“Why am I turning green, Professor?” I asked urgently. “Is it something to do with my connection to the Serpent King?”
The little man didn’t answer, but rustled through stacks of dusty papers on his desk until he found the yellowed sheet he was apparently searching for. He spent several minutes studying the paper. First reading it with his glasses on, and then with his glasses pushed up to his forehead. Finally, he put his glasses on upside down and read the paper that way. Even this didn’t seem to satisfy him, because he then shoved the paper into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully.
“Professor Das,” I said a bit louder, to make myself heard over the sound of the little man chewing on his own scientific notes. “Am I growing evil?”
“Evil?” Khogen Prasad Das peered at me so owlishly he reminded me of Bhootoom. He swallowed his notes with a dramatic gulp before coughing a bit and saying, “No one turns good or evil by magic. That’s not how it works. You become evil when you choose to act against your conscience again and again. Being good or evil is about the decisions you make each and every day. It’s not something that just happens to you.”
His words relieved some of my anxiety at least. “Well, then, what’s going on with my green skin and hair?”
The little man ripped off another page from a leather-bound notebook, sniffed it, then chewed on it like it was a piece of gum. “You obviously left something of yourself in the fortress last you were there. What I can’t understand is if you made it there before, why you can’t remember where it is to get there again?”
“I’ve never been to Sesha’s hotel fortress …” I began, and then I stopped myself. “Well, except in Essence-Tyme, I guess.”
The little professor blinked at me, his eyes all buggy through his glasses. “And you left something there of yourself?”
K. P. Das took out a huge mortar and handed me the heavy pestle. He gestured at me to start pounding as he threw into the stone bowl a weird assortment of ingredients: ginger, garlic, cumin, chilies, and then an entire melty bar of Cadbury’s milk chocolate, which he licked off his fingers.
“My hair. I had to chop off a bit of my hair to get free from there,” I said as he gestured for me to start pounding.
“Yes, well, that’s obviously it, isn’t it?” he gave me a skeptical look. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to leave a part of yourself behind when in an undersea serpent hotel?”
“Um, no?” I said as the professor kept tossing various spices and other ingredients into the mortar.
“Honestly! What do they teach young people in schools these days anyway?”
“A lot of test-taking skills?” I sneezed as the professor poured some black seeds into the bowl for me to pound.
“Well, you’ve got to be a bit more careful, child,” scolded the professor. “You are the jewel who can cement his power; you are the tail to his head. The all is one, you know!”
Why did I keep hearing that phrase? “What does that mean, ‘the all is one’?”
“Oh, just the metaphysical unity of the multiverse, the meaninglessness of space and time, of any traditional sense of linear existence, you know! All that good stuff!”
The problem was, I didn’t know. I’d barely understood anything he’d just said. “Um …” I said, but the professor smiled vaguely, made a clucking noise, and patted my head in a “there, there” sort of gesture. Then he took a big scoop of the noxious, chocolaty paste from the mortar, tasted it, and nodded.
I pointed at the smelly mixture the professor had just eaten a bit of. “Should I eat some of it too? Is this what will get rid of my snake skin problem?”
“Mmm?” K. P. Das looked startled. “Oh, no, this mixture has nothing to do with that!”
“Then it’s to help us find which ocean Neel is being held under?”
“No, no! Nothing to do with that either!”
What? I felt like bashing the little man in the head with the heavy pestle. “Then what is this you’ve been making?”
“Oh, I’ve been improving the formula for KiddiePow, trying to reduce the side effect of chest hair growth.” K. P. Babu peered under his kurta and groaned. “Darn. Furry as ever. You won’t believe how many mothers are touchy about a little extra chest hair on their babies and toddlers.”
I slammed the pestle down into the mortar and stood up. “Professor, are you going to help me or not?”
“Well, don’t get so testy, my dear! Of course I’ll help you with your seven oceans problem! The snake skin problem, well, that’s something else entirely now that I know about you leaving your hair!”
