“Mother, what’s happening with all the stories? Why do they keep getting mixed up?”
“Such a strange kitchen appliance.” My moon mother looked at the wildly spinning salad spinner. “Usually that’s a spinning wheel spinning out story threads …” she murmured, becoming all vague and distant again.
“Mother!” I demanded, feeling my old frustration returning. I thought back to her poem. “What’s going on, with these stories, with the chaos and the serpents?”
As usual, she didn’t answer me directly. “Sesha’s Anti-Chaos Committee is growing more powerful, but I never thought they would resort to g-force-generating kitchen gadgets. This is, perhaps, worse than I thought.” Her light started to flicker. “Thank goodness I am no longer married to your father, so he cannot tap into my power. The multiverse help any woman who chooses to marry that scoundrel.”
With every word, she grew more transparent, like she was fading away.
“Sesha’s Anti-Chaos Committee?” That glowy, delirious feeling when I’d first come into my moon mother’s presence was almost entirely gone now. I wanted to scream, shake her, demand she be more real. Why did she always disappear, right when we had just connected? She was like vapor, so hard to hold on to. “How do we stop whatever they’re doing?”
My moon mother didn’t answer but raised her head, as if hearing something from the sky. “It is almost time for me to rise,” she said, her body growing even fainter as she said this. I could see right through her now.
“Wait! How do I make a wormhole and get home to New Jersey? How do I figure out what Sesha’s up to and stop him? Please, Mother, can’t you help me? Please, stay, for once!” I grasped on to the end of her silky sari, as if I could keep her with me by force.
And then, to my surprise, my moon mother didn’t just fade but her face started to change too, like Neel’s had. A stream of blue butterflies shot out from the folds of her sari. Her skin grew lighter, her hair changing from black to red-blond, her sari into a big fairy-tale-type dress with a hoopskirt.
“Mother! Wait!” I watched in horror as she became swallowed by a big bubble. We were getting smooshed into the wrong story again! This time the one about that girl who goes to another world through a tornado. “Mother! How am I going to get home? And what’s with this Anti-Chaos thing? Is it why Sesha’s taken over the Kingdom Beyond?”
But my moon-slash-good-witch of a mother was already rising into the air, rising out of my story and into another. She held a long fairy-godmother wand in her hand, and a giant pink crown was perched on her now-light hair. The blue butterflies fluttered around her skirts. But her face was twisted, as if she was desperately trying to stay in this reality.
“No! I am myself! My tale stands on its own! I will not have my story forgotten!” she shouted.
Even though my moon mother’s skin and clothes turned back to what they had been, the bubble she was in continued to rise higher and higher into the air, and the butterflies seemed to multiply in number. “Here! Daughter! Take these!” she called.
I looked, startled, at what my mother had dropped at my feet. “What do I do with them?”
“Click them together three times!” she said, her voice faint as she rose higher and higher into the night. She was already up in her moon form in the sky when I heard her last instructions. “And, darling moonbeam girl, don’t forget the magic words!”
Ruby-red slippers, huh?” Tuni said, eyeing my moon mother’s parting gift. As soon as she had risen in the sky, my animal companions had unfrozen.
“Close enough. Ruby-red combat boots,” I said, lacing up the second one.
“You realize they were silver shoes in the original text, don’t you?” said Bunty. “I am a great aficionado of all tales 2-D. The change to ruby-red slippers was purely a cinematic embellishment.”
“Sure, okay, whatever.” I’d taken off the sparkly silver boots I’d been presented recently as the Kingdom Beyond’s champion on Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer? But when I tried to tie the silver boots together and take them with me, something very strange happened. The boots melted—well, not melted exactly—but kind of slowly evaporated out of my sight! And in their place a swarm of blue butterflies seemed to explode, straight out of my hands and into the sky!
“What the what was that?” I shouted, but Tuni, Bunty, and Tiktiki One just looked at me in surprise.
“What are you expostulating about, Princess?” Bunty lifted their giant head toward me.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t see it!” I sputtered, waving my hands in the air, toward where the butterflies had just been.
“See what?” Tuni put a yellow wing to my forehead as if testing for a fever. “Are you feeling all right?”
“But my shoes …” I began, pointing to my new red boots.
“Are on your feet?” Tuni said, then added, “Hey, I’ve got a good one! Knock knock!”
“But …” How could the animals have forgotten that I’d been wearing different shoes only seconds ago?
“Who’s there?” answered Bunty.
“Listen, my shoes disappeared …” I tried again.
“Wooden shoe!” chirped Tuni.
“Wooden shoe who?” asked Bunty.
“Hey, come on!” I protested.
“Wooden shoe like to know?” Tuntuni giggled as he flew in a circle above our heads. Bunty rolled onto their back, paws in the air, roaring with laughter, and even Tiktiki One blinked its eyes as if giggling, before going back to eating gnats and mosquitos out of the air.
I sighed. Obviously, I’d have to let the disappearing boots go. No one but me even seemed to remember them.
“So how do I do this? Make the wormhole, I mean?” I asked Tuni.
“How am I supposed to know?” the bird squawked. “I was frozen the whole time you were taking to your moon mommy. It’s not like I heard anything she said.” Tiktiki One slithered out its tongue and swiveled its eyes in agreement.
“She said I should click them together three times,” I mumbled, feeling totally foolish as I did so. I felt even more foolish when, after the third click of my heels, absolutely nothing happened.
“That was undoubtedly, unquestioningly, indubitably … underwhelming,” drawled Bunty, lazily picking their teeth with a long claw. “If this was a professional plenary session, I would definitely recommend they not invite you back.”
I wished I had my silver boots so I could chuck them at the know-it-all tiger’s head.
“Do these shoes have a button or a hidden compartment or something?” clucked Tuntuni, flying around my feet.
“Ouch!” I kicked out as he pecked at my ankle by mistake with his sharp beak.
“When in scholarly doubt, go back to the original text,” said Bunty.
“The original text?” I repeated, not understanding what the tiger could mean.
That’s when my up-till-now-useless gecko totally came through for me. It made a clickety-clackety noise with its mouth, but as it did, I could swear it said, “Noplacelikehome!”
“Of course!” It was so silly of me not to realize! “Tiktiki One, you’re a genius!”