The Chaos Monster, page 1
To Kiru, Kiya, and Khushi: My magical and beloved crew.
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1: A Chaos Monster Destroys the Solar System
Chapter 2: Normal Moms Should Not Have Extendable Arms
Chapter 3: Middle-of-the-Night Basements Are Darker Than You Would Think
Chapter 4: A Real Chaos Monster Causes, Well, Chaos
Chapter 5: It’s Not Every Day (Night) Some Flying Horses Arrive in Your Backyard
Chapter 6: A Book Can Be a Magic Beacon
Chapter 7: If You Call an Angry Pakkhiraj Stinky, You Might Have to Deal with the Consequences
Chapter 8: Facts Are Facts and Magic Is Magic and Never the Twain Shall Meet
Chapter 9: Meeting a Princess and Finding Old Friends
Chapter 10: Quests and Other Magical Things
Chapter 11: Everything Is Connected to Everything
Chapter 12: Bad Rhyme Schemes and Magical Gifts
Chapter 13: The Honeycombs Freak Kinjal Out
Chapter 14: The Royal Palace Freaks Kiya Out
Chapter 15: Makeovers Are Just as Scary as Monsters
Chapter 16: The Prince and Princess of Parsippany
Chapter 17: A Surprise in the Treasury
Chapter 18: In the Company of the Queen
Chapter 19: A Quest Redefined
Chapter 20: A Birdbrain of a Minister
Chapter 21: Okay, Thanks, Bye!
Chapter 22: Distractions
Chapter 23: An Academy for Murder and Mayhem
Chapter 24: More Secrets Revealed
Chapter 25: The Last Feather
Chapter 26: Parting the Waters
Chapter 27: Under the Serpent Sea
Chapter 28: The Truth Isn’t Always the Best Choice When Facing Down a Mean Snake King
Chapter 29: The Opposite of Blah
Chapter 30: Turns Out, Pakkhiraj Horses Are Awesome Fighters
Chapter 31: The Final Battle
Chapter 32: The Nature of Magic
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Sayantani Dasgupta
Copyright
KINJAL AND KIYA Rajkumar were regular, normal brother-sister twins. They went to a regular, normal school and learned all the regular, normal things fourth graders learn. They lived in a regular, normal house with regular, normal parents at the end of a regular, normal street in a regular, normal town.
Or so they both thought.
And anyway, no matter what the stories say, amazing things don’t just happen to heroes and demigods, those born with superpowers or magical abilities. Sometimes, they happen to regular, normal kids living regular, normal lives too.
Especially regular, normal kids from New Jersey. Which, if you didn’t know, is a state where a lot of strange things happen and a lot of fantastical adventures begin.
It all began in a regular, normal way, at least for the Rajkumar family: with Kinjal (totally by mistake, or so he insisted) destroying his twin sister Kiya’s science project, and Kiya (probably on purpose) deciding to pretend her brother didn’t exist.
“Hey, can you pass me the toothpaste?” he said to her the next morning. When she didn’t answer, but just kept brushing, he added, “Hello? Earth to Kiya?”
Kiya rinsed and spat without even reacting at all. Like her twin brother wasn’t right beside her in their bathroom but had teleported through a wormhole and into some faraway dimension. But Kinjal was still right there in the same old ordinary dimension, so he just reached across her and took the toothpaste. He was trying not to feel hurt that his sister hadn’t said anything about his smelly breath or rotten teeth or any other funny-slash-mean thing she might usually say.
“Do you want some cereal?” Kinjal asked as he was pouring his own later downstairs. But Kiya just ignored him, cooing and cuddling with their giant horse of a dog, Thums-Up, who was chocolate brown like their mother’s favorite childhood soda, and just as sweet.
As Thums-Up gave Kiya’s nose, cheek, and glasses some sloppy licks, Kinjal turned to Ma for support. But she just shrugged, giving him a look that said, You made this mess with your sister, Kinjal, and you have to clean it up too. Ma was sort of strict about the twins learning how to own up to their mistakes and take responsibility for their actions and that kind of typical mom stuff.
“Are you still mad at me?” Kinjal asked Kiya as they walked out together to the bus stop. “Because if it’s about your science project, I told you I’d help you put it back together after school.”
