Chapter 20: Trials

Oh, hey, we're back to plot!

Last time, Kelsey and Ren found the hidden entrance to Kishkindha inside Hampi, and we ended with an ominous descent down a magical staircase. Spooky!

Chapter Twenty: Trials

Kelsey and Ren are still walking down the staircase. Kelsey complains narrates that they can only see by the light of the flashlight. Wait, don't Fanindra's eyes glow? That's how you got to Hampi in the first place.

Fanindra's eyes start glowing when they get to the bottom of the staircase, though. I'm not sure why it works there, but not on the staircase. Weird. They start walking through a huge tunnel and it's still dark and spooky.

Kelsey pulls out the copy of the prophecy Mr. Kadam gave them and reads it in its entirety, again. I'm not going to complain about it too much. It's been so long since we've seen it because the pacing of this book is Bad. I'll transcribe it again here:

For protection, seek her temple
And take hold of Durga's blessing.
Travel west and search Kishkindha
Where simians rule the ground.
Gada strikes in Hanuman's realm;
And hunt the branch that's bound.
Thorny dangers grasp above;
Dazzling dangers lie below,
Strangle, ensnare, the ones you love--
And trap in brackish undertow.
Lurid phantoms thwart your route
And guardians wait to bar your way.
Beware once they begin pursuit
Or embrace their moldering decay.
But all of this you can refute
If serpents find forbidden fruit
And India's hunger satisfy . . .
Lest all her people surely die.

So they've already done the first couple of lines--they got Durga's blessing a couple of chapters ago, she gave them the gada and they're (about to) get to Kishkindha. So, what's left?

Something about a "branch that's bound," which is at least suitably obtuse for a prophecy.

"Thorny dangers grasp above" is pretty obvious--evil thorny plants. Which we've already seen, if you remember, back in Chapter 11. 

About ten turns later, I stepped onto a stone that sank into the ground. Freezing in place, I waited for the next booby trap to spring. The walls started to shake, and small metal panels slid back to allow sharp, spiky, metal barbs to emerge on both sides. I groaned. Not only were spikes sticking out of the walls, but also the trap was compounded by a slick black oil that poured out of the stone pipes, covering the floor.

Not really "grasping," but we've already seen this kind of thing.

"Trapping in brackish undertow" means that there's going to be a dangerous river at some point (or at least some form of flowing water).

"Lurid phantoms" and "guardians" means that they're going to be attacked. Probably by the monkeys, because evil monkeys is totally not something that's been overdone at this point.

(Also, I already spoiled that there are kappas in this chapter.)

"Refute" is a weird word to use, and it was probably only chosen to rhyme with "fruit."

And I've already spoken at some length about how it makes no sense that taking the fruit would be a good thing. Because based on what Mr. Kadam said, the fruit works because it's being protected by Hanuman.

Okay. So instead of leaving things to play out, and making the reader say, "Oh, cool, I see how it works now," Mr. Kadam helpfully explains things to Kelsey in a note. More explaining! Goody!

Miss Kelsey,

There are several trials you must face when you enter Kishkindha, so be wary. I have also included the warnings from Durga as you described them. She said that you should try to stay near Ren. If for some reason you get separated, there will be great danger. She also said do not trust your eyes. Your hearts and your souls will tell you the difference between fantasy and reality. The last thing that she said was that when you find the fruit, hide it well!

Bhayyashalin!

May you be endowed with luck!

Anik Kadam

So it's guaranteed that Kelsey and Ren are going to get separated at some point, because it's been repeated twice. Also, Mr. Kadam shares that amazing trait of repeating all foreign words in English with Circus Mario.

Also, why does he have to remind Kelsey of this? She can't remember a conversation she had with a literal goddess?

Kelsey says she doesn't know what the "grasping thorns are," but she thinks they might be some kind of plant. Then it literally says that she "babble[d]" about different animals that might have thorns along the way. Glad they're trying to keep a low profile on their heist mission!

Oh, do you want to hear what she's babbling about? Because it's all written out.

