a flat tin roof. My heart leaps. Honey could be inside.

When I reach the house, birds resembling swiftlets flit under the lip of the eaves and disappear. Dozens of them chitter underneath the overhang. There’s no proper door, only a curtain stamped with the silhouette of a Sonagachi tree. Trimming the edges are ink bottles, honey, bees, cherry blossoms, and birds in flight.

I push the cloth aside and step into the cramped house of my childhood. The dingy living room is littered with our scant belongings. So familiar, so forgotten. Father’s cane waits in the corner by the stove, my beloved notebooks and pencil case sheltered under a stool, and the threadbare bed pallet Key and I shared hangs on its peg. Facing the wall, her back to me, is Key at my aunt’s floor loom. Hung around her neck are my mala beads.

How can this be at the center her Scape? This, a dank room with the stained floors that served as our playpen, my desk, her worktable, and father’s spittoon.

If Key knows I’m behind her, she makes no sign of it. The tapestry is unfinished, only a quarter done, so I can’t make out the central image. The colors are too drab to be a wedding tapestry. I watch her interlace each colored weft back and forth, tenderly sliding the shed under the warps through a lattice of threads, binding them together. Each thread is held and given meaning by a hundred others, rendering a future portrait only she can see. Oracle, auger, auspex, sibyl.

She points to the mirror placed behind the tapestry to reveal the image as she works. It reveals a gated yard and the foundations of a house.

Every knot, every step I take toward the loom, welcomes a warm feeling of ease from Key. Gone is the confusion, the dissonance of the outside world. An overlooked little girl at her loom, this is Key at her best. No longer is Key’s SonaScape struggling to make sense of what everyone else takes for granted. Hers is the contentment unique to an artisan balanced between the confidence that comes with mastery and the thrill of creation.

A momentary flush of gratitude fills the room, the relief of being seen by another. We bask in it, truly together for the first time since we were taken by Mynah. The feeling shifts into frustration and red rage, the gnashing teeth of the old confusion. Key yanks the central thread anchoring the entire design, and the tapestry unravels.

She peeks at me through the mirror and begins again.

Her deft fingers pick up speed, tying knot after knot to the warps until the picture is a quarter of the way complete. Standing outside a house in a front yard are three people woven up to the ankles.

“This is the moment.” Key’s voice in my head is so similar to mine.

The next few inches reveal the face of a forlorn girl hiding behind a curtain at the window. She’s watching the three people outside her front door. One of them is a woman. Her dress is the vivid purple of fresh bruises.

“This? This is what you want to say?” I tell her. My voice sounds like it’s trapped in an echo chamber.

This is the moment that shattered everything we understood.

She tears at the anchor thread with her teeth, only to start the weave once more.

When did her love for me warp in this way?

“Look in the mirror,” she says. “Once you see, the story won’t be a lie. Don’t you understand? This will break the spell, shatter the curse. The beads can help. I know I’m right.”

She tamps down the weft with a snap of her comb. “This is the day you left.”

“I didn’t leave this hovel, I was taken.”

“This is the day you left me.”

“I’ve been yoked to you since the womb.”

“You wouldn’t talk to me. Not a word. You were going to take Blossom and Honey.”

“I was going to carry you over my shoulder, I hit you because you always mess things up for me. You would have called out to Mynah. Opened your ugly maw, like when you told Mynah I could read.”

“But you could read.”

How can she deny what she did? No one can lie inside a SonaScape. Not even me.

“I saved you,” she said, “and you left me alone when there was so much to understand.”

“Because you told Mynah to take me. Because of you Mynah locked me up.”

“Yes!” Joy, rapture, a contented sigh.

I slump to the ground. “You awful creature. You broken thing.”

She grunts in frustration. The ground shakes beneath me. An anger parallel to my own. A molten core. It flows deep inside both of us. She pulls the threads apart, tearing at the anchor threads on the warp beam with her teeth.

I scream as she dresses the loom once again. “No!” Her hatred of me is a skein that goes on forever. We’ll both die SonaStuck inside the worst moment of my life.

She interlaces the starting threads, changing the knot pattern. New colors are tied to the beam. Tracing the bottom border of this tapestry is a lattice design, like houndstooth.

“You’re wrong, Ink. Incorrect. Flawed.”

The ground grumbles again. Magma, mantle, anthracite, scoria, char.

This time the confusion is mine.

Key can’t wrap her tongue around these words. These are my words, but the anger behind them is both of ours intermingled, an amalgam of sadness and resentment.

She finishes the tapestry’s bottom border design. This time I notice that it’s not a random matrix, but numbers interconnected and repeated. A two. A seven. A lightning bolt. A two. An eight, and the pattern repeats.

“Don’t you see?” she says. “Can’t you read?”

Over the numbers is the muddied pantleg of Mynah’s Goon next to the cuff of our father’s frayed work trousers. Next to the Goon is a pair of women’s shoes.

Using glossy purple thread, she mimics the rich satin of Mynah’s dress. The slim hips, the wasp waist-level with the forlorn face of the girl at the window. The face is my face. Our face.

Her fingers crawl up the warp grid. She’s almost at Mynah’s chin.

I expect to see the gash of red that is Mynah’s lips, but Key switches the spool for one with golden thread. With it, she fills the mouth of the third person standing behind Mynah in the picture. I assume the last figure is the Goon, but it’s a woman with gold teeth giving a handful of jaspers to our beloved aunt.

“After Zada died, she couldn’t stand the sight of you,” says Key. “She wanted you gone.”

There should have been twenty-eight.

“I didn’t know what was happening.” Key uses cinnamon red for the brothel owner’s hair. The details are flawless, from the gold teeth to the gray roots of her cheap dye job. The madam’s arms are covered in more gold bangles, Key heard them jingle as she shook hands and agreed to buy me from my aunt.

“The brothel owner only paid half. She would give her the rest when she came for you at the end of the week. She wouldn’t take me, she said I was too ugly to work on my back, too lame to be of any use. Mynah came before the brothel owner returned for you.”

If Mynah hadn’t taken me, the woman from the truck stop would have. Brothel or Blight House. Key made the best decision she could to save me.

The room shifts into a mirror image of itself. The door is now on the other side, the loom is on the opposite wall, yet everything is the same. Sinister, Latin for left, counterclockwise, opposite of dextral, meaning right.

Father’s cane is still in the corner, trying to look innocent. It landed on Key a thousand times; it shook her brain loose from its moorings. She counted on me to translate the world and I stopped talking and refused to listen.

“I was wrong to leave you.” The words burn my throat as they come out.

“And I was wrong to meddle,” she says. “I’ve brought you so much sadness.”

 “You were right to do it. Father was wrong, our aunt was wrong, the whole town was wrong.”

“We need to leave here.” We say this at the same time.

Who will pull the other one out of this SonaScape? What is the symbol, the reparation, the moment that will set us both free? I grab the cane and break it over my knee. It takes two tries but it splits with a crisp snap.

Key and I look at each other and wait.

“The one who hurt you can’t ever be the one to save you,” Key says.

“The loom! It belonged to our aunt.” I say.

We knock it over and take turns stomping the frame until it’s a tangle of yarn and splinters—and still nothing. It looks like tinder, and I scan the ground for something to set it ablaze, but there is nothing with that much destructive power inside sad Key’s SonaScape. Hers is a place of creation.

The room looks the same. We’re still here. Stuck.

Then she makes a sound I haven’t heard since we were children. She laughs. She laughs, and we remember splashing each other on the riverbank. She laughs, and we remember a peppermint lollipop I stole for her.

“This is what I’ve wanted,” says Key. “Not to be erased. To be chosen. To be your favorite again.”

“I never erased you, Key.”

More giggling. “That’s not my name,” she says. “Only you know my name now.” She is not pressured to go because this is what she wants.

“We have to leave here,” I say. “We’ll talk. We’ll talk for hours, days, for the rest of our lives, but now we have to go back.”

She nods but doesn’t move.

“You’ll have this when we leave SonaScape, in the waking walking world. I will take care of you again, you will take care of me, but we have to find a way to get unstuck.” She presses her forehead to mine. I remember sitting like this under the blankets as girls whispering secrets amid the sound of our father’s trumpet snores. This is how we slept as children and how we floated inside our mother. Key presses into me harder, and the sweat from her cheek mingles with mine as she takes off the beads. They fit perfectly over both our heads. Tying us together once again.

At our feet lies the mirror she used at her loom. It survived the destruction and captures us both. I smile and she smiles, a close reflection of my face, intact and as it should be, without the slump of a cracked cheekbone. Same but not the same. Like human hands. Chirality, when something is not identical to its mirror image.

Key hands me the mirror, knowing what we’re meant to do. She trusts me. Even now.

The mirror cracks under my heel and we leave our father’s house for the last time.

Chapter 29
Syzygy

Over my head is the familiar water stain in the shape of a banana that I’ve been staring at for three years. My square ceiling, my book-filled room, my sister’s scent of bergamot and lilac.

Key’s head rests heavily on my shoulder. My arm drapes around her small waist. We’re lying on the floor, back in my room, at least I am. Key is dead weight against me. When I try to rouse her, she’s as floppy as a stranded fish.

I look around for Honey, but of course she wouldn’t be in here, dead or alive.

Blossom calls for me. I rush to my window but not before gathering Key in my arms and putting her on the bed; I won’t leave her behind again.

My feet are completely healed. My body feels supple and sturdy, now more than ever. Is this Key’s Life Force I’m enjoying? Did she give herself so I could break free? One twin always comes out stronger than the other. Guess which one you are?

Under Key’s bony chest, her heartbeat is weak. The flutter of a dying bird.

“I’m here,” I call out to the courtyard.

Blossom’s mouth is wide open, halted mid-breath or by surprise. “Honey? Key?”

When I lift Key’s limp body to the window, her head slumps into the hollow of my elbow.

“Did you kill her?” Honey asks.

“Honey!” Blossom and I yell at once.

“It was all a mistake,” I mutter. Everything feels too bright and too loud. The sun is aimed at my window. It’s a thousand degrees in my room.

“What happened?” asks Blossom, “and for once, don’t lie.”

I hold up my hand and block out the sun.

Honey is twirling the mala bead necklace on her finger. She wraps it in one direction, then the other, through the bars of her window. I don’t even care if they fall.

Honey climbs onto her windowsill. Honey’s feet are also healed, pink and plump to match her rosy cheeks. She looks so much better than when she first came here so many Blights ago. For all of Honey’s anarchy and untamed defiance, The Nectar House was her haven. I can imagine a dozen cruelties a life outside this place could have offered her: addiction to huffing hairspray, being butchered for her liver and corneas, maimed and made a professional beggar by the time she was ten. I bet she could imagine much worse, and that’s why a Blight House was the best thing to ever happen to her. I’m not sure what to make of that, except that I was wrong about her, too.

Little Bird looks like she’s been crying for a week. “What’s wrong with Key?”

Honey wiggles her toes at the Sonagachi. “Ink strangled Key like a swiftlet, like she always said she would.”

“Why isn’t Ink saying anything?” asks Little Bird.

Honey purses her lips at me, squints. “Those beads can pack a punch. Maybe Ink’s brain is broken.”

In a way, Honey’s right. My brain has broken wide open. I pull Key closer to me. Spidery hairs stick to her sweaty temples, and I brush them out of the way with the pads of my fingers. Syzygy, a union of opposing forces, a celestial event.

“She saved me.” I turn to Blossom. “Key saved me from a woman far worse than Mynah.”

Blossom’s face settles into a curtain of sadness that mirrors mine. “A woman with a mouthful of gold metal?”

My clever Blossom. Able to figure it out in one go.

“Key wouldn’t talk about what happened either?” asks Blossom, shaking her head. She doesn’t understand. She can never understand how deeply these things can cut, how betrayal, or the fear of it, can shape your whole world, make you defy logic, never believe in yourself again.

“Key believed I abandoned her and in so many ways I did.”

Blossom sighs. “Cut from the same cloth, both of you.”

“No, her cloth is finer. Better than sea silk. She is the smarter twin. The one with talent. The twin who had the sense knocked out of her more times than I can count. The twin who can’t spell her real name, orchestrated a rescue with a single sentence.” My wall is covered with hundreds of words, and they’ve only served to stoke my hate and fuel fantasies of revenge.

“What is Ink talking about?” asks Little Bird.

“Key told Mynah Ink could read,” Blossom explains to Little Bird, but Honey is also trying to follow along. “so Mynah would take Ink, too, because staying behind would have been much worse”

“But Ink can read,” says Little Bird. “And no place is worse than here.”

Blossom puts a finger over her lips to quiet any argument from me. She doesn’t have to bother. It’s an act of love to let a child believe there is safety somewhere in the world. Sometimes silence is better than a thousand bedtime stories, a hundred home-cooked meals. And sometimes silence can run you through like an awl. The trick is to know when to keep your mouth shut and when to scream off rooftops.

With the back of my hand, I wipe the drops of sweat from Key’s brow. “Not even as girls did Key have a stitch of malice. Couldn’t understand treachery if you drew her a picture. In the end, the true deceiver was my aunt. She was the one who made the deal with the brothel owner.”

With a mind so curious, it must be hard for Blossom not to question me further. She simply presses her finger to her lips and says nothing. See, silence as love, words as weapons, so difficult to know which to choose. Blossom is wise enough to know the difference.

Little Bird says, “So Ink is going to draw Key a picture?”

“No, stupid.” Honey snags a thin branch with her tiny prehensile toes. She pulls the branch close enough to reach a bulging seed pod. “Ink means that Key is only a little stupid, not spiteful. Dumb, like you. But she helped Ink in the end, because there are awful Houses out there where they treat Girls a lot worse than here.” She pulls the pod off with a twist. “Don’t worry, cupcake. Do what I say and you’ll be fine here. Grab a pod. There’s a bunch by you. Break it open like this.” Honey splits open the pod and arranges the seeds between her bars. “Do you know any tavern songs? I’ll teach you some if you give me your soup. Who will bring soup if Key dies?”

“She’s not going to die, is she, Ink?” Little Bird scrambles to sit on her sill and does as Honey instructs. In another story, they could be best friends. Every evening after dinner and a bath, they could laugh and make up stories from one apartment balcony to the other. This newfound camaraderie is beautiful to watch. It fills the courtyard more than the Sonagachi.

Honey says something to Little Bird that makes her howl with laughter. Blossom smiles wide, enjoying the rare sound of such pure joy. For the rest of my days, I will marvel at how easily she can access her wellspring of gentleness. Even now, knowing what destiny has in store for her.

“What’s so funny?” she asks.

“Honey is flicking Sonagachi seeds at Little Bird. Little Bird is trying to catch them, and one just bounced off her nose.”

“Not another pod, Honey,” says Blossom. “Mynah will notice. She’ll wait for your feet to heal and then strap you again.”

“My feet are fine.” Honey flexes her feet in Blossom’s direction, then tells Little Bird, “Blossom’s as blind as a street beggar.”

“Besides.” Honey flicks another seed, this time aiming in my direction. “Key said Mynah is gone hick hunting. Gives me at least two days to yank every pod from the fat branch. I could clear this whole side if the brat helps me. That way the tree won’t look uneven, and Mynah won’t know a thing.”

Little Bird doubles her efforts, desperate to trap a limb that is heavy with seed pods between her knees.

Mynah’s away. This is good. Key stirs slightly but doesn’t wake up. Mynah won’t notice she’s missing. The Parlor Goons will be too busy dealing with customers and taking nips of SonaDrink, and the stair Goons will be too sauced to notice that Key hasn’t delivered the breakfast trays. Maybe they figure it’s all part of our punishment. This buys us time, but time for what? For Key to die in my arms, to enjoy Blossom’s presence for two more days before she’s sold and tortured. For the first time since that door was locked, I consider letting the next Blight that crosses that threshold enjoy one final SonaScape at my expense.

“I cost us time. I cost us Bird.” I don’t know if I’m talking to Blossom, or Key, or Little Bird and Honey, or every Girl buried under the Sonagachi. “Key was right all along. This is no life. Fate gifted the beads to the wrong girl.”

Blossom extends both hands to me. “Ink, my love for you is fanned by a thousand dust storms. I love your mad caterpillar eyebrows, and the way you snort when you’re trying not to laugh, and how you can’t remember the way the game pieces move. I especially love your pretty poem words when you’re fresh from a SonaHigh, but if you don’t stop this talk, I’ll break out of this room just to smack you with your favorite book.” She beams a smile at me brighter than the sun of her faraway desert. I’ve only seen kissing in movies. I imagine this is what it feels like.

Key moans. I press my ear to her mouth. Her breath smells bad, like turpentine and fermented fruit.

“Did she say something?” says Little Bird.

“Yes,” I say, “but in our twin speak and it wouldn’t make sense to you.”

I plant a kiss on Key’s forehead and echo back, “Sister.”

Key lifts her arms and wraps them around my neck.

“Ink,” she murmurs, “I have an idea. Blossom says it’s a good one.”

Chapter 30
Halyard, lasso,
towline, noose

“You’ve done it wrong,” Key says as she undoes the mess I’ve made.

She takes the tangle of rags that was once my bed sheet from my hands. With a series of square knots, she ties it to what remains of her brocade jacket. The result is a rope braid sturdy enough to suspend an elephant in mid-air.

I worry the mala beads around my neck. Key brought them along with an armful of Blossom’s shawls, a length of hemp once destined for Little Bird’s new bed, and Mynah’s finest sea silk gown. It was the first thing she made for Mynah, an audition piece to show off her skills, a work of art that saved her life. Tiger lilies are Mynah’s favorite flower, and Key hand-stitched them all over the gown along with ospreys in flight over a raging ocean. The dress became an overnight sensation, and with it, Mynah made the cover of a trade magazine for Blight House procuresses. The design is so spectacular, I almost cried when Key ripped it to shreds and added it to the ropes stretched across my floor.

She’s been weaving for hours with me alongside her. Late last night, we shoved the bed to the middle of the room. The sun threatens to set now, so we sit, shoulder to shoulder, under the window to take advantage of the failing light, leaning against the only part of my wall not covered in words. I’ve barely been two feet away from her since her SonaScape two days ago. She’s only left me to tend to the Girls, collect more fabric, or assist the others with their own ropes. Each time she leaves, I’m afraid of losing her again.

“Help me,” Key tells me with a slight tilt of her head. As soon as she woke from her SonaScape, we slipped into the silent semaphores of our childhood.

Key lifts her brow, silently pointing to the end of a frayed rope at my knee, then purses her lips at my window. Together, we hitch the rope to the bars now covered in the tatters of our Nectar House costumes. The lattice rigging Key has made between each bar is worthy of the saltiest of sailors. The Spanish Armada never knew cordage this magnificent.

Blossom’s bars are also wrapped, not with marigolds for unworthy Blights, but with more of Key’s handmade rope. Honey’s and Little Bird’s are similarly woven and our bars are now connected. Through small slots in the design, I see Blossom has left her chessboard shawl for the working end of her rope. Honey’s face is twisted in concentration while she tightens a circle knot, and Little Bird does the same. Little Bird’s tongue is pressed against the side of her mouth the way kids do when they’re hard at work. Any other day, Honey would tease Little Bird without mercy, but Honey has barely said three words all day and hasn’t spit once. She’s as terrified as the rest of us.

