I had no idea how the butterfly effect was going to help us stop this wedding, but it was too loud to ask. The noise of the whirling wormhole was so tremendous I couldn’t hear myself think, and the shooting lights flying out of it hurt my brain. Then Sadie pushed a button on her control panel, and the vortex of the wormhole cranked open like a mechanical eye. The room shook like a spaceship taking off.
“Now off with you!” said Einstein-ji. Or at least, I think that’s what he said. The force of the wind coming off the mechanical wormhole had blown away his words, even as it blew off his hat, making his crazy gray hair fly this way and that. He made a gesture with his hands like a book opening and pointed to my backpack, where I’d stored the copy of Thakurmar Jhuli. The last words I heard him say before we leaped into the wormhole were “Trust in the power of stories!”
The Smarty-Pants Science Corporation atom-smasher-slash-wormhole obviously had super-powerful GPS. Not only did it get us all intact to the Kingdom Beyond, but it deposited us exactly where we wanted to be—at the entrance to the cave complex that was the PSS resistance headquarters. We were greeted there by a very angry Sir Gobbet, followed by a sheepish-looking Buddhu and Bhootoom. Buddhu, I was surprised to see, was wearing Neel’s paper crown on his furry monkey head.
“You came to find me and left Buddhu in charge?” I whispered to Neel as I got off Bunty’s back. I mean, what was Neel thinking? The monkey prince could hardly be trusted to be in charge of his own hygiene.
“Not just him,” Neel argued as he petted Raat’s nose. He sounded a little defensive. “Bhootoom too.”
I rolled my eyes. The owl prince Bhootoom was even worse than Buddhu. He hardly talked, ate rodents, and could only fly backward. They were not exactly a crack team.
Apparently Sir Gobbet agreed, because within minutes of us coming through the wormhole, and Neel helping a limping Lal off of the pakkhiraj horse’s back, the minister ripped the paper crown off the monkey prince’s head and slammed it down on Lal’s perfect curls.
“There, we have a new Raja now!” announced the man unceremoniously.
“I graciously accept the honor,” said Lal.
Neel gently helped his brother sit down on a rock. “Better you than me, Bro,” he said, but his words were the opposite of the hurt expression on his face. I looked away, not wanting to see how upset Neel looked. I knew I was responsible for a lot of it, but I didn’t know how to undo what I’d done.
“Where are Mati and Naya?” I asked the monkey prince.
“Arré, top sekrit PSS meeting, yaar,” drawled Buddhu in his characteristic laid-back tone. “Beyond my pay grade, you know. Nice to see you, brother Lalkamal. Glad to see that little vacation in the tree trunk didn’t hurt you any, yaar!” Lal acknowledged Buddhu’s comment with a smiling nod.
“Thank goodness you are here, Raja Lalkamal!” Sir Gobbet sputtered. “And you too, Prince Neelkamal. You won’t believe what’s it’s been like since you’ve been gone.”
“I’ve been gone for a day.” Neel frowned. “What could have happened?”
“What could have happened, you asked? Oh, your princely brothers just hacked into the Thirteen Rivers satellite, interrupted the kingdom’s favorite soap opera, and started telling those terrible jokes on live national television!” Sir Gobbet wailed. “Just in the course of a day, they have lost the support of half the kingdom and turned the other half of the kingdom more in support of Sesha!”
“Arré, yaar, am I to be blamed if the people here aren’t sophisticated enough to appreciate my banana jokes?” Buddhu said while scratching an armpit.
I petted the monkey’s furry shoulder. “Not many people are.”
“And what about the leaving of banana peels all over the capital city?” Sir Gobbet demanded.
“You didn’t!” I tried to keep myself from laughing. “Buddhu, no!”
“No one has any appreciation for physical comedy these days, yaar!” He wiped his fat tears with his tail. “Arré, there’s a real elegance in a classic pratfall!”
Obviously angry, Bhootoom hopped off his monkey brother’s shoulder to peck at Sir Gobbet’s turnip-shaped turban. Then, unbeknownst to the little minister, the little white owl spit out a giant regurgitated pellet of food on the man’s head. The rest of us looked the other way, hoping Sir Gobbet wouldn’t notice.
This seemed to make Buddhu feel better, because the next thing he did was jump onto Bunty’s back. He screeched a little, chattered his teeth. “Hey, tiger, what kind of key opens a banana?”
