only heard about in Baba’s folktales.
On the video, the demon’s tongue lolled out of its warty head as it approached Prince Lal. “How he’ll holler, how he’ll groan, when I eat the mortal prince’s bones!”
It was strange to see this all on-screen, but cool too, like flipping through an old yearbook. How did IGNN have all this footage? This was, after all, way before Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer? began, and therefore, at least theoretically, back in a time when everything in my life wasn’t being recorded.
On the screen, Lal did an outrageous back somersault off a nearby tree and landed on the demon’s head, riding him like a cowboy on a steer. “Methinks, sirrah, you need to go on a diet!” exclaimed Lal before attempting to stab the thick-skinned monster with his sword.
The audience gasped again, one woman letting out a faint shriek. It was only when I saw myself in the recording, trying desperately to control the horse Midnight, that I realized there was something seriously wrong with what I was seeing. When this had actually happened, I had been sitting on Midnight behind Neel, and it had been Neel who had been controlling the skittish horse. I hadn’t ever ridden any sort of horse before, nonetheless a flying one, but in the video, it somehow looked like I was controlling Midnight all by myself. And Neel was nowhere to be seen.
“Wait a minute, something’s not right,” I began, and Ms. Twinkle Chakraborty batted her heavily mascara’d eyes at me with sympathy. “I knoo it’s not. Your adopted parents had just been killed, their boones crushed to the size of ice cream sprinkles. You had noo idea who you really were, and you had just met the gallant Prince Lal—who was in the process of making you fall head over heels in lurve with him.”
“No, my parents weren’t killed, and their boones—I mean, their bones—are just fine,” I protested. “They were swallowed whole and whisked away to this dimension. And Prince Lal never … I mean lurve is really not what our relationship is about.”
Ms. Twinkle put a long-nailed hand over my mouth. “Shhh, darling, shhh … I know this footage must bring up terrible memooroos, but it will all be all right. Lurve will mend your brooken heart.”
“But,” I began again, as soon as she removed her hand, and she quickly replaced it, patting me all over my face in a bizarre attempt to shut me up while not looking like she was shutting me up.
“Mrph … blargh … mraph,” I protested
“Shhh, there, there, sweet child,” she countered, then louder, “There! There!” She was practically slapping my face now with her open palm.
I shut up, but what I saw next on the footage was so outrageously false, I almost started shouting again. The video showed Lal single-handedly fighting the rakkhosh, then rescuing me from its clutches. Of course, what had really happened was that the demon knocked Lal unconscious and I had rescued him. Then Neel had come in and rescued me when I was in trouble. But I saw none of that happen on-screen. Instead, I saw myself swoon in Lal’s arms as he carried me off on Snowy’s back. I also saw myself double back to stand on top of the now unconscious rakkhosh’s head, delivering a bloody death blow with a long-handled sword. This was a total lie, of course, because I’d never actually killed any monsters—rakkhosh or otherwise. I’d fought them, outwitted them, out riddled them, sure, but killed? No. Yet the recording looked so ridiculously real, I almost believed this alternative version of the truth myself.
“Wait a minute, that never happened. I don’t even know how to use a sword very well,” I sputtered. “And where’s Neel? Why isn’t he anywhere in the video?”
Ms. Twinkle let out a giant sigh, then looked at the camera and made a throat-slashing motion. “Cut!” called the director. After the video screen flashed with a sign that said WE R X-SPEERYUNSING TECKNICAL DIFFICOOLTIES, my interviewer jumped to her feet, her fake smile dropping from her lips.
“I cannoot work like this!” Her voice was super different now, not dripping with honey but sharp and barbed. She ripped off her lapel microphone and threw it down. “Unprofessional! Bloody amatoors! Who prepped this sad excuse for a princess? Who’s responsible for her toorrible answers?”
“I was just trying to tell the truth.” But Twinkle’s voice was so shrill she just talked right over me. “She made me look