“Gross,” I muttered.
“Oh, come on, I think he’s dreamy,” drawled the rakkhoshi Priya in a sarcastic voice. The effect of her words was even more ruined by the fact that she scratched her bald head with her long-taloned hand as she spoke.
“The doonce floor is hoopin’! They’re dooing the cain-cain, the macaroona, and the elooctric slide,” said Miss Twinkle, mispronouncing dances so old-fashioned I wasn’t sure I even really knew what they were. “And look, there’s the looscious snaky bridegroom himsoolf doing the flooss!”
“Oh, I don’t think I can unsee that,” I groaned. I squinted at the screen, watching Sesha do the side-to-side hip-swinging dance that looked like someone, well, flossing their teeth. It was super weird.
Besides the dancing, Sesha looked just like he always did—green-black hair, perfect skin, piercing eyes, and a-little-too-sharp-for-comfort teeth. He was the only person not dressed according to the engagement party’s black-and-white dress code. His green velvet jacket was close enough to black to pass in some light, but its snaky color still shone through.
“Thank you so much for celebrating our joy with us!” Miss Twinkle’s cell phone camera panned violently left, and caught, through a bunch of other people’s arms, Neel’s mom giving what sounded like a heartfelt speech. She was dressed in a black-and-white sari studded with diamonds. Her hair was flowing lusciously over her horns and shoulders, and her eyelashes were glamorously silky and long. Jewels glittered at her neck, arms, and ears, and she looked like she was actually glowing. Of course, the fancy effect was a little bit ruined by the fact that she kept rubbing her chest and burping as she spoke. “I’m just over the moon to be starting my new life soon, with my all-powerful new husband, ruler of the singular universe! So much better than that last human husband of mine, jerky runaway chicken butt that he was!”
“Is there anything better than a blushing, burping bride?” gushed Suman Rahaman. “Even a blushing, burping bride who’s been known to cannibalize entire villages?”
At these words, Miss Twinkle’s cell phone went all sideways and diagonal.
“Hey, we’re members of the press, and very good-looking besides! We can too have our cameras here,” I heard Suman say. “Do you know who I am? I’m Sooms! Ex–cricket captain and intergalactic heartthrob! Darn it! Don’t you recognize me? I’m the host of Lifestyles of the Rich and Monstrous!”
The camera still didn’t right itself despite all his protests. All we could see was an image of the dance floor and a bunch of feet. In the background, a song about posing like a statue was blaring through the loudspeakers. Some of the partygoers were dancing, and others chanting, “Down with Chaos! Down with Chaos!” as they stomped their feet.
“Yoo coon’t take my phoone!” sputtered Twinkle Chakraborty’s voice. “I’m a moomber of the prooss, you goon! Give it boock!”
But apparently whoever it was didn’t seem to care about her press credentials, because that was the end of the video.
“Dang, that was harsh!” Tuni said.
“Attacking the free press is the first step in establishing authoritarianism,” said Bunty as they cleaned their whiskers.
“Well, that is reassuring, isn’t it, Your Princeliness? Your mother looked … happy?” said Naya in an unsure voice. I could tell she was trying to cheer Neel up.
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “She kinda did seem super happy. If a little burpy. Doesn’t that convince you that she’s getting married to Sesha willingly?”
“I don’t believe it. Maybe the recording was doctored. Or she’s been brainwashed,” said Neel. “Or maybe that’s a body double.”
“Or maybe your mother really wants to marry Kiran’s evil dad,” suggested Tuni.
Neel sighed, running his fingers so harshly through his hair it all stood up. “Or that.”
“As much as I respect all of your input, the truth is, we don’t have time to debate the Rakkhoshi Rani’s motivations right now,” said Mati matter-of-factly. “But if you want to try and smuggle a note in to her, Neel, we can do it with the tottho.”
“The what?” I asked.
“You know, Your Royalness, the tottho!” Naya pointed to a bunch of beautifully decorated trays already arranged in lines on the ground. I saw packets of sweets, jewels, saris, fish, and more. “The presents that one side of the wedding party sends to the other! But because Sesha is, well, a greedy Gus, he’s expecting tottho presents from everyone in the kingdom to commemorate the day of the gaye halud ceremony!”