The little man tut-tutted around, pulling notes and papers out of his file cabinets and desk drawers, even from as unlikely places as under his seat cushion and from inside his biscuit tin. Some of these he nibbled on, some he chewed and swallowed, and some he simply smelled and licked.
“All right!” he finally shouted. “I’ve got it! Come with me! We’ve got to gather up those fish I threw at you before!” He ran back out of the hut, picked up two baskets made of twigs, and gestured that I should help him gather up all the slimy fish he’d shot at me earlier out of that tennis-ball-thrower thing.
After we’d picked them all up (yuck), the professor grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward a small pond. I waited, totally confused, as K. P. Das attached a rope between his two bare feet and then—zipitty-zip!—climbed up a tamarind tree at the pond’s edge. When he was a little way above my head, the old man asked me to hand him seven of the fish we’d collected, one at a time (double yuck). “That one! No, that one!” He pointed. “The slimy one! The other slimy one!” Carefully, consulting some notes he’d made on the back of his arm, the professor hung the seven fish from one of the tree’s longest branches.
To come back down, the professor climbed awkwardly from my head onto my shoulders, and then started climbing down me, placing a foot in my hand, another uncomfortably at my waist. I helped K. P. Das as gently as I could down to the ground.
The little professor straightened his dhoti and proudly indicated the tree. “These seven fish I’ve hung are from each of the seven oceans in our dimension, and their blood runs with the color of that ocean,” he explained. “If you are a true friend to Neelkamal, when you look down into the pond, you will see only one fish—the fish from the ocean where he’s being held.”
I looked down at the pond, where I could see all seven of the fish reflected. How was this supposed to work?
“You must concentrate. Draw on your inner resources,” K. P. Das told me. What if I didn’t have any inner resources? I wanted to ask, but didn’t. Then he pointed to my bow and arrow. “When you see only one, you must shoot that fish—right in the eye. But you can only do so by looking down, at its reflection.”
This exercise, shooting a fish hanging from above you while only looking down at its reflection, sounded familiar. I think it was a part of one of the epic stories that Baba liked to tell me sometimes. Inner resources, the little man had said. Okay, I guess it was time for me to try and find some.
I tried to put everything else I’d just been thinking about out of my mind and focus on finding out where Neel was being kept. At first it was really hard, as my mind kept jumping around, as antsy as the monkey Buddhu. I kept worrying about my green skin, my parents, the game, Mati, Naya, Sesha, everything.
“Remember, everything is riding on you, Princess,” K. P. Das said in solemn tones.
“No pressure or anything,” I mumbled under my breath.
I gave myself a little mental shake. The professor was right. I had to get it together. This was no game, and no joke. Neel’s freedom, if not his life, depended on it. I nocked an arrow in my bow, then did Buddhu’s breathing technique: in for four, hold for four, out for four, to try and still my mind. I pictured Neel’s face, pictured him riding on Midnight next to me, fighting beside me, mad at me, laughing with me. I pictured him captured in that awful fortress, egging on that disloyal demon Bogli, forbidding me from rescuing him. I pictured
Raat’s love and his brother’s loyalty. I thought of my arrow like an extension of my own will, reaching up to find its mark, straight and true. I imagined I could feel the little puncture of the arrow as it went into the correct fish’s eye, showing me the way to save my friend.
Then, finally, when I felt still and steady, humming with concentration and power, I opened my eyes. Holding my bow pointing skyward, I peered down in the pond water, hoping I’d see one, and not seven, fish. And I did this time. I saw only a fish of glittering gold swaying above me from the tree branch. With another deep breath, I thought of Ma and Baba, imagining I could feel their hands on my shoulders, guiding me forward. And then the words came into my mind. The all is one, I thought. The all is one. I let my arrow fly.
My arrow hit the golden fish’s eye and I didn’t need to see the shower of honey-gold blood pouring down into the pond to know the answer. Neel’s mother had even told me with that rhyme she had recited back in my bedroom. But I’d been too stubborn to listen. Some hero I was.