“A turnkey, a latchkey, an academic index—that’s a sort of a key, you know!” said Bunty.
“Dorky, hokey, malarkey?” drawled Neel, earning a dirty look and smothered laugh from me.
A donkey? asked the horse Raat into my mind. I patted the pakkhiraj’s neck. “Not a bad guess, buddy,” I said to him.
“Key lime pie!” shouted Lal, his handsome face beaming with confidence. Neel and I both gave him a funny look.
“What?” asked the younger prince, looking back at us with a confused expression. Sometimes Lal was so adorably clueless.
“Nothing! Nothing!” said Neel. I couldn’t help laughing but then swallowed down my chuckles when I realized Sir Gobbet’s face was going from red to purple with outrage.
I didn’t want the minister to get even more annoyed than he already was, so I said quickly, “Tell us, Buddhu, what kind of key opens a banana?”
Buddhu jumped from Bunty to me, then flipped upside down, hanging from my forearm by his tail. “Arré, a monkey of course!”
The animals and Lal all erupted in peals of laughter.
“Oh, that’s good. Puerile, but good!” laughed Bunty. Raat stomped his hooves with pleasure. Neel and I tried to contain ourselves, but it was a challenge.
“You see what I mean?” the minister sputtered.
Neel tried to stop laughing and look serious. “You’re right, it was a pretty terrible joke.”
“Enough!” sputtered Sir Gobbet. He beckoned to some other ministers, lords and ladies, and palace servants all crowding around the hideout entrance. “We must try to earn the goodwill of the people toward our cause once again.”
“All hail the new Raja, Lalkamal!” he and the other courtiers cheered.
Just then, Mati and Naya came bounding out of the hideout entrance as well. Naya threw herself into my arms for a hug, and Lal did the same to Mati. He practically fell over on top of her because of his sprained ankle.
“Whoa there!” Neel helped right his brother, putting a stabilizing arm under Mati’s shoulder too. I noticed that my cousin, who used special shoes because one of her legs was a little shorter than the other, was actually using a cane. This was new. I wondered if she’d been overdoing it.
“Try not to kill yourself, Bro, before you go off on campaign,” Neel was saying.
“But I just got here!” Lal’s eyes were glued to Mati’s face. “Do I really have to go on campaign right now?”
To my surprise, it was Mati who insisted. She gave Lal a stern look. “We’re never going to win against Sesha and the Anti-Chaos Committee without the support of the people.”
“It wasn’t my fault everybody hated my jokes, boss! Really it wasn’t!” Buddhu wailed. He and Bhootoom had been working for Mati and the resistance as spies for a while now. “Let us make it up to you!”
“You two can go with your brother on campaign and help him,” Mati told the owl and monkey princes. “But no more hacking into the satellite signal, and no more banana jokes, all right? And I want to hear that you personally apologized to anyone who slipped on those banana peels!”
Buddhu and Bhootoom looked down at the ground with sheepish expressions. Naya, softhearted rakkhoshi that she was, went to give them reassuring pets on the head. As she did, I realized that there was yet another animal sitting on her shoulder. Tiktiki One!
“What’s that goofy gecko doing here?” I asked. “The last time I saw it, it climbed up the Norse tree of life and disappeared!
”
“Don’t be mean, Tiktiki One’s just a prototype,” said Naya defensively. “There may be some bugs in the system still.”
“I’ll say!” laughed Neel as the lizard flicked out a giant tongue, caught a fly in midair, and then swallowed it.
In the meantime, Lal seemed flabbergasted by Naya’s presence. “So you’re a rakkhoshi,” he said slowly, wrinkling his nose.
“Lal,” said Neel in a warning voice. “Naya is Kiran’s friend. And now mine too.”
Naya, cupcake of sunshine that she was, beamed at Neel’s words. I knew, even if Neel didn’t realize it, that she’d been a member of the flying fangirls gang that had once chased me and Neel, threatening to nibble on Neel’s feet. I also knew for a fact she cut out all of Lal’s and Neel’s pictures, not to mention those of Buddhu and Bhootoom, from the Kingdom Beyond celebrity magazine Teen Taal. So I’m sure Neel calling her a friend was the thrill of a century.
