I yelped as I saw the needle-toothed rakkhoshi slap Naya’s almost-unconscious face with a merciless hand. Her words were equally strong and fierce. “Sister, we must flee and fly! Lean on me! I won’t let you die!”
It was chaos, with the shrieking villains below us and the flying villains behind us, but the entire time we were escaping, the only thing I could think was: If anything happened to Naya, it was entirely my fault!
I don’t know how the air clan rescue party lost the flying monkeys, green-faced witches, and other supervillains who were chasing us. But somehow they did. Back at PSS headquarters, we got a now-unconscious Naya in with the one physician Mati had found willing to treat hurt rakkhosh, Dr. Jhumpa Ahmed. Dangerously sick, my friend was rushed into surgery. The rest of us paced and fretted outside. Bunty, on hearing about what happened, let out an earsplitting roar. The accusing look the tiger gave me made me want to shrivel up and disappear. Bunty then planted themself outside of the surgery door, refusing to leave. Naya’s fellow clan members, the ones who had risked their own lives to come and get us, didn’t spare me any sympathy either.
“If our sister dies, it is on your head!” snapped the rakkhosh who had flown me home. “I really wish it was you instead!”
I shrank back from his snarling face, but I couldn’t blame him at all. “Whoa, whoa, whoa there,” Neel said, standing protectively next to me. “Let’s just all take a big breath and calm down, shall we?”
I felt a warm rush of gratitude for my friend. Neel and I might fight sometimes, but when the going got tough, he always had my back.
“Humans are selfish, with hearts like dumpsters!” barked the black-toothed rakkhoshi. “They hurt us and then call us monsters!”
“Slow your roll, you flighty fliers!” Priya snapped, getting in between me, Neel, and Naya’s air clan friends.
“Hothead flamies, burping fire!” roared another air clan member. “We fliers from the resistance retire!”
“No! Please!” It was Mati, rushing into the room with a few other PSS on her heels. When she saw the furious faces of Naya’s clan members, she fell on her knees, her hands in a pleading namaskar. “The resistance needs you, air clan! We can’t afford to lose you!”
“All our stories are connected, you stupid airheads!” Priya said angrily. She tried to get Mati to stand up, but my cousin stayed where she was, her head bowed in humility.
“The multiplicity of the multiverse must be protected!” Bunty said from their spot near the surgery door. “It’s what Naya would want!”
Neel was looking furious, his fists balled at his sides. From the looks on his and Priya’s faces, I could tell that neither of them was ready to apologize to the air clan. But then Mati looked desperately at me, and I realized what I had to do. I couldn’t stop thinking of Naya in the operating room, maybe losing her wing, maybe even dying because of something stupid that I’d done. I felt tears stinging my eyes, and instead of trying to stop them, I let them fall in honor of my hurt friend. Naya’s clanspeople were furious at us for good reason. I slid to my knees next to Mati.
“Please, friends! I love Naya too!” I choked out, my words coming from the purest, truest place of my heart. “I didn’t understand before how humans and rakkhosh could be friends, how our stories could be so connected. But I do now! I do because of what Naya has taught me!”
I saw Neel’s face soften at my words. He stayed on his feet, but his next words were measured and respectful. “Flying clans, we owe you our lives,” he rhymed, adopting the speech pattern of his mother’s people. “We need us all for the multiverse to survive!”
The air clan rakkhosh were still angry, but I could see that Neel’s words had an effect on them. “Son of our queen, think we should,” said the black-toothed rakkhoshi. “If fighting this war is worth our blood.”
“It’s all we can ask,” said Mati, rising slowly from the floor with Neel’s help. “In the meantime, I thank you for risking your lives today. I thank you for standing by our dear Naya. And I thank you for showing us how much humans have to learn from rakkhosh.”
My cousin moved as if to walk out of the room, but I stopped her, my hand on her arm. “Cousin, I just want to say—”
“What? That you were thoughtless?” Mati snapped. “That you risked all those lives without thinking it through, and now Naya’s suffering for it?”
I bit my lip, tears swimming in my vision. “You’re right,” I choked out. “I would do anything to change places with her.”
And I would. What I wouldn’t give to have it be me in there on the operating table and not sweet, bubbly Naya. I felt Neel’s warm hand on my shoulder but couldn’t look up at him. I was so ashamed.
“It’s my fault too,” Neel said. “I was so busy trying to get to my mom I didn’t even think about our escape route.”
“Look, if there’s anything that this fight against singularity has taught me, it’s that nobody can do this alone.” Mati rubbed distractedly at her hip. I wondered again if she was in pain. “This war against the Anti-Chaos Committee isn’t about being a cowboy—it’s about all of us, with all our differences, still figuring out a way to work together. Don’t you two numbskulls get that?”
I studied the ruby-red combat boots on my feet, wishing they could somehow help me turn back time.
“A symphony is not a symphony with only one kind of instrument!” said Tuni, trying to sound all wise and philosophical. “It takes a village to raise a nest of eggs! One wing cannot clap on its own!”
“Wait a minute, Tuni, you totally went along with the plan too,” said Neel accusingly.
“In cases like these, it’s exceedingly rude to have a good memory,” Tuni sputtered.
“Just try to stay out of trouble, you two, all right?” Mati said. One of the PSS girls skated in with a big pile of notes for Mati to go over, and she quickly left the room.
As we waited to hear word of Naya’s operation, Neel and I kind of wandered around the cave complex, checking out all the preparations for the next few pre-wedding days. Now that we had blown it, and Sesha knew that there was a human and rakkhosh resistance army of some sort out there, everyone had to be even more careful. The rakkhosh disguises, for instance, had to be perfect.
In one area of the cave complex, the fashion team was still trying wedding outfits on rakkhosh, clucking and cooing over outfits that didn’t fit right, and also ones that did.
“I’m brilliant, if I say so myself!” announced the fashion designer Gyan Mukherjee.
“Such grace! Such vision!” agreed his assistants, their mouths full of pins as they tucked up a ginormous purple gown on a warty, three-eyed rakkhoshi.
“I wish there was something we could do,” Neel burst out. “I hate all this waiting.”
“We could help the fashion team.” I gestured to Gyan Mukherjee’s work space, covered in mountains of fabric and ribbons and things. There were at least ten rakkhoshi seamstresses sewing away on giant machines, a countless number of rakkhosh models milling around, and in the middle of it all, the fashion guru shouting meaningless orders. “Fix that top stitch! Steam those culottes! Tack those hems!”