A Curious Moon

By Roshni Anaya Iyer

Scorpio 𖤓 | Pisces ⏾ | Gemini ↑

The day of the poojai, Mallika wakes to a morning before the sun, and it isn’t until she lights a candle that she realizes the skin and sinew and muscle of her left hand must have sloughed off in the night—and all that’s left is pale, polished bone. 

She rushes back to her bed, hints of yellow peeking through the wispy curtains and searches, expecting to find the remnants of her decaying body on the pillow or the stone-cold floor, but both are clean-as-ever.

Mallika moves the fingers of her hand, and the phalanges and metacarpals flex just as they should. She doesn’t know who to tell, so she gets ready instead. The ceremony has been planned for months in advance, and she figures it’s probably too late to stop it now, anyway. Mallika manages well enough with lining the mai around her eyes, the earrings, the blouse, but the problem arises mostly when she is trying to drape her saree. The bones don’t have as strong of a grip as flesh should, and the pleats kept falling through. She pokes her head out the door and asks someone to fetch her mother. 

When her mother arrives, adorned in a regal purple saree, Mallika tries to tuck her bone-hand behind herself, but her amma is no fool. 

“Show me,” she demands, and Mallika gives in, placing her hand in her mother’s. 

Amma sighs. “I should have warned you, kanna. I’m sorry I didn’t.” 

When Mallika looks at her mother again, she sees her differently: both of her arms flesh-less, leaving them as bare as Mallika’s hand. Her mother shifts slightly, and the illusion comes back; her arms adorned with bangles and her hands with rings, but at just the right angle, parts of her mother look like a skeleton playing dress-up.

“Mine started with my foot,” Amma says. “We women must live in a state of decay.”

Her mother always did the saree pleats better, even with bones for hands—years of experience-forced skill. Amma pleats pallu too, almost like a professional, and Mallika carefully ties the udyanam around her waist. Her mother braids her hair, hands gentle and slow, and Mallika can tell she is sorry.

“I wish you had more time,” her mother says. “I wish I was able to give you that—spare you some strife.” 

“Why can’t you?” Mallika asks. “Do you know why it happens?”

“Today is your nichyadartham, Malli. The process has already begun; it’s too late to stop.”

Mallika looks at herself in the mirror, hair pulled back, mai lining her eyes, rings and bangles and rows of necklaces adorning her body. She imagines Keerthi, months-or-years in the future, how she would look in wedding finery, and the thought sinks like a pit in her stomach. 

There’s a knock at the door and her father’s voice sneaks in through the closed doorway. “Can I come in?”

Mallika eyes her mother through the mirror. “Hi, Appa.”

Her father comes in, beaming, and the look on his face is of pride. “Malli, you look beautiful. You look so much like your mother when we got married.” 

“It’s only my engagement,” she says, but her father’s smile doesn’t waver. He reaches out to hold her hand in his—reaches out for her left hand—and doesn’t seem to flinch when the bones are cold. In fact, he doesn’t seem to notice at all.

Mallika’s eyes shoot up to meet her mother’s again, wide and unblinking, and her mother shrugs almost imperceptibly. 

“I know, kanna, but it’s still a big moment. I am very hopeful for a bright future for you.”

Mallika’s smile is tense and strained, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “I hope so.”

When her appa leaves, Mallika turns to face her mother again.

Amma tuts, pushing her head forward again. “Malli, I’m not finished. Don’t mess it up.” She starts pinning chains with delicate golden bells to the back of her hair.

“Why can’t Appa see? He didn’t even feel it!”

She sighs. “No man can. They may notice if they tried—I am not sure—but they don’t. My foot was at least hidden by the saree when I got engaged, and my mother was years-gone and not able to give me a warning. I spent the entire day panicked that someone would see. It was only a day later, when my athai saw, that I found out why. You only saw my bones after you noticed you had lost your own. I only saw how my aunt had decayed, then too. You need to focus to see. Your father never has.”

Amma finishes doing her hair, and Mallika turns around. “Ma, I don’t want to decay.”

There is a knock on the door, and Mallika looks at her mother. 

“It’s just me,” a voice calls. “Can I come in?”

“Of course,” Amma says. “Come in, Keerthi.”

