The Chaos Curse Read online

  “We don’t want to risk the Serpent King getting his hands on you again,” added Sir Gobbet.

  “So what are we supposed to do?” I asked.

  “Find your moon mother,” Neel suggested, looking a bit silly in his paper crown. He’d pushed it to the side to make it look cooler, but there’s not that much swagger anyone can pull off in a burger-joint-type crown. “She’s way powerful—she defeated Sesha once. Your birth mom connected us and let us talk when I was in the detention center. She should be able to help get you to New Jersey now.”

  I bit my lip. I wasn’t that sure. My biological mother had helped us, it was true. But being a celestial body, she wasn’t like other mothers. Certainly nothing like my own warm Ma, who had adopted and then raised me on food and hugs and loving scoldings. My moon mother was the opposite: kind of aloof, cold, remote. As evil and involved as Sesha was in my life, the moon always seemed to hover above me, kind enough, but still always out of reach.

  “What if I can’t find her?” I asked. “Or if she can’t help?”

  “Don’t worry. Just let us know, Your Princess-ship, and we’ll come up with a new plan,” said Naya. “Send a gecko-gram.”

  “A what?”

  “It’s something I’ve been working on!” explained Naya, pulling out a notebook with a lot of hand-drawn diagrams in it. “Lizard-based communication! You see, their nervous systems are very primitive. But with this immunologic boost I’ve developed to their limbic system, and something I’m calling lizard-to-lizard twinning, they can recognize a limited number of sounds and relay them to each other.”

  I stared at Naya’s notes, my mouth open. I couldn’t understand anything I was looking at, besides not really being able to follow what she was talking about. “You’ve invented lizard-powered cell phones?”

  “Well, not exactly, but interestingly enough, some of the principles are similar,” Naya said. “I’ve also been developing an intergalactic communication device I’m calling chaa-chat. It uses the tannins in tea as a medium, and then translates sound waves through the saucer, but it’s not exactly functional quite yet. Still burning people’s mouths …”

  I couldn’t help but be amazed. “I didn’t realize you were so into inventing stuff!”

  I’d only just learned my fellow Parsippany sixth grader was from the Kingdom Beyond Seven Oceans and Thirteen Rivers, and also a rakkhoshi. But somehow, the idea that she was so into science seemed just as surprising. I’d always thought of Naya as good-hearted but kind of ding-batty. I mean, she was addicted to her cell phone, was always posting pictures on social media, and had even been a part of the flying fangirls group that crushed on Neel and called themselves the Neelkamalas.

  “Why did you think I was so into cell phones?” Naya fixed one of the many ponytails on her head, adding, “Just because someone likes glitter lip gloss and selfie filters doesn’t mean they’re not scientifically minded.”

  “Now that you’ve cleared all that up,” Mati interrupted, handing me a tiny lizard with a slithery tongue, “meet Tiktiki One.”

  I tried not to shudder as the clammy animal scampered onto my hand, fixing its swively eyes on me. “Tiktiki? Isn’t that just the Bengali word for ‘gecko’? Doesn’t it have an actual name?”

  Mati and Naya both gave me weird looks. Finally, Naya lowered her voice, like she didn’t want to hurt the animal’s feelings. “Your Highnosity, this is a lizard. Lizards don’t actually have names.”

  I rolled my eyes, trying really hard not to freak out at the slimy feeling of Tiktiki One now walking up my arm. “All right, so how does this work?”

  “Easy,” Naya said. “Just whisper to Tiktiki One any message you want to send, and then pull off its tail. It’ll scamper off probably for some peace while it transmits, but eventually, we’ll get the message through one of the geckos we’ll have with us.”

  “Pull off its tail!” I exclaimed, staring at the slimy thing with its greenish skin, buggy eyes, and rubbery tail. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “Every cellular communication device needs a send button!” Naya explained, as if pulling off a gecko’s tail was no big deal. “And these are special tiktikis! Their tails grow right back! Oh, and don’t worry if it takes a while for it to return; these geckos sometimes like to go on walkabout.”

  The lizard on my arm gave me a doubtful look, then it flicked out its tongue and slithered from my arm down to the back of the auto rikshaw driver’s bench. Great. Not only did my parents refuse to get me a real cell phone, now I’d have to use a slithery lizard with a fast-regrowing tail. This was way worse than even a flip phone.

