Game of Stars

by Sayantani DasGupta

  “I didn’t know what was going on here! How could I? You guys didn’t call or write or anything!” I could tell I’d made a good point, because Mati looked guilty at this. I pressed on, my bow and arrow still at the ready. “Look around you, Cousin. Is this who you want to be working with? What are you thinking?”

  “What am I thinking? I’m thinking I didn’t have a choice. Not when Lal and the Raja have declared this partnership with Sesha and the entire kingdom’s got Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer? fever. When rakkhosh families are fleeing Demon Land in fear. When our own leaders are risking so many lives—for what? The jewels of any society are its people, not some … some … stones!” Mati’s face was flushed. She was usually so calm. This was the angriest I’d ever seen her.

  Around her, the other skateboarders gathered, making a tight circle of bodies and faces swathed in blinding pink fabric.

  “Whose side are you on?” I shot back. “They’re killers, or have you forgotten?”

  I felt, more than heard, the low grumble of anger around me. It was early evening, and the sun was setting, making multicolor streaks across the darkening sky.

  “Your Royalness, there’s really no need …” began Naya, but I whirled on her.

  “No need?” My voice sounded screechy and thin to my own ears. “No need to protect myself? No need to defend myself against someone like you—pretending to be my friend when you were all the while waiting to snack on my bones?”

  “No! Princess! How could you think that?” Naya looked like she was going to cry, and half stumbled over a clump of dry grass in her effort to move away from me.

  “I don’t like it either, Princess,” snapped Tuntuni. “But it’s not always so easy to figure out who are the heroes and who are the monsters.”

  “Oh, what, now you’re on their side too?” I snapped.

  “There are no sides!” Mati protested, her voice rising in pitch.

  Someone growled and snapped her teeth. It was Priya, breathing fire and looking like she couldn’t wait to take a bite out of me.

  “Please, sister!” begged Naya, standing between Priya and me. “No violence.”

  “She can be violent if she wants to, you! Who are you to tell her what she can’t do?” shouted another rakkhoshi skateboarder.

  At this, one of the human skateboarders jumped in. “Hey! Leave her alone, demoness!”

  All around us, as Mati and I argued, things were getting more heated among the rakkhoshis and the human skateboarders. In the darkening twilight, it was sometimes hard to tell which was which.

  “Kiran, stop being so emotional!” Mati yelled. “Use your head for once!”

  She sounded so much like Ma, I saw red. “For once? What are you talking about? Oh, I suppose I should be like you, all calm and rational all the time? Like this was rational, leaving the palace to form your own half-demon girl group? What was this, like, a rebellion against your dad or something?”

  “Don’t talk about my father!” Mati snapped.

  “He’s my uncle! I’ll talk about him if I want to!” I yelled back. “You know, why am I even here? This is bananas! I’m not going to hang out here with a bunch of rakkhoshis, wondering who’s going to break down and try to eat me first! You want to take that risk, that’s on you. I’m going to go get help from the only rational friend I have left! Lal!”

  Priya the fire rakkhoshi was getting more and more antsy, even though Naya was trying to calm her down. “Don’t act all innocent, Princess! Why should we trust you anyway?” Her arm muscles flexed and bulged, as if she was imagining hurting me. “Your hair and skin are getting greener every time I see you! Here we are risking our lives for you, and you’re probably just a spy for your dear old daddy!”

  And then Priya and a few other rakkhoshi girls took up the call, “Hao! Mao! Khao! Is that traitor flesh I smell? With curry leaves and turmeric, let’s cook the rascal well!”

  As fast as I could, I nocked an arrow in my bow, but before I could shoot it at the fire-breathing girl, Mati tried to jump in my way. Unfortunately, because of her one shorter foot, she stepped kind of awkwardly and almost fell in the process.

  “Stop, Kiran! You don’t want to do this!” Still stumbling, Mati tried to grab my weapon.

  I reached out a hand to steady her. “Get out of my way, Cousin! I don’t want to shoot you by accident!”

  “Your Splendid Highness, I think—” began Naya, but I cut her off.

  “I don’t want to hear what you think! If you’re so proud of who you are, why did you lie? Obviously because you had something to hide—like your true nature!”

