“You’re doing great, Neel!” I sidestepped out of Bogli’s reach and fished out my battered copy of The Adventurer’s Guide from my backpack. The teenage monster had Neel in a headlock, but he was still managing to stab at her with the fork-slash-trident from under her armpit.
“Stop the stabbing, you! Or I rip your limbs in two!” Bogli’s temper hadn’t seemed to have improved since the last time we’d seen her. I remembered that back then, it had been the Serpent King who had given Bogli the power to transform herself into a giant whirlpool and almost swallow us. No wonder she’d gone back to him. She’d probably stayed loyal to him this whole time. I flipped quicker through the book, searching for something important.
“This is not a great moment for story time!” gasped Neel, but I ignored him. I knew exactly what I was looking for. My bow still in my hand, I quickly found K. P. Das’s scientific diagram of water rakkhosh gills. The page described how rakkhosh gills were as strong as steel and only had a few vulnerable points in between the joints.
“Pwincess like a cozy stowy! When I eat her, she’ll be sowwy!” boomed the rakkhoshi as Neel continued kicking and stabbing at her, with no luck.
Before I shut the book, my eyes fell on the next entry.
Elemental Rakkhosh Clans and Alchemy
the creation of precious metals
the quest for everlasting life
the birth of neutron stars
the all is one
I knew there was something important here for me to think about, about the relationship between rakkhosh and the precious Chintamoni and Poroshmoni Stones, but I had to put it out of my mind now and deal with more pressing matters. Like Neel and my imminent death and dismemberment.
Bogli the demon school dropout was drooling long lines of smelly spittle on Neel’s head. Neel yelled bloody murder and managed to puncture one of Bogli’s scales with the huge fork.
“Nice!” I yelled as I got back into the fight, launching a bunch of arrows to make up for my absence.
The young rakkhoshi ignored my arrows, but the fork must have hurt, because with a roar and a cry, she plucked out Neel’s wooden weapon and flung it to the floor. Then she smacked Neel hard across the face. Because of his shackles, Neel didn’t have super balance, so he fell hard, unable to use his hands too much to break his fall.
As my friend tumbled down, sure to become demon fodder any second, I shot forward, waving my arms at the beast. “Hey, barnacle head!” I shouted. “Why don’t you pick on someone who’s not in chains?”
“Girlie mean like electric eel! But pwincess isn’t even real!” The rakkhoshi swiped at me, each time, her talons running right through my shadowy essence.
“Neel, are you okay?” I shouted, desperately trying to aim at Bogli’s soft spots. I didn’t want to kill her, but I certainly needed to slow her down and stop her from hurting either of us.
“Bangoma! Bangomee!” Neel called out to the empty air. “Stop the Essence-Tyme, get her out of here!”
“No! I’m not leaving you here!” I shouted, even as my vision started flickering. Screaming in frustration, I felt myself start to fade from the room, but then the teenage demoness managed to grab my ponytail. Bogli had me now, trapping me in this dimension as she lifted me face high, dangling from her filthy, webbed claws like a girl-shaped piñata.
“Let me go, you stinker!”
Now it was Neel’s turn to attack Bogli again, trying to distract her from me. He got in a blow to the monster’s thigh with both his shackled hands before Bogli flicked him off like a mosquito, then pinned poor Neel under a giant, warty foot.
“Bangoma! Bangomee! Any time now!” my friend croaked.
In the meantime, Bogli brought me even closer to her head, giving me a full blast of her disgusting bad breath. Her oozy fish drool poured onto me, dripping from my hair, cheeks, and nose. She peered at me with bloodshot eyes. “Who my bwother speak to, dear? Nobody but us fishes here!”
“I am not your dear!” I shot some arrows close range at the monster’s head, trying to get her to let a now purple-faced Neel go. Unfortunately, dangling from the air as I was, and only half my actual self, I couldn’t seem to steady my hands. The few arrows I was able to shoot went way off their mark, one coming closer to hitting Neel than the rakkhoshi.
“Watch it!” Neel sputtered.
“Sorry!” Concentrating like crazy to control my only halfway-present limbs, I took an arrow out of my quiver but didn’t nock it in my bow. Instead, I looked for a soft spot on Bogli’s slimy skin. “Hang in there, Neel!”