Only Key seems calm, humming as she works and shooting me complicit looks. My window was the last to be completed. After the discovery of the broken middle bar, Key’s original design had to be altered. My makeshift harpoon, the metal pipe I almost used to run her through, is too loose to act as an anchor to the weave Key has been planning for months. The cheap iron rod would fly off and ruin our already unlikely plan of escape. Key convinced Mynah to let her make Little Bird’s rope nest, thus affording her more than enough material. Once Key collected enough fabric, the only limiting factor to their escape plan was me. Bird, Blossom, Key, even the swiftlets knew I wouldn’t trust anything involving Key; they wouldn’t leave me behind and debated for weeks about how to save me. Bird died while Blossom tried to find the words to soften me.

Key nudges me out of my guilty thoughts. Get to work, her eyes say.

She’s right. I have no time to cultivate the shame that squats in my breast like an ugly toad, but we have a dark date for later.

Key stands, puts her hands on her slight hips, and surveys her work. Through the limbs of the Sonagachi, stretched above our dead, is Key’s finest work. Her opus. It took a heart-pounding day of swinging the ropes from window to window to create the tight matrix connecting all our bars. All it would take to be found out is a random Goon sneaking into the courtyard. They’re not allowed anywhere near the tree without Mynah, but some have tried to scrape off a bit of bark to sell on the black market while she’s away. We were terrified that Mynah has come back early, as she does if her hunt has been successful and she’s reached her bag limit. So far, fate has been on our side, and with every knot we fasten, with every marching second, we run out of daylight. Today is the last day the boy promised by Wing will be waiting for us on the other side of the alley.

“Ink,” Key says, “Bring your water.”

I do what she asks without question, responding to a voice that seems to belong to another girl, one that emerged transformed from the SonaScape that nearly killed us both. This Key Girl holds her head up and jokes as she spins our futures between her fingers, as if the success or failure of what we are foolishly attempting couldn’t get us sold or separated or beaten to death. Mynah won’t tolerate a Top Floor rife with rebellion and runaways, book or no book, busy season or slump. Her wardrobe is torn to shreds, drawn and quartered across her courtyard, strangling and snapping the branches of her beloved. Tonight ends in one of two ways: we’ll either reach a patient boy dressed in orange or we join our sisters under the Sonagachi.

The final sliver of the peach sunlight slips under the roof. I’m so scared I almost vibrate with nerves. It’s only been about ten days since my own SonaScape, and while my energy has more than doubled with every beaded SonaScape, my confidence has faltered. The necklace was to be my secret weapon, our SonaBridge to a better life, or so I thought. Perhaps they still are. Without them, I could hardly summon the strength to walk across the eleven feet of my enclosure, much less climb down a forty-foot tree.

A few days after Bird fell ill, they decided that knocking me out and carrying me down the tree was the worst, but only, option. Blossom suggested lowering my unconscious (possibly tied, definitely gagged) body out the window and down to the courtyard in an improvised hammock or sack. How the three of them thought they would be strong enough to maneuver me through the limbs of the Sonagachi without breaking their necks is a testament to Bird’s optimism and unfailing faith in Key’s deft hands. Blossom was trying to figure out a way to rig it. Putting up the tents is woman’s work in her nomadic tribe. The rope matrix is more like weaving and less reliant on strength.

“This is the fast, line, final knot,” says Key as she empties the pitcher of water over the covered bars.

“Water makes them stronger,” she explains, like she knows what she’s doing, like she’s been constructing ropes for girls to escape their tower prisons every day of her life. She smiles at me, a full smile, because her left cheek is no longer sunken in. The limp is also gone, as is the shoulder droop from the broken collarbone and the scar down her lip. In fact, all injuries caused by offending hands have been chased away by the magic of the beads and her weird SonaScape. I look more like her than ever before.

The smell of roasted almonds wafts through the courtyard. Any minute now, the Goons will open the House doors for the evening. Only the halo of city lights illuminates the kaleidoscope of fabric crisscrossing the square courtyard woven through the tree. Honey is at her window, giving her ropes a final pull, while Little Bird mirrors her every move. Directly across my window is Key’s darkened, windowless one. The mooring ropes disappear into the black hole of Key’s room because she’s using her heavy floor loom as ballast.

My knees soften as Key picks up a stretch of rope and nods. It’s time.

I consider the possibility of undoing the mess we’ve made of the tree and all our clothes and what it would take for Mynah to spare us if only I begged and bartered hard enough.

Key reads the doubt on face. She watches my chest heave in prelude to a spectacular panic I’ve been postponing for the past forty-eight hours.

With her forehead pressed to mine, she rests her palms against the beads. “Either way,” she says, “we leave this House together.”

Before I can protest, she spins me around to face my window and the others who are waiting for my command. Warriors would do this exercise. It’s a game as ancient as war.

She leans into me to steady her stance, then her arms slip under mine to take firm hold of the rope. “I like what you said last night, about games being preparation for might, fight, battle.”

Before there was rope, Vikings used animal skins.

She positions my hands at the grip knots she’s so brilliantly engineered into her design.

“Remember what Blossom said,” she whispers in my ear.

“Blossom said a lot of things.” There was a tedious explanation about forces and friction. I was too tense to pay close attention and only understood a fraction.

Key says, “The lead leg is our anchor.”

“The back leg is for power,” I answer.

We say this over and over. Rallying call, Shibboleth, mantra.

I shift my weight onto my ankles because Blossom cautioned us not to let our feet slide. Slide and we lose ground. Pause and the knots will tighten and tangle and they’ll be useless. Or maybe she told us sliding was good, and we should let the knots tighten. I can’t—

“Pull!” says Key.

The rope goes taut. I can feel the others pulling at their end of the rope; it’s like we’re holding hands. Our rope to Blossom, Blossom to Honey to Little Bird. I watch Key’s knots twist and slide like snakes over the bars of my window. Key’s breath is warm on my neck. Honey grunts and growls with effort as the sinewy branches of the Sonagachi creak and strain against us. A fat branch on Little Bird’s side snaps, and the rope gives two feet.

“Pull!” yells Blossom.

I move one hand to the next grip knot. Then the other.

“Step!” Blossom again.

We step backward.

“Now everyone, hang,” commands Blossom. “Let your weight do the work.”

Another branch snaps. The rope gives again but only by a few inches.

“Pull!” says Blossom.

No movement at all. My neck muscles strain. The bottoms of my feet are starting to sweat. Whatever you do, don’t let your feet slide.

We’ve collected all the slack and are now wrestling against the metal resistance of the bars.

“It’s not working,” whines Little Bird. “I’m not strong enough!” She lets go, or maybe her hands slip, because I fall back onto Key as our rope goes slack.

I peek through the wrapped bars. The Sonagachi is twisted and unrecognizable, wrapped in a cocoon of a thousand colors.

“Little Bird,” screams Honey. “Loop the end around your waist. Then use the wall, like Blossom said, drive with your legs. I bet they are as strong as your lungs!”

Key hands me the rope and I brace my legs against the blank wall under the sill. Once again, Key to me, me to Blossom, Blossom to the little ones who are working harder than anyone should ever ask them to work.

The rope slides one inch, then another as we harness the fear we have of losing Blossom forever, along with all the hate in our hearts for Mynah and all those who put us here. Most of all, we pull with the hope that there’s a world worth reaching beyond this courtyard.

Tears trickle off my chin as one of my bars starts to quake. Slowly at first, then faster, until it bends into a “C.” The bar next to it does the same, making a gap wide enough for me to fit.

Honey cries out that her bars have also made way. We stumble into a pile as the rope slaps against the floor. Little Bird’s bars have made plenty of space for an undernourished kid to slip through. Only Blossom’s bars refused to bend. We were afraid that would happen, so we planned for Key to get her to Honey’s room. All we need is one escape route, but it’s safer for the others to leave from their own window and minimize any traffic in the halls.

Key and I make our way to the bed in the center of the room as Blossom tells the others to start their descent, that we’ll all be close behind. She reassures them that Key will soon be there to unlock her door.

Key gets down on all fours, and I step onto her back the way we used to do when we used to steal mangoes off the trees in the spring.

I stretch my arms so far above my head, I might pluck them out of the socket, but the light bulb in the ceiling is still beyond my reach by at least two feet. I jump down, get my thickest, heaviest books, and stack them onto Key, who holds herself stiff as a board. I make my way up the teetering stack. Slip, fall off the bed, then climb up again. I wobble but find my balance at last, Key whispering encouragement the entire time. I take my battle book from my belt sash where it too has been bolstering me, preparing me for this moment.

Key’s head turns to look up. Are you sure?

I nod.

“Take it with you, Ink. With us.”

“I have all I need to leave this place,” I tell her.

My book has an entire chapter dedicated to warfare by fire. It’s only fitting I leave it behind to burn. It’s taught me all I need to know.

I press its pages to the hot light bulb. The paper blackens, then curls into nothing but gray smoke. My stomach drops. This won’t work. The only part of the plan that was my idea is a failure.

“Keep trying,” says Key. Her voice is patient and soft, full of time and snapdragons and games and Bird’s voice.

The pages ignite with a whoosh that warms my cheeks.

Key helps me to the floor as I keep the flaming book at arm’s length. She makes a torch out of Blight’s unfinished fairy tale and together, we make a pyre out of the bed, the books, and the walls of The Nectar House.

Inferno, conflagration, phlogiston, blitz.

Chapter 31
Shock and Awe

Devouring shelf after bookshelf is fire fit for a siege. The feather cushions of the Blight Chair go up like a tinderbox and scorched books tumble to the floor. The illuminated copy of A Conquest of Birds looks like a phoenix as it falls, and lands onto a black and white photograph of a Honey Girl with a harelip propped up against the floorboard. I placed the pictures of Mynah’s Chimera Girls all around the room so they could bear silent witness. I want them to watch the House burn, along with any future they might have had inside its courtyards.

The air is getting so hot, the inside of my nose burns with every inhale. The sweat drips down my face, stinging my eyes. The room fills with gray smoke that floats to the ceiling and out the window. Key covers her face with her arm.