  “That’s rich!” shouted Priya. “You lecturing us about hiding our true nature! Why don’t you look at yourself in a mirror?”

  I felt my insides turn to fire. Yeah, okay, I’d noticed the green color spreading in my hair and on my arm. But whatever was going on with me, I didn’t need help from any rakkhoshis. I turned around to look at Neel’s grandmother. “Can you get me back to the palace, Ai-Ma?”

  “Neel is my precious jewel-boy grandbaby. I will do anything for him. And for you, num-num.” Ai-Ma held out her arms to me. “Come, I will take you anywhere you want to go.”

  “Stay out of this, you half-dead old woman,” snapped Priya, teeth bared and flames coming out of her nose.

  Before I could punch the rakkhoshi in her fiery nostrils, though, Ai-Ma raised herself to her full height. Her eyes became like darkened caverns, her teeth flashed like razors, and her nails glinted and lengthened. She looked younger too, her hair thick and flowing, her skin unwrinkled. It was almost as if the years dropped away and she became the beautiful, powerful rakkhoshi she had once been, before her memory and everything else had started to go.

  “Do not mistake me, little bean pole demoness, for anything less than what I am!” The air shook and the sky thundered. Priya gulped and backed up a little, as did most of the other Pink-Sari Skateboarders, rakkhoshi and human.

  “Your Highness—” Naya tried again, but I interrupted with a wave of my hand.

  “I can’t. I just can’t! You lied.” I felt so weary as I looked at Mati and Tuntuni too. “You all lied. I can’t trust any of you.”

  As I reached out to her, Ai-Ma returned to her regular (if still giant) size and shape. She picked me up in her warty arms.

  “Cousin, let’s talk about this. We need you,” Mati said. “Neel needs you.”

  But I didn’t owe her, or Naya, or any of them an answer. “To the palace, Ai-Ma,” I said, and the old crone started galumphing off in the direction of the royal residence.

  Only once did she turn around, to scowl terrifyingly at Naya, who apparently thought it would be a good idea to fly after us.

  “Wait—” Naya tried, but old Ai-Ma wasn’t having it.

  “Scram! Shoo! Begone! Hato, little demon chitty-boo!” she yelled, flapping her floppy arms in Naya’s direction.

  Without another word, Naya turned around and flapped her wings back to where the rest of the PSS were waiting. I turned my face away from her and her betrayal.

  As we went, I formulated a plan. I didn’t need a skateboarding girl gang behind me to find Neel, especially since half of them were demons. I could do it on my own. I’d get help, that’s all. That was it. I’d get help from the wisest person I knew in the Kingdom Beyond, with the exception of Albert Einstein. I didn’t care if he was some eccentric hermit in the woods like Lal said. He was our best chance: the world-famous demonologist K. P. Das.

  Ai-Ma left me in the woods surrounding the royal palace well before dawn the next day. It was unsafe for her to stick around too long, what with the production company having hired soldiers to round up any and all stray rakkhosh. When I got to the palace, though, I was surprised to see tons of people out and about in the early morning. No one paid attention to me. They were all glued to the outdoor TV screens that had been set up all around the palace complex.

  “What’s going on?” I asked a courtly lady who seemed to have only gotten
half of her fancy outfit on before getting mesmerized by whatever was on the screen.

  “It’s the crown prince!” she gushed. “His second test just began!”

  I looked up at the closest screen to see Lal, whirling and clashing his sword as he fought off no less than twenty rakkhosh and khokkosh. I was impressed at how fierce my gentle friend looked with his weapon. I would have stayed and watched more, but then I saw that Suman Rahaman was already out with his camera crew, taking interviews of bystanders, discussing Lal’s fighting technique and how long people guessed it might take him to defeat so many demons.

  I knew I wouldn’t get another chance to slip away. Once Sooms and his cameras caught me, I’d be stuck. And so I took off, as quickly and quietly as I could, toward the royal stable.

  “Do you know the way to K. P. Das’s hut?” I asked the horses, and even though Snowy looked confused, Raat nodded his great head.

  The teacher. I know. I know.

  I’d honestly been hoping to take Snowy, who I was more used to riding. But Raat seemed so grateful to fly with me, to have something to do except worry, that I couldn’t disappoint him.