Naya turned to Lal with a giant smile. As she spoke, the zillions of perky ponytails all over her head kind of bopped and waved.
“Oh yes, Your Princeliness! I am a rakkhoshi! From the air clan!” At Lal’s confused expression, Naya added, “I just happen to have retractable wings—not everyone does. Should I bring them out? They’re pretty cool. Do you want to see them?”
“No!” Lal shouted, his hands up. Sir Gobbet and the rest of the palace courtiers were looking nervous too. Lal turned to Mati. “She’s not coming with me, is she?”
Naya’s face fell. I put a protective arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Lal, seriously!” I muttered. I noticed Naya’s eyes were already filling with tears.
Neel looked thunderous. “Dude, did you forget I’m part rakkhosh too?”
Lal looked even more confused. “But you’re different—” he began.
Mati cut him off. “A lot has happened since you’ve been gone, Lal. If you want to work with the resistance, you’re going to have to get used to the fact that we are an interspecies group. You’re going to have to get over your prejudice against rakkhosh.”
Neel gave me another fiery look, but I ignored him. Unlike Lal’s opinion of Naya, my opinion about Pinki wasn’t based on prejudice; it was based on knowing what kind of an evil monster the Demon Queen really was.
“I was just saying—” Lal started, but Mati interrupted him again. “I don’t want to hear it. But for your information, no, Naya’s not going with you. I need her here, helping me. She’s my right-hand woman.”
Poor Lal looked totally confused by his best friend’s reaction. The last time he’d seen Mati, she’d been a loyal and gentle stable hand. Now she was the general of an interspecies resistance army.
“I’m … sorry,” Lal muttered to Naya. Even as she nodded her thanks, I could tell that Lal was having a hard time understanding that rakkhosh, like human beings, weren’t all the same.
Gobbet and his helpers bundled Lal onto the elephant’s back, and within less than an hour of us arriving in the dimension, Lal, Budhhu, Bhootoom, Gobbet, and the royal ministers and courtiers were off.
“Good luck, Lal!” I called to the younger prince. “Take care of your ankle!” I hoped that being on campaign would give him time to get used to the new way of things and that he’d learn to be more open-minded about our new rakkhosh friends.
“I’ll miss you … all,” said Lal, but I could tell his words were mainly for Mati. Then he looked down at Neel, his face amused. “Thanks for doing my job while I was gone, Brother! I’m sure you’re relieved to hand over the responsibility!”
“Sure,” Neel said in kind of a flat way. I noticed a little muscle kind of clenching and unclenching in his jaw. “Good luck, Bro!”
We walked together behind Mati deeper into the PSS headquarters. Both Naya and Neel were super quiet, and I could tell they were each thinking about what Lal had said.
As Naya moved in front of us, to walk with Mati, I poked Neel teasingly in the side with my finger. “He’s been trapped in a tree for a long time. He’ll figure things out.”
Neel let out a breath, batting my poking hand away. “A lot of people have prejudice against rakkhosh. Some who even think they don’t.”
“Ugh, enough,” I said. “Look, let’s just agree to disagree right now on why your mom is marrying Sesha, all right?”
“Fine,” snapped Neel.
He was so darn pigheaded! I really wanted to scream, or knock him in the head, or both.
The main part of the PSS headquarters was overrun with rakkhosh. Fire clan, air clan, water clan, land clan—they were everywhere. I gave a little gasp at all the demons surrounding us. I was still not used to seeing so many rakkhosh and not having a freak-out fight-or-flight-type response.
“Relax. Remember they’re on our side,” Neel said under his breath, like he knew what I was thinking.
I felt my face heat up. Okay, maybe I was a little more like Lal than I was ready to admit. I too seemed to be having a hard time getting over stereotypes about rakkhosh. But of course, that didn’t mean I was wrong about Neel’s mom.
“Operation Demonic Wedding Guest is well underway!” Mati told us, spreading her hands around her with pride.
“The wedding invitation clearly says no rakkhosh,” Neel said, looking around at all the potential wedding guests. “How are you planning on getting all these demons to pass as human?”
“These rakkhosh are going to pass as human the same way I passed as a regular Parsippany sixth grader!” explained Naya. Tuni was sitting on her shoulder, casually nibbling on the birdseed she held out in her hand. “Nothing that a little manicure, pedicure, dental filing, contact lens insertion, haircut, dermabrasion, and wart peel can’t solve!”