Elladin, belladin, Honey-Gold Sea, she had said. And I knew that Neel was being held in a fortress under the Honey-Gold Ocean of Souls. Now I just needed to get myself there.
You’ll be off to the Honey-Gold Ocean of Souls right away, I presume?” asked K. P. Das. “Don’t worry, you’ll find your skin problem answer when you get there.”
“I have to wait anyway until moonrise tonight,” I explained as I mounted Raat. I was relieved to hear the professor didn’t think the green hair and skin situation was permanent. I’d hate to think how that’d go down in middle school. “Plus I want to go back to the palace and get Prince Lalkamal. He’ll be waiting for me.”
“Lalkamal? Why didn’t he come see me? He was always such a good boy. Got such high marks in my class, unlike that distractible brother of his.”
I turned the pakkhiraj around to face the teacher. Raat tossed his head impatiently. “Lal did well in your class?”
“Oh yes!” K. P. Das polished his thick lenses on his dhoti. “One of the best I’ve ever taught! His final demonology exam was wonderful—I always thought he should publish it, give up this royal-shoyal stuff and become a scholar! Very honorable profession, you know!”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure it is,” I said in a faint voice. I hadn’t remembered wrong, then, after all. It was such a small thing, but why would Lal lie about failing demonology class? About not turning in his final?
As Raat and I flew back to the palace, I was still wondering what reasons Lal could have for not telling the truth about something so silly like doing well in demonology. Was he afraid his father would find out how smart he was, and think it was somehow a bad thing? Was he ashamed about being book smart? Why? That was ridiculous, I thought, even as I remembered my own embarrassment in science class. But Dr. Dixon’s class felt like a zillion years ago. By the time I was bringing Raat down in a field outside the royal palace, I was still not sure what all this was about.
We’d just landed, and I was just trotting Raat through the early evening dusk in the direction of the stables, when I heard, then saw, a loud band party coming in my direction. They were dressed in bright red costumes with gold braids and played white instruments. It was an obnoxiously loud racket: five drums, five brass horns, and a conductor in a fancy red turban with a plume of starched turban folds sticking straight up. For who knows what reason, Neel’s pakkhiraj horse turned toward the music, like he wanted to join the parade. It was all I could do just to hang on as the stallion trotted along beside the band.
“What are you doing, boy?” I tried uselessly to tug him the other way.
Someone there. Like my boy, but not my boy, said the horse mysteriously. Needless to say, Raat was not quite as verbally gifted as Snowy, and I had a lot more trouble understanding what he meant.
“What’s going on?” I shouted at the band’s conductor, who pumped his baton up and down in time to the song. “Are you a wedding party or something?”
“No! A victory party!” yelled the conductor over the racket. There were torchbearers walking all around the band so that they were lit up by flames of flickering light. “Not only did Prince Lal pass his second test with flying colors, but we have just caught two demons trying to sneak into the palace grounds!”
That’s when I saw what was behind the band: a squadron of soldiers dragging a wheeled cage. The cage was coming up a rise in the road, and it was surrounded by so many villagers that even from Raat’s back, it was impossible for me to see what kind of monsters must be inside—probably some little doito or danav from the nearby woods.
Soon, the crowd grew as I was joined by palace servants and the lords and ladies who were called out by the band’s noise. I was regretting not stabling Neel’s pakkhiraj. The poor horse, initially curious, was now starting to get skittish in the crowd. He seemed terrified of all the fiery torches. His eyes grew big, and he started breathing heavy out of his nose. Finally, I dismounted. His sides shuddered as I tried to lead him through the crowd by the reins.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. Calm down, boy,” I whispered. But when I reached out to him with my mind, I couldn’t even understand any language. Just panic.
What made it worse was the crowd all around us. It was totally impossible for me to see now that I was on the ground, and I was feeling way claustrophobic. The people around me jeered at the demons, while some even threw rotten food and garbage at the cage. Most of the nasty stuff bounced off, but some clearly hit the prisoners inside as I heard wet thumps and squishes. Raat neighed and tried to break free of my hold. I dug out some more hardened bee nectar from my pocket, cooing at the frightened animal, looking for a way to get him out of the crowd.
