(Content Warnings: Historical bigotry, implied acts of violence and cruelty (fantastical in nature), parental death, grief, themes of power and ownership (fantastical in nature))
It is done. I have learned everything my master taught me of the arcane arts, and he has seen me surpass him in wealth and knowledge both. Upon his deathbed, he gave me a treasure to outshine any gem: He admitted defeat. Or so I thought.
“Sunil,” he said between ragged breaths, his beard as soiled as his bedsheets. “I now see that the wisdom of our craft cannot be contained to the Five Rivers—and neither, it seems, can you. I know you wish to show the world how much they underestimate us, hidden here under the shadow of the Maharaja. This, I will allow. I only ask that you hold to the core promise of our way of life.”
If the words on this parchment become disordered, do not mistake it for a delicate hand trembling with sentimentality. Even now, decades later and after translating my notes into every civilized language, it is difficult to temper my anger. After years of “apprenticeship” that outlived my mother and father, after a lifetime of orders, he left me with a final demand.
“A book will split along the spine if overburdened with pages. Our powers will do the same to us if we hoard them. You must pass on everything I taught you, Sunil. Otherwise, you will break my heart—and yours as well. This is not just a dying man’s request,” he said, sputtering like the candle at his bedside. “It is the only true responsibility we ever had, my son.”
Now I complete my last chore for the man who taught me everything but his name. Who showed me how to speak to the stars and dance with monsoons, but failed to see me as anything more than a chamber pot for his knowledge. For him, I write this guide, fulfilling his wishes to the letter.
He failed to specify the method with which to pass on my knowledge. So here lies the final lesson of the Great Sunil's tutelage. What future visionary will conquer the spells and snares that have kept this tome from any but the brightest mind of a new age? To you, future sultan, I say: Welcome, my son.
Grandpa used to have this bright green parrot, but it flew away under mysterious Gramma-related circumstances.
I think he kept the cage in our garden shed hoping the parrot would fly back home one day. His nameplate was still attached by a single loose screw: Chico. The once and future parrot. I wanted something cool for Show and Tell, but Ms. Hines said the cage was a “case study in biological warfare,” so I had to clean it in the parking lot first. I found this weird book underneath all the poop and newspaper. It was actually in pretty good shape once I threw away the cover. The spine was split, but that’s what three-ring binders are for.
Don't tell Sunil. He probably wouldn't love that.
A common misconception is that magic is divided into disparate schools. Naturally, I have a more accurate and versatile view: Magic is the art of control.
Also, I think he died a million years ago? At least a few hundred. I showed this stuff to Ms. Hines, and she gave me a funny smile and said something about “anthropological commentary through fiction.” Then she told me that “history is just people today trying to figure out people from yesterday.” But that’s impossible, because we think differently than they do, and we try to make people back then more like people today. She said her favourite way of viewing history is when we “use a modern lens to create a conversation with the past.”
She says things like that all the time. I like Ms. Hines a lot.
She also said that since this book isn't from the library, I can write in the margins like I used to before people complained. Even better, she said this could count as my research project for the year if I “approached it from an academic perspective.” This is me doing EXACTLY what my homeroom teacher said I can do. So future generations, don't yell at me.
To wit, let us consider the simple-minded—
Ms. Hines also said that the best way to respect someone else's writing is to edit it to your own standards. So, I'm gonna cut out anything that's boring. Or gross. Or mean.
—which sets the stage for this practical guide: THE FIVE RULES OF SPIRIT BINDING BY SUNIL THE UNDYING.
Edited and annotated by FARAH SAINT-FLEUR, AGE 13. But I read at a university level. Do you think Sunil went to a weird wizard college? I wish he wrote about that.
Before I began my journey abroad, I gave my village a gift for the years of shelter they had granted my master and me. I taught them to conquer THE YAKSHA. These nature spirits are not denizens of children's tales or wry metaphors in the Buddha’s teachings. They are an invaluable source of power, protection, and labour once bound and controlled. I first encountered a Yaksha in the dead of night, with only my lantern—
For someone writing a “practical guide,” he sure finds excuses to talk about himself. That's why Gramma hates looking up recipes online. “Just get to the point!” she yells at her phone, and then I need to come downstairs and show her how to turn off voice commands. Dad used to joke about getting us matching t-shirts that said, “FAMILY TECH SUPPORT.”
