“Like the security lines at an airport?” I took a swig from the water bottle Lal supplied. The water was warm and metallic and did nothing to make me less thirsty.
“Oh, sure.” Neel ground a good-size rock to dust under his heel, making me wonder about his workout routine. “If airport officers were ten feet tall and had a taste for human bones.”
“The transit officer is a rakkhosh?” My stomach spasmed. I might have discovered some secret demon-fighting gene in myself, but it didn’t make them any less scary. In fact, all the confidence I had felt last night seemed ground to dust this morning, like the stone under Neel’s foot.
“Not a rakkhosh precisely,” Lal said, “but a sort of an unusual fellow who has, er, been known to eat individuals without the proper documents.”
“He’s been known to eat people? Are you kidding me?” My head ached. It was all too much—my parents’ disappearance, the surprise trick-or-treaters, the demons, the spells, the risk of death and dismemberment at every turn. Besides which, I was hungry and thirsty and had just had a really crappy birthday, all in all.
I felt like the last day had been one of those superfast, upside-down roller coasters at the amusement park. (I actually really hate those—once I yuked corn dogs after riding one. Zuzu didn’t help by laughing her head off.) Only now I felt sick and I wanted to go home.
“I’m sorry guys, I can’t do this anymore.” My voice shook and I swiped furiously at my nose. “I mean, killer demons? Different dimensions? Black holes? I’m just an ordinary kid from New Jersey. I can’t deal with all this!”
Lal’s face softened and he looked like he was going to say something nice, but his brother cut him off with a furious exclamation. “Don’t be such a 2-D!”
I whipped around. “What did you call me?”
“A flatfoot, a ruler, a 2-D!” Neel ground out the words like they were curses.
Which maybe they were, by Lal’s reaction. “Brother, please!”
But Neel kept going. “People from your world think that everything is so easily measured and explained—that everyone’s exactly the same, paper dolls in some two-dimensional universe! Well, it doesn’t work that way, all right? Not everything makes sense and not everything in life is fair. The quicker you figure that out, the better off you’ll be!”
My fear was quickly turning to fury, but still, I squirmed inside as I thought about Neel’s words. Maybe I did want everything to be easy and the same. How many times had I wished my parents would just give me a straight explanation for something? How many times had I wanted them to be like everyone else? And now they were missing, and maybe if I’d actually believed all their crazy stories, I would know how to get them back.
“You can’t just decide to forget who you are because its inconvenient, Princess,” Neel barreled on. “Life doesn’t work like that. It’s messy and complicated and everything’s not always peaches and unicorns. There’s dangerous things out there, things none of us understand. But you don’t just quit the first time you get a little scared!”
“I am not scared!” I shouted. But I was. I’d almost just been eaten. My parents were missing. And I’d just realized my whole life had basically been a lie.
“What do you know anyway? I mean, peaches and unicorns? What are you, like six years old?” My face felt positively radioactive.
Neel grabbed at my dusty sweatshirt. “Don’t you want to see the people you know as your parents again?”
“They are my parents!” I flung his hand off my arm. “And I’m going to get them back no matter what it takes! What have you done to them?”
“Nothing! Of course we have done nothing!” Lal stepped in between us. “We were sent by them to help you. As my brother has said, they’re beyond the transit corridor. The officers tend to close the corridors on a whim, so it would be best if we could pass through now.” Lal gave Neel a warning look. “All your questions will be answered on the other side.”
“Sure, right, if she’s not made into an appetizer!” Neel glared at me.
I glared right back. I had no intention of being eaten, no matter which course of a meal. All the worry and confusion I’d felt just a second ago was now replaced by a new resolve, and a strong desire to punch Neel in the nose.
“Trust yourself, Princess. When you’re faced with a task that seems too big, it’s all you can do,” Lal said quietly.
“Okay.” I took a big breath. Even if Neel was more annoying than anyone I’d ever met, these princes obviously held the key to finding Ma and Baba. “Let’s do this.”
Lal, Neel, the two horses, and I picked our way over the rocky ground. As we approached the base of the high mesa, Lal turned to me. I noticed Neel still wasn’t meeting my eyes since we’d argued.
“This ancient mountain is known by many names. But we call it Mandhara—the mountain of concentration. It divides our dimensions, but it also unites them.”
“The mountain of concentration, got it.”
“You have to know within yourself, for certain, that you are committed to climbing it, committed to this journey,” Lal explained. “Or else you will never reach the cave on the summit.”
I stole a glance at Neel. He was shading his eyes and peering upward. I did the same. From where we were standing, I could barely make out the top.
All righty, a mountain that would go on forever unless I was set on climbing it.
I took a big breath, nodding at Lal. “This is how I get my life back, huh?”
“Yes, Princess Kiran. This is the first step in finding what you seek.”
“Just Kiran is fine.” I rubbed my aching neck.
“All right, Just Kiran, we should be going now,” said Lal with such a sweet smile I couldn’t correct him, especially in front of his judgy big brother.
“Onward and upward, I guess.”
We climbed for what felt like hours in relative silence except for an occasional whinny and a grunt from me as I stubbed my toe on a stone. The sun was up, but the higher we got, the more the desert winds ripped through us, biting at our skin. My bones ached and my stomach growled. I wished I’d stuck some sandesh in my pockets too.
“Why don’t we just have the horses take us up there?” I panted. It was so much higher than it looked. The animals were doing well on the hard rocks, but neither of them had unfurled their wings.
“It is a winged horse no-fly zone.” Even though that didn’t exactly clarify the situation, I decided not to ask any further. I didn’t want Neel to call me a 2-D again.
I also didn’t ask why it was taking so long to get to the cave. Probably something to do with my concentration or commitment. Was I ready to face my real identity? Was I ready to see the place that I came from? The truth was, I didn’t really have a choice. Turning away from this journey would mean forgetting about my parents and letting them die. And there was no way that I was willing to do that.
I tried to focus my mind, visualizing getting to the top. It seemed to work, because all of a sudden I could see the plateau of the mesa. And on the top, a dark cave. But a few yards before its entrance, something very strange blocked the way. After no indications of civilization whatsoever, we suddenly faced two roped-off lines going in different directions. They were the kind you see in front of theaters or in airports—waist-high metal pillars with black vinyl ropes hooked to them. The lines were marked with large signs. The first one read: