The Magick Maker

It took a while for me to believe it, but the girl in front of me was the Magick Maker.
Maidservants gathered around her. One fanned the Magick Maker while another massaged scented oils onto her feet. One painted henna on her hands while instructing the other girl to pour some chai.
I kneeled before her; she smelled of something ancient. It brought me back to my grandfather’s study.
He went on many pilgrimages and always brought something back with him. The cool smell of metal, the feel of the idols that he let me touch, the wonder of all the timeless relics that surrounded me. And I felt another hazy memory I couldn't quite recall, like static getting in the way of the climax.
You can tell a lot about someone from their smell.
And she smelled of that.
“Magick Maker—” I began, before she cut me off with a raise of her hand.
“I know what you seek.” Moonlight chakora birds flew through her hair, occasionally coming out to capture a moonbeam to braid into it. “And you shall get it—if you can get me a drop of advice.”
My heart fell to my knees. “With all the respect you deserve…” I hesitated slightly before continuing, “Such a thing is…”
“Improbable, yes?” she said.
I nodded.
“Make it work,” she concluded, waving the serving girls away.
And she was gone.

***

The Magick Maker unbraided the moonbeams and starlight the chakora birds had gathered in her hair. The last Magick Maker had taught her to always keep a stock. 
She sang notes with no words and fused the celestial powers into kajal sticks and added purple undertones of magick into the cone.
“Change me,” her client had asked, “change my world.”
So the Magick Maker did; her client would never look at anything or anyone the same way again after she lined her eyes with the dark soot.
“We are called the Magick Makers,” the last Magick Maker had said, “but our name is misleading. We never make magick—we only harvest what is already there.”
“Memsaab,” Omarim- the serving girl- said, “Chandrakant is ready.”

***

A drop of advice.
A drop of advice.
How does one get a drop of advice?
I panicked as I walked through the forest surrounding the Magick Maker’s haveli, until a parrot perched on a tree called out to me, “Hey, you.”
I looked up.
“Yes, you,” he squawked. “Coming from the Magick Maker’s haveli, are you?”
He swooped down under me, causing me to trip into something squishy and foul-smelling.
Dung.
“It is auspicious,” the bird mocked. “It is auspicious.”
“Does it have a drop of advice?” I asked.
“Oh, has she asked for that?” The parrot gave out its equivalent to a laugh. “How delightful are our mistress’s ways!”
My throat burned. “So there is no such thing?” I rasped.
“Oh, there definitely is, but can you find it?” The parrot flew away. “That is another matter altogether.”
I followed the bird.

***

It started with the moon.
In the last year that gods walked among mortals, she met the Magick Maker of that time.
She was a little girl who had wandered too far from a family outing, clutching the hand of her friend beside her.
Two little moonflowers under a moonless sky.
The forest around them seemed to grow taller, as it often did in a child’s eyes.
Inauspicious were such nights, her grandmother had told her. 
Amavasya.
Her friend pulled at one of her braids, knowing it always made her laugh. So she did the same.
Soon they were a giggling mess of hands pulling and pushing, clutching each other as they ran forward as fast as they could to get out.
Then came a cliff, and one of them slipped.
It happened so fast that she almost missed it; her best friend barely let go of her hand in time.
She didn’t know how long she stayed there. Long enough for someone to take notice.
The then Magick Maker bent down to look at her eyes. She didn’t ask what happened. Perhaps she already knew.
“My fault,” she may have croaked then.
“Never was,” is perhaps what the Magick Maker back then stated.
“It was an inauspicious time to wander.” It was a child’s blubbering.
“There is no inauspicious and auspicious in death,” those words turned into a balm, “It is all a play of karma that tracks across lifetimes.” The previous Magick Maker’s eyes softened. “But grieve, for you are alive.”
Then the Magick Maker held her and hummed a melody; the moon appeared in the sky. In a misplaced time, just for that one night.
From then on, the girl refused to leave the Magick Maker’s side. When had the girl succeeded her guardian? The girl herself did not care.
The Magick Maker now tightly clutched the ceramic pot in which the last Magick Maker now resided as she hopped onto the back of her best horse, Chandrakant—sari and all.

***

Following the parrot was exhausting. I wondered if the parrot really knew what he was doing and if I should just eat him now and save myself the rest of the trouble.
Soon, he led me to a clear pool of water; when gazing upon it, I could see the lakebed at the bottom. I reached for it, but I couldn’t touch the soil.
I shook my hand dry.
“Careful, careful,” the parrot screeched with indignity. “This water has seen it all and heard even more! Vidur, the great prime minister and advisor of Hastinapur, used to hold court among commoners here!”
I knew about Vidur Ji. Everyone did. Amid the Magick Maker‘s orders, I forgot where I stood; this land used to be Hastinapur before it fell. And Vidur was known throughout the three worlds to be immensely wise and noble. However, he could not prevent the ultimate destruction of his clan as he carried the curse that, despite his knowledge and foresight, he would not be believed by others.
Pity.
“A drop of advice, take your pick,” the parrot said.
The water.
Water was known to absorb its surroundings, so in the palace, we always kept sure to choose our words and actions carefully around water, lest it pick up the bitterness and turn to poison (as we believed anyway).
There was a box in my pocket, a small one made of glass.
I dipped my hand into the water and held it over the open box.
One drop.
Now close the lid.
“Thank you,” I told the parrot.
But he was already flying away. “I didn't help you,” he squawked.

