Lal caught my gaze and sighed. “My brother is so much better than me at almost everything.”
Lal’s words startled me, because they were tinged with that same wistful jealousy I thought I’d seen on Neel’s face back on my front lawn.
“That’s not true.” I stumbled over my words in my effort to be reassuring. “You’re brave, and nice, and very ha— um, I mean, very princely.” I almost said the word handsome but stopped myself barely in time.
“You think?” I couldn’t see Lal’s face, but he sounded nervous. “I’ve been working on it, the princeliness, I mean.”
“Oh, it’s going realy well!” I said in a rush. “You have excellent manners and perfect posture and great … erm, diction!”
“Many gracious thanks, my lady!” Lal said stiffly. Then his voice lost its confidence again. “But I don’t think I’ll ever be as smart and strong as my brother.”
Wow. Neel was a lot more of a bully than I thought. I couldn’t believe he would make Lal feel so bad about himself. Way uncool.
We rode for a while longer in silence, until I started to yawn something fierce.
“Sleep, dear princess,” Lal said, taking back the reins. “It is a long distance to the Kingdom Beyond Seven Oceans and Thirteen Rivers.”
“And we’ll find my parents there?” I rested my exhausted head on Snowy’s mane. I could hear the horse’s breathing, steady and low, like a waterfall—and imagined I could even hear the river of his blood flowing in his veins. I was asleep before I heard Lal’s answer.
The dawn was already breaking when I opened my eyes. My butt was sore from spending all night on a horse’s back, and I had a wicked charley horse in my left leg. I imagined it was like being on an overnight flight—except without the stale air and packaged peanuts.
Lal was saying something to me, pointing to the ground below, but the wind whipped his voice away. I shook my head, not understanding, until he repeated, “We have arrived! The transit corridor!”
The horses flew toward the ground, like planes preparing for a landing. My ears popped and I did the trick of swallowing hard. It didn’t work. (I’ve read you can also chew gum, but I didn’t have any, or, like, hold your nose and blow, but I was afraid that would risk unplanned boogerage in my hand, so I didn’t do that either.)
After hours of riding separately, Neel pulled his horse up next to Snowy, and now the two winged horses flew side by side, whinnying at each other.
“Your parents are beyond the transit corridor, Princess,” Neel yelled. “To get to them we’ll first have to get you through the checkpoint.”
“I suppose you possess the appropriate documentation?” Lal asked near my ear.
“Documentation?” I gulped. The horses were coming down fast. And all I could see below me were dusty rocks and red earth.
“You know,” Lal clarified, “an Earth exilation notification, a royal-to-nonroyal cover pass, a tweet from the president?”
“Um.” I closed my eyes as the horses finally landed in a vast canyon. The red-brown ground was dry, without a sign of any tree, bush, or shrub. More bald than our front yard even, and that was saying a lot. Weirdly shaped outcroppings of stone, and a giant mesa-like mountain marked the eerie landscape.
Where were we? Something about the spires of red rocks seemed familiar, like I’d seen a picture of this place before.
“Are we in … Arizona?” I asked when we finally dismounted. I stretched my aching legs. Snowy pawed the ground like he was stretching his legs too.
“It’s the biggest non-wormhole transit point to other dimensions in the U.S.” Neel looped Midnight’s reins loosely in his hands. “Even though the local government doesn’t like it.”
“So what kind of papers do you have, lady?” Lal asked again. “You’ll need them to get through here.”
Why were they so obsessed with my “documentation”?
“I have a birthday card from my parents, and …” I don’t know why, but I hesitated before telling the princes about the map. “Yeah, just the card.”
“A birthday card?” Neel snapped. “Who travels with just a birthday card? How are we supposed to get you past the transit officer without getting snacked on?”
“Princess Kiran will prevail. Have faith, Brother.” Unlike Neel, who looked totally rested, Lal seemed a little tired after the long ride. Not that it made him any less handsome, but his fourth eyelash from the right definitely looked less curly than the others. Or maybe it was that I’d gotten to know him a little better and could see him more like a regular person.
