The Chaos Curse (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #3) - Sayantani DasGupta Page 0,86
don’t even recognize my own homeland anymore!”
Neel and I exchanged horrified looks. We’d saved ourselves, hopefully saved Naya, but somehow, we’d made the fate of the multiverse worse? Was it because we’d filled Sesha with even more hate?
“What’s been going on?” I asked.
“My mom and Sesha didn’t call off their wedding?” Neel seemed stunned.
“No!” Mati said. “But while you two were gone, the royal wedding mehendi party got invaded by swarms of mythical creatures and story characters from the 2-D realm.”
“Actually, according to this report in the Seven Oceans Gazette,” Bunty said as they strolled in, a pair of reading glasses propped on their broad nose and a newspaper in their mouth, “these strange guests called the henna ‘nifty temporary tattoos,’ thought the mehendi party food was too spicy, and insisted that Sesha change his name to Sam and wear a tuxedo instead of his sherwani. Ludicrous!”
“It’s happening so fast now!” Tuni said. “It seems like all the people of the Kingdom Beyond and the Kingdom of Serpents and everywhere else in this dimension are starting to dress and talk and act like people from the 2-D realm.”
“Worse, they’re forgetting their language,” said Mati, running a hand over her exhausted face. “Everyone is forgetting their stories.”
As we walked around the resistance hideout with Bunty, Tuni, and Mati, evidence of the impending crunch was everywhere. Most of the PSS weren’t even wearing saris anymore, but pink jumpsuits and jeggings and skorts. Even as we gazed at them things changed right in front of our eyes. In the corner where Gyan Mukherjee had been making his fashion masterpieces was suddenly a giant, rakkhosh-sized girl with curly blond ringlets, sitting on a tuffet and eating what I could only assume were curds and whey. There was also a very tiny boy in her hand who kept jumping over a candlestick.
The girl gave a startled yelp when she spontaneously arrived, and then proceeded to scream and cry, throwing a huge tantrum. The tiny-sized boy was oblivious and just kept on with his candlestick leaping. And although we were all expecting they would go back from where she came and return the fashion designer, hours went by and Miss Muffet and Jack were still there.
“Can’t we get rid of them?” I asked Mati. Bunty began trying to reason with Muffet, to convince her to return to her own dimension, but the giant girl just lay down and stomped her arms and legs. “More curdsth! More whey!” she wailed. “And none of thath curry-flavor sthuff like lasth time! It’s too spithy!” As for Jack, he was so small it wasn’t even possible to understand anything he said. Tuni flew him up on top of one of the sewing machines for safekeeping and let him keep on with his obsessive jumping over the machine’s bobbin.
My cousin shook her head sadly. “I’m scared, Kiran. I don’t know who’s going to be next. Did you know there’s a beanstalk growing in the middle of the unisex bathrooms? I mean, will I change too? I don’t want to forget my heritage; I don’t want to forget who I am. I don’t want to vanish into somebody else’s story.”
I grabbed Mati’s hand and held on. “I won’t let you forget who you are, my sister,” I promised, remembering that in Bengali there was no real word for cousin. All cousins and even friends were our brothers and sisters; all adults were some version of aunties and uncles.
Mati smiled and squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry we fought, Sis.”
I wrapped my arms around her and gave her a big hug, feeling my heart expand to the size of the growing universe. I realized how small and tight everything in my chest had felt when we were fighting. “I am too.”
Together, we decided to call an all-hands-on-deck planning meeting for that afternoon.
“A council of war,” Mati had started to say, but I’d put my hand over her lips.
“No, a meeting of friends and allies,” I’d corrected her. “No war, no hate. There’s enough strength in our love and friendship.”
We sent a message via Tiktiki One and called back Lal, Buddhu, and Bhootoom to the resistance hideout. Soon, we were all there: Lal, Neel, Mati, Tuni, Bunty, Buddhu, Bhootoom, and those of the PSS who hadn’t forgotten who they were yet.
Right before the meeting, we got some wonderful news. We heard from Dr. Ahmed that the poison antidote had worked! This made our little band of friends cheer and shout. With the doctor’s permission, we