“Girlie underwater ghost, but I can eat her on some toast,” Bogli mused, bringing me ever closer to her rancid breath, her algae- and seaweed-streaked teeth.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to snack between meals?”
I stabbed at Bogli’s gill-ears with my arrow, aiming for the place that K. P. Das had marked as the most vulnerable. Success! My arrow broke off in the young rakkhoshi’s skin, sending something flying. On instinct, I caught a steely piece of broken-off rakkhoshi gill.
Bogli screamed and jumped. Luckily, she moved enough to let Neel roll away from under her foot. Unluckily, she didn’t let me go, but tightened her hold on my hair.
“Seafood girl get in me facer! I’ll eat you with an oyster chaser!” Giant drops of green-black goo were dripping from Bogli’s injured gill even as she drooled more long streams of spittle on my head. I felt like I was trapped at an all-you-can-eat seafood bar. Only, I was on the menu!
“Kiran, your hair!” Neel yelled as he launched himself again at Bogli’s giant leg.
He was right. This was no time for vanity. I was no help to anyone as long as the underwater rakkhosh had ahold of my long hair. Or the essence of my long hair. Or however this whole thing worked.
Bogli was so upset now, she was glub-glubbing out giant bubbles as she spoke. “Girlie is a spicy sashimi! I bet she will taste so dreamy!”
Desperately, I brought the broken piece of rakkhoshi gill up to my hair and began to saw.
“I’m no sushi platter, you underwater oaf! More like a big blob of wasabi in your eye!” As I hacked away, I felt the tension from my pony easing.
“Bangoma! Bangomee!” Neel yelled from his position grabbing at Bogli’s thick ankle. “Get Kiran out of here!”
“I’m taking you with me!” I yelled, hacking at the last bits of hair that kept me attached to the rebellious teenage rakkhoshi.
“No, Kiran! It doesn’t work like that! Get out of here now!”
“Neel, come on!” Did he hate me so much for getting him into this mess that he couldn’t let me rescue him?
By the time I sliced through the last bits of my ponytail end, I could feel something otherworldly pulling hard at me, taking me away from Neel. It yanked at my insides with an invisible hand. As I finally cut that very last strand of hair attaching me to the demon’s webbed claws, my vision went really wacky—the room started twisting and twirling like I was some kind of Olympic figure skater doing a triple-double-quadruple lutz. I felt my essence being sucked, as if through a giant straw, from this reality back into my own.
“Octopus! Shark! Tuna! Minnow! Where my snakie girlie go?” the water rakkhoshi moaned as my head, face, and body all began to vanish, and all she had left in her hands was a ragged bottom of my ponytail.
“Neel!” I held out my rapidly fading hand. “Come on!”
Neel gave me a look so intense and angry it made me want to cry. “Just get out of here!”
“I don’t understand!” I couldn’t keep the wail out of my voice.
“Go, Kiran!” Neel spat. “And don’t come back!”
“Be careful!” I yelled, even as the nausea swept over me like a tidal wave and everything around me shifted like the inside of a kaleidoscope.
Even in my halfway-present state, I could see what Neel couldn’t: that Bogli was advancing on him with venom in her eyes. In a second, the rakkhoshi pinned his arms behind him in a deathly grip.
�
��Stop!” I yelled, but no one heard my call. The young rakkhoshi had her evil-looking fangs at Neel’s throat when my vision clicked off and I was home.
No!” I screamed. “No!”
I wasn’t in the underwater detention center anymore, but back behind the gardening shed at school. It had stopped ice-raining, but instead, the tears rained down my cheeks. I wasn’t sure if I was crying because Neel was in prison, and maybe in some serious danger right now, or because it was my fault and he so justifiably hated me. Probably all of the above.
His mother, the Demon Queen, had no patience for any of it, though. “Oh, dry your eyes, you simpering snit! Bawling is for babies!” Then she took a closer look at me. “What have you done to your hair? Why is it so uneven, not to mention green?”
“What?” I flipped the bottom of my now-uneven, ragged ponytail over my shoulder only to see that the Queen was right. The bottom part, where I’d chopped it with Bogli’s scale, had turned a bright, emerald green. What the heck? But I couldn’t worry about that now.
