The Chaos Curse

by Sayantani DasGupta

Harimati was nibbling from a banana-leaf plate piled high with what looked a lot like bat-ear fritters. “If it’s not Gorgor-da, he’ll be off on a killing rampage, won’t he?”

  I looked over at the rakkhosh she was pointing at, a muscle-bound fellow with three eyeballs and way too many rows of teeth. Gorgor-da caught me looking at him and made a threatening, knuckle-cracking-type gesture. I looked away quickly, gulping hard.

  Harimati chuckled, shoving more fritters in her mouth even as she offered the plate to Neel and me. I shook my head no, but inexplicably, Neel picked up one of the fritters and tried it before gagging and spitting it out in his hand.

  “Um, wow. That’s got a bite to it,” Neel muttered, and I saw that he was right. The half-eaten piece of food in Neel’s hand did indeed have chomping teeth. Ick.

  Harimati laughed. “That’s what makes ’em so good, innit?” she said. It was weird how she was just accepting Neel’s and my presence here even though she’d never seen us before in her life. Must be part of Einstein’s storybook’s magic.

  In the meantime, the headmistress plucked one of the blue champak flowers from the tree. It fluttered in her hand as if it had wings. Then the wings turned into lips as, in a strangely breathy voice, it announced, “Gift giver for the air clan will be the flier Aakash!”

  As soon as the champak flower said the name, it seemed to wither and die in Surpanakha’s hand. She flicked off the wilted petals (or were they wings?) with a careless gesture.

  “I think we know now why the blue champak tree died off,” muttered Neel.

  “Or maybe they didn’t,” I whispered, thinking of how many blue butterflies I’d been seeing in the Kingdom Beyond lately. “Maybe these flowers have been there all the time, but we just didn’t know how to recognize them.”

  As his name was called, Aakash, a powerful and kind of scarily handsome rakkhosh, stood up from the air clan banyan and took a bow. The leaves and branches of the air clan’s tree waved in what appeared to be a gusty storm. Aakash’s giant insect-type wings spread out several feet when he extended them. His chest was bare under his light-blue-and-white house shawl, and I could see his muscles rippling as he waved to the crowds. I noticed that rakkhosh from a bunch of different clans seemed to give out long sighs all at the same time.

  Aakash approached the throne and bowed. “For our queen, the air clan offers the power of flight.”

  Aakash made a little gesture, and where there had been nothing before, suddenly, there was a blue pulsating energy, like a little swirling storm, in Aakash’s hands. The pulsing ball had, I noticed, tiny wings.

  Pinki gave him a skeptical look. “Was it you calling to me today from the garden?”

  “My queen?” Aakash looked confused, and I remembered Pinki had called out his name when Neel and I had tried to warn her about Sesha.

  “Never mind.” With a gracious incline of her head, Pinki took the winged storm from him. “Thank you, air clan, for sharing with me your power of flight,” she said, promptly ruining the gracious effect with a huge burp.

  The wild thing was, as soon as Pinki accepted the air clan gift, there appeared on her arms the same tattoo-like swirling markings that were carved into the champak tree. Now that I saw them in the context of her wedding outfit, I recognized them for what they were: the mehendi designs that brides often had henna-ed upon their skin for their weddings. But there was something different about Pinki’s mehendi; they almost appeared like they were …

  “Stories!” Surpanakha intoned, holding up Pinki’s arms to the crowd. “All the stories of the air clan and the creatures of flight are now the responsibility of our queen. They are etched into her very skin!”

  Almost as soon as Surpanakha finished speaking, Pinki’s mehendi disappeared, as if being sucked into her skin. Aakash, still bowing, backed away from the throne. Surpanakha waited for the applause to die down before reaching for the next magical champak flower. The gift giver for the water clan would be a sleek and strong rakkhoshi with a scaly crocodile tail named Kumi.

  Kumi too approached the throne with a deep bow. Her hair dripped as if wet, and her tail swished as she walked. The rakkhoshi knelt before Pinki, then waved her hands and produced what looked like a giant teardrop. “From the water clan, we offer our new queen power over water in all her many forms.”

  Pinki graciously took the offered gift. “I thank you, water clan, for your gift.” As before, as soon as she said these words, her skin was again covered by the swirling, beautiful mehendi designs, this time in the flowing shapes of waves and teardrops, rain and rivers.

