The ceiling was collapsing, and the underground cavern was filling with seawater. The thumping footsteps of the baby demon were fast upon us, and everyone was half unconscious from the attack of my serpent relatives. Just another average day in the alternate dimension.
“Neel, get up!” I didn’t have time to be super sympathetic right now. He was a demon prince and a fast healer, and I needed his help with the others. I hauled him up by the armpits and yelled into his half-focused face. “Come on, daycare demon’s on his way, and we’ve got to get out of here!”
I was thinking about slapping him across the face, but he got it together about the third time I shook him. The water in the cavern was already waist-high.
“Let’s get the others in the boat.”
Neel and I half dragged, half carried Ma, Baba, and Tuntuni into the peacock barge. The golden and silver spheres rolled around as if glad to see us. My parents were holding up okay, but the small bird had really gotten the worst of it. He sputtered and coughed, his face and body badly bruised.
Ma wrapped the bird in the frayed end of her sari, but her troubled eyes were on me. “Are you all right, my golden one?”
I couldn’t say anything. Fat tears fell out of my eyes. Now that I’d turned on the faucet, I couldn’t seem to shut it off.
Ma and Baba were horrified at the sight of me crying. “Are you hurt? Oh, what can we do? Is it your bowels?” They looked as if they thought I was going to die.
“No, it’s not that,” I sniffled. “It’s just that you didn’t ask to get involved in this. All you did was take care of me. You tried to tell me—but I never believed your stories. Can you ever forgive me?”
Their faces cleared.
“Shona, none of this is your fault.” Ma wiped my tears with her fingers. “We are your parents; it’s our job to take care of you. We will always love you, no matter what.”
“We humans may not be powerful or magical,” Baba added, holding me close. “But the stories we pass on to our children can be.”
“I hate to break up this touching moment,” Neel interrupted, “but we’ve got to find a way out of here before the cavern is totally flooded.”
As if on cue, we heard a familiar voice bellow.
“Where you go, din-din? Here, little din-din, come to Bogli belly!”
We all started rowing like crazy.
As we hauled the boat as fast as we could down a stony passage, I noticed my parents were looking a lot more sprightly. My tears seemed to have cleared up the bruises on their faces and hands. And even the few tears that hit Tuntuni, in my mother’s lap, had done him a lot of good. The little bird ruffled his feathers, and then flew over to help Baba row.
The narrow passages made everything echo. Now the baby demon’s voice seemed to be coming from everywhere.
“Come to Bogli, little din-din.”
And then we heard the most disturbing sound. Like someone was slurping a thick milk shake through a tiny straw.
“What is that?” I began to ask, when I realized what I was hearing. Oh gods, we were moving backward. That imbecilic demon brat was sucking the cavern water dry—and in the process pulling us toward him!
“Row! Row!” I yelled, and my parents obeyed. Neel, bizarrely, did not.
“What are you doing?” He’d pulled out his sword and was standing at the back of the boat, like some kind of advertisement for a one-leg-lifted-in-the-air pirate.
“I’m tired of this snot-nosed rakkhosh baby calling the shots,” he yelled. We were getting sucked back so fast now, Neel’s hair was swirling around his head.
“I think I’m retiring as a demonic pacifist.” Neel’s teeth flashed. “I’m going to kick some rakkhosh baby butt!”
We were back in the main cavern again and could see Bogli at one end. The demon was crouched low to the ground, sucking the water like some kind of deranged elephant. His beady red eyes glowed at the sight of us.
“Come to belly! Come to belly!” he squealed.
“I’ll come to your belly, all right,” Neel shouted, jumping off the boat into the ankle-deep water. “I’ll come to your belly to cut it in half!”
With a ferocious yell, Neel charged the demon.
“We’ll be fine, don’t worry,” I called to my parents as I jumped out right behind him, my weapon raised. The magic bow vibrated in my hands as I volleyed arrow after arrow in the demon’s direction. My moon-mother must have done something to my quiver as well, because, no matter how many arrows I shot, it kept refilling on its own.
My arrow tips glowed with white-hot moonlight, and where they hit the rakkhosh, they burned. The confused creature batted at the stinging missiles.
“Ow! Mean girl has mean pointies! Why you so mean?”
Neel was on him now, slashing at his ankles with his sword. Bereft of the Serpent King’s magical backup, the baby rakkhosh seemed to cower.
“Ow! You mean too! Why hurt Bogli?”
“Bogli needs to back off!” Neel shouted. “Stop chasing us, got it?” He was right up in the baby demon’s face, pointing his sword at Bogli’s eyeball.
The rakkhosh sat down with a plunk on the wet cavern floor.
“Mama! Mama!” Bogli wailed. “Boy yell at Bogli!”
“Mama?” I moaned.
“Let’s get out of here!” Baba yelled from behind me. “We don’t want to meet his mother!”