“It’s a new fashion, okay?” I snapped. “Like you should talk. What are you wearing?” Whereas I’d only seen her before in glamorous, embroidered silk saris, now the rakkhoshi queen was in some kind of 1980s workout gear—neon yoga pants, exercise tank, and even a ridiculous headband.
“I told you I was getting in my crunches!” the Demon Queen snapped. I’d never noticed before how much Neel’s eyes were like hers.
That helped get my mind back on the important issue. “Neel … I saw him. He’s in demon detention!”
“Oh, really? You don’t say, arugula hair?” snapped the demoness with so much sarcasm, I felt my cheeks burn. “Not like it’s your fault or anything that he’s there. Oh, wait, wait a minute, it is your fault!”
I bit at my lip, feeling somewhat grateful I now had a flesh and blood lip to bite. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get him out. I promise.”
“I don’t need stinking promises! Promises aren’t going to get my son away from your disgusting reptilian father!” The Rakkhoshi Queen pointed a twisted talon at my chest. “I need action!” She flung open the gardening shed door with a dramatic sweep of her hands. “You better get your butt to the registration office, missy misfit, before they’re all out of forms! And then you better be the best bloomin’ contestant that twisted game show has ever seen! If you don’t make it to the final test, when Sesha brings out Neel for you to fight, all of this won’t be worth anything! And neither will his life!”
“I’m not going to let anything happen to him, I pro …” At a cutting look from the demoness, I let the word promise die in my throat. I desperately wanted to ask her if she had a plan of how I was going to get Neel free after I got to the final round, but I didn’t dare. I guess I would have to just figure something out with Lal, Mati, and Tuni. Yes, that was it.
“Now get going! Time’s a-wasting, Princess Green Eggs and Ham.”
As the Rakkhoshi Rani swung the door of the gardening shed even wider, I fully expected to see some sort of psychedelic, swirling portal, or maybe one of those British porta potties that double as time-space traveling machines. After all, she may be half-present but those giant birds were obviously getting in and out of this dimension somehow. But instead, all I saw was an old wheelbarrow, some shovels, and a bunch of empty flowerpots. It was a little anticlimactic.
I ran my hand through my uneven new locks, unable to keep the disappointment out of my voice. “Is this the part when you teach me to ride a flying garden shovel and tell me I’m really a magician?”
“Oh, shove it up your unnecessary literary reference,” snapped the demoness. “Your chariot awaits!”
I peered around, but all I could see besides the wheelbarrow, shovels, and a few piled bags of fertilizer and mulch was what looked like a weird yellow-and-black lawnmower. The Queen saw me looking at it and snapped her teeth, making a dramatic hand gesture toward the thing.
“Ta-da!” she said, emphasizing the statement with a bee-filled burp.
I looked a little closer at the machine, which wasn’t so much a lawn mower as a little three-wheeled go-kart-slash-golf-cart. It was painted bright yellow and black, and had a roof and windshield but no doors. The top and sides were decorated with shiny plastic streamer things, and there were colorful pom-poms on both sides of the windshield. It didn’t have a steering wheel but handlebars like a motorcycle. Unlike a motorcycle, though, there was a broad seat for the driver, and behind that, a bench for passengers. It was an auto rikshaw, kind of an open-air taxi. I’d seen them on my last visit to the Kingdom Beyond but never ridden in one.
The outside of the auto was decorated with tongue-waggling demon faces, as well as spray-painted warning signs for both customers and other drivers:
“But … there aren’t any walls,” I said doubtfully.
“You aren’t going to have a head soon if you don’t quit your lip flapping and get in!” The Demon Queen pointed a talon to the driver’s seat.
“Is there a wormhole nearby? Or a transit point?” Last time I’d traveled to the Kingdom Beyond, I’d had to use a transit station all the way in Arizona, and it had taken all night flying on the back of a pakkhiraj horse to get there.