  “All the stories of the water clan and the creatures of the water are now etched into your skin,” said Surpanakha. The headmistress then picked another of the blue champak-flowers-slash-butterflies.

  “Our gift giver representing the land clan will be … Kiranmala!” shouted the small blue flower. The headmistress Surpanakha dropped the dying petals and wrinkled her brows. “I didn’t know we had a student with that name,” I heard her mutter.

  It took me a minute to register what had just happened. “Don’t be shy—that’s you!” Harimati the rakkhoshi urged me forward, even as the rakkhosh she’d called Gorgor-da growled at me. “Never mind Gorgor-da, go give the Queen a land clan gift!”

  “Wait, no—” Neel began, but Harimati cut him off.

  “It’s an honor! Get up there!” Before I could stop her, Harimati and another rakkhosh hoisted me up on their shoulders and carried me toward the stage!

  Oh no, what was I going to do? I didn’t have the ability to conjure up a magical gift like Aakash or Kumi had done. But then I thought about the one magical gift I did have. Maybe this was meant to be, another part of Einstein-ji’s book magic! And this might be my one last chance to convince Pinki not to choose Sesha!

  I saw Neel dashing up behind us, a worried expression on his face, but as Harimati and the other rakkhosh put me down by the stage, I whispered reassuringly, “Don’t worry, I got this.”

  “You better know what you’re doing,” said my still-blurry-edged friend.

  “I do,” I muttered. “Or at least I hope so!”

  With trembling legs, I approached Pinki’s throne and bowed low. She gave me a curious look, but nothing that told me she recognized me. Ai-Ma, on the other hand, kind of leaned forward and studied my face. “I feel like I know you from somewhere, little demon-ling,” she murmured.

  I pretended like I hadn’t heard Ai-Ma, and turned my face up to Neel’s mom. “Oh, Queen. The air clan has offered you flight, and the water clan control over water itself. What can the land clan offer you to compare?”

  I heard titters from the water, fire, and air clans and growls of discontent from the land clan behind me.

  “For our gift, we offer you these jewels, the Chintamoni and Poroshmoni Stones.” I pulled out the pulsating white and yellow jewels from my backpack and held them out toward Pinki. “They are stars fallen to land from the heavens themselves. Powerful enough to give their owner wealth beyond compare, or even control over death!”

  The entire clearing became still as everyone trained their attention on the pulsating, powerful stars-slash-stones. Pinki opened her lips as if to speak but was soon cut off.

  “What a wonderful wedding gift!” Sesha’s voice was smooth, but I could detect the eagerness within. “Perhaps I should keep them for you, my bride, for safekeeping.”

  The entire grove burst into laughter, and even Surpanakha chuckled. But I felt the triumph in my stomach. I knew that Sesha couldn’t resist revealing his greed once he saw the stones. After all, they had driven him to almost kill me, Neel, and Neel’s mom in the future.

  Surpanakha called out, “You are in no position to make such an offer, Prince of Serpents. The gifts of the clans are for the Queen alone, not her consort. Besides, what makes you so sure she will choose you and not the prince of the Kingdom Beyond?”

  “Oh, she will choose me,” protested Sesha, and now I could really hear the desperation in his voic
e. “And she wants to give those jewels to me, don’t you, my dear darling Pinki?”

  I could see Pinki’s expression shift from flattered to confused to cautious. Sesha’s words and actions alone might not have made her so suspicious, but in combination with the warning Neel and I had given her, she was clearly having some second thoughts.

  “Don’t tell me what I want or don’t want. I am no weakling to be controlled by a husband,” Pinki snapped. She grabbed the jewels from my open hands and stood up, holding the yellow and white stones above her head. As soon as she had taken the jewels, her skin was again covered by the elaborate mehendi stories. They glowed bright red before fading into her skin as the others had done before.

  Pinki cleared her throat ferociously. “In fact, let me declare it now, loud and proud. As my headmistress and mother have chosen, my consort will be none other than Fatteshwar Orebaba, aka Rontu, Prince of the Kingdom Beyond Seven Oceans and Thirteen Rivers!”

  With these words, the cage around Rontu vanished. With a triumphant look at Sesha, Pinki then handed Neel’s dad both the magic jewels!

