The Cripple and His Talismans Read Online Free Page B

it, scratches your eyes out.
    “I have lost my family in the fire that burnt this mill,” she says.
    “I don’t have any money,” I tell her. In the distance I hear transport trucks. The strain on their engines tells me they are moving uphill.
    “What will I do with money?” she says. “I’m already dead.”
    I do not ask her why she thinks she is dead. Maybe she means the loss of her loved ones has killed her soul.
    “I sell rainbows,” she says. “It’s my job.”
    “Where do you get them?” I do not know what else to ask.
    “I make them myself. When I have sold enough, I shall be free to return to my husband and son. Until then, I must live in these ruins.”
    “How much for one?” I ask. I get up from the stone and slap the dust off my legs.
    “You don’t understand,” she says. “I must convince you that the archway is a rainbow. That will be considered a sale.”
    “But it is an archway,” I protest.
    “Exactly. That’s what makes my job difficult.”
    When I had both my arms, the people I met were ordinary. They were perfectly formed, but ordinary. Ever since my loss, I have run into beasts who hold the meaning of the earth between their teeth.
    “Please,” she says. “I want to be with my family again.”
    I take a hard look at the archway. It is damp. “I see the rainbow,” I tell her.
    She shakes her head and looks to the ground. “No sale is that easy. Walk with me to where the boats sail.”
    I have walked this way many times before, holding a bottle, running my hands through my hair, catching the wind in my fist and sending it back to the sea. In the dark, I have used these walls to press against the insides of a woman’s thighs. I have heard each wave come in to the shore and call their names in alphabetical order: Aarti, Damini, Gauri, Hema, Layla, Payal, Roxanne, Reshma, Tarana, Zeenat. The tips of my fingers knew their hips better than the silk that once covered them.
    From a distance, the small boats look as if they can be toppled over with a finger. Perhaps that is the meaning of my gift. I will stand on the shore and overturn boats with the leper’s finger, send fishermen to the bottom of the sea.
    “Look down,” she says. “What do you see?”
    There is sand and gravel. Large pieces of stone are visible, too. I assume they are the remnants of the mill. There are also bits of rusted broken glass.
    “Do you see the sand?” she asks.
    “Yes.”
    “What colour is it?”
    “Black.”
    “No, it’s white.”
    I simply look at the boats; I know an explanation is not far away.
    “The sand is always white. Only our eyes darken it. Look at it again.”
    “It’s still white,” I affirm.
    “Correct.”
    “What?”
    “It’s still white,” she smiles.
    “I did not say that,” I tell her.
    “Your eyes have lightened the soil.”
    I look at the sand and gravel again. It is whatever I want it to be. It can change in a blink.
    “I will light a thousand oil lamps for you,” she says. “I will send them out to sea. You will need them to light the road before you.”
    She walks back to the where the sand and gravel meet the mill walls. She is gone only a minute. She returns with a burning oil lamp cupped in her palms. It is a tiny earthen bowl filled with oil and a wick. The flame flickers gently in the breeze, almost dying out, then displaying the spark of a newborn. I must have heard her wrong. I thought she said she would light one thousand oil lamps.
    She walks past me toward the water. She bends and carefully places the oil lamp on the water’s surface as though she is parting with the ashes of a loved one. The oil lamp floats away and the flame gets stronger.
    “A prayer has been lit,” she says. “A special one for you.”
    In the past I have been told that I needed prayers, but no one bothered to say one for me. When I had two arms, I never joined them in prayer myself. It is said that the only form of light that travels upward from the earth is