The Chaos Curse Read online

  “Rakkhosh!” I shouted again. I looked over my shoulder and realized that while the ministers and other human courtiers from the palace looked nervous, and Tuntuni was flitting around in panic, no one had pulled out a weapon or anything. Naya looked seriously hurt, and the Pink-Sari Skateboarder girls—demonic and human—all seemed to be laughing at me.

  “No kidding they’re rakkhosh!” Priya shot little flames out of her mouth with the words. “So are half of us. Or have you forgotten, Princess? And if I’m not wrong, you yourself freed these sad saps from the detention center when you destroyed dear old daddy’s underwater hotel.”

  “I wasn’t the only rakkhosh in that detention center,” Neel reminded me. “There were a lot of others kept captive too.”

  “But they’re not like you, Princie!” Tuni squawked. “You’re one of the good ones!”

  “Stop being such an anti-demon bigot!” Mati scolded. Her words were aimed at the little yellow bird, but I could tell she meant them for me and the other frightened humans too. “I would think you would know by now that no one type of creature has the market on monstrosity. Rakkhosh can be good or bad, based on their choices—just like human beings!”

  I felt a twinge of shame at my cousin’s words, but getting over my fear of rakkhosh was easier said than done. Based on my previous experiences with some of them, as well as all the monstrous stories I’d heard since I was a kid, it was hard to stop thinking of all rakkhosh as bad. But even as I relaxed my guard, the rakkhosh who had come up out of the waves made a tight circle around me. I gave a little yell and whirled, not sure where to aim my bow and arrow. “Some help, please!” I shouted.

  But what the rakkhosh did next shocked me into lowering my weapon. Some knelt, some gave me a respectful namaskar, some salaamed, and some even touched my feet with their warty hands.

  “From demonic detention you did us free,” rhymed one green-skinned and boil-covered fellow. “We are yours, if ever you need.”

  “We won’t discriminate against your blood,” said another creature with crooked and bitten-up bat wings. “You may be half snake, but we know you’re good.”

  That statement stopped me cold. They wouldn’t discriminate against me? My sweet rakkhoshi friend Naya gave me a little grin, but Priya gave a knowing laugh, like she could tell what I was thinking.

  “My friends, all, please rise up. The resistance is happy to have your support,” said Mati. “We have much work to do to get the kingdom back from Sesha’s rule.”

  “Our arms and wings and flames are yours,” said a water rakkhoshi with shells for hair. “Even those of us who walk on all fours!”

  The courtiers and palace servants moved away a little as the rakkhosh joined them. Naya linked her arm through mine and said in a low whisper. “Isn’t it wonderful, Your Princess-ship, how our people are working together?”

  I looked into her trusting face and felt my doubts about the rakkhosh easing away, at least a little. “Yeah, wonderful!”

  “Everything is upside down! Monsters are good and humans are monstrous!” sobbed Sir Gobbet.

  “No one said change was easy. And changing our ideas is sometimes the hardest thing of all.” Mati patted his turban as the little man kept blubbering. I noticed her and Priya exchange amused smiles.

  “The people of the kingdom need a new Raja to rally behind!” Gobbet snorted, wiping his nose and eyes with a lacy handkerchief. “With your brother Lalkamal vanished, the kingdom needs you, Your Majesty, Prince Neelkamal! Your people need you!”

  “Not necessarily. I mean, there’s something to be said for a parliamentary system, you know,” said Neel, chewing on a fingernail. “Or participatory democracy! I mean, monarchies are so last century, amirite?”

  “Neel!” Mati and I shouted at the same time, as Naya sputtered, “Your Royalness!”

  Priya, on the other hand, gave an approving snort.

  Gobbet rounded on him with the fancy pillow and paper crown. “Come on, Your Majesty, just put it on. It won’t hurt a bit.”

  “Stop calling me that! Majesty! That’s not me! I don’t want to be king!” Neel looked seriously freaked out. I knew his father had once convinced Neel he wasn’t good enough to rule, just because he was half rakkhosh. In fact, the Raja had stripped Neelkamal of the title of crown prince, even though he was the eldest, and given it to his younger brother Lalkamal. But I wondered if Neel was feeling nervous because of that, or because his confidence had been shattered from all those weeks in demon detention?

