Aru Shah and the End of Time (Pandava Quartet #1)(9)

Aru hadn’t heard anything after You’re a child of the gods.

Up until this point, her brain had only distantly understood that she could be a Pandava. But if she was a Pandava, that meant that a god had helped make her. And claimed her as his own. As his kid.

Her hand flew to her heart. Aru had the strangest impulse to reach into herself as if she might pluck out her own soul. She wanted to look at the back of it, as if it had a tag, like on a T-shirt. What would it say? MADE IN THE HEAVENS. KINDA. If she couldn’t hold it, it didn’t seem real.

And then another thought took root, one that was even stranger than the fact that a god was her dad.

“So I’m, like, a goddess?” she asked.

That wouldn’t be so bad.

“No,” said Boo.

“But the Pandavas were like demigods. They could use divine weapons and stuff. So that makes me half a goddess, right?” asked Aru. She examined her hands, flexing them like Spider-Man did whenever he started shooting out webs. “Does that mean I get to do magical things, too? Do I get powers? Or a cape?”

“There shall be no capes.”

“A hat?”

“No.”

“Theme song?”

“Please stop.”

Aru looked down at her clothes. If she was going to be meeting some long-lost sibling, she really wished she were wearing something other than Spider-Man pajamas.

“What happens after…after I meet them?”

Boo did that pigeon thing where he regarded her at an angle. “Well, we must go to the Otherworld, of course. Not quite what it used to be. It dwindles with humanity’s imagination, so I suspect it is currently the size of a closet. Or perhaps a shoe box.”

“Then how will I fit?”

“It will make room,” said Boo airily. “You should have seen it in its glory days. There was a Night Bazaar where you could purchase dreams on a string. If you had a good singing voice, you could use it to buy rice pudding dusted with moonlight. Finest thing I’ve ever eaten—well, second only to a spicy demon. Mmm.” He ignored Aru’s cringe. “We’ll take you to the Court of the Sky. There you may formally ask the Council of Guardians for the details of your quest.” Boo’s feathers ruffled when he mentioned the Council. “You’ll get your weapons. I shall get my place of honor back, make no mistake. And then it’s up to you and your brother. Or sister, gods help us.”

“Weapons?” repeated Aru. “What kind of weapons? That’s not something they teach you in seventh grade. How am I supposed to stop the Sleeper from getting to the Lord of Destruction if I can’t throw a bow and arrow?”

“You shoot a bow and arrow!”

“Right. I knew that.”

Aru wasn’t exactly the best at gym. Just last week she’d scratched at the inside of her nose hard enough to fake a nosebleed and get out of dodgeball.

“Perhaps you have a hidden talent somewhere inside you,” said Boo. He squinted at her. “Buried quite deeply, I imagine.”

“But if there’re all these deities, why don’t they help? Why leave it up to, as you said, a bundle of hormones and incompetence?”

“Gods and goddesses may occasionally help, but they don’t mess around with affairs that affect only humans. To them, mortal lives are but a speck of dust on the eyelash.”

“You don’t think the gods would be even a little upset to find out that their entire universe was stamped out?”

Boo shrugged. “Even Time has to end. The real measure of when others will get involved comes down to whether or not you succeed. The gods will accept the outcome either way.”

Aru gulped. “Awesome. That’s just the best.”

Boo nipped her ear.

“Ow!” said Aru. “Could you not?”

“You are a child of the gods! Stand up straight!”

Aru rubbed her ear. A deity was her…father. She still couldn’t quite believe it.

She had lied about many things, but she’d never invented stories about a father. She would’ve felt ridiculous bragging about someone who had no interest in her. Why should she go out of her way to make him sound better than he actually was? He’d never been there. The end.

Her mother didn’t speak of him, either. There was only one photo of a man in the house. He was handsome and dark-haired, with skin the color of dark amber, and he had the strangest pair of eyes. One was blue, and one was brown. But Aru wasn’t even sure he was her father. And he didn’t look like a deity at all. At least, not like anyone in the Hall of the Gods. Then again, ancient statues weren’t always a good reference. Everyone looked the same when they were cut out of granite and sandstone and their features were worn down to faded smiles and half-lidded eyes.

Apparently she herself was divine-ish, but whenever she looked in the mirror, all she noticed was that her eyebrows kept trying to join up. And it stood to reason that if you were even a little bit divine, you should not have a unibrow.

“Now,” said Boo, “tell the Door of Many where you want to go.”

Aru stared at the door. There were several symbols and scenes etched into its frame. Images of warriors notching their bows and letting their arrows fly.

When Aru blinked, she even saw a wooden arrow zoom across the tableau. She reached out and placed her palm against the door. The engraved wood pressed back, like a cat nuzzling her hand. As if it were trying to get to know her, too.