The half-crescent moon hung like a crooked grin over the village, its silver glow seeping into the cracks between the thatched roofs. It wasn't the kind of light that revealed much—just enough to turn the dirt paths into winding veins of shadow, and the children's laughter into whispers as they darted between huts.
All the children gets busy to go at Aunt Shumona's hut. Aunt Shumona tells folklore stories for the kids.
Aunt Shumona's hut smelled of burnt sage and the faint tang of goat milk left too long in the sun. The children piled in like eager puppies, elbowing for space on the woven reed mats.
Kiva, the smallest, always claimed the spot by the smoking hearth—not because it was warm, but because Aunt Shumona's fingers, knotted like old roots, would absently stroke her hair while she spoke.
Shumona laughs.
It's a sound like rusted hinges, like dry bones clattering down a well—the kind of laugh that makes mothers pull their children inside and bolt the shutters.
But the children still come.
They always do.
Especially when the moon is sharp as a sickle, cutting through the dark with its cold silver grin. Tonight, it hangs low and hungry over Tamaam, casting jagged shadows that twist like snakes in the dust.
Little Aafreen huddles closest to the lantern, her braids sticky with date syrup. She's missing a sandal—left it somewhere near the well when she ran from Iqbal's scream.
Now she chews her thumbnail raw, eyes darting to the empty space where Iqbal's shadow used to be. "Auntie," she whispers, "tell us about Behula."
Shumona's good eye gleams. The other droops, lid heavy as a coffin door. "Ah," she croaks, spitting a betel-red arc into the dirt. "The girl who danced with corpses." Her fingers tap the lantern glass, making the flame shudder.
"You want to hear how she walked into the sky with her husband's rotting body strapped to her back? How the gods wept salt when she spun his bones into music?"
The children nod, breaths held.
Zamshed lingers at the edge of the circle, the dented pot clutched to his chest. Its hollow belly still hums with the echo of that phantom ringing. He doesn't believe in ghosts. But the pot—the pot believes in him. It presses against his ribs like a second heartbeat.
"Chand Soudagar thought iron could stop fate," Shumona rasps, dragging a claw through the dust. She draws a square—the wedding chamber, strong as a fortress. Then a wriggling line. The snake. "But walls don't matter to Manasa's children. The serpent slid between the bricks like a needle through silk."
Her hands mimic the strike. Aafreen gasps. "Lakhindar died choking on his wedding sweets. Behula? She didn't scream. Didn't weep. She licked the poison from his lips and said..." Shumona leans in, her breath sour with tamarind, "'This isn't how our story ends.'"
Meena crouches in the shadows, her hen-counting pebbles clenched in one fist.
She watches Shumona's story take shape in the flickering light—the iron room, the snake, the bride who refused to let go. It's all wrong. Behula didn't carry Lakhindar's body for six months out of love.
She carried it out of spite.
The pot rings again.
Shumona's tale stutters. The children flinch. Even the moon seems to pause mid-breath.
Zamshed looks down. The pot's rim is crusted with something black and glistening—not rust. Not syrup.
Shumona grins, showing teeth filed sharp as a snake's. "Listen."
The pot's hum sharpens into a voice—not the doctor's wife's, not Iqbal's.
Something older.
A woman's voice, singing in a language that prickles the skin like static.
"O Mother of Blessings, lift the veil of sorrow...."
Meena drops her pebbles. They roll toward the pot, clicking like dice. The thirteenth lodges in the rusted crack where the handle meets the rim.
A scar.
A mouth.
Shumona throws her head back and laughs. "Behula didn't beg the gods," she croons, stroking the pot's curved flank. "She BARGAINED. Six sons for one husband.
Six shadows for—" Her hand darts out, snags Aafreen's wrist. The girl's pulse flutters like a trapped bird. "—a tongue that still remembers how to taste the wind."
The pot tips. Black syrup oozes over Aafren's bare foot, twining up her ankle like a vine.
Somewhere beyond the dunes, a rooster tries to crow. The sound breaks mid-cry, strangled by the dark.
