Coming toward us, down the line, was a man with too-pale makeup all over his face. I could tell it was makeup because his throat and hands were much browner than his face. He was wearing reflective shades, a very tight kurta that showed off his chest muscles, and some even tighter jeans. I recognized him, I realized, from the IGNN program. It was Suman Rahaman, Twinkle Chakraborty’s co-anchor! He was super famous and very charming, and since he’d been the Kingdom Beyond’s cricket team captain at one point, everyone referred to him as “Sooms”—like he was their personal buddy.
Behind Sooms were two umbrella holders, who shaded the star from the sun, and two sweating camera people, whom no one was shading. The anchorman was interviewing the contestants in line, who were going wild—cheering and waving and hamming it up for the cameras.
“What brings you to this endless line today?” The anchor flashed his toothy smile as he talked to one of the families with young kids. “Money? Glory? The chance to drop-kick some rakkhosh on live TV while the entire kingdom cheers you on?”
“We want something better for our children,” the father answered, gripping his son and daughter by the shoulders. “We want them to be like the crown prince or the Princess Demon Slayer—brave and strong, fierce and true!”
“Arré, lovely! How nice! How quaint! Cho cho chweet!” Suman Rahaman gestured to one of his umbrella holders, who handed the kids some melty-looking chocolate bars.
As the kids licked their chocolate from the wrappers, I followed the father’s gaze upward and realized there were a bunch of billboards overhead that I hadn’t even noticed yet.
The giant billboards weren’t for movies, but rather, starred two very familiar people: Lal and me—Lal and me fighting the rakkhosh on my front lawn, Lal and me flying on the backs of the two pakkhiraj horses. There were even images of Lal and me doing things for which he wasn’t actually around—like fighting Bogli in her whirlpool form. In all the posters, we’d been made to look older than we actually were. They’d photoshopped bulging muscles on Lal’s arms, given him a six-pack that for some reason showed through his clothes, and pasted a flowing moustache on his face like the Raja’s. As for me, I had slightly green-tinged skin, like in the logo, but in addition, my lips were big and red, my eyes huge with curling eyelashes, and my braid was whipping behind me almost like a—dare I say it?—snake. The billboard sayings all had to do with the two of us:
Princess Kiran and Prince Lal
Will slay the rakkhosh one and all!
She’s half snake, we’ll admit, to be fair
But she’s still our Princess Demon Slayer!
In between killing demonic thugs
Kiran and Lal steal kisses and hugs!
Make the kingdom pure, kill the rakkhosh dead
The only good demon is one without a head
Kisses and hugs? What was that about? But I didn’t even have time to think it through, because just then Suman Rahaman was jabbing a microphone in my face, and the bright lights from his camera crew were making me see spots.
“Young lady, I see you’ve tried to dress like Princess Kiranmala, the legendary demon slayer! What brings you here today to join the multiverse’s number-one mega-popular super-hit game show?”
I blinked against the light, shading my eyes. “I’m here because, um …” What was I supposed to say? I couldn’t say I was here to rescue Neel, certainly not on live intergalactic television. So I decided on another part of the truth. “I’m here because I want to be the hero I know I am.”
“Oh, my, my! How honorable! How sincere! Well, good luck to ya with that!” Sooms made a tsk-tsk noise with his mouth, like he thought I was so deluded. Then one of the helpers opened a small cooler and handed Suman Rahaman what looked like an ice-cold cola. Ignoring me and looking directly into the camera, Sooms took a long sip, smacking his lips at the end with a satisfied “ah.”
I’m not ashamed to say I almost drooled at the sight of the cold drink. It was hot out here.
“This interview was brought to you by ice cold Thum-puchi, carbonated beverage to cricketers and stars,” said the anchor man into the camera with a sparkling grin.
I was almost going to ask him if I could have a sip, but then he chucked me under the chin and continued on down the line.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have done that, Your Highness! Gotten yourself on television!” Naya hissed from the back seat. “Someone is sure to recognize who you are soon!”
“So what?” I countered. “Why do I need to hide my identity anyway? I do enough of that back in New Jersey. Why should I do it here?”
“Until we find your friends!” Naya argued. “Until we have some more support!”