"Let's see. There are stegosaurs. No, stegosauruses. Hmm, maybe it's stegosauri. Well, however you say the plural, there are those kinds of dinosaurs. Then there are dragons, porcupines, and we can't forget horny toads. If I had to pick a thorny animal, that would be my number one choice. Oh! But what if the horny toads are giant sized with huge gaping mouths? They could swallow us whole. Maybe we should get the gada out of the backpack, huh?

Riveting!

I like how her first thought for "thorny" animal is a dinosaur that I would not even remotely consider to be "thorny." Spiky, maybe, but not thorny. And then dragons. I think you're thinking of horny (lol) with dragons. As in, "having horns," pervs.

Why don't they have the gada out already? The prophecy says that it's going to be dangerous, and they have no way of knowing that these guardians/phantoms would have waited for them to finish descending the staircase.

This chapter is dumb so far.

The tunnel that they're walking in starts to get brighter, enough for Fanindra's eyes to stop glowing. I'm glad we're not really...doing anything with this. Why can she even do this? They're carrying a flashlight, so it's kind of pointless.

They're still surrounded by the mist that came out of the statue's mouth, and Kelsey says that the atmosphere feels "evil."

The cold, gray mist explored our skin with icy fingers as if looking for an Achilles' heel.

I know it's an actual saying, but please don't bring Greek mythology into this.

The farther they walk, the greener the tunnel gets, and now there are plants everywhere.

The ceiling opened up to a gray sky. There was no depth to it, and yet I couldn't see an end. It reminded me of a biosphere dome, but it wasn't manmade. It was like we'd stepped onto another planet.

This honestly isn't a terrible description. It makes Kishkindha seem otherworldly and off somehow, which actually seems to be what Houck is going for, for once. So, neat! I have something nice to say!

There are lots of "strange" plants around, which is a really helpful description. Yeah, we're not told exactly what's strange about them, so for all we know, they're completely normal and Kelsey just doesn't recognize them. Although they do seem to be moving without any wind, which is pretty weird.

Some of the trees have long tendrils reaching down like weeping willow branches. One of them touches Kelsey on her neck and she reaches her hand up to itch it and there's blood!

Wait, no, that's how a normal person would process this information. Here's Kelsey's tortured brain trying to work out what's going on:

I must be sweating. Strange, I don't feel overworked. Maybe water fell from the branch. Something was smeared on my hand. The greenish light gave the liquid a brown appearance. What is that? Tree sap? No! Blood!

So, yeah. Evil plants.

It's no venomous tentacula, but I guess it'll do.

Kelsey picks one of the leaves off of the tree, and there are lots of needles underneath. She wiggles her finger around and the needles follow it.

These don't really sound like "thorns" to me, either. These sound more like stingers. Like a stinging nettle or something.

"Ren, stop! The branches are scratching us. They have needles underneath that follow our movements. They're the thorny grasping dangers!"

Oof. Minus one point for repeating exactly what we were just shown one paragraph ago, and minus another one thousand points for saying that they're part of the prophecy, which we already figured out.

I guess since Kelsey pointed this out, the plants can grab onto them now, so they do that. Ren starts slashing at them with his claws, and Kelsey stands around being useless.

"We have to run or they'll ensnare us!" I shouted.

Who talks like this????

Also, you're literally holding onto a weapon, Kelsey. It's in your hands right now. Houck may have forgotten, but I sure didn't. You blew up a stone pillar with it before! It'll mess up those trees!

They run for about fifteen minutes, but they just can't get away from them. One of the branches wraps around Kelsey's arm, and she tells Ren to go on without him (I guess she forgot that the whole point of this quest is that...she's around to help them), but of course he doesn't go without her. Ren disentangles her and they keep going. Wow, that was really easy! Why is there a "go on without me" scene when the problem is that easy to solve? That's dumb!

Ren takes the gada (WHICH KELSEY WAS STILL HOLDING, GOD SHE'S SO STUPID) and although it doesn't do anything to the leaves, it leaves huge holes in the tree trunks. So, uh, they could have done this the whole time but didn't. For reasons.