But Kiya didn’t change her expression at all. It was like every drop of feeling had been sucked out of her the night before, when Kinjal had accidentally thrown one of Thums-Up’s slobbery tennis balls into her papier-mâché model of the solar system, knocking it off the kitchen table and into a messy heap on the floor. At the time, Kiya had screamed. And also cried. A lot. Just remembering that made Kinjal feel bad, like his recently eaten cereal was riding on a loop-the-loop roller coaster in his stomach.
“Look, it’s only Jupiter and Saturn that really got messed up,” he said in what he thought was a helpful way, running a little to keep up with his sister’s stomping walk. But even though he was being sincere, his sister just glared at him.
Kinjal gulped, trying to smile. “I mean, and yes, Pluto also got a little destroyed, but come on, does anyone really care about Pluto anymore? So flippy-floppy, amirite?” He waved his hands in what he hoped was a funny, jokey way. “One minute it’s all ‘I am a planet’ and then ‘I’m not a planet’ and then ‘Oh, wait, I’m a planet again!’ I mean, make up your little galactic mind, my dude!”
Kinjal wasn’t sure why, but that was the thing that seemed to really get Kiya mad. She whirled, her perfect braids flipping over her shoulder and her eyes flashing behind her red-framed glasses. She poked her finger into her brother’s rumply T-shirt. Hard. “Who cares about Pluto anymore? I care about Pluto, you little monster, all right? I care about Pluto!”
That stopped Kinjal in his tracks. Okay, maybe he wasn’t a hero like in the fantasy books he liked to read, but that didn’t make him a monster. Did it? “Who are you calling a monster, you … you …” Kinjal racked his brain for a good insult, but all he could come up with was “galaxy lover!”
Kiya raised one eyebrow, which annoyed Kinjal because they’d both practiced together in the mirror a lot over the summer and he still hadn’t gotten the hang of it yet. Unable to decide what else to do, Kinjal was about to launch into a chorus of “Kiya and Pluto sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G” but he got distracted when his sister started to wave to their neighbor Lola. Who they’d never been friends with. But now, Kiya was acting like Lola was her best friend. Which only made Kinjal feel even worse. They were twins, after all. Not that he would ever admit it out loud, but Kiya wasn’t supposed to need any other best friend but him.
But his sister seemed to have forgotten that. In the same way she’d forgotten him.
“Hey, Lola!” Kiya said in a best-friendy sort of way.
The cereal in Kinjal’s stomach started flipping around, like their dog doing dive-bombs on the lawn when she wanted to roll around in what was always usually poo.
“Hey, Kiya!” Lola smiled back, a little surprised.
“Looking forward to school today?” Kiya linked her arm through their neighbor’s.
“Not really!” Lola laughed.
That’s when their baba, who was in the front yard in his gardening clothes, laying down some stinky compost, called out, “Have a great day, kids!”
“Thanks, Dad!” Kiya answered, almost making Kinjal’s eyes fall out of his head. I mean, since when did they call their baba “Dad”?
“So, I’ve been meaning to ask you this forever.” Lola wrinkled her nose, like this was the first time she’d seen the Rajkumars’ weed-covered lawn. “What’s with all the dandelions? Also the clover? I mean, no offense or anything.”
Kinjal’s insides bubbled up like a boiling river. Whenever someone said “no offense,” it usually meant they knew they were saying something mean. And yes, okay, theirs was the only front lawn on the street full of the yellow-headed weeds, little white blossoms, and ragged clover. Everybody else’s lawn was green and lush—perfectly mowed and exactly the same. But so what? I mean, what business was it of Lola’s or anyone’s? But instead of saying any of that, Kinjal just started kicking the curb with his sneaker so it got more scuffed up than it already was.
Kiya gave a little fake laugh. “Our dad owns the gardening store on Route 46, Champak Brothers Gardening, and doesn’t believe in pesticides.”
“Our dad is a big fan of pollinators,” Kinjal said, hoping that maybe Lola wouldn’t know the word and he’d get to explain it. Pollinators, he’d say in a way that made clear he thought Lola was rude, are things like birds, bats, bees, and butterflies that carry pollen on their bodies and let the genetic material of one flower cross with another.
