This Is My

It’s cold in the studio, or so I gather from the goosebumps on Lee Mack’s forearm. As far as British comedians go, he’s one of the few whose work I’m familiar with. We’d met briefly backstage before taking our seats on the stage; I’d told him how big a fan I was of his; and how excited I am to be on his team tonight. 

‘Listen,’ he says now, turning to me as the lights go down and a hush descends on the audience. ‘It’s about to be really bright in here, so say goodbye to your corneas.’

I half-chuckle, fidgeting. On the other side of the studio stage, I can hear the other team captain, David Mitchell, whispering to his teammates, two comedians I know by virtue of having met them at various press events around town. I think one of them was on the game show Taskmaster recently, building a tower out of spaghetti or composing a poem only using the names of cheeses.  

A voice calls from the darkness: ‘Lights up in three, two . . .’

Immediately the studio is awash in spotlights glaring blue, purple, yellow—the words “Would I Lie To You?” flash on the screens behind us, and the theme music blares, all drums and electric guitar. I push my nails into my palm, fighting the urge to scream. Faces in the audience flicker in and out of focus; for a second I wonder if there are any Burmese people here, but then stop myself. It’s better if they’re not.  

To my right is our host, Rob Bryden, in a charcoal suit. 

‘Hello, and welcome to Would I Lie To You, a show where fact flirts with fiction. On Lee Mack’s team tonight—’

He introduces an up-and-coming comedian called Jeremiah Hoax, a young British man with a budding moustache, who beams and waves at the audience. Then he introduces me as the actress from Myanmar—pronouncing it My-An-mar—who ‘made a splash on our screens as MiMi in Hopwood Hall.’ He doesn’t realize he’s made a pun with splash, so I smile to myself, and nod when the camera pans to me. 

When the producer on Hopwood Hall asked if I wanted to be on Would I Lie to You?, the U.K.’s premier comedy panel show and glorified parlour game, I initially said no. It wasn’t for lack of want or appreciation for the show: WILTY has always struck me as ridiculous fun—because on some level there is no way you can tell which lies are actually true, because the person telling them may not ever be telling the truth. But after none of the rest of my castmates could do it, the producers circled back to me, and I agreed. When the writers asked for a few of my truths that they might put on a card, I left them vague enough so there’s room to maneuver either way. And by now I—like my truths—have gotten astonishingly good at hiding in plain sight. 

Rob introduces each of the comedians on David Mitchell’s team, and then we’re off to the first round. The last comedian to be introduced, Tom, reads out a card, saying, ‘When I was a boy, I used to throw cabbages over to my neighbor’s lawn using a catapult I had built myself.’

Lee’s ready. He folds his arms.

‘Right then,’ he begins. ‘How old were you, Tom?’

Tom scrunches up his face. ‘I think—six or seven?’

I chime in. ‘And how did you make a catapult?’

‘Well, you see, my father had this shovel—’

Jeremiah breaks in. ‘A shovel?! You can’t make a catapult from a shovel!’

‘And how many catapults have you made, Jeremiah?’ cuts in David, to general laughter. 

We listen as Tom attempts to explain the various farming implements involved in fashioning a catapult at the tender age of six or seven, before moving onto why his parents grew cabbages, and why for the love of all that was good and holy he was hurling them onto his neighbor’s property.

‘Is that common?’ I ask Lee during a lull in the conversation. ‘Hurling cabbages over with catapults?’

‘What, you don’t have catapults in Myanmar?’ Lee quips. ‘Or cabbages?’

‘Well, we use coconuts,’ I say, and the audience laughs. 

‘What, for catapults?’ 

Rod jumps in. ‘Ignore him, Thandar. You haven’t been in the U.K. for very long, have you?’

‘I arrived about four years ago,’ I tell him. ‘Bit of a culture shock.’

I remember it well. I had just made it to Calais, after months of running, dipping into the waterways when I thought no one could see me, scouring the skies for any hint of a shadow, a scythe-like beak, wings the size of houses. He knew me in my human form, which was an utter disadvantage—but he had never seen me change in the sunlight, peeling off my shimmering scales, one by one, the blood blistering bright, then congealing. My mother had warned me when I was a young Naga that becoming human came at a cost, but—oh, I had wanted so much to see the human country.