“Go. I’ll meet you there,” she says and pushes me away from the flaming wall to the tree.

I start to argue but cough instead. It wouldn’t be of any use. She’s made her decision. The fire is supposed to be a distraction, a way to buy us some time to evacuate the First Floor, but pulp is so deliciously flammable. Key won’t be able to reach the hall once the shelving above the door catches.

She has me lean on her for balance as I put one leg through the gap in the bars. “Fitch, catch, hetch … get the little ones to the courtyard.” Key looks over her shoulder at the door, which looks like a mirage through a veil of dancing smoke. If she’s scared or nervous, only her stutter is there to show for it. Her hands are still, her jaw is set.

“I’ll barricade the door, then I’ll meet you in the court”—she coughs into her elbow—“by the alley.”

I want to tell her something meaningful and important. Show her how scared I am for her and for me. I want to say how wrong I’ve been but choke on every syllable.

Key presses her palms to my face. They are surprisingly cool. Fearless, dauntless Key Girl. She pulls the collar of her dress up and over her nose and mouth. My clever sister has sewn a wide caul around the neckline so she can race through a burning building to save nameless Girls who are half dead already. No words had been written that would have dissuaded her from trying to save some First Floor Girls. If Bird were here, I would have to argue with her too. I want to tell Key that she can’t save them all, that some will have to be sacrificed, that it’s the only way, but she’s already disappearing into the haze.

A mushroom cloud of black smoke follows her out the door. I pull my leg back into the room, to run after her. I can’t leave her alone again. The air burns my throat, so I drop to the floor where the smoke is thinner, ready to crawl after her, when I remember we agreed to lock the door to keep the Goons from following us. The stairwell Goon has been face down in a puddle of sick for an hour, thanks to the Oxmed Key put in his SonaDrink, but the ones on the First Floor will soon smell the smoke. Key will only have a few minutes to barricade the door that leads to the rest of the House as best she can, then retrieve Blossom and get to the courtyard door. Mynah’s Goons are giants and will easily push through, but that will buy us time and—

“Ink!” calls Little Bird from the courtyard. She already climbed down well below Key’s fabric web. Each foot straddles the branch collar near the trunk, sturdy as a seaman. “Honey!”

I’m not sure if she’s calling for Honey or alerting me that Honey is holding tight to her bars, with her bottom wedged between them and showing no intention of climbing out her window. She’s bug-eyed and hypnotized by the ground below, as if we’re expecting her to jump to her death.

“I’m coming!” I swing my other leg out of the window, and I grab an overhead branch wrenched between purple fabric. Mynah’s favorite house dress makes for a perfect handgrip. A blast of heat hits my back. A shelf collapses behind me, launching orange embers and blackened paper into the room. The pretty Girl in the picture at the foot of my bed, a Blossom perhaps, smiles as we watch the last of my wall words disappear behind flames. There they go: Tortoise, dripstone, rope bridge, moor. I guarded them from Mynah’s threats of whitewash paint so fiercely, sea arch, crosier, ice rink, swordfish—I thought it would be sad to leave them, but their tour is over. They understand this night, and so do the girls in the photographs. Even if we all die in the fire, we’ll all be free.

Immolation. To destroy or sacrifice by fire, a catastrophic but powerful gesture of devotion or protest.

Smoke billows over and around me, like it too has found its way out. I tighten my grip, stomp around for a place to plant my foot, and climb into the Sonagachi.

The air is cooler out here, but heat blows out of my room like a kiln. When I scan the tree for Little Bird, vertigo makes the leaves whirl. Hooking my elbow around a branch, I wait for it to pass and squint into the night. The sky is already a deep blue-black, but I’m backlit by the fire and easily spot Little Bird making her way back up the tree. She stops on the branches in front of Honey, yelling, coaxing, and trying to pry Honey off the windowsill. I can’t hear her over the cackling, crackling fire behind me. I crawl to the trunk, feeling my way carefully through the leaves and trying not to look down.

Little Bird peeks over her shoulder and fear registers on her face. My window is now the mouth of a dragon breathing black smoke. Flames grip the edges of the wall as the fire tries to get out too.

Little Bird half-carries, half-yanks Honey onto a skinny branch. Honey has picked her side of the tree so bare that the limb seems too flimsy to hold their weight. She clings onto Little Bird like she’s trying for a piggyback ride. Little Bird manages to twist her around enough to help her to the steadier limbs near the trunk.

My foot slips. The other follows. I fall through the branches. Pain at the back of my head like a white light. The branches spin above me and sway as if SonaDrunk. Something alive fans my face, a startled swiftlet. My left hip stops my descent. Pain saws its way up my torso like it’s trying to split me in two.

I get my bearings, wedge my feet into the crook of a sturdy branch. When I look for the others, the branches lag each time I swivel my head, the light leaves trails that fizzle out like rockets. A breeze cools the sweat drenching my dress and makes me shiver. Little Bird and Honey are three quarters of the way down and have stopped their descent to watch me, waiting to see if the Sonagachi has split my head open. Panicked screams from the inside of the House reach the courtyard.

Little Bird points at a Goon squeezing himself through the bars of what used to be her window. Key must not have had time to lock it, or maybe they’ve caught her. Mynah could be back by now and has sent a squadron of Goons to the burning floor above to save her wares. Perhaps the fire has reached the stairs, and he’s trapped on the third floor. If so, Key and Blossom should already be making their way to the courtyard, but the backdoor is as dark and empty as the entrance to the alleyway.

By now, the screams are louder than the roiling fire blasting out of my window. The crown of the tree glows angry and orange. A low rumble fills the air. It’s followed by a crash and an enormous sigh of smoke from the top windows. Oh, please let that be a wall and says not a ceiling—or at the very least not my ceiling. I insisted we ignite my room because it has the most kindling, and if my ceiling collapsed, the fire would make a barricade and keep the Goons from entering the courtyard. Blossom warned us that my room is directly above the courtyard door, so Key would have to move fast with as many First Floors as she can get. If my books and walls block their only way out, then those deaths are also mine to claim.

A glowing branch falls past me. I look up, expecting to see the Goon, but he’s still at the window with his face the color of a beet. He’s stuck. His barrel chest is too big to clear the bars. He’s caught, half in and half out, the perfect death for a mongrel. I hope the fire starts with the soles of his feet.

As I get closer to the ground, the support branches become less dense, slowing my descent. Little Bird and Honey are only a few feet from me, barely holding on to limb stumps. When I reach for them, I slip but catch myself, only clipping my chin. Little Bird manages to straddle a lower branch, then balances herself onto her belly to let her legs hang. She swings from the tree with shoestring arms, then lands on two feet. She motions for Honey, who does the same.

Thin trails of smoke snake out the back door. Heat presses on me like a blanket. An ember lands on my shoulder, and I smell burning hair. My room is now a box of open flame and ink-black smoke puffs up and over the rooftops. I hope my books, Blossom’s gaudy bed, and Key’s glorious loom join dark forces with the smog and choke the life out of this stinking city.

The roof is a field of flames, and the tree is a monster, one of Blossom’s desert fire djinns. Loose ends of burning fabric swing in the wind, leaving streaks of yellow light and smoke. Our House Girl uniforms have unraveled, transformed into the flaming swords of a hundred-armed ifrit.

Honey lands onto the buttress roots in a heap. Little Bird helps her up. They run to me and hold out their arms as if to catch me, but my legs won’t move. The ground under the Sonagachi is neither dirt, nor sand, nor lava. It’s a graveyard. Unhallowed and vengeful. Something makes a clacking sound. It’s the shifting bones of the Girls I helped put here. They’re waiting to drag me by the ankles to some Cimmerian, netherworld SonaScape.

Key staggers out of the courtyard door dragging two Girls. They’re followed by three more who are holding onto a leading rope Key has tied around her waist. Some try to turn back inside when they see the burning tree and the dead-end yard. Key runs into Blossom coming out of the door with a Girl under each arm and many more in tow. Their clothes are smoking, and some drop to the floor to put out their burning hems and sleeves. Soon there’s a logjam of bodies at the door. Two figures fall onto the threshold, arms flailing, faces streaked with soot, while another tramples over them to get out. Her head is covered in a purple shawl. Mynah.

She bends over, coughing, and she removes her shawl to reveal a wild nest of curls cropped close to the neck. Her nails are short, and a broken garland of marigolds hangs off her neck. Not Mynah. Must be the Blossom from the Garden Wing, which is the farthest from ours. How have Key and Blossom managed to reach so many?

Key herds the Girls past the tree to the far corner of the courtyard toward the mouth of the alley while commanding me to jump. From down here, the alley looks so narrow.

Honey runs into Blossom’s arms. She takes off the cloth covering her mouth and wraps it around Honey’s face. She yells at the Girls, telling them that they must remain calm, there’s a way out, but they’re confused and unsure.

More Girls tumble out, each in varying states of panic and pyre.

At the opening of the alley, Little Bird frantically tries to get the Girls to the street. Some slip away without hesitation, some resist and fall to the floor in hysterics, while others carry or drag the weaker or smaller ones through the gap to the unknown.

Blossom reaches me after stomping the flames off a Girl who is now wearing half a night dress.

“You can do this. It’s not far, jump!” she begs me.

The little ones behave like trained soldiers, fearless and unquestioning, while I can’t will my body to move. The ground, the alley, the world outside might as well be five deserts away—I don’t deserve any of it and have no place there. My grip on the branch slips, I’m so lightheaded. The heat is unbearable and it’s so hard to breathe. If I pass out and fall out of the tree, then they can do with me what they will, but I’m not touching that dirt.

Two Goons stumble out, both on fire. They roll on the ground to put out the flames. One of them stops moving, but the other one manages to remove his flaming jacket. He gags and wipes his face, noticing the Girls leaving through the alley. He pushes a coughing Girl out of the way and wedges his shoulder into the gap. He lunges into the narrow slit. Tries again, then again until he’s huffing and cursing, but he can’t fit.

