“All the stories of the water clan and the creatures of the water are now etched into your skin,” said Surpanakha. The headmistress then picked another of the blue champak-flowers-slash-butterflies.
“Our gift giver representing the land clan will be … Kiranmala!” shouted the small blue flower. The headmistress Surpanakha dropped the dying petals and wrinkled her brows. “I didn’t know we had a student with that name,” I heard her mutter.
It took me a minute to register what had just happened. “Don’t be shy—that’s you!” Harimati the rakkhoshi urged me forward, even as the rakkhosh she’d called Gorgor-da growled at me. “Never mind Gorgor-da, go give the Queen a land clan gift!”
“Wait, no—” Neel began, but Harimati cut him off.
“It’s an honor! Get up there!” Before I could stop her, Harimati and another rakkhosh hoisted me up on their shoulders and carried me toward the stage!
Oh no, what was I going to do? I didn’t have the ability to conjure up a magical gift like Aakash or Kumi had done. But then I thought about the one magical gift I did have. Maybe this was meant to be, another part of Einstein-ji’s book magic! And this might be my one last chance to convince Pinki not to choose Sesha!
I saw Neel dashing up behind us, a worried expression on his face, but as Harimati and the other rakkhosh put me down by the stage, I whispered reassuringly, “Don’t worry, I got this.”
“You better know what you’re doing,” said my still-blurry-edged friend.
“I do,” I muttered. “Or at least I hope so!”
With trembling legs, I approached Pinki’s throne and bowed low. She gave me a curious look, but nothing that told me she recognized me. Ai-Ma, on the other hand, kind of leaned forward and studied my face. “I feel like I know you from somewhere, little demon-ling,” she murmured.
I pretended like I hadn’t heard Ai-Ma, and turned my face up to Neel’s mom. “Oh, Queen. The air clan has offered you flight, and the water clan control over water itself. What can the land clan offer you to compare?”
I heard titters from the water, fire, and air clans and growls of discontent from the land clan behind me.
“For our gift, we offer you these jewels, the Chintamoni and Poroshmoni Stones.” I pulled out the pulsating white and yellow jewels from my backpack and held them out toward Pinki. “They are stars fallen to land from the heavens themselves. Powerful enough to give their owner wealth beyond compare, or even control over death!”
The entire clearing became still as everyone trained their attention on the pulsating, powerful stars-slash-stones. Pinki opened her lips as if to speak but was soon cut off.
“What a wonderful wedding gift!” Sesha’s voice was smooth, but I could detect the eagerness within. “Perhaps I should keep them for you, my bride, for safekeeping.”
The entire grove burst into laughter, and even Surpanakha chuckled. But I felt the triumph in my stomach. I knew that Sesha couldn’t resist revealing his greed once he saw the stones. After all, they had driven him to almost kill me, Neel, and Neel’s mom in the future.
Surpanakha called out, “You are in no position to make such an offer, Prince of Serpents. The gifts of the clans are for the Queen alone, not her consort. Besides, what makes you so sure she will choose you and not the prince of the Kingdom Beyond?”
“Oh, she will choose me,” protested Sesha, and now I could really hear the desperation in his voice. “And she wants to give those jewels to me, don’t you, my dear darling Pinki?”
I could see Pinki’s expression shift from flattered to confused to cautious. Sesha’s words and actions alone might not have made her so suspicious, but in combination with the warning Neel and I had given her, she was clearly having some second thoughts.
“Don’t tell me what I want or don’t want. I am no weakling to be controlled by a husband,” Pinki snapped. She grabbed the jewels from my open hands and stood up, holding the yellow and white stones above her head. As soon as she had taken the jewels, her skin was again covered by the elaborate mehendi stories. They glowed bright red before fading into her skin as the others had done before.
Pinki cleared her throat ferociously. “In fact, let me declare it now, loud and proud. As my headmistress and mother have chosen, my consort will be none other than Fatteshwar Orebaba, aka Rontu, Prince of the Kingdom Beyond Seven Oceans and Thirteen Rivers!”
With these words, the cage around Rontu vanished. With a triumphant look at Sesha, Pinki then handed Neel’s dad both the magic jewels!
The rakkhosh students cheered. Ai-Ma and Surpanakha beamed and looked pleased. Rontu, the future Raja of the Kingdom Beyond, looked stunned. “But … you’re a rakkhoshi! I don’t want to be married to you!” he blurted out.
Ai-Ma waved her hands before Neel’s father. “True love will you see when you see your wife’s face. No demon anymore, but with human replaced.” And with those words, she snapped her fingers, and Rontu’s expression changed entirely.
“Oh, I adore you, my queen, my love!” he burbled, grasping Pinki simperingly by the hand.
Pinki said nothing but looked disgusted at her new consort’s rapid change of heart. She then turned to look at Sesha with tears in her eyes, like she couldn’t believe what she had just done. Sesha, for his part, howled and snarled, rattling his cage with all his might.
“How dare you, you stupid demoness?” he yelled. “How dare you not choose me?”
“You want my power!” Pinki yelled. “Not me! It was never about me!”
“You’ll regret this for the rest of your life!” shrieked Sesha. He turned, snarling, at the rakkhosh school gathered around him. “All of demon-kind will regret this. I will destroy your kind, if it’s the last thing I do! No one will remember who you are! I will erase your stories from the multiverse!”
Sesha raged inside his magical cage, prompting a bunch of rakkhosh guards to hop onstage and surround him. Pinki moved aside, flanked by a dazed-looking but passive Rontu as well as a fierce-appearing Ai-Ma. Surpanakha shouted orders, and most of the students ran around in utter confusion.
In the chaos, I made my way off the stage and back to Neel, stopping to pick two champak flowers off the tree on the way. “Come on, I think our work here is done! Pinki’s marrying your father, and she and Sesha hate each other—just the way things are supposed to be!”
“No, stop! Something’s not right!” Neel sputtered.
“What? You’re not blurry anymore, are you? What’s the big deal?” I pointed to Neel’s once-again-solid outlines.
“I may not be blurry anymore, but you are!” Neel said, his eyes wide in alarm.
“What the—” I sputtered, looking down at my now-blurry body. “What’s happening?”
“The Queen has made her choice of consort!” Surpanakha boomed from the stage. “Now, to complete the ceremony, she must kill the other suitor competing for her hand!”
At first, I didn’t get it, but Neel looked at me in horror. “Kiran! This is a disaster! We’ve made sure that my parents get married so that I can exist in the future. But now, if Pinki kills Sesha, that means you can’t ever be born!”