  It wasn’t a long flight to begin with, and the black pakkhiraj horse was bigger than Snowy, which also meant he had more power. He beat his strong wings, and I felt the wind rushing by me at a dizzying pace. I felt so free and happy that almost all of last night’s doubts were gone. So what Mati and Tuni had lost all sense of reality and were working with demons? So what Naya had turned out to have been fooling me this whole time? Lal and I could do this by ourselves. I would find out where Neel was being kept, and then tonight, after Lal had passed his second test (he had to! I couldn’t think of the alternative), we’d go together to the right ocean. I’d make that one-breath dive and break open the bee box and get Neel the heck out of that detention center already.

  Teacher will help find my boy? the black pakkhiraj asked into my head as we landed.

  “I hope so, Raat.” I petted the animal’s sleek nose, scratching and stroking the velvety hair with my fingers. “I hope so.”

  I grabbed my backpack and weapons from the saddle bags, then looped the black stallion’s reins around a tree trunk. The horse whooshed out a bunch of hot air into my hand.

  “I know you miss him, boy.” I put my forehead to the pakkhiraj’s and felt my own emotions mixing with his. I tried to lend him strength and comfort but wondered whether he was the one who was actually comforting me. “I do too. That’s why we’re here.”

  I gave the loyal horse one last chunk of dried bee nectar (the best food for a pakkhiraj) and made my way toward the distant hut. The path up the slight hill was lush and overgrown. Mosquitos swarmed around my ears and the sun beat uncomfortably down on my neck as I trudged forward. Finally, I saw a little clearing with the clay hut a bit ahead of me. “Hello? Dr. Das? K. P. Babu? Anyone there?”

  “Get out of here, you petni, you shakchunni, you daini!” Someone I couldn’t see yelled out in a wheezy, shaky voice. “I’m giving you until three!”

  “Wait, let me introduce myself …”

  “Forty-one!”

  “I’m a friend of the Princes Lal and Neel …”

  “Three thousand two and a quarter!”

  “Come for your help …”

  “Three!”

  Jeez, could no one count in the Kingdom Beyond? But I had no time to think about that anymore, because I suddenly found myself being pelted by something wet and slimy. A storm of wet, slimy things actually. Fish! And more fish!

  “Blargh! Blach! Stop! Stop!” I put up my hands to protect my face, but the onslaught of rapid-fire fish kept flying at me, flapping on my skin with their scaly cold.

  “Eat that, you mechho bhoot! Don’t come begging here for fish again!” I realized there was an old man under the thatched eaves of the hut, turning the handle on some kind of a seafood-shooting cannon.

  “I’m not a bhoot! I swear! Look at my feet—they’re right side around!” I held up my left leg with its silver combat boot.

  “It’s a trick!” said the old man, but the speed at which he was pelting me with dead fish seemed to slow down a little. He didn’t approach me, though. Instead, he uncorked and held out an empty beaker—the kind we did experiments with in Dr. Dixon’s science classes. “If you’re not a ghost, then you should be able to easily get into this glass container.”

  Maybe Lal was right and K. P. Das had gone off the deep end a little. “I’m a human being, I can’t get in that beaker.”

  “Are you sure?” The little man waved the science container at me. “A real human being would be able to get in!”

  “Please, sir!” I put my hands together in a respectful namaskar. “I’m Kiranmala, a friend of the Princes Lal and Neel. I’ve come for your help.”

  “Kiranmala?” K. P. Das finally put down the beaker and peered at me. His eyes were huge behind Coke-bottle glasses and the hand that adjusted the yellowing white shawl on his kurta-clad shoulder was thin and trembling. “The one they call Princess Demon Slayer?”

  “I don’t know why they call me that, but yes, the same.” I approached the old man, trying to walk with my feet as forward pointing as I could make them. I pulled out his book from my pack. “I’m a big fan, sir. I’ve read your textbook now cover to cover!”

  That seemed to put K. P. Das at his ease. “Oh, an autograph seeker! How wonderful! Here, I will happily oblige!” The demonologist grabbed my wrist and, before I could pull away, scrawled his name on my hand. “So, how did you like my chapter on skondokata bhoot? Brilliant stuff, am I right?”

