Aru Shah and the End of Time

by Roshani Chokshi

“These are ridiculous,” he snapped.

  “We’re Pandavas,” said Aru, loudly enough for the Otherworldly spirits to hear. “We can do better than the Seasons.”

  Leaves crackled behind her.

  “Did you say…Pandavas?”

  Mini slowed down as if she was about to turn, but Aru yanked her arm. “Let’s not waste our breath,” she said.

  “Excuse me,” said Summer, stepping in front of them. Their voice, which had been blistering before, had turned warm and languid. “Maybe there’s been some mistake. Pandavas, you say? As in actual Pandavas?”

  “Obviously,” said Aru, lowering her sunglasses and speaking to the air next to Summer’s face. “I thought you were designers. Aren’t you supposed to be able to tell the difference between real and fake things? We’re as real as it gets.”

  Monsoon stepped beside Summer and glared at her sibling. “I knew the whole time. Rain is cleansing, after all. It reveals the truth.”

  “Liar!” shouted Spring, marching over to them.

  “I spoke to them first,” said Winter. “I suspected right away.”

  “How can we help you?” asked Summer.

  “Well,” Mini started, “we need armor, or weapons—” Aru nudged her.

  “You can’t help us,” said Aru, waving her hand. “Could you please move? Your shadow is touching mine.”

  “Oh, I am so sorry,” said Monsoon apologetically. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Whatever,” said Aru.

  “We can make armor and protection! I make the best!” exclaimed Winter.

  “Hmm…” said Aru. She drew out the silence just a beat longer. “Prove it.”

  Winter, Summer, Spring, and Monsoon nodded as one.

  “And if my friend here”—Aru jerked her chin in Mini’s direction, who merely adjusted her sunglasses—“approves, then I’ll accept your measly and puny offerings.”

  Winter nodded enthusiastically. He opened his hands, and a cloak of delicate ice unraveled before Aru. With a twist of his wrist, it became a diamond bracelet. He presented it to Mini in a black velvet box. “Throw this on anything, and it will freeze an enemy in their tracks. Plus, it’s an excellent accessory. Perfectly understated. Very elegant. Timeless.”

  “I have something better!” announced Spring. “You may be Pandavas, but you are children still.” Aru narrowed her eyes, and Spring hastily added, “I don’t mean that in an offensive way, of course!”

  Spring spread her vine-covered arms, and a cube knitted from a thousand flowers floated in front of her. She snapped her fingers, and the cube transformed into a fancy bakery box. She opened it to reveal two little squares each covered in pink icing with a flower on top. Petit fours!

  “Bites of rest and rejuvenation,” she said proudly. “That is what I am known for, after all. From winter’s slumber I create life anew. One bite and you will feel as if you have had several days of rest. Your stomach will be full, and you’ll have no bodily aches and pains. It’s good for your skin, too. Please do me the honor of eating one, Pandavas.”

  Curious, Aru took one of the cakes and popped the whole thing in her mouth. Instantly, her feet stopped hurting. She felt as if she’d just woken up from the best nap ever and still had a whole lot of afternoon left before dinner. It tasted delicate and floral, like one of those expensive rose-flavored cakes her mom brought back from her Paris trips. Way better than an Oreo. Mini ate hers, too, and a moment later looked like she was glowing.

  “Well?” asked Spring expectantly.

  “They’re…edible,” said Aru, taking the bakery box. “They will do.”

  Monsoon cast a waterfall in front of them, then whispered a few words that shrank the waterfall into a gray pendant. Monsoon presented it to Aru.

  “This is my gift to you, Pandava. Just as water can go anywhere and reach anything, this pendant, when thrown, will be able to hit any target, no matter how far away. But be warned: regret will always follow. It is the price of aiming true. For sometimes, when we take the deadliest aim, we are nothing if not reckless.”

  Aru didn’t think it was fair that only her magical item came with strings attached, but it wasn’t like she was in a position to refuse it. The necklace floated from Monsoon’s hands and gently encircled Aru’s neck. It was cold and a little damp against her skin.

