“Can you help us, Your Brilliance? We need to find Kiran’s parents and rescue my brother and friend”—here he indicated the gold and silver spheres hanging from his sling—“who are trapped by a curse.”
But the wise man just smiled, adding even more crinkles to his already wrinkly face. “You arrived just in time for my next class. Find a seat! Find a seat! Quick now!” He clapped his hands gleefully, like our presence was the best treat he could receive.
From who knows where, there appeared a number of little colorful chairs attatched to desks, like the contents of a kindergarten classroom. From somewhere in the distance, a bell rang, and suddenly almost all of the seats filled up with sparkling orbs of light: little giggling, wiggling star-babies.
“Good morning, mein star pupils!” The wise man’s singsong European accent made him seem familiar, but I couldn’t place where I knew him from.
“Good mowning, pwofessor,” the infant stars chorused back as Neel and I found the only two empty seats, near the back of the floating classroom. The chairs were ridiculously small, and the two of us barely squeezed ourselves into them, our knees all splayed out in awkward ways.
“Now let us say our morning pledge together,” said the mysterious professor from his position on the branch. All the glowing star-children seemed to place their little hands over their unidentified middles. Even Tuntuni placed a yellow wing over his chest.
“We pledge allegiance to the element hydrogen, and also its partner, helium,” chanted the little star-lings.
Neel and I giggled from the back row like we were the classroom delinquents. Luckily, no one seemed to hear us, and the stars kept pledging allegiance.
“And to the principle of nuclear fusion. Luminous light, born from dust, nebula to stars, red giants to supernova, white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole!”
“Very good, students! Gold stars for everyone!” The floating wise man clapped his hands again. The force of his pleasure turned him upside down, so that now he hung suspended, folded legs above, moustache and turban below.
From this awkward position, the teacher pulled down a rolling chart from the middle of the air. It showed a diagram illustrating the pupils’ pledge—the life cycle of a star. He cleared his throat and waggled his bushy white eyebrows in my direction.
“Your parents, Princess, will soon be in danger of being swallowed forever by what you know as a black hole.” The upside-down professor pointed with a yardstick at the end of the diagram.
“How do I save them?” I begged.
“Shall we tell her, pupils?” the professor singsonged as he spun himself right side up once again.
The baby stars laughed and shimmered. Pushing their chairs aside, they joined what I supposed were their hands and began dancing in a circle. Like a game of intersteller Ring Around the Rosie. Then they started singing:
“Red, red, red are all my clothes
Red, red, red, is all that I have
Why do I love all that is red?
Because my brother is a red giant.”
The teacher waved his fingers in the air like he was conducting the music. “A nursery rhyme from my own youth!” he said.
“Lal?” Neel’s voice rose suddenly in alarm, and I noticed, just as he did, that the golden sphere—Lal’s sphere—was beginning to glow. It now looked far more red than golden. Red like his name. Red like the red giant a star becomes when it is in the process of dying.
“Your Brilliance,” I began, but the wise man just shook his head, indicating that the stars were about to start singing again. They whirled in the other direction, faster than before, their bodies a dizzying display of light and energy against the multicolor backdrop of the nebula.
“White, white, white are all my clothes
White, white, white is all that I have
Why do I love all that is white?
Because my sister is a white dwarf.”
“Mati!” And sure enough, the silver sphere in Neel’s makeshift sling was now glowing with a bright white light. Both spheres were also pulsing strangely, the red-gold one looking like it was growing and the silver one like it was shrinking.
“What’s happening, Genius-ji?” Neel shouted out, but Tuntuni pecked him on the head and squawked, “Raise your hand, raise your hand.”
I felt like slapping the bird, but Neel obediently did as he was told, wiggling his hand in the air with impatience. Yet the old man ignored him, despite Neel’s repeatedly calling out, “Sir, I have a question! Sir, I have a question!”
As the star pupils began their last verse, I felt my stomach do a double back handspring into a round-off layout, and not stick the landing.
“Black, black, black are all my clothes
Black, black, black is all that I have
Why do I love all that is black?
Because my parents got swallowed by a really evil
rakkhosh and then got lost forever and
ever in a black ho-o-le!”
“How do I stop that from happening?” I asked, but as it seemed to be recess in the star nursery now, the wise man couldn’t hear me over his pupils’ racket.
The star students were all tumbling about, tossing balls of poofy pink clouds, playing double-Dutch jump rope and what looked like hopscotch. One of the stars was asking another one riddles: “What’s red, then white, then black all over?” it asked. The other pupil shouted out, “A dying star!”
In the meantime, the wise man sang out Tuni’s meaningless song again, clapping in beat to the syllables.
“Ev-ry-thing
Is connected to
Ev-ry-thing,
But how?”
“But what should we do? We need your help here!” I blurted out in frustration. “Enough riddles, enough poems, enough songs with ominous meanings. I need some answers that make sense!”
“None of us can hide from who we really are,” the professor said unhelpfully. He batted one of the round pink ball-clouds in our direction, making Neel’s entire head invisible for a moment.
“What does that mean?”
“You must see yourself in the birthplace of darkness. You must travel through the darkness to find your inner light.” The wise man picked up a few sparkling crystals from the branch and started juggling some stars who were even smaller than his pupils. They giggled and squealed in glee as he tossed them in the air. “Darkness and light must always be kept in a fine balance.”
I shot to my feet. “What darkness? The spell holding my parents?”
The old man opened his palm to show me one perfect shimmering orb. “Stars are not only spells, but a deeper magic still: the wishes and dreams nurtured in the deepest places of our souls.”
He blew the star out of his hand like it was a bit of dandelion fluff, and watched it float to another cluster of playing stars a few feet away, who gathered up the baby star in their game. The man spun in the air so that now he was levitating again with his crossed legs up, and his twinkling blue eyes down.
“Kiran!” Neel warned. He showed me the sling. Lal’s sphere was now entirely red and vibrating ferociously. I could also swear it was double its original size. Mati’s sphere, in the meantime, was glowing bright white but was now about the size of a large grapefruit.