The Serpent's Secret (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #1)

by Sayantani DasGupta

  With a courage that came from somewhere deep but still unfamiliar, I picked up the petite bell with two fingers. Then I shook it.

  I didn’t hear anything, so I shook it again. It wasn’t until the third shake that a deafening gong-like noise from the bell startled me into almost dropping it.

  In a few seconds, the ground beneath me began to shake. And then the most horrible-looking creature emerged from the darkness of the cave. I sucked in my breath.

  The transit officer wasn’t as tall as the rakkhosh had been and looked nothing like that hairy, warty demon. Instead, it had a face like a cross between a lion and a rooster. On its head were a ginormous crown and three curved horns. Beneath its googly eyes and hooked nose was a toothy mouth. I took in the giraffe’s neck, the man’s arms and chest, the porcupine’s quill-filled tail. And I saw the spike-covered club that the creature dragged behind it on the ground. I swallowed hard. Then it … smiled at me? *double gulp*

  The beast shouted:

  “Fear not, fear not, fear not! You won’t be maimed or shot!

  Truth be told I can’t hold my own against one so strong, I’m a bag of bones!

  Sharp horns have I, but I use them not, my joints are old, my muscles shot.

  I have a club with spiky ends, but I won’t hit you, my dearest friend!

  Come closer, chum, into my cave. You’re tasty, young, and far too brave!

  Are you afraid? Are you insane? Do you want me all your blood to drain?

  Myself and I and my nine boys, we’ll grab your legs like two stick toys.

  You’re such a doll, you’re such a dear, we’ll eat you up if you have such fears!”

  It took a forcible effort to shut my mouth, which had dropped stupidly open during the officer’s speech. I couldn’t think of anything to say. The creature’s words and expression seemed—if not pleasant—at least not actively harmful. On the other hand, I’d rather not meet the transit officer’s nine mini-mes, and having my blood drained as a punishment for being afraid didn’t seem like an ideal plan either.

  “Um … are you the transit officer?” I finally asked.

  “No papers, eh? That’s such a shame.” The creature’s eyes went buggy. “Well then, we’ll have to play a game.”

  “What kind of game?” I wondered if the princes were through their checkpoint yet. Would they rescue me if the game this overgrown chicken was thinking about involved having me for lunch?

  “Answer these, my pretty, please!” The officer clucked. “What’s black and white and—”

  Really? Was this a joke?

  “And read all over?” I finished. “A newspaper!” My fifth-grade teacher Mrs. Ury had actually taught me that one—red and read were homophones—when you spoke them aloud they sounded the same and that was the root of the joke.

  The creature seemed so sad, I actually felt sorry for it. “Try another one,” I encouraged.

  “What has four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, three legs in the evening—”

  “Man!” I practically laughed as I blurted out the answer. It was the old question that the Sphinx was supposed to have asked the Greek hero Oedipus. Human beings crawled in the morning—hence the four legs—they walked on two when they were grown, and then walked with a cane when they were old. I’d seen that one on a documentary I’d watched at Zuzu’s house about the ancient Greeks.

  The transit officer was pacing around now, stomping its giant rooster feet. I was careful to stay out of the way of its porcupine tail as it moved back and forth. But something like hope was blossoming in the pit of my stomach. Maybe I’d make it through this test and be able to rescue Ma and Baba after all.

  “I reach to the sky, I touch the ground, sometimes I leave, but I’m always around?” The officer’s chicken wattle wobbled in agitation.

  This was an oldie but goodie from one of Niko’s joke books.

  “Yeah, I know that one too; it’s a tree,” I said. “Listen, don’t get upset. It’s not your fault. Can I go now? I bet my friends will be worried about me.”

  This was obviously the wrong thing to say, because the officer’s bloodshot eyes narrowed in my direction. My heart gave a jerky leap.

  “Friends?” it spat. “Kik, kik, ri gee! You’ve got friends, have you? Oh my, oh gee!”

  I licked my dry lips. “They’re not really good friends.”

  “Those were just practices, my pretty, my sweet,” the officer huffed, baring its yellow teeth. “If you don’t get this one, I’ll eat your feet!

