The Chaos Curse

by Sayantani DasGupta

  “Please, friends! I love Naya too!” I choked out, my words coming from the purest, truest place of my heart. “I didn’t understand before how humans and rakkhosh could be friends, how our stories could be so connected. But I do now! I do because of what Naya has taught me!”

  I saw Neel’s face soften at my words. He stayed on his feet, but his next words were measured and respectful. “Flying clans, we owe you our lives,” he rhymed, adopting the speech pattern of his mother’s people. “We need us all for the multiverse to survive!”

  The air clan rakkhosh were still angry, but I could see that Neel’s words had an effect on them. “Son of our queen, think we should,” said the black-toothed rakkhoshi. “If fighting this war is worth our blood.”

  “It’s all we can ask,” said Mati, rising slowly from the floor with Neel’s help. “In the meantime, I thank you for risking your lives today. I thank you for standing by our dear Naya. And I thank you for showing us how much humans have to learn from rakkhosh.”

  My cousin moved as if to walk out of the room, but I stopped her, my hand on her arm. “Cousin, I just want to say—”

  “What? That you were thoughtless?” Mati snapped. “That you risked all those lives without thinking it through, and now Naya’s suffering for it?”

  I bit my lip, tears swimming in my vision. “You’re right,” I choked out. “I would do anything to change places with her.”

  And I would. What I wouldn’t give to have it be me in there on the operating table and not sweet, bubbly Naya. I felt Neel’s warm hand on my shoulder but couldn’t look up at him. I was so ashamed.

  “It’s my fault too,” Neel said. “I was so busy trying to get to my mom I didn’t even think about our escape route.”

  “Look, if there’s anything that this fight against singularity has taught me, it’s that nobody can do this alone.” Mati rubbed distractedly at her hip. I wondered again if she was in pain. “This war against the Anti-Chaos Committee isn’t about being a cowboy—it’s about all of us, with all our differences, still figuring out a way to work together. Don’t you two numbskulls get that?”

  I studied the ruby-red combat boots on my feet, wishing they could somehow help me turn back time.

  “A symphony is not a symphony with only one kind of instrument!” said Tuni, trying to sound all wise and philosophical. “It takes a village to raise a nest of eggs! One wing cannot clap on its own!”

  “Wait a minute, Tuni, you totally went along with the plan too,” said Neel accusingly.

  “In cases like these, it’s exceedingly rude to have a good memory,” Tuni sputtered.

  “Just try to stay out of trouble, you two, all right?” Mati said. One of the PSS girls skated in with a big pile of notes for Mati to go over, and she quickly left the room.

  As we waited to hear word of Naya’s operation, Neel and I kind of wandered around the cave complex, checking out all the preparations for the next few pre-wedding days. Now that we had blown it, and Sesha knew that there was a human and rakkhosh resistance army of some sort out there, everyone had to be even more careful. The rakkhosh disguises, for instance, had to be perfect.

  In one area of the cave complex, the fashion team was still trying wedding outfits on rakkhosh, clucking and cooing over outfits that didn’t fit right, and also ones that did.

  “I’m brilliant, if I say so myself!” announced the fashion designer Gyan Mukherjee.

  “Such grace! Such vision!” agreed his assistants, their mouths full of pins as they tucked up a ginormous purple gown on a warty, three-eyed rakkhoshi.

  “I wish there was something we could do,” Neel burst out. “I hate all this waiting.”

  “We could help the fashion team.” I gestured to Gyan Mukherjee’s work space, covered in mountains of fabric and ribbons and things. There were at least ten rakkhoshi seamstresses sewing away on giant machines, a countless number of rakkhosh models milling around, and in the middle of it all, the fashion guru shouting meaningless orders. “Fix that top stitch! Steam those culottes! Tack those hems!”

  “Nah, I’m good.” Neel laughed. I laughed too. We kept walking.

  In another area, a bunch of rakkhosh were practicing an over-the-top musical number for the sangeet, which was happening in two days. They fluttered their eyes and ground their hips and waved their arms in a typical Kingdom Beyollywood–style dance production, only, it looked seriously more scary, what with all the performers’ warts and fangs and teeth and wings.

