A Mirror World Brings Wonders—and Dread—in This Fantasy Brief Story

io9 is proud to current fiction from Lightspeed Magazine. Once a month, we feature a story from Lightspeed’s present challenge. This month’s choice is “It May Be He Returns” by Fatima Taqvi. Take pleasure in!

It May Be He Returns

By Fatima Taqvi

What you have to know concerning the boy on this story is he’s at all times hungry and the solar is at all times too sizzling for him, and he would save the world if he may. That is what he tells himself as he sits reverse the tailor’s store, wanting on the garments sway within the breeze of the air conditioner inside. Fawad would save the world, he would change destiny itself. He would give his dad and mom the very best of the very best. March into any faculty he desires. Get any sort of training he must really feel just like the individual he is aware of he may very well be.

The mirror in Grasp Jee’s store has at all times stretched itself up at a tilt behind the counter, framed by the stitched garments that grasp round it. A skinny crack smiles throughout its grime. The quick approaching and departing shapes of Karachi’s blurred site visitors mirror on its floor in unsettling bursts. Maybe it could have been higher had it been going through someplace else. However then none of what was to come back would have occurred.

The primary time Fawad noticed the mirror’s true intentions, he was sitting cross-legged in opposition to a wall of the retailers reverse the tailor’s store, scratching a map of all he knew into the grime. He was pondering, at all times pondering. What to do? The place to go? Certainly one of his sandals was about to interrupt, ought to he spend time on the lookout for a brand new pair? Pangs of starvation assailed him and the world grew and contracted over the vacancy, shimmering on the edges, radiating unintelligible truths solely he felt the impression of.

Reverse the highway, the mirror beamed the solar’s reflection again so brilliantly that for the second that Fawad stopped, his gaze dragged up in direction of its face the place it shone by means of the glass behind the crouched determine of the tailor over a stitching machine.

Simply in time to see the tailor’s reflection peel away from the remainder of its flat mirror world and arise.

Fawad had wobbled the place he was sitting, nearly passing out. The tailor’s reflection paused for the longest second, earlier than giving a defeated shrug and sitting down once more in devoted imitation of Grasp Jee as each tailors shook out a size of white cotton.

The subsequent time it occurred, he couldn’t breathe, and the final time he nearly misplaced management of his bladder. The reflection had taken to tilting its head, shading its eyes with one hand because it peered out from the store window. Craning over its doppelganger’s shoulder, face hidden in a flash of sunshine. One arm reaching up. Pointing straight at him.

Evidently, Fawad was scared out of his thoughts. At first, no less than. As a result of, actually, regardless of how unusual these happenings are, the mirror belongs to a really massive group of issues that don’t have anything to do with him. He’s exterior, on the streets. It’s inside.

When his father died, the within locations all closed themselves to him. Individuals he used to know began sitting too shut collectively, taking over all of the area and leaving him none, staring up at him, as if in shock he thought they might yield him a millimeter. When he confirmed up at college, the Vice Principal held him by the ear and dragged him again out of the varsity gates. Would there be any cost coming for his charges, she requested. As a result of if not, it was time he turned a person and earned for himself. A person. And faculties had been for youngsters.

The varsity gates had been bolted twice behind him, as soon as sideways and the opposite bolt going into the bottom, deep into the earth, perhaps the aluminum went rattling all the way in which down into the earth’s core, the place little question his father sat with all the opposite useless and deceased swapping tales. The varsity gates shook for a second, as if full of rage. Then stood nonetheless and silent as a monument.

The final inside place left was residence, and that was swallowed quickly after the funeral by the grubby palms of leering, red-eyed uncles, and blockaded by the sharp tongues of aunts who snatched his outdated mannequin of a mobile phone, his faculty uniform, his small assortment of books and toys for his or her kids.

Now all he owns is his title. His title and his starvation, and his final thought each evening that if no one was prepared to save lots of the world, he would have beloved to if he may.

Fawad.

The craving within the voice hits him first. The necessity. Colliding with the vacancy and fullness that coexist inside him, his stupor and aches meet a sensation so robust it creates a pulling, a suction.

