Game of Stars

by Sayantani DasGupta

“Tell me, Daughter, which shari isn’t worn?” he’d boom out, pronouncing he word sari the Bangla way.

  The answer to that riddle was mawshari—or mosquito net. So, what land had no people? It must be a wordplay on the Bengali word for land—desh.

  “I’ve got it!” An image came to mind of the sticky sweet homemade desserts Ma always made for trick-or-treaters. “Which desh has no people? Sandesh!”

  “That was too easy!” shrieked one of the ghosts.

  “No, it wasn’t!” I protested. “You have one more chance, and then I pass this test!”

  There was more shuffling and whispering behind me, and for a moment, I couldn’t really see their reflections anymore and got seriously nervous.

  I guess they’d decided to play fair, because another one of the ghosts cleared her voice and said, “I have arms but no legs or head to behold. My chest is open wide, and I swallow people whole.”

  Oh, dratty drat pants, I hadn’t heard this one before either, and it seemed more complicated than either of the previous riddles. I took a big breath. Okay, calm down, Kiranmala. Think. Think.

  “Your soul I will steal and in a tree conceal!” screamed one of the ghosts.

  “Hold on to your petticoat! Give me a minute!” I yelled back. All I could think of was some kind of open-chested, headless rakkhosh, but that didn’t make sense. And it couldn’t be a snake because they had no arms or legs. Despite the cooling evening, I was starting to sweat. And I thought, randomly, how in New Jersey I would have been freezing cold, bundled in a giant winter jacket.

  That’s when it struck me. “Wait, I know! What has arms but no legs or head, and it swallows people whole? It’s a coat!”

  “No, the answer’s a shirt! You are wrong!” cackled a ghostly voice. “Your soul is ours, now come along!”

  “Wait, it could be a shirt or a coat!” I shouted.

  But they weren’t having it. “Come, Kiranmala, come to my tree!” “No, Princess, come with me!”

  Of all the sneaky supernatural tricks, what was I going to do? I was all alone with these ghosts—who weren’t playing fair! Then I remembered that I wasn’t actually alone.

  “Suman-da! Minister Gupshup!” I yelled to the air. I knew the anchor had told me not to break the fourth wall, but as Neel had said, I didn’t need to play by their rules. When no one answered, that’s when I remembered that Suman Rahaman and Gupshup weren’t the only ones who were watching.

  “Hey, Sesha! Your ghosts don’t play fair! I got their riddle right and they want my soul!” I shouted in the direction of the closest cameraman.

  The cameraman took in a big breath of shock. I could hear the ghosts behind me getting restless, cackling in anticipation of being able to spirit away my soul.

  “What kind of a game are you running here anyway, Serpent King?” I persisted, dragging out the last two words. “Is it any wonder I’m competing for the Kingdom Beyond and not for the Kingdom of Serpents? Do you want everyone competing on Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer? to know they’re not getting a fair deal?”

  There was a moment’s silence, then a speaker hidden in the jasmine bush came to crackling life, and out came that terrifying voice I knew so well. The voice of Sesha, The Serpent King, my birth father.

  “Oh, fine, fine! You win this round, Princess Demon Slayer!” drawled Sesha through the speakers. “Oh, get back to your dimension, you annoying ghostie minions! She’s right, the answer to your riddle could be a coat or a shirt!”

  I heard the shakchunni and petni cursing, long and low, but then with a pop-pop-pop, they disappeared from the garden. I turned around slowly and let out my breath. As I did, one of the cameramen pushed up his sleep mask to actually give me a grinning thumbs-up.

  I’d passed the first test. Only one more to go before I could rescue Neel.

  I was given an entire suite in the palace overlooking the gardens. After the first test was over, when Lal was allowed to speak to me again, he showed me to the rooms himself. The entire way over, he kept apologizing.

  “They wouldn’t let me interrupt the filming!” he explained, his handsome face screwed up in concern. “I am so sorry, Kiran, to abandon you like that! I didn’t want to!”

  “It’s okay. It’s not like you could help it. At least those ghost ladies didn’t snatch my soul and stick it in a tree trunk, so I consider that a win.” We were climbing the steep steps up to my tower suite. I couldn’t get Sesha’s voice out of my head, or the fact that I’d had to rely on him to get rid of those ghosts. “So, what was your first test like?”