I supposed the girl had a point. I couldn’t very well save Neel if Sesha caught me and imprisoned or killed me right now. I was about to tell her that, when she gave a little peep and dived under her sack again. I realized someone else official was coming down the line. This time it was a skinny little man driving a water-buffalo cart. He (the man, not the buffalo) was in a threadbare hotel bellhop jacket worn over a dirty dhoti and kurta. Someone who didn’t know how to sew very well had haphazardly stitched a little patch with the Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer? logo on his jacket. On his bald head was a triangular topi, and in the open cart were piled folders, rumpled and stained papers, some typewriters, and even a large, broken filing cabinet.
I saw that as he stopped at each group of contestants, he handed out some numbered tickets, like they do in that really popular bagel shop on Route 46 during the breakfast rush.
“Number five thousand three hundred and twenty-two!” I exclaimed when the little man handed me my number.
“Yes, be ready to have your blood sample drawn in, oh, say, two or three hundred hours,” he snapped from his cart. He clicked his tongue at the sleepy water buffalo, who swished its tail to chase away some flies before slowly starting to walk away.
“But I’ve already had my blood drawn!” I said. Then I remembered what the Rakkhoshi Rani had told me. “And it’s been approved!”
“You already have an approved blood sample?” Both the old man and his buffalo gave me hard looks. “Do you have the paperwork—signed in quadruplicate?”
“Um …” There was nothing for it but to tell the truth. “No?”
The old man rolled his eyes and sighed. “Here, fill these out,” he handed me a giant sheaf of smudged papers from the cart. “Oh, these too.”
As I took the bundle from him, he handed me one of the ancient-looking typewriters too. “Fill them out in quadruplicate! Four times!” said the old man. “Then go get them countersigned by Laltu-da up in the countersignature office! Oh, but make sure to first get it verified by Rama-di down in verification. That’s critical.”
“Rama-di, then Laltu-da,” I repeated. “Verification office, countersignatures.”
“Oh, but Rama-di won’t be back until two, and Laltu-da’s only here until one,” shouted the man, almost as an afterthought.
“Then how am I supposed to get their signatures in that order?” I protested.
“So impatient, you young people! Such linear thinkers!” The man shrugged and seemed about to go on, but I reached out and grabbed the buffalo’s harness. The animal blinked at me sleepily, chewing on some cud and drooling a long line of disgusting spittle onto my foot.
“Hey!” I protested as I shook the buffalo spit off my boot. I remembered something else the Rakkhoshi Rani had said. “I thought getting my blood sample in early was supposed to speed up the paperwork process.”
“Well, if you’re going to be that way about it, fine.” The man snapped his reins again. “Follow me, then! You’ve been parked in the wrong line this whole time!”
The little old man gestured that I should follow him out of the ginormous line. I started up the auto rikshaw and, ignoring the dirty looks I got from the other hopeful contestants, put-putted off behind the man, his cart, and his water buffalo.
The old man led us to a gate on the fa
r side of the registration office. Here, we were totally alone, with no other hopeful contestants in sight. “Wait here!” he ordered, before he and his water buffalo headed off again. I picked up one of the pieces of paper he had handed me at random. It had Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer? Hopeful Contestant Form written on top in giant letters. I threaded the paper into the ancient typewriter and began to type.
“How come this typewriter doesn’t have all the letters of the alphabet?” I muttered, hunting around the unfamiliar keyboard. “And why are there so many emojis?”
“Let me see …” Naya began, starting to come out from under her hiding place. But she scooched right back under again, because just then, the sunlight that had been streaming into the rikshaw was blocked by someone’s thick shadow. Naya gave a little squeak from under the burlap.
“Hark! Who goes there?” bellowed the big shadow-creating someone.
My hands froze over the typewriter as the person shouted, “Please supply your paperwork, signed in quintuplicate! And it better have Rama-di’s and Laltu-da’s signatures on it!”
Automatically, I handed over my barely filled-out paperwork. But when I looked up, I almost screamed. The scowling face of the man looming above me was actually familiar. And not in a good way. It was the barrel-chested police constable who had wanted to arrest me last fall for the ridiculous crime of stealing someone’s moustache. (Which I totally hadn’t done, obviously.) And now he was looking like he was regretting his decision to let me go.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t finish,” I admitted. “And I haven’t gotten anyone’s signature yet.”
