CW: none.
Up on the hill, past the wrought iron gates, sat the house where twin sisters Sayeh and Roshan lived. As imposing as it looked, the house, like the gate, was kept in elegantly stellar condition. There were no loose shutters banging on windy nights, or curls of paint sliding down its three stories. The steeply shingled roof was pitch as a raven’s wing and gleamed just so, as did the darkly painted wood. No, it seemed that every need of the house was seen to by invisible fingers that never let it stray from perfection, and so was every need of the two girls. For they never left the house, at least not together.
They were a lovely sight; too lovely to behold, they were cautioned by their parents. Their hair fell in chestnut waves to their waists and their eyes were a light sea green that seemed to change in different light. Sometimes they were deepest emerald and sometimes they were palest jade and yet other times they were burnished olive. A different shade for every day and mood.
But for one sister could exist in the world, the other had to stay in the shadows. For the pair of eyes that opened on the day, a pair closed. The girls were shahmeran, and the world would not be kind to the snake blood that ran in their veins. So powerful was this force that it was split between the two girls but could not exist as a whole in the world. The girls would take turns sharing the beauty of the body they were given. If Roshan was to walk about the house, or venture briefly inside the boundary of the gates, Sayeh would reside within her reflection in the mirror. To switch they had to hold each other’s gaze in the mirror, the echo sister and the flesh sister, and split the skin in their palm so the blood would pool up, garnet and furious. The wound and the source. Then the other sister would take her turn.
They swore to each other that neither would inhabit their one body longer than three days and that no one would ever see them. Under their long skirts, their legs shined with the serpent’s scales: a reminder of what they carried within. In their hearts they carried their promise of loyalty to each other and no one else. When their parents were given to the moon and stars, and it truly was just the two of them left, they closed in to each other even closer. The house on the hill gave them their protection and the girls wanted for nothing behind the gates.
It was on the first day of Roshan’s turn that she was in the garden, picking herbs when she noticed a man standing motionless by the gate. She froze, unsure what to do. He had both his hands clasped around the slim bars so tightly that his knuckles had gone white, and he stared at her unblinking. She turned to go back towards the house when he spoke. Wait, he whispered. Who are you? Please don’t go. But Roshan hurried into the house and closed the door. When she looked out the window he was gone and when she combed out her hair, she didn’t mention him to Sayeh who looked back at her, calmly coiled in the mirror, her asp’s skin the same shade as Roshan’s hair.
But as she ran the rose oil she used to scent and smooth her locks through her fingers, her mind wandered. In long, even strokes she brushed her hair. Sayeh’s serpent tongue flicked out in rhythm with her sister’s languorous caresses, and she watched the strands darken and gleam as Roshan’s fingers worked the oil from root to end.
On the second day, Roshan went back out to dry the herbs she’d gathered in haste the day before. She lay a white cloth on the porch and gently pressed the bunches of lavender and sage and thyme. When she glanced up, the man was back. This time he was standing with his hands clasped behind his back, as if he knew not to push forward. He noticed that she had spotted him and extended his hands. They held a bouquet of deep, jewel-toned dahlias that he held out to her. She rose and walked to him. They’re no match for your beauty but please accept them, he said. You don’t need to be afraid of me, you don’t even need to open the gate if you don’t want but please accept these as a token. Roshan grasped the flowers through the slates in the gate. The almond-shaped petals on each flower were delicate, each bloom more perfect than the other. A slight breeze picked up the loose locks of her hair and spread them through the bars of the gate. The perfumed strands wrapped around the man, dizzying him. He breathed deep the scent of rose and musk.
In her room that night, Roshan sat clutching the bouquet of dahlias. She softly ran her fingers across the velvet petals, soft as a kiss before she crushed them in her fists. The deep burgundy of the flowers stained her fingers and palm, like a bride anointing herself on her kina night. And in the mirror, she would not meet her sister’s eyes, today the same questioning sage as hers.
The third day, Roshan was waiting for him when he showed up at the gate. He smiled brilliantly, delighted that she was there. His teeth were white and even, and his skin looked as soft as the petals she had caressed all night. He gave her a cloth tied at four corners from which rose the most enticing scents she had ever inhaled. She opened it to find fresh pastries, full to bursting with raspberry jam and butter and apricot preserves. She offered him one and he took her hand, tracing the stain of the petals before accepting the bread. They shared them, standing on opposite sides of the gate, pressed so close they could feel each hitch of breath and swallow. Will you meet me tomorrow, too, he asked? But she shook her head. He asked again, softly pleading.
The next day, when Sayeh rose in her mirror awaiting her sister for their switch, she looked out into an empty room. Roshan did not come. She waited all day and all night, her body stretched out, her ever-changing eyes alert. But her sister was gone.
The man and Roshan ran away and got married. On her wedding night and the nights to come, she begged her new husband to dim the lights. Her one condition for their life together was that he would not behold her full body, terrified that he would see the scales on her legs and know her secret. He agreed, so besotted was he with his beautiful new wife.
But hers was a power that could not be contained and as the months went on, the man grew sick and weak. The scales she hid so masterfully grew on his neck and arms, red and vicious, shining with fever, and sharp to the touch. Nothing they did and no one they consulted could explain it or cure him.
In throes of pain he moaned and lashed out, refusing even her touch, believing that he would hurt or infect her. Unable to bear the guilt and his pain anymore, Roshan went back to the house she had abandoned.
Back to the mirror she had trapped her sister in. She walked into their room and stared deeply into the mirror, which had remained pristine and dust-free despite the time that had passed. She willed the snake within to look back at her.
Sayeh lifted her head up from her coils and listened as her sister begged her for help, for a cure, for a way to save her husband. In return she promised she would go back to their original plan. Three days for her sister, three days for her. She would explain her absences to her husband. It’s in our blood, came the reply.
Roshan traveled back to her husband. The sickness had spread across his whole body at this point. She could see nothing of the soft skin she had loved to caress as much as the dahlias he had once lovingly presented her. She cut open her palm, and as the blood flowed down her wrist, she fed it to him, forcing it down the slit of his mouth.
He healed fast. In a day the scales had receded. In two days he was able to stand and move almost like a healthy man again. On the third day, it seemed like nothing had ever ailed him. And on this day, she told him she had to go, that she had a promise to fulfil. He asked her where, he begged her to tell him, pleaded that he should come too. But she was steadfast and promised she would be back in three days.
She approached the mirror once more where her snake sister lay waiting for her. They locked eyes as Roshan drew out her knife to pierce her hand. As Sayeh emerged, the man stepped out from behind the door where he had hidden to watch.
He saw his wife’s reflection in the mirror as a snake.
He saw what she was.
He killed her.
As the body swayed and collapsed, the blood also ran. The shahmeran emerged from the mirror. She had the body of the sisters on one end, flowing gracefully and melding into the body of a snake on the other. The two heads of the shahmeran regarded the man and the snake end, the asp, reared and bit him twice in the neck. The poison worked fast.
Up on the hill, past the wrought iron gates, sits the house where the shahmeran lives. She has no reflection.
