“Getting soft from all that scientific grant money, Professor!” K. P. Das taunted, his eyes huge behind his dirty Coke-bottle glasses.
“Lucky shot! Just like your gold medal from the Royal Demonological Institute!” griped Shady Sadie before launching into a wild volley again.
“K. P. Babu and Shady Sadie know each other?” I breathed.
“I suppose knowledge belongs to all,” Lal said. “And scientific progress knows no borders.”
While they might be good at sharing their knowledge, when it came to their Ping-Pong, both scientists were super greedy. In fact, they were ball hogs, jumping for shots that were clearly meant for their doubles partners. But because of this, my bird and tiger friends actually noticed when we walked in.
“Princess!” roared Bunty.
“Prince Lalkamal!” squawked Tuni. “I know someone who’s going to be very happy to see you!”
“Who?” I looked confusedly around.
When the huge tiger moved aside, I realized who else was in the room. He’d been pacing around behind the Ping-Pong table, biting his nails. He stopped pacing as he saw us, a stunned expression on his usually confident face. Wow, it was good to see that face again.
“Brother!” Lal launched himself at Neel, almost like he was still a little kid.
“Kiran, you did it!” Neel was hugging his brother, but his smiles were just for me. “You found him! You saved my little bro!”
“Did you doubt I could?” I scoffed. I was so excited to see Neel that the words came out way harsher than I intended. I tried to soften my tone. “How long have you been here?”
“I just got here with K. P. Babu,” said Neel. “I wanted to go out and look for you right away, but the professor wanted a quick game of table tennis first.”
Wait, what? “So … you decided just to hang out here and let him play instead of looking for me while I was, oh, I don’t know, fighting for my life?”
Neel looked surprised and guilty. “Sadie said she had seen you in your school, and that there had been some kind of a fire drill, and that you were probably still there.”
“It wasn’t just a fire drill. And I seriously could have dealt with some help, you know. I was only battling mythological creatures from multiple different cultures!” When Neel blanched, I sighed. “But hey, at least I was able to rescue Lal.”
Neel turned to his younger brother with a protective glance. “Are you all right? Dude, look at the size of your ankle!” Then he turned back to me. “I’m really, really sorry, Kiran, that I wasn’t there to help you.”
“Sure, whatever. I guess it all worked out in the end.” I had to raise my voice a little to make myself heard over the endless dum-dum-DA-dum of the table tennis game, which was still going on. “But, Neel, what are you doing in this dimension in the first place? Did you get my lizard-gram?”
Neel waved for the scientists to stop playing so that he could respond, but they had such an intense volley going that they still didn’t notice us.
“Take a break, scientists!” Tuni yelled. When neither Sadie nor Professor Das stopped their playing, the bird jumped up and caught the next shot in his mouth. Both players looked at Tuntuni in surprise.
“That is against intergalactic table tennis regulations!” sputtered K. P. Das. “No player on either doubles team may eat the Ping-Pong ball while in play! Your team forfeits the point! It’s my game, set, and match!”
“Wait a minute, don’t be such a stickler!” protested Sadie, who seemed very upset at the possibility of losing. “Those regulations are only applicable on Sundays during an intergalactic apocalypse!”
“We very well might be in the middle of an intergalactic apocalypse!” said K. P. Babu triumphantly.
“Ha ha, the joke’s on you, then!” crowed Sadie. “Because it’s Monday!”
I decided to ignore the bickering players and turned back to Neel, happy to be able to hear myself. “Seriously, what are you doing here?” Then I turned to Tuni. “And how did you and Bunty make it here? I thought for sure you were back on the other side of the wormhole and we’d lost you!”
Since Tuni couldn’t exactly reply with a giant Ping-Pong ball in his beak, he shot it out at me with a ptu sound. I caught the little missive in midair.
“Say, Princess!” squawked my birdie friend. “Why was Cinderella kicked off the soccer team?”
