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 difficulty. This month’s choice is “It Would possibly Be He Returns” by Fatima Taqvi. Get pleasure from!

It Would possibly Be He Returns

By Fatima Taqvi

What it is advisable to know concerning the boy on this story is he’s all the time hungry and the solar is all the time too scorching for him, and he would save the world if he might. That is what he tells himself as he sits reverse the tailor’s store, trying 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 one of the best of one of the 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 might be.

The mirror in Grasp Jee’s store has all the time stretched itself up at a tilt behind the counter, framed by the stitched garments that dangle round it. A skinny crack smiles throughout its grime. The quick approaching and departing shapes of Karachi’s blurred visitors replicate on its floor in unsettling bursts. Maybe it might have been higher had it been dealing with elsewhere. However then none of what was to return 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 outlets reverse the tailor’s store, scratching a map of all he knew into the dust. He was considering, all the time considering. What to do? The place to go? Considered 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 affect of.

Reverse the street, the mirror beamed the solar’s reflection again so brilliantly that for the second that Fawad stopped, his gaze dragged up in the direction of its face the place it shone by 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, virtually passing out. The tailor’s reflection paused for the longest second, earlier than giving a defeated shrug and sitting down once more in trustworthy 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 virtually 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.

For sure, 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 house and leaving him none, staring up at him, as if in shock he thought they might yield him a millimeter. When he confirmed up in school, the Vice Principal held him by the ear and dragged him again out of the varsity gates. Would there be any fee 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 have been for kids.

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

The final inside place left was dwelling, and that was swallowed quickly after the funeral by the grubby fingers of leering, red-eyed uncles, and blockaded by the sharp tongues of aunts who snatched his previous mannequin of a cellular 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 person was prepared to save lots of the world, he would have beloved to if he might.

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 sturdy it creates a pulling, a suction.

After which—

Ignore it. Sure, it’s loud, it blocks the whole lot else out, however is it as loud as the decision of styrofoam containers of scorching, greasy meals being distributed proper now beneath the bridge? Kindly faces waited for him in that nice large exterior place, a foot away from screaming visitors. If he might feed himself, maintain 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 filled with shiny issues and fed individuals. He made sufficient cash to ship Fawad to highschool. 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 should not be a gardener while you develop up. Not like me. We are going to discover you scholarships. That is Karachi! There are faculties, faculties, tuition facilities on each road. You’ll study, you’ll develop up, you’ll change the world.”

And he’s undone, left completely 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 respiration whose chest strikes as you lie on it. Till it stops shifting altogether, and there’s nothing however the shrill tone of one thing else completely.

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 trying down from an ideal peak. What if he appears to be like on the mirror and his reflection is all flawed?

But it surely isn’t. It’s simply as he’s. Although the set of his reflection’s jaw has a glance about it. Possibly it already is aware of what is 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 previous tune, from days again when payments weren’t so excessive and he would think about a extra comfy previous age.

Fawad runs his fingers alongside the mirror’s floor. He traces the outlines of the grime, however he can’t 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 cheerful dancer at a mehndi, he lifts a foot, twists his physique, and steps proper by 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 completed its work and the cream cake was delicate. Because the mirror now melts across the contours of his physique, Fawad thinks of how the knife had fallen by his birthday cake as he’d reduce it, prefer it had waited all its life for the knife to comprehend it. He’s a bit boy once more. It’s his birthday, his father smiles, he laughs and jumps on the spot for a slice, and falls by the mirror on the opposite aspect.

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

He turns. There are garments on both aspect of the mirror on this aspect too. They bulge as if crammed 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 appears to be like away.

The Different Tailor’s store is just a glowing facade, marooned in all this darkness. There are partitions, however they’re not joined on the prime. There is no such thing as a roof. A door body however no glass door. The store rumbles, it’s chilly, however there isn’t 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 his thoughts. Who else would dwell 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 made from paper trot away down an unseen street, tattered reins slack at its aspect. 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 following creature could also be one thing apart from a horse.

However when he turns to go away, 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 lovely, and saved prepared for him by some type hand little doubt. Take a look at this sherwani, for instance. What a prince he’d look. His Vice Principal would maintain him for instance to the opposite college students. His uncles would maintain the doorways of his dwelling open to him once more. He might hand out meals beneath 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, by no means. 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 precise. He’s hunched over, absorbed in some work he holds in his fingers, 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 straightforward 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 individuals belonging to inside areas are. “You don’t belong.”

