I laughed, pulling aside the eye patch and beak mask to reveal my own face. “It’s me, Ai-Ma—Kiranmala!”
Neel’s grandmother’s nose twitched as if she didn’t trust her failing eyesight.
“Ai-Ma, it is me!” I stepped closer to her, hoping she’d recognize me. Finally, after squinting at me for some time, first through her glasses, and then not, Ai-Ma leaped, long-legged, over the mess of her desk and grabbed me so hard in her long arms that I almost couldn’t breathe.
Oh, my sweet candied dung beetle of a girl child! Oh, my sweet moon entrail of a chitty-boo! Oh, forgive me for not recognizing you right away! Come give your old Ai-Ma a kiss!” Neel’s rakkhoshi grandmother crooned and cajoled, cradling me in her huge warty arms like I was nothing more than a baby.
“Ai-Ma!” I hissed. “Let me down! What if the dentist comes in?”
“Don’t worry, he’s on his cockroach break!” Ai-Ma continued to sing and croon to me, dribbling long strands of saliva on my head. “Oh, my stinky baby-ta, oh, my fleshy human maybe-ta …” she sang tunelessly as she rocked me, kissing me again and again with her slobbery lips.
I gave the old woman a peck on her hairy, leathery cheek, and she finally put me down. I slipped back on my disguise in case the dentist returned from his break earlier than planned. And thank goodness I did, because not a few seconds had gone by before the front door swung open, and a little snarling dentist with bristly hairs all over his body and a mirrored headband stepped into the office door. Was he a khokkosh? A porcupine? A giant dung beetle? I couldn’t really tell.
Not even paying any attention to either me or the mess of her desk, Dr. I. M. Pagol tossed Ai-Ma his small briefcase, which she caught with her teeth.
“Miss Mooneypenny, I presume,” he cackled, “is the next victim in the room?”
I tried not to laugh. Ai-Ma looked nothing like someone named Miss Mooneypenny, but who was I to judge the fake name she’d chosen? After all, I was the one in a red wig, bird mask, and eye patch.
“Hi, boss! His Royal Snaky Highness is in the dental chair!” Ai-Ma warbled in a terrible fake falsetto.
The strange dentist snarled, taking out a metal dental pick from his pocket and chewing on it. “Good, great, grain.” He rubbed his hands together. “Can’t wait to cause some pain!”
“Super, boss! No one causes pain better than you! You’re the best!” Ai-Ma twitted like she was performing in some old-time play. “Your new hygienist will be assisting you!”
She gave me a jaw-shaking pat on the head. I noticed her wig was hanging off one ear a little crookedly, revealing part of her balding head, but decided not to say anything.
“A new hygienist, I’ll be gum! What happened to my old one?” The dentist gave me an appraising look. The fact that a little trickle of drool escaped his sharp fangs as he did so only made me more nervous.
“You were behind on my salary, so you said I could eat her,” Ai-Ma said, giving me a broad wink as if to say it wasn’t true. I wasn’t exactly sure. “I’ll send her in after you turn on the sleeping gas.” Ai-Ma handed the little creature a pair of pliers so big they were practically as tall as he was. He snorted and clapped at the sight of the instrument.
“Oh, toss it! Oh, toss it!” he begged like a very ugly dog with a bone.
Ai-Ma did, and the strange little dentist leaped up but missed the pliers, getting hit squarely on the head. Ouch, that must’ve hurt! But the animallike creature just blinked away the blood now dripping down from his forehead. “At the count of ten!” he begged, “Oh, try it again!”
“Six and a half, twenty-five, thirty-seven, one hundred two … TEN!” Ai-Ma counted, then tossed it.
This time, he did a somersault and caught the pliers in midair between his back feet. Ai-Ma clapped, indicating that I should too. I noticed that along with the giant pliers, the dentist also dug through a filing cabinet to pull out a rusty-toothed saw. He dragged both instruments behind him into the adjoining examination room, where I was assuming Sesha already was.
I didn’t have time to be nervous at the thought of my evil bio dad being so close, though, because as soon as Dr. Pagol closed the examination room door behind him, a square tile from the ceiling moved aside to reveal Naya’s enthusiastic face. “Hi, Your Royal Highnosity!” she whispered a little too loudly. “It’s super awesome up here! Like a slumber party minus the part where we braid each other’s hair!”
