Aru Shah and the End of Time (Pandava Quartet #1)(75)

“I’m not your patient!” snapped Aru, batting at Mini’s hand. Then she sighed. “Sorry. I know this isn’t your fault.”

“It’s okay, Aru. But what do we do now?” asked Mini. “Urvashi said that we’d get the answer about how to defeat the Sleeper from the Pool of the Past….”

“And we did,” said Aru. “But it’s not exactly helpful. You heard my mom. She said that she’d used his secrets to bind him, not kill him.”

“Right, and she said he can’t be killed by anything made of metal, wood, or stone. Or anything dry or wet. Your mom bound him with her heart, but I feel like she meant that more metaphorically than literally. I have no idea how she did that, do you?”

Aru’s head was spinning. “Nope. And if we did know, what’re we going to do with a bunch of hearts? Throw them at his head?”

“So what does that leave?”

“We could pelt him with slightly undercooked pasta?”

Mini rolled her eyes. “What about animals?” she asked.

“It has to be us,” said Aru. “That’s what Urvashi said. Besides, he’s a demon. Even if we found a hungry man-eating tiger, it would probably turn on us—the humans—before it turned on him.”

“Maybe slightly undercooked pasta is the right call.”

“I could use a pasta sword.”

“Pasta mace.”

“Pasta club.”

“Pasta…pasta bow?”

“Weak.”

“Pasta lightning bolt?” joked Mini.

“Wait,” said Aru. “The lightning bolt. It’s not dry or wet—”

“Or metal or stone or wood!”

Aru’s grip around the ball form of Vajra became clawlike. When she blinked, she saw the Sleeper in the hospital room, wearing the I’M A DAD! T-shirt.

Her eyes burned. Her home dad hadn’t left them at all…he’d just been locked away. In a lamp. By her mom. This is so messed up, thought Aru.

He’d wanted to be her home dad.

Aru’s throat tightened, and tears pressed at her eyes. Then she forced herself to sit up straight. It didn’t matter what he used to be like. The truth was that the Sleeper from the Night Bazaar was no longer the man from her mother’s vision. Now he was cruel and cold. He was evil. He’d hurt Boo and threatened to kill their families and them if they didn’t bring him all three keys. He wasn’t her dad.

Aru tossed the ball form of Vajra in the air and caught it with one hand. “Let’s do this.”

But even as she said the words, a thread of misgiving wrapped around her rib cage and squeezed tight.

They stood up and began silently walking between the ponds, ducking the low-hanging incense burners. Aru knew, deep in her bones, that this was where the Kingdom of Death ended: on the brink of new life. The atmosphere felt like that of a crowd holding its breath with anticipation. The light on the pearly walls was ever-shifting, ever-changing; the colors never settled on one shade, always glimmering with new potential. Like life starting anew.

Aru took a deep breath. They had made it through the kingdom.

Now the question was: Could they get out?





Can You Give Me Better Hair on the Way Out?


It’s challenging to shoulder all the stuff you get from the Kingdom of Death.

Dee Dee (Mini’s Death Danda) kept popping out of its compact form and turning into a gigantic stick. Twice it almost put out Aru’s eye. She was beginning to think the weapons had a sense of humor. At random times Aru’s weapon, Vajra, liked to shift into lightning-bolt form and zip across the sky before turning into a ball and bouncing in front of her. Aru imagined it saying, Throw me at a demon! Do it, do it, do it! I wanna play. Squirrel!

“I’m not really even sure of all the stuff this thing can do,” said Mini, shaking the danda.

Aru raised her eyebrow. That danda stick belonged to the god of death and justice. It had probably beat up its fair share of demons and also punished a bunch of souls. And now Mini was shaking it like a remote control that had stopped working.

“Maybe it’s like a video game, and you get to access more powers and levels once you complete something?” Mini guessed.

“Well, we got one demon, shopped at a magic Costco, and made it through the Kingdom of Death….What else does our video game magic want?”

“Maybe to defeat the real demon?”

“Oh, yeah, true.”

Mini awkwardly cradled Dee Dee. “Aru, do you think these weapons are a sign that they like us?”

Aru didn’t have to ask who they were. She meant their godly fathers.

“The danda is his most precious possession,” reasoned Mini. “He wouldn’t just give it to someone he didn’t care about, right?”

“I’m sure he cares,” said Aru. “Just, you know, in his own way? In the stories, the Dharma Raja took the form of a dog and kept Yudhistira company at the end of his life. Yudhistira refused to enter heaven without him. I think it was some kind of test? If your soul dad is willing to become a dog just to keep you company, that means they like you at least a little bit.”

Mini grinned. “I like the way you think, Shah.”

Aru dramatically flipped her hair over her shoulder, which was a bad idea, because it was still damp from whale spit and ended up smacking her in the eye. Smooth.