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

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

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

“These meant to be listed below are right here.” The Different Tailor replies. “However you will need to go if you’re not all for 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 trying up within the course of the garments, “as a result of they’ve had their fill already. Which is why they give the impression of being so tremendous.”

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 depart, I’ll cross him this one factor, Fawad thinks. It’s good to be useful, father all the time mentioned. So he passes it and as he does there’s a splash of sunshine because the Different Tailor appears to be like up for the briefest of moments.

“I can’t pay you.” He says instantly. “Don’t count on fee for that motion.”

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

“We now have no settlement. Your work has no recompense.”

“I solely meant—”

“Contracts are the whole lot right here. Guarantees right here matter. You can’t 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 recognize.”

“I may need stretched my again,” the Different Tailor speaks thoughtfully. “I work so arduous. I may need regarded 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 objects. 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 lifeless 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 appeared 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. “Should you like.”

So delicate his voice, like a rotten birthday cake spoiled in a bakery and bought at a reduction to a person keen to present 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 dangerous reaching up by his throat, exiting the physique it was by no means meant for.

“Do you go to highschool?”

Fawad’s mouth twists.

“Irrespective of,” the Different Tailor says. “We now have faculties right here. Even on the opposite aspect of Karachi, we have now faculties on each road, and a few of our graduates, they’ve modified the world. That may be your fee.”

Forgotten have been the styrofoam containers. The plastic baggage of biryani. The kindly faces on the nice large exterior. One factor gleamed for him, past all different desires or needs. 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 have been? Regardless of the whole lot, he was his father’s son, and on the promise of e-book studying he leapt earlier than he regarded.

• • •

The primary merchandise he was despatched to seek out was straightforward 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. Should you examine considered one of them, you recognize 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 the mirror to the opposite aspect, and the grey flat rectangles burst into hopeful firefly lights, coalescing into silver chiffon, illuminated by sighs and yearnings. The digits on them coil, change into black curlicues, embroidered floral preparations, imitations of marriage ceremony flowers that have 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 individuals far-off.

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 fabric together 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 town’s largest shrine to a string of ribboned squares. He sits and picks and unpicks thread from the fabric. He spools the thread that tangles up at his ft. Then out for extra.

Discarded syringes stained with blood change into white muslin—swaddling cloths smelling of milk.

“They all the time do this,” the Different Tailor says. So, he ventures out to scrub 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 faculty lady’s uniform dupatta retains its starched kind, 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 visitors lights provides 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 beneath the bridge the place they hand out these styrofoam field meals and infrequently fruit juice cartons. He’s hardly ever hungry anymore. He doesn’t know whether it is magic or anticipation.

“Extra.”

Someplace an Imam is on the point 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 beneath his hungry body. He can’t bear to wake her when she appears to be like so comfy. He’s heard her wailing not too long ago, and he thinks she has misplaced her kittens. Her physique continues 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 fireplace 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 marriage ceremony favors change into chilly rubies.

A teen stops to wipe the sweat off his face. His motorbike wobbles, hits a stone and a metallic 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 metallic.

The metallic 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 offended purple welts. He tosses them in anger on the Different Tailor in a cloud of sand that every 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 speak 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 succeed in 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 timber, in a abandoned space. The streetlamps don’t work right here, they’ve extra sense than that. There are areas the place individuals dwell and deserve mild, and areas that soak 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 fingers, 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, they usually 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 together with his small fingers. Folds up the bag. Pauses.

The Different Tailor had no additional directions, and Fawad can’t depart the mutilated kind identical to that. So he begins to dig a gap, and the bottom gained’t give, it has seen an excessive amount of to be delicate. 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’t say. After which he’s operating as one automobile 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 Grasp Jee Quantity One Tailor’s door, stepping by 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 objects, and retains its kind when he passes by the mirror. He one way or the other knew it might.

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 provides.

Fawad peeks behind the counter.

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

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

“A gharara,” he says.

The Different Tailor nods. Inconceivable to know what he’s considering. His face has all the time been hidden. Fawad desires to ask him now to indicate it, however he wonders if the Different Tailor is just too shy, or too filled 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 might imply rejecting one thing he can’t absolutely grasp.

The Different Tailor watches him.

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

“And her mom wore one on her marriage 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 will be important that she not be irritated in any means.”

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

“Make certain,” he murmurs. “Make certain you don’t remorse it.”

The stitching machine is clattering although, so possibly 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 any case, 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 aside from anklets of bougainvillea. Her soles are all the time sandy.