  “You’re the only one who can do it. It’s not like your brothers Buddhu or Bhootoom are up for the job.” Mati was right on this score. Neel and Lal’s monkey and owl brothers were seriously on the silly side. “It doesn’t matter if you’re not crown prince, because we don’t even know where Lal is.” Mati’s voice tensed a little as she said these last words, so I jumped in quickly to fill her in on her childhood best friend being captured by a ghost, something Neel, Naya, and I had only just learned.

  I opened my still-sodden backpack and held up my Lola Morgana thermos. “We’ve got him in here.”

  “You shoved Prince Lalkamal into that cheap merch from the Star Travels TV show?” squawked Tuntuni.

  “Not Lal!” I said. “The ghost who took over Lal’s identity after jamming the real Lal in a tree trunk!” I handed the thermos off to Mati, who looked at it wonderingly.

  “Her Royalosity Princess Kiranmala tricked that nasty bhoot into entering the Lola Morgana thermos all on his own!” said Naya in her usual enthusiastic way.

  My new rakkhosh fans sent up a little cheer.

  “No wonder he was acting so weird all those weeks—so power-hungry, so unlike his normal self. I can’t believe I never realized that wasn’t the real Lal.” Mati’s eyes were a little glassy as she turned the thermos around and around in her hands. “Where is he? The real Lal, I mean.”

  Instead of answering directly, I repeated the rhyme the captured bhoot had told us. “A peanut where my garden grows. A pike all the way from my toes to my nose!”

  Everyone was quiet for a second, until Tuni announced, in a game show contestant kind of way, “OOO! I know! I know the answer! It’s Ne-e-ew Joi-sey!” The bird did a loop-da-loop swirling dive in the air. “It’s shaped like a peanut, called the Garden State, and covered north to south by the New Jersey Turnpike! The real Prince Lalkamal’s in New Jersey!”

  “Exactly! So, we’ll go across the dimensions, then go home to my parents in Parsippany! It’ll be squishy, and maybe we’ll have to borrow some sleeping bags from Zuzu’s family, but it’ll be so cool to have you all there!” My bestie, Zuzu, had a lot of brothers and sisters, and so always had extras of everything. I thought of my own babyish pink Princess Pretty Pants™ sleeping bag and hoped Neel wouldn’t laugh at it.

  “What?” I was just noticing everybody’s frowning faces. “Okay, so we can start out for Parsippany right after Neel gets crowned or whatever.”

  I expected Mati to be even more enthusiastic about freeing Lal than I was, so I was kind of surprised when she hesitated. She handed the Lola Morgana thermos off to Priya, before replying, “No, Kiran, you’re going to have to go back to New Jersey on your own.”

  “Are you kidding me?” My eyes met Neel’s. He looked as confused as I felt.

  “Seriously, why can’t we all go get Lal?” Neel asked. “And, like, get some baklava at Kiran’s friend’s diner while we’re at it?”

  The mention of Zuzu’s family’s baklava made my stomach growl. Man, all that swimming from the bottom of the ocean had given me an appetite. I grinned at Neel. I wouldn’t mind a nice high-carb visit to the Mount Olympus Diner either.

  “Bakla-vah? Bakla-na! Shame, my prince! We can’t let the Kingdom Beyond Seven Oceans and Thirteen Rivers become a part of the Kingdom of Serpents!” sputtered Sir Gobbet. “That is why we are here. Not just to crown you and make you the Raja, sire, but then to urge the people of the kingdom to rise up behind you! Your people need a symbol to rally arou
nd, and that symbol is you!”

  “Why can’t I be a symbol after I rescue my brother? Maybe eat something? Have a shower?” Neel asked. “And, like, a nap?”

  “No, we can’t get distracted.” Mati tucked the end of her pink sari firmly into her waist. “We can’t let our personal feelings come before the needs of the kingdom. Including hunger!” Although she did make a little motion, and another one of the PSS girls brought Neel, Naya, and me small silver tiffin boxes.

  “Can’t let personal feelings get in the way?” I sputtered, more than a little surprised at my cousin’s attitude. I dug into some of the delicious biriyani in the tiffin box, chewed, and swallowed before adding, “But Lal’s your best friend! Don’t you want to rescue him? Who knows how long the ghost has had him in that tree trunk!”

