AUTHOR’S NOTE
OFTEN THE MORAL of a story is culled out at the end, but in the case of Library of Fates, I felt the need to state it up front: when we act with only our selfish interests in mind, disregarding the rights and experiences of others, everybody loses. But when we act in the service of the greater good, even if it costs us something—even if it costs us a lot—we are deeply and profoundly transformed by love, empathy, and wisdom. And so we transform the world.
I know that many on our little planet are feeling a great deal of despair and terror today; I know this because I feel it too, this unsettled dread that descended upon me after the jolt of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In the weeks that followed, I couldn’t write. I was in a state of deep mourning, worried for the safety and well-being of friends and family, the state of the environment, of civil rights, of civil discourse. I had recently completed a manuscript about a louche, patriarchal dictator’s slimy advancements on an idyllic kingdom. Now life appeared to be imitating art.
But I also knew that it was not the first time the forces of hatred and ignorance had somehow usurped power from those who seek goodness and equality. It was not the first time we had experienced grave disappointment in the systems and institutions we trust, or in humanity itself. Sadly, we know that hatred has always existed, even before this recent election.
But it stings every time, doesn’t it? It shocks us to the core, leaving us feeling exposed and raw. I am a woman, an immigrant, brown, a writer. I grew up in a world that made no effort to hide its disdain for me. I have spent a lifetime shielding myself and those I love from the contempt cast against anyone in this society who is considered Other.
That’s why I wrote this book, and the one before it, and why I’ll continue to write the ones that come after. Because I know that many times in our history, people like you and me have had to confront a culture of malevolence and antipathy and uproot it like a weed. And then we have to replace it with a new culture. A far better one. One in which we all matter, regardless of our race, gender, religion, or who we love. One in which our stories matter.
And we will. Because we’re not broken. And we won’t be silenced. It is up to us to build webs of goodness wherever we go, up to us to uproot injustices and expose them to the light. So be brave, keep fighting, and I will fight alongside you.
Aditi Khorana
Parable of the Land of Trees
LONG AGO, there was a land entirely occupied by some of the most beautiful and oldest trees in the world. These trees had inhabited the Earth longer than humans, longer than the vetalas—the immortals who roamed the planet alongside humans till they all but disappeared.
They were wise trees and had existed on the Earth for such a great span of time, they had learned how to speak. They offered their visitors fruit and shade. They told captivating stories and made people laugh. They were servants to the land and to those around them.
Those who had the good fortune to stumble upon the Land of Trees said that the experience stayed with them forever. They returned to their homes and spoke of this ethereal world, and so, word began to spread about the Land of Trees. Waves of new explorers trickled in, and soon visitors came in droves, marching into the land from all corners of the Earth.
But these new visitors wanted more from the trees. They sought to own the trees and the land that they lived on. They spoke of opening up taverns and lodges and inns so people could stay when they came to visit. They wanted to build roads, bridges, an infrastructure that would allow individuals to come by the thousands so that they could experience the Land of Trees. But there was one problem with this . . .
They needed the wood from the trees to build all of these things. And so they began to chop down the trees in order to build inns and taverns and roads and bridges. One by one, the trees came down, axes cutting into their trunks. Saws slicing away at their roots and branches.
And soon, the Land of Trees was filled with inns and taverns and roads and bridges. Some trees survived, but they were so devastated by the loss of their family and friends that they stopped speaking, stopped laughing, stopped sharing their voices. Their despondency, their mistrust became silence, and the forest was no longer filled with laughter, with wisdom, with stories.
For some time, people continued to visit, but instead of the Land of Trees, what they saw now was a land that had devolved into just another place on a map.
After some time, people stopped coming, and now the Land of Trees is just like any other place. A place whose magic has been erased.
But perhaps one day, you’ll find yourself walking through a forest, and maybe if you listen closely enough, and maybe if you ask from the very bottom of your heart, one of the trees might hear the longing in your soul—the longing for connection, the longing for something deeper that resides so far below the surface of the world in which we choose to live out our day-to-day. And you’ll hear it, the voice of one of those trees, calling back to you, telling you that the world is alive with mysteries, and that in order to understand them, one must first learn to be still, to listen, and the world will unveil itself to you, as though it was waiting to do so all along.
Prologue
I STILL REMEMBER the first time my father told me the Parable of the Land of Trees. It was night, and outside my window, a soft quilt of mysterious darkness had settled over Chanakya Lake. But I felt safe under the gauze of the white silken mosquito net that hung over me, and my father’s presence reassured me. He sat at the edge of my bed and pointed out past the lake, past the mountains, to a horizon shrouded in mist. What he was really pointing to was a time that existed before us, to a world neither of us could even be sure had ever really prevailed.
“Have I ever told you the Parable of the Land of Trees?” he asked me, his dark eyes fixed on that elusive brim between earth and sky, before they turned to look back at me, a wistful smile twitching on the edges of his lips.
I shook my head. Outside my window, lanterns lit up the sterns of houseboats on the lake, their twins reflecting in the water, suggesting another world underneath that channel, a mirror to the one we inhabited now. I wondered about the people who slept on those boats, who lived in that sphere I had still never seen. I thought about all the places I had never visited, that I had heard about only in the stories people told me.
And then in the gauzy lamplight, over the quiet, contented chirping of insects calling out to one another in the night, my father told me the tale. I didn’t understand then how stories have a way of staying with us long after people are gone. That night, I simply held on to his words: somber and thoughtful. I listened to his voice: calm, soft, measured, wise. It was how I would always remember it, taking for granted that it would always be there. I didn’t know then what I know now: that everything—my father, this moment, every experience that molds and shapes us—is ephemeral, evaporating into the air before we have a chance to grasp on to it, before we can truly even understand what it means.