Aru Shah and the End of Time (Pandava Quartet #1)(55)

If they didn’t leave now, they were probably never going to leave.

“Just this,” said Chitrigupta. He held out his hand. A slim ballpoint pen lay in his palm.

“What does it do?” asked Mini.

“What do you think it does?” asked Chitrigupta. “It’s a pen! It writes!”

“Oh. Thanks?” said Mini.

“Don’t mention it. I cannot help you in defeating the Sleeper, but perhaps this will come in handy at some point. Wherever you are and whatever you write on, I will get the message. And if it is within my means…I will answer.”

With a final farewell, they were off.


The moment the door closed behind them, all of Aru’s old fears raced back to her.

“I like him,” said Mini.

“Of course you do! You guys are practically the same person.”

The Halls of Death unfurled like a maze before them and actually grew. Colors gathered and stretched into passageways. The signs cropped up shortly after that:

TO DARE

TO DISTURB

TO DEIGN

An arrow was attached to each sign.

DARE pointed right and down a blue corridor.

DISTURB pointed left and down a red corridor.

DEIGN pointed up and into nothing.

Beneath them, the floor was polished marble, and the ceiling was a strange twisting river of names that, Aru imagined, belonged to the dead.

“Red pill or blue pill?” said Aru, in her best imitation of Morpheus.

“What pill? It’s a red road or blue road, Aru.”

“I know that! I’m quoting The Matrix!”

Mini blinked. “But a matrix has nothing to do with color. In mathematics, a matrix is a rectangular array of—”

Aru groaned. “Mini, you’re killing me. Don’t you ever watch old movies?” She shook her head and pointed ahead. “Which way should we go? Why don’t they have signs that say Weapons of Mass Celestial Destruction, and then Everything Else Is Actually a Trap? That would be helpful.”

Mini laughed. “What if we went with dare?”

“Why?”

“Because it’s like…we’re daring to save Time?”

“Are we, though? Or are we just panicking around and trying to save what we like?”

And the people we love, thought Aru with a pang.

“That doesn’t sound very heroic…” said Mini.

“What about disturb?” asked Aru. “Like, we’re disturbing the natural order of things?”

“I don’t think that’s right,” said Mini. “That makes it seem like we’re doing something wrong, and we’re not.”

“Fine. What does deign mean?”

“I’ll look it up,” said Mini, and she dug in her backpack.

Aru thought she was going to use her compact, but instead she brought out a Merriam-Webster Pocket Dictionary.

“Seriously?” asked Aru. “Of all the things you thought to pack on a quest, you brought a pocket dictionary?”

“So what? I like being prepared,” said Mini. “What did you pack?”

“I didn’t pack anything,” said Aru. “Who has time to pack when you’re told the world is going to end—”

Mini shushed her. “‘Deign,’” she said. “It means ‘to do something that one considers beneath one’s dignity.’”

“None of those options makes sense,” said Aru. “What if we just try walking in a different direction? Like in between the signs?”

So they tried. But their feet met a wall of air. Something prevented them from taking a single step that was not in a specific direction. The only place they couldn’t access was DEIGN, because the sign pointed up, and there weren’t stairs or anything.

“Chitrigupta could have told us which way to go,” grumbled Aru. “We’re practically family. He said so himself.”

“But then we wouldn’t—”

“Yes, I know. Character-building blah-blah, and the world wouldn’t be saved. That’s way too much pressure. Are our brains even fully developed? We shouldn’t be allowed to make these decisions—”

“Aru! That’s it!” said Mini.

“Okay, now I’m worried. None of what I said was good.”

“We’re not smart enough,” said Mini.

“Yay?”

“But we can change that,” she said.

Out of her backpack, she pulled out the box of wisdom cookies.

“Book cookies?” asked Aru, grimacing. “All right, fine. Gimme.”

Mini looked inside the box, then checked her backpack again. “There’s only one in here.”

The girls stared at each other for a moment. Mini’s fingers reflexively curled over the cookie. Aru could tell how much it meant to her friend.

“It’s yours,” said Aru. “You’ve got the same soul as Yudhistira, and he was always known for being the wisest of all the brothers. That cookie has your name all over it. Plus, I don’t need more wisdom. I’d explode.”

Mini flushed. “Thanks, Aru.”

“How long does the wisdom last?”

“I think only for the duration of the decision making,” said Mini.