I am a first-generation Indian-American. I did well in school. I am a “model citizen,” not even a current speeding ticket on my record.

In The Wicked + The Divine (WicDiv) by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, every 90 years, twelve young adults are told they’re gods from various pantheons. They will be loved. They will be hated. They will be brilliant. Within two years, they will be dead.¹

The climax of the series hinges on the revelation that this narrative is a lie, but it’s a powerful lie. As long as the main character, Laura, believes she’s Persephone, she can destroy—among other things—buildings. After she realizes she isn’t, she can barely produce a flame. It’ll take a lifetime to regain those powers—but it’s a lifetime she now has.

Growing up, I was always told I had a choice of three career paths: doctor, lawyer, engineer. I wasn’t that invested in math, and despite my love of having opinions, perusing stacks of potentially unexciting papers to bolster my arguments sounded soul-crushing (sorry, lawyer friends!). So: doctor it was. Research doctor, because in addition to working in a lab, I’d grown up around research. My father was—and is—a chemist.

Right. My father’s a chemist, my mother is an accountant, and although none of my immediate relatives were in any one of those three fields, it didn’t occur to me that I had options until after college.

In WicDiv, the claim about godhood—the thing that both makes them powerful and breaks them in two years—isn’t just for giggles. Ananke, self-described caretaker (or, to use WicDiv’s persistent music metaphor, manager) of the gods, is the one feeding them this story and doing everything in her power to ensure they never have a reason to question it—because that narrative is ensuring her immortality.

In 1952, the H-1B visa for immigrants with specialized skills was introduced. The 1965 Immigration Act abolished quotas based on national origin, which de jure eliminated institutional racism against Asian immigrants.² America needed highly educated, specialized workers, and was happy to grant one of these visas to my father, a postdoctoral fellow. Is it really surprising that the children—myself included—of people with graduate-level specialization in STEM fields generally go into specialized STEM fields?

Ananke doesn’t assign gods randomly. The goth kids get Morrigan and Nergal; the rebellious loner gets Lucifer. The quiet, closeted kid has an opportunity to express himself as the flamboyant Queen of Heaven, Inanna. So on and so forth.

Even these specific named deities are part of the lie. While using godhood to increase one’s power goes back all the way to the beginning, it was, originally, self-imposed; “Persephone” started off as a nameless tripartite. Once she seizes control of the narrative, Ananke chooses archetypes—stereotypes?—after observing each person, telling them who they are with a name and a couple of phrases. They fill in the rest of the blanks on their own. Which, of course, is exactly what she wants them to do.

The thing about wanting to do well in school is that it’s much easier when everyone around you assumes you’re going to do well. On the first day of kindergarten, I distinctly recall telling another kid during quiet coloring time that the apple was supposed to be red, not green, because that was the color of the day. I could’ve been written off as disruptive, but instead I got bumped up grades—cue Doogie Howser comparisons—and dumped in the gifted class.

It’s only recently, with conversations about ending these programs, that I’ve understood how much of this placement was subject to how those teachers perceived me. At the time, I barely even noticed how homogenous (read: predominantly white) those classes were, relative to the rest of the school. And, while those classes were right for me—I assumed I’d do well because I’m a nerd with high self-esteem, and I did—so many of those kids fell into toxic perfectionism.

What breaks Laura out of thinking she’s Persephone is the long miserable spiral of being suffocated by expectations. As a god—in Ananke’s words, the “Destroyer”—she behaves destructively, both towards herself and others. Sinking towards the bottom, she finally realizes she isn’t a god, or for that matter any of the labels that people have applied to her in the past.

Of course, living without these expectations—without a clear roadmap—isn’t easy. Laura says she “lay in the darkness for days.”³ But after that, she moves forward in the direction she wants to go, even helping the other remaining gods realize they aren’t limited to Ananke’s description of who they are. The final issue skips ahead 40 years, emphasizing not their specific accomplishments but rather the opportunity—instead of two years in an assigned role, a lifetime of choice.

WicDiv is about narratives and how they can both define and limit us. Stereotypes, too, are a type of narrative, one which elides the full picture of who we are.

At one point I realized I’m an Indian-American in IT and thought “Oh god, I’m the stereotype.” But why should I feel I’m not providing good representation, just because I work in a massively growing field with many STEM graduates?⁴ The laws of reality prevent me from throwing all labels into the sea—even if I refuse to acknowledge them, they’ve insinuated in my subconscious. But I can be aware of how they inform my interactions and decision making.

There’s no neat ending here. There’s only the work I—we—can do every day to refuse the flattening of complex narratives into stereotypes, to see how people are pushed not only into behaving a certain way but into thinking that they must behave in certain ways. Like the characters of The Wicked + The Divine, we cannot break this cycle until we become aware of it. I don’t know what exactly we will gain from doing so, but that’s the point: to have the opportunity.

¹. The first appearance of this paraphrased quote is in The Wicked + The Divine, issue 2

². While I’m paraphrasing Wikipedia, I wouldn’t have thought to look this up if Kal Penn hadn’t mentioned it at the 2021 Chicago Humanities Festival.

³. The Wicked + The Divine, issue #39

⁴. Also, I got my last interview because of the art minor.

In the beginning, the prince is more interested in mastering a fakie heelflip than meeting girls, but his father is insistent, and the prince knows he’s about one “Wrong attitude, son” away from not being allowed to stay in the castle rent-free anymore. So he says all right. All right to a casual barbecue or something, not, like, a whole thing. Not like that time the prince’s dad hijacked his birthday party and dragged everyone downstairs to see his collection of hunting rifles and showed the prince’s then love interest how to skin a deer. Without giving her an apron or anything, so deer blood got all over her yellow halter top. Even though nobody will admit it to his face, the prince knows everyone’s kind-of scared of his dad. Like the girl, she was all animal rights before then, dog rescues, vegan menus, “I am a life, not a lunch” bumper sticker on the back of her car.