“Unfinished paperwork! No signatures! Why are you in this line? In that case, tell me the password!”
I glanced back at Naya, who was being totally unhelpful by staying hidden. What was with this girl? One second, she’s stowing away to keep me company on an intergalactic journey, and the next, she’s scared of anything that moves. I sighed with frustration.
“What. Is. The. Password?” the constable repeated, emphasizing every syllable while baring his teeth. His dark brown face was dripping with sweat, and I was starting to feel dizzy from heat exhaustion and fear myself.
“The … um … password?” I squinted against the scorching sun, my hand over my eyes.
“Yes, the password! Must I get you a de-waxer for your ears as well as a sentence in a jail cell?” Even though it was ridiculously bright outside, the constable shone a big flashlight in my face. I really hoped he didn’t recognize me.
“No, no, I was just trying to remember it … the password, I mean …”
“Just as I suspected!” the constable snapped. Turning over his shoulder, he called out, “Captain Buddhu! Captain Bhootoom! We have a waxy-eared spy! Probably from one of the competing networks, here to gather secrets about Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer? We must take her to the cotton swab room for an interrogation!”
“I’m not a spy!” Being interrogated by two captains cleaning my ears did not sound like fun. Plus, being called waxy-eared kind of hurt. “Really! I’m not!”
“It doesn’t matter if you deny it!” The police officer’s chest was so big, his khaki uniform buttons threatened to pop off with each indignant word. “Truth? That’s a relative term these days anyway!”
As he continued to yell about how his serpent affiliates had warned him this might happen, how he didn’t tolerate any shenanigans on his watch, and how dare I not know the password, Naya mumbled some nonsensical words to me. When I didn’t say anything, she whispered a little louder, “Your Royal Celestialness—it is the password! Please repeat!”
I could see the glow of Naya’s phone shining through the rough material she was hiding under. She must be looking up the password on that Kingdom Beyond search engine—what was it called?—Shmoogles? Still, I hesitated. She couldn’t be serious. That was the password this guy wanted? That couldn’t be right!
It wasn’t until the constable was reaching for his handcuffs that I started blurting out the words that Naya kept whispering to me. “Exclamation point! Capital letter! Special symbol! Number!”
“That is not the whole—” The constable’s uniform buttons quavered in, I suppose, happy anticipation of arresting me.
But I interrupted him, continuing, “Question mark! Name of my first pet! Mother’s maiden name! Three asterisks followed by a tilde and a pound sign!”
“Wrong!”
“Hey ho, there, hi there, hee there, constable! She got it bloomin’ right,” said a funny little creature who had just come up behind the cop and hopped on his shoulder. It was a cheery-faced monkey with a shiny monocle over one eye. He was dressed in a formal military uniform with gold braids and sashes and all sorts of medals all over the chest. He carried a fancy cane, with a handle shaped like a banana, and wore one of those old-timey galleon-sailboat-type hats on his head. The monkey spoke in a seriously fake British accent, and on his shoulder was a tiny little owl wearing a monocle that matched the monkey’s, the chain hanging down over his snowy chest. The magnification of the one-sided eyeglass lens made one of the owl’s eyeballs look way bigger than the other, which was more than a little disturbing. That, and the stringy tail hanging out of the bird’s beak. I tried not to shudder. Gross!
Clearing his throat, the monkey turned the constable’s notebook the other way. “You were looking at the password quite flipetty-floppetty, you flibberty-jibbet! We’ll have to mention this in your mid-year evaluation! You know the brass ain’t going to look favorably on you trying to read upside down again.”
“It was an honest mistake, sirs!” The burly policeman shifted from foot to foot, looking downright sheepish. “Please, Captains, don’t mention it in your report.”
The white owl flapped his wings, swallowing whatever rodent was in his mouth with a loud gulp. The monkey whirled his monocle on its gold chain, saying, “Well, you’re lickety-lickin’ lucky that we haven’t yet learned how to write. Otherwise, this would go directmónt into our report, understandamente?”