After which—

Ignore it. Sure, it’s loud, it blocks all the things else out, however is it as loud as the decision of styrofoam packing containers of sizzling, greasy meals being distributed proper now beneath the bridge? Kindly faces waited for him in that nice massive exterior place, a foot away from screaming site visitors. If he may feed himself, hold residing a bit longer, keep away from the gangs so eager to recruit extra kids with or with out their will, he would possibly make it to being a gardener like his father. His father had been profitable and well-liked, going round to these massive sprawling homes stuffed with shiny issues and fed folks. He made sufficient cash to ship Fawad to high school. However remembering all this was a mistake on Fawad’s half, as a result of now he recalled his father’s softness as he’d draw Fawad to him, saying, “You have to not be a gardener while you develop up. Not like me. We’ll discover you scholarships. That is Karachi! There are faculties, faculties, tuition facilities on each avenue. You’ll be taught, you’ll develop up, you’ll change the world.”

And he’s undone, left solely open to the designs of the mirror who now calls to him once more with out phrases.

Not by his title. It snares him now, this unshaped sound. The gradual vibration of a mom’s respiratory whose chest strikes as you lie on it. Till it stops transferring altogether, and there may be nothing however the shrill tone of one thing else solely.

He’s already there with out actually deciding to do it, ft on the door to Grasp Jee’s store, twitching hand on the glass. The mirror reaches inside his head, twisting one thing important that connects his coronary heart to his eyes. His soul shudders to the resonance of the summoning.

Contained in the store, instantly blanketed within the silent chilly of the air con, the mirror is taller than he recalled. He’s giddy, as if wanting down from an awesome top. What if he seems to be on the mirror and his reflection is all fallacious?

But it surely isn’t. It’s simply as he’s. Although the set of his reflection’s jaw has a glance about it. Perhaps it already is aware of what’s going to occur subsequent.

Grasp Jee glances at him, his lips half and his forehead furrows, however a flash from the mirror, and Grasp Jee’s face relaxes. He turns away, buzzing an outdated tune, from days again when payments weren’t so excessive and he would think about a extra comfy outdated age.

Fawad runs his fingers alongside the mirror’s floor. He traces the outlines of the grime, however he can not really feel its ridges and bumps as he ought to. The cloud is beneath the mirror’s clean floor. Inherent to its substance.

As if he has deliberate all of it alongside, as if he’s a contented dancer at a mehndi, he lifts a foot, twists his physique, and steps proper by means of the mirror.

As soon as, on considered one of Fawad’s birthdays, his father had purchased him a cake like those they’d seen lining the cabinets in bakeries. A white creamy cake, with triangular chunks of candy pineapple closing ranks in a circle, often reserved for the youngsters of fathers on whose chests the bills of on a regular basis life didn’t weigh so heavy. The solar had carried out its work and the cream cake was comfortable. Because the mirror now melts across the contours of his physique, Fawad thinks of how the knife had fallen by means of his birthday cake as he’d reduce it, prefer it had waited all its life for the knife to realize it. He’s somewhat boy once more. It’s his birthday, his father smiles, he laughs and jumps on the spot for a slice, and falls by means of the mirror on the opposite facet.

Darkness. Neither of evening, nor of energy failure, as a result of he can see completely effectively. Gentle will not be wanted—all the things right here carries its personal mild inside itself, glowing in opposition to the void.

He turns. There are garments on both facet of the mirror on this facet too. They bulge as if stuffed by invisible our bodies. The ends of the kameezes transfer as if swaying. The shoulders droop, the necklines loll, all this fills him with terror, and he seems to be away.

The Different Tailor’s store is barely a glowing facade, marooned in all this darkness. There are partitions, however they’re not joined on the high. There isn’t a roof. A door body however no glass door. The store rumbles, it’s chilly, however there is no such thing as a air conditioner.

I need to go, he thinks. What am I doing? Djinn, churail, demons, all of the tales he’s ever heard race by means of his thoughts. Who else would stay right here on this sunless land?

