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

I asked, trying to remember the words from the book.

“Bear whoziwhat?” Neel’s mom yelled. “Don’t give me your touchy-feely psychobabble, you pathetic puppy from Parsippany! Oh, I knew it was a mistake to come to you, you dim-witted moon reptile of a chit! You just can’t understand how much depends on you, can you?”

“Of course I can’t understand! Because you’re. Not. Real!” I shouted so loud I actually woke myself up.

Coming back from the bathroom, though, I couldn’t help but stare at the dents in the ceiling, the flakes of plaster on the foot of my bedspread, the half-melted solar system on my dresser, and the charred spot on my carpet. Plus, my bedroom smelled all gassy, like it was at the receiving end of an exhaust vent straight from a garbage dump.

But that was all just my middle-of-the-night imagination. Maybe some cookie-induced sleepwalking. And a night-light so old and decrepit it had just spontaneously combusted. And the smell was probably a combination of melted plastic and some nasty gym clothes that I’d forgotten to wash. Or so I tried to convince myself.

But the thing about subconscious dreams that aren’t actually subconscious dreams? Eventually, they come back to bite you in the chocolate chip.

The Rakkhoshi Queen had been visiting my dreams for weeks, when my mother startled me one Sunday evening, screaming bloody murder. “Kiranmala! Come quick!”

My nerves were a little jangled already, what with all the middle-of-the-night visits from a flesh-eating demoness. So when I heard my mother yell, I couldn’t help but imagine the worst. I sprinted from my room and down the shallow steps of the split level, grabbing my father’s old cricket bat from the front closet.

“Take that, you fieeeeeeeeeeend!” I shrieked as I dashed into the living room, swinging the flat bat in a huge arc.

If not the Rakkhoshi Queen, I at least expected to find a snot-trailing rakkhosh in the middle of attacking my parents; some kind of bloodthirsty demon snacking on their limbs in the hopes of using their bones as toothpicks. But instead, what I found was a smiling Baba, fiddling with what looked like a small spaceship. Ma, who was closer to the doorway, got the brunt of my attack. Luckily, I didn’t actually hit her, but I did knock the aluminum tray she was holding clean out of her hands. The sugary desserts she had obviously just made went flying everywhere, one beaning me wetly on the forehead.

“Darling?” My parents’ shock kind of took the wind out of my heroic sails.

“Sorry!” I swiped at my sticky forehead, then scrabbled around, helping Ma pick up the smushed desserts. “I guess I’m a little tense. What with our history of intergalactic demon break-ins and everything.”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” said Ma, slapping Baba’s hand away as he tried to eat another one of the fluffy white desserts that had fallen on the floor. “There are more chomchoms where that came from! I’ve been trying out a new recipe!”

I didn’t need to look at the February calendar to know that Ma was planning for me to take these treats to school on Valentine’s Day. From the drippy rasagollas and sandesh she handed out to unsuspecting trick-or-treaters on Halloween, to the turkey curry and cranberry chutney she made on Thanksgiving, Ma was the queen of fusion holiday celebrations. No matter how many times I explained to her that I was too old to take valentines to school, or that drippy Bengali sweets weren’t meant to be put into heart-shaped envelopes, it wouldn’t matter. Best ignore the issue for now.

“Why were you screaming anyway?” I asked as Ma finished sponging off the sticky spots from the carpet. “I thought you were in trouble!”

“We wanted to let you know that the Thirteen Rivers satellite company finally sent the new intergalactic remote!” Baba waved the spaceship thing with all its levers, buttons, and weird-looking gears. “We can watch the news from the Kingdom Beyond again!”

My parents may have immigrated to a new dimension, but that was no reason, in their minds, for all of us not to stay up-to-date on the latest news, weather, and sports from the Kingdom Beyond Seven Oceans and Thirteen Rivers. Especially now that I knew the secret of our origins. But that wasn’t the reason Baba’s announcement made me smile.

As if he was reading my mind, my father said, “Perhaps we will see some of your Kingdom Beyond friends on the television! It has been a while since they have been in touch, hasn’t