It was the shadow seller’s purple vial with the cork top.
“Tuntuni, wait …” Neel began. But with one swift gesture, the bird smashed the vial to bits at the feet of the Snake King. There was a tinkling of broken glass, but beyond that, nothing happened.
We all stared at the broken bottle like participants in a strange wax-museum tableau. The king, the bird, the prodigal daughter, the looming serpent, and his princely prey.
Sesha was the first to break out of the expectant trance.
“Ha!” The Serpent King’s moustache twitched as he laughed. “I haven’t been that amused in a long time!”
But then a thick gray smoke swirled out of the shattered glass. It wrapped itself like a never-ending sari around the throne room, circling the pillars, weaving through the furniture, threading its wispy form above and below the throne. It wrapped us, the snakes, everything in its expanding folds.
“Hang on, y’all, here it comes!” Tuntuni chirped.
“Here what comes?” I eyed the growing mist.
“Just don’t let go!” Neel grabbed me with one hand, the bird with his other.
An earthquake-like rumbling shook the teeth in my head. The snakes hissed and slithered around in panic. Then enormous roots shot out of every nook and cranny of the throne room, breaking right through the snake pillars and snake chandeliers, the snake tables and snake throne chair. From the roots, a sturdy trunk exploded like a rocket toward the sky.
“Father! The sssky isss falling!” Naga shrieked.
And it was. The banyan tree shadow, which had been trapped inside the purple bottle, was reconstituting itself now that it was free—like a dry sponge exposed to water. The mighty branches shot up and out, crashing through any obstacle before them. Pieces of stone ceiling plummeted down like giant pieces of hail, crushing snakes.
“This isn’t the last time you’ll see me!” The Serpent King waved his arms, and in a flash of green, he transformed himself into a hideous serpent with a hundred heads. His endlessly coiled tail vibrated with a primordial power. Already, the banyan tree was destroying the room. Now, with every rattle of his mystical tail, the entire cavern shook and spun. Cracks shot along the walls and floors. A huge one beneath the throne opened up, and the Serpent King and Naga disappeared through it.
Neel pulled at my arm. “Wait!” I shouted, breaking free of his grasp.
In the chaos, the seven-headed serpent had left the python jewel. I grabbed it, tucking it inside Neel’s jacket, which I was still wearing.
Neel took my hand again in his steely grip and pulled me toward his body. “Hold on!” he ordered, and I wrapped one arm around his shoulder, holding Tuntuni with the other. Neel lunged, grabbing one of the branches that shot its way toward the sky.
“Wait a minute!” We were flying straight toward the stone ceiling, chaos and destruction all around us. Oh, I had a bad feeling about this. “Aren’t we right under the …”
“When I say so, you both take a big breath!” Neel commanded. “One … two …”
But he didn’t even have a chance to count to three, because the tree trunk charged a huge hole in the ceiling of the underground cavern, and lake water poured into the room, drowning the snakes. And, oh yeah, us.
We were underwater. I panicked in the swirling tempest and tried to kick away from Neel with my legs, toward what I guessed was the surface of the lake. But Neel held on to me. I fought him, panicking. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even see which way was up. My lungs were going to explode.
Air.
Oh, I needed air.
I shook my head. The pressure on my lungs was too much. I was going to drown. I didn’t want to die like this. I had to get air … had … to … get …
With a burst, the tree branch Neel was hanging on to cleared the surface of the water. I gasped big breaths into my lungs.
I breathed.
I breathed.
I breathed.
The air tasted so sweet. I would never take the simple act of breathing for granted again.
The tree deposited us on the shore, its branch acting like an enormous hand. As soon as we tumbled off, the branches kept shooting upward and outward. The banyan’s roots stretched and grew until the entire surface of the lake was gone. And with it, the underworld kingdom was buried without a doorway to the upper realm. Where the lake had been, with its magic door, was now a majestic banyan tree.
Neel and I lay side by side near the tree’s roots, panting.
“We’re alive!” Neel’s eyes glowed in a way that made me feel a little dizzy.
“You don’t need to sound so surprised.” I groaned, trying to sit up. My entire body ached like I’d been through some giant car wash. Except without a car. I felt all vomit-y again.
“Dark energy!” Neel stretched his arms, cracked his neck, and then began wringing out his shirt. “Dang, that’s some powerful stuff in Chhaya Devi’s shadows.”
“Dark what?” My breath was still jagged and hurt my raw throat. My hair was plastered to me, but I couldn’t find the strength to brush it from my eyes.
I couldn’t help but resent Neel, who looked almost chipper now. There was something really annoying about a boy who never seemed tired, even after fighting a passel of poisonous snakes, then getting half drowned.
“Dark energy. It’s the energy that helps the universe keep expanding. You might call it a part of the universal life force.”
That sounded vaguely familiar.
“My Baba always tells me we’re all connected by energy—trees, wind, animals, people, everything.” I tried to get my ragged breathing under control. “He says that life energy is a kind of river flowing through the universe.”
“And that our souls are just a bit of that river water held inside the clay pitcher of our bodies?” Neel smiled at my surprise. “Yeah, I know that story too. They say that when our bodies give out, that’s just the pitcher breaking, pouring what’s inside back into the original stream of universal souls.”
“So no one’s soul is ever really gone,” I finished, repeating the words that Baba had said to me so often.
“Yup.” Neel nodded. “It’s the same idea that governs Chhaya Devi’s shadows. When unleashed, there’s nothing more powerful than the desire of nature to reunite with the universal soul.”
I was about to ask Neel to explain some more, when I noticed the still, yellow body a couple of feet away.
“Tuntuni!”
The little bird wasn’t moving at all. His wings were dark with water, and his head and beak were at a funny angle. Panic sent energy shooting through my cramped muscles. I half crawled, half scrambled over to where his tiny form lay on the ground.