The Serpent's Secret

by Sayantani DasGupta

  “Anything for you, Ai-Ma!” I said in a low voice.

  The crone held the ruby up to her eyes, and murmured, “So hard and large and red, and still I want my grandbaby’s head? Oh, what have I done, what did I do? You must be my grandson true!”

  Returning the ruby to me, Ai-Ma grabbed us each in one of her gangly arms and drew us up to her chest, crooning, “Oh, my darling pom-poms, my shriveled beanpoles, my scrawny-crow grandbabies!” Ai-Ma rocked and sang. “I am Ai-Ma, mother of mother, for Lalu and Neelu, there is no other!”

  I held my breath as the crone cooed at us. It was more than a little disturbing. Finally, she put us down.

  “Come, my honey-drenched num-nums, my caramel boo-boos. It is time for Grammy to finish her nap. Neelu, you rub old Ai-Ma’s feet, and, Lalu, you pull out her gray hairs.”

  Ew. Really? I grimaced, but Neel gave me a warning glance. It was obviously too dangerous to do otherwise. The prince took a big bottle of mustard oil and began rubbing the crone’s warty feet, while I sat by her head, massaging her greasy scalp and pulling out long gray hairs one by one. They were hard, the texture of steel guitar strings, plus they were slippery, so it wasn’t easy. A few times, I had to use both hands, with my foot on her head for leverage. Ai-Ma didn’t seem to notice, but smiled blissfully and kept her eyes shut, like we were giving her some kind of five-star spa treatment.

  Her snores shook the gorge for about half an hour, but then, with a mighty shake, she was awake again. Ai-Ma snorted and hacked, then asked, “What can I do for my grandbabies who have traveled so long to visit me?”

  “Oh, we couldn’t ask for anything, Ai-Ma,” Neel protested, still rubbing the noxious stuff into her feet. He stared at me with big eyes.

  “Oh, no, how could we, Ai-Ma?” I added in my fake princely voice. My arms were aching from massaging the crone’s head, and I had more than one cut on my hands from pulling her awful gray hairs.

  Without warning, Ai-Ma sat up. Neel and I both tumbled off her.

  “Oh, shame shame, puppy shame, all the donkeys know your name!” she protested. “How can this be? My grandbabies must have a gift from their Ai-Ma—I have prepared no food, I have no new clothes or toys to give you. Please, please do not embarrass an old woman. What can Ai-Ma give you?”

  “Well, Ai-Ma,” Neel suggested, “you could take us as far as the border of Demon Land.”

  “Done!” Ai-Ma promised, scooping us both into her giant arms.

  The rakkhoshi walked us through the desert of Demon Land for seven days and eleven long nights. Her arms were large enough to be warty hammocks, and Neel and I each rested in the crook of an elbow. As comfortable as a warty hammock may sound, let me assure you it was hard traveling. The only trees on our path grew thorns or poisonous-looking pods. There was little water, even less food, and no respite. Ai-Ma grew tired once or twice, but I was so nervous of what would happen if she stopped, that I kept telling her stories from back home. Appropriately adapted for a demon, of course. In most of them, Jovi was a greedy khokkosh.

  As we left the desert, I was shocked to see such wanton waste, filth, and destruction everywhere the rakkhosh had been. There were piles of Styrofoam cups, mountains of single-use drink bottles, and plastic cola six-pack holders that no one had bothered to cut through.

  “Demon Land needs a better recycling program!” I protested. “Look at those plastic rings; if ducks get caught on them, they might choke and die, Ai-Ma!”

  “Well, I certainly hope so,” the old woman responded, her eyes a little glassy. Her long tongue was drooling like a dripping faucet on my turban, “Oh, grandbaby, forgive me, this nose of mine keeps making me think of roasted goose, partridge pie, chickadee stew!”

  The turban almost jumped off my head in fright, but I held it on tightly.

  After seeing almost no one on our long walk, we now approached a group of marauding rakkhosh, who were marching as they sang:

  “Good flesh, warm flesh,

  Toasted nice and sweet!

  We’ll suck their marrow, chew their bones,

  And curry up their feet!”