Unfortunately, we already had. Because, in a puff of acrid-smelling smoke, who should be standing there but …
“Ma?” Neel yelled. “Are you kidding me?”
I stared. “Are you trying to tell me that Bogli is your …”
“Adopted daughter? Yes, as a matter of fact, she is just that.” The Demon Queen picked her front teeth with a sharpened nail. “Say hello to your little sister, darling.”
Sister? I choked back a snort.
“Bogli’s a girl?” The odd revelation seemed to take the anger right out of Neel’s sails.
“Do you have a problem with that?” The Queen crossed her taloned hands over her chest, her nostrils spewing flames. “Have I raised some kind of demonic sexist? A purveyor of rakkhosh patriarchy?”
Huh. Maybe I liked Neel’s mother more than I realized.
Behind the Queen, Bogli stuck her giant thumb in her even more giant mouth. “Big Bwother!” she bellowed.
Neel shook his head. “Enough stupid tricks.” He pointed his sword at his mother’s throat. “You tell us how to turn Lal and Mati back. You tell us now!”
“They’re still trapped?” The Demon Queen belly-laughed hard and long, only stopping when she burped. “Vah! Some big demon prince you turned out to be—you haven’t even figured that out yet?”
“Tell us, Ma!”
The rakkhoshi rolled her eyes, “Oh, come on, Moon Moon Sen, you haven’t the faintest idea?”
“Well.” I looked apologetically at Neel. “I did have one thought …”
“Let’s have it, then!” the demoness urged.
Neel pulled me aside. “Are you seriously having this conversation? Did you forget she tried to eat my brother and Mati?”
“Well, she didn’t kill them, did she? And don’t you want to know how to bring them back?”
I turned again to the demoness. “Well, Your Highness …”
The Queen puffed up, raising one hairy eyebrow in her son’s direction. “At least some people know how to show respect, eh?”
Neel snarled, still clutching his sword.
I ignored him. “That line in the poem—” I started.
“Poem?” the Queen interrupted.
“Tuntuni’s poem … it said—”
“That interfering birdbrain of a minister? Is he still up to his tricks?”
I heard a faint squawk from the peacock barge behind us. I hoped that one of my parents had sat on the bird to keep him quiet.
“Are you going to let her talk or not?” Neel snapped.
“Fine, fine.” The demoness waved her hands at me. “Go on, Stella Luna.”
“ ‘Let golden branch grow from the silver tree,’ ” I quoted. “So I was thinking: Prince Lal is golden—of royal blood. The stable master’s daughter—though loyal and honorable—is not. How could a golden branch grow from a silver tree?”
Now that she was in her mother’s care, Bogli seemed to have all the bite—and intelligence—of a trained house pet. She clapped happily for my efforts. “Mean girl smart!”
“I don’t get it,” interrupted Neel.
“Such a disappointment!” the demoness moaned, rubbing her stomach. “Oh, my reflux! My kingdom for an antacid!”
Neel was looking murderously at his mother. I jumped in to distract him. “Lal’s the golden branch, but he needs Mati, the silver tree, around him to grow into his full potential as a ruler.”
“Okaaay,” Neel said slowly. “It’s true. Lal and Mati are friends and she is a good influence on his confidence, or whatever. He’s definitely less flaky when he’s around her.”
“Right, but the Raja and the queens will never allow Lal and Mati to continue to be friends, right? Not now that he’s the crown prince. Not as they get older.”
“No way, chickie!” The Rakkhoshi Queen cackled.
“Since they’ve been spheres, they’ve been so happy. Humming and buzzing and hanging out together. But once they become human again, then Mati goes back to the stables and Lal to the palace.”
“I guess.”
“So we’ve got to convince the Raja otherwise.”
Neel looked at me, the truth dawning in his eyes. “So we have to take them home again.”
I nodded.
“Everything is connected to everything,” drawled the Demon Queen in a bored voice.
Neel and I both snapped around to face her.
She arched a wicked eyebrow. “Haven’t you figured out the how part yet?”
I shook my head. To which she belched. Then, rolling her eyes, she shouted, “By love, you morons, by love!”
We stared at her. She moved her gruesome head side to side, cracking her neck with a gesture that reminded me of her son.
“You’re lucky you have Loonie-Moonie here.” She pointed a talon at Neel. “I for one am going to try to raise a real rakkhosh this time!”
As we talked, Bogli had fallen asleep right on her mother’s foot. The Queen shook her off, and the baby demon woke up, bawling. The Queen slapped her hand to her forehead.
“Am I to be forever cursed with imbecilic offspring?” the Rakkhoshi Queen snapped, and the two demons were gone in a puff of smelly darkness.
Her voice cackled through the vapor. “Don’t call me, dum-dums, and I won’t call you!”