The Serpent's Secret (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #1)(70)

To my loving parents, Sujan and Shamita, and my entire extended family of storytellers, I am so grateful to have received these stories at your feet. To my husband, Boris, and my beloved partners in crime, Kirin and Sunaya—thank you for cheering me on every step of the way. You are the joy, you are the magic, you are the feeling of flying through the sky. I’d slay all the demons for you, my darlings, in this universe and all the rest.





SAYANTANI DASGUPTA grew up hearing stories about brave princesses, bloodthirsty rakkhosh, and flying pakkhiraj horses. She is a pediatrician by training but now teaches at Columbia University. When she’s not writing or reading, Sayantani spends time watching cooking shows with her trilingual children and protecting her black Labrador retriever, Khushi, from the many things that scare him, including plastic bags. She is a team member of We Need Diverse Books and can be found online at www.sayantanidasgupta.com and on Twitter at @sayantani16.





The first time the Demon Queen appeared in my bedroom, I tried to decapitate her with my solar system nightlight.

I was fast asleep, but got woken up by the freaky sound of buzzing. Then I smelled that rancid, belch-y, acid-y odor I’d come to associate with the rakkhoshi during my adventures in the Kingdom Beyond Seven Oceans and Thirteen Rivers. As soon as I opened my eyes, I saw her tell-tale outline: pointy crown on her giant head, sharp horns peeking through her dark hair, and evil talons reaching from her long arms.

I reached for my magic bow and quiver under my bed, but when my hand came up empty, I remembered I’d left them in my locker at school. So instead, I laced my fingers through the plastic rings of Saturn, yanked my old nightlight from the socket, and spun the entire solar system like a flying discus right at the Rakkhoshi Rani’s head.

Unfortunately, the sun and orbiting planets never managed to hit her. To my shock, the plastic solar system just sailed through her see-through, sari-clad body, crashing on the front of my Princess Pretty Pants dresser, part of the disgustingly princess-themed bedroom set my parents had bought me when I was, like, six.

“Honestly, Moon-girl! Is that any way to greet the mother of an old friend?” The rakkhoshi’s fangs glinted in the moonlight that streamed through my curtain-less windows. Then she stretched her claw-like hand toward the fallen nightlight, making the plastic explode with a fiery bang.

“Stop that!” I ran out of bed, throwing my bedside glass of water on the place my bubble-gum pink carpet was burning. It did basically nothing to squelch the flames, though. “You’re going to burn the whole house down!” The smell of melting plastic gagged me as Mercury and Venus started ooblecking right before my eyes.

“Spoil sport!” The Demon Queen drawled, but she did lean over and breathe an icy gust of wind onto the burning planets—a little mini hailstorm—leaving a charred and smelly solar system on my bedroom floor.

“You’re not real.” I blinked my eyes, trying to wake myself up. “I’m imagining this.”

The demoness belched. Loudly. “You don’t have enough imagination to conjure the likes of me!”

Hoping to catch her off-guard, just in case I was wrong about the whole being-a-nightmare thing, I launched myself at the rakkhoshi with a ferocious yowl. But she just yawned, and let me go flying right through her vaporous form.

I slammed into my dresser, hitting my head hard on a tiara-shaped drawer knob. “I knew you weren’t real!”

“Oh, fie on your underdeveloped cranium, you pea-brained tree-goat!” The queen picked her teeth with a long nail. “Listen up, I have something important to tell you. A matter of life and death. About…”

“What?” I prompted from my position sprawled out on the floor.

“Oof!” The demoness made a choking sound, grabbing at her throat. She repeated the nonsensical word, fluttering her hands like she wasn’t getting enough air. “Oof! Eesh! Arré!”

Then, her image flickered, like she was a broken movie reel.

It went on like this, night after night. The Rakkhoshi Rani showing up in her smelly but see-through form, insulting me, trying to tell me something, but then disappearing.

If the demoness were real, I would have guessed this was some kind of trick. But since she obviously couldn’t be, I could only surmise I should stop sneaking so many chocolate chip cookies before bedtime. Because man, was this a super weird dream. Every time we got to the part where she wanted to tell me her secret, the rakkhoshi would open her mouth and flap her lips, like some kind of landed demonic fish. She would claw at her throat. Her mouth would move, but no sound would come out. Eventually, her image would flicker and fade altogether.

The closest she got to telling me her secret was one night when she managed to tell me some kind of riddle poem that made absolutely no sense when I first heard it:

Elladin belladin, Milk White Sea

Who seeks immortality?

A drum and flame, eternity

Life and death in balance be

My heart in chains where my soul sings

The prison key a bee’s wings

With father’s tooth you crack the case

Humility must wash your face

Sacrifice is love’s reward

The path of truth is ever hard

Justice can’t be stopped by a wall

Purity is not the end-all

Without the dark, the light will fail