  “Old woman, what tasty morsels are these you carry?” the head rakkhosh asked, peering at us with all three of his bulging eyeballs.

  Neel gulped audibly, and my own heart beat in time to Tuntuni’s shudders on my head. Ai-Ma may have been half-deranged, besides being sweet on us in a twisted sort of a way, but these rakkhosh weren’t. They weren’t going to mistake me for a demon prince with an oversized, live turban. If Ai-Ma decided to hand us over, or got overpowered, we were goners.

  Luckily, as Baba would say, Granny still had some chutzpah left in her.

  “Be gone, you fart-faces!” Ai-Ma shrieked, waving a knobby arm. “These are my darling grandbabies, and if you so much as break wind in their direction, my daughter the Rakkhoshi Queen will have your entrails stuffed with gold and made into necklaces!”

  The other rakkhosh responded immediately.

  “Oh, terribly sorry, ma’am,” the head rakkhosh apologized, bowing low as he backed away.

  “Entirely our misunderstanding, madam,” said the one with extra arms growing out of his chest.

  “Unforgiveable, wretched thing to suggest,” said a third demon, who had what looked like teeth for hair.

  “Scram! Scat! Hato! Shoo!” Ai-Ma yelled, and they ran off in the other direction.

  “Your mother’s name sure packs a punch,” I said under my breath to Neel.

  He said nothing, but pointed ahead of him. We were finally approaching the border. We knew this because of the sign that read:

  Thanks for Visiting Demon Land!

  “The Bloodthirsty State”

  State Symbol: The Razor Blade

  State Flower: The Thorn

  State Bird: The Vulture

  State Song: “Meat, Glorious Meat”

  100 million victims eaten daily

  Be sure to visit again soon!

  (Please drop by our gift shop for

  a complimentary toothpick!)

  With tears, hugs, and more than a few slobbery kisses, Ai-Ma let us down.

  “Good-bye, my licorice toadstools, farewell, my candied beetle dungs, come back to visit your poor Ai-Ma soon!”

  I guess we’re in the Mountains of Illusions.”

  It was hard to miss the drastic change of scenery. Instead of the carcass-filled, rubbish-strewn desert, we were now walking through rolling hills, the kind I’d never seen before. The colors were mesmerizing—shimmering blues, violets, yellows, magentas, and greens swirled all around us. In fact, it was hard to tell where the ground ended and the low-lying clouds began.

  As soon as we were out of view from Demon Land, we stopped to rest. We drank our fill from a sweet turquoise-colored stream, and Neel helped me free Tuntuni from under my turban. The poor bird was half-comatose from fright and heat exhaustion, and crumpled next to me. It was great to feel my head again. The mist was cool and the air rushing down from the hills whistled through my hair.

  “Now what?” I pulled out Ma’s moving map and studied it through the python jewel. I was leaning against some pink grass that felt like cotton candy on my skin. Well, cotton candy minus the stickiness.

  “I’m not sure.” Neel peered at the map over my shoulder. “What was the next part of Tuni’s stupid poem?”

  I looked around to ask the bird, but he wasn’t there. “Tuni?” The violet-colored trees had some kind of fluffy fruit hanging from them, and there were bushes with polka-dot magenta-and-orange leaves. But no bird.

  Where was he? Our diminutive yellow companion was nowhere to be seen.

  Neel and I walked down a steep hill, all the while calling Tuntuni’s name. The swirling mist was thick around our feet. To my surprise, it also sparkled and made squeaking noises.

  From a distance, we heard an odd little song,

  “Ev-ry-thing

  Is connected to

  Ev-ry-thing,

  But how?”

  We followed
Tuntuni’s voice until we came upon sort of a valley, with folds of multicolored mist all around it. We floated, more than walked, through the silky atmosphere. There were shimmering lights everywhere—silver, yellow, hot red, intense blue. My body felt light and airy, like I had turned into cotton candy myself.

  Then Tuni came into view, hanging from the branch of a nearby tree.

  “What in blessed bison jewels is he going on about?” Neel muttered. Then he paused. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

  I caught my breath. The yellow bird was sitting on a sparkly branch that looked like it was covered in—could it be?—diamonds.