  The rakkhosh students cheered. Ai-Ma and Surpanakha beamed and looked pleased. Rontu, the future Raja of the Kingdom Beyond, looked stunned. “But … you’re a rakkhoshi! I don’t want to be married to you!” he blurted out.

  Ai-Ma waved her hands before Neel’s father. “True love will you see when you see your wife’s face. No demon anymore, but with human replaced.” And with those words, she snapped her fingers, and Rontu’s expression changed entirely.

  “Oh, I adore you, my queen, my love!” he burbled, grasping Pinki simperingly by the hand.

  Pinki said nothing but looked disgusted at her new consort’s rapid change of heart. She then turned to look at Sesha with tears in her eyes, like she couldn’t believe what she had just done. Sesha, for his part, howled and snarled, rattling his cage with all his might.

  “How dare you, you stupid demoness?” he yelled. “How dare you not choose me?”

  “You want my power!” Pinki yelled. “Not me! It was never about me!”

  “You’ll regret this for the rest of your life!” shrieked Sesha. He turned, snarling, at the rakkhosh school gathered around him. “All of demon-kind will regret this. I will destroy your kind, if it’s the last thing I do! No one will remember who you are! I will erase your stories from the multiverse!”

  Sesha raged inside his magical cage, prompting a bunch of rakkhosh guards to hop onstage and surround him. Pinki moved aside, flanked by a dazed-looking but passive Rontu as well as a fierce-appearing Ai-Ma. Surpanakha shouted orders, and most of the students ran around in utter confusion.

  In the chaos, I made my way off the stage and back to Neel, stopping to pick two champak flowers off the tree on the way. “Come on, I think our work here is done! Pinki’s marrying your father, and she and Sesha hate each other—just the way things are supposed to be!”

  “No, stop! Something’s not right!” Neel sputtered.

  “What? You’re not blurry anymore, are you? What’s the big deal?” I pointed to Neel’s once-again-solid outlines.

  “I may not be blurry anymore, but you are!” Neel said, his eyes wide in alarm.

  “What the—” I sputtered, looking down at my now-blurry body. “What’s happening?”

  “The Queen has made her choice of consort!” Surpanakha boomed from the stage. “Now, to complete the ceremony, she must kill the other suitor competing for her hand!”

  At first, I didn’t get it, but Neel looked at me in horror. “Kiran! This is a disaster! We’ve made sure that my parents get married so that I can exist in the future. But now, if Pinki kills Sesha, that means you can’t ever be born!”

  Oh, blast. This was horrible. What were we going to do?

  “My queen!” Neel called out, his voice desperate and urgent. “You can’t kill the snake prince!”

  “Why the heck not?” Pinki already had begun spitting hot fumes of fire at Sesha’s cage, making him cower in the corner.

  “Because … because … you’re better than that?” Neel suggested.

  The students all around us began to laugh, like Neel had made a splendid joke. Even the vicious-looking Gorgor-da slapped Neel heartily on the back. “That’s a good one, kid!”

  “Better than that!” scoffed Pinki, but I could tell, even if no one else could, that she was torn. “I’m not better than that. Why should I be better than that? What a thought!”

  “You loved me once, Pinki,” Sesha spat out. “But you got squeamish and turned your back on all that! We were a good pair, you and I! How could you want to dim your light, hitching yourself to someone who doesn’t even see you for who you are?”

  Even through his thick enchantment, Rontu, the future Raja of the Kingdom Beyond, seemed to understand that Sesha was insulting him. “Hey there, I’m not dimming anyone’s light! I just want her to follow all the rules of my kingdom and be the picture of a good and docile wife to me, supporting me in all my dreams and having none of her own!”

  This got the crowd laughing again. “As if!” chortled Surpanakha. “Oh, you poor demented little prince, your rakkhoshi wife is going to marry you and use you to rule your kingdom!”

  Rontu blinked a little at these words, as if they were penetrating the magical fog around his brain. He looked what seemed like directly at Neel. “I hate rakkhosh,” he pronounced.

  “Husband-to-be, you are such a bore!” Pinki snarled. “Go to sleep now, and have a good snore!”