Lal peered at me with a hopeful expression even as Neel continued to scowl, biting his nails.
“You must be good at riddles?” Lal asked.
“Riddles?”
Zuzu’s brother Niko was obsessed with dumb jokes and riddles, and was always trying them out on us, but I couldn’t see why that would be helpful.
I squinted against the harsh sun. It was like we’d ridden all night and landed on some alien planet. There was nothing here. Just rocks. No train station, no airport, no subway platform. Not a soul—animal, human, or even monster. Where was this transit thingy the boys were talking about?
Neel stomped off, kicking red rocks and making a mini dust storm as Lal continued, “Please—you must be familiar with puzzles and logical games?”
“A bit,” I admitted.
“All this way, and Princess K-pop gets eaten by the transit officer because she has no papers!” Neel shouted to no one in particular.
“Chill, dude! She won’t be consumed by the officer, all right?” Lal said in a voice so different than his usual cultured way of talking that I realized how much of an effort he put into his princely accent. But I didn’t have time to worry about that now, because I really didn’t like what I was hearing.
“Consumed? Who’s going to consume me?” Why did the boys keep putting me and consumed in the same sentence?
“No one, no one will consume you!” But Lal was looking worried too. Which wasn’t comforting. “The transit corridor is the place where, in passing from one world to the next, the officer checks your papers, makes sure all is in order.”
“Like the security lines at an airport?” I took a swig from the water bottle Lal supplied. The water was warm and metallic and did nothing to make me less thirsty.
“Oh, sure.” Neel ground a good-size rock to dust under his heel, making me wonder about his workout routine. “If airport officers were ten feet tall and had a taste for human bones.”
“The transit officer is a rakkhosh?” My stomach spasmed. I might have discovered some secret demon-fighting gene in myself, but it didn’t make them any less scary. In fact, all the confidence I had felt last night seemed ground to dust this morning, like the stone under Neel’s foot.
“Not a rakkhosh precisely,” Lal said, “but a sort of an unusual fellow who has, er, been known to eat individuals without the proper documents.”
“He’s been known to eat people? Are you kidding me?” My head ached. It was all too much—my parents’ disappearance, the surprise trick-or-treaters, the demons, the spells, the risk of death and dismemberment at every turn. Besides which, I was hungry and thirsty and had just had a really crappy birthday, all in all.
I felt like the last day had been one of those superfast, upside-down roller coasters at the amusement park. (I actually really hate those—once I yuked corn dogs after riding one. Zuzu didn’t help by laughing her head off.) Only now I felt sick and I wanted to go home.
“I’m sorry guys, I can’t do this anymore.” My voice shook and I swiped furiously at my nose. “I mean, killer demons? Different dimensions? Black holes? I’m just an ordinary kid from New Jersey. I can’t deal with all this!”
Lal’s face softened and he looked like he was going to say something nice, but his brother cut him off with a furious exclamation. “Don’t be such a 2-D!”
I whipped around. “What did you call me?”
“A flatfoot, a ruler, a 2-D!�
�� Neel ground out the words like they were curses.
Which maybe they were, by Lal’s reaction. “Brother, please!”
But Neel kept going. “People from your world think that everything is so easily measured and explained—that everyone’s exactly the same, paper dolls in some two-dimensional universe! Well, it doesn’t work that way, all right? Not everything makes sense and not everything in life is fair. The quicker you figure that out, the better off you’ll be!”
My fear was quickly turning to fury, but still, I squirmed inside as I thought about Neel’s words. Maybe I did want everything to be easy and the same. How many times had I wished my parents would just give me a straight explanation for something? How many times had I wanted them to be like everyone else? And now they were missing, and maybe if I’d actually believed all their crazy stories, I would know how to get them back.