  “On a diamond branch the golden bird must sing a blessed tune,” I quoted.

  “Actually, I don’t think those are diamonds on that branch.” Neel’s wide, dark eyes turned to mine. “I think they’re stars!”

  Say what?

  I took in the scenery around me—the swirling mist, the colors, the sparkling lights. I had a sudden flash to a video that Shady Sadie had shown on her science program about the Andromeda Nebula.

  “Where are we?” I whispered.

  A different voice, not Tuntuni’s, but a man’s, answered from very nearby.

  “Why, it’s a star nursery of course, young lady. Ze birthplace of baby stars.”

  Who said that? I saw no one. Then I looked up and realized Tuntuni wasn’t alone after all. An old man with a turban and a white moustache sat cross-legged on a branch just above the bird’s head. Or to be more accurate, the man levitated off the branch above Tuni’s head.

  “Your Brilliance!” Neel bowed. “It’s an honor to finally meet you.”

  “The famous half-demon prince,” said the man. “And this must be Princess Kiranmala!”

  Tuntuni chirped in agreement. “Yes, Smartie-ji. This is them!”

  I stared at Tuntuni, then at Neel. They knew this guy? And somehow, this floating stranger knew us?

  The mist swirled around him, obscuring his features, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something really familiar about him. What was he, like, a yogi with ESP? A wise man, at least, from the way that Neel and Tuni were addressing him.

  Not wanting to seem rude, I dropped an ungraceful curtsy. “Uh, hello, sir-ji.”

  “Can you help us, Your Brilliance? We need to find Kiran’s parents and rescue my brother and friend”—here he indicated the gold and silver spheres hanging from his sling—“who are trapped by a curse.”

  But the wise man just smiled, adding even more crinkles to his already wrinkly face. “You arrived just in time for my next class. Find a seat! Find a seat! Quick now!” He clapped his hands gleefully, like our presence was the best treat he could receive.

  From who knows where, there appeared a number of little colorful chairs attatched to desks, like the contents of a kindergarten classroom. From somewhere in the distance, a bell rang, and suddenly almost all of the seats filled up with sparkling orbs of light: little giggling, wiggling star-babies.

  “Good morning, mein star pupils!” The wise man’s singsong European accent made him seem familiar, but I couldn’t place where I knew him from.

  “Good mowning, pwofessor,” the infant stars chorused back as Neel and I found the only two empty seats, near the back of the floating classroom. The chairs were ridiculously small, and the two of us barely squeezed ourselves into them, our knees all splayed out in awkward ways.

  “Now let us say our morning pledge together,” said the mysterious professor from his position on the branch. All the glowing star-children seemed to place their little hands over their unidentified middles. Even Tuntuni placed a yellow wing over his chest.

  “We pledge allegiance to the element hydrogen, and also its partner, helium,” chanted the little star-lings.

  Neel and I giggled from the back row like we were the classroom delinquents. Luckily, no one seemed to hear us, and the stars kept pledging allegiance.

  “And to the principle of nuclear fusion. Luminous light, born from dust, nebula to stars, red giants to supernova, white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole!”

  “Very good, students! Gold stars for everyone!” The floating wise man clapped his hands again. The force of his pleasure turned him upside down, so that now he hung suspended, folded legs above, moustache and turban below.

  From this awkward position, the teacher pulled down a rolling chart from the middle of the air. It showed a diagram illustrating the pupils’ pledge—the life cycle of a star. He cleared his throat and waggled his bushy white eyebrows in my direction.

  “Your parents, Princess, will soon be in danger of being swallowed forever by what you know as a black hole.” The upside-down professor pointed with a yardstick at the end of the diagram.

  “How do I save them?” I begged.

  “Shall we tell her, pupils?” the professor singsonged as he spun himself right side up once again.

  The baby stars laughed and shimmered. Pushing their chairs aside, they joined what I supposed were their hands and began dancing in a circle. Like a game of intersteller Ring Around the Rosie. Then they started singing:

  “Red, red, red are all my clothes

  Red, red, red, is all that I have

  Why do I love all that is red?

