The Chaos Curse Read online

  “But you have destroyed the magic auto rikshaw.” My moon mother pointed to the now-smashed-up vehicle. Then she looked thoughtfully at my frozen companions. “You’ll have to travel through the wormhole by tiger, I suppose.”

  “By tiger?” I repeated.

  “Well, you can’t well ride that tiny bird or lizard,” she said in an “isn’t that obvious?” sort of way.

  I nodded, pretending I had the first idea of how I was going to convince Bunty to be my interdimensional ride. But I pressed on. There was something else I’d been worried about, and I hoped she had an answer.

  “Mother, how do I find Lal? How do I figure out where the tree is in New Jersey that he’s hidden inside?”

  My moon mother closed her eyes, intoning,

  Your enemy’s enemy

  Is your friend

  Find your prince

  Where the road bends

  A tree between worlds

  A serpent’s friend

  Hate not love

  Makes difference end

  I dived into my backpack to grab a pen, then scribbled my moon mother’s rhyme on the inside of my arm. I knew from experience I’d probably need it later, and didn’t trust myself to remember it right.

  As I did so, I noticed my mother peeking into my open pack. Her face suddenly changed, taking on the look of someone else entirely. I knew she was looking at the Chintamoni and Poroshmoni Stones at the bottom of my bag when she whispered, in a hoarse, old-man-type voice, “Are those the star stones? You must keep them secret! Keep them safe!”

  I put the pen in my pack and shut it again. “Why? Are they dangerous?

  “Dangerous, yes,” said my mother, looking more like herself again. “But also perhaps very useful.” She touched her finger to the side of her nose in a secretive gesture.

  I nodded, tapping the side of my nose too. “I’ll remember.”

  I took a look at the poem I’d scribbled on my arm. I was stuck on the first lines. My enemy’s enemy, and then that part about the tree where the road bends … wait a minute.

  “Lal’s in the tree in front of Jovi’s house?” I asked, not wanting to believe it. My middle school frenemy Jovi Berger had the house next to mine, where our road bent. And she did have a great big tree in her yard. Could it be possible? Could Lal really be in it? Or was this another story swap?

  “Mother, what’s happening with all the stories? Why do they keep getting mixed up?”

  “Such a strange kitchen appliance.” My moon mother looked at the wildly spinning salad spinner. “Usually that’s a spinning wheel spinning out story threads …” she murmured, becoming all vague and distant again.

  “Mother!” I demanded, feeling my old frustration returning. I thought back to her poem. “What’s going on, with these stories, with the chaos and the serpents?”

  As usual, she didn’t answer me directly. “Sesha’s Anti-Chaos Committee is growing more powerful, but I never thought they would resort to g-force-generating kitchen gadgets. This is, perhaps, worse than I thought.” Her light started to flicker. “Thank goodness I am no longer married to your father, so he cannot tap into my power. The multiverse help any woman who chooses to marry that scoundrel.”

  With every word, she grew more transparent, like she was fading away.

  “Sesha’s Anti-Chaos Committee?” That glowy, delirious feeling when I’d first come into my moon mother’s presence was almost entirely gone now. I wanted to scream, shake her, demand she be more real. Why did she always disappear, right when we had just connected? She was like vapor, so hard to hold on to. “How do we stop whatever they’re doing?”

  My moon mother didn’t answer but raised her head, as if hearing something from the sky. “It is almost time for me to rise,” she said, her body growing even fainter as she said this. I could see right through her now.

  “Wait! How do I make a wormhole and get home to New Jersey? How do I figure out what Sesha’s up to and stop him? Please, Mother, can’t you help me? Please, stay, for once!” I grasped on to the end of her silky sari, as if I could keep her with me by force.

  And then, to my surprise, my moon mother didn’t just fade but her face started to change too, like Neel’s had. A stream of blue butterflies shot out from the folds of her sari. Her skin grew lighter, her hair changing from black to red-blond, her sari into a big fairy-tale-type dress with a hoopskirt.

  “Mother! Wait!” I watched in horror as she became swallowed by a big bubble. We were getting smooshed into the wrong story again! This time the one about that girl who goes to another world through a tornado. “Mother! How am I going to get home? And what’s with this Anti-Chaos thing? Is it why Sesha’s taken over the Kingdom Beyond?”