He had nearly found me at Calais. Had left me a brown feather, too big to be anyone else’s. So I dove into the water, changed again, and swam until I saw the lighthouse. I waited for the sun to fall. And then I dredged myself up from the depths and heaved myself onto the docks at Folkestone. The fishermen there must have assumed I’d gone for a morning swim, so no one batted an eye when I wandered through the market the next day, looking for work. The florist took me in, a lovely old woman named Doris. I spent hours in the back of her little shop, immersing myself in the fragrance of the strongest-smelling flowers—her roses, jasmines, and lavenders. Anything to throw him off the scent. 

‘What would you say was the most shocking thing you found here?’ Rob is asking.

I consider this question. ‘Probably Scotch eggs.’

They are absurd. Why wrap eggs in meat? It feels unnecessary. I think about telling my mother back in the Andaman Sea about Scotch eggs. It hurts me to imagine her laughter, so unlike the harsh sounds pouring from the human audience now.

‘Do you have to eat Scotch eggs on Hopwood Hall?’ asks Rob.

‘I’m sorry,’ chimes in David. ‘How did we get from Tom’s cabbages to Thandar’s Scotch eggs?’

Lee shrugs. ‘What do we think, team?’

Jeremiah shakes his head. ‘It has to be a lie.’

‘Thandar?’

‘He would have been too young. Lie.’

Rob turns to the other team. ‘They’re saying lie. Tom Carson, truth or lie?’

Tom presses the button. It’s a lie.

‘Next.’ The light in front of my desk turns purple. ‘It’s Thandar.’

I flip over the card, half expecting the text to read: I’m secretly a sea serpent from the depths of the ocean and I’m here parading as a human being! 

Before I can read what it says on the card, Lee pipes up, ‘I hate Scotch eggs.’

The card reads: ‘I have climbed Mount Everest.’

David’s eyes go wide. He looks like one of those Burmese lacquer owls I often see at Thadingyut festivals. Once I stole a jade owl from an unassuming market vendor and brought it home for my brothers. I imagine it sitting in our living room with my family, wondering—I suppose, I hope—when I’m coming home.

Blinking rapidly, he repeats incredulously: ‘You’ve climbed Mount Everest?’

I shrug. ‘Yes.’

‘When was this?’

‘Five years ago?’

‘Was it—did you always want to climb Mount Everest?’

‘I wanted to know what it felt to be at the highest point of the earth,’ I say, which was true enough. ‘So I went to Kathmandu from Yangon, and—’

‘Can you get to Mount Everest from Kathmandu?’ asks Tom, his eyebrows scrunched up to form a miniature mountain on his forehead. 

‘Yeah, you can take a quick flight, or drive—’

‘I’m sorry,’ interrupts the other comedian, whose name escapes me. ‘You can drive to Mount Everest from Kathmandu?’

‘You’ve never been to Mount Everest, have you, Greg?’ asks Lee. 

‘That’s not the point,’ says David. ‘The point is whether Thandar has not only been to Mount Everest, but has in fact climbed it.’

‘So tell us about the climb,’ says Tom.

Some part of me wants to tell them the truth. That it had not been an extremely difficult climb, because even in my human form, I’m still astonishingly stronger and faster than your average mountain climber, even those who are dedicated enough to train to climb Mount Everest. I’m used to the cold, although Everest was colder than my home; and I generally need less oxygen. What I really want to tell them is that I wish I hadn’t done it.

‘It was bad,’ I say now, wanting them to believe it, this half-truth. ‘You have to pay so much money to the Nepali government—’ this I heard from mountain climbers I came across ‘—and you have to hire a sherpa, and make sure you have enough warm clothes and oxygen—’

‘But you did it,’ says David, still incredulous. ‘You reached the top?’

I manage a smile. ‘Yes.’

It was the first time I saw him. At first I thought I was hallucinating: he was sitting in his nest, his wings wrapped around him against the howling frigid winds. I remember his beak pricking up—even here, in this unlikeliest of places, he must have recognized my scent. A Naga where it shouldn’t be. Out of its habitat. In his territory. Alone. 

He spread his wings; they stretched to either side of the mountain, looking as though they might touch the peaks beside Everest. He shook his feathers, the resting snow forming a flurried shower. I heard a climber below scream, ‘Is that an avalanche?’ and almost wished it was. An avalanche would have been safer.