“Bangoma and Bangomee can make a wormhole. They’re magic like that,” the demoness explained as she basically pushed me into the front seat of the auto rikshaw with an accompanying burp. “Oof! This ombol!” she muttered, before explaining, “The birds are waiting at the end of this football pitch. It shouldn’t be too hard, even for you. Drive toward them at top speed and then head for the vortex they make in between them. Just try not to screw it up.”
“But … but … I don’t even have a driver’s license!” I protested. I supposed by “football pitch,” the rakkhoshi meant the soccer field.
I heard from a distance the faint sound of my name. “Ms. Ray? Kiranmala! Are you out here somewhere?” It was Dr. Dixon’s voice, and Principal Chen’s too. Oh no, they’d finally figured out I hadn’t gone to the nurse’s office.
“My teachers are looking for me.” I heard my name being called again. Crud. It wouldn’t be long before Principal Chen telephoned my parents. And knowing them, they would freak, maybe even call the police. “My parents. They’ll be so worried.”
“Don’t get all acid refluxy about it,” the Demon Queen cackled. “Your adopted parents will figure out exactly where you are when they see you on Thirteen Rivers television, competing in Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer?”
That image was no better than the one where my parents were crying with worry. In my mind’s eye, I imagined how angry Ma and Baba would be to see me in the Kingdom Beyond, especially after they had point-blank told me not to go. But that also reminded me of how furious Neel was at me. So furious he wouldn’t even leave with me when given the chance. I couldn’t leave him in that detention cell, not when it was my fault he was there. Ma and Baba would understand that. I really hoped so anyway.
But I didn’t have more time to think about all that now, because Principal Chen’s voice was suddenly very close. “Kiranmala? Are you out here?” And then, “Could she be hiding in the gardening shed?”
“Flip on the gas and push the red start button!” the rakkhoshi hissed as she pointed to a little red button on the dashboard. “And don’t you dare miss the wormhole! I’m paying those dratted birds by the hour and intergalactic vortexes don’t come cheap!”
Without really knowing what I was doing, I pressed the start button and placed my hands on the motorcycle-like handles of the auto. The back bench was covered with a bumpy burlap sack, and I wondered briefly if I should try and get the fertilizer or whatever that was out of the auto before driving off. But then the engine rolled over with a rattling screech, and my heart jumped into my throat. Oh, what was I doing?
“Accelerator on the right-hand side; clutch and gears on the left! Green button to take off!” The Demon Queen indicated the open doorway of the shed, and the long stretch of soccer field beyond. “Time
might fold in on itself during the journey, but don’t have a meltdown, it won’t pass that quickly here.”
Time folding in on itself? I had no idea what she was talking about but didn’t really want to know either. I reached for the seat belt, only to realize that there wasn’t one. Oh, man. If my mom knew about this, she’d totally kill me.
“Kiranmala!” It was Dr. Dixon, sounding so worried it actually made me pause. I wondered if Principal Chen would fire him for losing me. And then, in the distance, I heard it. Police sirens racing toward the school.
“I … I don’t know …” I stammered, but the Rakkhoshi Queen snapped, “Oh, get going already you big nincompoop!” She leaned over me and revved the engine, making the little auto rikshaw shoot out of the shed and start rumbling down the frozen field.
“Kiranmala, is that you?” Dr. Dixon’s voice behind me was full of shock and recognition. “What are you doing? Come back!” I guess the auto rikshaw didn’t have the cloaking spell on it after all.
“Go! Straight at the birds!” the demoness screeched. “And don’t lift off until the last minute! I’ll make a biryani out of your innards if you don’t make it—those dratted birds don’t give refunds!”
I gunned the engine and drove as fast as I could manage. My hair flew, and my cheeks wibble-wobbled against the frosty, rushing air. At the end of the frozen soccer field, just above the far goal, I could see Bangoma and Bangomee circling around and around each other, and the faint light they were creating between them. At least my teacher and principal couldn’t see the magical creatures. Unfortunately, they could see me.
“What is that student doing on that scooter mobile?” shrieked my principal. “This is an unauthorized vehicle driving on school grounds! And a student taking a field trip without a permission slip! And the faking of a nurse’s visit! Stop her now!”
I pictured our detention-slip-happy principal running behind me up the icy field, her pregnant belly sticking out in front of her. Oh, this was not good. It was really not good.
Game of Stars Page 6