  But my moon-slash-good-witch of a mother was already rising into the air, rising out of my story and into another. She held a long fairy-godmother wand in her hand, and a giant pink crown was perched on her now-light hair. The blue butterflies fluttered around her skirts. But her face was twisted, as if she was desperately trying to stay in this reality.

  “No! I am myself! My tale stands on its own! I will not have my story forgotten!” she shouted.

  Even though my moon mother’s skin and clothes turned back to what they had been, the bubble she was in continued to rise higher and higher into the air, and the butterflies seemed to multiply in number. “Here! Daughter! Take these!” she called.

  I looked, startled, at what my mother had dropped at my feet. “What do I do with them?”

  “Click them together three times!” she said, her voice faint as she rose higher and higher into the night. She was already up in her moon form in the sky when I heard her last instructions. “And, darling moonbeam girl, don’t forget the magic words!”

  Ruby-red slippers, huh?” Tuni said, eyeing my moon mother’s parting gift. As soon as she had risen in the sky, my animal companions had unfrozen.

  “Close enough. Ruby-red combat boots,” I said, lacing up the second one.

  “You realize they were silver shoes in the original text, don’t you?” said Bunty. “I am a great aficionado of all tales 2-D. The change to ruby-red slippers was purely a cinematic embellishment.”

  “Sure, okay, whatever.” I’d taken off the sparkly silver boots I’d been presented recently as the Kingdom Beyond’s champion on Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer? But when I tried to tie the silver boots together and take them with me, something very strange happened. The boots melted—well, not melted exactly—but kind of slowly evaporated out of my sight! And in their place a swarm of blue butterflies seemed to explode, straight out of my hands and into the sky!

  “What the what was that?” I shouted, but Tuni, Bunty, and Tiktiki One just looked at me in surprise.

  “What are you expostulating about, Princess?” Bunty lifted their giant head toward me.

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t see it!” I sputtered, waving my hands in the air, toward where the butterflies had just been.

  “See what?” Tuni put a yellow wing to my forehead as if testing for a fever. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “But my shoes …” I began, pointing to my new red boots.

  “Are on your feet?” Tuni said, then added, “Hey, I’ve got a good one! Knock knock!”

  “But …” How could the animals have forgotten that I’d been wearing different shoes only seconds ago?

  “Who’s there?” answered Bunty.

  “Listen, my shoes disappeared …” I tried again.

  “Wooden shoe!” chirped Tuni.

  “Wooden shoe who?” asked Bunty.

  “Hey, come on!” I protested.

  “Wooden shoe like to know?” Tuntuni giggled as he flew in a circle above our heads. Bunty rolled onto their back, paws in the air, roaring with laughter, and even Tiktiki One blinked its eyes as if giggling, before going back to eating gnats and mosquitos out of the air.

  I sighed. Obviously, I’d have to let the disappearing boots go. No one but me even seemed to remember them.


  “So how do I do this? Make the wormhole, I mean?” I asked Tuni.

  “How am I supposed to know?” the bird squawked. “I was frozen the whole time you were taking to your moon mommy. It’s not like I heard anything she said.” Tiktiki One slithered out its tongue and swiveled its eyes in agreement.

  “She said I should click them together three times,” I mumbled, feeling totally foolish as I did so. I felt even more foolish when, after the third click of my heels, absolutely nothing happened.

  “That was undoubtedly, unquestioningly, indubitably … underwhelming,” drawled Bunty, lazily picking their teeth with a long claw. “If this was a professional plenary session, I would definitely recommend they not invite you back.”

  I wished I had my silver boots so I could chuck them at the know-it-all tiger’s head.

  “Do these shoes have a button or a hidden compartment or something?” clucked Tuntuni, flying around my feet.

  “Ouch!” I kicked out as he pecked at my ankle by mistake with his sharp beak.

  “When in scholarly doubt, go back to the original text,” said Bunty.

  “The original text?” I repeated, not understanding what the tiger could mean.