“I’m sure it is!” I hissed. “Now keep your voice down and tell me when you’ve hooked up the sleeping gas!”
Naya moved aside with a slight oof noise, and Mati gave me a thumbs-up from the ductwork. “We’re ready whenever you are. As soon as the dentist pulls the fang and you get ahold of it, give us the signal, and we’ll flood the place with sleeping gas so that you and Ai-Ma can get away!”
Before I had a chance to ask anything else, the dirty ceiling tile slipped back into place. And it wasn’t a moment too soon, because the dentist soon popped his hyena-like face around the door. “Hurry up, you bleepedy-bleep! Send that pirate now, or I’ll make you weep!”
“Don’t speak to her like that, you nasty little …” I began to say, but Ai-Ma pinched me hard with her bony fingers. Ouch, that hurt.
“She’s on her way, boss!” the old rakkhoshi crone singsonged. She smiled, her three crooked teeth poking this way and that, and the dentist shuddered at the sight.
“All right, fine! But no eye-patch contests on my time.”
He disappeared around the corner, and Ai-Ma gave me a bracing look. “Your turn now, my fart-flavored lollipop! Just help the dentist, get the fang, and then give the signal.”
I headed toward the examination room, but remembered a very important detail as my hand was just turning the knob. “What’s the signal?”
“Why, this of course!” Ai-Ma put her right hand under her left armpit and made a trumpet call of rude noises.
I shook my head. Figured.
Inside the room, I was a bundle of nerves. I couldn’t see Sesha right away, what with the sea of torture devices between me and the examination chair. Finally, when I saw him, though, it was a strange anticlimax. The Serpent King had a small breathing mask on his nose. His mouth was a little slack and his eyes were closed. He looked pretty much the same otherwise—the thick black hair and moustache, the rings on his fingers and silk clothes. But without his wit and his cruel words, without his flashing green eyes, he looked a lot less scary. That and the fact that he was drooling a little bit and making strange burbling noises with his mouth.
At the sight of him lying there, knocked out and helpless, I had a horrible thought. What if I just fired an arrow at him now, and was done with it? I could still take his tooth, and he’d never hurt Neel, or me, or my moon mother again. He was violent, and scary, and more than deserved it. I mean, this whole game show thing was obviously some kind of twisted plan to take over the Kingdom Beyond from the Raja, or who knows what. In which case, I’d be saving hundreds, maybe thousands of lives. A voice inside me seemed to urge me on, whispering, “Do it, do it.” But could I? Could I injure, or even kill, my evil bio father while he slept? I itched my snake scar, then reached down for my bow, and yet, something stopped me. For some reason, I thought of Ma’s and Baba’s faces, and how disappointed they would be in me. I couldn’t attack someone who was unconscious. Not even someone as purely evil as the Serpent King. He was a monster, it was true. But if I attacked him like this, then I would be too.
But I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t seriously tempted.
“What should I do?” I whispered. The little dentist, who seemed to be dancing some kind of spiky-booted jig on Sesha’s silk-kurta’d chest, turned around, and gave me a condescending sneer.
“Weren’t top of your class in hygiene school, eh?” Dr. Pagol cackled, tossing back a few sharp-looking dental picks like they were candy. “Just pull as hard as you can when I say!”
“Sure, okay.”
“Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!”
shouted the dentist as he attached the pliers to Sesha’s fang. “Grab me and pull hard, dum dum!” I grabbed on to his armpits and pulled with all my might. The little creature was squirmy and kind of disgusting to touch, but after a few minutes of tugging, we both stumbled backward, Sesha’s fang now between the teeth of the dentist’s pliers. It was long, and white, and glistening with some sort of poison. And it was the key to freeing Neel from his dungeon.
As soon as I saw the serpent tooth, I gave the armpit-farting noise signal. Immediately, I heard the whoosh of the sleeping gas being pumped into the room. Only, Naya must have made some kind of mistake, because the little dentist didn’t fall down asleep, like I was expecting. Instead, he started giggling like he was an honorary member of Baba’s early morning laughing club. (Yes, as totally weird as it sounds, a bunch of adults get together at the Parsippany community park to laugh every morning in unison, because it’s, like, good for your blood pressure or arteries or whatever.)
“You’re really good at that armpit song!” the dentist giggled, snorting and rolling around a bit. “Do it again! Again! For even more long!”