But Kinjal didn’t get to define the word because Lola was all over it.
“Pollinators are cool.” She bobbed her head, then adjusted the straps of her Shady Sadie the Science Lady backpack. “It’s a bummer that I’m deathly allergic to bees.”
“I didn’t know that!” Kiya gave her a bright-eyed look, like having a deathly allergy made Lola way more interesting than she’d been just a few seconds ago. “Do you have to carry injectable medicine for that? Like an epinephrine pen?”
“How do you know about that?” Lola aske
“I like to read about different diseases,” Kiya explained as she climbed the school bus steps after Lola. “Science is kind of my thing.” Kiya turned around and raised her eyebrow at Kinjal again.
“I said I was sorry already!” he muttered.
“You ruin everything you touch, you know that?” she hissed back. “You are a complete disaster, a freak of nature!”
KINJAL COULDN’T HELP but feel extra grumpy when his sister sat with Lola instead of him on the bus to keep extra-loudly talking about deadly allergies and other science-y things. After a long day of school, Kiya sat with Lola again on the bus ride home, which was enough to make Kinjal want to start up the song about her and Pluto K-I-S-S-I-N-G, but it was about six hours too late to make that burn actually sting.
When Lola came back to their house from the bus stop with Kiya, Kinjal was so mad, he went to his room to cool off with his favorite series, The Warrior Sloths. Which was, at least for a little while, awesome. Who didn’t love a series about slow-moving, long-armed warriors for justice?
But even as Kinjal reread his favorite book in the series, Splendors of the Sloth King, his mind kept wandering. What if Kiya was right? What if he was a freak, someone who couldn’t help but ruin everything he touched? What if he wasn’t a heroic warrior sloth, like he’d been thinking this whole time, but instead, one of the chaos monsters who were their mortal enemies? Because warrior sloths were slow and careful and thoughtful, but Kinjal was kind of the opposite. Instead of fixing things, was he actually someone who just blasted into things and created disasters?
As Kinjal was thinking this, he heard a freak-out happening on the porch. There were yells and yelps, and at least one panicky scream. He ran to see what was up, almost slipping on his saggy socks on the way down the stairs.
“What’s going on?” Kinjal was imagining a giant troll, or maybe a dragon, or at least a burglar on the front porch. But it was just his mother, sister, and Lola. And also Thums-Up, who always loved to be in the middle of the action. She had a tennis ball in her big mouth and was jumping around, making the most of the ruckus.
“It’s a bee!” Kiya yelled in panic, her eyes huge behind her glasses. Kinjal was surprised because panicking was really not on brand for Kiya. “Lola’s deathly allergic!”
Lola was still making a high-pitched squawking noise and flapping her arms around, which only made Thums-Up jump even more.
“Don’t worry, my dears!” Ma said in a soothing voice, the only one of the three not yelling (or barking). “I’ve got it!”
The thing that happened next had no explanation. It broke all the laws of space, time, and probably some other science-y things that his sister would know about. Kinjal saw his mom stretch out her arm and catch that bee in midair.
Ma didn’t stretch out her arm, like the normal way a mom would, to get a glass from a high shelf or whatever. No. Ma stretched out her arm like it was a fire hose being rolled out farther and farther from her body. From one side of the porch, she stretched her arm all the way over to where Lola was squawking around and grabbed the bee as it was flying. Then, stepping off the porch, she whispered something into her fist. With a little smile, Ma opened her hand and let the bee zoom away.
Lola looked stunned for about half a second, like she’d seen exactly what had happened. But then, in an even calmer and more soothing voice than before, Ma said, “Maybe it’s better to go inside, girls. Less bees there.”
Ma’s eyes kind of widened as she looked at Lola and Lola blinked her eyes, her expression totally changing. “Okay, thank you, Mrs. Rajkumar!” she singsonged, heading into the house.
Kinjal’s brain felt like it was turning to liquid and about to start pouring out of his ears. Like there was a chaos monster feasting on the contents of his skull.
