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.”
PLUNK.
And with that, the salty waters of the dark well overflowed. Maybe overflowed is the wrong word. More like exploded in a geyser-like fountain of intergalactic dark energy. The force of the stuff made me fly off the stones and onto the ground, landing with a crash—yet again—on Neel. I hardly had time to catch my breath, because then we were both being bombarded by boulders from the exploding well. Neel took the brunt of it, shielding me from the stones with his own body. We both ducked, trying to protect our heads from the falling liquid and debris. Okay, maybe the
python jewel was a little more umph than entirely necessary for this procedure.
But then there they were. A little wet, but none the worse for having been trapped under the surface of a magic well. My parents. Those horrible landscapers. Those overenthusiastic dessert-makers. Those total nuts.
“Ma! Baba!” I wrapped my arms around them. “I’m so happy to see you!”
“Darling moonbeam garland! Let me look at you!” Ma gushed, pulling away and taking my chin in two fingers. “Such dark circles! Ki holo? Not been sleeping well without your bear?”
“Ma! You know I haven’t slept with Binkie Bear for years!” I turned my face away from her prying eyes only to be accosted by Baba.
“Have you been getting enough fiber, darling? No problems with constipation, na?”
“Oof!” Ma joined in. “I remember that one time you had such terrible problems with your bowels …”
OMG! Forget a rakkhosh, my parents were going to kill me with embarrassment.
Luckily, they had no time to make any more inappropriate observations, because the misty ground started to rumble under our feet.
Wordlessly, Neel pointed at the dark sky, his face ashen. I saw nothing. No sliver of a moon, no trace of an outline. The heavens were entirely dark. But I knew. The new moon had risen.
“Run!” Tuntuni squawked. “A baby demon’s about to be born!”