The other problem was, whatever pipes my friends had connected, they’d obviously shut off the actual sleeping gas to Sesha’s mask. Because in less than a minute, the Serpent King’s eyes popped open.
He was confused, both because he had just been knocked out, and by my costume. “They must not be paying dentists enough,” he lisped through his missing front fang. “If you have to moonlight as pirates?” And then he too began to hoot and laugh. Clearly, no one had the policeman’s anti-laughing sickness.
The dentist was now rolling around on the ground, clutching at his stomach. “Yo ho hoo! A pirate’s life for you!”
“Ai-Ma!” I yelled even as I whipped off my hygienist’s robe. I carefully dropped the bloody fang from the pliers into my backpack. The wig and patch I also threw off, but I was careful to leave the bird mask on, to protect myself from the effects of the laughing gas now heavy in the air.
“Wait a minute, who are you? What are you doing with my tooth?” Sesha was still laughing, but he was growing less confused by the second. “I know you! You’re that daughter of mine! Give that back! Give it here! How much sharper than a serpent’s tooth is a thieving child!”
He reached for me, a bit unsteady on his feet, just as Ai-Ma came whipping through the door. “Come on, my adopted sweet grand-boo-boo!” she yelled, throwing me over her shoulder and leaping out of the window with one long-legged stride.
“Miss Mooneypenny, my hairy dumpling dear!” the dentist half chuckled, half wailed. “What will I do without your ugly face and figure here?”
“You can shove this terrible job in your dung-beetle wing nut!” yelled Ai-Ma, yanking off her cardigan, glasses, and wig with one swift gesture. “I quit!”
“Wait! Wait!” Sesha giggled and snorted, but he was sounding more like himself with every second. “Henchmen! Get them! They have my tooth! Don’t let them get away! Bring my daughter to me!”
And just like that, Sesha was flinging uneven green bolts of energy at us in between giggles. Poor Ai-Ma cried out when they caught and singed her skin. Over Ai-Ma’s shoulder, I nocked arrow after arrow in my bow, but they didn’t seem to bother Sesha. And as if the flying bolts of pain weren’t bad enough, at the Serpent King’s cry, the scraggly lawn outside the dentist’s office was filled with snakes of all kinds: boas, rattlers, pythons, and mambas. They slithered viciously in our direction, surrounding Ai-Ma in a trice. They hissed and snapped at us.
“Oh, dear, my licorice-toad dung drop!” Poor Ai-Ma exclaimed as another of Sesha’s bolts singed her skin. “I’m afraid this getaway isn’t going according to plan!”
Ai-Ma was right. With the green bolts of pain whirling all around us now, and the deadly snakes writhing at our feet, there was no way we were going to get away. And with one arm occupied with holding me up, Ai-Ma couldn’t even fight off our attackers.
“Put me down, Ai-Ma. Let me help you fight!”
“No way, my sweet dumpling pants, what we need is a set of wings!” Ai-Ma pointed at the sky, but at what, I wasn’t sure.
“I’ve got you, Grandma!” said a familiar voice. I couldn’t see who it was but breathed a sigh of relief as Ai-Ma and I were both swept up into the sky. The snakes hissed and writhed in anger at our escape.
“Get back here, you piratical daughter!” lisped a one-toothed Sesha from the dentist’s office window. The dental bib was still hanging crookedly around his neck from a chain. “I’ll get you for thisss!”
I was so relieved to have been plucked out of danger that I didn’t even register who had saved us for a few minutes. It was only when I finally looked up that I saw who was flying above us. As soon as I saw who it was, my relief turned to horror, and I screamed.
At first, I tried to tell myself I was asleep. This had to be a nightmare, like the Rakkhoshi Rani visiting my room. Only, that hadn’t been a nightmare at all, had it? And neither was this. But I couldn’t believe my eyes, even as my brain slowly processed the information it was receiving.
Our flying rescuer was Naya. Naya, that selfie-taking, cutesie pie, multi-ponytailed optimist. Naya, the new kid in my school who’d stowed away on my intergalactic rikshaw ride. Naya, who had emigrated from the Kingdom Beyond to Parsippany, just like me and Ma and Baba. It was Naya all right, but in her full rakkhoshi form, with huge wings sprouting out of her shoulders.