He drew himself up to his full height, blocking the sun. I felt like a speck of dust in his shadow, but I couldn’t move.

‘What are you doing here?’ he thundered. ‘In my home?’

I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before. If we, as Nagas, favored the depths of the ocean, then it made sense that our enemies, the Garuda birds, would favor the heights of the earth. Where else would they build their giant nests? Where else could they hide, to be mistaken for enormous eagles? 

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know Garudas lived here.’

‘You’re far from home,’ he stated. 

My mother would be furious. I could almost hear her mangled voice in my ear, screaming Get out of there, he wants to EAT you! But it was so strange—meeting a Garuda on Mount Everest, conversing with him, in my human form. If I survived—and I didn’t know if I would—I couldn’t wait to tell my brothers.

‘And you?’ he asked me. ‘Why are you on land? On this my mountain home?’

‘I—’ I decided to tell the truth. ‘I was curious.’

‘Curious?!’ He chortled, his laughter rippling across the mountains like a boulder across a pond. ‘A curious Naga! In human form!’  

His laughter unsettled me, roiled at the pit of my stomach. Suddenly I wanted my scales. Wanted to be away from here, wanted the depths of my ocean, wanted to be home. The wind whipped around me, my human skin pimpling underneath my climbing gear, and I considered for a moment just turning around and going the way I had come. If I could find a few other climbers, he might not recognize me among their mingled scent, sharp with sweat and snow—and I could escape, could live to tell the tale.

‘Don’t think about trying to escape,’ said the Garuda. ‘I haven’t had Naga in centuries. And I am famished.’

Every muscle in my body tensed. There was no way out—I would die here, would add to the many bodies already adorning Everest, except I would be consumed by a giant bird, the creature of all of my childhood nightmares, the villain in every folktale my mother ever told me, all because I’d made a rash decision. How stupid I’d been. How ridiculously stupid. 

I couldn’t cause an avalanche. I wouldn’t—I wasn’t the only one on this mountain. But I could—what if?—no, it wouldn’t work—

With nothing else to lose, I pressed my feet into the snow and reached out to my father in our jeweled palace. In my mind I traced the way I had come—every clump of dirt in northern Myanmar, the lotus-tipped lakes at Inle, the palace at Mandalay, then the strands of the Tanitharyi, where the country tapered off into the Andaman Sea, to the currents I loved so well. I whispered, begged, pleaded: Help.

‘You reached the summit?’ repeats David now. ‘Thandar? And then what happened?’

I bit my lip. ‘Then the earth moved.’

‘What?’

‘Do you mean an earthquake?’ asks Tom, like he doesn’t know exactly what I mean. I’m beginning to hate his guts. ‘Was there an earthquake on Mount Everest?’

‘Wasn’t there a news story about it?’ chimes in Jeremiah. ‘A few years ago. Freak earthquake on Mount Everest. Killed five people.’

‘So not only did you climb Mount Everest,’ says David, ‘you survived an earthquake.’

I survived the damn bird that wanted to eat me, I want to tell him, but I only nod. My father had come to the rescue. Had surprised the Garuda just enough for me to make my escape. He didn’t dare follow me in the broad daylight, and the first chance I got, I dove into the Dudh Kosi River and shrieked as my scales reformed in the water.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That’s exactly what happened.’

‘That’s a lie,’ says Tom. ‘There’s no way that happened. We would know.’

‘Tom, how well do you know Thandar?’ asks Lee, spotting a setup for a joke.

Tom shakes his head. ‘Only met her tonight.’

‘Then how would you know if she survived climbing Mount Everest or the freak earthquake that happened there?’

Rob waves a hand. ‘David’s team, we need an answer.’

David fixes his eyes on me. ‘It can’t be. There’s no way.’

They say lie. I relish every shift of their facial muscles that occur when I press the button to reveal it as truth. David’s jaw goes slack. Tom’s shaking his head in pure disbelief, and Greg is shouting, ‘Are you kidding me?!’ in the uproar that ensues. Beside me, Lee pats my shoulder, and says, ‘Good job. We’re going to win this.’

‘Our next round,’ says Rob pointedly. ‘Our next round is called “This is My,” where we bring on a mystery guest who has a close connection to one of our panelists. This week, each of Lee’s team will claim it’s them that has the genuine connection to our guest, and it’s up to David’s team to sort out who’s telling the truth. So please welcome this week’s special guest, Gary.’