Ren gets pretty beat up in the process, but as I've said before this doesn't matter because he heals so quickly.

His back was soon lacerated, his shirt torn and bloody. He looked like he'd been brutally whipped with a cat-o'-nine-tails.

Because he's a TIGER, geddit?

They get out of the trees, and Kelsey takes care of his wounds, which are already starting to close up. Kelsey points out that Ren's been human for longer than twenty-four minutes. He says he doesn't feel like he needs to change back.

"Maybe this is all we need to do. Maybe we've broken the curse!"

You know, maybe that traumatic brain injury did have consequences. She's getting dumber by the minute.

He turns into a tiger and then switches back, and now he has clean clothes on. Since this place is magic, it seems like there's no limit here.

See, this almost works. Ren's making it sound like the literal magic of the place means the curse doesn't work anymore. It seems to me like this is because they're in a pocket dimension or something that operates outside of our normal understanding of time, so it doesn't matter how "long" he's a human because no time is actually passing out in the real world.

It isn't actually confirmed that this is why. Which is why it only almost works.

Ren takes care of Kelsey's cuts.

He declared, "Everything checks out okay. You have one wicked scratch on your neck, but I think it'll heal fine. . . ."

Why is he talking like he's from Boston?

Then he tugged at the collar of my shirt with his finger. "Are there any, ah, other places you want me to check out for you?"

Ren, this is not the time to cop a feel.

Kelsey brushes him off, and they start walking again. There are still some of the evil trees around, but they're far enough apart that they can avoid them.

Even though the place is creepy, they start to cheer up a bit because they don't have to worry about the time limit and they can actually spend some real time together. Aw, that's actually kind of sweet. I award one grudging point back.

They find another path and start walking down it (do they even know where they're going?) and they find another set of tunnels that they enter. There are lit torches on the walls, and they can see something moving around in the shadows. Creepy!

Then all of a sudden they can hear voices echoing through the tunnel. It's just their names over and over again (which is annoying to read), and it's their own voices!

Yeah, this was done better in Catching Fire in that scene where the jabberjays showed up and started screaming in their families' voices and it wasn't clear if they were being tortured or not. That was actually a really spooky scene. Note that Catching Fire came out two years before this book was published. Here, it's just weird.

Ren lets go of her hand and hefts the gada threateningly.

"Kelsey! Help me!" Ren appeared in the side tunnel. He was fighting a group of monkeys that were scratching and biting him.

This is obviously not the real Ren because he thinks that Kelsey would actually be able to do anything useful.

He changed into a tiger, sunk his teeth into them, and ripped them apart. It was gruesome!

Oof. Why don't you show us how it's gruesome instead of just telling us? With an exclamation point?

Kelsey turns around and now there are more tunnels behind them. She turns back to Ren and now there are two of him! Oh, no!

Of course, they get separated, and Kelsey just picks a tunnel at random and tries to find him. The different tunnel show different scenes playing out. One of them is particularly interesting:

Mr. Kadam was in a swordfight [sic] with a man who looked like my nightmare guy in another.

Hey, the Big Bad! Too bad he's not actually there since he's just a...magic tunnel...vision..... Also, "swordfight" isn't a word.

She sees her grandma asking her to garden, her high school teacher asking her some questions (lolwut), and her parents. They're not doing anything, and they're the people that Kelsey sees last (even after her high school teacher), so I guess she doesn't care about them very much.

She hears Ren shouting for Kelsey, and she hears her own voice calling to him. This is actually effective, because we don't know if the Ren asking is even real. Even if he is, he's following a fake Kelsey. That's cool! Also, consequences and danger! Finally!

I actually kind of like this scene despite some of the dumb stuff in it. It's pretty effective in describing a disorienting series of tunnels filled with spooky magical mist (creepy on its own), but there are also fake versions of themselves running around, presumably trying to kill them or trap them in the tunnels. That's a cool setup!