  “Good luck, Kiran.” Ignoring everyone around us, Neel grabbed my hand. “Come back with my brother as soon as you can. Don’t leave me stuck as the Raja for too long.”

  “I’ll try,” I promised, super self-conscious of my hot and kinda sweaty hand in his. I was also really embarrassed about all the eyes on us. But still, it felt good to have this small moment of connection.

  Naya and Mati each gave me a hug, and then Naya, snifflingly, insisted we all take a selfie together. Neel, Mati, Naya, Tuni, and I posed, and Naya chose a silly special effect that made us all look like we were unicorns with rainbows coming out of our noses and eyeballs.

  “That is not cute!” I’d said, even though I was laughing.

  “Yeah it is,” Neel had replied, his eyes locking with mine. I felt something melt in my chest even as somewhere to the side of me, Priya started making way-too-obvious coughing noises. Mati and Naya exchanged a silly look and I tried to ignore all of them. My cheeks felt hot, but I couldn’t help grinning a little too.

  Neel gave me one last searching glance. “Hey, thanks for saving my life back there in the detention center. I owe you one.”

  Finally! The words I’d been wanting to hear for so long. My stomach was doing flip-flops of joy. Neel hadn’t forgotten what I’d done for him after all. And somehow, that recognition felt so much more powerful a reward than any party or magical weapon or castle full of jewels.

  I felt a smile spreading slowly over my face. “You know you do!”

  “Good luck, Moon Girl,” Neel said in a voice meant only for me.

  I gave Neel an awkward grin. “Thanks, Demon Prince. Have fun storming the palace!”

  And then the PSS helped Neel climb on the back of an elephant with a regal howdah on his back. Neel had sat on the fancy throne, waving and giving me thumbs-up signs. Naya had blown kisses upon kisses. Finally, the elephant gave a long trumpet, and they were all gone, leaving Tuni and me to find my moon mother alone.

  In the beginning of our search, I’d started out hopeful. “Um, Mother?” I’d called, keeping an eye on the sky. “It’s Kiranmala. Can you hear me?”

  Tuni, for his part, flapped around and sang a song I’d heard Ma sing. “O, aaa-maar chander alo!” he called. “Oh, my moonlight!”

  Soon, when it was obvious my moon mother wasn’t answering anytime soon, I started to get pretty annoyed. Why was my birth mother ignoring me when I needed her? Why couldn’t she be around, trying to feed me and asking me nosy questions, like a normal mom?

  I drove the auto rikshaw super slowly, trying not to freak out at the tiktiki sleeping right by my shoulder. We were far from the beach, and I was just driving through a patch of forest outside a village, when I saw something strange out of the corner of my eye. I thought for a minute it was a big orange moon heading right for us. Only, it wasn’t actually a moon. Oh no! I swerved, but it was a little too late. The giant rolling gourd kept bouncing along the forest path, picking up speed as it did, on a direct collision course with the auto rikshaw!

  I tried to reverse but instead bounced over a gnarled root in the road. “Ahhh!” I yelled, sure we were done for. My head slammed into the top of the auto as we went full-on airborne.

  “We’re gonna be baked into a Halloween pie!” Tuntuni shrieked.

  “Watch out!” I yelled, trying to control us as we headed directly for Cinderella�
�s pumpkin.

  “Every bird for himself!” Tuni flew up out of the rikshaw at the last minute.

  Tiktiki One, for its part, woke up, made a weird little clickety-clack noise, and then jumped with its clammy feet onto my head! Ewww!

  The auto rikshaw hit the giant pumpkin at an angle, and as soon as we made contact, the gourd exploded, shell cracking in a zillion pieces and orange goo flying out. The windshield was covered in orange slime, and I could see nothing. I slammed on the brakes, and the machine stalled with a dramatic shudder. “Suffering succotash!” I yelled for who knows what reason, before grabbing Tiktiki One from my head and yanking the animal off.

  Once I turned on the windshield wipers to clear a little of the windshield, I was shocked to realize that other than the orange stringy insides of the vegetable, something else had flown out of the gourd too. Or rather, someone. On the road in front of me, just inches from the auto rikshaw’s wheels, had fallen an ancient woman as wrinkled as an old leather shoe.