Gary enters the room and in one swift sweep steps onto the studio stage. His long hair has been braided in a plait along his back—and he’s certainly not white, he looks almost Burmese, except his skin looks pale, like he’s never spent much time in the sun, and he’s wearing what looks like trousers and a tunic, but I recognize as the Daura-Suruwal, something the men in Nepal used to wear. I sit up, suddenly frightened. Gary perks up, and he angles his body towards me. He must have picked up my scent. 

‘So, Jeremiah, how do you know Gary?’ asks Rob. 

‘This is Gary,’ begins Jeremiah. ‘He once took me to a Tibetan restaurant but we had to leave because I found all the dishes too spicy.’

Maybe I’m panicking for no reason. Maybe Gary is Jeremiah’s friend and I only need to make up a believable lie—

‘Lee, how do you know Gary?’

‘This is Gary,’ says Lee. ‘I once crawled into his tent once on a camping trip because I thought he was my wife.’

But this is too much of a coincidence. He’s calling himself Gary, for goodness’ sake! How original, Gary the Garuda—it sounds like a terrible children’s show. 

‘And finally, Thandar, how do you know Gary?’

I gulp and risk a glance at Gary, who offers me a faint smile. Even here, he smells faintly of wet feathers and snow. In that moment all the doubts in my mind vanish. I am in the presence of my predator.

But the lights are on and the cameras are rolling. Rob is staring at me expectantly, and I shift around to find both Lee and Jeremiah waiting for me to speak.

‘Make something up!’ hisses Lee. 

‘This is Gary,’ I whisper. I clear my throat and raise my voice at Lee’s nudge. ‘This is Gary.’ How to weave enough fiction out of fact to let him know that I know who he is? ‘He once bit me during a take for Hopwood Hall because he thought my hand was part of the set.’

‘So, David’s team.’ Rob smiles and spins his chair away from me. ‘Where do you want to start?’

‘Thandar,’ says David. ‘You say he bit you?’

‘On accident. We were on set for Hopwood Hall, and—’

‘I’ve never seen him on Hopwood Hall,’ chimes in Tom. ‘Is he an actor?’

My brain whirs. ‘He’s a stand-in.’

Hopwood Hall had been an accident. I had been perfectly happy working in the florist shop at Folkestone, had believed that the flowers had clouded my fish stench enough for the Garuda—Gary—not to find me, or at least confused him enough that he wouldn’t know where to look. Naively I thought I was free of him, that the Everest earthquake had jarred him so much that he had let me go—but when I emerged from the Sunkoshi River after days in the Dudh Kosi, I found a chestnut feather. 

He’d been looking for me.

So I ran. Most days on foot because it made hiding easier. I depended on the kindness of strangers, crossed national borders at the unlikeliest of places. I found that the longer I stayed without changing back into my Naga form, the easier it was to throw him off my scent. Now and again I would feel his shadow above me, his wingspan stretching as if to eternity—and the humans would mistake him for a dark cloud, or a rare eagle—but he would not swoop down. I think some days he wondered whether he had lost me for good, because I would see him circle and circle the places I had left a day or two ago. He recognized my scent, but if I continued being human, one day he would have to stop hunting. 

He had found me at Folkestone. One morning, while I brought out the buckets of flowers to the storefront, I found a flurry of chestnut feathers at our doorstep. I’d left a note for Doris, thanking her for taking me in, and with what little money I had, I hopped on a train from Folkestone Central to London. If he was intent on finding me, then, I would have to make it harder for him. 

‘A stand-in,’ repeated David. ‘So tell us about the scene. Was it in the last season?’

‘Oh, no. It was cut.’

‘How convenient.’

‘Funny how that worked out.’ I smile, keeping my eyes on David. I need to focus. ‘I’ll tell you the scene that came before, shall I? . . . So, it’s episode 6, I think, and my character’s just gone through a big breakup with—uh—Steve—’

I’d arrived in London late afternoon and had immediately joined a throng of people standing in line outside a building. I’d assumed it was a restaurant of some sort, and was taken aback when the first person I saw inside asked me for my name and handed me a side.

‘What’s this for?’ I asked.

‘You’re here for the audition, right?’ She cocked her head. ‘For Hopwood Hall?’