Dang. Now I'm doing what I just called out Sunil for, right? Karma.
—can be found mostly in hillside or mountainous regions. There are Five Rules to follow when summoning, binding, and dispelling Yaksha. Heed them well.
- Bring an offering to a place where spirits congregate. Leave it undisturbed there for one day and one night.
- Once it has seized the offering, lure the Yaksha into the worldly realm with dark thoughts and depraved acts.
- Leash the Yaksha with a rope of prayer beads or carnations.
- Direct the Yaksha to do your bidding for twenty-one nights.
- On the final night, cut the leash before the Yaksha can extract its toll from you.
As an academic, it is of the utmost importance that one maintains one’s non-biasedness. This is especially true when examining how people and cultures conducted themselves in the past. In my unbiased academic opinion, I have some healthy skepticism about the rules Sunil shares here. Let us continue to review them thoroughly. Post-haste.
My findings are absolute: I have summoned Yaksha for kings and commoners alike. But take great care: No creature has caused more misery and bloodshed than—
I changed my mind: Sunil is straight up wrong! Technically. In my opinion. Academically.
—if your fire for knowledge burns bright, let us delve into the Five Rules you must follow if you wish to keep your life.
Well, at least he's got bars. I will now provide supporting arguments. Let us discuss.
•••
- Bring an offering to a place where spirits congregate. Leave it undisturbed there for one day and one night.
A clay cup filled with a nourishing liquid will suffice; goat’s milk or blood are best when fresh, but I have also seen success with excretions of the—
I looked up “excretions” on Gramma's laptop, and she grounded me for a week. Also: Who doesn't love goats, Sunil? They’re objectively cute! Those big horns and weird eyes.
—upon a flat surface. Spirits can sense your gaze, so it is of utmost importance that you walk to a place of safety without looking back at your offering.
Mom would always bring me these cell phone charms whenever she traveled. I tried to tell her that nobody uses those anymore, but she kept doing it. I had dozens of them in an old shoebox underneath my bed.
Now I bring them with me to school. I tie a new one to my phone case each morning, and I can go for a month without repeating a single one. It helps me keep track of the days, and Dr. Shruti said that habit-forming rituals are good for me. She also said I deserved to find a place I felt safe and quiet outside of home.
If you squeeze through the weird part of the fence behind the baseball diamond, you can make your way into the woods before it gets too steep to climb. There's a nice flat rock that feels like an old bed. I call it my bed rock, and that is objectively a pretty good joke.
I didn’t do anything weird there. I just liked being able to see the town from a distance, and I always went home before Gramma finished her second shift. It’s something I could do just for me without worrying a bunch of people. It’s quiet and it’s safe: the good kind of secret.
Naturally, that's where I dropped my Third Wednesday of the Month charm. It’s this little frog stuck in a sushi roll. Mom kept laughing when she gave it to me, and it’s like I can still hear her when I hold it. Like a seashell. I didn’t notice it was missing until the weekend. It’s really cute.
A true son of the arcane will know when the ritual—
Okay, I just read all that back. Not very academic, Farah.
Still better than goat excretions, Sunil.
•••
- Once it has seized the offering, lure the Yaksha into the worldly realm with dark thoughts and depraved acts.
Spirits feast upon our sins like a portly—
You're not missing much here. It's just a half page of body shaming.
—with naught but dregs remaining. We must strive to make ourselves an ideal target for their hunger. It may take you hours or days of meditation to summon the dark energies and perverse thoughts required to lure a Yaksha into our realm; it takes me mere minutes. Let my standard inspire your efforts.
Was self-awareness not a thing back then? Sorry. Non-judgemental, academic lens.
