Game of Stars (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #2) - Sayantani DasGupta Page 0,1

that was all. A weird, recurring nightmare in which I was visited in my suburban New Jersey bedroom by a flesh-eating rakkhoshi monster and her personal swarm of venomous insects. No biggie.

“You’re not real,” I told the flesh-eating rakkhoshi monster. “You’re not really here.”

“Oh, I’ll give you such a tight slap, you dubious dullard!” The Demon Queen rubbed her hand on her chest and shot some bees out of her nose. “I’ll tell you what is real—this heartburn! This esophageal reflux! I’d give my left fang for a chewable antacid!”

“This isn’t happening.” I blinked my eyes, trying to wake myself up. “I’m imagining this.”

The demoness belched. Loudly. The bees buzzed even louder. “Loonie-Moonie, you don’t have enough imagination to conjure the likes of me!”

Hoping to catch her off guard, just in case I was wrong about the whole being-a-nightmare thing, I launched myself at the rakkhoshi with a ferocious yowl. But she just yawned and let me go flying right through her vaporous form.

I slammed into my dresser, hitting my head hard on a tiara-shaped drawer knob. “I knew you weren’t real!”

“Oh, fie on your underdeveloped cranium, you pea-brained tree goat!” The queen picked her teeth with a long nail. “Listen up, I have something important to tell you. It’s a matter of life and death. About …”

“What?” I prompted from the floor.

“Oof!” The demoness made a choking sound, grabbing at her throat like she wasn’t getting enough air. “Oof! Eesh!”

Her image flickered, like she was a broken movie reel. The bees swooped around her. And then they all disappeared.

It went on like this, night after night. The Rakkhoshi Rani showing up in her smelly-but-see-through form along with her insect minions, first insulting me, then trying to tell me something but being stopped by some invisible force. Then she’d disappear.

“Underwater fortress,” she said one night.

“Winged key,” she managed the next.

“Just one breath,” she said another time.

Buzz, buzz, said the bees, zooming in and around the Demon Queen’s lips and hair. Yeesh, they gave me the creepy-crawlies. And I’m saying that as someone who’s been trapped in an underwater serpent cavern with a bunch of slimy evil snakes.

If the demoness were real, I would have guessed this was all some kind of trick. But since she obviously couldn’t be, I could only conclude I should stop sneaking so many chocolate chip cookies before bedtime. Because, wowza, was this a super-weird dream. Every time we got to the part where she wanted to tell me her secret, the rakkhoshi would open her mouth and flap her lips. She would claw at her throat. Her mouth would move, but only bees would come out—no sound. Eventually, her image would flicker and fade altogether.

The closest she got to telling me her secret was one night when she managed to tell me some kind of riddle poem that made absolutely no sense when I first heard it:

Elladin, belladin, Milk-White Sea

Who seeks immortality?

Jewels, stars, eternity

Life and death in balance be

My heart in chains where my soul sings

The prison key a bee’s wings

With father’s tooth, you crack the case

Humility must wash your face

Fire, water, air, and land

Rakkhosh-kind will lend a hand

Without the dark, the light will fail

Heroes and monsters both will rail

Elladin, belladin, Honey-Gold Sea

Who seeks immortality?

“What is all that supposed to mean? What’s that ‘elladin, belladin’ stuff anyway?”

“Oh, this pancreatic pain! This gaseous gallbladder!” the Queen groaned. “Try to listen between the lines, khichuri-brain!”

“I’m trying!” It was hard to win an argument with a figment of my imagination. “If I figure out your riddle, will you leave me alone?”

“Oh, the intestinal agony of your stupidity!” The rakkhoshi grew so big, her crown grazed my ceiling. She blew green smoke out of her ears and nose, and bee-burped like she was lactose intolerant and had just eaten a cheesy burrito chased by a dozen milkshakes. “This is all the fault of that idiot-boy Lal! And Sesha, that snaky loser! Most of all my ex-husband, that pathetic excuse for a Raja!”

The Demon Queen was so upset it reminded me of something my best friend, Zuzu, and I had read in one of her oldest sister’s cheesy self-help books, the one called Healing Your Broken Heart Chakra: A 17.5-Step Guide. (Zuzu’s sister Athena had a lot of books like this because she had a lot of experience getting her heart broken. She was practically a professional.)

“So, are you just a manifestation of my angry subconscious telling me I need to bear witness to my … er … emotional isolation?”