The tale of the brothers who outwitted the demon queen - Malay Bera

The kingdom of Achinpur was on the precipice of demonic takeover. A mysterious woman beguiled the king and infiltrated the royal family. But she wasn’t human; she was the daughter of the matriarch of all rakkhoshes, a dreadful class of demons.

And under her beautiful facade lurked an insatiable appetite for flesh. The king’s human queen bore him a son— as did the demon queen, passing her powers on to him. The two princes came to be known as Neelkamal and Lalkamal.

Their bewitched father was distant, and their mothers couldn’t have been more different— but they were inseparable. Neelkamal fiercely protected Lalkamal. As the brothers grew, the rakkhoshi queen secretly devoured the palace’s elephants and horses and drained Lalkamal’s mother of life.

But it was only when Neelkamal found his brother in a demon’s clutches one night, the king paralyzed nearby, that he realized his mother’s true nature— just before she managed to devour the brothers. But soon she regurgitated a pair of metal eggs and hid them in the remote bamboo grove of a distant kingdom. She didn’t realize that Neelkamal and Lalkamal had evaded death encapsulated in the eggs.

With Achinpur under her full control, rakkhoshes hunted humans freely. Finally, one day, the princes burst from the eggs, determined to defeat the rakkhoshi queen and end the scourge of demons. First, they came upon a land terrorized by lesser monsters called khokkoshes, and staked out an area they frequented— Lalkamal standing guard as Neelkamal slept.

That night, the khokkoshes approached and asked who was within. As the brothers had agreed, the first word Lalkamal uttered was Neelkamal’s name. It made the monsters quake with fear, for they knew Neelkamal was the son of a powerful rakkhoshi.

To make the ruse more convincing, Lalkamal stuck the tip of Neelkamal’s crown through a small crack and said it was his fingernail, sprayed scalding oil from a lamp and called it Neelkamal’s spit, and presented a sword he said was Neelkamal’s tongue. Pricked by the crown, burned by the oil, and cut by the sword, the khokkoshes retreated. But when they returned and again asked who was inside, Lalkamal, half asleep, accidentally uttered his name first.

The khokkoshes burst in, waking Neelkamal, whose sword soon slayed them all. The rakkhoshi queen heard the news and sent an anonymous message to the kingdom of the princes’ victory. It said Achinpur’s king was ill and the only cure was oil from a rakkhoshi head.

In order to destroy the demon’s source of life— and save their father’s— the princes sharpen their swords and journeyed to Rakkhosher desh, the rakkhoshi homeland. When they arrived, they weren’t slaughtered, as the rakkhoshi queen had hoped. Instead, they remained inconspicuous as Neelkamal called for his grandmother, the monster matriarch.

She asked them to prove they were her grandchildren by eating iron peas, which Neelkamal did effortlessly as Lalkamal munched on secretly substituted chickpeas. Successfully fooled, the rakkhoshi matriarch welcomed the brothers. They feigned fear that the rakkhoshes would eat them if she went away.

But she reassured them that nothing would happen to her, for at the bottom of a deep well was a box holding two hornets— one containing her daughter, the rakkhoshi queen’s life; the other containing all remaining rakkhoshi lifeforce. Once the rakkhoshes went hunting, the brothers took the opportunity to find the well, and Neelkamal plunged in to retrieve the box. The rakkhoshes sensed danger as soon as the hornets touched open air.

But they couldn’t reach the princes before Neelkamal killed the first hornet, and the rakkhoshes fell, lifeless. The princes finally returned to Achinpur on the backs of divine birds. Following the message’s instructions, they carried a rakkhoshi head with them— the matriarch’s.

When she saw, the rakkhoshi queen nearly fainted in shock— and Neelkamal swiftly killed the second hornet. At last, Achinpur’s king resurfaced from the demon’s spell and the kingdom was free of invading evils.