You will know a Yaksha has breached the veil first by its sound, and then its stench. Like a newborn, it bursts from the ether screaming in rage and shame, the smells of its sins overpowering the senses. At this moment, the Yaksha is at its most deadly and—
I'm not saying that Sunil is lying. That wouldn't be “good archaeology or useful cultural criticism,” according to Ms. Hines.
But it doesn't match what happened to me.
When I realized my charm was missing, I wanted to sneak back to my quiet spot in the woods. It was Saturday, which means Gramma had the day off. I wasn't trying to start a fight. But I was being “vague and secretive,” in her words.
I just wanted one place where someone wasn't watching and worrying about me, and she wouldn't let me leave without giving that up.
—days later, I fought the spirit into submission. Sadly, my understudy from the nearby village did not survive the encounter. Upon my return, his widow—
It was a big fight. One where you say things you didn't even realize you had been feeling deep down. I think that's what scared me the most. That I had it in me to be like that, knowing everything she's been through. The both of us. What we've been through. It felt like the bad kind of secret.
—the greater the sin, the stronger the spirit. With those edicts firmly in mind, we can—
I just kept replaying our argument in my mind as I snuck behind the diamond. Through the fence. Into the woods. The sun was setting. It was windy. But I've never seen Gramma look that sad before. The funerals were one thing. It was like we would cry in shifts, one supporting the other. But this? She was hurt. Because of me. It was all I could think about as I got to the quiet spot.
The charm had fallen off my bed rock, half-buried in dead leaves. It was caught on a root and wouldn't budge. It was like a tree had started growing around the little knotted hoop, but it had just been a few days. I kept pulling, and the charm suddenly broke free with a loud crack. It was like the sound of a tree falling, or a boulder getting split in two.
My frog charm hadn't been wrapped around a tree root.
—drag the wretched spirit from its realm into ours. Be prepared for your retainers to lose life and limb, but such is the price of binding.
Like a wave of wet orange leaves, a gigantic lump rose out of the ground with my charm. It was two times my height, at least. As the leaves fell away, I saw it clearly. It stared back.
Its skin was bumpy and raw, the colour of clay and wet soil. It had hair like tree moss, but running along its shoulders and arms like a shawl. Its head was the size and shape of a pumpkin. Even its eyes were two flickering yellow pits like a jack-o-lantern, but with a squashed pug nose and a mess of teeth and tusks jutting from its wide, smiling snout. I wanted to scream. I wanted my sushi frog back.
It was holding my charm in between two fingers the size of fireplace logs. Delicately. With the pinky out. Like it was teatime. I took a deep breath.
I smelled Dad's beard oil and Mom's salt lamp. I saw its chest rise and fall in time with the leaves dancing around our ankles. I started thinking of goats. The only difference between a scary animal and a goofy one is how much you like it, and how much it likes you back.
•••
- Leash the Yaksha with a rope of prayer beads or carnations.
It brought me no joy to fashion a crude noose around—
It absolutely brought him joy, for the record. Pages of weird, gross joy.
—upon its leash, finish the incantation with the words of power. The ritual is complete.
Ms. Hines told me that “context is the foundation of understanding,” and I think I get it now. This guide? Sunil’s Magical Slavery School? I didn’t think I needed to remember anything in particular when I first read it. But now I was in the woods, playing tug-of-war with a giant dirt monster. I should have taken the book a bit more seriously.
I wanted my Mom’s charm back. I also wanted to not die. I took a step backwards, hoping to pull the charm free. Instead, I pulled the giant back with me, still holding my sushi frog in its teacup grip. I took a big step to the side: So did the giant, like it was blocking me from moving forward. I hated that feeling, and yelled: “BACK OFF!” I remember my voice shaking, my words echoing through the quiet spot as the giant struggled to follow my command. But it couldn’t. Despite being the size and shape of a mossy boulder, it strained against my grip.
Like I was blocking it from moving forward.