Within the darkness behind him there’s a sound, and he sees within the areas between the disconnected partitions a big horse manufactured from paper trot away down an unseen highway, tattered reins slack at its facet. The horse’s eyes are blinkered by decades-old newspapers yellowed by age. It shakes its inky mane because it trots alongside, and Fawad sees an advert for a nightclub scrunched up over one eye, an announcement from a mosque over the opposite.

Because it disappears Fawad realizes he has no concept what else lurks simply past. Maybe the subsequent creature could also be one thing aside from a horse.

However when he turns to depart, the garments don’t look the identical. Why hasn’t he tried one on but, his thoughts calls for to know. These garments are so alluring, so stunning, and saved prepared for him by some sort hand little question. Have a look at this sherwani, for instance. What a prince he’d look. His Vice Principal would maintain him for example to the opposite college students. His uncles would maintain the doorways of his residence open to him once more. He may hand out meals underneath bridges as a substitute of being the one taking.

He lifts his personal grey kameez over his shoulders.

“Cease that.”

The voice comes from past, and he sees now it belongs to an individual, one other human. Grasp Jee.

Besides it isn’t, under no circumstances. He wears the identical garments. The identical spotless brown kameez. The identical agate ring on his index finger. The identical Peshawari chappal on his ft.

However his ring is on his left hand. Not the fitting. He’s hunched over, absorbed in some work he holds in his palms, and the cap he wears throws a shadow on his face. He’s bent, turned barely away, and his face is hidden from view. And it’s simple to see he isn’t human in any respect. He’s too nonetheless. He radiates lack.

“Get out of right here.” He says, curt as all folks belonging to inside areas are. “You don’t belong.”

“I used to be known as.” Indignation triumphs over worry, and Fawad friends nearer. He sees a glint of one thing on the Different Tailor’s face. Exhausting to see.

A cat yowls from a nook, making him bounce. It dashes throughout Fawad’s imaginative and prescient, made up solely of scrunched up Urdu magazines ripped aside and remade to a feline type, an extract of a forgotten brief story legible throughout its again.

“You actually didn’t name me?” He stirs uneasily. He is aware of he was known as. However now that he’s right here, he doubts any of it occurred.

“These meant to be listed here are right here.” The Different Tailor replies. “However you have to go in case you are not excited by untangling these threads. For there’s a lot to do, and I work to a deadline. And I solely warn you away from these,” he waves a hand with out wanting up within the route of the garments, “as a result of they’ve had their fill already. Which is why they give the impression of being so high-quality.”

Fawad now sees a sleeve has snaked nearer to him. It stops the second he sees it.

The Different Tailor seats himself on a stool and bends over his work. A tangle of threads sits in entrance of him. He mutters and picks up this factor and that. A pair of scissors fall from his lap.

Earlier than I go away, I’ll cross him this one factor, Fawad thinks. It’s good to be useful, father at all times stated. So he passes it and as he does there’s a splash of sunshine because the Different Tailor seems to be up for the briefest of moments.

“I can’t pay you.” He says instantly. “Don’t anticipate cost for that motion.”

“I used to be simply passing it to you.”

“Now we have no settlement. Your work has no recompense.”

“I solely meant—”

“Contracts are all the things right here. Guarantees right here matter. You can not comply with one thing and renege on it later, as they do in your world.”

Fawad digests this.

“So you could have been there then? In my world? I did see you, you already know.”

“I may need stretched my again,” the Different Tailor speaks thoughtfully. “I work so arduous. I may need seemed out into the opposite world, to the place cities are unvoiced and nothing wears its that means on its sleeve. So are we agreed?”

“Agreed to what?”

“To our contract. You’ll help me. Procure me my gadgets. And I’ll pay you.”

One thing makes him look to see what method of outfit the Different Tailor is stitching.

The thread is sticky. He thinks of corpses with useless issues hanging out of their mouths. Filaments stick out, ragged. It’s colorless, translucent. Disgusting. It makes no noise, no rustling. As silent because the second simply earlier than he falls asleep when he can’t bear in mind what his father’s voice seemed like.

“What is that this? Who’s it for?”

“You may give it to the shopper your self,” the Different Tailor’s voice is mild. “When you like.”