Fawad tries to talk however his throat doesn’t cooperate, it closes his voice away. One thing about kids, he’s considering: 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, possibly stopping to take a look at a secondhand e-book stall, or to gaze on the locked gates of an artwork exhibition, wishing she might go inside. Oh, she says. Did you assume 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 looking for habitats lengthy since worn out? Look right here, she beckons, and also you see all of them sleeping protected 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 town, writing one thing in an historic language that was spoken on her shores lengthy earlier than there have been any people. No person is aware of that the boys in gunny baggage have change into kids once more, snoozing, 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 might be good if I did, wouldn’t it?”

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

Ah, sure. She remembers now. A complete swimsuit, if he has it. A gharara swimsuit.

“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 every single day he’s been working.

“I find it irresistible,” she says, clasping her fingers. “Oh, that is lovely. 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 aid. “Did I not inform you? And do you hear?”

There’s one final step each tailor is aware of which have to be completed for the gharara. It’s all the time stitched inside out. However he should anticipate 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 so that they fall on the within. Proper means round, Fawad thinks. That’s the way it’s meant to be.

When the Different Tailor withdraws his hand, the world on the precise aspect of the mirror screams.

The outlets flip inside out. The rooms flip so their insides come on the skin. 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 assume on whose flip it’s now to fill them.

A pause, a tremor, after which, identical to that, life goes on. Not one individual remembers. That is the way it has all the time been, they are saying, because the ministers choose up the garbage accumulating baggage and the homeless drive their shiny vehicles to their new mansions.

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

Karachi touches the material.

“How delicate,” she murmurs. “How energetic.” The Different Tailor sits again down, content material.

“No.”

“What’s that now?”

Karachi steps in the direction of him, and he realises he has spoken. She tilts his face up. You would possibly assume 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 worth? 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 all the time take. You took our cricket balls, our shrouds, our scratch playing cards and the issues that dwell 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?”

“Contemplate that I change the fates.” Karachi says. “And so, in a means, everyone is equally unfortunate. It’s all the time any person’s flip, given a era or two. Isn’t that particularly reasonable of me?”

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

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

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

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

“Should you don’t know the best way to do it—”

“I didn’t say I don’t know the best 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 tooth. She bites her personal disguise, and light-weight pours out, all on the shoreline. The primary mild on the swamp the place town of lights would come to be. “The ocean is for you, for me, for all of us. At some point when the solar is scorching sufficient, we will drown collectively.”

Fawad flinches. It’s already occurring. Unnatural monsoons have been devastating Karachi. Happening all evening lengthy, with out stopping. New faces are showing beneath the bridges. The lifeless are welcoming ever growing numbers of their circle beneath the bottom. Hidden fingers of highly effective individuals far-off have altered the steadiness of the land by negligence and malice.

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

Fawad stares.

“You mentioned—”

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

“How?”

“Is it my enterprise to know? Whenever you study actual magic, you should use it for all kinds of issues, I think about. And I want an attendant. So keep right here. Study. There are faculties sufficient if you wish to change the world. All of the secrets and techniques of bending life itself to what it must be, even when the highly effective transfer in opposition to you. Even after they devour your metropolis to its dregs. And while you’ve realized all of it, let’s see what you need to do with it. Possibly, sometime, you may change into town.”

“It’s not that merely completed,” 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 back? 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 lifeless, however your home is yours, you could have cash and individuals who assist you to. Whenever you sleep at evening, you would possibly assume 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 following day, and your mattress might be delicate, and the air conditioner good, and so that you gained’t. Have I not seen this many, many occasions?”

She laughs, and Fawad can hear the rain hammering on the precise aspect of the mirror. Maybe there’s water in Grasp Jee’s store on the opposite aspect. 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 making an attempt to say one thing.

“You don’t assume 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 crammed with an amazing panic. It’s silent on the opposite aspect. The rain has stopped. There’s a energy failure, so the store is darkish, and no person 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 aid when he realizes it want by no means be him once more.

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

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

One thing pricks his hand.

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

It’s the damaged blade he’d introduced again with the gunny bag. He will need to 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 Writer

Fatima Taqvi is a brief story author of horror and fantasy hailing from Karachi, Pakistan, and at present 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 difficulty, which additionally options quick fiction by David Anaxagoras, Osahon Ize-Iyamu, Adam-Troy Castro, Christopher Rowe, Sarah Langan, Naomi Kanakia, V.M. Ayala, and extra. You possibly can anticipate this month’s contents to be serialized on-line, or you should buy the entire difficulty proper now in handy book format for simply $4.99, or subscribe to the book version here.

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