  “Ghosts too. Only I never thought of asking them for riddles. That was brilliant!” said Lal. “I managed to fire iron pellets at them, and they left.”

  “Right, because of their whole afraid-of-iron-and-steel thing. Good thinking!” I pushed the heavy doors to my rooms open. “How many contestants are competing right now anyway?”

  “Dozens! All over the kingdom and beyond!” Lal gestured at a giant screen embedded in my sitting room wall, flipping the channel to a sort of scoreboard with a whole line of names on it. Lal’s and my names were at the top of the board. His was higher than mine, I saw, and when Lal caught my eye, he kind of blushed.

  “It didn’t take me quite as long to get rid of the petni and shakchunni,” he said kind of apologetically.

  I laughed. “Don’t worry about it, I’m just glad I got away from them in the end. But how come every other contestant after us is from the Kingdom of Serpents?” I pointed at the screen, noticing the number of green snake insignias after the other contestants’ names. “All the contestants from the Kingdom Beyond seem to have been crossed off!”

  “No other human contestants have made it past the ghosts, to be honest,” said Lal. “No, that’s right, one guy went all the way to the second test, but then he had to confront a fire rakkhosh, and well, he got so incinerated, there was not much of him left to find.”

  “Dang!” I knew that Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer? was a potentially deadly game, but hearing about someone getting flame broiled like a fast food burger didn’t make me feel particularly good. “Do you think Sesha has it rigged in favor of the serpents?”

  “Well, you and I are at the top of the leader board,” Lal pointed out.

  “True.” I bit my lip, thinking about those ginormous lines at the registration office, the parents enrolling their kids. How many of those people would enter the contest only to get hurt, or maybe killed? This was even more motivation to win the game, and quick. “I can’t believe people from the Kingdom Beyond are still signing up after seeing what happens to everyone else who isn’t us.”

  “Indeed, more sign up every day!” said Lal.

  “And we have no way of knowing when the next test will be?”

  “No, the harmonigram message just arrives without warning.” Lal fluffed his already-perfect hair, taking a quick peek at himself in a gilded mirror. I had to hide a smile. “I have been waiting for the second test harmonigram message to come for a while now. But the competition goes through all the different contestants, so you can never be totally sure when it will get to you. A part of keeping us on our toes, I suppose.” Abruptly, like he was avoiding talking to me about something, Lal turned to go, stepping back toward the door.

  I hesitated, not sure why I felt so weird bringing it up. “Wait. Lal, about Neel …”

  “It’s all my fault.” Lal turned back to me, his eyes a little shiny. “Oh, Kiran!”

  Oh my gosh, he was crying! I patted his arm as he took out a beautiful white handkerchief and wiped at his eyes and nose. I wondered how that knucklehead Neel could have ever suspected his younger brother of being at fault for putting him in prison. Lal mumbled through his sobs, “I thought—oh, I don’t know what I thought, Kiran, but I never believed they were going to take him away to demon detention. When my father told me …”

  “Your father knows?” I was shocked. The Raja had never been the most affectionate father, particularly after he found out about Neel’s
mom being a demon. He’d even made Lal crown prince instead of Neel, but I never thought he would stoop so low. “He just let Neel get taken like that? What the heck?”

  “I know, I know.” Lal gave a dramatic sigh through a couple sniffles. “But I won’t rest until we rescue my big brother, Kiran.”

  “Do you have a plan?” I asked. “You know, I was thinking, maybe we could ask your old demonology teacher for help?”

  “K. P. Das? That oddball? He is not even teaching anymore, but off in the woods above the palace calculating formulas and writing equations that make no sense to anyone but himself.” Lal was suddenly dry-eyed and full of irritation. “I hated that class. Never even handed in my final.”

  That startled me. Unless I was wrong, I thought Neel had once told me that demonology was Lal’s favorite subject. But I must have been misremembering.

  Just then, there was a noise at the suite door. Lal strode up to it and yanked it open. As if they’d been listening the whole time with their ears pressed to the door, in stumbled three maids with trays of food, new clothes, soap, and hair things for me. They didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed at being caught. The three eavesdroppers didn’t understand why I didn’t want them to stay and help me eat. I noticed that all three of them were wearing combat boots under their kurta-pajamas and one even had her hair styled like mine—including the bottom of her braid being dyed green!