‘Hopwood what?’

‘You’re not here to audition?’

‘No, I just—wanted to get out of the rain—’

‘Let her audition,’ said a woman who carried an authoritative air. ‘Our 4 o’clock canceled. She fits the age, build, and ethnicity. Send her in.’

The audition went surprisingly well, as did the three callbacks I did for it. When they offered me the part, I took it; I needed to make money. I didn’t think anyone would watch a show called Hopwood Hall about two families sharing an estate, but they did. I wasn’t the lead, which I was grateful for; and I foolishly trusted that the Garuda would never see me on television, given the fact that he has wings and can’t use a remote control, but he must have seen me somewhere, somehow. 

David presses, ‘And he bit your hand?’

‘Yeah, I had it right here, like this—’ I posture it on the side of the desk ‘—and Gary was supposed to reach for something on the table—I think it was a kind of fruit, an apple or a banana, and bite into it. So he wasn’t really looking, and just happened to bite my hand.’ 

‘Wouldn’t you have said something when he took your hand by mistake?’ asks Tom.

‘Look, it happened so quickly.’ I pause. ‘It was supposed to be funny.’

‘Clearly it wasn’t.’ David then shifts his gaze towards my right. ‘Jeremiah, remind us of your story.’

As Jeremiah spins his tale, I risk a glance at the giant bird in human form. My glance isn’t out of place; David’s team is looking at us and Gary, while the three of us are looking between Gary and David’s team. I startle under his gaze—Gary is looking directly at me, his eyes burning amber. He has a permanent smirk fixed on his lips; he laughs softly with the audience. He’s not here to be like other mystery guests who stand stoically while comedians and actors fabricate instances of their acquaintances. No, Gary is here to enjoy himself. 

David moves on to Lee’s story, and Lee spins a tale so ridiculous—involving a mountain lion and losing his way in the dark—that David looks both aggrieved and humored at having to listen to another one of his tall tales. 

A shadow falls across my desk.

I look up. Gary has edged closer to me. 

‘You’re mine,’ he whispers, using the audience laughter as cover. But he could have grunted and I would have heard him. I notice every shift of his body. I mark the exits. If Rob or David or Lee distracts him—without meaning to—I can run. I can throw myself into the Channel and swim home. Hopwood Hall will recast me after I don’t show up on set. This episode of Would I Lie To You? will air with a disclaimer: ‘This episode was filmed before British-Burmese actress Thandar drowned in the English Channel.’ Their views will spike. 

Alternatively—I may not make it to the Channel. The Garuda, who will not act while the cameras are rolling, will follow me to my one-bedroom flat in Notting Hill. Of course I won’t make it home. He will force me to change back into my Naga form in the shadows of the streetlamps. I will protest. Perhaps I will even fight him. With any luck, I will call on my father again, but he’s further away now, and I haven’t been a Naga in so long, I think I have forgotten how to transform. My father will not feel my fear here in London all the way in the Andaman Sea. I will be eaten in the street and the Garuda will fly away, back to his nest on Mount Everest, nourished by my flesh for the first time in centuries.

For a moment, a peace washes over me. The tension in my shoulders goes slack. Would that be a mercy? Did my body, shrunken and sunburnt, weighed down with years of running, want to be caught? Want the violence that would inevitably end me, want at the very least an end? 

I fix my eyes on Gary. He narrows his eyes, and I give him a slight nod. 

‘Alright, David, we need an answer.’ Rob turns to the camera. ‘Is Gary Thandar’s chomping colleague, Lee’s sham spouse, or Jeremiah’s spice-loving companion?’

‘It’s not Thandar,’ says Tom, and I feel a violent urge to lure him into the water and eat him. ‘There’s no way Gary bit her on set.’

‘It’s not Lee,’ says Greg. ‘It’s just not.’

‘Where did I lose you?’ cries Lee. ‘Was it the mountain lion?’

‘That leaves Jeremiah,’ says Rob.

David sighs. ‘We’ll say Jeremiah.’

‘You’re saying Jeremiah.’ Rob turns to Gary. If any of them have noticed he’s much closer to me than he was when this segment started, no one’s saying anything. ‘Gary, will you please reveal your true identity?’

‘I’m Gary.’ His voice is flutelike, which I imagine makes sense to only me. ‘And I bit Thandar’s hand while filming a scene on Hopwood Hall.’

