“Nah, I’m good.” Neel laughed. I laughed too. We kept walking.
In another area, a bunch of rakkhosh were practicing an over-the-top musical number for the sangeet, which was happening in two days. They fluttered their eyes and ground their hips and waved their arms in a typical Kingdom Beyollywood–style dance production, only, it looked seriously more scary, what with all the performers’ warts and fangs and teeth and wings.
“We could practice a song-and-dance number for the sangeet,” Neel said, pointing to the demonic dancers, who seemed now to be bumping into each other at every turn. The human choreographer looked about ready to pull out her hair with frustration.
“Step-ball-change, step-ball-change, kick, kick. Okay, close enough. Look left, look right, hip swivel, turn around, jazz hands! Get that finger out of your dance partner’s nose!” she yelled.
“No thanks, no jazz hands for me,” I said. “I’d rather face an army of supervillains again!”
Neel nodded in agreement. “But I could do without the fake beard this time!”
It would’ve all been funny, only I couldn’t seem to concentrate on any of it. All I could think about was Naya, on the operating table. Naya, so happy to be rescuing us. Naya, risking her life for her friends without a second thought. It was a good few hours before we heard from the doctor that she had made it through the surgery.
“She’s alive but I’m worried that she’s not waking up.” Dr. Ahmed looked incredibly serious. “Our tests show there was a rare kind of poison in that monkey arrow—and the only antidote …” The doctor rifled through a copy of K. P. Das’s The Adventurer’s Guide to Rakkhosh, Khokkosh, Bhoot, Petni, Doito, Danav, Daini, and Secret Codes. “… is from a long-ago-extinct flower.”
“What flower?” I grabbed on to that small hope. “What flower?”
“The juice of a blue champak flower is the only antidote to this kind of poison,” the doctor said, shaking her head.
Naya’s air clan friends next to me gnashed their teeth and hissed.
“What?” I looked around in confusion.
“The last-known blue champak tree grew on the grounds of the Ghatatkach Academy of Murder and Mayhem—the main rakkhosh school in Demon Land—but that last tree died back when my mom was a student there,” Neel said. “I remember her telling me about it. It was their school flower or something—everyone was really upset.”
“Unless we can find another antidote, we don’t know if she’ll make it,” Dr. Ahmed said. Then she turned to go, her face back in the book. “Excuse me, I have a lot more research to do.”
The news was such a horrible blow, I couldn’t look at Naya’s other clan members in the face. The black-toothed rakkhoshi made an angry noise and turned away from me. Next to me, wordlessly, Neel squeezed my hand. I didn’t have the heart to squeeze back.
As we walked away slowly from the clinic, I thought about Naya: the time she stowed away on the intergalactic auto rikshaw, the time she tried to give me a facial in outer space, the time she was captured alongside Ai-Ma because of me. And of course, this most recent time she’d saved my life.
I knew what we had to do, but I didn’t have the courage to do it. “I guess we have to go find that tree,” I said in a low voice to Neel. “To save Naya.”
Neel didn’t miss a beat. “We have to use the book Einstein-ji gave you.”
We were in a deserted area of the PSS hideout, a narrow hallway by the dormitories. I leaned against the wall and heaved a sigh. “My last plan didn’t go so well. That’s how Naya got this hurt. Are you sure we should do this?”
“Kiran, listen, the Trojan horse plan may have been your idea, but I went along with it too,” Neel said. His face suddenly had its old determination, like when I’d first met him last fall. “It’s both our faults that Naya is in there, fighting for her life. We have no choice. We have to use the book. We have to save her.”
“But to go back in time?” I pulled out the copy of Thakurmar Jhuli that Einstein had given me. “I don’t know, Neel. Maybe I’ve gotten a little too sure of myself, a little too brave. Maybe we need to think this through.”
“Look, Smartie-ji must have known something like this would happen. Why else would he have given us this book and made such a big deal about stories existing outside of time?” Neel asked, but I couldn’t answer. I felt the weight of Naya’s life squarely on my shoulders.
“Maybe Einstein was just being all metaphorical,” I finally hedged.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Neel grabbed the book and flipped through it, “Here it is! A story called ‘How the Demon Queen Chose Her Consort’!”
I started. “I’ve never heard that story.”
Neel frowned, scanning quickly through the pages. “Weirdly, neither have I. But then again, this isn’t just an ordinary book.”
I peered over his shoulder at an illustration of someone who looked a lot like a crown-wearing young-looking Pinki standing before two men who had their backs to us. Behind her throne was a sign for Ghatatkach Academy of Murder and Mayhem—and just to the right of the throne was a tree with some bright blue flowers on it.
“Look, those must be the blue champak flowers the doctor was talking about. We’ve got to at least try, Kiran.” Neel’s voice was so low and urgent, it was almost a growl.
“Neel, we almost got killed on our last trip to Demon Land. The only reason we made it out alive was because of Ai-Ma,” I reminded him.
“Well, we’re a better team now,” Neel said stubbornly. “And older. And more mature.”
I didn’t point out that neither of us could have gotten that much more mature in only four months. “But how does this time-traveling book work? Do we just ask it to take us back to your mom’s school?”
“I’m not sure.” Neel stared at the pages of the story. “I guess we could start reading it out loud and see what happens.”
I bit my lip. I had learned my lesson, at too great a price, about making rash decisions after the fiasco of the Trojan horse. I didn’t want to make the same mistake and hurt someone else again. “Neel, are you sure? Isn’t a part of that butterfly effect that you’re not supposed to mess around with time? What if we go back there and make things worse?”
“Einstein-ji gave us this book because he knew we’d need it!” Neel’s voice was definitive, but I could tell he was worried too, because he was chewing on his nail. “We can’t just let Naya die!”
That did it for me. He was right. I couldn’t just let Naya die. I wouldn’t just let Naya die.
“We can always join the rakkhosh dance team.” I smiled weakly, remembered the huge, webby water rakkhosh who had tripped on a flying rakkhosh’s wings earlier this afternoon and then proceeded to take about three fellow dancers out during a step-ball-change turn. The resulting demon pile was a disaster of talons, warty limbs, hair, teeth, and I don’t know what else. It looked worse than a tractor-trailer pileup on the Jersey Turnpike.
“No thanks,” Neel snorted as I recalled the image to him. “No step-ball-change for me.”