“Pinki of the fire clan has been elected our new Demon Queen due to her skill in the classroom and the combat yard, and of course due to all of your faith that she will fulfill the great cosmic duties of demon-kind,” Surpanakha was saying. She peered around the clearing with her sharp eyes. On either side of her lounged two fierce-looking jackals on golden leashes that she held in her hand. Even as the animals feasted on some kind of bloody meat, their sharp eyes moved over the students just like their mistress’s.
“Tonight, as has been our custom since the beginning of time, we have captured the princely sons from two neighboring kingdoms—from the Kingdom Beyond and the Kingdom of Serpents. One of these future rulers, Pinki will choose as her consort.”
“She just said that they captured the two princes, but Sesha wants to be here!” I whispered to Neel.
“Obviously, Pinki and Sesha bent the rules because they were into each other!” Neel hissed back.
The headmistress went on, “Before our new queen makes her choice, she must swear to keep the balance of the multiverse. For the seeds of the multiverse’s origins—the singularity—reside in our queen, and on her shoulders falls the responsibility of rakkhosh-kind: to keep in balance the light and the dark, birth and death, story and silence. On her shoulders falls the responsibility to keep the diversity of the multiverse ever expanding.”
“Whoa,” I whispered. It was all that stuff the scientists had been talking about. About the origins of the multiverse coming from something within black holes—aka rakkhosh. But that last bit, about rakkhosh-kind being responsible for keeping the multiverse expanding, that was the exact opposite of what Sesha was trying to do. I wondered if Neel could be right after all. Was Pinki not a part of the Anti-Chaos Committee but actually, somehow, Sesha’s prisoner?
“To fulfill this great duty,” Surpanakha went on, “our queen must gain the power of all four clans. She already has the power of her own fire clan, but tonight the other three clans will be sharing their power with her with offerings of symbolic gifts. I call first upon the air clan to make their offering.”
“Look at the tree!” As the headmistress was speaking, my attention was captured by the blue champak tree to the side of Pinki’s and Ai-Ma’s chairs. The tree was full of bright blue champak flowers that seemed to be moving—almost as if the flowers were actually butterflies!
“Do you see what I see?” I hissed. Neel just made big eyes and nodded as one of the flowers-slash-butterflies took off from the tree and flew into the darkening sky.
“Wonder who’s gonna be the gift giver for our clan?” singsonged a tall rakkhoshi sitting on the next root from us. She had on a necklace with her name, Harimati, in Bangla script, and giant jhumko earrings. She also had yellow eyes and fangs so sharp they looked like she’d stolen them from a saber-toothed tiger.
Harimati was nibbling from a banana-leaf plate piled high with what looked a lot like bat-ear fritters. “If it’s not Gorgor-da, he’ll be off on a killing rampage, won’t he?”
I looked over at the rakkhosh she was pointing at, a muscle-bound fellow with three eyeballs and way too many rows of teeth. Gorgor-da caught me looking at him and made a threatening, knuckle-cracking-type gesture. I looked away quickly, gulping hard.
Harimati chuckled, shoving more fritters in her mouth even as she offered the plate to Neel and me. I shook my head no, but inexplicably, Neel picked up one of the fritters and tried it before gagging and spitting it out in his hand.
“Um, wow. That’s got a bite to it,” Neel muttered, and I saw that he was right. The half-eaten piece of food in Neel’s hand did indeed have chomping teeth. Ick.
Harimati laughed. “That’s what makes ’em so good, innit?” she said. It was weird how she was just accepting Neel’s and my presence here even though she’d never seen us before in her life. Must be part of Einstein’s storybook’s magic.
In the meantime, the headmistress plucked one of the blue champak flowers from the tree. It fluttered in her hand as if it had wings. Then the wings turned into lips as, in a strangely breathy voice, it announced, “Gift giver for the air clan will be the flier Aakash!”
As soon as the champak flower said the name, it seemed to wither and die in Surpanakha’s hand. She flicked off the wilted petals (or were they wings?) with a careless gesture.
“I think we know now why the blue champak tree died off,” muttered Neel.
“Or maybe they didn’t,” I whispered, thinking of how many blue butterflies I’d been seeing in the Kingdom Beyond lately. “Maybe these flowers have been there all the time, but we just didn’t know how to recognize them.”
As his name was called, Aakash, a powerful and kind of scarily handsome rakkhosh, stood up from the air clan banyan and took a bow. The leaves and branches of the air clan’s tree waved in what appeared to be a gusty storm. Aakash’s giant insect-type wings spread out several feet when he extended them. His chest was bare under his light-blue-and-white house shawl, and I could see his muscles rippling as he waved to the crowds. I noticed that rakkhosh from a bunch of different clans seemed to give out long sighs all at the same time.
Aakash approached the throne and bowed. “For our queen, the air clan offers the power of flight.”
Aakash made a little gesture, and where there had been nothing before, suddenly, there was a blue pulsating energy, like a little swirling storm, in Aakash’s hands. The pulsing ball had, I noticed, tiny wings.
Pinki gave him a skeptical look. “Was it you calling to me today from the garden?”
“My queen?” Aakash looked confused, and I remembered Pinki had called out his name when Neel and I had tried to warn her about Sesha.
“Never mind.” With a gracious incline of her head, Pinki took the winged storm from him. “Thank you, air clan, for sharing with me your power of flight,” she said, promptly ruining the gracious effect with a huge burp.
The wild thing was, as soon as Pinki accepted the air clan gift, there appeared on her arms the same tattoo-like swirling markings that were carved into the champak tree. Now that I saw them in the context of her wedding outfit, I recognized them for what they were: the mehendi designs that brides often had henna-ed upon their skin for their weddings. But there was something different about Pinki’s mehendi; they almost appeared like they were …
“Stories!” Surpanakha intoned, holding up Pinki’s arms to the crowd. “All the stories of the air clan and the creatures of flight are now the responsibility of our queen. They are etched into her very skin!”
Almost as soon as Surpanakha finished speaking, Pinki’s mehendi disappeared, as if being sucked into her skin. Aakash, still bowing, backed away from the throne. Surpanakha waited for the applause to die down before reaching for the next magical champak flower. The gift giver for the water clan would be a sleek and strong rakkhoshi with a scaly crocodile tail named Kumi.
Kumi too approached the throne with a deep bow. Her hair dripped as if wet, and her tail swished as she walked. The rakkhoshi knelt before Pinki, then waved her hands and produced what looked like a giant teardrop. “From the water clan, we offer our new queen power over water in all her many forms.”
Pinki graciously took the offered gift. “I thank you, water clan, for your gift.” As before, as soon as she said these words, her skin was again covered by the swirling, beautiful mehendi designs, this time in the flowing shapes of waves and teardrops, rain and rivers.