“These wishes cannot happen without consequences. Darkness is the night side of light. The forgotten brother. The exiled self.”
Now that hit a little close to home. Was he talking about Neel—the forgotten brother—and me—the exiled self? Were we the dark matter to Lal and Mati’s friendship, to my parents’ deepest wishes?
The old guy kept spinning, so that now he was lounging sideways in the air, his fingers twirling his white moustache.
“It is the separations between darkness and light that are the illusion, my dear.” He waggled his bushy brows. “Illusion like the ring you see when light tries to travel around the dark matter in its path. Remember this, my dear, remember my ring and you will find what you are looking for.”
“I don’t understand,” I began.
But he was singing again, “Ev-ry-thing is connected to ev-ry-thing.”
“But how?” I asked.
“Eggs-actly! Perfectly put!” He pulled off his turban, and made an old-fashioned bow in my direction. “Chase the giant, cradle the dwarf, and find the well of dark energy before it folds in on itself and those you love are lost forever. But hurry!”
Then, just like that, he disappeared.
Why was the wise man so familiar? That crazy hair going in all different directions, that accent, that moustache. Oh my gosh!
“Was that who I think it was?”
Tuntuni squawked and nodded his yellow head. “The one and only Einstein-ji.”
“The physicist from your world whose name is practically synonymous with intelligence,” Neel added.
I swallowed my spit the wrong way and choked. Tuni had to swat me on the back with his wing for me to regain my breath. “Albert Einstein?” I finally managed. “Albert Einstein is our golden bird on a diamond branch?”
“He was one of the few scientists from your dimension to understand the seven parallel worlds, the thirteen simultaneous universes.”
“But isn’t he, like …” I paused. “Dead?”
“Well, technically, yes. At least, in the way we understand death. Remember, this is a guy who unlocked the secrets of space, time, and a bunch of other things I don’t even know about. It’s he who first predicted dark matter to begin with.”
But I didn’t have time to process this mind-blowing piece of information, because the red and white spheres were making noises, groaning and squeaking. The red one hopped out of Neel’s sling on its own, and began rolling up the hill and out of the star nursery.
“Wait, Lal, stop!” Neel yelled, chasing after him.
I had no option but to run after Neel, and what I was soon realizing was Lal manifesting into a red giant star. As Neel ran after his brother the red giant, the white sphere, which had shrunk now to the size of a nectarine, slipped out of his sling and began rolling down the hill toward me.
“Mati!” Neel yelled, but I dived for the rolling star-sphere, catching it and holding it in my palm like it was one of those crazy predict-your-future Magic 8 Balls.
“Got her!”
We ran after the red giant, who now looked less like Lal, or even a sphere, as opposed to a huge mass of pulsating solar energy. Although no less scary, this was no fee-fi-fo-fum kind of giant, but something else entirely. It was as if a huge forest inferno suddenly grew some legs and began running across the landscape.
In fact, as the red giant ran, he wreaked havoc all around him. The fuzzy purple trees of the nebula caught on fire, exploding in cracking cascades of flames.
“Lal! Stop!” Neel called, but the red giant didn’t hear him. This wasn’t Lal anymore but something beyond human. He was a solar phenomenon.
We ran through walls of flames exploding over the formerly azure plains. Branches cracked and fell too near my head for comfort. Where was the red giant going? How would we survive chasing a monster essentially made out of fire?
The white dwarf in my hands buzzed, as if with worry for Lal too. I shook it desperately.
“Mati,” I called. “If there’s something of you left in there, help us. I need to save my parents before they get swallowed by the spell turning into a black hole. But I don’t know where they are, and I don’t know how long they have.”
Tick, tick, tick …
Amazingly, some part of Mati must have heard me. The ticktocking noise was coming from the white dwarf. Its face resembled something like a clock now. But the labels on the clock’s face were like nothing like I’d ever seen before. They were the phases of a star cycle—nebula, star, red giant, white dwarf, supernova, and black hole. And the clock’s single hand was pointing right at the third position, the red giant.