  That’s when my up-till-now-useless gecko totally came through for me. It made a clickety-clackety noise with its mouth, but as it did, I could swear it said, “Noplacelikehome!”

  “Of course!” It was so silly of me not to realize! “Tiktiki One, you’re a genius!”

  The lizard blinked rapidly, then hit itself in the eyeball with its long, rubbery tongue.

  My moon mother had said I had to remember the magic words. And as it was in that tornado story, so too was home a magical word for me. Unlike my moon mother and Sesha, my adoptive parents, Ma and Baba, were completely ordinary and human. Yet they had a magic that came from always being there for me. They weren’t royal, or mystical, or special in any way—except in all the ways that counted. They, not my biological parents, were the ones who raised me, fed me, washed my clothes, made sure I studied, cared for me when I was sick, and tucked me in at night. And there was no place like the home they created for me with their support and love. I just had to get home to them, and they would help me figure out everything. They would help me rescue Lal. They would help me stop Sesha. Suddenly, I wanted to see them, to be with them, so desperately, it made my whole body ache. So this time, when I clicked my heels together, with each click, I said the magic phrase, believing every word.

  Click. “There’s no place like home.”

  Click. “There’s no place like home.”

  Click. “There’s no place like home.”

  And with that, everything got misty and wild, and there appeared in front of us the magical shape of …

  “A clothes dryer?” shrieked Tuntuni, doubling over with laughter. “You sure you weren’t actually saying ‘There’s no place like a laundromat’?”

  “ ‘There’s no place like a clothes hamper’?” chuckled Bunty, and then actually high-fived Tuni. Only Tiktiki One didn’t laugh, bless his buggy-eyed clueless lizard heart.

  “I don’t understand.” Had I made this home appliance appear simply by thinking about my parents washing my clothes? What was going on here? I was totally confused until I decided to open the industrial-sized dryer’s giant door.

  “Whoa! Check it!” I stared in amazement.

  Instead of mismatched socks or white T-shirts dyed pink by a leaky red blouse, a whole universe of colors and shapes swirled inside the machine. Some multicolor galaxies tumbled by at top speed, as did some stars and planets. There were squeaking clouds and shapes, as well as giant forks, spoons, and knives that seemed to be making weird musical noises. I was pretty sure I saw a couple dinosaurs swim by, but they weren’t made of flesh, or even bones, but blocks and flowers and what seemed like origami paper too. Then a worried-looking rabbit ran by, scowling at his pocket watch, and also a little terrier barking at a green-faced witch. A giant polar bear dressed in armor gnashed his teeth at us, before transforming into an exploding bouquet of blue butterflies. There were flying keys and a pen that looked like a sword, and a mouse sailing by in a teapot. This wormhole looked like someone’s dreams after they’d fallen asleep in a library, all different stories jumbled up in their head. Was this because of that story-tangling stuff? And again with those darned blue butterflies! But I couldn’t worry about all that right now; I had to rescue Lal and get him home to his brother. Then, with the help of all my friends, we’d take on my bio dad and whatever evil plans he had cooking.

  I gave Bunty a doubtful look. “So this is the part where we get on your back and go through the wormhole, I guess,” I said.

  “Pray do so,” said the tiger, pleasantly enough.

  And so, Tuntuni and Tiktiki One climbed onto my shoulders as I got on Bunty’s back. The tiger didn’t have a collar or anything on, but a big thick chunk of striped skin at their neck. I held on to this a little tentatively at first, but then harder as, without warning, Bunty jumped from this dimension and into the neon colors of the magical clothes dryer.

  At first, it was like being inside a box of rainbow sprinkles. Everything was shining and dizzying and bright. Also, super out of control and out of balance—like the Jersey Shore roller coasters I hated so much. “Whoa!” I yelled, feeling my recently eaten biriyani rise in my throat.

  We were running upside down through what looked like some sort of a spaceship, with computer screens and controls everywhere. And then, as Bunty leaped out a hatch, we were in a house that looked remarkably like my own split-level in New Jersey, only with shag carpeting made of grass and a ceiling that hung heavy with stalactites. I held on to Bunty’s neck as the tiger ran out the side door of the house and into what looked like a giant wardrobe. The back of the wardrobe swung open onto a shimmering forest whose trees hung with picture frames, cameras, and old-model cell phones instead of leaves. I almost asked the tiger to slow down so I could pluck one. But before I could tell Bunty anything, the scene changed again and we were surfing on some waves that weren’t made of water but, I guessed, the very fabric of space-time.