“You can’t just decide to forget who you are because its inconvenient, Princess,” Neel barreled on. “Life doesn’t work like that. It’s messy and complicated and everything’s not always peaches and unicorns. There’s dangerous things out there, things none of us understand. But you don’t just quit the first time you get a little scared!”
“I am not scared!” I shouted. But I was. I’d almost just been eaten. My parents were missing. And I’d just realized my whole life had basically been a lie.
“What do you know anyway? I mean, peaches and unicorns? What are you, like six years old?” My face felt positively radioactive.
Neel grabbed at my dusty sweatshirt. “Don’t you want to see the people you know as your parents again?”
“They are my parents!” I flung his hand off my arm. “And I’m going to get them back no matter what it takes! What have you done to them?”
“Nothing! Of course we have done nothing!” Lal stepped in between us. “We were sent by them to help you. As my brother has said, they’re beyond the transit corridor. The officers tend to close the corridors on a whim, so it would be best if we could pass through now.” Lal gave Neel a warning look. “All your questions will be answered on the other side.”
“Sure, right, if she’s not made into an appetizer!” Neel glared at me.
I glared right back. I had no intention of being eaten, no matter which course of a meal. All the worry and confusion I’d felt just a second ago was now replaced by a new resolve, and a strong desire to punch Neel in the nose.
“Trust yourself, Princess. When you’re faced with a task that seems too big, it’s all you can do,” Lal said quietly.
“Okay.” I took a big breath. Even if Neel was more annoying than anyone I’d ever met, these princes obviously held the key to finding Ma and Baba. “Let’s do this.”
Lal, Neel, the two horses, and I picked our way over the rocky ground. As we approached the base of the high mesa, Lal turned to me. I noticed Neel still wasn’t meeting my eyes since we’d argued.
“This ancient mountain is known by many names. But we call it Mandhara—the mountain of concentration. It divides our dimensions, but it also unites them.”
“The mountain of concentration, got it.”
“You have to know within yourself, for certain, that you are committed to climbing it, committed to this journey,” Lal explained. “Or else you will never reach the cave on the summit.”
I stole a glance at Neel. He was shading his eyes and peering upward. I did the same. From where we were standing, I could barely make out the top.
All righty, a mountain that would go on forever unless I was set on climbing it.
I took a big breath, nodding at Lal. “This is how I get my life back, huh?”
“Yes, Princess Kiran. This is the first step in finding what you seek.”
“Just Kiran is fine.” I rubbed my aching neck.
“All right, Just Kiran, we should be going now,” said Lal with such a sweet smile I couldn’t correct him, especially in front of his judgy big brother.
“Onward and upward, I guess.”
We climbed for what felt like hours in relative silence except for an occasional whinny and a grunt from me as I stubbed my toe on a stone. The sun was up, but the higher we got, the more the desert winds ripped through us, biting at our skin. My bones ached and my stomach growled. I wished I’d stuck some sandesh in my pockets too.
“Why don’t we just have the horses take us up there?” I panted. It was so much higher than it looked. The animals were doing well on the hard rocks, but neither of them had unfurled their wings.
“It is a winged horse no-fly zone.” Even though that didn’t exactly clarify the situation, I decided not to ask any further. I didn’t want Neel to call me a 2-D again.
I also didn’t ask why it was taking so long to get to the cave. Probably something to do with my concentration or commitment. Was I ready to face my real identity? Was I ready to see the place that I came from? The truth was, I didn’t really have a choice. Turning away from this journey would mean forgetting about my parents and letting them die. And there was no way that I was willing to do that.
I tried to focus my mind, visualizing getting to the top. It seemed to work, because all of a sudden I could see the plateau of the mesa. And on the top, a dark cave. But a few yards before its entrance, something very strange blocked the way. After no indications of civilization whatsoever, we suddenly faced two roped-off lines going in different directions. They were the kind you see in front of theaters or in airports—waist-high metal pillars with black vinyl ropes hooked to them. The lines were marked with large signs. The first one read:
Those upstanding royalty, citizens, animals, and demons holding papers (this way)
While the second said:
All the rest of you good-for-nothing undocumented scoundrels (this way)
No one else was visible for miles, but the roped lines threaded their way over the ground in front of the cave. Who’d put them there? And who was here to check which way I went? But my question was answered as the princes headed toward the right side, and a disembodied voice barked, “This line is for those with papers only!”