“Tuni, seriously?” Neel was helping his limping brother into a chair, playfully messing with Lal’s hair as he did. I felt bad for being so snippy before with Neel. He was obviously super happy to see his brother again. And I guess he couldn’t have known I would be battling a Gorgon and a dragon right here in Parsippany.
“Who is this Cinderella?” Lal heavily sat down, wincing as Neel helped him prop up his injured foot.
“She’s a 2-D-story princess,” I explained. Then, to make up for my bad mood before, I guessed, “Um … Cinderella got kicked off the soccer team because her glass slippers weren’t cleats?”
Tuntuni landed on my shoulder, squawking, “No! Because she kept running away from the ball!”
I laughed at the bird’s silly joke, then realized Shady Sadie was waving her hands maniacally, gesturing for me to throw her the Ping-Pong ball. Ugh, I couldn’t stand them starting up again.
“It’s time for a Ping-Pong intervention!” said Bunty. I tossed the plastic ball at the tiger, who promptly crunched down on it and ate it in one gulp.
“Aw! That’s not fair!” protested Shady Sadie.
When Bunty responded with a loud roar, both players looked a little sheepish. “Okay, maybe it’s a little fair,” amended the television scientist.
“I’ll dock your grade for this, Prince Neel!” grumbled K. P. Das. “You too, Prince Lal! And no hope of extra credit!”
Lal looked a little worried, but Neel rolled his eyes. “We’re not even in your class anymore, Professor. And we’ve got more important things to worry about right now. Could we stay on topic?”
Both scientists seemed to get their acts together at the scolding. “Sorry, perhaps we got a little carried away,” said Shady Sadie.
“Ping-Pong always brings out the worst in the scientific community,” agreed K. P. Babu.
Finally realizing who was in the room, Shady Sadie came over to me and started shaking my hand so hard I thought it would fall off. “I knew you’d make it, young scientist!” she said, her eyes dancing behind her glasses. “Your friends the tiger and tia bird were doubtful, but I told them to give you time, that you’d heard my message about the darkness and the light and you’d make your way here!”
So Shady Sadie had been looking at me during the end of the assembly! “You showed that slide of the Smarty-Pants Science Corporation building on purpose so I would know where it was!”
“That’s why I set up that visit to your school in the first place,” explained my scientist idol. “When your tiger and bird friends got dropped here by the wormhole and told me about you, I assumed your coordinates were somewhere close by and you would make it to your school somehow.”
“But then Shady Sadie came back without you and we got worried.” Bunty padded over to me and rubbed a big head against my side. “She wouldn’t let us leave to go look for you either!”
“Said it would be hard to explain a talking bird and a giant tiger roaming around Parsippany,” Tuni sniffed.
That was actually fair. It would be a problem to explain a talking tiger and bird wandering around Parsippany. Weirdly, I didn’t feel as irritated at Tuni or Bunty for not coming to help me as I did at Neel.
“But then why did you and K. P. Babu come to New Jersey, my brother?” Lal asked. “I heard you were canvassing the countryside, looking for support from our people. That you got crowned temporary Raja.”
At Lal’s words, Neel got a funny expression on his face. “Now that you’re free, we’ll make sure the crown goes to you as soon as we get home, okay?”
I was hoping Lal would say something wise and magnanimous, a
bout how their father should never have stripped the crown prince title from Neel anyway, and how Neel should hang on to the crown, but instead, the younger prince just said, “Okay, sure.” He was holding his lips a little funny, and I wondered if he was in pain or just upset that Neel had been made Raja instead of him.
I took a quick glance at Neel, wondering how he was taking his brother’s reaction. Unfortunately, his face got all still, like he’d brought down a mask over it that refused to let through any emotion. “Cool, cool, cool,” he said. “You’ll make a great Raja, Lal. Plus, I can’t wait to get rid of the responsibility.”
“No surprise there,” said Lal, more teasing than mean, but I could tell the words hit his brother like a slap. Neel winced a little and turned around, busily putting away all the paddles and balls.
As I was trying to figure out what to say to take down the tension in the room, Tuni squawked, “Hey, Princess, what did Delaware?”