***

There was a small house, separated on the other side of the forest that the previous Magick Maker hadn’t allowed her to go in.
That was, until she passed away.
The Magick Maker put the creamery pot her predecessor had turned into on the half-full shelf, right beside the pot of the former Magick Maker’s predecessor.
There were many such shelves in this room, but they were all full. The rows of pots towered up to the ceiling, which went on for miles.
It was an illusion; from the outside, this house looked only as tall as a shed.
On her deathbed, the previous Magick Maker finally gave her permission to go into that room. Of course, she knew this was going to happen. But knowing and experiencing something are two different things that cannot be compared.
With her dying breath, the previous Magick Maker bid her successor goodbye, and her limbs started to snap.
They snapped and twisted and moved to go into the shape they needed to be. Her flesh kept on folding into itself until the body that once belonged to the woman that hummed a lullaby for her to drown out her cries was now deformed into the shape of a pot, and she could hold her. In just a few moments it all turned to clay, even the roses in her hair.
No one would be able to distinguish it from an actual pot.
Now that her predecessor was on the shelf, she would not be able to reincarnate. Her soul wouldn’t even have the luxury to wander. It would always stay trapped in that body, with no escape.
And such would be her fate too.
She knew the risks to her power when she decided to stay, but she also knew that there was always a way out.

***

I presented the water to the Magick Maker. “A drop of advice,” I declared.
She leaned forward. “So it is,” she murmured.
“Now, please,” I spoke polite words in anger, “give me—”
“Not yet,” she interrupted again. I squeezed my hands together, trying to quiet the thoughts I was so sure she would hear otherwise.
Witch.
Chudail.
I never should have come.
There must have been another way.
The voice narrating my thoughts sounded less like me and more like my mother.
She held the box in her hands, gazed at it deeply for a while. And then she might have seen what she wanted to. She held the lid to my lips.
“Drink it,” she commanded as she tilted the box. The drop made its way down my throat.

***

The Magick Maker looked at the Yamaduta in front of her.
It was easy to find him. One could find one of them next to someone taking their last agonal gasps.
If you had the sight to see.
“Magick Maker,” the Yamaduta said with neither fear nor reverence, “I have told you all you needed to know,”
She nodded. “I cannot stop you from your duty any longer. Thank you for—”
“No need, Magick Maker.” The Yamaduta flew out of the window laughing. “This was eventually meant to happen. It was only a matter of when.”

***

Run.
Run.
Run.
Run.
That was all that filled my mind as I did what it commanded. Why would she make me drink that if she knew what I would see?
Two moon flowers under a moonless sky.
There wasn’t enough light to see where I was going, so I kept bumping into trees.
Why did today have to be amavasya? I thought with anger.
Someone pulled me back from the collar of my kurti.
I turned around—her.
“Careful.” I couldn’t see her face, but it felt as though she was smiling.
I took half a step back only to realize that there was no earth there.
I pulled my leg back. A cliff.
I couldn’t hold it back anymore. “Why?!” I screamed. “Why do you want to kill me?! And even if you do, why make me aware of it? Why?”
I was afraid of death. She knew, and she wanted me to feel scared. She wanted to see me terrified.
Gods, they were all right. I was such a fool.
“I just wanted something to stop the nightmares,” my voice cracked as I spoke.
Her face flushed something close to hurt. “Were they nightmares to you?”
I didn’t stay long enough to hear her say anything else.

***

The first time the Magick Maker saw her again, she thought her friend had come to haunt her.
“I need your help,” the girl said between puffs of breath. She must have run here. “I’ve been plagued by nightmares. No one has been able to do anything, not doctors nor priests. Please. I’m willing to pay any price.”
“Do not beg, sister,” were the words that escaped the Magick Maker, “It does not suit you.”
She knew that the girl was her friend, even though she looked different now. But she saw beneath flesh. Her soul was the same.
The Magick Maker also knew that her friend had moved on long ago, without her.
But still, she packed her magick, free of charge.
Then the Magick Maker asked what the nightmares were about.
“I’m always a little girl,” she said, “holding onto a hand. But I always let go and…”
The Magick Maker’s breath stopped in her throat in a way she didn’t think was possible.
A few hundred years later, the girl came again—same problem, new life.
A nightmare of her previous life plagued the girl each time, and it always involved the Magick Maker.
And each time, the Magick Maker helped her.
It went on like this for an immeasurable amount of time.
And each time, a desire grew larger and hungrier in the Magick Maker.
She tried to tame it.
But even the Magick Maker was once human.
I want to follow her.
She wanted to live through lives with her friend.
And she knew just how to do it.