“So that’s the ceremony where the bride and groom get smeared in turmeric paste—like for purification or whatever, right?” I asked.
“Very good, Your Highnosity!” agreed Naya. “Growing up in another dimension and everything, I know things can be confusing, but you catch on quick!”
I remembered Ma had told me stories about her cousin-sister’s gaye halud. How she and her other young cousins had all worn yellow. How they had watched as all their aunties had laughed and ulu-ulu’ed and smeared the bride-to-be’s face, arms, and legs with Va-va-voom Turmeric Cream, a product advertised to help clear up your complexion and make you look, according to their company jingle, “va-va-voomilicious!”
Neel, I noticed, was scribbling something on a piece of notebook paper that Naya had helpfully handed him. In classic Naya style, she’d also given him an assortment of sparkly and fruity-smelling markers to write his note. For who knows what reason, Neel was going along with her suggestion to write each word in a different color. I looked over his shoulder and saw that his note was simple but direct.
Dear Mother—You may be a killer, but you’re no stooge. Are you marrying this goon for real or are you a prisoner?
Your sometimes-loving son,
Neelkamal
“Huh,” I couldn’t help but say, “interesting choice of wording.”
“Don’t judge,” Neel snapped, as with Naya’s help, he tucked the note into a gift tray full of fake eyelashes, bobby pins, and nail polish.
Mati came over to me. “The plan is to smuggle some weapons into the wedding venue inside these trays of presents. So that they are there for when we decide to bring in a bigger force.”
“Weapons?” I echoed.
“Sure. We rakkhosh can use our strength and nails and teeth. But you human resistance fighters need a little more help. Take that giant sandesh shaped like a fish.” Priya pointed at a tottho tray lying nearby, wrapped prettily in bright pink cellopaper. “It’s the perfect shape to hide chakus.”
“What’s the point of smuggling in weapons without anyone to use them?” I asked. “I mean, you’re putting knives inside sandesh, but you’re only sending in four or five spies at a time to each of these events.”
“Weapons are expendable; my team is not,” Mati said. “I’m not risking even one PSS life unnecessarily. We have to study, scout, and plan everything out.”
“How long are you going to do that? The wedding is at the end of the week,” I snorted. Man, for an important resistance leader, Mati was ridiculously cautious.
“Do you have a problem with the way I’m running things, Cousin?” Mati’s voice got tense again as she caught my expression.
“No, no! Not at all!” I said, trying to fix my face.
I caught Naya and Priya giving each other a look. “What are in these saris, then?” Neel asked, pointing to a tray of saris starched and sculpted to look like a bouquet of butterflies.
“Oh, they’re not saris at all,” explained Mati. “They’re poison-proof shields. Armor for the humans on our side if and when there’s a battle.”
“Wouldn’t want to risk someone getting a hangnail,” I muttered.
“Kiran, come on,” Neel said. Now it was his turn to give me a “cut it out” look.
“The fate of the multiverse is at stake, Cousin,” Mati snapped. “I’m not going to just run in there willy-nilly without a plan!”
“If you’re so busy planning, maybe you’ll never have to run in there at all,”
I countered.
Just then, one of the younger PSS girls skated on her board into the room and whispered something in Mati’s ear.
“Listen, I’ve got to go deal with some kind of crisis with the rakkhosh pedicures. I’ll be right back,” Mati said. Her face was tight and tired, and I felt bad for giving her a hard time. “Naya, will you give me a hand? I’m not sure I can always make out all these different demonic dialects.”
As Mati and Naya left, I felt ashamed, but also a little irritated. Why was Mati being so darned careful? Were we heroes dedicated to saving the multiverse or not?
“What’s that?” I pointed to a clay horse half a head taller than me. It looked like the traditional clay horses from the Kingdom Beyond that Ma had decorating our mantel in Parsippany, only a bunch bigger.
“Oh, Mati had it made to hide swords and bows,” said Priya. “It’s going to be part of the tottho.”