Tom and Greg are facedown on their desks. David screams, ‘No!’ amid his laughter. Rob dismisses Gary, who stops in front of my desk.

Then, as if in slow motion, he reaches out his hand. 

There’s dirt under his nails. He’s been human for a while too. I try to recall if there’s been any sightings of a giant bird in or around London. Or sudden instances of darkness, of the sun being blocked by what people called a storm cloud. Closer, I see the cracks on his lips. The way his skin sags under his chin. He doesn’t know how to be human. Doesn’t enjoy it. Wants to return to his true form. For a moment I feel the overwhelming urge to hug him. To say, I understand. To say, I’m sorry.

‘How long have you been like this?’ I ask him. 

‘How long have you been in London?’ he returns.

His hand is suspended, unshaken, between the two of us. I sense the audience wondering whether to keep clapping. 

I am standing now. 

‘You won’t hurt me in front of these people,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll meet you after the show.’

He retracts his hand. ‘You will.’

It’s a threat. An inevitability. But I’m so tired. I have no intention of running. Not anymore. 

I sit back down, and I hear Rob breathe a sigh of relief. I lose Gary to the audience—but not really. I can still sense him where he sits in the back, his yellow eyes like lanterns in the darkness. 

‘You’re really killing it,’ says Lee. 

‘It’s not hard,’ I say. ‘Sometimes the truest story is the hardest to believe.’

The final round is Quick-Fire Lies, which is essentially a round for David and Lee to showcase their comedic talents, to one-up each other. As I expect, David’s desk lights up first, and then Lee’s. I laugh. I ask a question or two. I play the part they are paying me to play. But mostly I sit, too visible now, in the brightest of bright studio lights, keeping an eye on Gary. He reclines in his chair, his eyes focused on me. He’s in no rush. 

When Rob concludes the show, I keep my goodbyes and thank-yous brief. My only concern right now is to keep the Garuda away from these people who have no idea they are in the presence of two ancient creatures. On my way out I knock on Lee’s door to thank him for his captaincy. He’s shoving a thermos into his bag. 

‘Good work tonight, Thandar,’ says Lee, then frowns. ‘Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘I’m fine,’ I say. And I am. I will be. ‘I just wanted to say goodnight.’

‘Goodnight. Stay away from hand-biters.’

I laugh, and leave him in the dressing room light. 

Gary is waiting for me outside. Without a word, I start walking towards the Thames, and Gary falls in step with me. 

‘I noticed something during the show,’ he says, and I, out of some form of self-preservation, raise an eyebrow. ‘You don’t have the scent anymore.’

I frown. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Your Naga scent. It’s usually pungent, like a thousand fishes left out in the sun.’ 

‘Thanks.’

He stops me. ‘It’s not there anymore.’

I feel my forehead crease. ‘What the fuck are you talking about? Isn’t that how you tracked me?’ 

‘I tracked a faint smell. But I found you because I saw a poster of Hopwood Hall on the side of a double-decker bus. It didn’t take me too long to figure out which taping of Would I Lie To You you’d be on.’ He laughs, a hollow cackling sound, something between a squawk and a chirp. ‘For someone who’s supposed to be hiding, you sure have your face on so many things.’

I ignore his comment. ‘And you’ve been human all this time?’

‘Since you took the train to the city.’

‘That’s why I didn’t see you coming.’

Gary’s head tilts. He’s such a bird, I find myself thinking.

‘Did you hear what I just said?’ he asks.

‘What?’

‘You don’t have a smell anymore. You’ve been human for too long.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘How long has it been since you changed?’

‘It can’t have been that long,’ I say, sweeping my memories for one that stung, sharp and swelling, warped with electricity. Nothing. When it finally comes to me, the memory is dull and misshapen, like a toy I loved in childhood and have long discarded. ‘The Channel. When I made the crossing.’

‘That was four years ago.’ 

