“You could say that.” Neel laughed—a harsh, unhappy sound. “You could also say that as far as our father’s concerned, I’m invisible.”
“Oh, come on,” I scoffed. “Not really?”
“Yeah, really. I might as well be a ghost.” Neel pointed at a nearby coconut tree. “Like the one who lives in that tree trunk.”
“Please, you’re trying to tell me there’s really a ghost that lives in that tree?”
“Usually. Unless she’s out trying to impersonate a human woman and sneak into a real family again. Don’t ghosts live in coconut trees in your dimension?”
“No!” I still wasn’t sure whether to believe him, but quickened my pace just in case, to put more distance between myself and the tall brown trunk. “Are you just trying to scare me?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, just lay off. I don’t scare easily.”
Neel snorted. “Good, ’cause I don’t roll with scaredy-cats.”
“Whatever. Could we go meet this minister guy now?”
Neel didn’t say anything else, but loped off, leaving me to dash after him. To my surprise, he didn’t head toward the palace, but toward the edge of the forest. I hurried to follow, and almost crashed right into him when he stopped. He stood under a guava tree whose branches were heavy with fruit.
“Tuni!” he called. “Oh, Tuni Bhai! Come on, Brother Tuni, show yourself!”
There was a twittering and a chirping from above our heads, and then something hard and fast pelted down at us.
“Ow.” I rubbed my head. Something solid had hit me. Something solid that hurt!
Thunk. Neel rubbed his head too. “Stop it, Tuntuni!”
An adorable yellow bird with a bright red beak danced on the branch above our heads.
“Yeaaaaah, boy! I got you good!” The bird chewed on a piece of bamboo that bobbed up and down in his beak like a cartoon cigar.
“Come on, Tuni, chill out,” Neel protested. “This is the princess—”
“From the other dimension!” the bird chirped. “You don’t gotta tell me! I can smell the ordinariness on her from a kilometer away! Pee-yew!”
“Please don’t tell me this rude bird is your father’s minister.” At this, the bird tossed a few more unripe guavas, which we managed to duck.
“Don’t take the act too seriously,” Neel muttered. “He likes to keep everybody thinking he’s a few crackers short of a packet.”
“Tuni doesn’t want a cracker!” the bird rhymed, spitting seeds. “Especially from a royal slacker!”
“Tuni, sir … um, do you know where my parents are?” I asked as politely as I could.
“And why should I tell an unimaginative 2-D like you?”
“Come on, Tuni, strike us a deal—how can we convince you to tell us what we want?” Neel wheedled.
The bird considered the offer. “Okay, slacker, why don’t you convince your royal father to arrest the barber?”
“I don’t think the cuckoo thing is an act,” I whispered.
“Nah, he’s just a big poser,” Neel said. Then louder, “Why should I do that?”
“When I had a thorn in my foot last week, that dratted barber wouldn’t come—he made me wait and wait. Said he had human customers who came first.” The bird spit more guava seeds. “The nerve!”
“I don’t think my father would arrest the barber for that,” Neel said.
“Well then, how about I ask the palace mouse to bite his royal potbelly?” Tuni suggested.
“Why would the mouse do that?”
“Well, what if I asked the castle cat to chase the mouse?”
This was getting silly. “Where are my parents?” I interrupted.
But Neel shushed me with a gesture. “And if the cat refused to chase the mouse?”
“Why then”—Tuni was gaining steam—“I’d ask the stick to beat the cat.”
“And if the stick refused to beat the cat?”
“Why then, I’d ask the fire to burn the stick.”
Neel was apparently enjoying the game. He picked up one of the hard guavas that the bird had thrown and began to toss it in the air. But I wondered if he was playacting too, because there was a muscle twitching suspiciously in the prince’s cheek.
“And if the fire refused to burn the stick?” Neel asked the bird.
“Why then, I’d ask the sea to drown the fire!”
I was getting the hang of it. “Okay, so if the sea refused to put out the fire?” I asked. Neel gave me a glimmer of a grin, and I was startled by how nice it felt to be on the same team for once.
“Well then, I would ask the elephant to drink up the sea!”
“And if the elephant refused to drink the sea?” Neel and I asked in one voice.
“Why then, I would go to the smallest animal I could find.”
“An ant?” I guessed.
“A gnat?” Neel supplied.
Suddenly, I felt a sharp bite on my arm. As I slapped the sting, something Neel had said in the market came to me.
“No, it’s the mosquito, right?”
Tuni pecked at a guava. “Oh yes, I would ask the mosquito to bite the elephant.”
“And if the mosquito refused—” Neel began to say, but now it was my turn to shush him. A light bulb went off in my head. Weren’t all of Baba’s animal stories about creatures fulfilling their destiny—their dharma? The moral always seemed to be that if you ever came across a tiger or a crocodile in the woods, you weren’t supposed to trust it. Because no matter how much they promised they weren’t going to eat you, they definitely would, because that was their nature. To eat people. Like a mosquito’s was to bite people. I’d never thought there was much use for Baba’s animal stories—I mean, it’s not like I was bumping into tigers and crocodiles on a weekly basis in the Willowbrook Mall. But boy, was I glad for them now.
I called to Tuni, “The mosquito wouldn’t refuse because that’s what mosquitoes like to do—that’s their nature—they bite, right?”
“Yessiree! The Princess Kiranmala will be performing nightly at seven and eleven in the royal forest tea salon!” the bird burbled into the stick, as if it were a microphone. “Catch the best puzzle-solving act this side of the transit corridor! And be sure not to miss our early-bird shrimp cutlets special!”
“So the mosquito—” I began, but Tuni interrupted me.
“Did you see what I did there?” He put his wing up to his mouth as if telling me a secret. “With the early-bird special? Early bird, get it?”
“Hilarious, I get it,” I agreed. “The early bird catches the worm, the whole thing.”
Tuntuni screeched in glee. “Early bird catches the worm! Good one! Going to have to remember that!”
Trying not to roll my eyes, I rushed on to solve the rest of Tuni’s riddle.
“So the mosquito would threaten to bite the elephant, and then the elephant would threaten to drink the sea, the sea would threaten to douse the fire, the fire threaten to burn the stick, the stick threaten to beat the cat …” I stopped to take a breath.
“The cat threaten to catch the mouse, the mouse threaten to bite the belly,” Neel supplied.
“And the king would then agree, after all, to arrest the barber,” we concluded together.
“Which proves what, boys and girls?” Tuni twirled the stick of bamboo in his mouth like a baton.
“That cooperation is a good thing?” I guessed.