  “We could practice a song-and-dance number for the sangeet,” Neel said, pointing to the demonic dancers, who seemed now to be bumping into each other at every turn. The human choreographer looked about ready to pull out her hair with frustration.

  “Step-ball-change, step-ball-change, kick, kick. Okay, close enough. Look left, look right, hip swivel, turn around, jazz hands! Get that finger out of your dance partner’s nose!” she yelled.

  “No thanks, no jazz hands for me,” I said. “I’d rather face an army of supervillains again!”

  Neel nodded in agreement. “But I could do without the fake beard this time!”

  It would’ve all been funny, only I couldn’t seem to concentrate on any of it. All I could think about was Naya, on the operating table. Naya, so happy to be rescuing us. Naya, risking her life for her friends without a second thought. It was a good few hours before we heard from the doctor that she had made it through the surgery.

  “She’s alive but I’m worried that she’s not waking up.” Dr. Ahmed looked incredibly serious. “Our tests show there was a rare kind of poison in that monkey arrow—and the only antidote …” The doctor rifled through a copy of K. P. Das’s The Adventurer’s Guide to Rakkhosh, Khokkosh, Bhoot, Petni, Doito, Danav, Daini, and Secret Codes. “… is from a long-ago-extinct flower.”

  “What flower?” I grabbed on to that small hope. “What flower?”

  “The juice of a blue champak flower is the only antidote to this kind of poison,” the doctor said, shaking her head.

  Naya’s air clan friends next to me gnashed their teeth and hissed.

  “What?” I looked around in confusion.

  “The last-known blue champak tree grew on the grounds of the Ghatatkach Academy of Murder and Mayhem—the main rakkhosh school in Demon Land—but that last tree died back when my mom was a student there,” Neel said. “I remember her telling me about it. It was their school flower or something—everyone was really upset.”

  “Unless we can find another antidote, we don’t know if she’ll make it,” Dr. Ahmed said. Then she turned to go, her face back in the book. “Excuse me, I have a lot more research to do.”

  The news was such a horrible blow, I couldn’t look at Naya’s other clan members in the face. The black-toothed rakkhoshi made an angry noise and turned away from me. Next to me, wordlessly, Neel squeezed my hand. I didn’t have the heart to squeeze back.

  As we walked away slowly from the clinic, I thought about Naya: the time she stowed away on the intergalactic auto rikshaw, the time she tried to give me a facial in outer space, the time she was captured alongside Ai-Ma because of me. And of course, this most recent time she’d saved my life.

  I knew what we had to do, but I didn’t have the courage to do it. “I guess we have to go find that tree,” I said in a low voice to Neel. “To save Naya.”

  Neel didn’t miss a beat. “We have to use the book Einstein-ji gave you.”

  We were in a deserted area of the PSS hideout, a narrow hallway by the dormitories. I leaned against the wall and heaved a sigh. “My last plan didn’t go so well. That’s how Naya got this hurt. Are you sure we should do this?”

  “Kiran, listen, the Trojan horse plan may have been your idea, but I went along with it too,” Neel said. His face suddenly had its old determination, like when I’d first met him last fall. “It’s both our faults that Naya is in there, fighting for her life. We have no choice. We have to use the book. We have to save her.”

  “But to go back in
time?” I pulled out the copy of Thakurmar Jhuli that Einstein had given me. “I don’t know, Neel. Maybe I’ve gotten a little too sure of myself, a little too brave. Maybe we need to think this through.”

  “Look, Smartie-ji must have known something like this would happen. Why else would he have given us this book and made such a big deal about stories existing outside of time?” Neel asked, but I couldn’t answer. I felt the weight of Naya’s life squarely on my shoulders.

  “Maybe Einstein was just being all metaphorical,” I finally hedged.

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Neel grabbed the book and flipped through it, “Here it is! A story called ‘How the Demon Queen Chose Her Consort’!”

  I started. “I’ve never heard that story.”