I looked in another tunnel and saw Ren running up to approach . . . me. Only it wasn't me. I was me.

Okay, some of the lines are still pretty stupid. But the idea is cool.

Ren came close to the thing that looked like me and stroked her face.

"Kelsey, are you okay?"

I heard it respond, "Yes. I'm fine." It turned its head and looked straight at me while Ren kissed its cheek. The image morphed, and with a sharp, shattering noise, the face melted into death. It smiled insidiously, and I shivered with revulsion as I looked at a smiling corpse pulsating with maggots.

So, that happens. She tries to yell out to Ren but there's some sort of barrier in the way, and the corpse laughs and waves at her. That's actually a legitimately funny image.

She sees another Ren lying on the ground crying and talking about all of the mistakes he's made in his life--"ineffable, horrible things." Kelsey says that it's impossible for him to have done these things, but how does she know? She wasn't around three hundred years ago, and Ren can't have told her everything he's ever done. Also, this would be more effective if we actually heard what thing Ren was talking about to make the judgment for ourselves, but this would mean associating Ren with unwholesome things, and we can't have that.

This makes Kelsey angry. I will point out that in addition to the fact that something is playing games with them, she seems to also be annoyed about how they might be portraying her to Ren. Never change, Kelsey!

She sees Ren standing down the tunnel, and he turns around to meet her. She runs over to him, and he hugs her. She only gets suspicious when she sees that he doesn't have the backpack and gada anymore, so I guess seeing Ren made her forget about the whole "we're in a cave that shows us fake versions of ourselves and I've already seen several different versions of Ren" thing.

She tries to figure out what to do, and remembers that she has Mr. Kadam's note in her pocket. It's quoted again, even though we already read it just a little over ten pages ago.

If for some reason you get separated, there will be great danger. She also said do not trust your eyes. Your hearts and souls will tell you the difference between fantasy and reality.

This is now the third time we've seen this exact information.

There's reiterating so your readers remember things, and then there's repeating them because you don't trust them to. I'm annoyed.

Do not trust my eyes? Well, that was obvious at this point. [why is this in past tense if this is her thoughts, and the rest of it is in present tense?] So my heart will help me tell the difference. Okay, follow my heart. How do I do that?

Four times now.

She just decides to walk through the tunnels and ignore the voices until she comes to a tunnel that feels right. So...exactly what she's been doing up until this point. Brilliant.

I saw myself dead and lying on the ground with Ren kneeling beside me. He leaned over my inert body investigating. [sic]

Yeah, that last sentence is missing a comma. I'm used to it at this point.

This Ren has the backpack and the gada, so Kelsey decides to check if this is the real Ren. She tells him that she's there, and he looks up, and Kelsey says that this Ren feels different than the others. He can hear her, but he can't see her, and they close their eyes and try to reach out and find each other. Kelsey focuses on his heart, which just means that she thinks about how attracted she is to him (no joke) and this works.

The way they check if it's really the other person is hilarious. You know how most stories would have them ask a question that only the other person would know, and it shows how well they know each other and how much they've bonded over the course of the story? Yeah, that doesn't happen here.

"Kelsey, is that really you?"

"Well, I'm no maggoty corpse, if that's what you mean."

He grinned. "That's a relief. No maggoty corpse would be that sarcastic."

I countered, "Well, how do I know it's really you?"

He considered my question for a moment and then ducked his head to kiss me. He tugged me flush up against his chest, pulling me closer than I thought was possible, and then his lips touched mine. His kiss started out warm and soft, but quickly turned hungry and demanding. He ran his hands up my arms, to my shoulders and then cupped my neck. I wrapped my hands around his waist and luxuriated in the kiss. When he finally pulled back, my heart was pounding in response.

When the power of speech returned, I quipped, "Well, even if it isn't really you, I'll take this version."

Yeah, Ren's proof that he's really him is just kissing her, which shows how little personality he really has.

Kelsey soon realizes that this Ren is actually just another mist monster when he leads her further into the tunnels, where she wanders to this day, lost, always trying to find Ren, but never able to. The end.

