“What’s happening to them?” I demanded of the professor.
“The prince and the stable maiden—they wanted to be together, however that was possible, yes?”
I considered that. Lal and Mati, they did want to be together. But not like this, surely?
“And your parents, Princess, they wanted you to discover who you are, to be proud of where you came from, yes?”
He was right on the money there. That’s the only thing my parents ever wanted. But had they imagined they would have to risk their lives for it to happen?
“These wishes cannot happen without consequences. Darkness is the night side of light. The forgotten brother. The exiled self.”
Now that hit a little close to home. Was he talking about Neel—the forgotten brother—and me—the exiled self? Were we the dark matter to Lal and Mati’s friendship, to my parents’ deepest wishes?
The old guy kept spinning, so that now he was lounging sideways in the air, his fingers twirling his white moustache.
“It is the separations between darkness and light that are the illusion, my dear.” He waggled his bushy brows. “Illusion like the ring you see when light tries to travel around the dark matter in its path. Remember this, my dear, remember my ring and you will find what you are looking for.”
“I don’t understand,” I began.
But he was singing again, “Ev-ry-thing is connected to ev-ry-thing.”
“But how?” I asked.
“Eggs-actly! Perfectly put!” He pulled off his turban, and made an old-fashioned bow in my direction. “Chase the giant, cradle the dwarf, and find the well of dark energy before it folds in on itself and those you love are lost forever. But hurry!”
Then, just like that, he disappeared.
Why was the wise man so familiar? That crazy hair going in all different directions, that accent, that moustache. Oh my gosh!
“Was that who I think it was?”
Tuntuni squawked and nodded his yellow head. “The one and only Einstein-ji.”
“The physicist from your world whose name is practically synonymous with intelligence,” Neel added.
I swallowed my spit the wrong way and choked. Tuni had to swat me on the back with his wing for me to regain my breath. “Albert Einstein?” I finally managed. “Albert Einstein is our golden bird on a diamond branch?”
“He was one of the few scientists from your dimension to understand the seven parallel worlds, the thirteen simultaneous universes.”
“But isn’t he, like …” I paused. “Dead?”
“Well, technically, yes. At least, in the way we understand death. Remember, this is a guy who unlocked the secrets of space, time, and a bunch of other things I don’t even know about. It’s he who first predicted dark matter to begin with.”
But I didn’t have time to process this mind-blowing piece of information, because the red and white spheres were making noises, groaning and squeaking. The red one hopped out of Neel’s sling on its own, and began rolling up the hill and out of the star nursery.
“Wait, Lal, stop!” Neel yelled, chasing after him.
I had no option but to run after Neel, and what I was soon realizing was Lal manifesting into a red giant star. As Neel ran after his brother the red giant, the white sphere, which had shrunk now to the size of a nectarine, slipped out of his sling and began rolling down the hill toward me.
“Mati!” Neel yelled, but I dived for the rolling star-sphere, catching it and holding it in my palm like it was one of those crazy predict-your-future Magic 8 Balls.
“Got her!”
We ran after the red giant, who now looked less like Lal, or even a sphere, as opposed to a huge mass of pulsating solar energy. Although no less scary, this was no fee-fi-fo-fum kind of giant, but something else entirely. It was as if a huge forest inferno suddenly grew some legs and began running across the landscape.
In fact, as the red giant ran, he wreaked havoc all around him. The fuzzy purple trees of the nebula caught on fire, exploding in cracking cascades of flames.
“Lal! Stop!” Neel called, but the red giant didn’t hear him. This wasn’t Lal anymore but something beyond human. He was a solar phenomenon.
We ran through walls of flames exploding over the formerly azure plains. Branches cracked and fell too near my head for comfort. Where was the red giant going? How would we survive chasing a monster essentially made out of fire?
The white dwarf in my hands buzzed, as if with worry for Lal too. I shook it desperately.
“Mati,” I called. “If there’s something of you left in there, help us. I need to save my parents before they get swallowed by the spell turning into a black hole. But I don’t know where they are, and I don’t know how long they have.”
Tick, tick, tick …
Amazingly, some part of Mati must have heard me. The ticktocking noise was coming from the white dwarf. Its face resembled something like a clock now. But the labels on the clock’s face were like nothing like I’d ever seen before. They were the phases of a star cycle—nebula, star, red giant, white dwarf, supernova, and black hole. And the clock’s single hand was pointing right at the third position, the red giant.
“Where is he going?” Neel called out desperately. “Lal! Bro! Stop! It’s me! Dude, it’s me!”
But the red giant kept running, setting everything in its path on fire. Neel and I were running side by side, a charred-looking Tuntuni on his shoulder, and the white-dwarf-slash-clock in my hand. The mist was getting thicker, and the ground looked more orange than blue now, because the entire nebula was on fire. The heat was getting unbearable, and poor Tuntuni squawked as he lost one feather after another.
“Lal!” I tried. “I know some part of you can hear us! Tell us where we’re going before you burn us to cinders!”
Tick, tick, tick …
Mati’s timepiece was now pointing at the space in between the red giant and white dwarf. Which meant it was creeping even closer to the black hole. Which was essentially my parents’ death.
“We’ve got to hurry, Neel!” I showed him the clock, indicating the all too rapidly moving arm. “My parents don’t have much more time!”
As if in answer to the danger my parents faced, the landscape itself seemed to change. Instead of the pastel colors and glowing atmosphere, there were spiky bushes and black trees with thorn-covered branches. In front of us, the red giant ran through a hastily put up cardboard archway. It was a little crooked, and decorated to look like a demon’s open mouth, complete with fangs hanging down toward us. On the garishly painted signboard, near the top, was the word:
D E N G A R
As the red giant ran through it, it set the flimsy sign on fire. Neel and I both stopped short, avoiding the falling embers and pieces of burning cardboard.
“Dengar?” I shouted, to make myself heard above the noise of the burning sign. “Really?”