Magic Has No Borders by Samira Ahmed

Author:Samira Ahmed
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

She Who Answers

By Shreya Ila Anasuya

In the darkest deep of the mangroves, Bonbibi’s skin gleams green. The rich forest green of an overflowing canopy. Neon green like sunlight shot through summer fruit. Green like a newborn tendril, green like an ancient tree. But here, in the city, it is a burnished brown, melting her into her surroundings. She eyes the river, seeing what the people around her, hurrying to work, cannot—dolphins under the surface of the brackish currents. She pauses, watching a ferry pass noisily through the water to the other side, and catches the eye of a little girl sitting on her father’s lap on a bench nearby, staring at her. Bonbibi considers what the girl sees—herself, in this mortal guise of a girl no older than sixteen, thick hair plaited loosely down her back, wearing salwar kameez the color of bougainvillea. She smiles at the girl, who smiles back shyly. Bonbibi walks on, the city swirling around her.

Even in the city, the forest thrums within her, and she can hear its great old banyans and flowering gulmohar trees turning their buzzing minds toward her presence. If Sajangali—her brother—were here, he’d enjoy the city’s arboraceous interludes, the quiet, lush spaces that erupted from every possible crack and crevice, sometimes stretching over abandoned warehouses, sometimes knotting over old buildings. He would stop to explore them, to ask them questions. He and Bonbibi are twins, part of a larger whole, mirrors to each other, opposites, the sun and moon of the mangroves. Between them, they had a pact: one of them must always remain in the land of the eighteen tides, their domain and their home.

They must deal periodically with Dokkhin Rai, the Lord of the South, known to the people of the mangroves by his favorite disguise—a tiger, striped orange fur, deep roar, padded feet. He isn’t actually a tiger, of course; just a man who inherited too much land and the gift of shape-shifting.

Rai had a propensity for stealing away children, taking their youth and vitality from them until they had none left. Not a week passed without a child disappearing, a home erupting in wails. Until Bonbibi intervened. Until the people opened their hearts and let her in, knowing she would keep them and their children safe.

In the mangroves, her people tie colorful fabric on tree bark before they enter the heart of the forest. The thread on the trees is an offering to her, to protect them when Dokkhin Rai is on the hunt, calling on the dark forces that inhabit the Sunderbans to aid him in his avaricious desires. The body of the mangroves is her body, and each time they tie a dua on a branch, it is her wrist they are adorning. She collects prayers and petitions by the hundreds each day, not just from people, but from each insect and bird, from each leaf and stone. Entreaties trickle in, too, by the dozen, from the city. From ever-expanding Kolkata. Some of her devotees

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