“Yes, sirs, yes!” The constable wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his thick arm.
“What is with that crazy password, anyway?” I muttered, intending my words for Naya’s ears.
“Come now, come now! It’s blickety-bloomin’ easy to get hacked these days.” The monkey put his monocle back on, then picked some small bug off the police constable’s eyebrow and seemed to eat it. “Malware, old chap. Er, chapette. It’s a thing.” As if in agreement, the owl hooted several times in a surprisingly loud voice and then bit his own little foot with his sharp beak.
“You insolent girl! How dare you insult the Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer? registration office security system!” The constable doubled down on his anger, maybe to impress the funny little animals, who seemed to be his bosses. The man flipped the pages of his now-right-side-up notebook so enthusiastically, I was sure he’d tear the paper. “Would you like a citation for insolence as well as the one you almost got only a couple months ago for facial hair thievery?”
Well, there went my hopes that he didn’t remember me. “I’m sorry,” I began, but the furious man cut me off, speaking out loud as he wrote down my citation. His notebook was so small he could only fit one word per page, so it sounded pretty ridiculous: “Disrespecting”—flip—“malware”—flip—“moustaches”—flip—“and more.”
The little owl flew onto the constable’s hat and started pecking at it, like he was a woodpecker. In the meantime, the monkey captain hopped onto the roof of the auto rikshaw. Then his little bristly face popped into view, hanging upside down. Which of course resulted in his ridiculous hat and his monocle falling off. When the policeman wasn’t looking, the hairy animal gave me a sparkly-eyed, tongue-out-of-the-side-of-his-mouth grin, and then a hairy hang-ten sign like surfers do. “Namaste, Princess!” he hissed. “The sacred in me, like, greets the sacred in you!” Suddenly, the monkey sounded a lot like Amber, Ma’s goofy yoga teacher at the Parsippany Community Center, who liked to speak in Sa
nskrit, and thought she was super deep.
More importantly, I realized with a start, the monkey knew who I was! But when I looked over at him, about to ask him how, the monkey captain put his finger to his lips, whispering, “Shhhh!” I shut my mouth, but my heart was pounding. Just who was the spy here?
In the next moment, the monkey’s British accent was back. “Enough with the ding-dong citations, man, ask her the special questions!” The hairy animal snapped from his upside-down position. “Hop to it! Security of the show at risk, yaar!”
“But, sirs!” the constable protested, but then he cowered as the snowy owl clamped his small beak on the man’s ear.
“The jiggety-jaggety questions, old boy, ask her the bloomin’ questions!” the monkey yelled, jamming the fallen hat and monocle back on.
“Don’t think this lets you off the hook, you pre-criminal.” The constable rubbed his earlobe with one hand even as he shook his pen at me. It was one of those bouncing novelty-shop things with a long-tongued snake on the top, so when he shook the pen, the snake head bounced around, waving its little rubber tongue. Anyone would have found it creepy, but with my personal history with evil serpents, I was seriously weirded out.
“No, I won’t.” I gripped the rikshaw handlebars, my palms sweaty.
The policeman flipped some more through his notebook, which was tricky, because the not-all-there-in-the-head owl had apparently thought the snake-headed pen was a real snake and so was attacking it with little aggressive cries. In the meantime, the monkey jumped around, from the rikshaw roof to the constable’s shoulder and back again.
“I do like your pen. That snake on it. Very tickety-boo, and all that! First-class creepy! Yes, sir! Yes, sir! Have you ever fought a snake? Well, not anymore because of our partnership with the Kingdom of Serpents, but before that, my second cousin on dear old mummy’s side, Honu Bhai, once had a terrible encounter with a boa constrictor. Well, we think he did because he was never seen again. They found just his rainbow-colored suspenders. Must not have tasted very good, those. Not a pleasant scenario, let me tell you, yaar. I mean, boyo. I mean, old chap.” Then, as if remembering his dignity, the monkey Buddhu stopped, cleared his throat, and found his English accent again. “Terribly, terribly sorry. Got a tad mentally hornswoggled there. Yes, yes, carry on.”
Game of Stars Page 8
