Neel pulled at my arm. “Wait!” I shouted, breaking free of his grasp.
In the chaos, the seven-headed serpent had left the python jewel. I grabbed it, tucking it inside Neel’s jacket, which I was still wearing.
Neel took my hand again in his steely grip and pulled me toward his body. “Hold on!” he ordered, and I wrapped one arm around his shoulder, holding Tuntuni with the other. Neel lunged, grabbing one of the branches that shot its way toward the sky.
“Wait a minute!” We were flying straight toward the stone ceiling, chaos and destruction all around us. Oh, I had a bad feeling about this. “Aren’t we right under the …”
“When I say so, you both take a big breath!” Neel commanded. “One … two …”
But he didn’t even have a chance to count to three, because the tree trunk charged a huge hole in the ceiling of the underground cavern, and lake water poured into the room, drowning the snakes. And, oh yeah, us.
We were underwater. I panicked in the swirling tempest and tried to kick away from Neel with my legs, toward what I guessed was the surface of the lake. But Neel held on to me. I fought him, panicking. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even see which way was up. My lungs were going to explode.
Air.
Oh, I needed air.
I shook my head. The pressure on my lungs was too much. I was going to drown. I didn’t want to die like this. I had to get air … had … to … get …
With a burst, the tree branch Neel was hanging on to cleared the surface of the water. I gasped big breaths into my lungs.
I breathed.
I breathed.
I breathed.
The air tasted so sweet. I would never take the simple act of breathing for granted again.
The tree deposited us on the shore, its branch acting like an enormous hand. As soon as we tumbled off, the branches kept shooting upward and outward. The banyan’s roots stretched and grew until the entire surface of the lake was gone. And with it, the underworld kingdom was buried without a doorway to the upper realm. Where the lake had been, with its magic door, was now a majestic banyan tree.
Neel and I lay side by side near the tree’s roots, panting.
“We’re alive!” Neel’s eyes glowed in a way that made me feel a little dizzy.
“You don’t need to sound so surprised.” I groaned, trying to sit up. My entire body ached like I’d been through some giant car wash. Except without a car. I felt all vomit-y again.
“Dark energy!” Neel stretched his arms, cracked his neck, and then began wringing out his shirt. “Dang, that’s some powerful stuff in Chhaya Devi’s shadows.”
“Dark what?” My breath was still jagged and hurt my raw throat. My hair was plastered to me, but I couldn’t find the strength to brush it from my eyes.
I couldn’t help but resent Neel, who looked almost chipper now. There was something really annoying about a boy who never seemed tired, even after fighting a passel of poisonous snakes, then getting half drowned.
“Dark energy. It’s the energy that helps the universe keep expanding. You might call it a part of the universal life force.”
That sounded vaguely familiar.
“My Baba always tells me we’re all connected by energy—trees, wind, animals, people, everything.” I tried to get my ragged breathing under control. “He says that life energy is a kind of river flowing through the universe.”
“And that our souls are just a bit of that river water held inside the clay pitcher of our bodies?” Neel smiled at my surprise. “Yeah, I know that story too. They say that when our bodies give out, that’s just the pitcher breaking, pouring what’s inside back into the original stream of universal souls.”
“So no one’s soul is ever really gone,” I finished, repeating the words that Baba had said to me so often.
“Yup.” Neel nodded. “It’s the same idea that governs Chhaya Devi’s shadows. When unleashed, there’s nothing more powerful than the desire of nature to reunite with the universal soul.”
I was about to ask Neel to explain some more, when I noticed the still, yellow body a couple of feet away.
“Tuntuni!”
The little bird wasn’t moving at all. His wings were dark with water, and his head and beak were at a funny angle. Panic sent energy shooting through my cramped muscles. I half crawled, half scrambled over to where his tiny form lay on the ground.
I shook him, calling his name. The poor thing just flopped in my hands. I tried looking for a pulse (did birds have pulses?) but couldn’t find one. My own heart fluttered alarmingly in panic. Where was a phone to dial 911 when I needed it! I started to do CPR, pumping his little yellow chest with two fingers. Problem was, the only CPR I’d ever learned was from a hospital TV show.
“He might be gone, Kiran,” Neel murmured. He touched the bird’s feathery head. “Returned to the universal stream of souls.”
“I won’t let him die! He saved our lives!” I wailed, but then I noticed Tuni’s chest was moving—although very slightly—on its own. I didn’t know what else to do except to cradle him in my lap, stroking his feathery head. His breathing was uneven, now rapid, now stopped entirely. He made a strange choking sound, and then the movement in his chest slowed down even further.
“Kiran,” Neel said, but I ignored him, rocking and cooing to the bird in my arms.
Within a few seconds, I realized that Tuntuni’s breathing had stopped altogether.
No, no, no.
“Kiran,” Neel said again. This time he put a gentle hand on my shoulder.
“He can’t die!” I cried. “He can’t!”
Everything crashed in on me. Being away from home. Inviting Neel’s mom into the kingdom. Fighting that awful snake in the dark. Coming face-to-face with my über-awful birth brothers and father. The ticking clock on my real parents’ lives. My chest burned until I thought I would explode. And then it happened.
I started to cry. Not just cry, but sob, complete with pathetic bleating noises. My eyes stung, my throat caught. And that doorway in my chest that I’d kept tightly shut for so long burst open, releasing everything that I’d stuffed inside. Salty tears poured down my face, mingling with the lake water on the bird’s body.
But Neel didn’t laugh or point or even say useless platitudes about how the bird had lived a full life. How everything would be okay. He just sat there in my presence, letting me be sad. He just was.
And then the most remarkable thing happened. The stone-still bird took a shuddering breath. He stirred, and grew warm in my arms. I watched, stunned, as Tuntuni opened his eyes.
“What should you buy a bird?” he chirped weakly.
“He’s alive!”
“Looks like it.” Neel looked at me with a curious expression. “He’s alive.”
Tuni coughed and sputtered, shaking his soaked wings dry. “Something cheep!”
I laughed in relief. If Tuni was telling bad jokes, he was going to be okay. I hugged the bird to me until he started to protest, and I put him down.
“Let’s get out of here, numskulls!” Tuni croaked weakly. “Before those snakes figure out how to come back!”
“We can’t.” I looked around wildly. “I don’t know where the horses are!”