The Chaos Curse

by Sayantani DasGupta

  Okay, so Ned was probably more than an ordinary sixth grader. But then again, so was I. I gave a loud whoop of victory. To be perfectly honest, the only other person I’d felt this sense of heroic teamwork with was Neel. It felt strange to experience the same emotion with a totally different boy.

  “You tween troublemaker!” the Gorgon groaned, trying to hold the now-falling-apart parts of her body in place. “You Norse nincompoop! Why couldn’t you just leave this dimension thief to me? You’ll pay for this, you Scandinavian show-off!”

  And with that, Stheno-slash-Principal-Chen seemed to disintegrate into a pile of ash on the snow. Before I could even fully put down my garbage pail lid of a shield and investigate, the eagle swooped down, landing on top of one of the giant dumpsters. The force of its beating wings made a swirl of ice and snow dance all around us, and the Gorgon’s gray ashes caught the breeze and floated away.

  “Well, thank goodness for that!” I tossed the burned-out hockey stick and garbage lid aside with a clatter, then rounded on Ned. “Who are you, anyway? She seemed to know you!”

  “Aw, shucks. I’m just a guy.” He shrugged, turning the force of his smile in my direction. “Just a guy saving a girl from a Gorgon.”

  “Saving!” I sputtered. “How about following her suggestions and plan, a little late, but still successfully while she got the stuffing beat out of her?”

  “That doesn’t have quite as romantic a ring to it,” he said with a heart-stopping grin. I was going to snap off a fast response, but as he tossed me the bow and still-full magic quiver, the spells my moon mother had filled them with seemed to radiate into my skin, soothing me. Okay, yes, things were a little bit off and I just had to fight a monster disguised as my middle school principal. And yes, Ned had taken a while, but he’d come through with the flaming arrows in the end. Plus, I was alive, so that was a thing.

  “Thank you for helping me,” I said sincerely. “But seriously, you owe me some kind of explanation. Where are you really from?”

  “Don’t you of all people find that question annoying?” Ned asked, his blond brows arching above his perfect eyes. His eagle kind of arched its nonexistent eyebrows too, so they both wore the same expression. “Where are you from? No, where are you really from?”

  The mocking way that Ned asked these questions made me give a short laugh. “Yeah, I guess I do find those questions annoying, but I don’t mean it that way. I know you’re not just a regular sixth grader from Parsippany. So who are you?”

  Instead of answering, Ned got off the bird’s back and walked toward me. He reached his hand out toward my ear, like he had before. This time, though, instead of pulling out any loose change, he simply tucked a piece of hair behind my ear.

  “Hey there,” he said in kind of a growly way. He was looking at me so weirdly, so intently, I had two totally conflicting feelings: (1) totally gooey and flattered and (2) like I wanted to punch him in the nose.

  I decided to go with the second emotion. I mean, who did this guy think he was? Plus, I was a Jersey girl, and so I had a reputation to uphold as not so easy to impress. “Get your hands off me,” I snapped, even as I felt my cheeks heating up and heart thumping kind of offbeat.

  Ned didn’t have a chance to answer, though, because just then the cafeteria double doors behind us banged open, and somebody yelled, “You heard her, creep—back off!” while someone else cried, “En garde!”

  I whipped around to see Jovi and Zuzu in fighting stances, their fencing foils drawn and pointing at Ned.

  “You giant jerk!” Jovi yelled. She turned panicky eyes toward me. “Kiran, are you okay?”

  “Ladies, relax! Relax! I think you have the wrong idea …” Ned began, reaching out an arm like he was going to wrap it around my shoulders.

  “Get away from her!” Zuzu flourished her sword in Ned’s direction. “Now!”

  “Hey there, ho, there.” Ned put his hands up and backed away a little from Zuzu’s pointed foil. The sword made little zipping sounds through the air as she waved it at him.

  “What did he do to your face?” Jovi pointed at the cuts bleeding hotly on my injured cheeks. I touched my sore jaw. I was definitely going to be black-and-blue there.

  “Enough talking, Jovi, move aside so I can cut this patriarchal pig to ribbons!” Zuzu yelled. “How dare you hurt her?”