In the beginning, June is not honeybees, Nat is not horseflies, and both score jobs at the dessert shop walking distance from their apartment, which in the summer sells ice cream and the rest of the year sells pies and still a little ice cream, for people who want it à la mode. June and Nat applied for this job because it’s the only one in town, apparently, that doesn’t require them to freeze their butts off wearing short skirts all day in an air-conditioned mall. Rumor has it that Rebecca, who played volleyball with them back in high school, wore leggings under her skirt one day and got fired on the spot. Besides, the dessert shop is one of those old-fashioned places that spells it with an extra P-E, and June and Nat have a lot of fun shouting “Shop-ee! Shop-ee!” while twirling their fake moustaches and straightening their fake double-breasted vests.

In the beginning, the prince’s dad was okay with him taking a gap year, but now it’s getting a little excessive. Now it’s getting a little “No son of mine.” So now, two years after walking the stage at graduation, it’s either go to college, Penn State preferably, and do something—clubs, grades—with your life there, or stay in town and do something—wife, kids—with your life here. The main point being, well, get on with it already. And if it’s the wife/kids route, that’s all right with the prince’s dad, who has always wanted to teach a little slugger the ways of the world. Who passed through the toy gun section at the big retail store the other day and there was this tiny rifle, with an orange tip and a camo strap, that made him soften a little, that made him think, huh, how about that, isn’t that cute?

In the beginning, when June and Nat find the invite to the barbecue stuffed in their mailbox alongside a random catalog, the kind that sells sensible women’s office fashions, and a bunch of other stuff they didn’t ask for, they struggle to remember who the prince is. Did they have homeroom with him? Or was he that one guy in that group of guys who always booed Mr. Lefkowitz at assembly? And does it really matter, they wonder, when clearly this invite went out to all the townies, the kids who stuck around, and they aren’t those, not really. Because June’s only here for as long as it takes to save up for X-ray technician school, and Nat’s only here as long as June is. Which isn’t long now, because they’re already talking about their apartment in the city, and how since there’s no way they’ll be able to afford anything bigger than a studio, it’ll feel like a sleepover all the time.

In the beginning, the prince is a little miffed that June and Nat don’t come to the barbecue, for which his father promised to supply venison burgers but otherwise stay more or less out of the way, and which is attended not only by girls, but, well, girls are kind of the point. And people do come, and they say nice things about the music and the decor and the food, and the prince even gets to show off the skate ramp he and his dad are building in the driveway. Which is pretty much his mom’s worst nightmare, but should she really get a say, considering she’s always up in her office at the tippy-top of the tallest turret, the prince thinks it’s called, day in and day out, doing people’s taxes or whatever? So the party’s a hit, Mary even makes it, and her hair looks good long, and it’s not a huge deal about June and Nat. Until the prince mentions it to his father.

In the beginning, before June is a swarm of honeybees, she still gravitates toward Nat like Nat’s the sweetest-smelling flower. And before Nat is a cloud of horseflies, she still charges anyone who’s even remotely unkind to June, totally ready to bite. Like the guy at the dessert shop who called June a bitch for not giving him her number, who rolled his chew around the inside of his mouth like a threat and knocked the tip jar over before walking out with his strawberry cone. Then Nat ran around the counter to pick up the change and swore to June the next time she would key the motherfucker’s car. And June, she wants to be an X-ray technician, right? She wants to go to school to learn to see through people. So once, when they’d had too much to drink during some TV marathon, Nat made a joke like June could practice on her if she wanted, like, Junie, bet you can see right through me. And June didn’t take her up on it or anything, but looked at her for a long time, kept looking even after Nat, cheeks beer-hot, looked away.

In the beginning, when the prince tells his dad, whatever, those girls are attached at the hip, and his dad says what do you mean, the prince doesn’t know what he means exactly. He means they’re best friends. Are they? Ever since I can remember. And they live together? On the south side. That so? And they do everything together. Everything? Everything. And before the prince can say anything more about it, like probably they were just busy working the same shift or something, or his dad is doing that thing again where he absolutely has to have his way, like with the forced vegan deer-skinning, his dad is out the door. With his 30-30 Winchester 94, which he’s nicknamed, so embarrassing, the Kingdom Defender.

In the beginning, it’s supposed to be a simple wave-it-in-their-faces, scare-’em-straight situation, make sure they never stand his son up like that ever again. But then Nat gets mega protective like she does, and also sometimes, honestly, she just hates this town so bad. The way her name tag at work has to say “Natasha” instead of just Nat, manager’s orders, and all the other ways she can’t be completely herself. So she launches herself at the king’s head in the middle of the dessert shop parking lot, June a few seconds too late out of the double doors, and wrestles him, limbs flying, to the ground. And what’s the king to do then? Royal decree number one is the right to self-defense.

When Nat comes apart, it begins at her chest, at the point where the bullet enters, then spreads throughout her entire body, a near-instant dissolution of hair, skin, gritted teeth, balled fists still in food-safety gloves into a hundred thousand furious horseflies. A hundred thousand pairs of membranous wings, compound eyes.

When June comes apart, it begins with her mouth, open in a soundless scream like that painting they both know, made replicas of during a wine-and-paint class they took once for Nat’s birthday. Then not soundless. Then thunderous buzzing, as the bees bloom out of her, through her, from her. Like her organs are the first to go. Like what happens when you die of heartbreak, inside-out.