  Neel frowned, scanning quickly through the pages. “Weirdly, neither have I. But then again, this isn’t just an ordinary book.”

  I peered over his shoulder at an illustration of someone who looked a lot like a crown-wearing young-looking Pinki standing before two men who had their backs to us. Behind her throne was a sign for Ghatatkach Academy of Murder and Mayhem—and just to the right of the throne was a tree with some bright blue flowers on it.

  “Look, those must be the blue champak flowers the doctor was talking about. We’ve got to at least try, Kiran.” Neel’s voice was so low and urgent, it was almost a growl.

  “Neel, we almost got killed on our last trip to Demon Land. The only reason we made it out alive was because of Ai-Ma,” I reminded him.

  “Well, we’re a better team now,” Neel said stubbornly. “And older. And more mature.”

  I didn’t point out that neither of us could have gotten that much more mature in only four months. “But how does this time-traveling book work? Do we just ask it to take us back to your mom’s school?”

  “I’m not sure.” Neel stared at the pages of the story. “I guess we could start reading it out loud and see what happens.”

  I bit my lip. I had learned my lesson, at too great a price, about making rash decisions after the fiasco of the Trojan horse. I didn’t want to make the same mistake and hurt someone else again. “Neel, are you sure? Isn’t a part of that butterfly effect that you’re not supposed to mess around with time? What if we go back there and make things worse?”

  “Einstein-ji gave us this book because he knew we’d need it!” Neel’s voice was definitive, but I could tell he was worried too, because he was chewing on his nail. “We can’t just let Naya die!”

  That did it for me. He was right. I couldn’t just let Naya die. I wouldn’t just let Naya die.

  “We can always join the rakkhosh dance team.” I smiled weakly, remembered the huge, webby water rakkhosh who had tripped on a flying rakkhosh’s wings earlier this afternoon and then proceeded to take about three fellow dancers out during a step-ball-change turn. The resulting demon pile was a disaster of talons, warty limbs, hair, teeth, and I don’t know what else. It looked worse than a tractor-trailer pileup on the Jersey Turnpike.

  “No thanks,” Neel snorted as I recalled the image to him. “No step-ball-change for me.”

  “Then it’s back to demon school we go?” I suggested. “For Naya?”

  “For Naya.” Neel’s eyes locked with mine.

  I looked away from him, feeling suddenly shy at his nearness. “What if it only takes the one of us who is doing the reading? We should probably read it together.”

  “That makes sense. And maybe just to be safe, maybe we should … uh … hold hands while we read.” Neel’s voice cracked in a funny way as he finished that sentence.

  Without meeting his eyes, I held out my hand, hoping it wasn’t too gross and sweaty for him to hold. He grasped it with his own warm one, interlacing his fingers with mine. I felt a zipping electricity where our skin touched, and my stomach gave a lurch.

  “Okay, let’s do this,” I muttered. “One, two, three …”

  Even as we started reading the first sentence of the story together, it was hard to stay focused. Neel’s fingers kept a tight grip on mine, and he was sitting so close, I could feel the words of the story rumbling in his chest as he spoke them out loud.

  “Nothing’s happening,” Neel whispered as we finished the first sentence.

  “Keep reading. Stories don’t work unless you keep reading, dive into them,” I said.

  And so we kept reading, our voices rising and falling together, the words rolling off both our tongues, the images and plot being built by both our voices. Not long after we’d finished the first paragraph, I felt it, the tugging at my belly. I looked at Neel, who was starting to look all smudgy—like a charcoal drawing being erased by someone’s fingers. I saw his eyes widen as he looked at me, so I figured I must look the same.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said.

  He nodded. “We’re going to demon school.”

  We landed with a thump on the rocky ground right below one of the many balconies jutting out from a majestic building of turrets, mosaics, and open porticos. I was at first really impressed by the architecture, until I realized most of the mosaics were images of bloody rakkhosh attacks—pictures of demons tearing people and animals apart in a bunch of gross and horrible ways. This was obviously the famed Ghatatkach Academy of Murder and Mayhem! It was twilight, and from the voices I heard just above us, I knew we weren’t alone.