So comfortable his voice, like a rotten birthday cake spoiled in a bakery and offered at a reduction to a person keen to provide his son a particular second, although for days afterwards he’d been racked with fever, his ribs aching from how he’d thrown up, the cream cake gone unhealthy reaching up by means of his throat, exiting the physique it was by no means meant for.

“Do you go to high school?”

Fawad’s mouth twists.

“Regardless of,” the Different Tailor says. “Now we have faculties right here. Even on the opposite facet of Karachi, we now have faculties on each avenue, and a few of our graduates, they’ve modified the world. That may be your cost.”

Forgotten had been the styrofoam packing containers. The plastic baggage of biryani. The kindly faces on the good massive exterior. One factor gleamed for him, past all different desires or wishes. There have been faculties right here. And the Different Tailor was guaranteeing him a spot.

Ought to he have investigated first? Seen what method of locations they had been? Regardless of all the things, he was his father’s son, and on the promise of e book studying he leapt earlier than he seemed.

• • •

The primary merchandise he was despatched to seek out was simple sufficient, however returning to the mirror with it taught him the methods of this different world.

Garbage heaps in Karachi are as widespread as clouds in picture-book skies, and Fawad is aware of them. They’ve their very own ecosystems. When you research considered one of them, you already know all of them. He finds what he’s on the lookout for instantly—scratch playing cards. Mendacity crumpled, used, light by solar, sodden in liquid waste. He picks them up by the handful.

They’re grubby. Used up. He doesn’t perceive in any respect.

However then he steps by means of the mirror to the opposite facet, and the grey flat rectangles burst into hopeful firefly lights, coalescing into silver chiffon, illuminated by sighs and yearnings. The digits on them coil, turn out to be black curlicues, embroidered floral preparations, imitations of wedding ceremony flowers that had been by no means picked. In one other life Fawad’s father would ship him to purchase these scratch playing cards, then they might enter them into cell telephones for credit score to speak to folks distant.

The silver chiffon shimmers, and for a second Fawad thinks of the flare of a skirt lined with this cloudy cloth.

The Different Tailor sighs and takes it. He stabs the material along with his needle. He has just one phrase for Fawad now.

“Extra.”

A cricket ball turns right into a floating kind of emerald and ochre silk. A bridal bracelet studded with jasmine buds turns to string the colour of moonlight and romance. A garland of roses to crimson patches. A damaged tile from the town’s largest shrine to a string of ribboned squares. He sits and picks and unpicks thread from the material. He spools the thread that tangles up at his ft. Then out for extra.

Discarded syringes stained with blood turn out to be white muslin—swaddling cloths smelling of milk.

“They at all times do this,” the Different Tailor says. So, he ventures out to clean them. There’s a swamp, a shrine, a river, so he sits on the river, hoping the amused faces beneath the mire of the swamp don’t come nearer to research him.

A watchman’s discarded sandal turns to clean leather-based. A college lady’s uniform dupatta retains its starched type, and he should unravel it, the starched white swiftly dissolving into cobalt ink threads. A butcher’s stained garments have to be unpicked as effectively to pink rosettes. A khwaja sira on the site visitors lights offers up a snippet from the patterned interior fabric of her purse bemusedly.

“Are you consuming?” She asks him. “You look kangra sa.”

Fawad realizes he hasn’t for some time and goes again to the place underneath the bridge the place they hand out these styrofoam field meals and sometimes fruit juice cartons. He’s not often hungry anymore. He doesn’t know whether it is magic or anticipation.

“Extra.”

Someplace an Imam is on the brink of lead the Friday prayer on the smallest mosque in Karachi, however a cat has fallen asleep on the one kameez he owns. He can’t be late, and he can hardly go to mosque in his prayer cap and his lanky vest, however the cat is weak as she lies stomach up on his proper sleeve. Her bones poke out, the way in which his personal do from underneath his hungry body. He can’t bear to wake her when she seems to be so relaxed. He’s heard her wailing lately, and he thinks she has misplaced her kittens. Her physique remains to be heavy with milk. She shouldn’t be disturbed any extra.