Everybody talks about happy endings, like “And then all the many parts of them flew as one into the sunset,” which isn’t what happens at all. They don’t even recognize one another. Obviously. Of course. But no one talks about the other way around. How beginnings can be beautiful, something worth lingering and lingering in. How in the beginning, June and Nat are best friends, and the lemon juice works its magic and they both have blonde streaks for the summer. The blacktop is hot but not too hot. The future is bright and not yet impossible, and they think next time they’ll try fresh-squeezed lemons for a change, instead of the stuff that comes in the bottle.

Thank you! I’m so glad to see it flying out into the world. The bees and horseflies I borrowed from Pushkin’s “The Tale of Tsar Saltan,” one of the first fairy tales I remember hearing as a child. In keeping with the pattern of threes found in lots of fairy tales, it actually features three insects: a bumblebee, a horsefly, and a mosquito. But mosquitoes have always had it out for me—when I was little my mom liked to say my blood was too sweet—so I try to avoid invoking them, even in stories.

Since this story is called “Beginnings,” we have to ask how the story got started—what was the initial spark? Did it start with the idea of a character being turned into a swarm of bees or did it begin elsewhere?

This story started with an idea I had for a structure: a twist on the fairy tale’s “Once upon a time.” I was interested in focusing on beginnings at the expense of endings, since traditional fairy tales, and specifically their endings, tend not to be very kind to their women characters—they’re banished into the woods, locked away at the tops of towers, and worse. I think a lot about fairy tales: who gets to live inside them and who can only wish to; how they help us to survive, and when they no longer serve us, what parts of them we can leave behind. With this story in particular, I wondered whether a prolonging of a character’s beginning could act as a refusal of their ending, and whether refusing their ending could be a way to save them.

While it’s not stated outright, I got the sense that Nat and June are not just best friends, but maybe in love with each other—and that the king, at least, thinks they’re in a queer relationship. If that’s how I’m reading it, then the line “it’s supposed to be a simple wave-it-in-their-faces, scare-’em-straight situation” has what feels like a more sinister vibe than its more common, face-value meaning. Is that interpretation what you intended?

Yes, I’m glad that came through. June and Nat love each other. They’re in love with each other. They’re best friends, of course, and at the same time they’re still figuring out everything else they might be. They have all the joy in the world ahead of them, all the possibility. Only they live in a town that’s hostile to that joy. I think many of us know those kinds of towns, grew up in them ourselves. They have a way of suffocating a flame that could burn long and bright. A way of crushing the bulb of a flower before it blooms.

Was this a difficult story to write, or did it come fairly easily?

It came quickly, at least. I wrote it in a single sitting. I’m not sure I can say it came easily. I had to mentally revisit the places I grew up, how claustrophobic they felt and how very unkind they were to queer kids. (One of them inspired the small American hunting town June and Nat find themselves in.) That was a long time ago, and there are still those places today, still those so-called kings intent on breaking into a million pieces those things they don’t understand. Queer kids should be able to grow up feeling safe and protected and loved and whole. A lot of writing “Beginnings” felt like screaming into that unfairness. In the world of a story, the writer can make the artistic decision to reject people’s unhappy endings and to dwell instead on the promise of their beginnings. That’s all well and good in stories. But in our world outside of stories, we’re going to have to do a lot better than that.

What are you working on now, and are there any other projects we can look forward to seeing from you in the future?

I just finished my first collection of short stories, and am currently at work on my second. I have something coming out soon in Lightspeed—“The Queen of the Earless Seals of Lake Baikal”—that I’m really excited for folks to read. It’s another tale of survival that has fun with structure, magical animals, and elements of fairy tale, this time with invented myth and a setting that’s very dear to me. Best read after an image search for “cute baikal seals.”

you’re pondering deeper
subjects when you see her
slink half-naked down the hallway
towards the EXIT, heart
a rabbit,
one finger waving
like a paintbrush.
she isn’t wearing her glasses.
it’s becoming a habit, the
hallway saying “Ah”, and she
walking into it,
perhaps tasting your last
kiss. she says the sign
is blurred (again,
the glasses). she claims it says
Drink Me; anything else is a trick
of the light. of course
it only seems she is getting
smaller.

you decide you are your own
best subject, and go back
to the creek, to the sun that hangs
over it. (yours has legs,
and short streams of gas
crowning a leonine head).
the earth turns a blue
cheek as your brush rips birds
from the thin skin of sky,
like the panties of girls roughly
doctored with your teeth
beside the weeping tree.

— as for her, she sleeps

in the corner where
she’s been painted,
legs splayed, apron flung up
over her head, dreaming
herself into focus, and out
of the hole she keeps
falling in.

I pulled it out of my leather satchel just far enough to see that it was, in fact, the daycare. My heart sank.

“Sorry, I have to take this,” I mouthed apologetically to Glork, the only member of my party within earshot; his bulging yellow eyes narrowed at the interruption between him and his spoils. “Be right back.”

I backed away from the cave, into the majestic-yet-abandoned marble halls of a greedy people who had delved too deep into a mountain whose secrets they could not have fathomed.

Then, I swiped to answer the call.

“Kristen, what’s up?” I asked. “Is Ber okay?”

“He’s fine, he’s fine,” she soothed, knowing my mind had immediately jumped to images of my little baby boy being taken away in an ambulance or tossed atop a Plague cart. But then she paused. “We-ell, he did actually just throw up everywhere. I’m gonna need you to come pick him up.”

“Oh no. Is he okay?”

“He seems better now that he’s gotten it all up,” she chirped. “But you know the policy, he’s gotta be symptom-free for 24 hours to come back.”

