Chapter 1: The Boy with the Broken Wing

Seventeen years later.

Akshar Junior stretched his arms up into the hot May air, then lay back on the roof of the Maruti Suzuki, a gentle breeze cooling his smooth, seventeen-year-old skin. The metal beneath him had warmed up under Pune's fierce afternoon sun — the sun that turned car roofs into tawas, the flat griddle pans that every Indian kitchen owned and that could, in May, be replicated by any vehicle left in direct sunlight for more than: twenty minutes.

As he closed his eyes, a droplet of sweat ran down the side of his head into his silk, dark hair. The hair that was — like everything about Akshar Junior — inherited from his grandfather. The grandfather who died just two days before his grandson was born. The grandfather whose name he carried like a: title and a: weight.

AJ was an undeniably good-looking pari. His perfectly positioned features and glimmering green eyes — the green that was rare among pariyan and that marked him as: Akshar's bloodline — were the kind of features that made human girls look twice at empty spaces, sensing: something beautiful they couldn't see. Pariyan were invisible to humans. Always had been. The invisibility was: the point. You couldn't protect someone who knew you were: protecting them. Protection required: anonymity. The moment the guarded knew about the guard, the guarded became: dependent. And dependence was: the opposite of what the pariyan wanted for humans.

He was just about to doze off while waiting for the human who owned the car to pay at the petrol pump when a loud crash sent him bolt upright and flying into the air. The car was parked at an HP petrol station on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway — the kind of station that sold Frooti and Parle-G biscuits and had a Café Coffee Day attached to it that smelled permanently of: overpriced mediocrity.

A second crash followed the first, and the human came running through the station's glass doors holding magazines, packets of Kurkure, and a selection of Thums Up cans in her arms — the specific armload of a woman who had decided that shoplifting was: a valid life choice.

Oh no, AJ thought. I might have picked the wrong human to hitch a ride with today.

Next, a chowkidar — wearing a khaki uniform and waving his lathi — burst through the doors running and shouting after her. "Arre! Ruko! Police bulata hoon!" The security guard's Hindi carrying the specific authority of a man whose authority was: regularly ignored.

AJ flew back down and held tightly onto the car's antenna as the woman jumped into the driver's seat, threw the stolen items in the back, turned the key in the ignition, and sped off before the chowkidar came close. The tyres screeched on the asphalt — the particular screech of cheap rubber on hot road, the sound that Bollywood action films used to signal: escape.

They were travelling fast down the Expressway now — 140 kilometres per hour, weaving between trucks that carried sugarcane and oil tankers that carried: future explosions — and AJ's arms were feeling weak holding onto the antenna at this speed. He needed to get off and hitch a ride with someone else, but he was not strong enough to fly anywhere on his own right now. He needed to get back up to Devlok to recharge his wings before he could do that.

His broken wing. The wing that had been damaged since birth — the deformity that made him: different from every other pari in Devlok. Different in the way that mattered most: vulnerability. A pari with a broken wing was not immortal. A pari with a broken wing could: die.

The car made a sudden stop — a cow on the road, the specific Indian hazard that no amount of highway engineering could: eliminate — and before AJ could get a better grip, the vehicle had spun so fast that it flung him from the roof and into the air.

"Arre baap re!" he called as he whizzed up into the empty space above the Expressway.

He looked at the car beneath him which was now tumbling down the side of the grassy embankment, flipping and crashing into the red earth. He felt a strong jerk on his neck, and suddenly he could only see sky. A bulbul had him in its beak — the red-vented bulbul, the bird that was as common in India as: opinions, and that had just saved his life.

AJ relaxed into the strength of the bird's beak. They flew to a nearby electricity pylon — the concrete kind that dotted the Expressway like: sentinels — and found their balance on top of the metal cross-arm. Pariyan and bulbuls were roughly the same size when they stood up straight. AJ stared at the Expressway below, while trucks and cars zoomed past in a blur of colour and diesel smoke.

"What were you doing out there?" asked the bulbul, smoothing out his ruffled breast feathers. The bird's voice carried the particular irritation of someone who had just performed an unplanned: rescue.

"I thought I was just going for a casual ride," AJ replied, avoiding eye contact while shuffling his feet on the warm metal. "I don't have my own humans assigned to me, so I pick different ones to look out for and to hitch a ride with. I think I made a mistake this time."