‘No.’ I feel my head shaking, but my entire body is shuddering. ‘No. It can’t have been that long. I’ve changed since, I must have—’

And there it was, the truth: somewhere, sometime in the hiding, I had no longer felt the need to jump into the Thames and become my full serpent self. I’d made excuses for myself not to: What if somebody sees? What if the Garuda finds me? I told myself it was for my own safety, that being human was the least dangerous option available to me. But the truth was also the fact that starring in Hopwood Hall paid me well enough to rent a flat in Notting Hill, to go to brunch with my castmates every other Sunday, to participate in comedy panel shows like Would I Lie To You? I had left my home in the Andaman Sea because I’d wanted to see—to feel, to truly experience—something other than what I’d known. And I had seen it. Another life. Another world. Seen more of it than I could ever want. 

I remember the day I left my underwater home. It wasn’t a split-second decision; more of an accumulation, of a life lived mostly in fear: of oil spills that claimed many of my kindred, of deep-sea fishermen, of missile-stocked submarines that skirted the borders of our underwater cities. Humans are so oblivious; they never noticed how the caves changed in the shifting light, how the sculptures that marked ancient watery graves were the work of sea serpents. The day I decided to leave, a submarine collided against a coral reef and shook our palace. My brothers wept, their tails tangled with my tail, our scales shuddering in tandem with one another. That night my mother screamed at my father, but her voice was drowned out by my father’s roar. We would live and die here, he thundered, here where the bones of our ancestors were woven with pearl and algae. So many of us had left, opting for the terror of the unknown than that of the known. 

That night, I kissed my brothers’ brows, and swam to the surface, because if there was one thing I was certain of, it was that I wouldn’t die in a place wrought with fear. 

So what if I was comfortable here, in London, in this skin? What if sometimes I dream about the scales on my body and wake up screaming? What if, when I douse my face in cold water, a shadow of a former self emerges on my skin? Can’t I leave it there? Can’t it live forever in my memory, in my reflection? I glare at Gary. None of this would have happened, I decide, if I hadn’t been running for my life.

‘It’s your fault,’ I say now, suddenly angry. ‘You’ve been hunting me. If I’ve forgotten myself in this form, then it’s because you forced me into it—’

‘You could have gone home.’ Gary’s voice rattles in the wind, catching in the cold. ‘You were in the Dudh Kosi. You could have gone home.’

‘But you would’ve gone after my family—’

‘They’re in the water. All I could have done was wait for one of them to appear on the shore. Garudas can’t swim.’

‘You’re lying.’ I draw myself up to my full height. ‘What do you know about Nagas anyway? I bet—I bet if I jumped into the Thames right now, I could change.’ 

Gary raises an eyebrow. I know I must reek of desperation, if not fish. 

‘Then prove it,’ he says. ‘Let’s go to the Thames.’ 

‘Before we do—’ I reach out and grab his wrist. ‘Answer one question for me.’

He stops. ‘What?’

‘Why are you so adamant that I change?’

‘Humans don’t taste as good as Naga,’ he quips. 

He offers to fly us to the Thames, but there is no way I am trusting the Garuda to get us there safely. So we hail a taxi, shuffling awkwardly together into the back seat, sitting silently as the unwitting driver winds us through the streets of London, until he drops us off at an isolated riverbank.

‘What’s it like for you to change?’ I ask, closing the taxi door. 

Gary grunts, pausing before he answers. ‘Like my entire body is pierced with daggers.’

I nod, understanding. I think that’s why I haven’t changed in so long—it is such a process, forcing myself to be palatable for an audience who will never know who I truly am. 

‘Well?’ he says. ‘Are you going to do it?’

I look down at the lazy sloshing of the Thames, dark and swelling. I think about my flat in Notting Hill, the leftover butter chicken from the night before that I was looking forward to having after the taping. The scenes we’re set to shoot on Hopwood Hall tomorrow. The script for the episode, sitting bookmarked on my kitchen table. I think about the flowers I was going to buy at this weekend’s farmer’s market. The tomatoes that are definitely rotting in my fridge. 

I take a step back. I feel Gary move closer to me. 

‘You’re scared,’ he whispers. ‘It’s okay.’

‘Why does it matter to you if I change?’ 

‘I told you. Humans don’t taste as good—’

I cut him off. ‘No. The real reason.’ 

Gary stares at me for what feels like an eternity, his eyes burning gold in the shadows of the streetlamps. His fingers curled up into tight fists, and for a moment I brace myself for violence or death—but he releases them, and lets them fall at his side. 

‘Because,’ he declares, ‘too many of us have forgotten.’ 