Our party’s necromancer had drifted after me into the hall, poking the faceless void of its hood out to check on me. I held up a “one minute” finger; the hood nodded and the lightless form retreated.

“Okay, that’s good—listen, Kristen, is there any chance you can give my sister a call? She’s on the emergency contacts, and I’m a little tied up here at work.”

A whoosh of frustrated breath. “I’ll try and let you know, but if she doesn’t pick up—”

“Thank you, I’ll be here if you need me, I appreciate it, goodbye,” I rattled off and hung up, then dashed back towards the mouth of the cave.

“Finally,” sneered Alohir, a golden-haired elf clutching the magical harp whose enchanted tones would charm the dragon to sleep, allowing us to rob it blind. “Your little gremlin giving you troubles again?”

“Okay, first of all, can we not with the gremlin stereotypes?” I huffed. “And secondly, Alohir, he’s a child. I know you haven’t had elflings for seventeen centuries but some of us—”

“Silence,” the necromancer said, somehow, despite its lack of visible mouth. “The dragon stirs at your bickering.”

Alohir glared at me and began to play. The warm tones rang true in the dark of the cavern, filling the damp, mossy air with a somnolent melody.

We crept in closer, closer. As we drew near, I could make out the dragon’s impenetrable coat of jewel-toned scales stirring with each breath as it slept, curled atop its stolen treasure. We needed to catch it by surprise.

And then my phone vibrated again, clanging against the metal plate of my armor.

The dragon awoke with a roar and a burst of impossibly hot fire that whooshed through the cavern, all aglow with gold and flame. It screeched, baring teeth like pikes. The skull of some long-dead knight was still impaled on an incisor.

“Necromancer! Begin the death-spell!” Glork screeched from where he’d clambered up atop Alohir’s shoulder, making it hard for the elf to aim his arrows.

But I didn’t have time for all that. I rushed forward, reckless, as Alohir screamed “WHAT ARE YOU DOING—” and lopped the dragon’s head off with my broadsword in one brutal swing.

Then, I ran straight out of the cavern to pick up my son before we got kicked out of daycare and had to find a new one with open spots and flexible aftercare.

(I was not about to start that quest over again.)

• • • •

When I climbed over the top of the tower wall, clanking in my armor and cursing the upper-body strength I was still building back postpartum, the beautiful, captive princess at the top smiled gratefully at me.

Until I took off my helmet.

“Oh,” the princess said, tossing her raven cascade of ringlets and looking me over with distaste. “I rather thought . . .”

“Rather thought what?” I snapped, irritable from having left my sick kid with my insufferable sister that morning.

“Well, that I’d be rescued by a knight.”

“I am a knight,” I sighed.

“You’re a lady knight,” she clarified. “A knightess.”

“Most of us prefer just knight, actually.”

The princess blinked her false lashes.

“You know,” I went on, beginning to feel foolish. “Because you don’t say lord knight. Or . . . he-knight.”

“I see,” she sniffed, clearly uncaring. “Still. I expected . . . someone else. For, you know, the kiss.”

“I can still kiss you,” I offered. “Why not, you know, get rescued, subvert a few gender tropes along the way?”

Her mouth formed an unimpressed line as she looked me over, eyes lingering at the dried spit-up on my breastplate. “If I wanted to subvert a trope, I would have just rescued myself,” she said tartly.

My phone rang, and with my sister watching Ber, I had no choice but to answer. “Shoot, sorry, do you mind if I take this?”

She frowned, but made a “go on” gesture.

It was, indeed, my sister. “Listen, I know you said to give Ber some Tylenol if his fever went up, but he just keeps spitting the pills back out.”

“The— the what!? He needs infant Tylenol, the bubblegum-flavor syrup, not—” I stopped, took a deep breath, and realized I had no choice but to dash to the rescue. “Okay, you just put those pills away, and I’ll be there soon.”

The princess had her perfectly-threaded eyebrows raised as I stuffed my phone back into my pouch.

“Could you do that, actually? Rescue yourself?” I implored.

She sighed, and I raced back down the tower steps.

• • • •

“Your Majesty,” I said from one knee in front of the Glorious Throne of a Vaguely European Fantasy Kingdom, “I need a couple days off. I apologize for the wretched timing, but, alas, my son has fallen ill.”

“Oh, quite, quite; we’re a family monarchy,” the old king nodded benevolently. “Work from home as long as you need. NEXT!”

I opened my mouth to protest—that was not at all what I had asked—but the next petitioner was already wailing and rending their burlap garments before the throne, so I left.

• • • •

I eased my little boy into his crib, watched the rise and fall of his chest in ducky pajamas, the sleeping pucker and release of his tiny lips. His fever had stayed away today, but he was still cranky. Getting him to sleep had been a lullaby marathon.

And now he was down.

I crept out of the room, then flung myself over to the crystal ball. I was never gonna make the sales quota they’d given me (I was a tank, not a disembodied spirit) but knight errantry leaves few work-from-home options. It was this or unemployment.

“Hello, is this the Evil Queen?” I asked when my next prospect appeared before her own crystal ball.

“It’s pronounced Queen,” she snapped. “Just the Queen.”

“Yes, yes, I’m so sorry, m’lady. I’m just calling to let you know the warranty on your night-black stallion with eyes like embers and hooves like obsidian is about to expire, and—”

“And what are you going to do about it?” she drawled.

“My employer is prepared to summon the spirits of the damned to haunt you until you renew,” I said, hoping the mystical connection wouldn’t pick on the way my voice shook. The training slideshow had encouraged us to use threats whenever possible; it had never sat quite right with me, but I really needed to get my sales numbers up.

