“What’s happening, Genius-ji?” Neel shouted out, but Tuntuni pecked him on the head and squawked, “Raise your hand, raise your hand.”
I felt like slapping the bird, but Neel obediently did as he was told, wiggling his hand in the air with impatience. Yet the old man ignored him, despite Neel’s repeatedly calling out, “Sir, I have a question! Sir, I have a question!”
As the star pupils began their last verse, I felt my stomach do a double back handspring into a round-off layout, and not stick the landing.
“Black, black, black are all my clothes
Black, black, black is all that I have
Why do I love all that is black?
Because my parents got swallowed by a really evil
rakkhosh and then got lost forever and
ever in a black ho-o-le!”
“How do I stop that from happening?” I asked, but as it seemed to be recess in the star nursery now, the wise man couldn’t hear me over his pupils’ racket.
The star students were all tumbling about, tossing balls of poofy pink clouds, playing double-Dutch jump rope and what looked like hopscotch. One of the stars was asking another one riddles: “What’s red, then white, then black all over?” it asked. The other pupil shouted out, “A dying star!”
In the meantime, the wise man sang out Tuni’s meaningless song again, clapping in beat to the syllables.
“Ev-ry-thing
Is connected to
Ev-ry-thing,
But how?”
“But what should we do? We need your help here!” I blurted out in frustration. “Enough riddles, enough poems, enough songs with ominous meanings. I need some answers that make sense!”
“None of us can hide from who we really are,” the professor said unhelpfully. He batted one of the round pink ball-clouds in our direction, making Neel’s entire head invisible for a moment.
“What does that mean?”
“You must see yourself in the birthplace of darkness. You must travel through the darkness to find your inner light.” The wise man picked up a few sparkling crystals from the branch and started juggling some stars who were even smaller than his pupils. They giggled and squealed in glee as he tossed them in the air. “Darkness and light must always be kept in a fine balance.”
I shot to my feet. “What darkness? The spell holding my parents?”
The old man opened his palm to show me one perfect shimmering orb. “Stars are not only spells, but a deeper magic still: the wishes and dreams nurtured in the deepest places of our souls.”
He blew the star out of his hand like it was a bit of dandelion fluff, and watched it float to another cluster of playing stars a few feet away, who gathered up the baby star in their game. The man spun in the air so that now he was levitating again with his crossed legs up, and his twinkling blue eyes down.
“Kiran!” Neel warned. He showed me the sling. Lal’s sphere was now entirely red and vibrating ferociously. I could also swear it was double its original size. Mati’s sphere, in the meantime, was glowing bright white but was now about the size of a large grapefruit.
“What’s happening to them?” I demanded of the professor.
“The prince and the stable maiden—they wanted to be together, however that was possible, yes?”
I considered that. Lal and Mati, they did want to be together. But not like this, surely?
“And your parents, Princess, they wanted you to discover who you are, to be proud of where you came from, yes?”
He was right on the money there. That’s the only thing my parents ever wanted. But had they imagined they would have to risk their lives for it to happen?
“These wishes cannot happen without consequences. Darkness is the night side of light. The forgotten brother. The exiled self.”
Now that hit a little close to home. Was he talking about Neel—the forgotten brother—and me—the exiled self? Were we the dark matter to Lal and Mati’s friendship, to my parents’ deepest wishes?
The old guy kept spinning, so that now he was lounging sideways in the air, his fingers twirling his white moustache.
“It is the separations between darkness and light that are the illusion, my dear.” He waggled his bushy brows. “Illusion like the ring you see when light tries to travel around the dark matter in its path. Remember this, my dear, remember my ring and you will find what you are looking for.”
“I don’t understand,” I began.
But he was singing again, “Ev-ry-thing is connected to ev-ry-thing.”
“But how?” I asked.
“Eggs-actly! Perfectly put!” He pulled off his turban, and made an old-fashioned bow in my direction. “Chase the giant, cradle the dwarf, and find the well of dark energy before it folds in on itself and those you love are lost forever. But hurry!”
Then, just like that, he disappeared.
Why was the wise man so familiar? That crazy hair going in all different directions, that accent, that moustache. Oh my gosh!
“Was that who I think it was?”
Tuntuni squawked and nodded his yellow head. “The one and only Einstein-ji.”
“The physicist from your world whose name is practically synonymous with intelligence,” Neel added.
I swallowed my spit the wrong way and choked. Tuni had to swat me on the back with his wing for me to regain my breath. “Albert Einstein?” I finally managed. “Albert Einstein is our golden bird on a diamond branch?”
“He was one of the few scientists from your dimension to understand the seven parallel worlds, the thirteen simultaneous universes.”
“But isn’t he, like …” I paused. “Dead?”
“Well, technically, yes. At least, in the way we understand death. Remember, this is a guy who unlocked the secrets of space, time, and a bunch of other things I don’t even know about. It’s he who first predicted dark matter to begin with.”
But I didn’t have time to process this mind-blowing piece of information, because the red and white spheres were making noises, groaning and squeaking. The red one hopped out of Neel’s sling on its own, and began rolling up the hill and out of the star nursery.
“Wait, Lal, stop!” Neel yelled, chasing after him.
I had no option but to run after Neel, and what I was soon realizing was Lal manifesting into a red giant star. As Neel ran after his brother the red giant, the white sphere, which had shrunk now to the size of a nectarine, slipped out of his sling and began rolling down the hill toward me.
“Mati!” Neel yelled, but I dived for the rolling star-sphere, catching it and holding it in my palm like it was one of those crazy predict-your-future Magic 8 Balls.
“Got her!”
We ran after the red giant, who now looked less like Lal, or even a sphere, as opposed to a huge mass of pulsating solar energy. Although no less scary, this was no fee-fi-fo-fum kind of giant, but something else entirely. It was as if a huge forest inferno suddenly grew some legs and began running across the landscape.
In fact, as the red giant ran, he wreaked havoc all around him. The fuzzy purple trees of the nebula caught on fire, exploding in cracking cascades of flames.
“Lal! Stop!” Neel called, but the red giant didn’t hear him. This wasn’t Lal anymore but something beyond human. He was a solar phenomenon.