The Chaos Curse (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #3) - Sayantani DasGupta Page 0,11
moving both animals back onto the auto rikshaw handlebars. “Stop suggesting recipes to eat us with!”
“Every bird for himself!” Tuni said sheepishly.
The tiger, meanwhile, did something totally unexpected. As if we were the funniest thing it had ever seen, the huge animal flopped down on the ground, grabbed its belly, and began to laugh.
“Don’t laugh at us!” I yelled, which only made the tiger laugh harder.
“It’s just an act, Princess!” shouted Tuntuni above the tiger’s guffaws. “What did you do with the old granny, you deranged feline?”
“I did nothing with her!” The tiger’s nostrils flared and muscles rippled as it kept laughing. “Such an accusation is highly unjust!”
Tuni gave me a little peck with his beak, and I knew he wanted me to back him up. “Then where is she?” I managed to ask, my voice quavering only a little. “The old woman from the story? In the original folktale, you’re not supposed to be in the pumpkin—she is!”
“I am not precisely sure,” the tiger admitted, wiping tears of laugher from its giant eyes.
“Then tell us how you ended up in that pumpkin, you dirty rat … er, cat?” said Tuni like he was an old-timey private investigator.
“I am ashamed to say that I did indeed threaten the old woman a little,” said the tiger. “But it was primarily to keep my jungle credibility up—it’s remarkably hard with my level of education and eloquence to maintain my status as a fierce carnivorous predator. ‘Bunty has lost their edge.’ I’ve heard several animals say so only recently at the local watering hole.”
“Bunty?” I interrupted, wrinkling my nose. “Your name is Bunty?”
“The one and only.” The tiger gave a bow of its giant orange head. “If speaking English, you may use they or them pronouns when you refer to me.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking of my friend Vic back home who didn’t use he or she pronouns either. Conveniently, in Bengali, there was no he or she, and everyone used the same pronoun, o.
“In the words of that great philosopher J. Tumblerpond,” Bunty continued, “ ‘I don’t wanna be a fool for you. Genders split in two. It may sound performative, but it ain’t no lie. Binaries, baby! Bye! Bye! Bye!’ ” As they said this, Bunty had padded over to the auto rikshaw and started helping me clean the windshield, licking it free of all the pumpkiny innards.
“Thanks.” I was feeling less and less nervous of the tiger by the second, even though I’d never heard of this J. Tumblerpond person.
“My pleasure,” purred the big cat, before crunching on a few stray pumpkin seeds.
“Wait a minute, Princess, don’t get so friendly so quick,” Tuni squawked. “Don’t you want to find out what this tiger did with the old buri?” The bird stuck out a wing in accusation. “Fess up, Professor Bunty, did you chomp her down like a bowl of kitty kibble?”
“Chomp the old woman? How erroneous!” Bunty protested. “You are quite convinced I am carnivorous, aren’t you? So prepared to prejudge! So ready to reduce me to a stereotype! From where does this tremendous terror against tigers come if not from imposed colonial constructs?”
I was starting to trust Bunty more, but was still confused. “If you didn’t eat her, where is she? What did you do with her?”
“Veritably, I’ve done nothing with her!” the tiger said. “I was just telling you that, yes, I had threatened her a bit, to keep up the pretense of my vicious reputation. And then, this morning, a few moments after I saw her daughter sneaking her into the pumpkin, voilà! I suddenly found myself vaulted with great velocity into that selfsame vegetable!”
“That doesn’t make any sense!” snapped Tuni. “One person can’t just swap out for another!”
“You would think not,” I muttered, remembering Neel falling into the other king’s story.
Tiktiki One click-clacked its tongue like it was agreeing with me, and Tuntuni bellowed, “People—or animals—can’t just substitute for each other in their own stories!” In his agitation, Tuni jumped on Tiktiki One’s back, making the little lizard click-clack even louder. “A villain can’t just take over the role of the victim!”
But even as the talking bird said this, I remembered something Mati had said on the beach. She’d said that heroes and monsters weren’t always so easy to label. It wasn’t what you looked like, who your family was, or where you came from that made someone bad or good, but the things you did each and every day. But still, what did all that have