  “Oh, no, no, no! The tiger will for sure get me now!” wheezed the old lady, clutching the end of her white sari around her head.

  I rushed out to help the woman. “Are you all right, Grandmother?” I helped her get unsteadily to her feet. She was tiny, and frail, with skin like paper and bony hands that I was afraid to squeeze too hard for fear of hurting them. I peered at her, wondering if she was my moon mother in disguise or something, but the next thing she said made me think that couldn’t be true.

  “One month ago, I was heading to my daughter’s house, all skin and bones, when a vicious tiger threatened to eat me,” the woman said. Her glasses were covered with pumpkin goo, and she lisped a little, because she didn’t have all her teeth. “I convinced him to wait until I had eaten well and gotten all fattened up, but he promised to be waiting for me on the trail home.”

  “So to hide you from him, your daughter put you in a hollowed-out gourd and sent you tumbling!” I said, the pieces clicking in my brain. “I know this story!”

  My baba had told me it a million times, like he did all his stories from the Kingdom Beyond. This wasn’t my moon mother at all, then, but an old woman from a well-loved folktale!

  Just as I thought this, though, something even stranger happened. Something stranger than finding an old woman rolling home in a pumpkin gourd. Like what had happened with Neel before, a bright blue butterfly landed on the granny—this time on her nose. And in the next second, the grandmother’s image flickered like she was on a faulty television screen. When my vision corrected, no longer was she an old gray-haired woman afraid of a tiger, but the tiger itself!

  The animal gave a rumbling roar, showing a glimpse of its shining teeth. I jumped about a foot in the air in my scramble to get away from it.

  “Oh, my rotten tail feathers! If that’s the tiger, then we’re the old woman about to get eaten!” Tuntuni shrieked, flying quickly back into the auto. “Get in, Princess! Start the engine now!”

  I stumbled into the driver’s seat, pressing down on the start with a panicky finger. Even though the engine turned over and over with a screeching noise, it didn’t catch.

  The tiger was huge, sleekly muscled, with stringy pumpkin innards mixing into its orange-and-black-striped fur, and bits of rind trapped in its whiskers and wide jaw. It studied us with its dark, hungry eyes. Then it gave an earsplitting roar.

  “We’re gonna die!” wailed Tuntuni, throwing his yellow wings around my neck. This time, I didn’t actually think he was wrong. “I’m too pretty to croak in a tiger’s digestive tract!”

  Hurry up!” yelled Tuni, jumping with all his weight on the start button. “Unless you want your baba to tell the story about a princess and a bird who got eaten by a pumpkin-spiced tiger!”

  When Tiktiki One click-clacked its tongue, Tuni added, “Okay, fine, a princess, bird, and lizard eaten by a pumpkin-spiced tiger!”

  “Stop that! You’re not helping!” My hands were shaking as I tried to get the little bird to stop pressing on the starter. “I think you flooded the engine!”

  Tuntuni kept shouting useless instructions, though, and the lizard kept clickety-clacking. That is, until the tiger roared again.

  “Stop your superfluous shrieking!” shouted the tiger, white teeth flashing in the sun.

  At that, Tuntuni and I shrieked at the top of our lungs, and even Tiktiki One clattered so loud it was clear the little lizard was terrified. Both animals hid behind my back as I now began pushing on the start button with frantic fingers.

  “You’re undoubtedly flooding your fuel injector!” roared the tiger.

  “Leave us alone!” I yelled in a total panic. “I swear we won’t taste very good!”

  “I’m such a little bird, just feathers and bones, really!” shouted Tuni from behind me. “Hardly any meat! But the lizard here, he’s delicious on a skewer I bet! With a little lime and salt! And the princess—just look at all that juicy muscle! She’d be great breaded and fried probably! Or maybe with a little jhinge posto!”

  I turned around in the seat to stare at the bird, and saw that Tiktiki One’s buggy eyes were swiveled around in outrage too. “You traitor!” I shrieked, moving both animals back onto the auto rikshaw handlebars. “Stop suggesting recipes to eat us with!”

