“Oh, all right, take the tiger!” Tuni indicated Bunty with his two wings. “You drive a hard bargain, Ms. Khepi, but if you must have your price, there it is!”
“Not remotely amusing,” said Bunty, snapping their teeth in Tuni’s direction.
“Well, you can’t blame a bird for trying,” Tuntuni sniffed.
“I don’t need a tiger! I just want you to gather up my lost story threads, you fools!” the woman roared. The salad spinner was, I noticed, still spitting out strings of sticky white thread even without the khepi operating it. “Or I will smite you such a smiting as you have never been smote before!”
“Very well, then, as I’m apparently superfluous in this situation, I will skedaddle. Most delightful to meet you all. Best of luck with the story strings and all that,” said Bunty, backing slowly away.
“All of you must help!” shrieked the minstrel. She pointed her ektara at the animal, making streaks of fire leap from the instrument’s strings.
“I say, really, that seems hardly necessary …” began Bunty.
“You dare defy me?” the Baul woman shrieked. In response, her ektara sent out sparks at Bunty’s feet, and the tiger had to jump to get out of their way. Then she clashed her small finger cymbals together, and the waves of sound reached out to slap at the poor animal’s ears. Bunty yelped and jumped, rubbing at their singed fur and sore ears.
“I’d be delighted to help!” Bunty yelled. “I was just saying to Princess Kiranmala—I mean, this young person I’ve never met before, how much I enjoy gathering up slippery threads of whatever that is scattered stickily all over the sylvan forest scene.”
Now that I knew we’d be gathering them, I cautiously eyed the endless threads wound all over the forest. “What did you say these were? Story threads? Why are they tangled like that?”
“Do you want to waste time asking me questions, or find your mother?” the Baul woman responded, and so I busied myself, along with Tuni, Tiktiki, and Bunty, in gathering the glowing white threads from the thorny trees.
It wasn’t easy, let me tell you. The strings were sticky and slippery, and near impossible to get a hold of. It grew dark—though with no illuminating moon yet in the sky—as we gathered the woman’s lost story threads, and my hands were raw and bleeding from getting cut on the thorn trees.
Finally, we were done. It wasn’t pretty, but the glowing, sticky threads were disentangled from the trees and in a big pile in front of the patchwork-wearing khepi. She sighed when she saw them and played a little tune on her ektara:
The story threads are twisted, torn
And no new stories can be born
Smooshed together stories same
Uniqueness gone, in chaos’s name
Before I could ask the Baul woman what the song meant, or more importantly, how she was going to get my mother’s attention, her face began to shimmer and transform yet again.
The Baul woman swirled around and around, dancing like a spinning top herself. The colors on her multicolor coat melted into one, growing brighter and brighter until they were just a pure silver light that lit up the night. I watched, mesmerized, as the body of the Baul woman disappeared into the growing brightness. Bunty, Tuni, and even Tiktiki One dived for the ground, bowing low. Only I stayed standing.
“Hello, daughter.” My moon mother’s voice was like bells on the wind. Her light illuminated the dark forest so that it looked like day. Her presence had made the animals freeze in place and time. Even the trees seemed to hold their breath before her.
My mother was dressed a bit like the Baul minstrel had been—but in a white sari shot through with beautiful silver threads, her dark hair on the side of her head in a bun bound with jasmine flowers. The minstrel’s ektara was in her hand too—and I couldn’t be sure if the Baul had always been my mother or if this was one of those story-smushing situations again.
“Mother!” I reached out my hand, but my flesh touched only her transparent energy. Where we made contact, I felt filled with energy and power. Even though I’d been frustrated with her before, now I felt myself glowing in her presence, as if from the inside out.
“Mother, I don’t know what’s going on with all these story threads getting tangled.” I pointed to the pile of glowing threads still at her feet, and the salad spinner still spitting out glowing string. “But I’ve come to ask you about something else—if you could make me a wormhole through the fabric of space-time to the other dimension.”
“Oh, is that all?” My moon mother’s laugh was tinkly and sweet. “Most daughters just ask for an after-school snack or a little allowance.”
“Or a cell phone,” I added, wondering for a second if Ma and Baba would finally let me have one if my moon mother gave it to me. “I know. But for now, the wormhole would be awesome.”
“But you have destroyed the magic auto rikshaw.” My moon mother pointed to the now-smashed-up vehicle. Then she looked thoughtfully at my frozen companions. “You’ll have to travel through the wormhole by tiger, I suppose.”
“By tiger?” I repeated.
“Well, you can’t well ride that tiny bird or lizard,” she said in an “isn’t that obvious?” sort of way.
I nodded, pretending I had the first idea of how I was going to convince Bunty to be my interdimensional ride. But I pressed on. There was something else I’d been worried about, and I hoped she had an answer.
“Mother, how do I find Lal? How do I figure out where the tree is in New Jersey that he’s hidden inside?”
My moon mother closed her eyes, intoning,
Your enemy’s enemy
Is your friend
Find your prince
Where the road bends
A tree between worlds
A serpent’s friend
Hate not love
Makes difference end
I dived into my backpack to grab a pen, then scribbled my moon mother’s rhyme on the inside of my arm. I knew from experience I’d probably need it later, and didn’t trust myself to remember it right.
As I did so, I noticed my mother peeking into my open pack. Her face suddenly changed, taking on the look of someone else entirely. I knew she was looking at the Chintamoni and Poroshmoni Stones at the bottom of my bag when she whispered, in a hoarse, old-man-type voice, “Are those the star stones? You must keep them secret! Keep them safe!”
I put the pen in my pack and shut it again. “Why? Are they dangerous?
“Dangerous, yes,” said my mother, looking more like herself again. “But also perhaps very useful.” She touched her finger to the side of her nose in a secretive gesture.
I nodded, tapping the side of my nose too. “I’ll remember.”
I took a look at the poem I’d scribbled on my arm. I was stuck on the first lines. My enemy’s enemy, and then that part about the tree where the road bends … wait a minute.
“Lal’s in the tree in front of Jovi’s house?” I asked, not wanting to believe it. My middle school frenemy Jovi Berger had the house next to mine, where our road bent. And she did have a great big tree in her yard. Could it be possible? Could Lal really be in it? Or was this another story swap?