“I don’t hear any spirits of the damned,” the Queen laughed, and my heart sunk. “Now if you’ll—”

At that moment, through the static of the baby monitor (which I had meant to mute, but which was still on full volume) came a cry so ear-piercing, so agonized, that I clapped my hands over my ears even as I saw the Queen do the same.

“Fine, fine, sign me up,” she cried. “Anything to stop that horrible sound.”

“Hey! That’s my . . . tormented soul you’re talking about here!” I said, offended, even as I switched off the monitor, then switched back to my professional voice. “But thank you and have a nice day.”

As soon as I cut the connection, the screeching from down the hall stopped. I checked the monitor, and Ber was blinking up at the camera, eyes bright as stars in the night-vision setting.

Then, his eyes blinked closed. He lay back down and went to sleep.

“Thanks, buddy,” I whispered as I watched him doze.

It was the little moments like this that made all the hard work and sleepless nights I’d spent tricking that pious maiden out of her firstborn worth it.

Thank you so much! I’ve been reading Fantasy Magazine for years and I’m so excited to see my work here among all these incredible stories.

I’m part of a writing group with two friends from college, and sometime last year we chose the prompt “Illusion.” I started thinking about my time at Yale, and how we all presented these glowing, successful versions of ourselves when we first got to campus, not deliberate illusions, but subconscious ones. With that mental image in my head, I sat down and wrote the first few paragraphs of “How to Make a Man Love You,” and the rest of the story grew from there.

I thought it was an interesting choice to have this from the perspective of the man who’s being affected by the love potions, rather than the woman who’s instigating the whole thing. Did you have it set up as this perspective from the beginning, and what led you to tell the story like this?

I had the story set up like this from the beginning, because I wanted the illusion to be present for both Zayyan and the reader. I wanted to write a story about what happens, not when an illusion is first created, but when it’s peeled back and we see the truth for the first time. To do that, I knew I needed to make it Zayyan’s story, not Cecilia’s.

A big theme I picked up from this story is that there is, in fact, no such thing as love at first sight—in the absence of mind-affecting potions, of course—and that relationships need constant maintenance to be successful. Was that what you were driving for while you were writing it, or did you have other themes at the front of your mind?

I think that was definitely a part of it, but the main theme on my mind was this idea of illusion versus truth.

When you first fall in love with someone, you’re falling in love with your mental picture of who they are, which is rarely a perfectly accurate picture. And as you get to know them more and more, you have to start accepting who they really are instead of superimposing your own illusions onto them.

At the same time, though, you need to keep some illusions to stay happy in a long-term relationship. Or perhaps not illusions, but at least hope, or optimism. You have to see the person you love as the best possible version of themselves, in order to keep the magic alive.

I’ve always thought that was such an interesting contradiction, that need to see your partner for who they truly are, and yet also see them as someone extraordinary.

This story, to me, is filled with issues of consent—it’s arguable that Zayyan’s only real choice came at the very end—and traversing some very thick weeds; if the situation had been reversed, if Zayyan had been regularly dosing Cecilia with love potions, the story would have read very differently. How did you navigate the issues here during writing?

That’s a great question. I think feeding someone a love potion without their consent, regardless of the genders at play, would be an inexcusable act. There’s no excuse for what Cecilia did to Zayyan. I didn’t intend for the ending to exonerate her for that.

My intention was to focus, instead, on Zayyan’s choices once he realized what was going on. Given this impossible situation, what would he do? I don’t think there’s necessarily a right answer. He could have left her, he could have stayed with her but stopped taking the potions, or he could have made the choice he did, and any of the three, I think, would have been a difficult but justifiable decision.

Is there anything you’re working on now that you’d like to talk about? What can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?

I have stories forthcoming in Analog Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, and Nightmare Magazine. I’m also revising a YA fantasy novel about a watercolor painter who wants to become a magician.

never in mockery, but desperation
for solidarity. Look kindly
upon the grooms that the world
has molded after you, ignored
when all is well, blamed for any
irregularity. Bless us beasts
burdened and bred for tedium.
Watch over us poor monkeys
shoved into stables unmoving/
unmoved. For what is a human
if not an ape, blessed
with extra cheek?

If we are to be chewed
into our component hairs,
let us be reborn splendid, o King.
Dress us in tigerskin. Transmute us
seventy-twice. Make us cudgel-flexible.
Deliver us from our trigrams fire-eyed,
breakable no longer. Let us find
paradise behind these waterfalls
battering us flat.

We may not all become Buddhas,
Splendid Monkey, when we fight bare-
toothed, our victory is
not guaranteed. But still
we pray: when we double
somersault for triumph,

let us not miss.

They bump into one another on their way into Woolsey Hall, sending Cecilia’s books and papers scattering, and by the time they’ve picked everything back up they’ve exchanged phone numbers and made plans to have dinner the next evening. It’s the perfect meet-cute. A storybook moment that Zayyan will retell many times, to friends and colleagues and chatty Uber drivers, until it becomes a dog-eared page in the narrative of his life.

Cecilia will confess, years later, that this wasn’t actually the first time they’d met. Months prior to bumping into each other at Woolsey, they were paired up for an icebreaker event during Bulldog Days; they exchanged names, hometowns, favorite movies; they even sat next to one another at lunch afterwards.

When she describes these things, Zayyan will insist that she’s mistaken. He remembers that encounter but feels certain he was paired with a different person entirely, some dull girl with a braying laugh and desperate eyes.

• • • •

He studies physics. She studies fairy tales. English literature, technically, but it’s fairy tales that she loves best.

They read together in the library stacks. She brings her own books, with titles that bewilder him: East Asian Magic, The New Grimoire, Ancient Witchcraft for the Modern Woman. He has never given much thought to anything without a disprovable null hypothesis, but he finds it endearing that she does.