I hated that idea even more, and took my hands off the charm completely. Immediately, the creature became fuzzy, like someone threw a filter over the world. It started to rapidly dissolve into the carpet of leaves underneath us. The charm fell through its hands, and I caught it before it hit the ground. Those tea candle eyes started to flicker. It was like watching a time-lapse of someone pouring a bucket of water over a sandcastle.
But sandcastles aren’t alive. I touched my sushi frog charm against the shrinking, shifting surface of its shoulder. It snapped back into perfect focus, and stopped melting away. Even after losing a third of its height it was still bigger than me, as tall as my cousin that plays college basketball.
Do not fall victim to the romantic notions of European mystics. There is no such thing as a deal with devils. A Yaksha will exact its price unless you act swiftly and decisively. It will turn whispers into weapons.
I tentatively took my hand off the creature’s shoulder, leaving the sushi frog behind.
I saw its lantern eyes shift from the charm, to me, and back again. I felt frozen as I watched the creature reach a thin, withered claw across its chest to pluck the charm from its moss-hair. It seemed to grow taller and fiercer almost immediately, and its eyes blazed and flickered like a campfire.
A leash has two ends: So goes the Master and his Yaksha. If you fail to grasp the handle, you will spend eternity under the noose. I would never suffer such indignities—
Mom said that when you give someone a gift, you receive one: the knowledge that you added something to their life. “And that’s more valuable than the gift itself,” she’d say every year while joking that my birthday present was “her worldly wisdom.”
—so too does the wise farmer not ask his oxen how to plow a field. For if freed from the yoke, the oxen would ruin both crop and farmer in its destructive rage. The Yaksha are cursed with exceptional abilities. Reason and decency are not among them. One such gruesome example occurred—
I could have left it standing there in the quiet spot. I would have lost a charm, but that’s a fair trade to avoid being eaten by a forest monster.
But I looked at those glowing eyes above that toothy snout, and I remembered what it felt like, wishing someone would talk to you like a normal person. I was so tired of everyone at school using kind words while they avoided me, like I would infect them with what happened to my family.
—whatever you ask of the Yaksha, it will repay you in three weeks’ time in the cruelest coin. Now begins your true test of vigilance—
I got so fed up. I told them car crashes aren't contagious. No one laughed, but I could tell Ms. Hines was trying not to smile when she sent me to the principal’s office. She started checking up on me around then.
—give it nothing, leave it unarmed. Names have power; deny it even—
Academic distance is overrated.
I looked the monster in its flaming eyes and said: “I’m Farah. What’s your name?”
Its voice was more feeling than sound. Each syllable was like a woodpecker thumping in my brain. “MY. NAME. IS.” Then silence.
I repeated myself. It did the same. I realized it wasn't trying to mimic me; it didn’t have the words for my question. It was an invitation for me to fill in the blanks.
This had all started with that messy birdcage. I knew why Grandpa had kept it all those years; he wanted a living piece of his homeland. He wanted a noisy bird like the ones that woke him up as a boy back home. He named it Chico, and even Gramma liked the name.
This wasn’t a parrot. It wasn’t a monster, either.
Chico the Yaksha smiled. I think. But I know I smiled back.
And then he walked me home. I held his hand at the crosswalks, teacup style. I wanted him to know he was safe.
I looked up and noticed he had already braided the sushi frog into the mossy cape of his hair. It suited him.
•••
- Direct the Yaksha to do your bidding for twenty-one nights.
Yaksha act on primordial impulse and respond to simple commands. I once tasked one with bludgeoning its way through a mountain to create a passageway. Its walls were smooth and sturdy; no stonemason could compare.
This might be the first nice thing Sunil has ever said, but that's an unproven hypothesis so far.
Yet that same Yaksha failed the simple task of pouring my morning chai. Never forget their limitations.
There goes that theory.
This section is why I wanted to start doing some serious research. Because I’ve been watching him for days now, and Chico isn't anything like what Sunil describes.
It’s also why I stopped giving Ms. Hines daily updates on my project and just share the highlights—minus Chico-related content.
Mom loved this old movie about a kid who finds a lost alien and gives it candy. I know what happens to weird, adorable monsters when you call the cops—the same thing that ALWAYS happens when you call the cops.