So much hate. Scared. Want my boy. I want my boy.
I couldn’t blame the pakkhiraj. The force of hatred was thick in the air.
“Our heroes are gonna destroy you cannibals!” someone shouted, waving a fire-lit torch.
“Eat garbage, monster!” yelled a delicate-looking court lady, her features ugly with anger. “Time to get slayed!”
I was getting a little freaked out, and starting to worry about getting trampled, when I felt someone grab my arm and pull both me and Raat safely away from the crowd.
“Princess Kiranmala is here!” boomed the captain of the guard, lifting my hand in the air as if I’d just won a boxing match.
Then someone standing right next to him lifted up my other hand. “Let’s hear it for the Princess Demon Slayer!”
It was Lal, grinning at me and looking as handsome as ever in full princely armor, a shining sword at his side. Just seeing his honest and earnest face made me feel twenty times better. Things couldn’t be so bad if Lal was here.
The mood of the crowd shifted. Someone took up Lal’s lead and began happily chanting my new name: “Princess Demon Slayer, Princess Demon Slayer!”
Before I could say anything, the soldiers lifted me back up onto Raat’s back. Lal himself took his reins, and I was paraded around like some kind of victor returning from war.
No. False. No. False. No.
I couldn’t make heads or tails of the pakkhiraj’s panicky thoughts, but I did understand his fear. I tried as best as I could to emanate calm, slowing my own racing heartbeat, relaxing my own muscles, hoping the animal would sense my emotions. Lal was here, I kept repeating in my mind. Lal was here, and that meant everything was going to be okay.
From my perch on Raat’s back, I saw that the gathering wasn’t as scary as I’d initially thought. There were actually plenty of families with kids, and at the edge of the crowd were food vendors and toy sellers with everything from popcorn to balloons to pinwheels. There were novelty booths with baseball-style hats that said Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer? and T-shirts with Lal’s and my faces on them. A group of adorable little kids threw flowers at us, and all around us were grinning faces who seemed to take great delight in seeing Lal and me together. These were people who obviously believed we were the heroes they needed. I felt myself relax even
more.
Lal waved like I should bend toward him. The crowd went wild, as if he was calling me down for a kiss. But it was just his mouth near my ear. “Not bad for a sixth grader from Parsippany, eh, Princess?”
Trying not to be embarrassed by the fact that the crowd had the totally wrong idea about Lal and me, I let myself enjoy their cheering anyway. I smiled back at the prince’s friendly face. “It’s not bad at all.”
I wanted to tell him about my visit to K. P. Das, about discovering where his brother was being kept, even about my green skin worries, but all that would have to wait until we were somewhere less noisy. For now, I would just sit back on Raat and let myself enjoy the people’s attention. I felt like a filled-up balloon, all floaty on their admiration. I tried to ignore the skittish horse under me—he obviously had some kind of panic disorder, I’d have to talk to Neel about it when he came back—and started waving back to the crowd, just like Lal was doing. They cheered and called out our names even louder.
It felt great. I mean, so what if the stories that were being told about us weren’t entirely true? I had actually just done something really amazing—I’d hit that fish in the eye without even looking up at it and found out where Neel was imprisoned. So what if the recognition I was getting wasn’t exactly for the right thing? It still felt pretty darn good. I caught a glimpse of myself on the giant palace posters, my bow and arrow in my hand, leaping over a building as I fought a snarly-toothed rakkhosh. Did it matter that the details were wrong if the sentiment was right? I was a hero. I was a star. And wasn’t that the story that really counted?
Then, as the soldiers paraded me past the cage itself, my soaring emotions were basically flushed down the porta potti. A wave of nausea came over me, like a hand had reached inside my gut and squeezed my intestines tight. I saw for myself the prisoners the soldiers had caught. And I understood why Raat was so upset.
Game of Stars Page 18