“I don’t know, Tuni, what did Delaware?” I asked, a little too loud and a little too happy. Neel gave me a look like he thought I’d lost it.
“A New Jersey!” Tuni bellowed, flying in a circle around Neel’s head.
I guffawed way too loud at the dumb bird, not knowing what else to do to make Neel feel better. For his part, Neel rolled his eyes, but I did see a hint of a smile on his lips.
“So are you going to tell me why you’re here or what?” I asked Neel. “Did Tiktiki One find you?”
“Yeah, the lizard passed on your message.” The prince stopped putting away the Ping-Pong stuff and gave a grimace. “That’s how I knew where you were. But I was already planning on coming because of the wedding invitation.”
“Wedding invitation?” I was relieved to hear Tiktiki One was okay, but at Neel’s mention of an invitation, I remembered Ned/Nidhoggr talking about someone getting married too. “What is this wedding I keep hearing about?”
“I knew I had to come find you as soon as I got it,” Neel went on, chewing on his nail.
“What kind of a wedding invitation could send you all the way across the dimensions to find me?” I looked from one face to another, but no one seemed to be willing to spit it out. The animals were suddenly eager to clean their whiskers and feathers, the scientists seemed busy staring at the ceiling and floor, and Lal looked just as clueless as I felt.
Without a word, Neel reached into a beat-up old leather shoulder bag and pulled out a bright red-and-gold wedding card. The outside of the folded card was decorated with the shapes of butterflies, fish, and peacocks—traditional wedding card fare. But there were also a number of twisting snakes weaving in and out of the other animals that gave me a little bit of a start. The address on the wedding invitation reminded me of a different letter in a different story.
When I opened the top and bottom folds of the card, I almost yelled at what I found inside. It was a beautifully decorated invitation, gold lettering on a red background:
It took me at least three times of reading the card to let all the information sink in. “My dad is marrying … Neel’s mom?” I finally sputtered.
“It sure looks like it,” squawked Tuni.
“How could this happen?” Lal was downright shocked. “Anyway, Just Kiran, isn’t Sesha still married to your mother, the moon?”
“I think her turning him to ashes with her moonbeams counted as some sort of divorce. She mentioned they weren’t married anymore.” I spoke slowly, still processing the news. “The last time they were together, Sesha was trying to kill Neel’s mom! How could they be getting married? Is this the rumor that Mati heard—about them allying with each other?”
Then something else occurred to me. “Wait a minute, if our parents are getting married, Neel, that’s gonna make you my … !”
“Stepbrother,” said Neel grimly.
At that, Tuni started singing the theme song from an old 2-D TV show about a blended family. Who knows where he learned it. “That’s the way they all became the Snaky Bunch!” the bird warbled, adding, “You guys can fight about bathroom time and get into funny hijinks with the family dog!”
The thought made me want to puke. I spit out the word more than said it. “Gross!”
“Super gross!” Neel nodded.
Well, at least we finally agreed on something.
Not willing to think about Neel and me living as happy-go-lucky stepsiblings, I turned my attention back to the invitation. I shook the envelope and out fell two more cards. One card inside the envelope was labeled Pre-Wedding Festivities:
There was also a small RSVP card that read:
“How could this be for real?” I sputtered. Was this another bizarro-parallel-dimension thing happening again? But I couldn’t imagine there being any dimension in the multiverse where Sesha and Neel’s mom actually loved each other.
“They hate each other,” Neel said, as if reading my mind.
“Maybe that hate has turned to true love!” chirped Tuni. He’d gotten a flower garland from who knows where—the kind that people exchange when they’re getting married in the Kingdom Beyond—and was humming a wedding song. “Mala badal hobe ei raate!”
“Could such a wedding be real?” Lal looked confusedly from me to Neel to Tuni.
“Of course it is!” Tuni declared. “You all are way too cynical! I blame it on your generation using too much social media.”
“No such thing as true love,” said Bunty. “Only heteronormative rituals created by a capitalist patriarchy to reinscribe its institutional power.”