“I’m sorry, Your Royal Highness, ma’am! I can explain everything, really I can!”
Apparently now that she had taken on her rakkhoshi form, she was speaking in the rhyming way of her people.
“Explain?” I shrieked from Ai-Ma’s arms. Naya had Ai-Ma under the armpits and was flying like that, holding up the old woman even as the old woman held on to me. “There’s nothing to explain! You’re rakkhosh and a liar! Just wait until I tell Mati!”
“Not to contradict your prose,” rhymed Naya, flapping her huge wings. “But Miss Mati already knows.”
That’s when I realized Naya wasn’t the only air rakkhoshi flying in the skies above Demon Land. All around us were flying skateboarders, and when I saw them all together like that, I realized where I’d seen the girls before. Oh no. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. But it was.
“You’re the flying fangirls!” I screamed. “The ones who chased me and Neel last fall!”
“Prince Neel is a cutie, Prince Neel is sweet!” cackled some flying rakkhoshis to the left and right of us. “Prince Neel’s toes are a great treat!” They did a little pep rally–type cheer as they flew, rolling their arms in circles and pumping their fists in the air.
And then some other girls joined in. “We all have his posters up in our rooms. Neel’s so dreamy, he makes our hearts bloom!”
I should have known! Naya’s clueless giggliness, her fangirl behavior with Buddhu and Bhootoom, her familiarity with all the back issues of Teen Taal magazine. She was one of the flying fangirls we’d run from last fall! And she’d had the guts to pretend to be my friend! I bet she had just been waiting on the chance to snack on my limbs this whole time!
“Let me down! Just let me drop!” I yelled, aiming my arrow upward at Naya’s face. “I don’t want to be rescued by the likes of you!”
“Num num gumdrop!” Ai-Ma grabbed on to me tighter, breaking my arrow in the process. “Don’t say that! I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you!”
It’s not like I didn’t appreciate the irony. Here was Ai-Ma, a three-toothed, near bald, drooling, and hairy crone of a rakkhoshi. Yet, her I trusted. She was one of the few good ones. Then there was adorable, perky Naya, refugee to Parsippany. And she was a rakkhoshi too. But as opposed to Ai-Ma, Naya’s identity terrified me. Maybe it was that Ai-Ma had never disguised what she was, nor had she chased Neel and me across the skies, threatening to eat our toes. Or maybe it was the horrible realization, deep in the pit of my stomach, that if Naya was already living in New Jersey, passing herself
off as human, then other rakkhosh could do the same. There really would be nothing to stop those lines of rakkhosh refugees in Demon Land from fleeing to my dimension. I closed my eyes, willing away the image of my parents being attacked again, being hurt again by rakkhosh. A wave of nausea rolled over me. I was obviously no hero if I couldn’t even tell ally from enemy, friend from foe. I felt my snake scar throb on my arm.
“Kiran, I know it’s a lot to process!” It was Mati, riding up on the back of Bangoma. Right next to her was the skateboarder Priya on Bangomee. She smiled, revealing wickedly sharp teeth, and then blew out fire from her mouth like she was a dragon. I shuddered, holding back a scream.
Mati shouted at me again, “Since the game show began, with the roundups and sending of demons to the detention center, we’ve been working in the interspecies resistance. There are some rakkhosh willing to work with humans besides Ai-Ma, you know.”
She said it like it was no big deal. But it was a huge deal. My cousin was making a huge mistake, and she didn’t even know it.
“You weren’t even around last fall!” I yelled at her. “When Neel and I were fighting for our lives, fighting to save you and Lal. You don’t know what went on—you were trapped in that magical sphere the whole time.”
We’d landed in a field somewhere back within the borders of the Kingdom Beyond. Naya had let Ai-Ma down, who had in turn let me down gently on the grass. I tried not to freak out at the sight of all the rakkhoshis around me. At least half the Pink-Sari Skateboarders weren’t human, and most of those who were rakkhoshis were either fire or air clan—and so were breathing out flames or had huge wings. Their fangs, horns, and claws were out now, and they looked like the monsters they were.
I felt a hand on my shoulder as Mati pulled me around to face her. “Don’t you dare throw last fall in my face. It wasn’t my fault I was a sphere! And besides, you think that being a hero back then is all that counts? Where have you been in the meantime?”
Game of Stars Page 16
