By Arya Vishin

That night, as the moon glittered across Dal Lake, the boy slipped out of his house and down to the lakefront. The crows called out to him in warning as he locked the back gate; his Nan used to say they did so when there was a visitor coming.

Gravel crunched softly under his feet. Across the water, the mountains swallowed the sky whole. When he was in primary school, he would watch the sunrise over the lake with the neighbors’ son, and they’d count the colors reflected in the water, deep orange and yellow and pink—nearly two decades on, it was still easy to picture, even in the dark.

Home, the willows and poplars on the bank whistled, go home. “I’m meeting someone,” the boy told them. “Someone I haven’t seen in years.” The trees fell into hushed whispers, whipping their branches at each other as they gossiped. Insolent, they murmured, how insolent.

As he set his foot down on the shore, a silvery snowtrout rose from the water, poking just its slick head out to examine the boy. It looked delighted to see him. I told you I’d be here, it said to him. Come, come. I want to show you something.

The boy hesitantly took one step into the lake, then another. He paused. The waves jumped up to nip at the ends of his pants like street dogs. On his third step, the sediment crumbled under his weight, and he slipped into the water, the lakebed disappearing beneath his feet.

Beneath the surface, the lake was much deeper than it seemed whenever he went fishing with Mamaji. The snowtrout led him forward and deeper into the water until an array of glowing lights crowded the boy’s vision. A vast, vibrant palace shaped like a lotus flower rested at the bottom of the lake, lit up in all shades of pink: magenta to rose to the lightest pink-white, pulsing hot and bright.

Come, the fish said, come. The boy followed the snowtrout through the entryway and the corridors, their walls heavy with thick garlands of jasmine draped over engravings of dancing eel-people. He ran his hands along the folds of the limestone, his fingertips stumbling over the tiny, colourful gemstones carefully embedded in the eel-people’s serpentine eyes.

In the center room, a lone snake waited, its scales a dark peacock-blue under the shifting pink lights. When the boy and the fish entered, it slowly pivoted until it stood upright, staring right at them.

Kill him, the snow trout told the boy. The snake did not say anything.

“I just wanted to see you again,” the boy said. The fish’s eyes flicked back and forth.

Then kill him, it said. You’re strong enough. Kill him and this whole place can be ours forever.

“Forever?” said the boy. The snake turned away. “I can’t. I would miss home too much.”

In here, the fish said, you can still see all the colours of the sunrise. And they’re closer. You can reach out and touch them. You can reach out and touch anything you want.

It wouldn’t be the same, though. The lake didn’t look the same from under the surface. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” he said. The snow trout opened his mouth, full of human teeth, and laughed.

*   *   *

Arya Vishin is a mixed Kashmiri-American & Jewish writer.