However then if he doesn’t go to the mosque, they’ll select another person to do the khutba, and that individual will communicate of fireside and disgrace as a substitute of wishing for others what you need for your self. The Imam cuts off the sleeve with scissors, pulls his torn kameez over his head, and rushes away previous the place Fawad hides within the shadows.

Within the different world, the sleeve turns into gold.

“Extra.”

Damaged arcade lights flip to sequins. Shriveled up almonds in wedding ceremony favors turn out to be chilly rubies.

A young person stops to wipe the sweat off his face. His motorbike wobbles, hits a stone and a steel piece breaks off the body. He doesn’t cease, deliveries have to be made on time, so he swerves previous a skinny boy who picks up the damaged steel.

The steel piece turns to silver.

Fawad goes to Clifton. On the seaside he steps between garbage to gather bluebottles in an empty ice-cream tub. He wonders, crossly, what the mirror picture of those coasts are like within the different world, and if they’re free from the stench of air pollution. The bluebottles sting him, and so his pores and skin wears indignant pink welts. He tosses them in anger on the Different Tailor in a cloud of sand that each one turns, mid-air, to a nude granular cloth with aquamarine crystal work.

“It’s chaotic”, Fawad says, feeling imply. “It gained’t go collectively.”

However he doesn’t discuss an excessive amount of anymore. His thoughts feels uneasy. One thing isn’t proper on this association. To settle his ideas, he has walked round to see the faculties. The buildings on the horizon transfer with him. They don’t keep nonetheless lengthy sufficient for him to achieve them. He thinks he can hear kids speaking. He thinks he can hear a bell ringing.

The worst was the gunny bag.

“Can I not simply get one from a bag of flour?” He had pleaded. However no. This one. At this location. Behind this many bushes, in a abandoned space. The streetlamps don’t work right here, they’ve extra sense than that. There are areas the place folks stay and deserve mild, and areas that take up violence, the haunts of the criminally merciless.

The gunny bag is heavy. He pulls and pleads with the burlap, but it surely insists on falling out of his palms, every time with an unsettling thud Fawad would promote his soul to unhear. He can’t see clearly however he is aware of these are maroon stains on it, and he is aware of the place they’re from. The flies and different bugs know too, and so they scramble as Fawad continues to disturb their feast.

Lastly, he manages to empty the contents of the gunny bag out. He delivers the determine of the bag along with his small palms. Folds up the bag. Pauses.

The Different Tailor had no additional directions, and Fawad can not go away the mutilated type similar to that. So he begins to dig a gap, and the bottom gained’t give, it has seen an excessive amount of to be comfortable. Fawad collapses, taking heaving sobs. He runs his hand over the bottom and finds grass.

He locations the blades of grass on the determine’s mutilated ft. One thing gleams there within the shadow, having fallen out of the gunny bag too, together with an empty pockets. He picks it up—a damaged blade.

Why does he pocket it? He can not say. After which he’s operating as one car after which one other attracts up, with a brand new gunny bag, its contents nonetheless alive. He ignores the sounds of crying and pleading, males laughing, and he races away, banging by means of Grasp Jee Quantity One Tailor’s door, stepping by means of the mirror. He doesn’t even blink when the gunny bag turns right into a white, shroud colored sheet.

The blade sits in his pocket. It’s the least magical of all gadgets, and retains its type when he passes by means of the mirror. He by some means knew it could.

He tosses the sheet to the Different Tailor.

“Unpick it.” The Different Tailor says with out turning.

Fawad doesn’t transfer. The garments hanging within the Different Tailor’s store watch him. Ready for him to get it.

Maybe it’s pity that strikes the Different Tailor. Or impatience.

“Look,” he affords.

Fawad peeks behind the counter.

The chaos of patchwork has disappeared. It’s not colorless. It’s all one outfit, skirts flaring out. It’s not silent, however rustles a tune because the Different Tailor strikes it, the refrain in additional languages than Fawad is aware of. It seems to be heat now and vigorous. It’s a pleasure to behold.

When it’s worn, all this bedsheet sized cloth might be gathered into bunches across the girl’s waist to fall in probably the most swish of the way.

“A gharara,” he says.

