“All for one and one for all!” said Buddhu, running up between Lal and Neel and embracing his two brothers. “Bhootoom and I humbly accept your generous offer to be co-Rajas!”
Neel and Lal exchanged an amused look and laughed, but they didn’t contradict the monkey prince.
“So what’s our next move?” I wondered out loud.
“If only we had some way to ascertain if the Rakkhoshi Rani received her son’s missive,” mused Bunty.
Of course! Neel’s letter to his mother that had been hidden in the tottho presents! Had she gotten it, and more importantly, had she answered?
“From what our spies were able to tell us, we think she got it,” Mati said. “But I’m sorry, we haven’t intercepted any notes from her.”
“She was my first storyteller,” Neel said in such a soft voice, I wasn’t sure anyone else heard him. “And she’s sworn to protect the diversity of the multiverse’s stories. I just don’t think she would help destroy them.”
“I think you’re right, Neel,” I said honestly. “There has to be something else going on.” That’s when something clicked in my head. “Wait a minute, last night, when Neel and I were away, was the big mehendi ceremony, right?”
“Don’t tell me you’re sad you missed getting henna on your hands while you were attending demon school?” squawked Tuni.
Instead of answering the bird, I scooched over to Naya’s hospital bed. “Naya, do you have your phone on you?”
“Pfft, what kind of a question is that?” my friend said, pulling her cell out of a pocket in her gown. “I had wing surgery, not a personality transplant!”
“Look up if Twinkle Chakraborty or Suman Rahaman, or anyone, really, made a video diary of the mehendi ceremony. Anything that would give me a closer look of Pinki’s hands and feet,” I demanded.
“Arré Pinki, is it?” Buddhu drawled, chuckling. “If you’re brave enough to call my stepmother that, hats off to you, yaar!” The monkey collapsed in giggles, and Bhootoom the owl hooted his laughter too.
Despite everyone else looking confused, Neel seemed to catch my drift. “You think she might have sent me a message in her mehendi design?”
“If she couldn’t send something more openly, it would make sense,” I said. “I mean, you saw how at her choosing ceremony all those stories got marked and soaked into her skin.”
“Mehendi isn’t actually traditional to the Kingdom Beyond Seven Oceans and Thirteen Rivers,” sniffed Bunty. “Here, alta, or the outline of the palms and feet in red, is far more common. Mehendi has been imported from other regions in the dimension. If you’d like, I can explain the history of this cultural transmigration …”
“No, I’m good right now!” I assured the tiger as I watched Naya scroll through her search results. “Maybe later!”
Bunty sniffed. “Fine, fine, don’t know your own history.”
But I did know my history. In fact, I’d just traveled through it. I also knew that it was okay—wonderful even—that stories and practices sometimes traveled from place to place, influencing each other and even creating new stories. That was okeydokey by me. The more stories the better, in fact. The dangerous thing was when we tried to shut some stories down, silence them, smush them into more dominant stories.
“Did you find anything?” I asked Naya.
“No video feed. I guess Ms. Twinkle and Sooms were really banned from reporting on any more wedding events,” said Naya. “But I did find this picture, taken by none other than your brother, Naga, apparently.”
It was a weird image. Seven separate lens exposures combined into one big image. But the seven separate pictures actually let me see the mehendi on Pinki’s arms and hands from multiple different angles. I could tell there were words there, but the more I magnified Naya’s phone, the blurrier the images got.
“Hey, Bhootoom, can I borrow this for a minute?” I asked. When the owl prince hooted his approval, I carefully took his monocle and looked at the phone through the magnifying lens of it.
What I saw took my breath away. A very clear message was written into the decorations on the Demon Queen’s right arm:
Stories keep the multiverse growing.
And on her left arm, over and over, in the shape of flowers, birds, dancing peacocks, the words: Save the Stories. Save the Stories. Save the Stories.
“I knew it,” whispered Neel.
“No, you thought she was a prisoner,” I said slowly. “But Pinki’s no prisoner. She’s marrying Sesha because she thinks she can stop him! She must think it’s her responsibility as the Demon Queen to stop the Anti-Chaos Committee from destroying the multiverse’s stories!”
“She’s on our side?” said Lal wonderingly.
“Stranger things have happened,” said Naya pertly.
We all watched as Lal sheepishly walked over to Naya’s bedside. “I’m truly sorry I said those, erm, unkind things about you earlier.”
Gentle Naya’s eyes got a little shiny, and I noticed Mati’s did too. “That’s okay, Your Princeliness,” Naya said in a muffled voice. “But I appreciate the apology.”
Neel seemed too occupied with his mom to even register Lal and Naya’s interaction. “My mom is marrying Sesha so that she can stop him!” he exclaimed. “She wants to save the multiverse!”
“But she’s obviously not doing a very good job of it,” said Mati. “I mean, look at what’s going on!”
She pointed at Buddhu and Bhootoom, who were gathered at Bunty’s feet, singing some kind of a song about a lion king.
“If she’s going to keep the multiverse’s stories expanding, Pinki can’t do it alone.” I thought back to Mati scolding Neel and me because we were trying to go off and do things on our own, instead of relying on the connections and strength of our family and friends. “She may not realize it, but Pinki needs our help!”
The sangeet is tonight,” Mati said, her eyes dancing with a suspiciously merry expression. “And we do have a musical number planned for it.”
“No. No. No. No!” Neel said, his hands out. “I’ve already told Kiran, no step-ball-change or jazz hands for me.”
“You have to do it, Neel!” I insisted. “It’s a part of the plan!”
And that’s how Neel and I found ourselves being measured for last-minute costumes by Miss Muffet and Jack, who had most surprisingly taken over the role of fashion designer Gyan Mukherjee. All of tiny Jack’s candle jumping made him both nimble and quick with a needle and thread. And as Miss Muffet explained, designing over-the-top sparkly and shiny sangeet costumes was a lot more interesting than designing tuffets. “My creathivity was being blocketh,” she explained while chomping on some spicy curds and curried whey.
And that’s also how Neel and I found ourselves maniacally rehearsing the end of the grand song-and-dance number that the demon dance troupe had already been practicing for days.
A lot of the rakkhosh dancers were jealous of us being allowed to jump in at the last minute—and the fact that we were getting prime center stage placement.