Honey leaps onto him, legs over shoulders, and claws his face. Soon Little Bird latches on and together they all tumble to the floor like a three-headed giant wrestling an octopus. The Goon’s fist connects with the side of Honey’s face, and she flies off him while Little Bird wraps around his legs. He falls, then kicks her off. He can barely stand because he’s holding the side of his face. Under his hands are streaks of blood coming from his eye. He lifts his knee, preparing to kick Little Bird, when a burning branch flattens him. He stops squirming almost immediately.

Someone calls my name, but I can’t tell where the sound is coming from amid the screaming and the sirens.

Key is yelling for me as she leads a stagger of Girls who look like wraiths. They barely look up or around them, expressionless as dead deer. First Floor Girls. Nothing phases them anymore. The pillars of fire and the dead and the rampage only add to their long list of atrocities.

Close behind them is Mynah brandishing her strap, as if thrashing dead-eyed House Girls will put out the inferno that was once her legacy. She reaches the tree, stops under the branch I am clinging to, and falls to her knees at the sight of her beloved turning into ash.

I leap off the branch and into the scorching air. Something snaps in Mynah’s torso when I land. She tries to fight me but can barely breathe. Her diseased lungs, the poison smoke, and the weight of every House Girl who has died at her hands are killing her. Somehow, I’m holding Mynah’s strap in my hand. She looks up at me in terror. Behind me is a crown of fire. A halo of heat surrounds me, I am a creature freshly escaped from hell.

I give Mynah a blow to her head with the handle of her own scraping knife, then another, then another until someone drags me off by the armpits.

Key pulls me to Blossom, who’s helping two First Floors enter the alleyway. I reach her as she’s kissing Honey and Little Bird all over their sooty faces and sending them out. At the other end of the gap are the flashing red lights of emergency vehicles. A gust of fresh air pushes my hair back.

“Wait for us on the other side!” I tell Honey’s silhouette as she and Little Bird disappear into the sliver of orange light. “And look for the boy. But please—”

“I won’t run, Ink,” Honey says as she pulls Little Bird along. “The bumpkin can’t keep up with me. I’ll take care of her.”

Key takes my hand. The alleyway is too narrow for us to go side by side or even facing forward; we have to turn to our sides. I make her go in first. Her eyes are red-rimmed and puffed up almost to slits, but I can read them like a book. Sister, snapdragon, bookmark, love.

My chest and back are hard pressed to the walls as I squeeze into the alley next to her. It’s almost too tight a fit. The Gavage Girls, if any have been able to get to the courtyard, will be too big. They will burn, trapped in the courtyard with Mynah and the Sonagachi. I despair at the thought, comforted only by the rules of war. To attain highly, I must sacrifice greatly.

Key takes my hand and pulls me a few steps farther into the dark alley. When I extend my hand to Blossom, she makes no move to take it.

Out in the street, I hear Little Bird and Honey yelling for us over the sounds of fire trucks.

“Blossom?” I ask. Why won’t she take my hand?

She shoulders her way into the gap to show me that she can’t fit.

“You have to go,” she says.

“Not without you. Not alone.” I try to yank her into the narrow opening, but her chest won’t fit, not even sideways.

“You have to go now, Ink, and you will. You always do the hard thing for the right reasons. And those hard acts you hate yourself for, that’s where you put your love. Don’t forget that. Bird never did. And you won’t be alone. Blossoms are a dime a dozen in this town.” She puts something small into my palm, closes my hand around it, and kisses each one of my knuckles. The pointy edge of her white queen digs into my hand.

Above us, the ropes Key fashioned out of silk and tulle burn into the night, symmetrical as a spider’s web, beautiful as a wedding tapestry. Mine and Blossom’s. I feel the heat of Blossom’s desert on my skin.

Key pulls on my dress and screams for me to come. Blossom on one side, Key on the other. Key won’t move another inch unless I go too.

I swallow a sob and tell Blossom, “Nandani.” Key squeezes my hand.

“Nandani.” I point at my chest, then at Key. “Yamuna.”

Blossom laughs, “Nandani and Yamuna! You were named after the twin rivers?”

“Oh, Blossom, is there any subject you’re not good at?”

She gives me a gentle shove, and Key’s arms find me.

“Helena,” Blossom says as Key pulls me away from her and the ash that were my words from the House that made me what I am.

I ask Blossom. “Is that your real name?”

“No,” she answers, “it was Bird’s.”

My legs crumble under me. The tightness of the alley holds me up, as do Key’s quick hands that usher me toward the freedom of the street.

The way out is lit by a warm saffron light. The passage is so narrow, I can barely turn my head to look at Blossom, whose body is traced by the burning maw that was our time together. A figure moves behind her, Mynah, or maybe another sizzling branch of the Sonagachi has fallen from on high. A blast of cool, smokeless air hits me. I blink, and Blossom and the figure are gone.

In warfare, fire is both friend and foe. It will guide your soldiers through the night and burn your village to the ground. Save your life and take it.

Chapter 32
Homecoming

Little Bird has a room full of rescued House Girls in a trance. When she opens her mouth to sing, what comes are ancient ululations that hold them in thrall, as if they’re hearing a human voice for the first time. Some songs are simple, composed of doleful wailing that lets us collectively inhabit our grief. Other notes ring with celebration and promise and possibility, but the girls don’t seem to like these as much. Those newly arrived to Homecoming House might cover their heads with their arms and rock in place. Maybe for them, for us, hope is a painful thing to be feared, a poison needle aimed at the eardrum, a siren’s call to a feeling long forgotten and too good to be true.

From my corner on the couch, I watch Little Bird wind down this evening’s concert. She fluffs her calico skirts and stands on a velvet ottoman the color of a ripe peach. Homecoming House is unafraid of lavish hues. The dozen or so girls gathered in the common room sit on a plush ultramarine rug. Strewn about are throw pillows and poofs in every color. It’s enough to bring on a seizure. Our new, temporary home is overrun with cushions, blankets, pliable sack chairs. I can’t cross a room without tripping over something soft or someone in repose. The landmines of comfort and recovery.

Honey is at her usual post closest to Little Bird, balancing on a footstool and gnawing on a lamb kabob. Greasy orbs dot her shimmery chemise of blue and burnt orange. Little Bird is identically clad but innocent of rips in the hems or stains on the bodice. The two of them flit around the gardens all day like a pair of motmot birds. Key gladly makes them matching outfits because they refuse to wear anything else. Honey also refuses to wear yellow or wash her hair ever again. The knotted mess on her head is dreading into a dangerous, lopsided clump that she’s constantly scratching and may necessitate some kind of intervention by Key in the near future.

Flanking Honey are a former Apple Girl and a pale Strap Girl, the kind who tie up Blights and beat them into their SonaScapes. Since our arrival at Homecoming House almost a month ago, I’ve met three Strap Girls, four Shadow Girls, a Scent Girl, and many more. There is even an Ursula Girl, who lost an arm to the bear early on in her House Girl career. She’s only alive because she came from a family adept in funerary arts and convinced her procuress she could manage the crematorium ovens. It seems that deals of this sort were not unique to Mynah and me.

I never knew there were so many kinds of Girls and from all over the country, from Houses boasting an even greater complement of Specialty Girls than The Nectar House ever did. I find myself writing their entries in The Book of Ardor. I can’t help it. The words just come.

Strap Girl. This buxom beast of a Girl could school a sailor in the art of knots and chain you to your deepest desired SonaScapes.

Shadow Girl. Behind a screen of purest silk, this creature of night will shape her body into a bridge to your truest self.

Scent Girl. These enchanting sylphs, deities of air and sensuality, will create a fragrant feast that will transport your soul into Sona.

Ursula Girl. Confident, courageous, intrepid spirit guides who will walk you through the darkest hinterlands of your SonaScape.

Last week a rare Water Harp Girl arrived, the ones who SonaScape Blights with music played on an armonica. Rumor has it she smashed her glass instrument to shards before making it to Wing’s organization of liberators all on her own by faking her suicide. Her neck has a raised red ligature mark around it. Aside from this, she’s as pretty as any Blossom. My fingers float to the beads around my own neck.

I wonder if she misses her instrument, if its music gave her solace like my words once did. Armonica was written on my wall. Mynah told me all about them, for she loved the ethereal harmonies made by dainty wet fingertips rubbed on fine crystal. I’ve never even seen a sketch of the usual instrument, but they sound magical, like from a fairy tale, or another planet, or a SonaScape.

I’m curious about them, and about the Water Harp Girl who has yet to surrender any other moniker. Alias, sobriquet, nom de plume. I want to ask how she designed the harness ropes she used for her deception, but she doesn’t talk much. Then again, neither do I. Lately, we’ve started nodding to each other in the dining hall, or when we walk along the high stone walls of the garden at twilight. She keeps to herself and never attends Little Bird’s concerts or my nightly meetings. Perhaps she’s had enough of music. I can go days without seeing her because the grounds are huge with a tiled interior courtyard, much like The Nectar House but with benches and chair hammocks instead of trees. I hope she comes to my meeting tonight. I’ve yet to conscript her, but hers is the kind of heart I’m hoping for.

Homecoming House has many wings and nestles in a quiet neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. There are about fifty girls in our enclosed compound, but the number changes daily. Wing and his squadron of allies move them out of the city once the girls are strong enough to travel or when there’s a window of safety for smuggling them out of the country. Some stay on to help the cause, others are too scared to leave the buildings, but this place is meant to be temporary lodging, a “safe house,” which is a descriptor that I refuse to use no matter what Wing says.