  “Headless ghosts?” I recalled the gory illustrations in that chapter and tried not to grimace. “It was … ah … one of my favorites.”

  “Very good taste! It was mine too!” K. P. Das beamed. He pushed up his glasses with one hand and yanked up his dhoti with the other. “You won’t find that level of research in any other volume on the creatures. And my index! I am kingdom-renowned for my ability to write indices and bibliographies! I’ve been recognized multiple times by the Royal Demonological Institute for my efforts, you know. I was even the runner-up for the purple medal of knowledge.” The old man’s face became shadowed with bitterness. “But I cannot believe that ridiculous poser Madan Mohan got the award. For his motivational motion device! A stupid trick to run from rakkhosh! Imagine! There was clearly some hanky-panky with the selection committee there.”

  “That’s terrible!” I tried to pretend I had no idea who he was talking about. “Neel told me that you were the best in the business, sir.”

  “Kind of him to say so!” Now the old professor looked downright delighted. “Very kind indeed! Come into my office, my dear! I’m so sorry for mistaking you for a bhoot! How about a nice cup of tea and a digestive biscuit to settle your nerves?”

  I shook off the remains of the fish scales that were still stuck to my face and hair and followed him into his hut. He’d set it up like an office, with a desk, a few cane chairs on one side and a rolling high-backed office chair on the other.

  The professor puttered around, heating up some tea on what looked like a Bunsen burner—the kind Dr. Dixon sometimes used to show us cool blow-up chemistry experiments. After pouring out the tea into two dirty glasses, he dug out an incredibly dusty carton of biscuits from one of his desk drawers and offered me one. I took a gingerly bite. It was the stalest thing I’d ever tasted. I secretly spit out the mouthful into my hand the first chance I got.

  K. P. Das settled behind his desk, leaning back on the towel he’d placed upon his office chair. He sipped at his tea, made a face, then asked me, “Now, you wanted to interview me and write my memoir, correct?”

  I sighed, trying to hold the hot tea in the glass cup without burning myself. “No, sir. I wanted to ask about your student Neelkamal. He’s being held prisoner in the dungeon detention center of the Snake King’s new undersea hotel. Only, I don’t know where the place is.”

  “Undersea hotel?” muttered K. P. Das, taking
another slurp of his tea and making another face. He then dumped the contents into a desk drawer and tossed the glass in there too. “It’s very hard to get into the TSK undersea hotel casino without an invitation. Well, if that instructional video is to be believed. Although they did do that very nice segment on Lifestyles of the Rich and Monstrous.”

  “You’ve seen that instructional video too?” I asked, surprised. Maybe Mati was wrong in how secret that interception was. “I’ve seen that video. And I’m prepared to do everything it asks. I already have a fang from the Serpent King himself.”

  “You do?” K. P. Das scooched toward me in his rolling chair. I put my tea down, then took the tooth out of my pack to show him. I was sure to hold it only through an old gym T-shirt. No need to poison myself, after all.

  The professor’s eyes got a bit glassy behind his giant glasses, and he rubbed his hands at the sight of the fang. “You wouldn’t want to give that to me, would you? For research purposes? That could be my ticket to a Demonological Institute medal this year!”

  “No, I need it to free Neel!” I tucked the tooth back into my bag before K. P. Das could grab at it. “I’ve been to Sesha’s underwater fortress, but I need your help figuring out which ocean he’s under.” The professor kept his eyes on the tooth, so I added, “But maybe I can give it to you after I’m done with it?”

  He perked up at that. “I bet that Madan Mohan won’t have the chemical composition of the Serpent King’s tooth to submit to the Royal Demonological Institute awards committee! And just to show you I’m sorry for thinking you were a ghost before, I’ll throw in an ointment for your little snake skin problem!”

  Snake skin problem? The professor’s words opened the door I’d kept closed inside, the one in which I’d stuffed the worry about my green skin and hair. Was I turning into a snake? Was Sesha’s wish coming true? I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself, but I had noticed that the skin near my snake scar had become an even deeper green and kind of scaly. I’d been trying to ignore it up until now, but the truth was, I was looking more and more like Sesha’s logo every day. And it was completely freaking me out.