As we rode, I found myself actually relaxing, if that makes any sense. It was super easy to talk to Lal. Turned out, he was a great sky-tour guide, and kept pointing out things like cloud formations, flocks of Canadian geese, a shooting star—which was a spell being cast, he explained. After a while I couldn’t see the ground below us. The funny thing was, I wasn’t scared of falling—not at all. I got the feeling I’d always lived up there with the sky and the stars. Maybe it was all that curtainless sleeping in the moonlight, but it felt comfortable and familiar, like the moon itself was looking out for me.
Lal even let me take the reins. Neel was right; I’d never been on a horse before (riding lessons weren’t exactly in our family budget), but Snowy was gentle and responded right away to my touch. A good ways ahead, Neel’s black horse—whom I’d started to think of as Midnight—bucked and snorted as he galloped in the air. I could only see his vague outline by the thousands of twinkling stars that lit the way.
Lal caught my gaze and sighed. “My brother is so much better than me at almost everything.”
Lal’s words startled me, because they were tinged with that same wistful jealousy I thought I’d seen on Neel’s face back on my front lawn.
“That’s not true.” I stumbled over my words in my effort to be reassuring. “You’re brave, and nice, and very ha— um, I mean, very princely.” I almost said the word handsome but stopped myself barely in time.
“You think?” I couldn’t see Lal’s face, but he sounded nervous. “I’ve been working on it, the princeliness, I mean.”
“Oh, it’s going realy well!” I said in a rush. “You have excellent manners and perfect posture and great … erm, diction!”
“Many gracious thanks, my lady!” Lal said stiffly. Then his voice lost its confidence again. “But I don’t think I’ll ever be as smart and strong as my brother.”
Wow. Neel was a lot more of a bully than I thought. I couldn’t believe he would make Lal feel so bad about himself. Way uncool.
We rode for a while longer in silence, until I started to yawn something fierce.
“Sleep, dear princess,” Lal said, taking back the reins. “It is a long distance to the Kingdom Beyond Seven Oceans and Thirteen Rivers.”
“And we’ll find my parents there?” I rested my exhausted head on Snowy’s mane. I could hear the horse’s breathing, steady and low, like a waterfall—and imagined I could even hear the river of his blood flowing in his veins. I was asleep before I heard Lal’s answer.
The dawn was already breaking when I opened my eyes. My butt was sore from spending all night on a horse’s back, and I had a wicked charley horse in my left leg. I imagined it was like being on an overnight flight—except without the stale air and packaged peanuts.
Lal was saying something to me, pointing to the ground below, but the wind whipped his voice away. I shook my head, not understanding, until he repeated, “We have arrived! The transit corridor!”
The horses flew toward the ground, like planes preparing for a landing. My ears popped and I did the trick of swallowing hard. It didn’t work. (I’ve read you can also chew gum, but I didn’t have any, or, like, hold your nose and blow, but I was afraid that would risk unplanned boogerage in my hand, so I didn’t do that either.)
After hours of riding separately, Neel pulled his horse up next to Snowy, and now the two winged horses flew side by side, whinnying at each other.
“Your parents are beyond the transit corridor, Princess,” Neel yelled. “To get to them we’ll first have to get you through the checkpoint.”
“I suppose you possess the appropriate documentation?” Lal asked near my ear.
“Documentation?” I gulped. The horses were coming down fast. And all I could see below me were dusty rocks and red earth.
“You know,” Lal clarified, “an Earth exilation notification, a royal-to-nonroyal cover pass, a tweet from the president?”
“Um.” I closed my eyes as the horses finally landed in a vast canyon. The red-brown ground was dry, without a sign of any tree, bush, or shrub. More bald than our front yard even, and that was saying a lot. Weirdly shaped outcroppings of stone, and a giant mesa-like mountain marked the eerie landscape.
Where were we? Something about the spires of red rocks seemed familiar, like I’d seen a picture of this place before.
“Are we in … Arizona?” I asked when we finally dismounted. I stretched my aching legs. Snowy pawed the ground like he was stretching his legs too.
“It’s the biggest non-wormhole transit point to other dimensions in the U.S.” Neel looped Midnight’s reins loosely in his hands. “Even though the local government doesn’t like it.”
“So what kind of papers do you have, lady?” Lal asked again. “You’ll need them to get through here.”
Why were they so obsessed with my “documentation”?
“I have a birthday card from my parents, and …” I don’t know why, but I hesitated before telling the princes about the map. “Yeah, just the card.”
“A birthday card?” Neel snapped. “Who travels with just a birthday card? How are we supposed to get you past the transit officer without getting snacked on?”
“Princess Kiran will prevail. Have faith, Brother.” Unlike Neel, who looked totally rested, Lal seemed a little tired after the long ride. Not that it made him any less handsome, but his fourth eyelash from the right definitely looked less curly than the others. Or maybe it was that I’d gotten to know him a little better and could see him more like a regular person.
Lal peered at me with a hopeful expression even as Neel continued to scowl, biting his nails.
“You must be good at riddles?” Lal asked.
“Riddles?”
Zuzu’s brother Niko was obsessed with dumb jokes and riddles, and was always trying them out on us, but I couldn’t see why that would be helpful.
I squinted against the harsh sun. It was like we’d ridden all night and landed on some alien planet. There was nothing here. Just rocks. No train station, no airport, no subway platform. Not a soul—animal, human, or even monster. Where was this transit thingy the boys were talking about?
Neel stomped off, kicking red rocks and making a mini dust storm as Lal continued, “Please—you must be familiar with puzzles and logical games?”
“A bit,” I admitted.
“All this way, and Princess K-pop gets eaten by the transit officer because she has no papers!” Neel shouted to no one in particular.
“Chill, dude! She won’t be consumed by the officer, all right?” Lal said in a voice so different than his usual cultured way of talking that I realized how much of an effort he put into his princely accent. But I didn’t have time to worry about that now, because I really didn’t like what I was hearing.
“Consumed? Who’s going to consume me?” Why did the boys keep putting me and consumed in the same sentence?
“No one, no one will consume you!” But Lal was looking worried too. Which wasn’t comforting. “The transit corridor is the place where, in passing from one world to the next, the officer checks your papers, makes sure all is in order.”