  There was a light on in the balcony and two people up there, near the edge. Luckily, Neel and I had landed next to a broad tree with thick branches, so we were shielded from view. As I glanced over at him, I realized that he looked really different—with small horns peeking out of his dark hair, and fangs hanging below his lips, and even a little wart on his cheek. His eyes widened as he looked at me, and putting my hands to my face, I realized that I too had somehow been transformed by our magic time-traveling storybook into a rakkhosh! But I didn’t have time to worry about how many warts I had on my face. Right now, we had to concentrate on not being found out. We both leaned hard against the tree, listening to the people in the balcony.

  “Oh, my suave serpentine suitor! How patient you have been!” someone was saying. Neel put a hand over his mouth, like he was stopping himself from crying out. Wait a minute—the person talking was Pinki, his mother. I was sure of it!

  “Oh, my demonic darling! You are more than worth waiting for!” This time it was my turn to clap a hand over my mouth. That voice—it couldn’t be, could it? I snuck a quick look up at the balcony from around the tree. What was he doing here? Sesha!

  Neel put his hand on my arm, like he thought I was stupid enough to leap out from behind the tree and confront my snake father. I shook my head. I loathed Sesha for all that he had done to us, but I wasn’t that stupid. Plus, what exactly could I do to him from down on the ground when he was up in that balcony? But what in the world was he doing here in Demon Land? Neel and I eased ourselves out from behind the tree but were careful to stay well in the shadows so we could hear and see their conversation without any threat of being seen ourselves.

  “Tonight is the night we have been waiting for, my darling! The night of the choosing ceremony! When I choose you as my consort and declare our love openly!” With the light behind her, and her thick dark hair pouring over her horns and shoulders, Pinki absolutely glowed.

  “Everyone will know and we won’t care, my sadistic sugarplum!” Sesha singsonged in his oily way. He was clean-shaven, younger, and his hair was shorter, but there was no mistaking his features. Maybe I was imagining it, but I could also hear a hint of the evil malice that would define his adult personality.

  Neel shot me a questioning look, and I shook my head. What was happening here? It was uncomfortable enough hearing our parents’ teenage selves talking about love—but with each other? I mean, yuck!

  “I won the title of Demon Queen fair and square—after so many tests of intellect, bravery, and rodent disembowelment!” said Pinki, placing a long-clawed hand on Sesha’s arm.

  I mouthed, “Rodent disembowelment,” at Neel, a
nd he scowled, putting a finger to his lips.

  “That you did, my clever, bloodthirsty, disemboweling minx!” Sesha tweaked her nose as he said this, earning another shocked look from Neel. I mean, the Pinki we knew would probably chop off the arm of anyone who dared to tweak her nose.

  “And tonight’s choosing ceremony will show everyone that I know how to chart the best course for our people’s future!” young Pinki added breathlessly. “I’ll show them that love is the answer to the riddles of the multiverse!”

  “We will combine our powers and rule them all!” Sesha cooed. “Tonight, after you choose me at the ceremony and not that nincompoop Rontu, the human prince from the Kingdom Beyond!”

  Yet again, Neel almost gasped. “Rontu is my dad!” he hissed. “She’s choosing between Sesha and my dad!”

  What? I’d understood from the conversation so far that there was some kind of choosing ceremony set up, where Pinki would have to choose a future husband. But it was shocking to hear that the choices were either my dad or Neel’s!

  “I can’t believe my mother and Headmistress Surpanakha want me to marry that buffoon of a human prince!” Pinki’s voice was a little higher than I was used to, but it still had that same sarcastic confidence. “They say it’s important for the future of demon-kind and humankind. I mean, blah blah blah! Who cares about that?”

  “All that matters is our eternal love,” Sesha drawled.

  Neel looked like his eyes were going to pop out of his head. “Gross!” he mouthed at me. I was feeling just as horrified as he looked.

  “Oh, Seshi!” Pinki tittered. “You’re such a dreamboat!”