  As weirdly unnerving as Ned was, I knew I had to stop Zuzu from attacking the guy. “Hang on, I know what this looks like, but Ned didn’t hurt me, he was helping me. It was actually …” I gestured to the pile of ashes, but then I realized Principal Chen was no longer exactly a piece of material evidence. I’d have to explain that part later. “Someone else,” I concluded, adding, “Wait, what are you two doing here?”

  “We heard you were in trouble and that you needed help!” Jovi explained. “I mean, I was surprised, I admit, to have a gecko talk to me at first, but I figured it must be an emergency for you to send it.”

  It was only then that I saw what was sitting on her shoulder. Or rather, who. It was Tiktiki One, looking all pleased with itself as it absentmindedly boing-boinged its tongue in and out of its mouth. Oh man, the lizard-gram had totally malfunctioned. I had sent Tiktiki One off to get Mati and Neel, not Jovi and Zuzu. But I was really touched by how worried both of them looked.

  “I’m okay, but thanks for coming.” Even if Ned hadn’t been the one to attack me, I was relieved Jovi and Zuzu had come right when he was getting all suave and weird.

  “If you say so.” Jovi lowered her sword, but she took a little “fake-out” punch-step toward Ned, who gamely backed up. “But watch it, pretty boy!”

  “Do I even want to know what’s going on with that giant bird?” Zuzu pointed her sword at the eagle.

  “Let’s just say it’s been an interesting day,” I sighed.

  After Jovi and Zuzu had finally lowered their fencing foils, Ned raised an eyebrow at me. “Shouldn’t you stop fooling around and be getting on with your heroic agenda?”

  “Heroic agenda?” I repeated, my teeth chattering from the cold.

  “Did you forget about your friend stuck in the tree?” As he spoke, both Ned and his eagle cocked their heads again and looked at me.

  At the question, my limbs got all liquidy. How did this kid know so much about my life? He must be from the Kingdom Beyond too. It was the only explanation.

  “How do you know about my friend Lal?” I demanded, trying to inconspicuously wipe my nose on my sleeve. “He’s here, then? In this dimension?”

  “In the same tree where first I met you, darlin’,” drawled Ned.

  “You have a friend stuck in a tree?” asked Zuzu.

  “Is Lal okay?” said Jovi almost at the same time. It was so weird, having my BFF and my frenemy in opposite roles. Obviously, in this version of New Jersey, it was Jovi who knew about my identity as a princess from the Kingdom Beyond, not Zuzu.

  “It’s a long story,” I said, my teeth chattering more than ever. “A little bit hard to explain. But I have to go help him.”

  “Oh, how rude of me.” Ned whipped off his ski jacket and wrapped it around my shoulders. He had on a green fleece under it that matched his ski hat and scarf.

  “Thanks.” I felt both grateful for the jacket and a little flustered. I remembered once, last fall, when I’d worn Neel’s jacket just like this. But somehow, the two situations felt really different. Neel’s coat had felt warm and smelled like soap and clean-boy smells. Ned’s jacket smelled like antiseptic or medicine.

  “Anyway …” I tried to get my brain back on track. “Ned, how do you know about my friend being captured by a ghost and stuck in a tree?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way,” Ned said. “For now, you better get on the eagle already before someone finds us out here and makes us go back to class. Girls, you can go make our excuses to the attendance office.”

  For who knows what reason, the thought of getting on the giant eagle alone with Ned was a little uncomfortable. Thank goodness, though
, Zuzu and Jovi weren’t having any of it.

  “Um, I don’t think so. (A) Don’t call us ‘girls’—what are you, our weird uncle? And two, we’re not letting you go anywhere alone with her!” Jovi snapped. “I know she says you didn’t hurt her, but I don’t see anyone else out here, and I see her hurt. So it’s a little hard not to jump to conclusions.”

  “As Principal Chen would say, you’re on probation,” added Zuzu, making a V from two fingers, pointing to her own eyes and then at Ned’s. “We’ve got our eyes on you.”

  And so, I found myself on the back of a giant eagle holding on to the waist of a way-too-good-looking blond boy who was clearly something more than just a way-too-good-looking blond boy. Behind me on the eagle were Zuzu and Jovi, their fencing swords in hand, and Tiktiki One still perched on Jovi’s shoulders. For two totally normal girls from the Jersey burbs, Zuzu and Jovi were accepting the weirdness of the situation—i.e., the flying giant eagle and whatnot—with remarkable calmness. I wondered how they’d take the knowledge that our principal was really a Greek Gorgon. Well, I’d have to cross that bridge when we came to it.

