I pelted off, half expecting Neel to chase behind me. When he didn’t, I let out a sob but still couldn’t let myself cry. I wasn’t about to start doing dumb cliché things like crying over boys.
I bit back my tears, pushing branches and leaves aside as I ran into the beautiful wilderness, away from the shining lake. The moss was soft under my feet and the trees all thick with greenery. There was a gentle breeze, making it seem like the leaves were dancing all around me.
I was well out of sight of the lake’s shores when I heard something more than freaky. It came from my right: a rustling in the trees, a cracking of branches. Oh gods, it was probably one of rakkhoshi girls, braving the Kingdom of Serpents to come and get me! Why had I been so moronic and told them “better luck next time”? As Baba always said, only a fool poked a sleeping tiger. I don’t know what he would say about someone who poked a flying rakkhosh.
I reached for my new bow, only to realize that I’d left it and my quiver hooked on Snowy’s saddle. Stupid, Kiran, stupid, stupid, stupid! I looked around for a fallen branch I could use as a club, but there was nothing big enough. I’d have to take her with my hands. I took a big breath, raised my fists as I’d seen Lal do back in Parsippany, and clenched them hard. I channeled all the anger I’d felt toward Neel now into thinking about how I’d defeat a rakkhosh with my bare fists. I had to believe I could do it. Failure was not an option. Not only Ma and Baba, but now Lal and Mati were counting on me too. If I could just keep the element of surprise.
The rustling was louder now, and I heard some raspy breathing and coughing. The sounds were all coming from behind a large clump of bushes. Fists raised to protect my face, I rounded the foliage with careful steps and then jumped.
“Got you!” My mind whirling with self-preservation and not much else, I launched myself at the intruder, tackling the creature to the ground. Somehow, the target was smaller than I thought it would be. And squishier than I thought a rakkhosh should be. Then I realized there were a bunch of yellow feathers shooting into the air from my arms.
Wait a minute, this wasn’t a demon.
“Why in the world are you strangling Tuntuni?” It was Neel, having followed me through the woods. “I know he’s a pain, but I really think you’re overreacting.”
The bird was a disaster. Bleary-eyed, missing feathers, and with some leaves stuck in one wing.
“Oh no! I’m so sorry! Are you okay?” I disentangled my hands from around the bird’s neck and tried to smooth some of his ruffled feathers. “How did you get here?”
“What … do … you … call … a … bird … who’s … out … of … breath?” Tuntuni panted.
I petted and cooed at the obviously shell-shocked bird, but Neel asked, “What?”
“A … puffin!”
“Shhh …” I soothed the little yellow bird I’d just almost killed. “No more bad jokes now. Save your breath.”
“Have … you … ever … tried … to … keep … up … with … a … flying … horse?” he wheezed. “I’ve been flying all night!”
“Why were you following us?” Neel demanded.
“Only … because … the Raja … insisted.” Tuni coughed. “Doesn’t trust you to finish the job, Princie … thinks you’re as much of a slacker as I do.”
“You’re here to spy on us?”
“I’m here to make sure you ding-dongs do the job right!” Tuntuni squawked. “But I didn’t think I’d have to chase a pakkhiraj, hide from those boy-crazy rakkhoshis, and then get attacked by you, Princess! The Raja is going to have to give me a serious pay raise after this—I mean, benefits, stock options, hardship pay, the works!”
“All right, all right,” Neel said. “Don’t get your tail feathers in a bunch.”
Tuni pointed a yellow wing over my shoulder. “Hey, dummies, what’s that?”
“Where?”
Neel and I both turned to where the bird was pointing. I didn’t understand what I was looking at. The ground looked like it was moving.
“That doesn’t seem right,” I said.
Without a word, Neel grabbed my hand. Not romantic or anything. Just hard. Really hard.
“Ouch!” I tried to pull away, but Neel ignored me.
“Move!” he ordered, yanking me back toward the horses. He ran almost full-out, pulling me along, until we reached a grove of trees to the side of the lake, with Tuntuni squawking beside us.
Snowy and Midnight lifted their heads to greet us, but then whinnied—shrill and fierce. The noise shot a ripple of fear down my spine. I just had a chance to grab my weapons from Snowy’s saddle when, with flapping wings, the horses took off into the distant sky, the golden and silver spheres still tucked in Midnight’s saddlebags.
“Wait, the horses …”
I stumbled after Neel, my legs tripping over themselves. He wasn’t letting go of my wrist and I couldn’t seem to get my balance. We finally stopped beside an old gnarled tree with a lot of knobbly branches, and I looked at him, confused.
“Kiran, hurry!” Neel shoved me up the rough trunk of the tree. “Grab that branch!”
He was starting to really freak me out.
“What is going on?” After I managed to pull myself up to the lowest branch, Neel clambered up behind me. Then, with a panicky glance toward the ground, he dragged me to a branch even higher than the first. When he finally let me sit, I turned on him.
“What the—” I stopped short as a shaking Tuntuni crash-landed on the branch next to me. Some more of his tail feathers were missing.
“Look down, Kiran,” Neel said. “Look!”
I squinted to see what he was pointing at. At first, I thought that my eyes were playing tricks on me. I could swear the grass was moving. Then it seemed like the very ground itself was slithering. With a queasy start, I realized what I was seeing.
“Holy moly, there are thousands of snakes down there!” I met Neel’s own wide-eyed stare with my own.
“Maybe hundreds of thousands.”
Tuntuni shuddered. “Oh, I hate snakes!”
From my perch on the tree, I could scan the area all the way around the lake. And what I saw made my skin crawl. From every direction, scores of snakes were slithering their way toward the lake. They occupied every square inch of land. Cobras, pythons, boa constrictors, asps, rattlesnakes, and a lot of kinds of snakes I’d never seen before and couldn’t identify. And didn’t want to identify. Big ones, small ones, fat ones, thin ones. There were so many snakes that the aggressive ones crawled over the slower ones. Some of those who got crawled over didn’t get up again. It was like a snake stampede.
“They’re nocturnal,” Tuntuni chirped. “They hunt at night and go to sleep in the daytime. It’s morning, so they’re all coming home.”
The bird was right. The sun had risen even higher in the sky, and as its rays reached across the entire surface of the lake, the water itself became almost transparent. And then an elaborate, arched doorway opened on the water itself, and the snakes streamed down through the passage.
“There’s the entrance to the Kingdom of Serpents.”
“We’re going to have to go down there, right, to get the python jewel?”
Neel nodded, our past argument apparently forgotten in the face of our certain deaths.
“We can’t; we’ll get poisoned by all those snakes,” Tuni protested.
“Pythons and boas don’t have poison, they just squeeze you to death,” Neel corrected, chewing on a fingernail.
“Details!” Tuni squawked. “All I know is we’re going to die, I tell you! We’re going to die!”
I tried to calm the bird down by telling him a joke.
“Hey, Tuni, do you know what they call a bird who can open doors?”
“A para-keet?” Neel suggested distractedly.
“No, a kiwi!” I said, but poor Tuntuni just kept burbling, “We’re going to die, we’re going to die,” at regular, demoralizing intervals.