Keerthi walks in slowly, dressed in a lovely lavender saree, anklets chiming on her feet. Mallika’s heart flutters in her chest, and she pushes back the thought of her soon-to-be-married. 

“Golussu!” Amma says, reminded, and rummages through Mallika’s box to find hers.. 

“You look beautiful,” Keerthi says, awkward-a-touch. “I didn’t think I expected to see you get engaged so quickly.”

“Thank you,” Mallika says. “That purple… suits you.”

Amma finds the anklets, giving them to Keerthi. “Will you help her put them on? I have to go check on something, and I can’t lean down like I used to.”

“Of course, my queen,” she says, and Amma glides out the door. 

When they are alone, the silence presses down. Mallika doesn’t know what to say. Memories flash behind her eyes: Keerthi and her, five-years-old and playing pretend in the sprawling gardens; nine and spying on her father’s court through the hidden balcony at the top of the room; thirteen and whispering under the covers; seventeen and kissing in the servant’s stairwell, just to see what it was like—and Mallika finds her heart in her throat, stopping sound from moving through her. 

Keerthi kneels before her, gently pulling Mallika’s feet onto her knees to tie the golussu around her ankles. Her eyes catch on Mallika’s left hand, and her head tilts.

Mallika flinches away, covering her hand, but by then, Keerthi knows something is wrong. 

“What happened?” she asks, incredulous. 

Mallika looks away. “I… I woke up and it was gone. Amma says it’s because of my nichyam. That you can only see the bones if you really notice, and that men never seem to see them at all. That women are in a state of decay.”

Keerthi looks appalled. “Is the queen all bones too? Is my mother?”

Mallika shrugs. “Your mother probably is, too. Amma’s limbs are all gone.”

“And it’s because you’re going to be married soon? It’s because of a man?”

Mallika considers this. “It’s because I will be married soon. I suppose it’s because of a man.”

Keerthi scoffs. Her eyebrows are furrowed, mouth curved down, and gently ties the golussu around Mallika’s other foot. “Then why on Earth do we marry—”

There’s a quick knock on the door, and Amma strolls in without waiting for an answer. 

When Keerthi looks at her this time, her eyes widen, and she huffs out a sigh. 

“What is it?” Amma asks. 

“Majesty…” Keerthi says sadly, bowing her head. “You’re all bones.”

Amma’s head whips to Mallika. “You cannot go around telling everyone, Mallika. You have to keep this a secret. It’s a burden we must bear alone.”

Mallika jumps up. “I didn’t tell her, Amma. She saw my hand.”

The queen looks at the other girl, shock coloring her face, and considers this. “You… you just saw it? You noticed her bones? It is not your time, yet, kanna.”

Keerthi stands up, head still bowed. “Majesty… if women start decaying after being promised to a man, why do we let it happen? Why do we spend our lives with them?”

Mallika’s mother chews on this, and she can almost see the gears turning in her mother’s head. Her mother, as beautiful and royal as ever, the elaborate jewelry in her hand and across her upper-arm when she didn’t see the bones, the jimmikis in her ears… but this time, there was an exhaustion in the hollows of her eyes, in the corner of her mouth, that Mallika had never really noticed before. Amma looks between Mallika and Keerthi, as if piecing together some part of the puzzle she didn’t realize was missing.

The queen looks towards the window, now almost fully flooded with light, and says, “There is time, still, before you must go down to the poojai. Enough time for you to do whatever it is that you need to. I don’t know if your decay will stop. But maybe…” She turns to Keerthi, her gaze steely. “You take care of her.”

Mallika looks at her mother again, and this time, there are tears in her eyes. She rushes toward her, arms wrapping around her amma’s shoulders.

“If you are lucky,” Amma says, “The hand will be the only part missing.” 

Roshni Iyer is a graduate from NC State’s English Creative Writing program, and has been dreaming of far-off worlds since they were eight years old. She is a huge speculative fiction lover and loves to write increasingly weird stories, often bringing in elements of her Indian heritage. She has been published in the Oakland Arts Review, NC State’s Windhover Literary Magazine, and others. When not writing, you can find them listening to their one favorite song on repeat, lurking judgmentally in a Barnes and Noble, and sitting in the sun like a cat.