  As the eagle took off, away from Alexander Hamilton Middle School and toward Jovi’s and my neighborhood, I gave a little whoop. No matter how many times I did it—on a flying pakkhiraj horse, in a magic auto rikshaw, or on the back of a giant otherworldly bird—I would never get over it. I loved the magical feeling of soaring high in the sky.

  I pumped my fist in the air and shouted the slogan from the story about the three musketeers: “All for one and one for all!”

  Ned kind of looked skeptically over his shoulder at me, but Jovi and Zuzu laughed, echoing, “All for one and one for all!”

  “The all is one!” cheered Ned. His words, so like Sesha’s, gave me the creeps. All the stuff I’d recently learned about the beginning of the universe, and chaos, and the demon who saw all and controlled all was swimming around in my brain, but like pieces of a giant table puzzle, I couldn’t see how everything fit together just yet.

  But there was no time to dwell on this, because we were soon landing at the base of the giant tree in Jovi’s front yard. I glanced to my own house and saw the lights were off. My parents must still be at their boring accounting office jobs. That was a relief, at least.

  “Nobody home at my house either.” Jovi pointed to her own darkened house. Her mom, Dr. Berger, was our neighborhood dentist, so I’m sure she was busy filling somebody’s cavities.

  “Okay, so let’s take a look at this tree,” I said, dismounting and walking toward the giant ash. “Lal? Lal, can you hear me?” I called, knocking on the trunk. There was no answer.

  “That’s strange. I’ve played under this tree my entire life, and I never noticed that.” Jovi touched a knot in the giant trunk that looked weirdly like a door handle, and then promptly gave a little shriek. The moment she had put her hand upon the big bump, an arched doorway appeared around the knot.

  “Whoa, this is some fairy-tale-level stuff happening here,” Zuzu said, approaching the tree with her sword raised.

  The snow crunched under our feet, and our breath made frosty designs in the air. Our suburban street was lifeless and gray on this February midmorning. Something about all this wasn’t feeling right. Quick as a wink, I whispered a message again in the gecko’s ear and pulled off its already regrown tail. It scampered up the tree trunk and out of sight.

  And then my eyes filled with wonder as mysterious glowing letters in some ancient script appeared above the tree trunk doorway. “Wait a minute, I’ve read about this in a story before. Plus I’ve seen this movie way more times than I should.”

  “Then what do those letters say?” Ned asked. I was too distracted at the moment to think too much about it, but there was something kind of hungry and excited in the way that he asked the question.

  “How are we supposed to know? That’s not in any known language.” Zuzu frowned as she ran her gloved hand along the unfamiliar lettering. “Believe me, I would recognize it if it was.”

  Well, that at least sounded familiar. The Zuzu I knew and loved was way into languages and was teaching herself to speak a bunch from a website. But the Zuzu I knew and loved would also have recognized this language, since it was she who had watched the movie so many times with me.

  “The letters aren’t in a real language. They’re in a storybook one: Elvish,” I whispered.

  It was happening again. The smooshing-of-stories thing. Like when Neel and I had fallen into this very same story back on the shores of the Honey-Gold Ocean of Souls.

  “You mean, like from the movie with the blond elf guy? And that tough dude who’s heir to the throne of Bondor or Gondor or whatever?” Jovi asked.

  “Veeery good!” Ned watched us carefully as he practiced a silly magic trick, making a playing card appear and disappear from between his fingers. I noticed the design on the card was a bright blue butterfly. “But can you tell me what it says?”

  Zuzu whipped her sword around toward the boy. “Wait, Kiran, I think it’s a trick!”

  “Suspicious much?” Ned waved his hand so that the butterfly card disappeared into the frosty air with a pop.

  “Of course I know what it says!” I scoffed.

  “Kiran, do you think …” began Jovi, but I was on a roll, wanting to prove myself somehow to Ned.

  “It’s Elvish for the phrase ‘Speak, friend, and enter!’ ” I said.

