“Yum! Yum! In my tum!”
The all-too-familiar voice echoed weirdly from within the unnatural torrent of water.
“Oh gods! He’s more powerful than I thought!” yelled Neel. “This isn’t a whirlpool; it’s that demon brat’s open mouth—and he’s going to eat us all!”
That snot-nosed newborn demon transformed himself into a whirlpool?” I screamed furiously at Neel. “Is there more stuff you people can do that you didn’t tell me?” I rowed like a wild thing, as did all of us, but our boat was going nowhere.
“He shouldn’t be able to! A newborn practice that kind of complicated magic? I’ve never heard such a thing,” Neel protested. “There has to be someone helping him!”
There weren’t enough oars, and he was bent over the side trying to muscle us physically up the mountain of water. But it wasn’t working. For every few inches we moved forward, we moved more back down toward the whirlpool’s center.
“Well, he’s obviously smarter than we gave him credit for!” I could barely see, there was so much water rushing into my eyes.
“Stop arguing, for goodness’ sake,” Baba said, putting his shoulder into his oaring. “It’s not very royal behavior on either of your parts!”
“Oh dear, I’m afraid we are traversing backward,” Ma piped in.
She was right. Despite our best efforts, our barge was sliding inevitably down the demonic drain. Or demonic digestive system, as the case may be.
“Yum! Yum! Snaky King is a big dum-dum!”
“What did he say? Oh no, what did he say?”
The boat went almost vertical and tumbled backward.
“Yaaaa!” I wasn’t sure who was shouting, but the last thing I saw before we got pulled down into the center of the whirlpool were people—and a bird and two magical spheres—that I didn’t want to lose.
It was a long way down—history-test long, humiliating-moment-in-the-locker-room long, Alice-falling-down-the-rabbit-hole long. And dark. And loud. And terrifying.
When we landed—with a hard thunk, I might add—it wasn’t in the demon’s stomach, but in a relatively dry undersea cavern. The peacock barge, luckily, was equipped with airbags, and they seriously broke our fall. (Go magical crash-test systems!)
We climbed out, leaving the gold and silver balls in the barge for safekeeping, and looked around. I could hear the water of the whirlpool still swirling above us. The scene was all too familiar. The demon baby was nowhere to be seen. But someone else was.
“Hello, Sssissster,” said a set of seven nasty voices.
I whipped around to see that last-place winner for brother of the year—Naga, the seven-headed snake.
“Oh, booger-nosed snot fest, where did YOU come from?”
“Daughter, your mouth.”
“Yesss, indeed, your mou-sss,” hissed the cobra heads in unison. In a flash, Naga wrapped Ma, Baba, and even poor terrified Tuntuni in his coils. As a last flourish, he slapped his nasty tail over all their mouths. They were effectively bound and gagged.
“Let them go!” Neel brandished his sword. Even in the dark cavern, it glinted with an inner light.
“Now!” I aimed my arrow at the largest of his seven hooded heads. The snake lunged at me, flicking seven forked tongues.
I saw Baba’s eyes widen at something behind me even before I heard the chilling voice. I whirled around, my arrow still raised. I should have known who was behind all this.
“Children, children, why all the fuss?” The Serpent King slithered into the room—his top half human, but his bottom half in his terrible serpentine form. “Do you like my new undersea residence?” he oozed. “It’s a rental, and I’m still waiting on the interior decorator …”
“You!” Neel ran at the Serpent King, his sword aimed at my birth father’s throat.
“Impudent demon-ling!” The Serpent King held up his hand, sending Neel’s sword clattering to the floor with a bolt of green lightning. “Did you actually think you could destroy my glorious kingdom and get away with it?”
“Stop!” I whirled back around and aimed my arrow at the largest of the cobra’s seven heads. “Let them all go—it’s me you want. Otherwise … I shoot Naga!”
The Serpent King waved a callous hand, mocking Naga’s snakey lisp. “Oh, shoot him, what do I care? You’d think those ssssseven ssssstupid heads would make him sssssmarter. But he let you get away last time, didn’t he?”
If it was possible for a magical seven-headed cobra to look hurt, he did. But it’s not like my snake-brother got all warm and fuzzy as a result. In fact, he squeezed his prey even harder. Ma and Baba sputtered, their faces red, and an alarming number of yellow feathers discharged from where Tuntuni must be—almost invisible in the folds of cobra muscle.
“Stop!” I shrieked, turning to the Serpent King. “Please! He’ll kill them!”
“So what?” snarled my biological father. “Did you show my poor snakes any mercy? Hmm? Did you?”
“Let them go!” I sent an arrow flying at the Serpent King, but he stopped it mid-flight with a green bolt. As I aimed a second arrow, the Serpent King shot another bolt of green lightning, this time directly at my hands. My beautiful bow exploded in green flames. I dropped it, before falling to the ground myself. Where the green fire hit me, my arms felt like they were burning, only from the inside out. It was agony.
Neel had picked up his sword again, and ran screaming at the Serpent King. “Aaaa!”
“Oh, will you never learn?” He shot a bolt of green, this time a flaming sphere that imprisoned Neel within it. The prince screamed in pain—a sound that made my blood run cold. He writhed around within the glowing orb, his body twisting in unnatural contortions, as if he was being tortured.
“Neel!” I shrieked, running toward him. The heat of the sphere was scorching, and it shot out green flares. It burned me even at a distance, like the molten surface of some alien sun. “Neel, hang on! Hang on!”
“You’ll join him soon enough, you pathetic waste of a daughter.” The Serpent King aimed his hands high.
“No!” Everyone I loved was going to die. And it was all my fault. My legs couldn’t hold me up anymore, and I collapsed. I was screaming and crying so hard, my tears were tumbling from my face. I didn’t try to control them. I had much more important things to worry about. But where the tears hit my arms, something strange happened. They eased the burning feeling of the green bolt.
My tears. In a flash, I remembered how Tuni had seemed dead, but how he’d come to life in my arms. I’d been crying then too. And why was it exactly I’d spent so many years training my own tears not to spill? Had I somehow known the power they contained?
Unless the pearly waters of the fountain can flow free.
Were my tears the salty pearls that needed to flow free too?