Looking at the big clay horse gave me an idea. “Why not hide the rakkhosh army in there instead of just weapons?” I suggested, thinking of an old story I’d read about at school. “You have a few humans go with it, pretending it’s a present for the tottho, and then, at the right moment, they let the rakkhosh out of the horse! No need to worry about all this costuming and manicuring, then!”
“Brilliant!” squawked Tuni.
“It could work,” said Neel. “If only to get us enough time to figure out if my mom’s a prisoner and get her out of there.”
I rolled my eyes but didn’t say anything.
“Cool plan.” Priya looked impressed. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Let’s clear it by Mati,” Bunty suggested. But I stopped the tiger before they padded away.
“Don’t bother her! She said she had to deal with a pedicure crisis!” I knew Mati was a good leader, but what did that make the rest of us, chopped liver? “We can do this on our own!”
“But, Princess …” protested Tuni.
“What, don’t you trust me?” I asked in an offended tone. “I do have some experience with this being a hero stuff, you know. More than Mati.”
“Jealousy is a green-eyed monster,” mumbled Neel.
“What did you say?” I snapped.
“Nothing, nothing,” said the prince, but his words struck me hard. I set my jaw in a determined line. Just because I had a different way of doing things than Mati, that didn’t mean I was wrong.
While most of the rakkhosh army stayed at headquarters, working on their manis and pedis and tusk filings, I assembled a crack force. Even though Bunty didn’t want us to, Neel and I decided to be a part of the Trojan horse delivery mission.
“I’ll go with them and keep them out of trouble,” Tuni said. “Don’t you worry, you old scaredy-cat!”
Bunty roared in annoyance at the bird, batting a giant paw. Wisely, Tuni flew out of the tiger’s reach and perched on a jutting rock near the ceiling.
“You’re not leaving me out of the fun!” said Priya. “You’re right, Kiran. I’m getting tired of all this prepping and planning. I want some action!”
“Perhaps it is more prudent to wait until a bigger horse can be prepared,” mused Bunty. “I estimate no more than about six rakkhosh are going to fit inside that!”
“I’ve got to go see if I can find my mom, talk to her.” Neel was chewing on his fingernail again. “Even if this isn’t a perfect plan, it’s better than sitting around here doing nothing.”
Neel and I gave Priya and her friends on the inside our weapons. Then we dressed up in some excellent yellow designer duds from Gyan Mukherjee. Since both Neel and I were pretty recognizable, we made sure to hide our faces. Neel had on a weird fake beard and I a full face scarf.
“Most likely Mati is going to be livid!” said Bunty, but Tuni flapped his wings in the tiger’s face.
“You’re just mad you can’t join the army!” said the bird to the tiger. “Not only do I get to go along, my yellow feathers perfectly match today’s dress code!”
“With only six rakkhosh within,” said Bunty again. “It’s hardly an army.”
“The six of us are as good as an army!” roared Priya, clapping her fellow rakkhosh on the back. They roared and drooled and cheered, waving long-nailed fists in the air.
“I’ve got to find a way to talk to my mother.” Neel scratched distractedly at his fake facial hair. “It may not be a perfect plan, but if she’s Sesha’s prisoner, I’ve got to free her.”
I said nothing but exchanged a rolly-eyed look with Tuni.
“I have a great deal of concern for your lack of cautiousness,” sniffed Bunty.
And with that, we were off.
The area surrounding the palace was an absolute zoo. It seemed that everyone from all over the Kingdom Beyond, the Kingdom of Serpents, and beyond had been invited to the pre-wedding festivities. Everyone except me, I thought bitterly. From servants to farmers to bankers to schoolchildren—everyone was crowding the streets, dressed in their fanciest yellow and red clothing for the gaye halud ceremony. There were horses and carriages, elephants and rikshaws, prettied-up bicycles, and even a painted bullock cart or two.