  Despite Zuzu and Jovi’s warnings, nothing weird happened when I said the words from the movie. Well, nothing more weird than had already happened. The magical doorway was still there, the glowing letters arching above it.

  “I love that elf dude with the ears,” Jovi mumbled, coming over to examine the doorway with me.

  “What about that elf queen lady?” Zuzu added as we all three ran our hands over the door. “She’s so cool, talking about how she’s going to be beautiful and terrible and everyone will love her and despair.”

  “Self-confidence goals!” I agreed, and the other girls laughed.

  We were all examining the frosty tree with its funny doorway, basically ignoring Ned. It had been weird to accept this new, nice version of Jovi, and the slightly meaner version of Zuzu, but we were starting to feel like an all-girl crew. Like a female version of three musketeers, only without moustaches. Like the Pink-Sari Skateboarders, only without pink saris. Or, like, skateboards. Like Charlie’s Angels, but without the 1970s feathered haircuts or disembodied dude on the speakerphone.

  So that’s why, when Jovi and Zuzu both lost their footing at the same time, I was looking at them and not at Ned. “Whoa, are you okay?” I asked, before I felt my own ankles suddenly stiffen, like someone had clamped a giant hand around them. I looked down to realize that, as my friends were being pulled underground, one of the tree’s giant roots had wrapped its strong length around my ankles! What was going on?

  The girls were screaming now, and while I tried to reach them, I couldn’t move. The tree’s gnarled roots had me fixed in place.

  “This better not be one of your magic tricks, dude!” Zuzu yelled, her feet entirely hidden now under the frosty lawn. Ned laughed, but as he did, he kind of hissed at the same time.

  I turned, almost in slow motion, toward Ned and saw that his eyes were a lot more yellow than blue. And his perfect pale skin strangely scaly.

  I gave a startled yelp of recognition. “You’re a serpent?” I shrieked. I was pulling my legs with my hands now but with no luck.

  Ned shrugged, letting out a little lick of flames from his vicious mouth. Then he transformed into his other, far more terrifying self—complete with scales, teeth, tail, and slit-like eyes. “Dragon, but close enough.”

  “I knew there was something seriously off about you!” I screamed.

  But my realization was too late, because before the words had finished leaving my mouth, the doorway in the tree trunk slammed open. With a slurping gulp, the roots of the huge tree shoved Jovi and Zuzu in through the doorway, a bit like
hands shoving food into a giant mouth. One second, I was hearing my friends’ screams, and the next, all was silent.

  And then I was alone, face-to-face with the dragon boy.

  What have you done with my friends?” I had my bow and arrow out and was aiming right at Ned’s smirking yellow eyes. “And who the heck are you for real?”

  “Can’t you guess?” With a pop, Ned transformed back from his dragon-self to looking more or less like a boy. Then, with a suave little flick of his wrist, he pulled a flat magician’s hat out of thin air and flicked his hand again to pop the hat open. The dude had style, I had to give that to him. He was wrong, but he had style.

  Perching the hat on his head at a rakish angle, Ned went on, “I’m hurt, Kiran! You knew about the Gorgon, but I suppose the U.S. educational system is sadly lacking in teaching storied diversity. Not that diversity of any kind is going to be important for much longer.”

  “Stop talking in riddles,” I snapped. “Who are you?”

  The still-somehow-perfect-looking dragon boy gave me a swaggery bow. “I told you, I’m Ned Hogar! Or perhaps I should pronounce it the Norse way, Nidhoggr. I’m the dragon that guards the base of Yggdrasil.” Ned gestured to the tree in front of us.

  Wait a minute. What?

  “Yggdrasil … are you trying to tell me that this tree on the Bergers’ lawn is actually the mythological Norse tree of life?” I demanded. “Yo, are you kidding me?”

  “Nope, sorry, darlin’, not kidding at all.” Nidhoggr raised a perfect blond eyebrow and gave me what I’m sure he thought was a devastating smile.

  “Okay, so you’re a dragon from a Norse myth. I don’t even care anymore,” I snapped. “What have you done with my friends? Get them back, now!”

  “Your friends are safe enough. They’re being held inside Yggdrasil along with your friend Prince Lalkamal,” Ned drawled.