Little Bird finishes her song. The girls don’t clap or talk too loudly, even though the ones who venture into the third floor common rooms are usually the most lively and strongest among us. The first two stories are hospital floors lined with beds and bedpans and the smell of sick. Former First Floor Girls recover or die there tended to by a tireless corps of efficient women who work and live here. The Strap Girl told me the caretakers were former House Girls or have lost a daughter or a sister to the SonaHouses. Key spends her days there giving baths and changing sheets sweat through by girls weaning off the Oxmed. One twin always comes out stronger than the other. Now I know which one that is.

I spent a few weeks at the first-floor hospital. Three days after we arrived, I lost it. My marbles, my reason, my sense. Bonkers, batty, barking, loony, nuts. So many words for how your brain breaks under inexhaustible grief. I don’t remember much. Key told me I called out for Blossom and Bird all day long, then filled the night with a litany of Specialty Girls I saw buried or scattered. Some nights I even called out for Mynah. Key said those nights were the worst. My head is less confused now, but no hospital bed, no medicine, no magic beads can heal the charcoal ruin that is my heart over Blossom not fitting through that gap.

“Nandani.”

“Nandani.”

“Ink,” says Key, touching my shoulder.

It takes me a second to remember where I am, who I am, and I even look around the room at the explosion of color and girls chatting and nibbling on fruit.

Key’s carrying a basket of mending. “You were lost in your dread, head again.”

I shrug.

“Thinking of Blossom or Bird?”

“All of them,” I shove a cushion the color of a scream onto the ground so Key can sit next to me. In my head or when we are alone in our shared room, I call her Yamuna, her true name, but it feels unsafe to do so elsewhere. I want to protect every part of her, and throwing her name into the wind for anyone to grab at seems perilous.

She sits and her basket of folded clothes is immediately occupied by an overfed mutt that looks like a cross between a ferret and a sausage. A pair of new girls are sneaking peeks at us. Everyone seems fascinated by the twin House Girls who decimated one of the oldest House families in the city and burnt down a full grown Sonagachi tree that stood for generations.

Key pets the mutt, which contently offers her his round belly.

“If he’s not careful,” I say, “Honey might try to eat him.”

Key giggles and rests her head on my shoulder. I scratch the back of her neck like I used to when we were girls. These days we like to find a sun-soaked spot and sit like this for hours. It’s better than the sweetest SonaHigh.

Touch is one of the hardest things to grow used to. Shoulders bump into mine, foreign skirts rustle against my thighs as I walk up the stairs or wait for the bathroom. There are real bathrooms and showers, but no tubs. Wing had them taken out as a safety measure. Such a thing would have been unthinkable to me, to hurt oneself after leaving captivity, but I get it now. The world is weighed down by uncertainty, too many bodies, noises, odors. The House morphs into a different place every day. The lack of predictability unsettles me. Yesterday, a Nectar House First Floor with singed eyebrows laughed at one of Honey’s raunchy jokes. The girl released a full-throated, grab-your-sides cackle that put me on the precipice of a panic attack.

A little girl approaches us, eyes cast down, mousey brown hair covers her face. “Are you the Twins?”

“Yes,” we answer together.

Key and I laugh at this, but the girl doesn’t.

“I was, am, was a twin,” she says.

Key slips her hand in mine. Squeezes.

The girl can’t be more than ten years old. Judging by her golden eyes, she must have been a Honey.

“They stole me. They reached into our bedroom window and lifted me right out of bed. My sister was closer to the door, and they left her alone. When I was in Celandine House all I ever thought about was her and how I wanted her with me, and I know it’s not right, but maybe if she had been snatched we’d be together now, like you. Maybe they went back for her or maybe she’d be dead.”

Key gathers the girl’s bangs and begins finger combing her hair away from her face. The girl doesn’t resist Key’s gentle touch, but she can’t meet our eyes. I know what that means. I know the heavy ballast of shame when I see it.

The girl says, “I wished so hard for her. Begged the owner of the House to fetch her. I think that makes me a kind of monster, as bad as them. What if I tempted God or called the Fates? What if she ended up in another House?”

“Hate, fate doesn’t work that way,” says Key. “Wishing for your twin was how you survived your House, the Blights. Every single one of us did what we had to do. Kind things, ugly things, even those who went along with everything and did nothing at all—this is also a way to stay alight—alive. No wrong way to do it.” Key glances at me. “All these voices, choices were the right ones.”

The girl looks to me to confirm this, so I do. My days of hard truths are not yet over.

“Every time the forked road of fate presented its unfair choices, we chose the right path if we are all living to tell the tale.” I say all this with the conviction of an accomplished liar, but the firebrand of shame glowing bright inside my belly shows no hint at burning itself out, because I have yet to believe my own words.

Key cocks her head at me, indicating that I should help hold a section of the girl’s long hair so she can weave it into the braid across the crown of the girl’s head.

“There,” I say when Key is finished, “you look like the maiden on the yogurt boxes.”

She pats her head, inspecting it. There is a smile in her somewhere, but it will take a while to manifest. Maybe weeks, maybe years, but it’s there. “You’re the twin with the beads?” she asks me.

I nod.

“Will you cure me too? With your beads?”

“No cure. Just help a little.”

“I need to be rid of the nightmares and the thoughts that come when I don’t want them to because they come all the time. I need my thoughts to be mine again. I want them back.”

Key ties the braid off with an orange ribbon from her basket. “The beads will help you not remember the bad things all the time. Ink will help you.”

“Will it be scary?”

“Yes,” I say, while Key answers, “No.”

If the girl is weary of our disparate responses, I can’t tell. She must have been an excellent House Girl. I would have put her on the Top Floor.

“And I will truly SonaScape? Will there be Blights?”

“Perhaps,” I say, trying to make my tone soft, which is a skill I have to master. Wing says I sound like a drill sergeant even when asking someone to pass the bread at dinner. “When I SonaScape you, I’ll get you in and out safely. You might have Blights in your trance, but they can’t hurt you. Seeing them, facing them, changing the story of how the bad things happened—”

“I don’t believe you,” she says, deadpan. “No magic beads can make it so that it did not happen.”

“Correct,” I say. “It will have always happened. It’s like a book in the library across the hall from the kitchen. The book will always be there, but you won’t have to read from it all the time. You can close it. Put it away and learn from it, but it will always be part of your library.”

“And it’s always scary?”

“Doesn’t have to be. I’ll be there to help you in and through the worst of it. Then we can talk about it after, as much as like or not at all. It might even be nice, like a memory that is important to you. The beads will show you what you need to see so you can be restored to the health you had before the Blights. They don’t change what happened to you, only the damage done deep inside you. Your mind will go far out as if in a dream, then you’ll come right back.”

“Like a boomerang?” she says. “Do you know what that is?”

I like this snarky kid. “Yes, I know what a boomerang is.”

“They were made to be impact weapons. Don’t suppose you know what those are.”

I take a closer look at her stoic little face. “I could tell you were clever when I first saw you.”

She lifts her chin. “Ink Girls have to be clever.”

Key’s weird eyes catch mine, as do Honey’s, who has been studying this entire exchange. Honey hasn’t spoken to me in weeks but somehow manages to be part of every conversation.

“Tomorrow night we can talk about it some more,” I tell the former Ink Girl. “We meet here after the singing. The beads will help you.”

“And you don’t even heed, feed, need SonaDrops,” adds Key. “Ink can do it all with the beads. She’s helped so many girls here already.”

The kid nods in a way that reminds me of someone who has had more than ten summers, someone used to fending for herself, someone who thinks they know more than everyone else because she’s read it in a book and spent too much time alone with only words for company.

She runs her fingers over her hair. “Thanks for the braid.”

As she leaves the room, she sidesteps an emaciated girl hovering at the edge of the archway. The Ursula Girl told me this walking wraith spent six months howling downstairs after she was rescued from a Twin Pleasures House. By now, I can easily recognize these wretched creatures because their blank and startled expressions give them away. They inch around the edges silently alert, motionless, bloodless, but ready to fawn or freeze at the slightest shift. Like all prey.

All former House Girls share an overcast feeling of sadness about them, even the intense looking ones who wear combat boots and help Wing free Girls, or the rotund women who make the meat pies Honey steals. These women listen to the radio and dance in bare feet in the kitchen, but they don’t fool me. They may have been liberated years ago during The Orange Rebellion, but they still cry out in their sleep. Our nights are all the same, full of nightmares lived out loud. Too many memories, too many SonaScapes not their own.

The Twin Pleasures Girl watches me from her spot in the doorway. I’m sure she too can tell who among us lived the posh life of a Top Floor or the shadow life of a First or whose body was violated like her own. There but for the grace of Mynah …

In an effort to reassure the spooked girl, I assemble my face into the closest thing to a smile I can manage these days. I still lie. Old habits die hard, and secrets and artifice have gotten me this far. If I find a better strategy to tackle the world, I’ll replace it. All war is won on deception.

Honey readies herself for the next song, and a short cough from the hallway punctuates the quiet. The Twin Pleasures Girl grows pale, then scurries away at the sight of Wing approaching from the corridor. He gives her wide berth and clears his throat again to announce that he is entering the room. Only a handful of men are allowed here, all of them liberators, but many Girls stiffen or panic at the sight of them, so Wing always treads softly.

Something shifts, a heightened awareness blankets the room, a buzz of unease fills the air as Wing makes his way to where I’m seated. The couch is only a few inches from the floor, and Wing’s arthritic knees crackle in protest as he folds his six-foot frame around the cushions and pillows. His illness is notorious for arthritis and I’m sure he’s in pain a lot of the time, but the soldier in him will never let that show.

A matronly woman walks in bearing a steaming platter of cheese puffs. Key smiles at Wing as she gets up to protect the woman from Honey’s greedy paws, already threatening to topple the pile of puffs.

I jerk my thumb at the fleeing figure of the Twin Pleasures Girl. “Didn’t you do her extraction?”

“A year ago.” Wing’s wide, drop-crotch trousers are a shocking shade of orange. They balloon under him as he sits on the opposite end of the couch.

“You look like you’ve just laid a giant persimmon,” I tell him.