“Um, right,” Lal agreed uncertainly. “What the tiger said.”
“Whatever this is,” I said slowly, “it can’t just be them deciding to get married because they fell in love. There’s clearly some evil plan going on here.” I whirled around to face Neel. “I know! Your mom must be a part of this Anti-Chaos Committee!”
“What?” Neel looked startled. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“That whole being on our side and rescuing us stuff must have been an act before!” I sputtered. “Maybe she was faking wanting to save you so bad from demon detention. Maybe she and Sesha staged that whole fight in his undersea detention center …”
“Wait. Hold it right there, Kiran. You think it was an act that my mother was willing to give up her life—sacrifice her soul bee—to save mine? And that she staged the fight with Sesha, the fight where Ai-Ma, her own mother, died to save her?” Neel snapped. “No way. That’s sick!”
“Well, I don’t know. I don’t know how supervillains think!” I protested. My brain was working hard trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. “It would be gullible of us to think Pinki’s suddenly become all nice and heroic, wouldn’t it? I mean, the Anti-Chaos Committee is all these baddies from all different cultures trying to collapse the diversity of the multiverse’s stories. It would be just like her to be a part of that!”
“But I can’t imagine my mom would be involved in something like that!” Neel countered.
“Brother, she did try to eat both me and Mati,” Lal reminded him. “Only a few months ago.”
“And she is kind of mean,” Tuni added. “Plus cruel, sadistic …”
“Not to mention seriously bloodthirsty and power-hungry,” I volunteered.
“Okay, great, thanks, everybody, for your input,” Neel snapped. “Never mind I was just starting to think I could have some sort of relationship with my mom, what with Ai-Ma being gone and everything. Way to point out how that’s never going to happen.”
Lal, Tuni, and I exchanged guilty looks. I wasn’t sure what to say to that. There were a few seconds of awkward silence before K. P. Babu came to our rescue.
“Yes, well, never mind all that now. Supposition will only get us so far. It’s time to gather some more data and then send you all back home to do some hypothesis testing!” the elderly professor exclaimed.
“All right, gang, so let’s go gather some data and test some hypotheses!” said Sadie, clearly all pumped up at the science talk. “Time
to go to the atom smasher! Woot!”
From who knows where, she produced a wheelchair with a Smarty-Pants Science Corporation logo on the back. We helped the injured Lal into the chair, and Sadie took charge of pushing it out of the break room and down a long lab hallway.
As we all walked, K. P. Babu turned to Bunty and asked, “Now, tiger, tell me the secret to your killer serve. How do you get that topspin?”
Lal and Sadie were at the lead, while Bunty, K. P. Das, and Tuni were chatting in happy tones about table tennis. So that left Neel and me to walk quietly together at the end of the group.
He wasn’t looking at me, and I felt a twinge of guilt at how upset he seemed. “Neel, I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, really, but I can’t think of another explanation as to why Pinki would want to marry Sesha.”
“Feelings hurt? My feelings aren’t hurt, what makes you say that?” snapped Neel in a way that kind of proved the opposite point. “No, Kiran, you’re right, as usual. Once a villain, always a villain. My mom’s obviously marrying Sesha to be a part of his latest dastardly plan. I’m probably just not thinking straight. Being in that detention center obviously messed me up bad. Gosh, I can’t even trust my own judgment anymore.”
“Hey, I didn’t mean any of that,” I protested.
“No, seriously. I’m so, so glad you’re here to set me right,” Neel said, still refusing to look at me.
“It’s just a theory,” I said, trying to be nice. “Like K. P. Babu said, we should gather some more facts or whatever before we assume our theory’s right.”
“Your theory,” Neel muttered. “Not mine.”
Ugh. How could he be so gullible? I crossed my arms over my chest. “I wonder where my invitation went? There’s a strict ‘no rakkhosh’ policy on the invite, but they still sent you a card.”
Neel snorted. “Are you seriously upset that your killer of a serpent dad didn’t invite you to his wedding?”
The Chaos Curse Page 13
