“I can’t believe we still don’t know how to get them b-a-ck.” Neel kind of sputtered that last word, because just then, the boat lurched to the right.
“Oh, I think I have an idea,” I said. “The golden branch in the poem must mean …” I stopped mid-thought, because the boat swayed again.
“What was that?” Ma looked over the edge. “The water seems so calm.”
“Oh, nothing,” said Tuni drowsily. “We’re almost—”
But he couldn’t finish his sentence because the next lurch of the boat sent him flying off Baba’s shoulder and onto the floor of the barge. We all collapsed to the left.
“I’m getting a bad feeling about this …” I drew an arrow from my quiver.
But before I had a chance to shoot it I was coughing up water from a wave that rushed over the entire boat. We were knee-deep and the boat was still tossing on the newly rough seas.
“Bail! Bail!” Neel yelled, his hair streaming into his face. We all grabbed whatever we could to chuck water overboard, but all of our hard work was meaningless when the next big wave swept over the peacock barge in a few minutes.
“Are we all okay?” Neel shouted. I took a glance around. Except for being drenched, and the terrified expressions, we all seemed to be in one piece.
But the respite was half as long as the last time. I’d only just scooped a couple quiverfuls of water out of the boat when another wave hit.
“Gaak!” Tuni went overboard, but Baba grabbed a feathery wing and yanked him back.
“I’m afraid this doesn’t seem like an altogether natural storm,” Ma ventured, ever grammatical, even in a crisis.
There was a weird sucking sound coming from somewhere. A hole in the boat? I looked around at our soggy barge, but couldn’t find one.
“What makes you say that?” I shouted over the now rushing winds.
Wordlessly, she pointed at the sea. I felt my heart drop.
“Neel!” I yelled. He was still bailing water from the back of the boat with my boot. “I think you’d better see this!”
All around our boat rose a wall of spinning water, inclined like the steep seats at an auditorium. Only, this was theater in the round, and we were the performers.
“We’re in the middle of a whirlpool!”
The sucking sound was the water below us getting pulled downward. To make matters worse, on the top edges of the giant water tornado were what looked like gigantic rakkhosh fangs.
“Yum! Yum! In my tum!”
The all-too-familiar voice echoed weirdly from within the unnatural torrent of water.
“Oh gods! He’s more powerful than I thought!” yelled Neel. “This isn’t a whirlpool; it’s that demon brat’s open mouth—and he’s going to eat us all!”
That snot-nosed newborn demon transformed himself into a whirlpool?” I screamed furiously at Neel. “Is there more stuff you people can do that you didn’t tell me?” I rowed like a wild thing, as did all of us, but our boat was going nowhere.
“He shouldn’t be able to! A newborn practice that kind of complicated magic? I’ve never heard such a thing,” Neel protested. “There has to be someone helping him!”
There weren’t enough oars, and he was bent over the side trying to muscle us physically up the mountain of water. But it wasn’t working. For every few inches we moved forward, we moved more back down toward the whirlpool’s center.
“Well, he’s obviously smarter than we gave him credit for!” I could barely see, there was so much water rushing into my eyes.
“Stop arguing, for goodness’ sake,” Baba said, putting his shoulder into his oaring. “It’s not very royal behavior on either of your parts!”
“Oh dear, I’m afraid we are traversing backward,” Ma piped in.
She was right. Despite our best efforts, our barge was sliding inevitably down the demonic drain. Or demonic digestive system, as the case may be.
“Yum! Yum! Snaky King is a big dum-dum!”
“What did he say? Oh no, what did he say?”
The boat went almost vertical and tumbled backward.
“Yaaaa!” I wasn’t sure who was shouting, but the last thing I saw before we got pulled down into the center of the whirlpool were people—and a bird and two magical spheres—that I didn’t want to lose.
It was a long way down—history-test long, humiliating-moment-in-the-locker-room long, Alice-falling-down-the-rabbit-hole long. And dark. And loud. And terrifying.
When we landed—with a hard thunk, I might add—it wasn’t in the demon’s stomach, but in a relatively dry undersea cavern. The peacock barge, luckily, was equipped with airbags, and they seriously broke our fall. (Go magical crash-test systems!)
We climbed out, leaving the gold and silver balls in the barge for safekeeping, and looked around. I could hear the water of the whirlpool still swirling above us. The scene was all too familiar. The demon baby was nowhere to be seen. But someone else was.
“Hello, Sssissster,” said a set of seven nasty voices.
I whipped around to see that last-place winner for brother of the year—Naga, the seven-headed snake.
“Oh, booger-nosed snot fest, where did YOU come from?”
“Daughter, your mouth.”
“Yesss, indeed, your mou-sss,” hissed the cobra heads in unison. In a flash, Naga wrapped Ma, Baba, and even poor terrified Tuntuni in his coils. As a last flourish, he slapped his nasty tail over all their mouths. They were effectively bound and gagged.
“Let them go!” Neel brandished his sword. Even in the dark cavern, it glinted with an inner light.
“Now!” I aimed my arrow at the largest of his seven hooded heads. The snake lunged at me, flicking seven forked tongues.
I saw Baba’s eyes widen at something behind me even before I heard the chilling voice. I whirled around, my arrow still raised. I should have known who was behind all this.
“Children, children, why all the fuss?” The Serpent King slithered into the room—his top half human, but his bottom half in his terrible serpentine form. “Do you like my new undersea residence?” he oozed. “It’s a rental, and I’m still waiting on the interior decorator …”
“You!” Neel ran at the Serpent King, his sword aimed at my birth father’s throat.
“Impudent demon-ling!” The Serpent King held up his hand, sending Neel’s sword clattering to the floor with a bolt of green lightning. “Did you actually think you could destroy my glorious kingdom and get away with it?”
“Stop!” I whirled back around and aimed my arrow at the largest of the cobra’s seven heads. “Let them all go—it’s me you want. Otherwise … I shoot Naga!”
The Serpent King waved a callous hand, mocking Naga’s snakey lisp. “Oh, shoot him, what do I care? You’d think those ssssseven ssssstupid heads would make him sssssmarter. But he let you get away last time, didn’t he?”
If it was possible for a magical seven-headed cobra to look hurt, he did. But it’s not like my snake-brother got all warm and fuzzy as a result. In fact, he squeezed his prey even harder. Ma and Baba sputtered, their faces red, and an alarming number of yellow feathers discharged from where Tuntuni must be—almost invisible in the folds of cobra muscle.