When he brushes a strand of hair out of her face, she glances up, her eyes dreamy, her mind far away. When he teases her about the things she believes in, she graces him with a laugh that sounds like tinkling bells.

She cooks for him often, even though they both have unlimited meal plans in the dining halls, and so Zayyan now has access to dishes that the dining halls don’t provide: Persian food and Chinese food and often some fusion of the two, which he either loves or hates. They eat together in his dorm room while his roommate studies a few feet away; in her dorm room while her suitemates play drinking games around the table; on Old Campus, autumn leaves falling around them.

He associates Cecilia with liminal spaces, in-between places, like the sunbaked line of sand between the sea and the road, or the illegible scrawl of time between waking and dreaming. Something about Cecilia always makes Zayyan feel like she is too good to be true, and the only response he knows is to hold on tighter.

He proposes to her the week after graduation. His parents are hesitant about the cultural gap between their two families, but to Zayyan’s surprise, his older brother Farhan is the only one who strongly objects to their engagement.

“It’s just that you’re moving so fast,” Farhan tells him over the phone, the day after their engagement is announced. “If she’s really the one for you, there’s no harm in waiting.”

“We’ve been together four years. Mom and Dad only knew each other two months before they married.”

“That was different. With Cecilia . . . I just feel like there’s something off about her. Take all that witchcraft stuff she’s into. That stuff gives me the creeps.”

Zayyan tries to keep his voice calm. “She’s my future wife. You don’t have to like her hobbies, but you can’t call her creepy.”

Farhan doesn’t bring up his concerns again, and soon their relationship smooths back to the easy banter it’s always had. Zayyan pushes his brother’s worries to the back of his mind. Farhan has always been overprotective; he spent years defending Zayyan from their parents’ unhappiness at home. Of course he would see a threat in Cecilia, too.

After the wedding, the newlyweds move into a small apartment in Boston where they can both start their careers, Cecilia at a small publishing house and Zayyan at a research lab. They have two children, both boys, one right after the other. Cecilia wants a third, but Ali and Asim keep her so busy already that Zayyan sees no need to sign up for more.

She takes to motherhood the same way she’s taken to every challenge in the past. She prepares special meals for the growing boys; she chauffeurs them to one extracurricular after another; she reads storybooks to them every night, all three of them falling asleep together until Zayyan comes to wake her.

Each time he looks at her, he feels so lucky he could burst.

• • • •

There are moments. A night when he opens the bathroom door, unaware that she’s inside, and sees her reflection in the mirror, makeup smudged into the creases around her eyes. A week when he goes on a business trip and comes home to a woman older and crabbier than the girl he fell in love with.

Still, over the course of their marriage, his brain becomes adept at lying to itself, patching over these inconsistencies. Whenever Cecilia isn’t around, his mental version of her solidifies further, congealing into the romantic ideal of a woman. His love for this perfect woman never wavers, from their perfect meeting to their perfect wedding to each perfect anniversary that follows. He could have lived his whole life this way, tracing a constellation from one storybook moment to another, if not for the summer when his brother Farhan comes to visit.

Farhan arrives unexpectedly one afternoon with a suitcase in each hand. The only explanation he gives, with a stoic kind of misery, is that his wife Noor has filed for separation.

Zayyan has always been used to Farhan being the strong one, the capable one, the one who sang silly songs to cheer him up whenever their parents were fighting in the other room. He doesn’t know how to switch roles.

“Do you want something to eat?” he asks tentatively.

Farhan nods. “That’d be great. I’m half-starved.”

Zayyan checks the fridge. The only thing ready-made is half a pot of the ash reshteh Cecilia made last night, his favorite noodle soup. He microwaves a bowl for each of them.

Farhan downs most of his in a few slurps. “This is delicious. What’s your secret ingredient?”

“Turmeric, probably.”

“That’s not a secret ingredient, man, that’s part of every ash reshteh recipe.”

“You’ll have to ask Cecilia, then. Want seconds?”

Farhan grins. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Cecilia comes home, humming to herself, both of the boys in tow. Ali and Asim run upstairs, loud and boisterous as always. She smiles politely when she sees the two men sitting together at the dining table, but her smile darkens when she sees their empty bowls.

Zayyan clears his throat. “Farhan needs to stay with us for a while. I’m sorry it’s so last minute.”

“Of course. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”

Zayyan watches the way Farhan’s gaze follows Cecilia across the room. He’d expected to see distrust there, he’d been resigned to it even, but instead what he sees is something more like open desire.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” Farhan says, a little too quickly. “You’re a lucky guy, that’s all. It’s rare for a woman to look even better at forty than she did on her wedding day.”

The hunger in his brother’s eyes makes Zayyan uneasy. “Hey. Back off.”

He has never seen Farhan ogle a woman this way, like he can’t help himself. Perhaps he’s been jealous of Cecilia this whole time; perhaps that’s why he objected to their engagement.

But something about that theory feels wrong. For the first time, Zayyan feels a seed of doubt take hold in the back of his mind.

Over the next few days this seed grows roots and begins to sprout. Zayyan stops eating the meals that Cecilia serves him, spitting each bite back into his napkin when she looks away. He sneaks down to the halal corner store once or twice a day to buy pre-made sandwiches and packets of jerky that he devours on the walk home.

When Cecilia discovers one of the receipts in his pocket, she seems to find it funny. “Thirty dollars’ worth of snacks in two days? You’d think I haven’t been feeding you properly.”

He chuckles nervously. “Of all the marital problems we might someday have, my love, that one’s last on the list.”