“Where is he going?” Neel called out desperately. “Lal! Bro! Stop! It’s me! Dude, it’s me!”
But the red giant kept running, setting everything in its path on fire. Neel and I were running side by side, a charred-looking Tuntuni on his shoulder, and the white-dwarf-slash-clock in my hand. The mist was getting thicker, and the ground looked more orange than blue now, because the entire nebula was on fire. The heat was getting unbearable, and poor Tuntuni squawked as he lost one feather after another.
“Lal!” I tried. “I know some part of you can hear us! Tell us where we’re going before you burn us to cinders!”
Tick, tick, tick …
Mati’s timepiece was now pointing at the space in between the red giant and white dwarf. Which meant it was creeping even closer to the black hole. Which was essentially my parents’ death.
“We’ve got to hurry, Neel!” I showed him the clock, indicating the all too rapidly moving arm. “My parents don’t have much more time!”
As if in answer to the danger my parents faced, the landscape itself seemed to change. Instead of the pastel colors and glowing atmosphere, there were spiky bushes and black trees with thorn-covered branches. In front of us, the red giant ran through a hastily put up cardboard archway. It was a little crooked, and decorated to look like a demon’s open mouth, complete with fangs hanging down toward us. On the garishly painted signboard, near the top, was the word:
D E N G A R
As the red giant ran through it, it set the flimsy sign on fire. Neel and I both stopped short, avoiding the falling embers and pieces of burning cardboard.
“Dengar?” I shouted, to make myself heard above the noise of the burning sign. “Really?”
“English is not everyone’s first language,” Neel explained defensively, raising his arm to protect Tuntuni from a floating piece of flaming cardboard.
I realized there were a few other signboards here and there around the burning archway with crazy slogans painted on them too. Before they started to catch fire and burn, I saw that most of them were warnings for people setting out to fight rakkhosh:
AFTER WHISKY, FIGHTING DEMoNS RISKY
and
IF YOU SlEEP, YoUR FAMIlY WIll WEEP
in addition to
RAKKHOSH BABIES DON’T SAY MAYBE!
and the ever popular
FIGHT DEMONIC FOOLS AND FORM BLOOD POOLS!
“The well of demonic energy must be nearby, right?”
Neel didn’t have a chance to reply, because, just then, Mati’s clock hand started ticktocking even louder than before.
“Oh no! Neel! Look!”
We watched as the clock hand now swept right past the white dwarf to hover somewhere right before the black hole mark. As it did so, the glowing white shape in my arms began transforming once again into the silver sphere I knew and loved.
“Neel! I’m running out of time!”
But Neel had run ahead of me through the almost burned-out “Dengar” archway and was picking up the other sphere. It had magically transformed back into the golden bowling ball that we were used to, its red giant manifestation complete. And while that brought some strange degree of comfort—to see Mati and Lal back to their magical sphere forms—it also reminded me that the spell we were dealing with was almost at an end. As was the time I had left to find my parents.
“What do
I do?” I cried.
“Look for the ring! Look for the ring!” squawked Tuntuni from Neel’s shoulder. The bird was pointing at what looked like a simple pile of boulders in front of us. Now that it had stopped raining fiery cardboard from the sky, I could approach it.
“What is this?”
I wasn’t sure if I actually had tears in my eyes, or if it was the swirling mist, because, all of a sudden, the rock formation began to glow.
“Dr. Einstein said to look for a ring of light …” I remembered aloud.
“Einstein’s ring! Of course!” Neel was tucking the golden and silver spheres back into his makeshift sling. “Einstein predicted that dark matter must exist in the universe because he noticed that light from distant stars sometimes looks like circles of light instead of pinpoints.”
“Oh, right, I heard about this on a science program,” I added. “He realized there must be something in the way—so that the light had to travel all around the object before making it to Earth. Hence, Einstein’s ring.”
At Neel’s surprised expression, I shrugged defensively. “I never said I wasn’t good at science.”