  Summer bowed before Mini. “Pandava, please accept our offering as well,” they said.

  The air shimmered. Thin flames erupted from the ground. They spiraled into coils and then braided themselves, forming the prettiest headband Aru had ever seen. It looked like it was made of beaten gold, complete with delicate roses and a glittering butterfly whose wings reminded Aru of stained glass.

  “My season is one of lazy heat and forgetfulness ripening under a burning sun,” said Summer theatrically. “Forget can be a powerful tool for distracting an adversary. It can leave them feeling scorched and barren. Whoever wears this will forget something important.”

  “But, um, can—” Mini stammered as she stared yearningly at the headband.

  “A Pandava may wear it without fear.”

  Mini nodded slowly, and Aru thought she could see a neon sign flashing above Mini’s head that said MINE! IT’S ALL MINE! MWAHAHAHA.

  The headband was nice and all, but Aru wouldn’t be caught dead wearing one. Headbands made her chin-length hair fan out weirdly around her face so that she ended up looking like a frilled-neck lizard.

  By now, they had arrived at the end of the Court of the Seasons. Boo was staring at Aru, stunned. Mini kept touching her new headband and grinning.

  Aru patted her necklace. “These things will do,” she said rudely. “If we find them to our liking, we will—”

  “Recommend you to everyone we know,” finished Mini, smiling, before she realized she wasn’t supposed to smile. “But only if we like them. Which we might not.”

  “Oh, thank you!” said Winter. “Can we, perhaps, get a selfie…you know, for the Instagram?”

  Do it for the Insta! Also known as the rallying cry of half of Aru’s classmates.

  “I hope they haven’t changed the algorithm. Again. My likes are plummeting,” moaned Spring.

  “Sorry,” said Aru. “No photos.”

  Winter’s shoulders drooped. “Of course, of course. Thank you for accepting our gifts. You’re most kind.”

  “Most generous,” said Spring.

  “Most lovely,” said Summer.

  “Most…clever,” said Monsoon.

  Out of the four of them, only Monsoon held Aru’s eye for a moment longer than necessary. But when she smiled, it was with approval, not suspicion.

  Aru waved her hand like a pageant queen—rotating it slowly at the wrist—before the three of them ducked through the large gateway marked EXIT. The moment they crossed the threshold, the entrance to the Court of the Seasons closed up behind them. They were left standing in a tunnel covered in vines. A crowd of people shuttled back and forth around them. On their right, an exasperated winged woman screamed into her phone and then incinerated it in her fist. At the end of the tunnel, a herd of wild grocery carts ambled past.

  Boo ushered them to the side of the tunnel. A mechanical golden insect whirred to life above them, opening its stained-glass wings and hovering so they were lit as if standing under a Tiffany lamp.

  “That was awesome, Aru!” squealed Mini. She held out her elbow and Aru bumped it, grinning.

  Aru felt a little better, and it wasn’t just because of those Spring cakes. At least now she knew that if they had to see that starry-tailed monster anytime soon, they weren’t totally unprepared.

  Boo fluttered to Mini’s shoulder. “Well, that’s not how the legendary Arjuna would have done it.”

  “I’m not Arjuna,” said Aru, lifting her chin. “I’m Aru.”

  Boo puffed out his chest. “I know.”

  The Library of A–Z

  The tunnel led to a massive cavern that opened out into a grand library.

  “Books! Jus
t what we need!” said Mini. Her eyes might as well have been heart emojis. “When my mom told me stories about the Night Bazaar, this was the place I wanted to see most. All the books are enchanted. They cover everything and everyone.”

  “Great?” said Aru.

  She liked libraries. She liked going to the audiobooks section and listening. And she liked pranking people by waiting until they pulled out a book, only to see her making strange faces in the empty space on the shelf.