  At a wave of her hands, Fatteshwar Orebaba, aka Rontu, Neel’s father and the future Raja of the Kingdom Beyond, curled up next to the throne and went fast to sleep.

  With that done, Pinki turned back to Sesha. “How dare you!” she snarled. “You pretended to love me only because you wanted my power!”

  “Like you weren’t doing the same thing!” he spat out through the glowing bars of the cage.

  Pinki’s expression faltered at these words, like she had loved Sesha for real, and thought he felt the same. Then a mask fell over her features again. “Of course I was, it was all a joke, and now it’s over!”

  Pinki jumped forward, reaching through the bars of the cage and putting her hands around his throat. Sesha gasped, and the crowd cheered. Sesha was strong, and powerful, but inside his magical cage, he could do nothing. The rakkhosh students all around me jeered and taunted him. Something in my chest constricted. I remembered Neel explaining how much rakkhosh hated snakes. I understood everyone’s gut reactions pretty well, since I was having the same one too. The sight of Sesha’s evil face made me want to claw his eyes out. He’d tried to kill me not once, but multiple times, when he wasn’t trying to turn me into a snake, that is. He had tormented my moon mother and probably been the reason she was the vague, not-really-there-but-there presence she was in my life. He was the reason I’d been banished to New Jersey and never really known who I was for so many years. He’d tortured and later imprisoned Neel. He was evil. He was terrible. He was trying to destroy the multiverse and all our unique stories. I would think I would rejoice to see him looking so small and beaten and afraid.

  Yet, with every squeeze of Pinki’s hands, I felt myself growing weaker and more light-headed. No matter how much I hated Sesha, my fate was tied to his. Neel grabbed me by my elbows, holding me up. “Hold on, Kiran, don’t disappear on me yet!” But with every passing second, I felt my essence growing fainter and fainter.

  I tried as hard as I could to control my breathing. In and out, Kiran, I told myself. In and out. I couldn’t control what was happening to me, but I had control over myself, and my reactions.

  That’s when I met Ai-Ma’s eyes. And I saw the old rakkhoshi’s eyes traveling over my fuzzy outline and then landing on Neel’s worried face. She squinted at her grandson, like she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing, and then back at me. And in that second, I could see that something inside Neel’s old grandma was beginning to recognize him.

  Neel caught her glance too. “W
e need some help, Kiran, come on!” he said. Supporting my weight now entirely, he dragged me to his grandmother. “Ai-Ma, can you help us?”

  “How do you know me, little desperate demon-ling?” she said, touching Neel’s face in wonder. “Wait, why does this lollipop of a dung-beetle boy look so much like my daughter?”

  “He’s your grandson, Ai-Ma. Your grandson from the future,” I wheezed, hoping that this version of past Ai-Ma was as loving as the one I would know in my own time.

  “I can hardly believe it,” she breathed, running her already-wrinkled hands over Neel’s cheek.

  “Will you help us, Ai-Ma?” Neel begged. “We can’t let my mom kill Sesha or else Kiranmala will never be born. Look at how she’s fading. We hate him too, but we can’t let him die.”

  “Kiranmala, is it?” cackled the old woman. “The name of an adventuress, an underestimated heroine from a long-told tale.”

  “But will you help us, Ai-Ma? Please?” I breathed, holding on to the edge of her sari in supplication. Behind us, Pinki seemed to be choking the life out of Sesha. I heard him sputter and choke as the crowd roared. My head spun, and I fell to my knees.

  “Kiran!” Neel cried. “Ai-Ma! What should we do?”

  “You must invoke the right of challenge kill,” said Ai-Ma quickly.

  “What?” I sputtered from my position on the ground.

  But without explaining any more, Ai-Ma stood up, holding my fist in the air with her own. “Halt, my daughter! This young rasagolla of a demon-ling invokes the right of challenge kill!”

  “What?” Pinki sputtered sharp blades of fire. Taking advantage of her confusion, Sesha somehow pushed Pinki’s hands off his neck and took in some big shuddering breaths. I felt the strength entering my own body again as he did. “You invoke challenge kill? Based on what right?”

  “Based on right of … relation,” Ai-Ma said. “This young rakkhoshi has had, erm, loved ones harmed by Sesha’s malice.”

  “What?” Sesha snarled. “I’ve never seen that hideous rakkhoshi wench before in my life!”