The Different Tailor nods. Unimaginable to know what he’s pondering. His face has at all times been hidden. Fawad desires to ask him now to point out it, however he wonders if the Different Tailor is simply too shy, or too stuffed with disgrace. Asking feels too intimate, too presumptuous. Who’s he to ask? His anger now appears like a silly, knobbly factor. And but he feels to disperse it could imply rejecting one thing he can not totally grasp.

The Different Tailor watches him.

“My mom wore one,” Fawad says for the sake of claiming one thing. “A gharara. At her wedding ceremony.”

“And her mom wore one on her wedding ceremony too. However earlier than her, her mom wore a gharara each single day. And her mom earlier than her too. However when every of them died, they wore a shroud, and we make these right here too. Fawad,” the Different Tailor says. “Are you sure?”

“Sure of what?”

However the Different Tailor’s eyes are actually affixed behind Fawad.

“She is coming.”

“When?”

“Any day now. It is vital that she not be irritated in any approach.”

And he falls to work swiftly, assimilating the brand new cloth into the entire.

“Be sure,” he murmurs. “Be sure you don’t remorse it.”

The stitching machine is clattering although, so perhaps Fawad imagined it.

• • •

The shopper climbs out of the ocean. Or out of the swamp, out of the river, out of the distant buildings on the horizon, or out of all of those without delay. Worst of all, Fawad recognises her, as a result of, in spite of everything, he’s recognized her his total life. He is aware of all about her.

Karachi flashes charcoal eyes. Shakes the odor of grilled kebabs out of her hair each morning and washes it with sea water. The hem of her light skirt is lined with bluebottles. Her ft are naked apart from anklets of bougainvillea. Her soles are at all times sandy.

Fawad tries to talk however his throat doesn’t cooperate, it closes his voice away. One thing about kids, he’s pondering: Karachi’s arms swing the youngsters spherical and spherical, giving them sights and sounds and adrenaline in order that their laughter touches the peach fires within the sundown sky. Then at nightfall she goes for a stroll leaving them behind, ignoring their tears and ravenous wails because the evening gently claims them. She inspects the produce in the marketplace thelas, perhaps stopping to take a look at a secondhand e book stall, or to gaze on the locked gates of an artwork exhibition, wishing she may go inside. Oh, she says. Did you suppose I’d forgotten the youngsters? The stray cats, the scab-ridden canine, the overburdened donkeys? The infant women left on garbage heaps? The monkeys and flamingoes who escape their handlers, each cell of their being in quest of habitats lengthy since worn out? Look right here, she beckons, and also you see all of them sleeping secure contained in the knots on the ends of her dupatta slung round her neck.

And the whimpering of the strays and the tearful voices of the youngsters fade away as Karachi tires out, crawling inside a horse’s corpse left to rot exterior a leather-based manufacturing facility. She places a trembling finger in her mouth after which passes it over the gunny baggage strewn throughout the town, writing one thing in an historic language that was spoken on her shores lengthy earlier than there have been any people. No one is aware of that the boys in gunny baggage have turn out to be kids once more, drowsing, wrapped contained in the loop of her dupatta, held shut in worlds above her bosom.

“However you don’t,” Fawad says. “You don’t do any of that.”

“No,” Karachi replies. “However it could be good if I did, wouldn’t it?”

She is right here for herself in the present day. Right here for one thing that would be the excellent factor. She is distractible, her ideas are like so many rickshas, buses, tankers zooming round, however she additionally has a malaise, perhaps one thing autoimmune, that brings the site visitors to a shrill standstill for hours.

Ah, sure. She remembers now. An entire go well with, if he has it. A gharara go well with.

“In fact. Have I not been engaged on all of it this time?” The Different Tailor replies, and the phrases are courteous however his voice has a nervous anger laced inside it.

“And who is that this?” She asks.

“An apprentice. A helper,” the Different Tailor says. And he brings up an outfit Fawad can barely acknowledge, although certainly he has seen it day by day he’s been working.

“I like it,” she says, clasping her palms. “Oh, that is stunning. Higher than the final one so a few years in the past.”