The skin at his temples crinkles with a smile that reaches his eyes, which he likes to line with coal to hide the yellowing brought on by worsening disease. “She can’t tell friend from foe yet, storm from safe harbor. Twin Pleasures have the hardest time—and I hate calling her that.”

“Still won’t tell anyone her real name?”

“Still too blended. Takes time to restore a separate sense of self from the confusing mental violations of other people’s SonaScapes and other trespasses. Safer to stay invisible, stay an unperson, a zero.”

Unblending is a term he uses often, but I struggle with what he means. Unblending, unburdening are the kinds of words I’d scratch on my wall so I could think about them some more. Wing has offered me a wall on which to do this, and enough pen and paper to fill a scholar’s library, but I’m done with writing words on walls or trapping them inside books. I’m searching for new ways to experience them. Commune, integrate, coalesce, dwell.

It was hard to believe Wing’s words at first, even though everything he told me turned out to be the truth. The Orange Rebellion, the underground liberators, the bloody rivalry of the House Syndicate that is subverting the Blight Girl system from the inside—all true. Most especially, he made good on the promise of a boy dressed in orange patiently standing outside a burning building.

A chubby girl with bouncy, blond curls elbows Honey away from the platter, telling Honey that there is no need to snatch.

Honey bares her teeth at the former Gavage Girl, who outweighs her twice over. They’ve skirmished over food before, and the former Gavage Girl has a busted lip to show for it. Key separates them and gives them each a puff.

“Food is never about food,” I tell Wing, quoting his own words back to him when he explained all about food aggression. These girls have tasted every flavor of deprivation, and it comes out in different ways. Nighttime, mealtime, and dusk, when the Blights would come, are usually the worst.

“We have plenty of food stored. Good thing, too. The streets are the same.” Wing sighs. “Looting, boarded-up grocery stores. No produce. Entire neighborhoods are cut off from each other, the Syndicates are holding the roads hostage, and there is no more gas. Stations are all out.”

He’s lowered his voice, doesn’t want the others to hear, but he trusts me, knows the soldier in me won’t panic. The ferret-sausage snuggles into him, and Wing scratches his rump. “It’s mayhem in the streets, but we’ll be fine. Safe as—”

“If you say safe as houses, I’ll get that rat to bite you.”

Another smile. Teeth white as soap. “We’ve run people and guns in and out of this city for years. I could mobilize a platoon in broad daylight, including a marching band without waking a cat from their midday nap.”

I like how Wing uses words, how he exaggerates to reassure me. How he teaches me about the world but never condescends.

“Will the government declare martial law?” This was another thing he told me about.

“Not yet, but soon. Without Mynah’s tree, and no way into the city, there’s little Sona. Every drop has been bought up. The market will bottom out, and the Syndicates will butcher each other. And we’ll let them. Won’t we?” He nuzzles the belly of the ferret-sausage. “We’ll wait them out. Thin the herd.”

I say, “The supreme act of war—”

“Is to subdue the enemy without fighting,” he finishes the quote. This has become a game between us; he knows my favorite book almost as well as I do. He says it is because we are both soldiers. I like when he says this, but I don’t tell him.

“We have generators and a well and food for many.” His sleeve slips down as he taps the mustard yellow wall behind us. “Homecoming House was built for siege.”

When he lifted his arm, he revealed light blue patches on his wrist that weren’t there a month ago. Wing’s broad back and full head of hair deceive me into forgetting how sick he is, how sick he will soon be. Half-Blights live longer than Full-Blights, if they don’t catch a bad flu or get an infection, but it’s unpredictable and never very long.

Like Wing, the boy who waited for us in the halo of my inferno is also Half-Blight, the son of one of the cooks. The night of the fire, I didn’t want to go with him, but Key had a plan that involved Honey and a rock to the side of the boy’s head should things go south, so I trusted her instincts. I was wrong about the alley, which opened to a side street, not the front of the House. The police and fire trucks were all conglomerated at the main entrance of The Nectar House around the block from our escape route. Once on the street, we slipped away with ease.

Some Girls scattered as soon as they got outside, and Key can’t say for certain how many were left behind, but she cries for all of them every night. Once the blaze reached the First Floor, there was no way for all the girls to reach the central courtyard of our wing. For us, the fire was a distraction; for others, it was a death trap. Key knew this. So did Blossom. These were hard decisions, and I know making them had to be worse than any Blight.

It was only when I met the other rescued girls in Homecoming House did I believe we were safe, at least for the moment. Safe. SonaScape. Escape. Those words rhyme.

“Hey,” Wing says, bringing me back from my thoughts which like to wander off. “Perhaps you’re using the beads too much?”

“You’re like an old woman, but not as good looking,” I tell him.

“We don’t know what these trances of yours are doing to them, or to you, in the long run.”

“Do they look sick? Sicker than when they came here? You should let me work with the really sick ones downstairs. The beads will speed any recovery—”

He shoots me a look he may use on the battlefield. Everything about it tells me he will not budge on this. Wing was furious the first time I Scaped a rescued girl. He sees how the beads fill them with resolve and health and vigor, all without a drop of vile Sona, but I’ve yet to convince him to trust the beads like I do.

Ferret-sausage groan-grumbles. His nap was disturbed by Wing’s sudden change in tone. “These girls have had their minds messed with enough, and there’s too much we don’t know about the beads or the SonaScapes. Is it even a SonaScape if there’s no Sona? We don’t even know what to call it.”

“We know they cure any damage done by another. We know we need able bodies. We know that girls who have purpose do better than most, you told me that. Homecoming House is too soft.” I kick the cushion at my feet. “Locked in a gilded cage of rescue and repose. You may have given them freedom, but I’m giving them purpose.”

We’ve fought this field before. It won’t be the last time.

We watch Honey stuff her mouth with a third cheese puff and silently call a truce. Armistice, detente, cease-fire, accord. The pungent, buttery smell of the pastry reaches me and rouses a twinge of nausea. It mingles unpleasantly with the smell of smoke that my nose can’t seem to rid itself of. Everything tastes like burnt toast. Key complains I’m too thin but has had to let out Honey’s clothes twice already because Honey can’t stop eating and spies on the cooks like she’s stalking them on a savannah.

Little Bird is between songs. Honey hands her a brimming cup of mango juice while downing one of her own in loud, sloppy gulps. Food here is plentiful and readily available, but Honey can’t stop hoarding it, or offering it to Little Bird or Key, but not to me. She blames me for leaving Blossom behind, even though Key told her how she had to drag me out of the alley, how Blossom had grown too big to fit, how I did not want to leave her, how it was the only way. Perhaps Honey is mad because I know her original tale of enucleated Goons is false. It seems easier to blame me, so I’ve left it alone for now.

Wing says there’s a zoo in the town he’s moving us to once it’s safe. I’ll take Honey to see the big cats, if she ever speaks to me again. I’ll bring Little Bird too, of course. They’re never more than arm’s length from each other. Every morning, we find them in a nest of purloined linen, fast asleep in a corner, forehead to forehead even though they have their own beds. Key jokes that it’s only in slumber that Honey looks as sweet as Little Bird. When they lie there in a tangle of limbs and cotton pajamas, it’s hard to tell them apart. All day long, they play. They play like they invented it, like it’s their job. Little Bird sings songs about plucking eyeballs and the exploits of our daring escape. Honey is teaching Little Bird how to spit.

Ferret-sausage sighs contentedly when Wing repositions him onto his lap. “Little Bird has stopped asking me about her family.”

“That’s Honey’s doing, I’m sure.” Honey’s only home is now inside Little Bird. She won’t give it up without a fight. I suspect she launched a robust propaganda campaign to convince Little Bird to stay with us. There is a tacit agreement between the Girls of the Sonagachi Wing; we don’t know where we’ll end up, but the four of us will be there together. It should have been the five of us. Six if I count Bird.

My fingertips search for the hard lump in the cuff of my jacket sleeve. Key has sewn a button-sized pocket into all my shirt hems so I can always carry Blossom’s white queen. I touch the jagged chip whenever I miss her. I alternate between it and the beads which don’t leave my neck. Talisman, totem, periapt, charm. For someone with such poor sight, Blossom saw who I was and loved me anyway. Forget the mala beads, forget the fairy tales, forget the SonaScape, this is the only magic.

“Have you heard anything new?” Wing knows what I am asking about. One of Wing’s spies heard that Mynah escaped the fire with a tall girl in tow. Wing says not to get my hopes up, that rumors are as abundant as lice now that the city is in chaos.

“Fifteen new recruits arrived yesterday,” he says. “Ten more expected tomorrow. I’ll ask.”

“That many?”

“The numbers of resistance fighters have doubled since the advent of the Twin Pleasures Houses.”

This still surprises me, but it shouldn’t. When the danger arrived at their doorstep, when it was no longer possible to look away, the general public grew a conscience. Girls were ripped right out of their beds as the appetite for House Girls grew rapacious and the line between brothel and Blight House blurred for the first time in history. Fathers slept on the floor next to their daughters. Little brothers traded toy cars for kitchen knives as they sat sentinel on front stoops.

Wing says, “Helpers to the cause are spreading like—”

“Wildfire!” we say at the same time, making some of the girls startle.

Honey has secured a bowl of orange slices. She offers some to Little Bird, to the Apple Girl, to the Strap Girl, skips me, but insists Key take two pieces. Key raises an eyebrow higher and higher until I accept her second squishy sliver.

“Keep making faces and your face will freeze like that.” I bite into the orange, trying to squirt her with the juice. Yesterday Little Bird asked me why the beads cured Key’s sunken cheek and her limp, but not her stutter. I told her Key’s speech is not broken, it’s part of who she is, and no part of her needs to be fixed, that she’s as perfect as the day she followed me out into the world.

Little Bird finishes her last song and asks, “How did you like that last one, Ink?” She scoops up ferret-sausage and holds him to her chest.