Shumona doesn't stop smiling. "Now," she murmurs, "who wants to hear how Behula danced the moon into dropping its tears?"
The children lean closer.
The pot sings louder.
And Meena—Meena picks up the thirteenth pebble with her teeth.
It crunches between her molars like dried bone, powdering her tongue with the taste of salt and old rust. She spits it into the pot just as Shumona's story hits its crescendo, the lantern guttering wildly as Behula's ghost-song winds through the circle of children.
"Lies," Meena says, but the word comes out garbled, her mouth full of pebble-dust.
Zamshed's pot tilts toward her voice, its rusted rim gaping like a hungry mouth. Inside, something sloshes—thick, sluggish, the consistency of congealed molasses.
Shumona's grin widens. "Ah. The hen-girl speaks." Her fingers tap the pot's belly, producing a hollow THUNK. "Tell us, Meena, where's your shadow gone?"
The children's eyes gleam in the lantern-light, pupils blown wide with fear and fascination. Little Aafreen's bare foot twitches, syrup-crusted toes curling in the dust.
Meena wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.
The gesture leaves a smudge of reddish grit across her cheek—the color of dried blood, or perhaps the clay from which Tamaam's walls were built. "Behula didn't bargain," she says, low and rough. "She STOLE."
The pot rattles.
Shumona's laugh cuts off mid-cackle.
Even the moon seems to hold its breath.
Meena steps into the circle, her bare feet scattering the remaining pebbles. They roll toward the pot, clicking against its sides like teeth. "Six sons?"
She snorts.
"Behula took SIXTY. One for every night the gods made her walk the sky with Lakhindar's stink in her nose." Her fingers twitch toward her empty hen-coop. "Ask the rooster."
As if summoned, the rooster crows—or tries to. The sound emerges strangled, half-formed, more gasp than cry. From the Jagarry house, a chorus of answering clucks rises, then cuts off abruptly.
The pot rings again.
This time, it's not a bell-tone but a voice—husky and raw, like wind through cracked reeds.
"O Mother of Blessings, lift the veil of sorrow...."
Meena doesn't flinch.
She reaches into the pot, her arm sinking elbow-deep in the black syrup. When she pulls it free, her fingers are wrapped around something slender and pale—a bone, yes, but not human. A chicken's wishbone, bleached white as moonlight.
"Sixty shadows," she murmurs, snapping the bone between her fingers. The sound cracks through the night like a gunshot. "One for every egg the moon owes me."
Shumona hisses. The lantern gutters, plunging them into darkness for one heart-stopping moment before flaring back to life.
And in that flickering light, the children see it. Meena's shadow, returned—but wrong. Stretched too long, twisted at the edges, its hands ending in cruel talons that rake the dust.
Aafreen screams.
Meena meets her gaze, the broken wishbone still clutched in her fist. "Tell them the rest, Auntie," she says, voice dripping with mock sweetness. "Tell them what Behula did with those sixty shadows."
The pot shudders.
Somewhere beyond the dunes, a phone begins to ring.
And this time—this time, someone picks up.
Somewhere beyond the barbed wire, where the dunes swallow sounds whole, the ringing stops. Not with a click, not with silence, but with the wet crunch of a jawbone forcing itself to move.
The howl that had been fading—raw-throated, newborn—snaps off mid-cry as the moon shrinks to a sickle. Half-crescent now, sharp enough to slit a throat.
The creature in the dirt shudders. Its fur peels back like wet parchment, revealing skin slick with sweat and something darker. Fingers curl—too long, then not long enough—as the knuckles pop into human places. The spine remembers standing upright. The tongue remembers words.
The half-crescent moon watches, indifferent as a blade left in the sand. Its light doesn't illuminate; it EXPOSES. Every crack in the earth, every scar on the creature's reforming flesh, every drop of black syrup oozing from the pot's rusted mouth—all laid bare in that merciless silver. This isn't the romantic glow poets sigh over. This is the light that shows you what's been hiding in your own shadow.