It was the gray morning when I at last opened my eyes. I realized that Neel hadn’t woken me up to take over the watch.
“You looked tired,” he explained, yawning himself.
Neel hadn’t slept all night but was still pretty energetic as he gathered our things, including the golden and silver spheres, cradled like twin babies in his makeshift sling. This morning they were buzzing and humming, letting off a red glow and the warm smell of cotton and honey.
“They’re happy to be together,” I said.
“Make new orbs, but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold,” Tuni sang.
“Tuni,” I warned, “maybe it’s a little too soon.”
“You are so spherical, so round and spherical, you make me hap-py when rakkhosh stay,” the bird continued, ignoring me.
“Hmm … wonder if my grandma would fancy some Tuni-bird stew,” Neel snapped. Immedately, the bird stopped singing.
“Come on, let’s go.”
It was a long walk over a rubbish-filled stretch of land—broken yo-yos, half-eaten peanut butter sandwiches, a few scary-looking skulls, and more than a few smelly old socks, none of them with a proper partner. As we walked, we saw no one.
“They’re mostly nocturnal,” Neel said.
“Like the snakes,” I offered. Neel gave me a half smile. He seemed to get what I was saying. That my biological relatives were just as terrible as his.
We were heading for a giant gorge between two steep mountains on either side. When we got closer, gooseflesh broke out on my arms. I wasn’t sure if it was coming from the gorge itself, but the air was filled with an almost-deafening rumbling sound. It sounded disturbingly like some very large creature snoring.
“We’re almost there.” Neel stopped walking to look critically at me. “You’re wearing my jacket, so that’s good.”
Neel picked up Tuntuni and, to my surprise, sat him right on my head.
“Hey, what’s the big idea?” I asked as the bird squawked his surprise too.
“As much as I don’t mind if my Ai-Ma makes chicken stew out of the bird, I think I’d better try to get him home in one piece. And he’ll be safer out of sight.” Neel pulled out a long cloth from his pocket and wound it around both Tuntuni and my hair, making a big, only slightly lumpy turban.
There were muffled sounds of Tuni squawking nervously. “How do chickens get strong?” Without waiting for an answer, the bird yelled out from inside the turban, “Eggs-ersize!”
“Chill, Tuni. We’ll be all right.” I patted my head. “Just try not to dig your claws in, okay?”
“How do crows stick together in a flock?” came the muffled question. And again, without waiting for an answer, the bird squawked, “Velcrow!”
“How did the dead chicken cross the road?” Neel snapped. “It didn’t, because it was dead!”
That shut the bird up rather quickly.
Neel made a few more adjustments to my outfit, then stepped back, obviously satisfied with the results. “You’ll pass.”
I wasn’t sure what I was passing for—a bird-containing turban certainly wasn’t going to fool anyone into thinking I was a demon—but I was too exhausted to protest. Just like Tuntuni, if I wanted to make it out of Demon Land alive, I was going to have to trust Neel.
He reached into the food pouch at his waist and brought out a handful of dark seeds. “Keep these just in case she asks you to chew on anything,” he said.
Chew on something? I wanted to ask but the prince kept walking. “Come on, we better get there before any of the other rakkhosh wake up.”
We entered the gorge, and I realized that the awful snoring had been coming from here after all. Those horrible rumbling, shrieking, trilling noises were coming from the nose of an elderly rakkhoshi who was fast asleep in the riverbed.
“Ai-Ma! Ai-Ma!” Neel called, gesturing to me to stay behind him. “It’s your grandson, Neelkamal!”
The old crone sat up mid-snore, and then came flying at us. Her knobby arms and legs were flapping, her gray hair was streaming behind her, and her near toothless mouth was fixed in a wide grin.
“Oh, my sugar plum yum-yum, my lollipop dum-dum, my molasses-sweet grandbaby, oh me, oh my, oh, come and give your old Ai-Ma a kiss!”
“She can’t see very well, and she can’t hear very well,” Neel hissed as the old woman approached. “And she can’t remember very well.” I felt my heart lighten, then fall again as Neel added, “But unfortunately she can still smell really well.”
The old rakkhoshi crone bent far down, and standing high on his toes, Neel gave her a gingerly kiss on her hairy cheek. Then Ai-Ma began to sniff the air like a crazed hunting dog catching the whiff of a fox.
“Grandbaby, my sweet boo-boo, have you brought a pet? A human being to play with? A gift for your poor Ai-Ma?”
My turban shuddered. Neel slapped it. I didn’t love the thought that Tuni or I might be considered a delicious gift, like a box of cookies, for Neel’s grandmother.
“Ai-Ma!” Neel exclaimed. “What are you saying? This is my brother, Lalkamal, and he’s your grandson too!”
The crone reached for me, but, feeling my turban first, withdrew her hand.
“The brother of my gum-gum must be my grandbaby too,” the old crone mused. “But why does he smell so much like a human pup?”
Neel’s grandmother drew herself up to her full height, and then, randomly, snorted out some iron pellets from her left nostril.
“If you are my family true, here’s some iron pellets for you to chew,” she sang, handing the booger-covered iron pieces to me.
I had no choice but to take the revolting things. I slipped the pellets into my jacket pocket, and substituted the seeds Neel had given me. I chewed them as loud as I could. Ma would be horrified at my table manners, but Ma would be even more horrified if I was this old biddy’s main course for dinner.
Ai-Ma smiled, but kept sniffing the air. “Is old Ai-Ma’s nose fooling her? Why do I smell human flesh? And mixed in with a nice roasted chicken?”
My turban muttered and wobbled again, but I gave it a good punch.
“How can my grandbaby be so small? Let me see your eyeball!” Neel’s grandmother demanded.
I looked in shock at Neel, who handed me the golden ball from his sling. I held it out to the crone, who felt the bowling-ball-sized object, and smiled.
“Oh, boys, what has become of your Ai-Ma? Why do I still smell delectable meats?” The old crone’s mouth was watering, and giant drops of spittle rained down from her mouth like a fountain. She slurped loud and long.
“If of my flesh you are a part, why, let me see your beating heart!”
“Ai-Ma!” Neel protested.
But I had an idea. I grabbed the biggest ruby from my pocket. It was the size of a small lunch box, and gritty with sea salt and sand. I rubbed it off the best I could and shoved it toward the old rakkhoshi.
“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!”