#Spring Love, #Pichal Pairi: A Tor.com Original

By Usman T. Malik

A series of interviews between a young, clean-cut journalist and an alternative, independent pichal pairi turns into an unexpected romance. But their relationship is tested when the entire world around them shuts down.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Mar 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781250800916

Usman T. Malik

Usman T. Malik is a Pakistani vagrant camped in Florida. He reads Sufi poetry, likes long walks, and occasionally strums naats on the guitar. His work is forthcoming in the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Year's Best Weird Fiction, Nightmare, and other venues. In December 2014, Usman led Pakistan's first speculative fiction workshop in Lahore in conjunction with Desi Writers Lounge.

Book preview

I met the pichal pairi by the Ravi’s bank at the mouth of a secret tunnel. She was sitting on rocks, massaging her backwards feet on pebbles from the riverbed.

My mother always said, she sighed, this is good for plantar fasciitis.

She was smaller than I’d expected, five-three perhaps. Pretty, with green eyes and walnut hair with copper and gold hues, so a red ripple went through it every time she shook her head. She wore ripped jeans, a white T-shirt with WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY? printed on it in electric blue with a middle finger skewering PEOPLE, and an orange dopatta around her neck. No jacket, though the riverbank was chilly from late February winds. Woke, but somehow vintage at the same time.

I didn’t realize witches got plantar fasciitis, I said.

I didn’t realize I’d be stuck with an idiot who wouldn’t know the difference between a witch and a churail. She arched her back, stretched, and straightened. She spoke perfect English, slipping in and out of the language like an eel. So, who’re you with again?

Dawn Magazines.

Ah, that bastion of anti-establishment sentiment. Nice. She produced a cigarette from a shoulder bag on the rock beside her and lit up with a Zippo. The smoke drifted across the bank toward a buffalo wallowing in a stream that was once a