As I saw the throngs of people swarming around, I wondered how Sesha, enemy of the Kingdom Beyond, had convinced an entire country to trust him so quickly. Had it been that stupid Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer? game show? I’d heard from Naya that he’d started his own MeTube station, where he said the most outrageous things. Most of his rants were about how much he hated rakkhosh, and how rakkhosh were responsible for all the ills of the kingdom. Was it really that easy? Just to give a group of people someone different than themselves to hate and blame for their problems? And how did that even make sense if he was marrying the queen of the rakkhosh? But apparently, everyone was so swept up in wedding party fever, no one was bothered by the contradiction.
As soon as I thought this, of course, I squirmed a little inside but quickly convinced myself that my view of the Rakkhoshi Rani was based on facts, not opinion. So it definitely wasn’t the same thing.
“Check those out,” Neel breathed. As he spoke, his moustache fluttered a little, making him sneeze.
“Jiu—bless you!” I looked where he was pointing, at the billboards decorating the streets. I was grateful that he hadn’t seen the ones that had been up only a few weeks ago, those fake images for the game show that showed Lal and me killing rakkhosh, looking glamorous, and being in love.
But now the billboards were all of Sesha. The weird thing was, all the images seemed borrowed from other stories. In one picture, Sesha was wearing a knight’s armor and helmet, riding on a horse like he was going jousting. In another, he was in military uniform, saluting at a row of tanks and airplanes dropping bombs on Demon Land. On yet another billboard, he was wearing a suit and tie, sitting behind a presidential desk, his fist poised over a big red button that read Blow Up the Rakkhosh. In the background in about half the billboards was the Demon Queen, at her most glamorous and beautiful.
“Why do they look so different, Sesha and my mother?” Neel wondered aloud. “They don’t look like themselves.”
“It’s got to be the effect of the story smushing,” I said. Neel was right. Not only were the images in clothing from other cultures, both his mom and my bio dad looked way paler in most of the images, like they weren’t even themselves anymore. “Whatever they and their Anti-Chaos goons are up to, they’re moving us more toward the singularity.”
Neel made a noise in the back of his throat but didn’t say anything.
All this weirdness didn’t seem to bother the people in the streets at all. There were tottho gifts coming from all directions. People danced, sang, clapped, and chanted as they brought their beautifully decorated trays of offerings toward the palace. We joined a procession of people playing the conch shell and ulu-ulu’ing. Despite the fact that it was a little unnerving to see everyone so happy about this particular wedding, it was hard not to get caught up in the party atmosphere. I was feeling so confident and pumped that, wh
en Neel started to whisper at me, I didn’t know what he was going on about.
“Guards,” I heard him muttering. “There are guards doing spot checks on the gift trays. And I don’t recognize any of them! Sesha must have hired a whole new crew to replace my father’s people!”
“Kill ’em!” hissed Priya a little too gleefully from inside the horse.
“We’re gonna die!” burbled Tuni, who’d hitched a ride to the party on my shoulder.
“Relax, no one is killing anyone,” I whispered, tucking the scarf more firmly around my face. “Everyone chill and keep quiet!” I gave Tuntuni a quick pat. “Especially you, birdie. You shouldn’t have insisted on coming if you couldn’t take the stress!”
I looked cautiously around and realized that Neel was overreacting. The guards walked right by us, waving us on.
“That was close,” Neel muttered as a lady carrying a wrapped tray of oranges, mangoes, and bananas walked by.
“What was close?” hissed Priya from inside the horse. “Did you split their jugular veins with your teeth in a silent but deadly attack?”
“Shh! Keep quiet in there already!” I ordered, pushing the wheeling horse along. I turned to Neel, lowering my voice even more. “Are you okay?”
I’d never seen Neel looking so nervous. He was more the overconfident type.
“I just can’t get over the feeling that my mom is a prisoner,” Neel admitted. His eyes were darting this way and that, like he was sure someone was going to capture him and throw him in detention again at any minute. I wondered if he had a case of post-demonic stress disorder or something. “I can’t help but think that Sesha’s got her trapped in this engagement just like he had me trapped in that prison.”
I gave him what I hoped was a supportive look, without fighting with him again, like I was trying to say “Buck up, little buckaroo!” with my eyes. I’m not sure it worked, as Neel squinted at me and asked, “Do you have something in your eye?”
The Chaos Curse Page 16
