“English is not everyone’s first language,” Neel explained defensively, raising his arm to protect Tuntuni from a floating piece of flaming cardboard.
I realized there were a few other signboards here and there around the burning archway with crazy slogans painted on them too. Before they started to catch fire and burn, I saw that most of them were warnings for people setting out to fight rakkhosh:
AFTER WHISKY, FIGHTING DEMoNS RISKY
and
IF YOU SlEEP, YoUR FAMIlY WIll WEEP
in addition to
RAKKHOSH BABIES DON’T SAY MAYBE!
and the ever popular
FIGHT DEMONIC FOOLS AND FORM BLOOD POOLS!
“The well of demonic energy must be nearby, right?”
Neel didn’t have a chance to reply, because, just then, Mati’s clock hand started ticktocking even louder than before.
“Oh no! Neel! Look!”
We watched as the clock hand now swept right past the white dwarf to hover somewhere right before the black hole mark. As it did so, the glowing white shape in my arms began transforming once again into the silver sphere I knew and loved.
“Neel! I’m running out of time!”
But Neel had run ahead of me through the almost burned-out “Dengar” archway and was picking up the other sphere. It had magically transformed back into the golden bowling ball that we were used to, its red giant manifestation complete. And while that brought some strange degree of comfort—to see Mati and Lal back to their magical sphere forms—it also reminded me that the spell we were dealing with was almost at an end. As was the time I had left to find my parents.
“What do I do?” I cried.
“Look for the ring! Look for the ring!” squawked Tuntuni from Neel’s shoulder. The bird was pointing at what looked like a simple pile of boulders in front of us. Now that it had stopped raining fiery cardboard from the sky, I could approach it.
“What is this?”
I wasn’t sure if I actually had tears in my eyes, or if it was the swirling mist, because, all of a sudden, the rock formation began to glow.
“Dr. Einstein said to look for a ring of light …” I remembered aloud.
“Einstein’s ring! Of course!” Neel was tucking the golden and silver spheres back into his makeshift sling. “Einstein predicted that dark matter must exist in the universe because he noticed that light from distant stars sometimes looks like circles of light instead of pinpoints.”
“Oh, right, I heard about this on a science program,” I added. “He realized there must be something in the way—so that the light had to travel all around the object before making it to Earth. Hence, Einstein’s ring.”
At Neel’s surprised expression, I shrugged defensively. “I never said I wasn’t good at science.”
Neel nodded, squinting at the glowing rocks. I followed his gaze.
In between the gaps in the boulders, I could make out something glimmering with a strange, magical force. Without a second thought, I began to climb up the slippery stones.
“What are you doing?” Neel took my arm.
I glared at him, and he dropped his hand. “There’s something in the middle there, and I’m going to find out what it is!”
I scrambled up the rocks, but when Neel tried to follow me, I waved him off.
“You might have to come rescue me!” I cautioned. “My Baba always says, two men should not go into a jackal’s den.”
“Your Baba has a lot of really, uh, fascinating sayings,” said Neel as I began to climb, carefully placing my foot in one crevice and then another. My hands gripped and slipped and got cut on the sharp stones, but I kept on climbing. I had no choice. My parents’ lives depended on me.
Finally, after a slightly harrowing few minutes, I was at the top of the stones. Even though I hadn’t been able to see it from the ground, I realized the boulders were surrounding a central hollow—a crater-like hole at the top. I perched on the edge of the open space, peering down, not understanding what I was seeing.
“What is it?” Neel called.
When I didn’t answer right away, Tuntuni flew up to land on my shoulder. As the bird and I peered into the hole together, I finally understood.
“I don’t think this is just any old pile of boulders,” I called down to Neel. “I think it’s a well!”
As I saw my own face and Tuntuni’s birdy visage reflected back to me from the well’s water, I realized it must be true.
“A well of dark energy!” Neel exclaimed. “Your parents must be there!”
“I know, but how do I find them? How do I get them out?” My voice echoed weirdly off the stone sides.
“We don’t have much time!” Neel cautioned.
“It’s the night of the new moon,” Tuntuni said, looking at the sky. “When the dark moon rises is the time that marks when a rakkhosh is born.”
The mist was getting darker now, swirling around in grays and blacks rather than vivid colors. Soon it would be time for the moon to rise. Or, rather, it would be the night of the new moon. And my parents’ time would be up.
I blinked hard, trying to keep my cool. “Dark matter scatters light …” I repeated to myself.
I peered at the wobbly reflection of my own determined face in the well’s dark fluid, its surface a bit thicker and more oily than water. But still, I saw myself in the darkness. Our golden bird was right.
“Ma? Baba?” I called tentatively. There was no answer.
“We found it,” I mumbled to myself. “But now what?”
Neel said there were lots of wells of dark energy; how did I know this was the right one? Could I even be sure that my parents were in here? And if they were, how the heck was I going to fish them out of this magic, invisible goo?
I didn’t have a lot of time. The mists were getting even darker. I had to find out if my parents were below the surface of that water. And there was only one way to do it. I yanked off my jacket and shoes, getting ready to dive into the well.
Stop! Ma’s voice yelled.
What are you, a few mangoes short of a bushel? Baba echoed.
I stopped. As clear as if they were standing next to me, I heard my parents’ voices.
“Stop, Kiran, you can’t dive into a well. You’ll kill yourself,” Neel shouted from below.
“Yeah, that’s what my parents just said.” I put my shoes back on.
“Okay, let’s just think this through,” Neel continued. “Every step, we’ve known we’re on the right track because we had evidence. The moving map led us over the sea, where we found the red rubies from Tuntuni’s poem.”
“Right,” I shouted back. The jewels were still heavy in my pockets.
“Then the map led us through Demon Land to here—and we knew it was Maya Pahar because another one of the poem’s lines came true—‘on a diamond branch a golden bird must sing a blessed song.’”
“Yeah, yeah,” I sputtered impatiently. Ma and Baba’s time was running out while Neel was pontificating. “Let’s move it along, haven’t got all night here. On a bit of a pre-apocalyptic deadline.”