  “The ocean’s pearl, a grain of sand

  More precious than all the gold in the land

  Life would be flat, life would be bland

  Without this diamond in your hand.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. I hadn’t heard this one before. And now the transit officer was angry with me. I wondered even if I were to get the answer right, would it ever let me go?

  “The ocean’s pearl?” I stalled.

  “Kluk!”

  “Life would be flat?”

  “Kik ri gi!” the creature crowed. It was suddenly looking much happier. “Into my stomach with thee!”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute, I’m thinking,” I protested. “Besides, I probably don’t taste very good.”

  “Princesses taste so very nice! I won’t even need a spice!”

  At the officer’s words, the childhood nursery rhyme about “sugar and spice and everything nice” popped into my head.

  “Hold on.” I grinned. “I’ve got it!”

  “No, you don’t! All lies and stuff! Princess makes a big old bluff!” But the officer looked worried. Its spiny tail swished in the rocky soil.

  What’s from the ocean, like a grain of sand, a diamond in your hand? I got a flash of a day trip I had taken with my parents last summer to Atlantic City: the surf, the sand, the gritty taste of the waves on my lips.

  I smirked confidently at the officer. “Salt.”

  “Kik ra koo!” The beast’s googly eyes rotated wildly. “Into my gizzard with you!”

  “Wait a minute. Stop! That’s not fair. I got the right answer; it’s salt!”

  The creature banged its club on the side of the cave, causing a small avalanche of stones. I ducked, covering my head with my hands.

  “That’s not fair, that’s not right! I won’t let you go without a fight!” The officer stomped its foot. Its cheeks were now wet with enormous tears and gurgling noises came from its beak.

  Before I had a chance to say anything else, the transit officer lay down on the ground, kicking its arms and legs.

  “What will my supervisor say,” it wailed, “now that I’ve let you get away?”

  It was having a monster of a tantrum. For a minute, I was tempted to give the giant rooster a time-out in its coop. Ma would have never stood for such bad behavior.

  “If the princess gets me fired,” the officer shrieked, “who will feed these boys I’ve sired?”

  “Shh! Stop crying so loud!” I urged, trying to edge by the flailing monster.

  Just my luck, all this yelling was going to wake up his entire family of younger, stronger, monstrous offspring. And I really didn’t feel like getting divided up as an after-school snack among this guy’s nine hungry kids!

  Waa hoo hoo!” the creature cried, its face on the ground. “Boo hoo kik ri goo!”

  “It’s okay, don’t cry! Shh!” I whispered, scooching past the hiccuping and snotting transit officer. My heart was beating like crazy in my throat. Would I get away in time?

  When I heard the sound of yawning coming from the cave, I stopped trying to be quiet and just flat-out ran as fast as I could.

  “Cluck! Cluck! Clacket! What’s all the racket?” someone called. I didn’t wait to see if the officer would answer, but kept running until I was well out of sight of the transit corridor. I ran so fast my gym teachers would be very proud. Even Mr. Taylor, whom I had accidentally—and completely nonfatally!—injured once. I only stopped to catch my breath when I wa
s sure I couldn’t hear giant monster chicken sounds cackling behind me anymore.

  After a few minutes of no younger versions of the transit officer chasing me down, I finally let myself relax a little. I was safe. At least for now.

  As barren as the previous landscape had been, I was shocked to see the change on the other side of the mountain. I was overlooking a lush valley intersected by several rivers whose source was a snowcapped peak in the far distance. Beyond that peak, I was pretty sure I could see a sparkling ocean dancing with the serene blue sky.

  I was finally here, in the Kingdom Beyond Seven Oceans and Thirteen Rivers. Now, just to find the princes and get on with rescuing my parents. How much time did we have to get to them before the spell “expired”? I had no way of knowing.