  “They’re gravitational waves!” Tuntuni trilled, looking terrified. As for me, I felt shiny with excitement.

  I smiled at some tiny fellow surfers with itty-bitty surfboards who looked like the workers from that story about the secret chocolate factory. One of the little surfers gave me a whooping hang-ten back. I thought for a moment of Buddhu, Neel’s preposterously laid-back half-monkey brother, and wondered where he and their half-owl brother Bhootoom were.

  The scene changed again. Now we were standing at the top edge of an old-fashioned, if unnaturally giant, typewriter. There was a sinister, swirling darkness in between each key that bubbled with something that smelled poisonous. This magical ruby-red-boot-created wormhole was weirder than any other interdimensional traveling experience I’d had so far. But if it was following standard story threads, I knew what facing a giant typewriter meant.

  “If this is like other stories I’ve read, we must have to jump from key to key,” I said to Bunty.

  “I’m trying, but I can’t!” As the tiger tried to jump to the first row of keys, there seemed to be some sort of invisible force field stopping the beast from making it across the machine. The tiger reached for the T, the Y, and the E, but couldn’t seem to get beyond whatever magic was holding them back. Bunty roared in frustration.

  Tiktiki One click-clacked its tongue and rolled its eyes almost 360 degrees around, as if trying to give helpful input, but none of us could understand what it was trying to say.

  “I bet we have to spell something—like a magic phrase or word,” I said, vaguely remembering a scene from a story in which people had to do that.

  “I know!” yelled Tuntuni. “Something like ‘jadu-kar’ or ‘chi-ching-phak’ or ‘jhuri-jhuri-alu-bhaja’!”

  The first two phrases Tuni said meant “magic” and “abracadabra,” but I was pretty sure that last phrase was just
describing crunchy french fries. “What about where we’re going?” I said. “Like ‘Parsippany’ or ‘New Jersey’?”

  “Indeed, that makes infinitely more sense than jhuri-jhuri-alu-bhaja!” said Bunty, which made Tuntuni sniff in offense.

  “I happen to be a little hungry,” said the bird. “Crunchy fried potato strings sound pretty good right now.”

  My stomach growled at the thought. Crunchy alu bhaja sounded pretty good to me too.

  I was super hopeful about the location suggestions I’d made, but when Bunty tried to jump toward the P or even way down toward the N, nothing seemed to happen. After that, he tried Tuntuni’s words, but those didn’t work either. “Incorrect! Insufficient! Inept!” complained the tiger. “This is worse than the password on my academic departmental computer.”

  “We’re never getting through this wormhole!” moaned Tuni. “It’s hopeless, Princess! Let’s just rip the tail off Tiktiki One and call for reinforcements!”

  The bird had its beak hovering near the squawking tiktiki’s tail when, suddenly, another possibility occurred to me.

  “No, wait, I’ve got it!” I said, snapping my fingers. “Bunty, try ‘home.’ ”

  “No way, too obvious,” sniffed Tuni. “I vote we rip this lizard’s tail off and tell Mati Didi to send a rescue party.”

  “No, I cautiously consider Princess Kiranmala might be correct,” said the tiger. “That’s good PhD-dissertation-level logic there!”

  The tiger jumped down to the H, and when we made it to the key, we all cheered. Then Bunty went up to the O, and down to M. Only, before we reached the E, Bunty’s paws seemed to slip—or did the key itself tip?—and we all fell into the dark void between the keys.

  “Ahhhhhh!” screamed someone. I’m pretty sure it was me.

  We started falling down a long, long tunnel. Except, I soon realized, it wasn’t any ordinary tunnel, but the dirt-packed rabbit hole of a very familiar children’s story, the one about the girl who travels to a magical wondrous land. I fell off Bunty’s back, and the bird and lizard slipped off mine, and all four of us tumbled, head over paws over tail.