  But this library made her feel uncertain. She had that prickly cold feeling that had followed her in the parking lot right after they’d gotten the first key. Aru slipped her hand around the golden ball in her pocket. It was warm to the touch, but thankfully not hot the way it had been when the Sleeper had shown up before.

  “So the bite-of-adulthood key is somewhere in here…” said Aru. Was she mistaken, or was the book design on her hand glowing?

  “Then by all means, meander slowly and ponderously until my feathers molt,” said Boo.

  “I’m looking!” said Aru defensively.

  Easier said than done. The library was the size of a village. Shiny black stone formed the ceiling. Large windows cut into the walls looked out onto unusual settings. Through the first, Aru could see the depths of the ocean. A stingray glided past. Through the second Aru could see the leaves of a dense jungle. The third window peered out over the skyline of New York City.

  Hundreds of shelves loomed before them. Aru watched, eyes wide, as the books hopped and fluttered around. Some of them even fought one another. A giant encyclopedia marked A–F squawked at a dictionary. And a book entitled What to Expect When You’re Reincarnated from a Cockroach arched its spine and hissed at a bookmark.

  “Maybe this place is organized like a regular library?” suggested Mini. She looked like she was in heaven, surrounded by all the books. “Adulthood starts with the letter A, so let’s see if the shelves are alphabetical.”

  “What if adulthood isn’t a book?” asked Aru. “Maybe it’s hidden in something. A book isn’t a key.”

  “Neither is a sprig. I think a book would make sense,” said Mini quietly. “They’re keys to lots of stuff.”

  When Aru stopped to think about it, she had to admit this was true. She may not have liked the books she’d had to read for school, but she’d loved the stories her mom had read aloud to her. Those tales had unlocked things that ordinary metal keys never could. A particularly good book had a way of opening new spaces in one’s mind. It even invited you to come back later and rummage through what you’d learned.

  “What do you think, Boo?” asked Aru.

  He didn’t respond. He was circling the ceiling. There was an agitated, restless quality to his movements. He moved jaggedly back and forth, as if he were trying to suss out something.

  “Seriously, Boo? Do you have to stretch out your wings now? Must’ve been so tiring just sitting on our shoulders the whole time.”

  Shaking her head, Aru wandered over to the first aisle. Mini had already pulled out two stools, stacked them one on top of the other, and climbed up to read the book spines. A few volumes leaned out, inspecting Mini as closely as she was inspecting them.

  “I can’t quite see the titles at the top,” muttered Mini. “Can you ask Boo to come help?”

  “He’s busy pecking at the ceiling or something,” said Aru. “But I’ll try. Boo?”

  He was still flying in an agitated manner. Beneath him, his shadow sprawled over the books. It didn’t seem like an ordinary pigeon’s shadow. This shadow had wings the size of small boats and tail feathers that looked like trailing ribbons.

  Aru turned to look at the tunnel entrance and saw that all the people who had once been in the library had disappeared. They were alone.

  Aru frowned, looking upward for Boo again.

  The ceiling had changed. It seemed to be moving….The colors were swirling and melding. Aru realized that what she’d thought was polished marble was not stone at all, but skin.

  She’d been wrong about something else, too: they were definitely not alone.

  Boo soared back to them, squawking, “RUN! It’s him!”

  Mini tumbled down from the two stools.

  They took off, racing toward the tunnel, but the opening had disappeared. Behind them, someone started chuckling softly.

  “Always so eager to run from your problems, aren’t you?” asked a silky voice. “Well, you’re just children. I suppose that’s to be expected.”

  Aru turned slowly, expecting to see the snakelike Sleeper slithering toward her. But as it turned out, the Sleeper could take many forms. Before her eyes, the skin from the ceiling dripped down, coalescing into the shape of a man.

  He no longer had a star-studded snake tail, but his hair was the same inky shade of night, and it looked as if there were stars caught in his hair. In the form of a man, he was tall and thin. He looked…hungry. His cheekbones stuck out. He wore a black sherwani jacket over dark jeans, and an empty birdcage swung from his hand. Aru frowned. Why would he carry something like that? