Aru Shah and the End of Time (Pandava Quartet #1)(62)

In the tale, the archery teacher of the Pandavas had tied a wooden fish to a tree branch. He instructed the brothers to shoot an arrow at the fish’s eye. But they could only aim by looking at the reflection of the wooden fish in the water below them.

The teacher asked Yudhistira, the oldest brother, what he saw in the reflection. He said, The sky, the tree, the fish. The teacher told him not to shoot. He asked Bhima, the second oldest brother, what he saw. He said, The branch of the tree, the fish. The teacher asked him not to shoot.

And then the teacher asked Arjuna what he saw. He said, The eye of the fish.

Only he was allowed to shoot.

It was a tale about focusing, about peeling away distractions one by one until all that was left was the target. The eye of the fish.

The flames touched Aru’s feet. She grimaced, but didn’t move. She closed her eyes.

The bow and arrow were only distractions.

The real way out…had always been in her mind.

She pictured Mini and the museum, her mother and the memories. She pictured Boo’s feathery chest puffed out in pride. She pictured the red, blinking light of Burton Prater’s phone. She pictured freedom.

It wasn’t an all-of-a-sudden thing. She wasn’t yanked from one place to the next. She didn’t open her eyes and see a new world where there had been an old one. Instead, she felt something like a latch unclasping inside her.

People are a lot like magical pockets. They’re far bigger on the inside than they appear to be on the outside. And it was that way with Aru. She found a place deep within her that had been hidden until now. It was a place of silence that seemed deafening. It was a feeling of narrowness turned vast, as if she could hide small worlds within her. This was what escape was: discovering a part of herself that no one else could find.

Aru reached. She imagined a door to the Otherworld with a tether of light wrapped around its handle. She grabbed on to that tether…

And pulled.

In that moment, she could no longer feel the flames. She could no longer hear the buzzing of cruel insect wings. She heard only her heartbeat pounding against the silence. She saw only her dreams of freedom turning bright and wild, like a rainbow glimpsed through a prism.

And in that moment, she escaped.





The Palace’s Story


When Aru opened her eyes, she was standing once more in the decrepit palace hall.

Mini was a couple feet away from her, furiously arguing with…with herself? Two Minis? One of them was getting increasingly red in the face and hunching her shoulders. The other pushed her glasses up her nose and kept talking. Her! Aru would’ve bet money that version was the real Mini. Aru tried to run forward, but she was kept back by some kind of invisible barrier.

“Hey!” called Aru, pounding her fists against the air. “Mini!”

But the Minis kept right on arguing. The real one said, “And so it stands to reason that the fastest thing in the world is not a person or a creature, but a thought!”

The other Mini let out a horrible groan, as if she’d just gotten attacked by a headache, and vanished.

The remaining Mini braced her hands on her knees and took a deep breath. The invisible barrier must have disappeared, too, because Mini finally noticed Aru. A grin stretched wide across her face.

“You’re alive!”

“So are you!” shouted Aru, running toward her.

But no sooner were they next to each other than the palace roared to life. Torches flamed on. Even the roof pulled itself up, like someone adjusting his suspenders.

The two of them braced themselves. Aru wrapped her hand around the glowing ball in her pocket. Mini gripped her compact.

The palace shuddered.

“Only Yudhistira would’ve been able to out-reason himself through wisdom,” it said.

Aru dropped her voice to a whisper. “Seriously? Your task was to annoy yourself?”

Mini scowled.

“And only Arjuna,” continued the palace, “would’ve had the vision and perception to escape the mind’s own fear. Which means it’s you! It really is you….”

“Duh!” said Aru. “We told you that when we got—”

But the moment Aru started speaking, the ceiling split above their heads. Rain gushed in from the cracks in the roof. The whole palace rolled.

“I—”

The beams creaked.

“—thought—”

The foundation whined.

“—you—”

The roof caved in.

“—forgot—”

The floor tiles beneath them split.

“—about—”

The walls peeled back.

“—me.”

The rain was a waterfall now. There was nothing for Aru and Mini to do except clutch each other as the palace broke apart around them. When the crying (and rain) finally stopped, the walls pulled themselves back together. The roof dried its shingles and stitched itself whole again. The foundation rolled one last time, as if heaving a sigh.

The palace had a right to be upset. They had forgotten all about it. But was that really their fault?

“I missed you,” said the palace. “For three hundred years after you left, I kept the floors polished and the ceilings free of dust. I kept the larders full, and I watered the plants. But you never returned. Did I do something wrong?”