She lets out a braying laugh.

Now, for the first time, he sees her clearly. All his memories of their storybook relationship fall apart upon closer examination, a silver thread unspooling.

That night, when Cecilia takes the boys to soccer practice, Zayyan searches through her belongings. Her nightstand, her wardrobe, her purse.

At last he tries the bookshelves in their small home library. It feels like an intrusion, his being here, even more so than looking through her things. This has always been Cecilia’s space, not his.

He finds nothing unusual. After so many years working in publishing, most of her books are mainstream and respectable, novels and biographies and little about magic or witchcraft.

It takes him a while to find them. All the books she read in college are hidden in the back, behind the books she reads for work. He thumbs through them. There are pages she’s marked up and highlighted, in one book after another, a pattern impossible to refute. “Ancient Persian Love Potion Recipes.” “Concoctions to Bewitch and Beguile.” “How to Make a Man Love You.”

• • • •

The story of his perfect marriage shatters like a bottle smashed against concrete.

When she comes home that night, he can’t bring himself to look her in the eyes. Looking at her, trying to love her, hurts like trying to pick up broken glass with bare fingers.

He doesn’t know what’s real and what’s false anymore. He needs time away to think, to plan.

He leaves the next morning, while she’s asleep, and calls her from the airport so he won’t have to see her face.

“I’m on my way to New York for a couple of days,” he says. “Sorry for the late notice.”

The static on the line blurs her voice. “New York?”

“Farhan wants to go apartment-hunting. He needs my help.”

“I wish you’d told me earlier,” she says, her voice unreadable. “I would have cooked you something for the trip.”

The thought gives him chills. “We’re about to board,” he lies. “I’ll call you when I land.”

• • • •

In New York, Zayyan fills his hours following Farhan to single-bedroom apartments. They visit Brooklyn brownstones and Manhattan high-rises, spaces filled with fake fruit and used furniture. One night in New York turns into two, then three.

Away from Cecilia, his thoughts become legible. He pins down their flapping corners, forces them to hold still so he can examine them properly.

Cecilia isn’t real. Not his version of her, anyway. The thought makes no sense to him, and yet he knows it to be true.

This isn’t what he’d wanted. This isn’t what he’d thought his marriage would be.

He wants to ask Farhan for advice, but he knows his brother will never forgive Cecilia once he knows what she’s done, and Zayyan isn’t ready, not yet, for so permanent a fallout. Farhan doesn’t bring up Noor either.

The last open house they attend is full of couples who comment incessantly to their partners, and the two brothers stand out in their silence. The real estate agent, a chirpy woman wearing lipstick too pale for her skin, ushers them from one room to the next with a rush of effervescent chatter.

The place is exactly what Farhan has been looking for. The stainless-steel kitchen, the red-brick walls, the bay windows.

In the bedroom, one of the women whispers to her husband, “This place is a steal.”

“I heard someone died in here a few years ago,” another woman says. “That’s why the property value went down.”

The real estate agent appears behind her to interject quickly, nervously. “There was an unfortunate incident, yes. But it won’t affect your experience here. The house is in perfect condition.”

A few of the couples murmur in discontent. The first woman takes her husband by the elbow and walks him out.

Zayyan watches as Farhan looks up the incident on his phone.

“I kind of wish I didn’t know about this,” Farhan says after a moment. “This place was really growing on me.”

“At least you can make an informed decision now.”

Farhan shrugs, puts his phone back in his pocket. “Informed about what? Not knowing wouldn’t have hurt me.”

Zayyan pauses. “Then forget you heard it. Focus on the stuff that matters. Could you see yourself being happy here?”

“Yeah. I think so.” Farhan furrows his brow. “I didn’t realize it until now, but I think I’ve been unhappy for a long time.”

They’re both silent for a while.

“Maybe it’s for the best that Noor left me,” Farhan says. “We both deserved more.”

Zayyan stares out at the Manhattan skyline. He has not been unhappy, not the way Farhan has been. But maybe he deserves more, too. He would be well within his rights to leave Cecilia and start over with someone new, someone with whom the magic would be real. Someone simultaneously perfect and true.

• • • •

When Zayyan comes home—for he does, eventually, come home—Cecilia has ash reshteh waiting on the table. She’s turned out the lights and lit the candles, the expensive ones they usually save for birthdays and guests.

Now, of course, he sees her as she really is. She is plain, dull, uninteresting.

He sits down at the dinner table but doesn’t touch his food. They speak of his trip, the kids, her week at work. The conversation begins to crumple in on itself.

In a transparent attempt to save it, Cecilia shows him pictures of their friend’s newborn daughter, a red-cheeked creature with enormous eyes and a pink bow tied across her forehead.

“I know what you’re doing,” he says, after a few of these.

She raises her eyebrows. “Ambushing you with cute baby photos so you’ll agree to give the boys a little sister? Okay, you got me, guilty as charged.”

“The love potions.”

She grows very still.

For a moment, he imagines every possible response she might give. She will deny it, laugh at his accusation, tell him he needs to see a therapist. Or she will grow cold and calculating, ask him how he figured it out, negotiate a path forward with him. Or she will fall to her knees and beg him to forgive her, promise never to bewitch him again.

None of these things happen. Cecilia only nods, as though she’s expected this moment for a long time.

“Why did you keep the recipe books?” he asks. “You must have memorized them by now.”

“I think a part of me wanted you to find them.”

He feels bewildered. “You could have just told me, then.”

“I couldn’t have. I’m not that brave.” More softly, she says, “I loved you from the first time we had lunch together. This was the only way you would love me back.”

“It wasn’t the only way. We could have dated like normal people.”

