The Serpent's Secret (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #1)(11)
The dawn was already breaking when I opened my eyes. My butt was sore from spending all night on a horse’s back, and I had a wicked charley horse in my left leg. I imagined it was like being on an overnight flight—except without the stale air and packaged peanuts.
Lal was saying something to me, pointing to the ground below, but the wind whipped his voice away. I shook my head, not understanding, until he repeated, “We have arrived! The transit corridor!”
The horses flew toward the ground, like planes preparing for a landing. My ears popped and I did the trick of swallowing hard. It didn’t work. (I’ve read you can also chew gum, but I didn’t have any, or, like, hold your nose and blow, but I was afraid that would risk unplanned boogerage in my hand, so I didn’t do that either.)
After hours of riding separately, Neel pulled his horse up next to Snowy, and now the two winged horses flew side by side, whinnying at each other.
“Your parents are beyond the transit corridor, Princess,” Neel yelled. “To get to them we’ll first have to get you through the checkpoint.”
“I suppose you possess the appropriate documentation?” Lal asked near my ear.
“Documentation?” I gulped. The horses were coming down fast. And all I could see below me were dusty rocks and red earth.
“You know,” Lal clarified, “an Earth exilation notification, a royal-to-nonroyal cover pass, a tweet from the president?”
“Um.” I closed my eyes as the horses finally landed in a vast canyon. The red-brown ground was dry, without a sign of any tree, bush, or shrub. More bald than our front yard even, and that was saying a lot. Weirdly shaped outcroppings of stone, and a giant mesa-like mountain marked the eerie landscape.
Where were we? Something about the spires of red rocks seemed familiar, like I’d seen a picture of this place before.
“Are we in … Arizona?” I asked when we finally dismounted. I stretched my aching legs. Snowy pawed the ground like he was stretching his legs too.
“It’s the biggest non-wormhole transit point to other dimensions in the U.S.” Neel looped Midnight’s reins loosely in his hands. “Even though the local government doesn’t like it.”
“So what kind of papers do you have, lady?” Lal asked again. “You’ll need them to get through here.”
Why were they so obsessed with my “documentation”?
“I have a birthday card from my parents, and …” I don’t know why, but I hesitated before telling the princes about the map. “Yeah, just the card.”
“A birthday card?” Neel snapped. “Who travels with just a birthday card? How are we supposed to get you past the transit officer without getting snacked on?”
“Princess Kiran will prevail. Have faith, Brother.” Unlike Neel, who looked totally rested, Lal seemed a little tired after the long ride. Not that it made him any less handsome, but his fourth eyelash from the right definitely looked less curly than the others. Or maybe it was that I’d gotten to know him a little better and could see him more like a regular person.
Lal peered at me with a hopeful expression even as Neel continued to scowl, biting his nails.
“You must be good at riddles?” Lal asked.
“Riddles?”
Zuzu’s brother Niko was obsessed with dumb jokes and riddles, and was always trying them out on us, but I couldn’t see why that would be helpful.
I squinted against the harsh sun. It was like we’d ridden all night and landed on some alien planet. There was nothing here. Just rocks. No train station, no airport, no subway platform. Not a soul—animal, human, or even monster. Where was this transit thingy the boys were talking about?
Neel stomped off, kicking red rocks and making a mini dust storm as Lal continued, “Please—you must be familiar with puzzles and logical games?”
“A bit,” I admitted.
“All this way, and Princess K-pop gets eaten by the transit officer because she has no papers!” Neel shouted to no one in particular.
“Chill, dude! She won’t be consumed by the officer, all right?” Lal said in a voice so different than his usual cultured way of talking that I realized how much of an effort he put into his princely accent. But I didn’t have time to worry about that now, because I really didn’t like what I was hearing.
“Consumed? Who’s going to consume me?” Why did the boys keep putting me and consumed in the same sentence?
“No one, no one will consume you!” But Lal was looking worried too. Which wasn’t comforting. “The transit corridor is the place where, in passing from one world to the next, the officer checks your papers, makes sure all is in order.”
“Like the security lines at an airport?” I took a swig from the water bottle Lal supplied. The water was warm and metallic and did nothing to make me less thirsty.
“Oh, sure.” Neel ground a good-size rock to dust under his heel, making me wonder about his workout routine. “If airport officers were ten feet tall and had a taste for human bones.”
“The transit officer is a rakkhosh?” My stomach spasmed. I might have discovered some secret demon-fighting gene in myself, but it didn’t make them any less scary. In fact, all the confidence I had felt last night seemed ground to dust this morning, like the stone under Neel’s foot.