I needed to keep Chico hidden.
It turns out he’s REALLY good at blending in with Gramma’s garden. Plants love him. Our flowers are blooming, and we have more parsley than we know what to do with, even though it’s still cold out.
We take the hiking trails to school, and no one has spotted us yet. I talk to him, and he listens. He asks good questions and nothing seems to faze him. I ask him how long he has lived in those woods, and after a couple minutes of silence, he just says “SINCE. THE. FIRST. TREE.”
I ask him if he means the first tree in that forest, or the first tree, period. He just makes that weird twig-snapping sound that means he’s laughing.
On the matter of limitations, not once in his teachings did my master mention any dealings with Yaksha. In this, I have surpassed him. You hold the fruits of my generosity in your hands.
The morning after I first brought him home, he greeted me by holding his arm outstretched, and gestured for me to do the same. He dropped a seed the size of an apple into my palm. When I asked him what it was for, he just said “GIFT” while pointing to the charm-braid nestled behind his left ear-horn as the sound of wooden wind chimes echoed from his chest. I put it in my shoebox with the other charms.
So, hey: Chico is a gift-giver! That’s cool.
Whenever I stare into the unfocused eyes of a Yaksha, I am reminded of the gulf of reason between man and—
Nothing useful here, unless you wanted more evidence that Sunil really needed a good therapist. And a big hug.
—I chart a lone course through a treacherous jungle that others must follow, or find themselves torn apart with the same ease as a Yaksha carving through mountains.
I stopped going to my quiet spot because I didn't really want to be alone. And it was fun to bounce my thoughts off someone who listened. Everyone else just looks for warning signs.
Never forget the price it will demand for its strength—
Okay, that's not fair. Gramma doesn’t look at me like a problem, she looks at me like I’m special. In a good way. I don't know how we can laugh like we did before our big fight. Our first fight.
We still cook together. We watch movies. I try to explain the dances I’m learning while she shakes her head and mutters about electric slides.
I can’t find the words to apologize or explain why I lashed out. I know she’d forgive me in a second, but I don't think I deserve that yet.
Instead, I work with Chico to make her garden even more beautiful. I ask him to fill our house with mountain air, so her asthma doesn't act up. It helps to think that I’m helping her.
And Chico keeps growing. He’s not taller, but almost every inch of him is covered in clover, grass, ivy, and even some flowers. He reminds me of Gramma’s garden beds. But I think that’s just because I miss talking to her without secrets.
He also looks healthy. Wanna know why that’s weird?
The Yaksha withers and becomes malformed within twenty-one days. By the end, it is but a shriveled mass of flesh and malice to be dispelled before it strikes.
Because of THAT. Sunil says that Yaksha wither into gross bags of skin, but Chico is doing great.
I needed more sources, and I eventually found them at the Central Library under “World Religions,” because that’s helpful and accurate. Everything in the books I found matches what Mom used to tell me, anyway. But Ms. Hines says “modern academia fails to adequately approach oral tradition as a valid primary source,” which is why “bedtime story” doesn’t count as a proper citation.
Mom told me that in Buddhism, Yaksha are heavenly bodyguards who sinned in a previous life. In Thailand, Yaksha statues stand watch outside temples. Mom grew up hearing Bengali stories from her Nanu about how they lived in nature, and reacted to how people treat the environment around them.
Mom would always act weird when mentioning her. It’s hard to keep a straight face when you’re thinking about someone you miss. I get it now.
Except Sunil’s notes, every version of Yaksha had the same thing in common, which leads me to my new hypothesis: Yaksha are GUARDIAN spirits. They grow stronger when they're helping and enriching their environment. Why couldn’t Sunil get that? It makes me feel a weird type of sad for him.
A Yaksha is simple-minded, and thinks only of achieving its freedom and calculating its twisted plan for vengeance.
I have another, even newer, hypothesis:
I'm reading a childcare book written by a guy who didn't realize babies need food to survive.