“Ma?” he said, his voice kind of trembly. “What was that?” Thums-Up rubbed against Kinjal’s leg, licking his hand and whining. He wondered if she’d seen Ma’s arm trick too.
“Good girl.” Kinjal scratched the dog’s ears and she rolled her eyes with pleasure. “Ma?” he repeated. “What did you do?”
Kiya gave him a weird look. “What are you talking about? She saved Lola, obviously!”
“But you saw how she saved Lola!” he said, still looking at Ma. “I mean, your arm! What happened to it? It got so long! And then, did you actually talk to that bee?”
“Have you been reading too many zombie stories again?” Kiya asked bossily before Ma had a chance to say anything. “You know what happened last time! You got freaked out, didn’t sleep for two days, and tried to convince me our gym teacher was a part of the walking dead!”
“This isn’t the same thing!” Kinjal protested. “How did you not see what I just saw?”
Without stopping smiling, Ma narrowed her eyes. “What did you just see, Kinjal?”
He stared at her. Ma and Baba always made a big deal about how they never lied to the twins. But here she was, lying. Or at least, not telling the truth, which was just as bad. Thums-Up whined, twining herself around Kinjal’s legs.
“He saw nothing, Ma.” Kiya gave Kinjal a look. Even though she was talking to him again, he could see she wasn’t going to forget about the solar system he’d destroyed anytime soon.
“Don’t tell me what I did or didn’t see!” Kinjal snapped.
“Let me get you all a snack,” Ma said, heading into the house. “I’m sure you’re hungry after your long days at school.”
“I’m not just hangry!” Kinjal protested, even as Ma swept through the door, followed closely by the dog, who had heard and understood the word snack. He turned to his sister. “I saw what I saw!”
“Did you, though?” Kiya asked with a sickly-sweet smile.
The chaos monster inside Kinjal’s head gave a roar. He knew what he’d seen. And he was going to get to the bottom of it.
LIKE ALL GREAT ideas, the great idea came to Kinjal in the middle of the night. He’d already been asleep for a little while when all of a sudden, his brain just went ping! like a cartoon lightbulb blinking on above his head.
Kinjal sat up, feeling wide awake even though the glowing bedside clock said it was after midnight. He knew where he’d seen pictures of magical creatures with long, extendable arms! It was an illustration in a folktale book called Thakurmar Jhuli that Baba sometimes read from. It was an old book with a thick silver binding that was frayed and pages that were yellowed, crackly, and almost falling apart. But when Kinjal asked Baba why he didn’t just buy a new copy, he’d looked sad and said he couldn’t find one, at least not where they lived now. It was one of those things that Ma and Baba never really talked about—where they’d lived before.
Kinjal looked up at the bunk bed above him, wondering if he would fight so much with his sister if Kiya still slept up there. But she’d gotten her own room last year when Ma and Baba had decided it was time for them to have their own spaces, especially since Kinjal slept with a night-light that kept Kiya awake. So it was only Thums-Up at the end of the bed, groaning as Kinjal woke her up from her deep, drooly, doggy sleep.
“Sorry, girl, this is an emergency,” he whispered as Thums-Up leaped off the bed in a flurry of fur to pad along behind him. She was wagging her tail, her eyes bright and head up, like she was looking forward to whatever middle-of-the-night adventure Kinjal was planning.
Kinjal walked quietly, avoiding the creaky parts of the hall in front of Ma and Baba’s room. But when he tried to creep past his sister’s new room, the one that used to just be for guests, she opened the door like she’d been waiting for him.
“Where are you going?” she hissed, stern in her constellation pajamas, her glasses on her face and her two braids only a little mussed from sleep.
Thums-Up whined at her tone, but Kiya put a hand out to scratch her fluffy head and the big dog calmed right down, panting happily.
“Nowhere!” Kinjal lied. He’d never been a very good liar.
“Are you still thinking what you imagined about Ma’s arm was true?” Kiya gave a frustrated sigh. “What, are you going down to find Baba’s old folktale book or something?”
Kinjal felt his eyes growing rounder. His sister really was creepy the way she could read his mind sometimes. “No, I was just going to the … kitchen for a snack!” Kinjal lied again. At least this lie was a little more believable. He was hungry almost all the time.