  Priya shot her a look, and Mati seemed pained. Then she shook her head. “He’s my best friend, yes, but he is going to have no home to return to if we don’t protect it. We’ve got to go on a campaign—show Neel around the kingdom, get support from the common people to overthrow the Serpent King. We’ve also gotten several disturbing reports that Sesha may be planning some kind of an alliance with … well …” Mati’s voice trailed off.

  “Who?” Neel insisted.

  When Mati said nothing, Priya drawled, “Your mommy dearest, my prince!”

  “My mother?” Neel repeated in a stunned voice. “You think Kiran’s birth dad is planning an alliance with my mom? That’s ridiculous!”

  “That’s the report that’s reached us,” confirmed Mati. “The people of the Kingdom Beyond are terrified, ready to hand over control to Sesha just at the thought.”

  “But that’s garbage!” I snorted. “Sesha and Pinki allies? They hate each other! Last we saw them, Sesha was trying to kill Neel’s mom and use her powers to change these jewels into neutron stars!” I held up the Thought and Touch Stones from my backpack for Mati to see before carefully putting them away again. “And then, after Ai-Ma … um … sacrificed herself saving us, Neel’s mom went chasing after Sesha to murder him and get revenge! No way they would ever become allies! They’re worst enemies!”

  “And Sesha’s entire stance has always been very anti-rakkhosh. I can’t believe the alliance is real either,” Mati admitted. “But having Neel crowned is a sure way to squash the rumors. The people will be confident the Demon Queen’s not going to turn against the kingdom if her son is Raja.”

  “It is what she always wanted for you, anyway,” I murmured to Neel.

  “No way, though, she’s teaming up with Sesha,” he said. “This is just false propaganda, like that stuff about you and Lal when you were competing in Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer?”

  I squirmed a little at his words. So Neel knew about those stories linking me up with his brother? They’d obviously been totally fake news, but it was still embarrassing to think Neel had heard the gossip.

  “So what do you say, sire?” sputtered Sir Gobbet, waving his pillow. “Ready to become Raja?”

  “But …” Neel threw me another desperate look.

  I could see how unsure he was. With a heavy heart, I realized that things weren’t going to go as I’d imagined, yet again. There wasn’t going to be a sleeping-bag slumber party at my parents’ house, or late-night giggly stories or all-kingdom pillow fights. Neel and I weren’t going to go on this adventure together, and I wasn’t going to get to show him around my hometown of Parsippany or introduce him to my bestie, Zuzu. But I shoved my disappointment aside. There were bigger things at stake now.

  “Mati’s right, Neel,” I said finally. “We can’t let Sesha take over the Kingdom Beyond. I don’t know what his plan is, but it can’t be good. And if it gives the people confidence to see you as Raja, you’ve got to accept the crown.”

  “I don’t know …” Neel muttered. Then he took a look around the beach. At all the people who were looking to him to solve this crisis. He whispered in a voice so low only I could hear it, “What if I can’t do it?”

  I thought for a minute about saying something nice and supportive, like how of course he could or how I believed in him. But I knew Neel well enough not to go down that route. Instead, I looked into his dark eyes and drawled, “Don’t act like such a 2-D! What are you, scared or something?”

  Neel held my gaze for a second longer than he had to, his lips twitching a little like he was trying not to smile. Then he made a snorting noise. He obviously knew I was teasing him, calling him by the insulting name he’d once given me—because I was from a dimension where everyone expected everything to be uncomplicated and easy, for the mysteries of the universe to have simple answers. He sighed, shutting his eyes tightly, like he was being forced to drink some bad-tasting medicine. “All right, I’ll do it,” he finally gritted out.

  Everyone seemed to hold their breath as Sir Gobbet placed the paper crown on Neel’s head. As soon as he did, the crowd went wild.

  But as everyone else was cheering and clapping, the strangest thing happened. One of those blue butterflies flew over to Neel and landed right on his shoulder. For a split second, he looked seriously different. Not just different; like someone else entirely. Neel’s skin got paler, his hair grew lighter, and his face got way older. He gave me a strange look, and I could have sworn he said something like, “Are you the elf maiden? Or a hobbit?”