“What about for air clans—the ones who can’t hide their wings like Naya?” I pointed to a bunch of rakkhosh waiting around, who had huge dragon-type wings, smaller insect-type wings, feathered eagle wings, and everything in between.
“Oh, that’s nothing for the legendary fashion designer Gyanendrachandra Mukherjee!” Mati said. I followed her gaze and realized there was a little mini fashion show going on in one corner of the cave. A long-bearded, gray-ponytailed fashion designer with a cape, gloves, and dark glasses was clapping his hands and showing off models wearing futuristic backpacks over their evening gowns, giant feathery capes over their saris, and even elaborate hat-scarf sets that draped all the way down the backs of their tuxedo jackets. All were designed, I guessed, to hide wings.
“Clever,” Neel said, but I wasn’t convinced any of those outfits wouldn’t draw more rather than less attention to the person wearing it.
“Exploitation of the sewing proletariat,” sniffed Bunty. “Although I do like those snazzy capes.”
“You should see some of these engagement party pictures!” said Tuni, dropping a copy of the Seven Oceans Gazette in my lap. “We missed a wild party while we were traveling through that wormhole!”
I looked at the party photographs on the front page of the Seven Oceans Gazette. I noticed a couple of tall cape-and-scarf-draped partygoers, and realized they were probably rakkhosh in disguise.
“The plan is to send out just a few scouts at a time to each of these pre-wedding events, to see if their disguises hold,” explained Mati. “Last night, all of our spies came home safe and sound.”
“Why are you being so cautious?” Neel asked. “I thought our plan was to infiltrate the wedding and stop it.”
I couldn’t help but agree with Neel. “Plus, I didn’t travel through all these dimensions just to sit around and watch other people go up against Sesha,” I said. “I’m ready. I want to face him.”
“We can’t just rush in there, Kiran. I want to make sure we have a plan that works,” said Mati. “We can’t risk everybody’s lives because you’re impatient.”
I glanced at my cousin’s cane, wondering again if she was overdoing it. “You should take it easy, Cuz. Is your foot bothering you?”
“Are you implying something?” Mati’s temper went fro
m about zero to sixty in a second. “Because if you are, you need to step off with your ableist assumptions. I’ve been running this resistance group this whole time, and I’m going to keep running it.”
“I’m not implying anything!” I said, holding my hands up in an “I give up” gesture. Wow, the multiverse potentially coming to an end really had everyone on edge.
“Sorry.” Mati rubbed a tired hand over her eyes. “You’re right. This whole leading-a-revolution thing has been a little stressful. I didn’t mean to snap at you like that.”
“No worries,” I said in a somewhat milder tone, even though I was still irritated inside.
To stop myself from saying anything I’d regret later, I studied the huge front-page newspaper photo of Sesha and Pinki, the Demon Queen. They were posed in kind of a fancy-perfume-ad style, her flinging her hair and staring off into the distance, him flexing his bicep as he kissed it.
“Weird,” I muttered. “I still can’t believe they’re getting married.”
“Because marriage is an antiquated symbol of the heterocapitalist patriarchy,” asked Bunty, “or because you can’t believe they’re marrying each other?”
“That second thing you said,” I told the tiger.
“Wait, I’ve got video!” gushed Naya. I was glad to see that being in the PSS resistance hadn’t squelched any of my friend Naya’s natural enthusiasm for all things glamorous. She pulled up the Thirteen Rivers television anchor Miss Twinkle Chakraborty’s MeTube channel, where Twinkle had done a little segment on the fancy engagement party. Tiktiki One, who was sticking to Naya’s shoulder like glue, flicked out its tongue as if in excitement to see the clip.
“I’m livestrooming from the event of the milloonium!” squealed the nose-ringed and heavily mascara’d anchor, her face mere inches from her camera screen. “I’m here with my handsoom date, ex–Kingdom Beyoond cricket captoon Suman Rahamoon.”
“Heya, Kingdom Beyond superfans,” drawled Suman Rahaman. He was wearing a glittery black sherwani, and Miss Twinkle was in a white chiffon sari. Despite being in a high-collar jacket, “Sooms” had still managed to keep enough buttons undone to show a bunch of chest hair and his gold chain necklace.
The Chaos Curse Page 15