Just kidding.

They finally find the exit to the tunnels! And I give another grudging point for Kelsey not explicitly saying that these were the lurid phantoms that the prophecy talked about! Awesome!

Although that's probably just because she forgot what the prophecy says again. She's not very smart.

The tunnel opens up to a river. Hey, running water! I called it! Ren says that hopefully the river will lead them to Kishkindha. Wait, I thought Kishkindha was the name of the magical realm they were in right now? What's this place called? I have no idea.

Kelsey picks up a rock from the riverbed and it changes into a huge emerald. What? And now all of the rocks in the river are jewels? What is happening?

Ren tells Kelsey to look at something out of the corner of her eye. She sees a white hairless monkey in her peripheral vision. She throws another jewel into the river, and when the water stops moving, she sees more monkeys.

When I looked directly at the jewels, that's all I could see, but when I looked out of the corner of my eye, I could see water monkeys everywhere, floating just under the surface. It looked like they used their tails to anchor their bodies to tree roots and underwater plants, just like seahorses.

I want you to look at something or someone in your peripheral vision, and then try to describe it in detail. You can't because this is impossible. Your eyes aren't equipped to handle details in your peripheral vision. You can see motion, but that's about it.

Ren mumbled, "I wonder if they're Kappa?"

"What are Kappa?"

"A demon from Asia my mother used to tell me about. They lurked in water, waiting to catch children and suck their blood."

Oh, a demon from Asia, huh? So, like, an oni? A doekkabi? Iblis? Jinn? You can't just say "Asian" demon and expect that to narrow things down at all. You want to know what people picture when you say Asia?

IT'S A BIG CONTINENT

So, kappas in particular come from specifically Japanese folklore. The Japanese kappa is amphibious, anthropoid, and has a turtle shell. It also has an indentation on its head that's filled with water, which when spilled will weaken the kappa. There is a Chinese creature that's mentioned on the Wikipedia page called the shuigui (水鬼), which translates to water monkey. This seems to be what Houck is going for. Even though they're not kappa, but okay.

The Japanese kappa "are known to favor cucumbers and love to engage in sumo wrestling. They are often accused of assaulting humans in water and removing a mythical organ called the shirikodama from their victim's anus." So, there's that. Also:

They have a weakness to farts, apparently.

Hee hee.

"She said that children in China were taught to show respect for their elders by bowing. They were told that if they didn't bow, the Kappa would get them."

Okay, but kappa are part of Japanese folklore. Not Chinese. Children were warned about water monkeys, sure, but they're something different. He then goes on to explain the whole "impression in the head filled with water thing," which again. Is the Japanese kappa. Not Chinese water monkeys. Also, "kappa" shouldn't be capitalized.

Ren stops for a while to basically repeat the Wikipedia entry for kappas (which I've already linked to up above, so if you're really curious about how cucumbers factor into the kappa mythos, there you go). He talks about his mother at some length, because the pacing of this book is bonkers. He then says that they're probably there to protect the jewels in the river and they'll probably drown them if they try to take any. Okay.

They walk through the creek for a while, avoiding the needle trees. The kappa mostly ignore them. There's a big tree in the middle of the river, so Ren climbs up and thumps it with the gada. Once the tree despawns (seriously, it doesn't fall over, so where does it go?) they see Kishkindha behind it and the chapter abruptly ends.

Closing Thoughts

This chapter was going strong with some actually fun action for once, and then it just stops and they talk about kappas for a bit! The pacing is really bad! If the kappa scene and the tunnel scene had been switched, it would have been better, honestly. You'd have the evil trees attacking them, and then there'd be a moment of reprieve in the river because nothing really happens, ending with the dramatic scene in the tunnels that open up to Kishkindha. That would fix the pacing, I think.

But hey, stuff is happening still! That's fun!

Next time: Chapter 21: Kishkindha! I think Houck heard my complaints about how static Kelsey and Ren's relationship has been for most of the book, because now they're mad at each other for no reason! Also, plot.