  “Who you calling a hobbit?” I snapped. But with those words, Neel shook his head and seemed to come back to himself again. The butterfly lifted off his shoulder and flew airily back into the sky.

  What had just happened? It was like, for that half a second, the two of us had fallen into the wrong story. He was the wrong king, and this was not our world, but a world of elves and wizards, hobbits and kings. No one else seemed to have noticed, because they were so busy cheering for their new Raja. The girls with the flower garlands draped a few of them over Neel’s neck, and then some garlands over my neck, Mati’s, Naya’s, and even Gobbet’s too. The tickly smell made me sneeze, so I handed mine to Priya. Tuntuni flew around, dropping fragrant petals over everyone’s heads, and the musicians started their different, clashing songs again. A few people took up the tongue-waggling ulu-ulu call to mark the special occasion. Everyone looked really happy, except Neel. I took a step to go over to him, wanting to ask him if he’d experienced the same slipping into another story that I had, but Naya grabbed my arm.

  “Even if His Rajaness Neel cannot go, I will go with Her Princess-ship back to New Jersey to rescue Prince Lalkamal!” the girl announced.

  “No, Naya.” Mati shook her head. “We need all the rakkhosh who are on our side here right now. Especially you air clans. Tuntuni can go with Kiran.”

  “But I’m needed here!” The yellow bird squawked, spitting a few remaining flower petals out of his beak. “To help rally the country with my eloquence! To lighten the mood with my humor! To kick that Minister Gupshup’s tuchus and get him out of the palace!”

  “Dear birdie, we all must go where we’re needed,” Naya said.

  The three of them were so busy arguing, and so firmly in this world, I was sure I must have imagined Neel’s temporary transformation into that other king from that other story. I must be tired, or underoxygenated, or suffering some kind of post-snake-fighting trauma. That was it. That must be it.

  “Tuni, you’ll go with Kiran,” Mati said again. “She’ll need help. And we can’t afford anyone el … ah, I mean, you’re the right bird for the job.”

  “You’ll be all right, Kiran?” I wasn’t sure, but it seemed like Neel’s eyes were scanning my face, like he was looking for something. But maybe I was imagining that too.

  “I’ll be fine. Totally!” I pasted on a fake smile, acting all cheery even though I felt anything but. “We’ve all got to do our part for the resistance!”

  Tuni and I had been at it for hours. Driving around in our auto rikshaw, calling ourselves hoarse. It was early evening, and the moon would soon make her appearance in the sky. The plan, which had been to get my moon moth
er’s attention before she rose for the night, wasn’t going exactly perfectly.

  The others had left us long ago. As soon as Neel was crowned, everyone was in a hurry to get off the beach and on their way. The crowd had rushed around, packing up instruments, mounting skateboards, and the few chariots and horses they had with them.

  “So how am I getting to New Jersey to rescue Lal? Will Bangoma and Bangomee help?” I’d asked. The giant, human-faced birds had once created a wormhole from New Jersey to the Kingdom Beyond just by flying faster and faster in circles. If they could do that for me again, then Tuni and I would be back in Parsippany in no time.

  The only problem was, the giant birds made the wormhole last time not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they were paid by Neel’s mom, the Rakkhoshi Queen. And the PSS didn’t have near enough money to hire them for as big a job as intergalactic wormhole creation.

  “I don’t blame Bangoma and Bangomee. They have a lot of expenses, what with all those giant baby birds to feed,” Mati said.

  I was disappointed. I’d liked the strange-looking magical birds. But more importantly, how was I going to travel to New Jersey without them?

  “Please don’t tell me that I have to cross back through the transit corridor, then!” The transit corridor wasn’t an easy place for those without official papers, as I’d discovered on my first visit to the Kingdom Beyond. I’d had to face a riddling monster of a transit officer, who had almost eaten me rather than let me pass through.

  “No, we can’t go through the transit corridor because Sesha’s obviously got that under watch, that snaky-pooper!” chirped Tuntuni from the handlebars of the auto rikshaw. The half-car–half-taxi–half-motorcycle–half-spaceship thing I’d driven here from New Jersey had some sort of magical spell on it that allowed it to travel safely in outer space, but it couldn’t make a wormhole from scratch.