  “That’s a super-nice offer, but I can manage to feed myself,” I said, trying to shoo them out. But it was Lal who got embarrassed and decided to go instead.

  “I should probably let you get settled,” he said, blushing.

  “No, we haven’t finished talking about …” I sputtered. One of the women jammed a crunchy piece of fish chop in my mouth, so I couldn’t talk until I finished chewing.

  “Tomorrow,” said Lal, raising his eyebrows significantly as he turned back from halfway down the stairs. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  I was still fighting off my enthusiastic helpers, so all I could do was nod in agreement.

  It took me another ten minutes to get rid of the curious maids, convincing them that, no, Princess Demon Slayer, the savior of the Kingdom Beyond, really could feed herself. Also bathe herself and brush her own teeth. All three of them asked if they could take selfies with me, though, before they left. It was with a sigh of relief that I shut the heavy doors behind them. I guess I’d thought being a famous hero and reality TV star would feel, somehow, more awesome, but the kind of attention I’d gotten since coming to the palace just felt suffocating.

  I nibbled on some more spicy fish chop as I looked around my suite. My rooms were beautiful, with a huge mosquito-net-covered carved bed, silver pots of flowers everywhere, carved leaf motifs on the marble walls, and one wall that wasn’t even really there but opened out to the balcony. I walked out there now, looking from the balcony over the darkened garden. I could smell the night-blooming jasmine, heady on the warm evening air. Far in the distance came the sparkle of moonlight reflecting off the distant ocean. Then I was getting goose bumps on my arms, but it wasn’t from the warm night breeze. It was the faint rustle to my right that told me I wasn’t alone.

  “Who’s there?” I demanded, my bow in my hand and an arrow nocked and ready.

  “Hi, Your Highness-ship!” Naya heaved herself over the dark balcony railing and ran straight at me, barely giving me a chance to put my weapon away before she wrapped me in a bear hug.

  “What did that two-faced crown prince want?” snapped Tuntuni, flapping over to my shoulder. “I thought he’d never get out of here.”

  “He’s not two-faced! Lal wants to get his brother out of detention as much as we do.” I looked meaningfully at Mati, who had pulled herself onto the balcony just behind Naya.

  “Well, congratulations on making it through the first test!” said Mati, ignoring my comment about Lal. I wondered what had happened between the two friends to make her so upset with him. They used to be super close, and now she’d not just left the palace to join an anti-government skateboarding resistance group, but was refusing to even mention his name.

  “How did you two climb up here?” I looked over the railing for a ladder but saw nothing.

  “We flew,” said Naya promptly, but then Tuntuni gave her a peck on the arm and the girl quickly corrected, “Erm, I mean, Tuni flew over here real quick. We were behind him with the auto rikshaw.”

  That still didn’t explain how they’d gotten up so many stories to my balcony.

  “We saw the broadcast of your first test,” said Naya, hopping up on her toes with enthusiasm. “Congratulations, Princess, you were wonderful!”

  “Um, thanks!” I was relieved to see Naya looking like her normal, perky self. Even though I hadn’t exactly asked her to stow away with me, I felt responsible for her and was glad to see Mati was taking good care of the girl just like she’d said.

  “I for one was sure you were going to get stuck in a tree trunk by those petni and shakchunni,” squawked Tuni.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, buddy!”

  “Keep your voices down! We’re not exactly here with a royal invitation,” Mati shushed. Then she grabbed my arm and pulled me close toward her. “Listen, Cuz, this isn’t a social call. We’re here because our spies intercepted a message that we wanted to get to you right away.”

  “Intercepted?” Why was my cousin talking like a movie secret agent? “What do you mean?”

  Mati lowered her voice even more. “They’re not going to transfer Neel to the on-land holding cell before your third test. So we’re going to have to get him out the hard way.”

  “The hard way?” I repeated, feeling my stomach flip. “What’s the hard way?”

  “We’re going to have to rescue him from the hotel—under the water,” explained Mati.