  “Every bird for himself!” Tuni said sheepishly.

  The tiger, meanwhile, did something totally unexpected. As if we were the funniest thing it had ever seen, the huge animal flopped down on the ground, grabbed its belly, and began to laugh.

  “Don’t laugh at us!” I yelled, which only made the tiger laugh harder.

  “It’s just an act, Princess!” shouted Tuntuni above the tiger’s guffaws. “What did you do with the old granny, you deranged feline?”

  “I did nothing with her!” The tiger’s nostrils flared and muscles rippled as it kept laughing. “Such an accusation is highly unjust!”

  Tuni gave me a little peck with his beak, and I knew he wanted me to back him up. “Then where is she?” I managed to ask, my voice quavering only a little. “The old woman from the story? In the original folktale, you’re not supposed to be in the pumpkin—she is!”

  “I am not precisely sure,” the tiger admitted, wiping tears of laugher from its giant eyes.

  “Then tell us how you ended up in that pumpkin, you dirty rat … er, cat?” said Tuni like he was an old-timey private investigator.

  “I am ashamed to say that I did indeed threaten the old woman a little,” said the tiger. “But it was primarily to keep my jungle credibility up—it’s remarkably hard with my level of education and eloquence to maintain my status as a fierce carnivorous predator. ‘Bunty has lost their edge.’ I’ve heard several animals say so only recently at the local watering hole.”

  “Bunty?” I interrupted, wrinkling my nose. “Your name is Bunty?”

  “The one and only.” The tiger gave a bow of its giant orange head. “If speaking English, you may use they or them pronouns when you refer to me.”

  “Okay,” I said, thinking of my friend Vic back home who didn’t use he or she pronouns either. Conveniently, in Bengali, there was no he or she, and everyone used the same pronoun, o.

  “In the words of that great philosopher J. Tumblerpond,” Bunty continued, “ ‘I don’t wanna be a fool for you. Genders split in two. It may sound performative, but it ain’t no lie. Binaries, baby! Bye! Bye! Bye!’ ” As they said this, Bunty had padded over to the auto rikshaw and started helping me clean the windshield, licking it free of all the pumpkiny innards.

  “Thanks.” I was feeling less and less nervous of the tiger by the second, even though I’d never heard of this J. Tumblerpond person.

  “My pleasure,” purred the big cat, before crunching on a few stray pumpkin seeds.

  “Wait a minute, Princess, don’t get so friendly so quick,” Tuni squawked. “Don’t you want to find out what this tiger did with the old buri?” The bird stuck out a wing in accusation. “Fess up, Professor Bunty, did you chomp her down like a bowl
of kitty kibble?”

  “Chomp the old woman? How erroneous!” Bunty protested. “You are quite convinced I am carnivorous, aren’t you? So prepared to prejudge! So ready to reduce me to a stereotype! From where does this tremendous terror against tigers come if not from imposed colonial constructs?”

  I was starting to trust Bunty more, but was still confused. “If you didn’t eat her, where is she? What did you do with her?”

  “Veritably, I’ve done nothing with her!” the tiger said. “I was just telling you that, yes, I had threatened her a bit, to keep up the pretense of my vicious reputation. And then, this morning, a few moments after I saw her daughter sneaking her into the pumpkin, voilà! I suddenly found myself vaulted with great velocity into that selfsame vegetable!”

  “That doesn’t make any sense!” snapped Tuni. “One person can’t just swap out for another!”

  “You would think not,” I muttered, remembering Neel falling into the other king’s story.

  Tiktiki One click-clacked its tongue like it was agreeing with me, and Tuntuni bellowed, “People—or animals—can’t just substitute for each other in their own stories!” In his agitation, Tuni jumped on Tiktiki One’s back, making the little lizard click-clack even louder. “A villain can’t just take over the role of the victim!”

  But even as the talking bird said this, I remembered something Mati had said on the beach. She’d said that heroes and monsters weren’t always so easy to label. It wasn’t what you looked like, who your family was, or where you came from that made someone bad or good, but the things you did each and every day. But still, what did all that have to do with stories smushing into one another?

  My face must have shown my confusion, because Bunty asked, “You have noticed it, haven’t you, the shrinking of multiplicity? The shifting of narratives?”