‘The humans have never known who we are,’ I say, misunderstanding. ‘They’re not like their ancestors, more willing to believe. The ones today will dismiss my scales for common snakeskin—’

Gary shakes his head. ‘No. We have forgotten. It’s become so easy to be human, to stay human. Look at you—a young sea serpent from the south seas, an English actress. Everywhere I fly now, I pick up faint scents that remind me of saltwater and I know they’re Nagas who have chosen to be human forever, who will never change again. It—it makes me sad.’

‘But you’ve changed.’ 

‘Not for a long time. Not forever.’

I pause, shift my weight from one leg to another. 

‘Are there others?’

Gary’s breath catches. He turns away.

‘Not anymore,’ he whispers. ‘I’m the last one.’

I fight the urge to reach out and touch his shoulder. I knew there were fewer Garudas than Nagas, although we lived about the same exorbitant number of years, whiling away our near immortality chasing down one another. I begin to understand why he didn’t kill me the minute I walked out of Pinewood Studios. Even if I am fully human, as he claims. 

‘Are they human?’ I ask now.

‘Some, yes. Others, hunted. Shot down. For their skin. For their feathers. It was—safer to be human. I don’t—blame them.’

I turn back to the Thames, billowing in the darkness, and take one more step towards the edge. For a moment I think I won’t do it. I have too much to lose. No matter what Gary says. The fact of the matter remains: I have no business being here in the middle of the night, on the banks of the River Thames, with a Garuda who’s been hunting me for years. Even if what he says is true. Even if I can never change again. 

I think of my mother, my father, my brothers. Waiting for me, in a different body of water. It’s been so long since I’ve seen them, felt their presence even. Perhaps, I realize with a pang, they’ve declared me dead. After all, I’ve been away for four years, more even—who could blame them? 

If I went back, would they forgive me for leaving them in the first place? 

‘If you don’t do it now,’ Gary says, ‘you’ll never do it.’

It doesn’t matter now, I think. All I want is the option of going back. 

I take in a giant gulp of air and push off against the ground. I break the surface of the river with a splash—the water is freezing, and my skin feels like it’s being attacked by a million different blades. For a few thundering moments, all I can see is darkness. My lungs fill with water. I beat against my chest. 

I’m still human. I’m still human.

No! 

I will myself to change. It has always been like breathing—at least before, at least four years ago. I envision scales forming on my skin, the same kinds of silver-blue that I spent so much time weeping over as I pulled them apart, shed them, left them shining by the lakeside. I imagine my crested frills, golden around my neck. My fangs, sharp and protruding. I lose my legs. Humans have too many limbs. Humans are so clumsy. Humans trip over everything! How graceful I am in the water. I imagine my serpent tail, the brightest thing in the depths, the way it curves to a point.

The pain, staggered and searing, pierces every cell of my body. 

Scales like jagged shards of glass push through my soft human flesh. My arms stick to my sides—I lose balance, neither Naga nor human, in the current. My teeth fall out, tiny stubs of white floating in front of me: and then my fangs, like scimitars, force their way through my gums, now bleeding. Every bone in my body breaks, only to regrow, reform. I am taking in water. My nostrils sting. When I open my mouth to scream, more water rushes in. For the first time in my life, I feel what it is to drown. 

In the blur of the surface, just as I begin to lose consciousness, I see Gary’s figure—first, human, crouched by the river’s edge, then shadowed wings unfurl from his back—I wonder if he’s changing, but why would he change? He can’t even swim, he’s only a silly bird even if he is the size of eight houses— 

I open my eyes. I’m no longer hurting. I’m breathing. 

With a swish of my tail, I break again the surface of the river. Gary’s waiting for me on the shore, still human. He’s beaming—with pride or hunger, I can’t quite tell.

Oh. Of course. I’m such an idiot.

‘You’re going to eat me, aren’t you?’ I say, poised to duck into the water again. 

‘I’m not hungry.’ He shrugs. ‘Well? What are you going to do now?’

I take a long, last look at London. Big Ben, chiming two o’clock. The cars honking at one another in traffic. The Eye in the distance. 

‘I think I’m going home,’ I hear myself say. ‘That is, if you promise not to kill me the first chance you get.’

‘I’ll keep you company,’ he says. ‘I won’t kill you.’

I smile. ‘Is that a promise?’

Gary smirks, his arms becoming wings. 

‘Would I lie to you?’

***