Still, I can’t ignore the fact that Sunil is firm about two things: The time limit and the price. I hope he’s wrong about both.
•••
- On the final night, cut the leash before the Yaksha can extract its toll from you.
Much like the boar-rearing dullards of—
Three straight pages of really specific racism. Do better, Sunil!
—the Yaksha operates on its own twisted calendar. No matter the strength of the summoner or ritual, it will break free after twenty-one nights, fleeing to the spirit realm, but not before demanding harsh payment: Everything you asked of it, inverted. Even I, Sunil Sorcar, could not devise a way to avoid the curse of the Yaksha's Paw unleashed upon others. Never allow that deadline to expire.
Finally, a lead! What's your story, Mr. Sorcar? Are you a reliable source? Or an unreliable Sorcar?
Another great joke.
But know this: The wise man can outfox a magical contract by adhering to its word, not its spirit. Break the leash with a clean iron knife. Say the words of power once more. And watch your faithful Yaksha become mist upon the moonlight.
Mystery solved! Well, kind of. Digging around for “Sunil Sorcar,” I found a handful of old bulletins from the British East India Company. They all spelled his name wrong, but named him as the prime suspect in everything from landslides to sunken ships across the continent. It was probably easier to blame a “Sorcerer” for their own mistakes, but if even half of these are real? Wow.
Send it to the next realm before it regains its freedom, and avoid paying the price of its servitude.
I think I understand where he got some of his ideas about human nature and power from. I just wish he didn’t choose to operate the same way.
Eff colonialism. I can say that in a historical context, right?
My late master demanded that our arts be passed on from father to son, as is our oral tradition. Lacking a son by birth, he settled for me.
But through writing, I need not rely on the next impressionable boy wooed from a poor village with promises of mystical apprenticeship. My words will serve the brightest, most worthy mind of the years to come.
His obituary was brief. Sunil Sorcar was in good health for his age, but was found dead from a heart attack at his writing desk on a private ship bound for unknown shores. He had no family to notify, and his belongings were auctioned off before the ship had reached its destination.
Years later, a parrot pooped on them.
And through this, I have become Undying.
I hope he found what he was looking for. At the very least, I hope his ashes made their way back home. I don’t think he would have hated that.
And Ms. Hines said that “Eff Colonialism” is “an apt response” to my independent research.
Have a Yaksha to dig a well, and you will drown in your morning bath. A field of barley sown by Yaksha will grow hearty enough to poison your cattle and your land. The Yaksha pays its debts upon release.
Learning everything Sunil had been through made it harder to know what parts of his writing to trust. That’s the fun part of studying history, but I was on a three-week deadline.
I spent my days with Chico, trying to make it up to Gramma by giving her garden a helping hand. But I spent my nights alone, reading these notes, looking for a way to save him. I watched for any signs that Chico was about to become an angry weapon overnight. I stared at him in silence for an entire afternoon, and the only change was a new yellow hibiscus growing out of his ear.
The days were starting to blur together.
Ms. Hines was the first to notice. She asked if things were okay at home, which is the kind of question you only ask when things are clearly awful. I tried to make this joke about gardening. I thought it was really funny.
Instead, I started crying. About Gramma. About running out of time. About how it had been almost a year since the crash, and I never wanted to talk about it again, but I hated that no one was asking.
Ms. Hines was quiet. She only had one question: Had I told Gramma about any of this? I said no.
She asked for permission to call Gramma on my behalf. I nodded, thanked her, and ran outside to Chico before I could change my mind.
All magic is an exercise in control. Harnessing a Yaksha may seem foolhardy and dangerous. But so too are the bullwhip or the yoke: Will you master these tools to tame this bull, or find yourself gored and trampled as it fights for freedom?
We took the long way home. It was my last night with Chico, and there wasn't much more we could do for Gramma. I suggested turning our bungalow into a treehouse, but Chico just chuckled. It sounded like hail on a windowpane.
When I think of my master, I remember his failure. Not just with me, but his simple failure to see the power of a Yaksha contract. Was he afraid? I saw what he could not. I saw the shape of things.