  Going up the mountain had been a hard scramble over sharp rocks. Now I ambled down a grassy slope. I took off my sweatshirt and tied it around my waist, enjoying the warm sun on my skin. My skin. I reached for my bandanna to tie it over my scar. But then I remembered I didn’t have one. I’d changed clothes at home before we’d left. Crap. I never went anywhere without long sleeves on, or else something to cover up the weird, U-shaped scar on my upper arm—like a strange, saggy pair of glasses. I felt relieved that I’d been wearing my sweatshirt during the trip from New Jersey, so Lal and Neel hadn’t seen my hideous blemishes all hanging out there in the open the whole time. Of course, Neel had already seen my arm scar once, and I’d be lucky if he ever forgot that awful sight. I’d have to find a scarf or something to tie over it before I found the brothers, or at least just put my hoodie back on.

  It had been late fall on the other side of the mountain, but here it seemed to be spring. There were riots of blossoms on all the trees that gave the valley a festive air. A family of bottle-green dragonflies zoomed past my face, and fat bees feasted on the wildflower carpet beneath my feet. As I walked farther down, I realized there was another surprise waiting for me at the bottom of the valley. I was no longer alone!

  A few yards in front of me was a marketplace. The bazaar was right next to a babbling stream from which I could see fish leaping out, their golden bodies catching and reflecting the sunlight. I crossed over a little bridge and onto the dusty main path through the center of the market. Off of it, countless little alleyways zigzagged this way and that.

  The buildings lining the main street seemed to be built by the same architect as those ramshackle alleyways, because they zigzagged too. They were slapped together haphazardly, with the top floors at slight angles to the bottom floors, so that nothing exactly lined up. Entire rooms seemed to be added on as afterthoughts and stuck out like pimples from the upper stories of some buildings. A twisted little pink house leaned so heavily on the patched green one next door it seemed to be riding piggyback. Bright saris and other laundry waved at me from the flat rooftops. On one crooked clothesline, I saw rows of colorful bills, each clipped with a large clothespin, as if someone had just washed out his life’s savings. Everything looked odd and precarious. The entire place seemed to be thumbing its nose at any principles of sense or gravity.

  Looking for the princes, I scanned the faces in the crowd, which were both unfamiliar and familiar at the same time. Brown skin, black hair—it was a strange feeling to be around so many people who looked like me. Like I’d somehow come home to a place I never knew I belonged. But none of the faces belonged to Lal or Neel.

  “Have you seen two brothers—one in red, one in blue?” I asked a rikshaw puller, who looked at me blankly.

  “Ride? Ride? You want a ride?” the man asked.

  I asked everyone I could as I made my way down the bustling street. Most people ignored me or just shook their heads and kept going. The crowd pushed me this way and that, and I had to shove my way through with my elbows sometimes. I walked past men with overloaded pushcarts, sleeping cows and water buffalos, footpath stalls selling everything from shoe polish to tooth powder to mountains of dizzying-scented flowers.

  “For you, lady!” Someone dropped a thick white-and-pink garland around my neck. The scent was heady, the color of the pink flowers blinding.

  “No, I don’t think so.” I returned the garland as politely as I could, then sneezed. The pollen count on these things was probably through the roof.

  “You should learn to smell the flowers.” The merchant shook his finger at me.

  The market was starting to feel less like a homecoming and more like an overload on all my senses. I hadn’t made it five steps before I was accosted again.

  “Don’t diet—buy EZ Fit glass bangles!” a roly-poly lady in a polka-dot sari bellowed. She balanced a flat basket on her head. “Changes to fit your changing body!

  “Hey, slippery,” she barked, poking me in the arm with her fleshy finger. Ow. “You buy some bangles from me.”

  When I shook my head, she plunked her reed basket on the ground and crouched beside it. The folds on her belly jiggled as she worked so that she looked like a big bowl of polka-dot Jell-O.

  “I really don’t think—” I began, but she pretended that she couldn’t hear me. The woman dug through a sparkling array of green, magenta, turquoise, and gold bracelets until she found what she was searching for.

  “I have your color!” she insisted, pulling out a dozen silver and pink bangles that she slipped on her own robust arm. As she slipped them off, she grabbed my arm and began shoving the huge bracelets over my wrist. Strange thing was, they shrunk to fit me perfectly.

  “Uh, no, thanks.” I pulled the bangles back off and dropped them into her basket with a clatter. “I don’t like pink.”