Her face dimples. Her kajal-lined eyes dance as they comply with the gleaming embroidery going up and down the skirts.

The Different Tailor says, in a cross kind of reduction. “Did I not inform you? And do you hear?”

There’s one final step each tailor is aware of which have to be carried out for the gharara. It’s at all times stitched inside out. However he should look forward to her command. That is their ritual.

“Now,” she says.

The Different Tailor reaches into the garment, grabs the interior fabric, and pulls. The fabric flips. The gharara has folds that ripple, their stitches protruding. The Different Tailor pulls all of the folds in order that they fall on the within. Proper approach round, Fawad thinks. That’s the way it’s meant to be.

When the Different Tailor withdraws his hand, the world on the fitting facet of the mirror screams.

The retailers flip inside out. The rooms flip so their insides come on the surface. The department stores, the homes, the workplaces, every flips so that everybody falls out, like cash from pockets shaken roughly.

And everybody exterior falls inside. Gates burst open, the flower peddlers and kids promoting balloons are pulled in. Our bodies fly out of gunny baggage. Allow us to not suppose on whose flip it’s now to fill them.

A pause, a tremor, after which, similar to that, life goes on. Not one individual remembers. That is the way it has at all times been, they are saying, because the ministers decide up the garbage gathering baggage and the homeless drive their shiny automobiles to their new mansions.

The fates have been switched, and no one is the wiser.

Karachi touches the material.

“How comfortable,” she murmurs. “How vigorous.” The Different Tailor sits again down, content material.

“No.”

“What’s that now?”

Karachi steps in direction of him, and he realises he has spoken. She tilts his face up. You would possibly suppose that was mehndi on her palms, however Fawad sees now it’s dried blood.

“Nothing is with out consequence.” Fawad continues, his voice shaking. “Gained’t you pay the value? For the garment?”

“I’ve by no means paid for it but. Have I?” She appeals to the Different Tailor. “Don’t be ridiculous. What would that even seem like?”

“And but you at all times take. You took our cricket balls, our shrouds, our scratch playing cards and the issues that stay on seasides. You took the varsity lady’s dupatta with out which they won’t let her into faculty, the khwaja sira’s purse the place she retains her ID paperwork. You took the maulana’s sleeve, the corpse’s resting locations. And made your self fairly. I ask you, what do you give?”

“Think about that I swap the fates.” Karachi says. “And so, in a approach, everyone is equally unfortunate. It’s at all times any person’s flip, given a era or two. Isn’t that particularly reasonable of me?”

“Not adequate. So many individuals are floor down into struggling. Each household has a narrative of ache. Of damage. And your costume has taken from representatives of all the town’s inhabitants.”

“Very effectively,” she says softly. “Let’s say you could have the fitting of it. What shall I grant you? A throne? A crown?”

“Grant your folks avenue lights that don’t fade. Roads that don’t cave. Electrical energy that doesn’t fail. Factories that by no means catch fireplace. Libraries anybody can be part of. Water that doesn’t flood.”

“You ask lots,” she says calmly. “None of that is in my reward.”

“When you don’t know the right way to do it—”

“I didn’t say I don’t know the right way to do it. It’s not what I’m for.”

“Come now,” the Different Tailor says to Fawad. “We didn’t comply with this. The contract was for an training.”

“You promised me that. However what has she promised to the individuals who personal the supplies? They might have used the silver, the gold, the gem stones. And what has she promised in return to me?”

“The ocean,” she murmurs. She will not be an individual anymore, Fawad sees. She is historic, she has fins and an elongated neck and sharp enamel. She bites her personal disguise, and lightweight pours out, all on the shoreline. The primary mild on the swamp the place the town of lights would come to be. “The ocean is for you, for me, for all of us. Someday when the solar is sizzling sufficient, we will drown collectively.”

Fawad flinches. It’s already taking place. Unnatural monsoons have been devastating Karachi. Occurring all evening lengthy, with out stopping. New faces are showing underneath the bridges. The useless are welcoming ever growing numbers of their circle beneath the bottom. Hidden palms of highly effective folks distant have altered the steadiness of the land by means of negligence and malice.