I didn't see Gramma waiting for me. Her sunflowers had grown so tall and dense, it's like she was hiding amongst the flowers, nodding as she ended her phone call. I felt sick with familiarity.
Gramma had been standing right there, holding the phone loose between her fingers, when she got the call from the hospital. She ran to me and held me close before telling me the news.
It was the same a year later. Bad news and sunflowers.
We were stuck in place.
A contract is only as strong as its ability to bind. That is my gift to you: The power of leverage. It may be the only power that matters in our age. Enjoy the song of a piper you will never deign to pay. Turn the noose into your loophole.
I didn’t want to be stuck anymore. I ran to her and buried my apologies into her shoulder. We said a lot of nice things. None of them are relevant to my academic lens for this project. Sunil could learn a thing or five.
You are the future student worthy of my wisdom. Some prince or sultan. I would expect nothing less.
The moon was crawling out of the trees, and we were still sitting in the garden. I wanted to show Gramma why I had been so distant lately. If anyone was going to understand Chico, it was her.
I asked her to trust me. It's one of those questions you only ask when you're terrified of the answer. She told me she always trusted me, and always would. I believed her, just like that.
It was magic.
I called the Yaksha, and he stepped into the moonlight. Tall, proud, and smiling. I think.
“MY. NAME. IS. CHICO.” His voice was a soft pressure, like a hummingbird hovering at your ear. I saw Gramma flinch with each word.
But she didn’t scream or run. She stared at him for a long while, as sunflower petals danced at our feet. Gramma smiled like she was seeing an old friend. “It looks like Chico has flown back to us after all,” she said.
And Chico laughed, like a smooth stone skipping across a pond.
Gramma made chai for all three of us, and listened as I talked. She didn't interrupt. She didn’t accuse. She didn’t book an appointment with Dr. Shruti. I showed her Sunil’s notes. My notes. In the silence that followed, she took a long, patient breath.
“Farah? Sweet pea?” she said softly. “It's been twenty-three days. You counted wrong.”
I'm an archeologist, not a mathologist.
The Yaksha pays its debts upon release. Remember this rule, and the world is ours.
•••
THE FIRST RULE OF SPIRIT GARDENING: Plant your Yaksha Seed!
Ms. Hines said that this now officially qualifies as “a thoroughly transformative work,” so I found a better title.
Chico never left. He's still here. Still thriving. It turns out that if you throw a parka and some snow pants over a forest spirit, he can pass as your Tall Cousin from Back Home. He walks with Gramma to pick me up after dance class. My parent and my guardian.
But I didn’t want to end up like Sunil. So I did something he never tried: I asked Chico if there was some sort of magical contract forcing him to stay with me.
He shook his head so hard all of the phone charms in his braids rattled. Then he held out his hand and said “GIFT,” and the sound of wooden chimes rang through my head as I ran into my room. I found the now-charmless shoebox under my bed and dug out the giant seed he gave me.
I brought it back to Chico, and he gently showed me how to plant it in the far corner of our backyard. Gramma glanced over the edge of her laptop to check we weren’t crowding her blackberry bushes, and then gave us a thumbs-up.
Overnight, the seed grew into something that looked like an old armchair made of twisted roots and glossy leaves. When Gramma and I went out there to do yoga the next morning, we found Chico sitting in his root-throne, looking even more lush than usual.
I asked him if it was like my bed rock. He looked confused. He pointed to his seat. “HOME.” More wooden chimes I could feel in my teeth.
Then he pointed to me. “HOME.” The sound of wooden chimes shook down my spine.
Now, it was my turn to look confused. “How can both of those things be Home, Chico?”
Gramma was making her thinking face. She views Chico from a gardening perspective. But she asked me for my thoughts first. I told her it looks like Chico is putting down roots. She told me I was more right than I realized, which is my favourite compliment.
That’s when I understood what Chico had been trying to tell me this whole time. I smiled at him and held his hand like the first day we met.
Every time I do that, Chico laughs. It feels like fresh rainfall in a quiet garden.