  Because my brother is a red giant.”

  The teacher waved his fingers in the air like he was conducting the music. “A nursery rhyme from my own youth!” he said.

  “Lal?” Neel’s voice rose suddenly in alarm, and I noticed, just as he did, that the golden sphere—Lal’s sphere—was beginning to glow. It now looked far more red than golden. Red like his name. Red like the red giant a star becomes when it is in the process of dying.

  “Your Brilliance,” I began, but the wise man just shook his head, indicating that the stars were about to start singing again. They whirled in the other direction, faster than before, their bodies a dizzying display of light and energy against the multicolor backdrop of the nebula.

  “White, white, white are all my clothes

  White, white, white is all that I have

  Why do I love all that is white?

  Because my sister is a white dwarf.”

  “Mati!” And sure enough, the silver sphere in Neel’s makeshift sling was now glowing with a bright white light. Both spheres were also pulsing strangely, the red-gold one looking like it was growing and the silver one like it was shrinking.

  “What’s happening, Genius-ji?” Neel shouted out, but Tuntuni pecked him on the head and squawked, “Raise your hand, raise your hand.”

  I felt like slapping the bird, but Neel obediently did as he was told, wiggling his hand in the air with impatience. Yet the old man ignored him, despite Neel’s repeatedly calling out, “Sir, I have a question! Sir, I have a question!”

  As the star pupils began their last verse, I felt my stomach do a double back handspring into a round-off layout, and not stick the landing.

  “Black, black, black are all my clothes

  Black, black, black is all that I have

  Why do I love all that is black?

  Because my parents got swallowed by a really evil

  rakkhosh and then got lost forever and

  ever in a black ho-o-le!”

  “How do I stop that from happening?” I asked, but as it seemed to be recess in the star nursery now, the wise man couldn’t hear me over his pupils’ racket.

  The star students were all tumbling about, tossing balls of poofy pink clouds, playing double-Dutch jump rope and what looked like hopscotch. One of the stars was asking another one riddles: “What’s red, then white, then black all over?” it asked. The other pupil shouted out, “A dying star!”

  In the meantime, the wise man sang out Tuni’s meaningless song again, clapping in beat to the syllables.

  “Ev-ry-thing

  Is connected to

  Ev-ry-thing,

  But how?”

  “But what should we do? We need your help here!” I blurted out in frustration. “E
nough riddles, enough poems, enough songs with ominous meanings. I need some answers that make sense!”

  “None of us can hide from who we really are,” the professor said unhelpfully. He batted one of the round pink ball-clouds in our direction, making Neel’s entire head invisible for a moment.

  “What does that mean?”

  “You must see yourself in the birthplace of darkness. You must travel through the darkness to find your inner light.” The wise man picked up a few sparkling crystals from the branch and started juggling some stars who were even smaller than his pupils. They giggled and squealed in glee as he tossed them in the air. “Darkness and light must always be kept in a fine balance.”

  I shot to my feet. “What darkness? The spell holding my parents?”

  The old man opened his palm to show me one perfect shimmering orb. “Stars are not only spells, but a deeper magic still: the wishes and dreams nurtured in the deepest places of our souls.”

  He blew the star out of his hand like it was a bit of dandelion fluff, and watched it float to another cluster of playing stars a few feet away, who gathered up the baby star in their game. The man spun in the air so that now he was levitating again with his crossed legs up, and his twinkling blue eyes down.

  “Kiran!” Neel warned. He showed me the sling. Lal’s sphere was now entirely red and vibrating ferociously. I could also swear it was double its original size. Mati’s sphere, in the meantime, was glowing bright white but was now about the size of a large grapefruit.

  “What’s happening to them?” I demanded of the professor.

  “The prince and the stable maiden—they wanted to be together, however that was possible, yes?”

  I considered that. Lal and Mati, they did want to be together. But not like this, surely?

  “And your parents, Princess, they wanted you to discover who you are, to be proud of where you came from, yes?”

  He was right on the money there. That’s the only thing my parents ever wanted. But had they imagined they would have to risk their lives for it to happen?