The bulbul didn't respond but looked at AJ, then tilted his head. "Akshar Junior?" he asked.

AJ turned to look at him.

"You're Akshar's grandson, aren't you?" the bulbul asked.

AJ's grandfather was the first pari to have been so loved and respected that he was known beyond the realm of the pariyan and was celebrated among the birds of the sky, too. His fame extended to his grandson — the fame that was: both gift and: cage.

"You almost died," the bulbul continued. "And, if you are Akshar's grandson, I thought you weren't supposed to be alone on Earth?"

AJ ignored the comment, frustrated at its truth. The truth that his mother had made into: a rule. The rule that AJ broke: regularly.

"I need to get back up to Devlok as quickly as possible," said AJ. "If you can get me two miles up, my right wing will be strong enough to do the rest. Also, please call me AJ."

"Okay, AJ," said the bulbul.

The bulbul flew up as far as he could manage with AJ in his beak, which, happily, was a little more than the two miles AJ required. The beginning of the pari atmosphere was sixty-two miles above Earth, but the effort it took to fly lessened the further you were from Earth's surface, and AJ reckoned that two miles would be enough this time.

"Thank you," said AJ when the bulbul let go. "Please don't tell anyone about this."

"Don't worry, I won't. And Akshar's grandson?" the bulbul smiled. "They wouldn't believe me anyway."

The bulbul flew back down and AJ pushed — in pain — to complete the last stretch of the journey, flying much slower than the typical pari speed, the strain on his body: immense. The broken wing protested every wingbeat — not the sharp pain of injury but the deep, grinding pain of: inadequacy. The wing that couldn't do what wings were: designed to do. The wing that made him: mortal in a realm of: immortals.

He crashed through Devlok's front gate into the grand open courtyard, collapsed onto the terracotta tiles by the entrance, and caught his breath. He could hear delicate chatter in the corridors around him, but, thankfully, the courtyard was momentarily empty. He rearranged the sleeves of his black kurta, ran his hands through his dark hair, then wiped the sweat from his face. He leant forward and looked at his reflection in the silver water vessel beside him — the kind of vessel that every pari household kept by the entrance, the water inside perpetually: cool.

He looked nearly normal.

AJ rested his head against the carved wooden wall behind him, closed his eyes, and thought about how close he had just come to death. Again. The again that was: accumulating. Each time a little closer. Each time the broken wing a little: weaker.

He couldn't help it. He had to keep going down to Earth. The desire was deep in the cells of his blood — the blood that carried three centuries of his grandfather's devotion to humans, the devotion that was: genetic. All pariyan were born to help humans, but AJ's damaged wing made it dangerous for him to travel between Devlok and Earth. The journey that other pariyan made effortlessly — the sixty-two-mile flight through the atmosphere — was for AJ: an ordeal. Every time.

His broken wing also meant he was not assigned specific humans the way other pariyan were. He weighed the pros and cons of this: constantly. One pro was freedom — the freedom to be obsessed with all humans, to see the beauty and joy in every single one of them. Even the ones who robbed a petrol pump, got chased by a chowkidar, then crashed down an embankment on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. On the other hand, pariyan talked endlessly about their assigned humans, and AJ was excluded from these discussions. As pariyan grew older, they were given more humans — some caring for as many as seven hundred. AJ cared for: zero. Officially.

Unofficially, there were two humans to whom AJ had particularly warmed, and it had been them he had wanted to see today before his disastrous ride pulled him off track. The two humans were called Harini and Jai.

They shared the same Class XII Maths class at Mahadevi Verma School in Pune, but they shared little else. Harini was an introvert. Jai was an extrovert. Harini was a loner. Jai was popular — the kind of popular that came from being: funny and fearless, the combination that Indian teenagers valued above: everything. The only other thing they had in common besides Class XII Maths was that AJ had just nearly died trying to see them: both.

He had to be more careful.

If his mother found out, she would be disappointed. Maya rarely placed rules on AJ, but he had known — for as long as he could remember — that there were restrictions on him that the other pariyan did not have. The restrictions that came from: love. The love of a mother who had watched her father die from a damaged wing and who would: not watch her son die the same way.