Chapter 1
Chapter One: The Moon Stall
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The moon stall opened quietly, just after sunset.
It was a crooked little cart tucked beneath an old neem tree at the edge of the bazaar. Its canopy was made from faded velvet, stitched with care, and tiny glass beads hung from the corners like sleepy stars. There was no sign, no prices. Just moons. Dozens of them. Some dangled from hooks, some rested in velvet-lined trays, and others glowed softly inside wooden crates. Each moon was different. Some were smooth and pale. Others had tiny craters, gentle ridges, or specks of copper dust. There were moons that shimmered like silver, moons with icy lines, and even one that looked like it had been shaped from volcanic stone.
The boy who made them never spoke.
He was small and quiet, with hair as dark as midnight and eyes that held the hush of deep space. But his hands—his hands were full of wonder. They moved like music, shaping clay, carving tiny paths, painting shadows with a brush no thicker than a few strands of hair. He carried a satchel filled with moon maps and bits of stone, and he worked by the soft glow of a lantern. His silence spoke more than words ever could.
People called him Chandwala, the Moon Boy.
No one knew where he had come from. Some said he was born during a lunar eclipse. Others believed he had fallen from the sky, a child of the stars. But the boy never said anything. He simply smiled, nodded, and offered his moons with open hands.
One evening, just as the call to prayer faded and the market grew quiet, a girl appeared.
She wore a coat that hung too big on her shoulders, patched at the elbows and trailing loose threads like comet tails. Her boots were worn, her braid messy from the wind, and her eyes—her eyes were the color of a stormy grey sky. She didn’t speak either, not at first. She stood in front of the stall, looking at the moons with a gaze so deep it made the boy pause mid-brushstroke.
Then she pointed.
Not at the shiny ones. Not at the moons that gleamed like pearls or sparkled like frost. She pointed at a small, crooked moon tucked behind a crate. It had a crack along one side, its glaze uneven, its surface marked with tiny scars.
The boy hesitated. That moon wasn’t meant to be sold. It was one of his first—a clumsy try at copying Phobos, the moon that circles Mars. He had kept it to remind himself that even broken things are beautiful.