“Magnificent!” I say.

Little Bird pulls a face. “You always say magnificent. Were you even listening?” Little Bird kisses the dog’s neck. She dotes on the ugly mutt, but Honey, street urchin until she dies, kicks the dog whenever she thinks no one is looking. This is the only thing she and Little Bird ever bicker about. Little Bird bids me a goodnight and then she’s an echo of a laughter fading down the hallway, the slaps of Honey’s bare feet right behind her.

A few girls leave the common room, but most stay. Many are the ones I strengthened with the beads, others are curious, all are angry. The ones who have experienced the trance they sometimes call “The Scape” seem to forge the greatest fury. As I entered their minds, I helped them discover things about themselves they never imagined, I held their hand through the Hell realms, revived pure pleasures not lost to oblivion or ordeal. What a privilege to remind them of the raw power it took to survive, or that fate did not deliver them into the slaughterhouse of the anonymous dead. Not an unknown soldier among us. It’s hard work. Worthy work.

Key settles at my feet with her hand loom, though she barely speaks during the meetings. I can sense she’s unsure of my rousing speeches and vitriol. She’ll come around. I know it. Behind those two keyholes is a Girl who’ll do what I ask and raze this city to the ground to find Blossom. I’ll put the twin of the little Ink Girl from earlier this evening onto the long list of missing sisters. Dozens have vowed to help me and Wing search and save more girls. How odd to braid my future with a man and a Blight, the same species of beast whose sole purpose in my life was to shorten it.

Wing is also conflicted about my nightly meetings as well as my incessant fantasies of vengeance. Yet he doesn’t miss a gathering—after which he urges patience, strategy; I envision only fire. He cannot deny that my work with the Girls has replaced their terror with an energy I’m eager to harness. He knows a battle cry when he hears one. I’m assembling an army to add to his numbers. We are the mightiest of soldiers, for who else but those who have already experienced death of self can better give themselves over to a cause? We are fearless. Even the meekest among us has the heart of a gladiator.

“I have something for you.” Wing digs in his shirt pocket. “Consider it part of the reconstruction effort.”

He hands me a shiny silver square. It’s a lighter. The flicky kind soldiers use.

I flip open the lid, run my thumb over the flint wheel. A shushing sound manifests a spark transformed into flame. Corona, nimbus, halation, aureole.

“I challenge you to sit with its glow like a meditation.” This is his sage, I-know-what’s-good-for-you voice. “Vengeance is like fire: the more it devours, the hungrier it gets.”

I reward him with a sober nod, even shut my eyes as if taking a mindful moment for his lesson to land. If his words are meant to dissuade me, weaken my resolve, then we have now traced the limits of his fine intellect, for I am well-used to starvation and fantasies of supping on the bones of my enemies is the only repast I crave.

The desire to hurt Mynah and those like her is a bottomless barrel matched only by my despair at having left Blossom inside a ring of fire. Limitless, boundless, unfathomable, abysmal, vast. There are not enough walls in this city for all the words.

More Girls file in, settle onto overstuffed pillows, talking in accustomed murmurs and waiting for me to speak. Come. Join us. All are welcome.

Tonight’s talk will remind them that House Girls are by nature sit-and-wait hunters. Jaguar, angler, puff-adder, cobra lily. Ambush predators all.

Wing points to my lighter. “Look underneath. There’s an engraving.”

I flip it over. Written at the base is a single word. Firestarter.

“Also, a meditation?” I ask.

“On power, perhaps. And responsibility. Maybe a good alias for you? I dislike calling you by your House name.”

Ink, House Girl, maven of avian slaughter, collaborator, soldier, twin.

I close the lighter with a quick flick of my wrist. “I haven’t decided on a name yet but lean toward some. Thermite, napalm, hellburner, pyro.”

“Moth to flame.” He snatches the lighter from my hand and lights it against his thigh with two quick snaps. “I like Firestarter.”

I snuff the flames out with an open palm. “Firestarter is a mouthful.”

“Only two more syllables than Ink,” says Key, inspecting my hand for injury.

But the same number of syllables as Nandini.

Nandani. I don’t want to surrender my given name, my true nom de guerre. Only Key, now Yamuna to everyone else, is allowed to say it, and only in whispered secret. Maybe one day I’ll share it with Wing. I joke I’ll tell him on his deathbed. He laughs, a warrior unafraid of death, but I hope that day doesn’t come for a long time.

Bird once told me that naming things gives us power over them, and I told her words give others power over us too. She shook her head at my cynicism but kissed my forehead anyway. One day I’ll go back to the scorched earth of The Nectar House, where the Sonagachi once stood, and erect a marker that will read: Resurgam. That word soothes me to sleep. Even in death Bird comforts me.

The room grows crowded; each night our circle widens. Even the zeroes, the unGirls, the nearly catatonic seem to stir when I tell them our tale of triumph and teach them new words.

Fire pot, trebuchet, hellburner, blitz.

First Floors, Top Floors, Specialty, the Twins, all are welcome, all are valued.

I need the help.

We have fires to set.

The End

Author Photo Credit

Julie Lieblich

About the Author

Liza Losada Schor is an advanced practice nurse psychotherapist specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder and adolescent psychology. As a trained psychedelic psychotherapist, she has worked in research studying the use of psychedelic drugs in the treatment of mental health disorders. She holds a degree in literature from Wesleyan University and a master’s in psychiatric nursing from the University of Maryland. Her work is inspired by the intersection of her clinical career, her cultural background, and the resilience of her patient population. When not putting her protagonists in peril, she lives in Maryland where she enjoys making dioramas and book art alongside her family and two wonder pups. Ink Honey Blossom is her first published novel.

Acknowledgments

So many people have made this book possible. Let me begin with the talented author Jordan Rosenfeld, my first editor. Thank you for your keen mind and invaluable help in making my books what they are and for the many years of encouragement and support. So honored to add “friend” to your superlatives.

I am immeasurably grateful to the Olney Writers Group, especially Andrew and Emily, the Olney Library as well as the women of the War Night Writers Group. Alyssa, Jen, Linda, Fernanda, and AG were the first to read “Ink” and never doubted. Please keep writing.

Many thanks to Sibylline Press for giving this author and her scribbling a home, and to my fellow Sibyls. I believe in what we are doing. Thank you for believing in me too.

Thank you to Suzy Vitello, my editor and sister Sibyl. Anna, thank you for such keen attention. Looking forward to the next one. 

My deepest love to ALL my cousins big and little. Larry, Sandra, Ani, and Lisy, you are my brothers and sisters. Yayo, I wish I was as good a person as you.

Oceans of gratitude to my chosen family Jen, Mara, Lisy, April, Amy and her balls, and Christine, my newest bestie. My beloved Gossamers, you are the pounding heart of my creative dreaming. Thank you for being on this timeline with me. Could not have made it this far without you.

Scott, thank you for reading my work with such care. You are the stuff of Summerlands.

Thank you to the Setzers and their many kindnesses. If everyone had the Setzers, the world would know peace.

Espy, my bestie, my wolf without whom this book would not be possible, and this incarnation would be unbearable. Thank you for being exactly who you are all the time and for always bringing a kaleidoscope.

Seven, there are not enough words to express my gratitude for being so deeply seen and loved by you, but I will try as long as there is ink in my pen.

To Hetty and Gioia Guerrieri, and the Internal Family Systems therapists, the best dream team a woman could ever have.

Gracias a mami, que me ubica y me ama. Te quiero.

I would also like to humbly honor the veterans held prisoner by the pain of moral injury and trauma. You are not invisible. I am deeply inspired by the intrepid psychonauts and those healers who sit with them as embodiments of compassion, integrity, and inviolable boundaries. Thank you for doing the work. Bodhisattvas all. This means you, Norma.

This book respectfully acknowledges the trafficked children and people of the world and the aid workers who devote their lives to ending the horror. To the real women of the Sonagachi District and all the sex workers, forgive me my trespasses into your experiences. Any mistakes are my own. 

And finally, but not least, thank you to Nick, aka Moto, who believed in and encouraged every syllable and for giving me space and time to write, for my orange room and for his Kung Fu. 

To the radiant Lucien, the greatest work of art I have ever had a humble hand in creating. Angels ain’t got nothing on you.

Study Guide Questions

In what ways do you think the character of Ink has changed by the end of the book? In what ways is she still the same?

How does the novel explore the topic of resilience in children?

We all imagine what we would do in the face of danger or life-altering circumstances. If you were in Ink’s situation, how do you think you would survive? What aspects or yourself, which passions or beliefs or memories do you hold dear that would allow you to survive hardship? 

Ink had to make difficult choices in order to help her loved ones. What choices and attitudes did you agree or disagree with? How do you imagine doing things differently?

Betrayal by a loved one is often thought to be one of those most devastating, life-altering traumas. Have you ever been betrayed? How do you think it changes people? What impact did it have on Ink and how she loved others? How she interacted with the world?

Ink only saved Girls she thought had potential, who were special and who were tough enough to withstand the trials of Top Floor Life. How do you feel about this, and do you feel she was justified in her decisions? 

Moral injury is the psychological distress when someone experiences or witnesses events that violate their deeply held beliefs or moral code. Do you think Ink suffers from moral injury? Do you think this is why she identifies with soldiers and war?

What role does patriarchy and poverty play in the dystopian world that is the setting of the novel? Can you see something like this happening in our society? Who are our most vulnerable? Who would be the major and minor players?

The novel has been described as an allegory for human trafficking and the sex trade. Do you think the SonaHouse system resembles issues that are real in the world today? If so, how?

How is the theme of fate and destiny explored in the novel?

(SPOILER ALERT) What are some of the ways in which the trauma of Ink’s experiences carries over into her life outside The Nectar House?

Sibylline Press is proud to publish the brilliant work of women authors over 50. We are a woman-owned publishing company and, like our authors, represent women of a certain age.