  “But he’s in a detention cell, not in a hotel,” I corrected.

  “Oh, you haven’t heard?” chirped Tuni, pecking at the plate of food I’d brought out to the balcony with me. A piece of beguni, or battered and fried eggplant, hung from his beak as he went on, “After you and me and Neel destroyed his fortress last fall, Sesha, your lovely birth father, built a huge underwater fortress and casino. The detention center is in the subbasement level, but above is all high rollers, slot machines, and snake-friendly cigar shops.”

  “There was a huge segment about the casino on TV a few weeks ago.” Naya pulled out her phone and typed in something. “Here it is, look!”

  The first thing I saw on the screen were the scrolling words Lifestyles of the Rich and Monstrous. It was obviously some sort of celebrity lifestyle show, hosted by none other than ex–Kingdom Beyond cricket captain and overall king of pomposity, Suman Rahaman. Reporting from inside a deep-sea diver’s outfit, Sooms toured his viewers around the gold-plated outside of the gaudy TSK underwater casino. A few minutes later, he was inside, having changed out of his diving costume into a way-too-tight sherwani suit, marveling at the dripping chandeliers and snake motifs emblazoned in gold everywhere. The place was totally disgusting and so typical Sesha.

  “A hotel-slash-casino-slash-fortress so exclusive, no one even knows which of the seven oceans it’s under!” exclaimed the fancy host. “Tune in next time on Lifestyles of the Rich and Monstrous! Until then, champagne wishes and cadaver dreams!”

  “Wow, that underwater casino’s really, um … something.” I fake suppressed a gag, which made Naya at least laugh. “So how did you find all this out, I mean, about them not taking Neel to the on-land place and us having to rescue Neel from under the water?”

  Mati pointed to Naya’s phone. “They’re not transferring anyone anymore to the on-land facility. We saw a video message from Sesha.”

  “Wait a minute,” I sputtered. Zuzu and I didn’t watch as many spy shows as we did science fiction ones, but I’d seen enough to learn a couple basic spy things. “If Sesha sent you a video, it’s got to be a trap, right?”

  “We don’t think so.” Tuni p
aced back and forth on the balcony railing with his wings behind his back, like some kind of detective or lawyer. A piece of cauliflower he’d obviously stolen from my dinner plate bobbed up and down from his beak like some kind of flowering cigar. “The Serpent King has been broadcasting this video all over Demon Land—to torture those rakkhosh whose relatives have been taken. But it wasn’t in range of anything we would pick up in the Kingdom Beyond.”

  “If the Pink-Sari Skateboarders didn’t have eyes and ears everywhere, we’d never have seen it,” explained Mati. “That’s why we think it’s authentic.”

  “Our guess is he’s trying to make money by running a competing reality game show—Who Wants to Be a Rakkhosh Savior? or something equally horrible.” Tuni pecked again at my plate, nibbling at some spinach leaves until I shooed him away. “Filming rakkhosh as they unsuccessfully try to save their relatives from the underwater detention center.”

  Mati shook her head grimly. “It’s totally sick.”

  “Look, Your Serene Princess-ship, here’s the video!” Naya hit a button on her phone. I leaned over the small screen, almost giving a shout as Sesha’s slimy face filled it.

  “Welcome, hopeful rakkhosh, to this instructional video to entering The Snake King Towers underwater detention center!” said Sesha with a sly smile. “Your sister’s disappeared? Your father has a heart condition and doesn’t have his medicine? Your little kiddies are crying for you from their detention cells? Why not try to save them? Why not try to, dare I say it, be a hero?” He cackled evilly, petting his hooded cobras that wound around his wrists. Naya visibly shuddered. As for myself, I was experiencing a mix of rage and disgust and confusion. There he was, my biological father. Why was he so evil? And how much of him had rubbed off on me? Could someone who was the daughter of an evil serpent king ever really hope to be good?

  “For those of you foolish enough to attempt it, I have created this helpful video to share the many terrible ways you can die in your attempt to enter my detention center without invitation.” Sesha casually wound the twisting cobras around his ringed hands. “First of all, only one chosen one per captive may be appointed to rescue said captive. If a captive does not appoint a chosen one themselves, then their nearest relative may appoint a chosen one for them.”