Neel nodded, squinting at the glowing rocks. I followed his gaze.
In between the gaps in the boulders, I could make out something glimmering with a strange, magical force. Without a second thought, I began to climb up the slippery stones.
“What are you doing?” Neel took my arm.
I glared at him, and he dropped his hand. “There’s something in the middle there, and I’m going to find out what it is!”
I scrambled up the rocks, but when Neel tried to follow me, I waved him off.
“You might have to come rescue me!” I cautioned. “My Baba always says, two men should not go into a jackal’s den.”
“Your Baba has a lot of really, uh, fascinating sayings,” said Neel as I began to climb, carefully placing my foot in one crevice and then another. My hands gripped and slipped and got cut on the sharp stones, but I kept on climbing. I had no choice. My parents’ lives depended on me.
Finally, after a slightly harrowing few minutes, I was at the top of the stones. Even though I hadn’t been able to see it from the ground, I realized the boulders were surrounding a central hollow—a crater-like hole at the top. I perched on the edge of the open space, peering down, not understanding what I was seeing.
“What is it?” Neel called.
When I didn’t answer right away, Tuntuni flew up to land on my shoulder. As the bird and I peered into the hole together, I finally understood.
“I don’t think this is just any old pile of boulders,” I called down to Neel. “I think it’s a well!”
As I saw my own face and Tuntuni’s birdy visage reflected back to me from the well’s water, I realized it must be true.
“A well of dark energy!” Neel exclaimed. “Your parents must be there!”
“I know, but how do I find them? How do I get them out?” My voice echoed weirdly off the stone sides.
“We don’t have much time!” Neel cautioned.
“It’s the night of the new moon,” Tuntuni said, looking at the sky. “When the dark moon rises is the time that marks when a rakkhosh is born.”
The mist was getting darker now, swirling around in grays and blacks rather than vivid colors. Soon it would be time for the moon to rise. Or, rather, it would be the night of the new moon. And my parents’ time would be up.
I blinked hard, trying to keep my cool. “Dark matter scatters light …” I repeated to myself.
I peered at the wobbly reflection of my own determined face in the well’s dark fluid, its surface a bit thicker and more oily than water. But still, I saw myself in the darkness. Our golden bird was right.
“Ma? Baba?” I called tentatively. There was no answer.
“We found it,” I mumbled to myself. “But now what?”
Neel said there were lots of wells of dark energy; how did I know this was the right one? Could I even be sure that my parents were in here? And if they were, how the heck was I going to fish them out of this magic, invisible goo?
I didn’t have a lot of time. The mists were getting even darker. I had to find out if my parents were below the surface of that water. And there was only one way to do it. I yanked off my jacket and shoes, getting ready to dive into the well.
Stop! Ma’s voice yelled.
What are you, a few mangoes short of a bushel? Baba echoed.
I stopped. As clear as if they were standing next to me, I heard my parents’ voices.
“Stop, Kiran, you can’t dive into a well. You’ll kill yourself,” Neel shouted from below.
“Yeah, that’s what my parents just said.” I put my shoes back on.
“Okay, let’s just think this through,” Neel continued. “Every step, we’ve known we’re on the right track because we had evidence. The moving map led us over the sea, where we found the red rubies from Tuntuni’s poem.”
“Right,” I shouted back. The jewels were still heavy in my pockets.
“Then the map led us through Demon Land to here—and we knew it was Maya Pahar because another one of the poem’s lines came true—‘on a diamond branch a golden bird must sing a blessed song.’”
“Yeah, yeah,” I sputtered impatiently. Ma and Baba’s time was running out while Neel was pontificating. “Let’s move it along, haven’t got all night here. On a bit of a pre-apocalyptic deadline.”
“So let’s think about the next part of the poem. It’s gotten us this far.”
