Aru Shah and the End of Time (Pandava Quartet #1)(77)

Aru tried to sidestep them. “Well, umm, then we better get to it?”

It was impossible to see what lay beyond the two creatures. It seemed like a tunnel, but every time she looked away from it, she couldn’t remember what she’d seen. It made Aru think she wasn’t supposed to see it.

“Not so fast!” said Time. “Can’t let you out without your giving us something! You must pay!”

“Pay?” repeated Mini. She patted her pockets. “I—I don’t have anything.”

Aru scowled. First, nobody had appreciated her Batman joke. Second, why did they have to keep paying for things? They were the ones going to all the trouble to save everyone else, after all! Rude. Her hands formed fists at her sides.

“Why should we give you anything, anyway?” she demanded. “You do realize we’re doing all this to save you.”

Time rose up a little higher on its insect legs.

Oh.

Time could be a lot…bigger than she imagined. It just kept growing until it was the size of one of the pillars from the museum. She had to tilt her head up just to see its featureless face regarding her.

“Did I just detect a trace of impertinence?”

Mini stepped in front of her. “No! Not at all! That’s just how she talks! She’s got a medical condition. Um, Type One Insufferable-ness. She can’t help it.”

Thanks, Mini. Thanks a lot.

“You must leave behind something of yours in order to get out,” insisted Time.

The spider creature grew even taller. It was clicking its front legs together, steepling them like hands grown impatient from waiting.

“Sorry,” said Wish, daintily licking one of its paws. “Rules are rules, although…good karma can let you out, if you have any.”

“What, like good deeds?” asked Aru.

She took a careful step back, and Mini followed her example. Time was looming vast and terrifying before them. Click, click, click went its slender legs on the marble floor.

“Er, I take my neighbor’s dog on walks?” started Aru.

“I floss my teeth twice a day!” said Mini.

“Prove it,” said Time.

Mini hooked her fingers into her cheeks and pulled. “Rike zish?”

“Not good enough…” said Time.

Mini started laughing hysterically.

Can we fight our way out of Death? wondered Aru. Her hand slipped into her pocket, reaching for Vajra, but something else met her fingers. She fished it out:

An ivory-colored token.

The same one Chitrigupta had handed to her what felt like a lifetime ago. She turned it this way and that, watching the little good deeds she had done throughout her life shimmer on the surface.

“Wait!” shouted Aru, holding up the token. “We’ve got proof!”

Mini dug into her backpack and pulled out hers. “It’ll show you I flossed. I swear!”

Wish padded forward, took the token between its teeth, and bit down on it. Then it did the same to Mini’s. It turned to Time and said, “It rings true.”

In one blink, Time shrank until it stood eye level with Aru. “You may go, then, daughters of the gods.”

There was no way Aru was going to hang around another moment for a second invitation.

“Great!” said Mini with fake cheer. She pressed a bit closer to Aru.

“Yes! This was…such a treat.” Aru edged past them. Wish and Time simply watched the two of them inch toward the exit. “See ya later!”

Time bowed its head.

“Inevitably.”


People joked about the afterlife. They said things like Don’t follow the light! But there was no heavenly glow here. Yet, somehow, it was still bright. It burned with something else, whiting out the setting around them.

All Aru remembered when she crossed the threshold was a curious sense of bemusement. As if she had done this before, and never quite wanted to, but submitted to it all the same. It was kind of like getting a shot: a necessary evil. And it was also a bit like a dream, because she couldn’t recall much about the place they’d left behind. One moment it was there, and the next moment it was not.

With every step she took into that tunnel between life and death, sensation washed over her. Sensation that belonged to memories. She remembered impossible things, like being cradled and held close and told over and over by her mother that she was loved. She felt the pinch of her first loose tooth from so many years ago. She remembered how she had once broken her arm after swinging from the museum elephant’s trunk and felt more surprise than pain. It hadn’t occurred to her until that day that she could ever get hurt.

Aru blinked.

That single blink felt like hundreds of years and no time at all.

When Aru opened her eyes, she and Mini were standing in the middle of a road. A couple of cars had been left running, doors still open, as if their drivers and passengers had fled in a hurry. A few feet away, Aru heard the cracklings of a television coming from inside a tollbooth.

Mini turned to her.

“At least it’s not a parking lot?”





The TV Started It


Aru flexed her hand and Vajra changed from a ball to a glowing circlet around her wrist. It looked really cool. Too bad she didn’t know the first thing about what to do with it. Other than throw it at people, obviously.