“And sure,” she feels the material once more. “I’ll grant you all that.”

Fawad stares.

“You stated—”

“Oh, I gained’t do one little bit of it. You’ll.”

“How?”

“Is it my enterprise to know? Whenever you be taught actual magic, you should utilize it for all kinds of issues, I think about. And I want an attendant. So keep right here. Be taught. There are faculties sufficient if you wish to change the world. All of the secrets and techniques of bending life itself to what it ought to be, even when the highly effective transfer in opposition to you. Even once they devour your metropolis to its dregs. And while you’ve discovered all of it, let’s see what you wish to do with it. Perhaps, sometime, you’ll be able to turn out to be the town.”

“It’s not that merely carried out,” the Different Tailor says.

“In fact it isn’t. You’ll first return.” She turns Fawad away from her by the shoulders. “Till the total moon sits in your sky once more. See how you want life with the fates flipped. Will you come? That’s the essential bit. As soon as they style privilege, few ever want change.”

“Has this occurred earlier than? Have there been—”

“Faculty tomorrow! Your driver will take you. Your lunch might be packed. Your dad and mom are nonetheless useless, however your home is yours, you could have cash and individuals who assist you to. Whenever you sleep at evening, you would possibly suppose you’ll do one thing for these unhappy faces who faucet on the window of your automobile and ask for cash. However you’ll get up the subsequent day, and your mattress might be comfortable, and the air conditioner good, and so that you gained’t. Have I not seen this many, many instances?”

She laughs, and Fawad can hear the rain hammering on the fitting facet of the mirror. Maybe there may be water in Grasp Jee’s store on the opposite facet. She laughs once more, however the Different Tailor, he raises his face to Fawad, and Fawad sees himself in his glass face. He feels the Different Tailor is attempting to say one thing.

“You don’t suppose I’ll return? I might be again,” Fawad says, voice trembling from what? Uncertainty? “On the subsequent full moon.”

“It is perhaps he returns,” the Different Tailor says. He slips one thing to Fawad. One thing sharp.

Karachi shrugs, and turns away.

When Fawad steps again out of the mirror into an amnesiac world newly remade, he’s full of an awesome panic. It’s silent on the opposite facet. The rain has stopped. There’s a energy failure, so the store is darkish, and no one has began the generator.

He leaves Grasp Jee’s store, and spots one other boy sitting cross- legged reverse the store. His coronary heart sinks to see him—however oh, the reduction when he realizes it want by no means be him once more.

He sees a automobile pull up, and his recollections are rearranging themselves, so he recognises it as his personal. He backs away, contained in the store once more.

It’ll unmake him, he thinks. The amnesia. He can really feel the lure of pondering that it wasn’t simply luck that rescued him. It was himself, the lure his new life has laid for him whispers. It’s his cleverness that received him off the road. He deserves this life.

One thing pricks his hand.

He seems to be at what the Different Tailor had given him.

It’s the damaged blade he’d introduced again with the gunny bag. He should have dropped this someplace, and now the Different Tailor had given it to him again.

So it did occur, he tells himself, strolling to the door. All of it occurred. He mustn’t neglect. He locations it with care in his pocket.

One hand on the door deal with about to step out, and he’s scared. There’s a lot to do. Who will assist him?

He turns again to see the mirror.

All he sees is his reflection.

In regards to the Creator

Fatima Taqvi is a brief story author of horror and fantasy hailing from Karachi, Pakistan, and at the moment residing in London. She has work showing in Unusual Horizons, Journal of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Nightmare Journal, The Darkish, and different locations. She will be contacted on her web site fatimataqvi.com.

Please go to Lightspeed Magazine to learn extra nice science fiction and fantasy. This story first appeared within the August 2025 challenge, which additionally options brief fiction by David Anaxagoras, Osahon Ize-Iyamu, Adam-Troy Castro, Christopher Rowe, Sarah Langan, Naomi Kanakia, V.M. Ayala, and extra. You may look forward to this month’s contents to be serialized on-line, or you should purchase the entire challenge proper now in handy book format for simply $4.99, or subscribe to the book version here.

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