  “It’s not a crime to like pretty things.” I caught the lady peering at my scar, and I put my hand over my arm to cover it. The bangle seller shrugged her beefy shoulders, heaving the basket on her head again. “You should eat something, maybe then you wouldn’t be so grumpy.”

  “I’m sorry, they were very nice,” I began. “Maybe in a different color …”

  But she was already hawking her wares again. “EZ Fit bangles—for the generously proportioned and the skinny-butt offspring of slimy snake creatures alike!”

  What the heck did that mean? I got the feeling that maybe the bangle-selling lady wasn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.

  On the other hand, maybe she was right about one thing. I was pretty hungry. Maybe if I ate something, I’d feel less overwhelmed. As if on cue, my stomach moaned. I looked around at the signs on the shopkeepers’ stalls.

  FRIED DRIED COCKROACHES. ALSO PILLOWCASES—DEEP-FRIED OR NOW, FOR YOU HEALTH NUTS, STEAMED.

  As ravenous as I was, neither item seemed particularly appetizing. I stopped by a stall that was selling kati rolls—egg and meat with onions and chilis, folded into fluffy parathas, and then rolled up in a paper carrier. I inhaled the first one in about three bites and then bought three more with Ma’s rupees, eating as I walked. I rolled my eyes a little as they filled my mouth and stomach with spicy goodness. As I finished the last one, ineffectively wiping my oily fingers on the oily wrapper, something caught my attention.

  Lazy? A slowpoke? Running from a rakkhosh? Try Mr. Madan Mohan’s motivational motion device!

  (PATENT PENDING)

  Huh. I had certainly run from a rakkhosh, and there was nothing to say I wouldn’t do so again in the process of rescuing my parents. This seemed like something I should investigate.

  “Mr. Madan? Mr. Mohan?” I called from the counter.

  From the back of the stall emerged a little man whose curling moustache was at least the length side to side as he was tall. He could barely peer over the counter, and stood on his toes to do so with an air of suspicion.

  “It’s Mr. Madan Mohan, Esquire!” he snapped. “Well, what is it? I haven’t got all day!”

  “Well, Mr. Esquire, I wanted to see your”—I paused to read the sign, not wanting to offend the shopkeeper again—“motivational motion device.”

  “Hmm. I was just going to oil and curl my moustache,” Mr. Madan
Mohan, Esquire, muttered. “What use have you for it anyway?”

  “How can I know what use I have for it if I haven’t even seen it?”

  “Then it’ll be just as well you come back tomorrow. Or better yet, next week.” The man took out a metal rod and began to pull down the corrugated shutters in front of the shop. “Maybe next month, there’s a good girl.”

  I was getting irritated. “If you’re not willing to show it, how do you ever expect to sell it?”

  “Sell it?” Mr. Madan Mohan, Esquire, put back up the shutters with a snap. “For money? Why that’s a splendid thought! Why didn’t I think of that myself?” The little man reached over the counter and pumped my hand. “There’s a reason that you’re in the business that you’re in!”

  I snatched back my arm. “I’m not in any business! You’re the one in business. I just wanted to see what you’re selling—in case I need it to run away from a rakkhosh!”

  “Yes, of course you do! Why didn’t you say so before?” His moustache quivered.

  I rolled my eyes. Someone needed some lessons in basic capitalism. But before I could turn away, the tiny shopkeeper came out of the stall with the most amazing contraption.

  A wooden frame balanced on Mr. Madan Mohan’s shoulders, and from the back of this frame rose a long stick extending beyond the man’s head. From this stick, parallel to the ground, was what looked like a fishing pole whose end dangled just beyond the man’s nose.

  “What is that?”

  “Just see!” He took a bag of potato chips from his pocket, attached it to the end of the fishing pole, then let the line out a little farther from a handle he held.

  Even though he had just put them there himself, Mr. Madan Mohan, Esquire, went a little crazy at the sight of the potato chips. Glassy eyed and drooling, he started chasing the chips farther and farther down the street, as if not realizing that all he had to do was reel them in.

  “Wait! Wait!” I ran after the little man.

  He was so fast, it took me a few seconds to catch up with even his short legs.