Lal and Neel fished inside their pockets and pulled out papers, which they waved around in front of them. Then Neel reached over to each horse’s saddlebag and pulled out what must have been the horses’ official papers.
I took a big breath and headed all by myself toward the left-hand line, the one for “undocumented scoundrels.”
“This place could use some immigration reform,” I grumbled.
“We’ll meet you on the other side, Just Kiran!” Lal called with a nervous smile. “No matter what happens, answer honestly, and do not be afraid.”
Neel gave me a hard look. “And if that doesn’t work, for the Goddess’s sake, run like crazy!”
For a few minutes, we threaded our way through our individual lines. It was slow going. The ropes herded you this way and that—like the lines in an airport—so you couldn’t walk straight but had to keep turning left, right, left, right.
At each corner, there was another ridiculous sign. The first read:
Drink all your liquids. Take off your shoes. Hop on one foot.
I looked over at Lal and Neel, and saw that they were hopping away, curly toed shoes in hand. I slipped off my combat boots and did the same. Until I came to the second sign.
No drinking of liquids. No bare feet. And unless you can provide evidence of being part toad, kangaroo, or jumping juju beast, stop hopping!
I put my boots back on and kept walking, until I came to the third sign.
All bows and arrows, knives, whips, maces, clubs, swords, and magic wands must pass through the X-ray machine. No nunchakus, poisonous darts, or firearms permitted.
And then:
P.S. If your arms shoot fire, that’s okay. But you will be liable for anything or anyone you accidentally set on fire. And you must provide your own fire extinguisher. If you do not have your own fire extinguisher, one will not be provided for you.
Miranda rights for people with fir
e-shooting arms. Now I’d seen everything.
Up until this point, I’d been able to see Lal, Neel, and the horses turning this way and that in their own line. Now they disappeared behind a huge boulder, probably to have their weapons X-rayed. My heart sank to see the last flick of Snowy’s tail.
I realized I must be getting closer to the guard’s station, because the next sign read:
Do not sneeze, cough, snot, or drool on the transit officer. If you must, use conveniently located spittoons for the appropriate deposition of your bodily fluids.
And then, in smaller letters:
A spittoon is a spit-bucket, you illiterate swine.
I remembered being covered in the rakkhosh’s reeking snot. I looked around for a spittoon, but didn’t see one. I continued walking until I saw the next sign.
Any rakkhosh, khokkosh, magical beast, or half human caught eating a spittoon will be prosecuted. Any human caught eating one will become very ill. And probably die.
(Stop eating the transit spittoons, we know who you are.)
The line came to an end a few feet away from the entrance of the cave. In front of me was a podium—the kind of stand Principal Chen used during auditorium assemblies at school. On it was a teeny tiny bell and a sign that read:
Ring here for transit officer. Be not afraid. (If you can help it.)
I looked around the deserted hilltop and down into the rocky valley. I wasn’t anywhere near Alexander Hamilton Middle School or Parsippany anymore. I felt very small and very far away from anything I knew. What I would give to see a familiar face. Even giggly-mean Jovi’s.
The wind shrieked around me, lifting my hair with jagged fingers. I shuddered.
There was nowhere to go but forward. I had to get to my parents before they got sucked into some alternate dimension or black hole or spoiled spell or whatever. I couldn’t—wouldn’t—even imagine the alternative. As weird as they were, they were my weirdos, and nothing in the universe could ever be right without them.
With a courage that came from somewhere deep but still unfamiliar, I picked up the petite bell with two fingers. Then I shook it.
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