“ ‘Neelkamal and Kiranmala, heed my warning well,’ ” I muttered, “ ‘Your families will crumble, your life an empty shell.’ ” My arms were covered in goose bumps. I wasn’t going to let that happen. No way! “ ‘Unless you find the jewel in evil’s hidden room, cross ruby seas full of love beneath the dark red moon.’ ”
“ ‘In a monster’s arms be cradled and cross the desert wide, in the Mountains of Illusions find a wise man by your side,’ ” Neel said. “And then comes that line about Einstein-ji—on a diamond branch, a golden bird must sing a blessed song.”
“And then those lines about Lal and Mati—follow brother red and sister white not a moment too long.”
“What’s the next line?” Neel asked, fishing around in his pockets. He pulled out some gum, a broken pencil, and some of the sea rubies, but not the paper he’d written the poem on. “I know I wrote it down here somewhere.”
“Something about golden and silver balls?” I asked nervously, my mind a racing blank. I didn’t have time to be discussing poetry stanzas, I had to get my parents!
“ ‘In your heart’s fountain, set the pearly waters free,’ ” said Tuntuni. “I can’t believe you numskulls don’t remember. Really, it is so hard to find people who appreciate good lyric verse these days.”
“ ‘In your heart’s fountain, set the pearly waters free,’ ” I repeated, looking into the dark well. What did that remind me of? When had I heard about pearls and water? Waters and pearls? I snapped my fingers. The transit officer. What had that riddle been? The ocean’s pearl, a grain of sand, more precious than all the gold in the land …
“Neel!” I called. “I think I know what we have to do!”
I reached into my pocket and ran my hand over some of the smaller rubies I had stashed in there. My hand came out gritty and sticky, full of salt from the sea. “Set the pearly waters free,” I repeated.
“What are you talking about?” Neel yelled.
I raised my voice a couple notches. “Listen, when I had to answer the transit officer’s riddle, the puzzle was something about the ocean’s pearl, a grain of sand—something without which life would be bland. It turned out the answer was salt.”
“Something white like a pearl, from the ocean, small like a grain of sand,” said Neel. “Life would certainly be bland without salt.”
“Neel, what if the word ‘pearl’ in Tuntuni’s poem refers to salt too? What if we have to set the salty waters of the fountain free?” I started to
empty the red jewels from my pockets into the shadowy well, and was gratified to hear a plunk with every stone.
“You think we have to get rid of all our rubies?” Neel shouted.
“Unless you have a saltshaker on you. The rubies are coated in sea salt!” I dug out the jewels and threw them into the water. Plink. Plunk. I had them stashed all over: my pants, shirt, backpack.
“Baba used to tell me this story about a thirsty crow who found a well during a drought,” I explained as I threw more jewels into the deep. “The well water was so low the crow couldn’t reach it. Now a different animal may have dived in, to his death …”
“Isn’t that what you were just about to do?” Neel was emptying all the rubies from his pockets, and Tuntuni was flying them up to me a few at a time in his beak. I tossed them all into the well of dark energy.
“But the crow was clever, and instead of jumping in, began to gather all the stones he could, and throw them into the well.”
Plink, plunk, plink. The noise was getting louder now, as if the water level was rising. I cautiously leaned over. Sure enough, my wobbly reflection was several feet closer now than it had been before.
“Finally, the water rose high enough, and the crow could reach his beak in and quench his thirst.”
I was getting down to our last rubies. Plink. Plunk. The dark water was now almost to the top of the well. My reflection was so close I could reach out and touch it.
“It’s a good theory, Kiran,” Neel called. “Except that I’m all outa rubies, and the waters still aren’t flowing free.”
He was right. My reflection was just teetering on the edge of the boulders. My heart sunk.
“Wait a minute, there’s one more stone.” With a deep breath, I pulled out the python jewel from my jacket pocket.
“Princess, stop!” squawked Tuntuni.
“No, Kiran, we have no way of reading the map without it!” Neel shouted. “How are we going to get home?”
“I have no home without my family,” I explained, remembering that Neel had said almost the same thing about Lal to their father. “I’m sorry, I can’t leave without them.”
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