with hourglasses all over it. The hourglasses were filled with little multicolor gems that looked like the sands of time. Her bow tie was a giant gem-filled hourglass too. Her short black hair was all spiky in a zillion directions, and she bopped to the beat of her show’s theme.
“Heya, young scientists!” Sadie boomed as the music finished. The TV audience yelled back, “Heya, Sadie!”
“The universe is rich with mysteries.” Sadie hit a button and the entire room around her became the solar system, so it looked like she was casually walking, in her white pantsuit, through space.
“Just this past year, for the first time in all of history, our instruments began to detect cosmic ripples across the fabric of space-time, the aftershock of two black holes colliding into each other many light-years away.”
There was an exaggerated yawn followed by some giggles from somewhere in the room. Dr. Dixon cleared his throat, and the noise quieted down. “You guys are going to like this next part,” our teacher said.
The image behind Sadie changed, to two bright white stars circulating around each other.
“Now, just this year, we have detected a remarkable event that happened a hundred and thirty million light-years away. We have seen the beautiful explosion of light—the fireworks—created when two long-ago and faraway neutron stars collided.”
“What’s a neutron star?” someone in the classroom shouted out.
“Good question.” Dr. Dixon paused the video on Sadie’s animated face. “Neutron stars are formed when the collapsed core of a very large star explodes out and becomes a supernova, then dies.”
Not that I would admit it out loud, but I, of course, knew all about the life cycle of a star—how some suns become red giants, then white dwarves, before becoming black holes. That was because Lal and Mati had actually been transformed into a red giant and a white dwarf last fall during a whole messy disaster where Neel’s mom had eaten them, and then vomited them out as golden and silver spheres. Part of the risk, I guess, of having your stepmother be a rakkhoshi-queen-slash-powerful-black-hole.
Dr. Dixon clicked his remote to let the video run again. On the screen, Shady Sadie also clicked on her remote. The two white stars behind Sadie ran into each other, letting off jets of silver and gold sparks. “When these two neutron stars collided,” the TV scientist explained, peering at the camera over her dark frames, “they filled the universe with streams of heavy metals, plumes of gold and platinum.” To illustrate her point, the sparks danced and glowed on the screen like they were alive.
And just then, my own brain sparked and danced to life too, just like those precious metals. This was what I’d been reminded of when Ms. Twinkle Chakraborty was talking about those magic Thought and Touch Stones—the Chintamoni and Poroshmoni—and how together, they could make it rain gold and platinum from the sky. I felt my breathing speed up. If black holes in this dimension were rakkhosh in the Kingdom Beyond, why couldn’t the precious stones the Raja and Sesha both wanted be twin neutron stars?
“So how much gold and platinum did those stars make?” Jordan Ogino asked. Clearly, the talk of precious metals had gotten my classmates interested. They were materialistic, if nothing else.
Dr. Dixon paused the video again. “Oh, just a few nanillion dollars’ worth!” He smiled when we all looked baffled. “Well, let me put it this way, it made about twenty Earths worth of gold, and about fifty Earths of solid platinum.”
“That’s some serious cosmic bling!” shouted out Jordan as everyone laughed.
Dr. Dixon switched off the video and brought up the room lights. “Okay, so who can tell me what alchemy is?” I could tell the teacher was looking straight at me, expecting me to jump in with an answer. But I kept my eyes on my desk. I’d already made a fool of myself enough for one class period. Besides, my brain was occupied thinking about my evil bio father in possession of a neutron star.
“Isn’t that, like, when wizards tried to change metals into gold and live forever and stuff?” said Sophie Hiller, popping some gum at the end of her sentence.
“Yes, you’re right, young scientist!” Dr. Dixon pointed enthusiastically at Sophie, like she’d just said something brilliant. “Except, maybe, the wizard part. Alchemists were people who spent their whole lives looking for a jewel, sometimes a stone or an elixir, that could transform other metals into gold. They thought this precious stone, if they found