***

The Magick Maker followed behind me on a horse; it’s a miracle she didn’t catch up to me.
Then suddenly, I wasn’t in the forest anymore. I was in a tall tower, its walls full of shelves that were filled to the brim with ceramic pots.
The room smelled earthen.
And it smelled like lemon in kheer.
It smelled of longing.
And it smelled like—I shuddered—the Magick Maker, but thousands of times more potent.
The Magick Maker walked in with such casualness that I was thrown off. Without sparing a glance at me, she walked over to one of the shelves and picked up a ceramic pot decorated with roses.
She caressed it with infinite care and smashed it with infinite force.
I flinched, expecting it to shatter midair with the force of the throw itself rather than the impact with the floor. But it remained completely intact.
The Magick Maker gently picked it up and put it back in its original spot.
I turned around, but the door was gone.
I was trapped.

***

The Magick Maker was dying, she knew that very well. And on her deathbed, she remembered the Yamaduta’s words from so long ago:
“A Magick Maker cannot break their or another Magick Maker’s pot, neither can the Magick Maker’s servants, who are, in their true form, simply extensions of the Magick Maker.
“A pot can only be broken by someone to whom the Magick Maker is precious."
“A pot can only be broken by someone who does not know what breaking the pot will truly do.”
In this world, there was only one person to whom the Magick Maker was precious, but the Magick Maker would not live long enough to see her.
As her time grew shorter, an idea began to form in the Magick Maker’s mind. She had taken no successors, deciding to end their line with her.
However—
With her last bit of strength, she harvested one last Magick, the Magick in her own shadow, and gave it life. Her shadow separated from her and took on her form. She didn’t have to explain what to do — her shadow already knew.
Her shadow kept her ceramic pot, decorated with images of moons and Chakora birds, on the shelf beside her predecessor’s, and she waited.

***

The drop of advice told me what to do: destroy the Magick Maker before she destroys you.
Its whispering voice haunted me.
A pot of moon and chakora is where her strength rests.
Destroy it.
Destroy it.
Destroy it.
Destroy it.
A pot can only be broken by someone who does not know what breaking the pot will truly do.
I held the pot in my hand and felt my heart crack.
I smashed it to the ground with every shred of desperation I had. When the pot broke, an inhuman howl reverberated through the room.
But I didn’t feel scared, I felt my soul crack.
A pot can only be broken by someone to whom the Magick Maker is precious.
The parrot from before perched on one of the shelves; now he transformed to resemble a human with azure colored eyes, until he eventually faded away.
A Magick Maker cannot break their or another Magick Maker’s pot, neither can the Magick Maker’s servants, who are, in their true form, simply extensions of the Magick Maker.
I barely managed to catch a glimpse of the Magick Maker. She folded her hands at me and smiled. She let out a laugh that came out more as a relieved sob while her body dissolved into black smoke.
In fact, the whole room around me was disappearing in spirals, a white light consuming everything in its path as it raged down at a deranged pace to the bottom.
When I opened my eyes after blinking, I was home, surrounded by maidservants. When I asked where the Magick Maker had gone, everyone replied there was never such a thing.
Even Mother and Father, who regarded her as a cursed witch.
But I felt as if something had been lifted off my chest, and that night when I slept, there were no nightmares.

***

Shadow had a lot of work to do before the girl arrived again.
She went to the pool of advice where the prime minister Vidur once held court and whispered her own words to it, using Magick that was clear in color to make the water more inclined to listen and replaced former advice with a new one.
It was just as the last Magick Maker instructed her host in her early years, “Keep as close to reality as possible, in color, in tune, and in spirit. Magick works with reality, not against it.”
Purav, her servant, perched ready on a branch as a parrot for the girl to come.
The pot had to break this time or Shadow would fade and it would truly be the end.
The Magick Maker knew it was a bet against fate that she took; there were a million things that could go wrong, but she knew how to believe.
The relief that showered over the Magick Maker was immeasurable. Her soul danced and sang and laughed and cried.
Oh, there were a million things she wanted to do in her next lives, and there were a thousand people she wanted to live them with.
But first, she would come back, to the haveli, to that room for as many lives as it took to break her gurvi’s pot. She was no longer a Magick Maker; she could free the woman who always hung roses in her hair and taught her to harvest and weave magick. She had to.
While her mind would not remember, her soul could never forget.
And she knew that once she did, her predecessor would do the same for the Magick Maker before her.
Maybe one day, eons later, they would all be free.
But right now, she waited, for reincarnation, for her friend to hold her hand again and pull at her braid. 
She waited for Uma, Laila, Tara, Kishiori, or whatever name she came as next.

***

Sanjita Patel lives off folklore and whimsical prose. She moved to Canada from India when she was around two years old and now spends her days being overly dramatic and having a minimum of 5 existential crises a day. Her creative thinking process is centered around pacing in a small room, mumbling to herself. The Magick Maker is her first publication.