Aru Shah and the End of Time (Pandava Quartet #1)(57)

“QUICKSAAAAAND!” screamed Mini. She started struggling.

“Stop!” shouted Aru. “Haven’t you seen any movies? Thrashing around is, like, the fastest way to die!”

“Quicksandquicksandquicksand,” moaned Mini. “I don’t want to go this way. My body will be preserved forever like those bog mummies! I’ll become a Wikipedia page!”

“You’re not gonna die, Mini. Just stop screaming and let me think for a minute!”

She was going to reach for a branch to pull out Mini, but the branches weren’t really there. Aru ran through a couple of the trees. Maybe there was an actual tree lurking in the midst? But there wasn’t.

“Aru!” screamed Mini. By now, she was up to her neck. Any farther, and she wouldn’t even be able to scream. Her arms waved wildly in the air.

“I’m coming!” said Aru, running back.

But Aru tripped. She braced herself for a fall, but of course, the silky ground was soft. She landed with a light thump. When she looked down, her hands were clutching folds of the “dirt.”

“That’s it,” whispered Aru.

She lifted some silk off the ground. It came up in a dark, slender rope. Aru dragged it over to Mini, who, by now, was buried up to her chin.

Mini grabbed hold of the rope, but the quicksand yanked her under.

“No!” cried Aru.

She pulled the rope as hard as she could. Under ordinary circumstances, she might not have been able to do it. Under ordinary circumstances, Aru probably would have slipped into the quicksand herself and both of them would have become dismal Wikipedia pages.

But worry for a friend can make ordinary circumstances extraordinary. In that moment, all Aru knew was that Mini was her first true friend in a long time…and she would not—could not—lose her.

Mini gasped as Aru heaved her onto the silky ground.

Aru was shocked. She did it. She saved her. Even though she’d faced down a demon and tricked the seasons, this was the first time she felt like she’d done something magical.

Mini spluttered and coughed. “There was a shark down there.” She shuddered, then gathered a handful of silk and started toweling off her hair. “A shark! And you know what it said to me? It said, ‘Is it true your sharks don’t talk?’ I didn’t have a chance to answer, because you pulled me out so quickly.”

“What kind of thank-you is that?”

“Why should I say thank you?” asked Mini. “I knew you could do it.”

I knew you could do it.

Aru bit back a grin. “Fine. Next time I’ll let you drown a bit longer.”

“No!” squeaked Mini. “Drowning is number three on my Top Ten Ways I Don’t Want to Die list.”

“Who makes a list of that?”

Mini primly straightened her shirt. “I find that organizing scary information actually makes me less scared.”

Once Mini had finished toweling off, they looked at the path ahead of them. The road that wound through the forest was the same color as the DEIGN sign.

“Do you think it goes to another hall?” asked Aru.

“Maybe? I wish we had a map again,” Mini said, squinting as she studied her hand.

Ever since they had arrived in the Kingdom of Death, the mehndi had grown lighter and lighter, as they did naturally, because they were not permanent. But now all that remained of the fantastical designs were faint waves on their fingers and the dark Sanskrit numbers on their palms.

The forest arced over them. In this place there was even a sky. But given how topsy-turvy everything was, Aru wondered whether it was a sea. Maybe here the moon really was made of cheese.

“Does this place feel familiar to you?” asked Mini. She rubbed her arms as if she had goose bumps.

“No?”

Aru would have remembered a place that looked like this. But she couldn’t deny the smell that she had caught right before they’d jumped into DEIGN. It was the smell of…home.

She was still thinking about this when she experienced a very rude awakening. Every tree they had seen so far had been intangible, so Aru had walked straight through them. She was passing through one of the trunks, not really minding where she was going, when she smacked her nose. Hard.

“What the—?” she muttered, glaring.

She had run into the side of a cliff. A rocky black wall glistening with water. No, it was a hard waterfall. She reached out to touch it carefully. It seemed like actual water, cold and cascading through her fingers. But the minute she tried to put her hand through it, it pushed back. As firm as stone.

“Yet another illusion,” said Aru. “Except this one’s got substance to it.”

Beside her, Mini paled. “Aru, that’s it! I think I know where we are!”

Mini closed her eyes and put her hand on the waterfall. She groped around, and then her hand abruptly stopped moving. She must have found what she was looking for, because her eyes opened suddenly. Behind the waterfall, Aru heard the faintest unclasping sound. Like a key sliding into a lock.

The next instant, the waterfall swung open.

It hadn’t been a waterfall at all, but a secret door.

“Just like in the stories about the Palace of Illusions,” breathed Mini.

“Is this your wisdom cookie speaking, or you?”

“Me,” said Mini, frowning. “I only remember the story because of the carnival my mom took me and my brother to. She brought it up when we went to the place with all the weird mirrors—”