“Look at me,” she says, with a faint tremor in her voice. “Would you ever have said yes?”

Zayyan doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. They both know.

And yet it’s true, too, that the texture of his love has changed over the twenty years they’ve shared together. Love at forty isn’t as simple as it was in college, can’t be pinned down to a single chain of cause and effect. There is no way now to disentangle the illusion from the real. He loves her now, not just because of the way she once entranced him, but because of something deeper: the generous way she spends her time, the gentle way she raises their sons.

He remembers years ago, when Cecilia was nearing the end of her labor with Asim after nearly two days of pushing and screaming and trying to breathe, while Zayyan stood helpless by her side. In a moment of lucidity, she made him promise to take care of Ali if she didn’t make it. There was the same tremor in her voice then.

Slowly, he lifts a spoonful of soup to his mouth and swallows it clean.

AS: That sounds so fun! We went to see The Batman in theaters. Every time I go out I have a mix of feelings, including being happy to be out and doing stuff, but also including a touch of nervousness and a dash of guilt. I’ve been to two major conventions recently (World Fantasy in Montreal and Worldcon in Washington D.C.) and I’m so excited for things to be more fun, less stressful, less worrisome. I’m definitely a fan of writers and works which straddle or defy genre definitions! Genre writers often understand the ongoing conventions and conversations, which can be great; but sometimes folks who started in “mainstream” or “literary” and are just starting to play in genre bring fresh, unique perspectives. As readers, stepping outside genre (at least, in my opinion) can be wonderful. Great writing is great writing, whether or not it has unicorns or aliens.

CY: “Going back to the well” is a theme that comes up frequently in my life, both creatively and in a more mundane getting-through-the-day way. These have been trying times for everyone, and we’ve all had to make sacrifices we never anticipated, and give more of ourselves in ways that were unfamiliar and painful. We found ourselves drained in a very real sense: drained of energy, of inspiration, of resources, and sometimes of hope. We are going to have to find ways to fill up again. That will look different for everyone. For me I think it looks like taking a walk with a friend, reading a short story collection by an author I hadn’t encountered before, and learning something new.

AS: So true. I love going out for a nice meal; I think I get a similar thing from it sometimes. Or even cooking, if I’m doing it for someone I care about, putting that love into it. Reading can definitely be cathartic, or healing. Even when it’s just plain entertaining, sometimes that distraction is exactly what’s needed. I know many writers find that sense of going back to the well in putting together a short story or poem. There are always new and interesting things in the work we publish, and we publish many new writers who have fresh perspectives. I am confident that readers can find energy, renewal, or even just the distraction they need in our pages!

• • • •

In this issue’s short fiction, Hannah Yang takes a different kind of look at the magic of love in “How To Make A Man Love You,” and in Kristina Ten’s “Beginnings” we get a new twist on “once upon a time;” in flash fiction, Martins Deep plays with format, imagery, and emotion with “Isio,” and  fantasy meets reality in “Practical Childcare Considerations for Knights Errant” by Rachel Locascio; for poetry, we have “Great Sage, Protector of Horses” by May Chong and “Alice Is Much Farther Than She Appears” by Laura Ruby. Plus essay “Stereotypes, Godhood, and The Wicked + The Divine” by Priya Chand. Enjoy!

in this ritual /of stargazing/ i whisper to dots of light /hoping they ripen /into an answered prayer /just one, a windfall /where i can be the first to catch it /make a solitaire/ for my mother’s body/ asleep without a bedspace /in her casket /the many things to outgrow isn’t wonder, isn’t /this solitude of gazing/ like a head lifted before the water level rises/ to the nostrils/ of the drowning/ i want to imagine my father in a garden of stars/ but his reality on earth was that he sold coals/ to make a living /i remember /how he stained everything /blackened the rose petals/ on the tongue of his guardian/ angel/ everyone kept him out of their cotton fields /an uncle said it must be because he was born during an eclipse/ of the sun

“what are you doing/ here all by yourself?” it’s the voice/ of my little sister /kevwe, a girl/ formed delicately in the mold of a thrush/ “i want to teach you/ a song,” she says. and as she sings, i pray /inwardly against the tides rising /in my throat/ i do not want to drown /in waters not stirred by joy/ at least, not tonight/ when the stars are /close, and my noose/ has become a lasso /it’s the third time her ghost would come/ find me here, her smock scented /with petrichor/ the closest she came /one evening/ it was with my twin/ brother who lived only eight days/ & went cold /on mother’s lap/ today, her eyes reflects a falling/ star/ i would leave here/ with the ghost of her song/ which is its echo/ my being pulsing to its every chord, its every /note

i must confess, i am done/ traveling mapless/ in my head, running into bodies /of mist that eat violins/ to cough out owls /in family trees/ my eyelids are heavy/ with what my fingers cannot offload /some days, the only wind that carries a lost /ship to shore is the sigh/ after a faithless prayer /i whisper wishes between intervals of heartbeats/ i’ll sharpen my sickle/ for a harvest/ of dreams

as the starless night/ sky in my chest reaches for the one /over my rooftop, i fall /asleep. i find myself awake/ on the bed of an old man/ knitting with wisps of smoke/ from the necklaced body/ of a boy. i ask him/ what his craft is about, and he says, “i weave garments/ of shame/ for god and country,” placing the weight of one/ in my hands

it is morning/ i wake up with a mouthful of hymns/ for dead dreams /& a rooster /the fallen star from last night’s sky/ dissolved into my eyes /and warmly, begin to snake/ down my face /wiping it with the green of my country’s flag /but it stains my eyes red/ with a scream, dark/ with the dye that colours a gag/ over the victim’s mouth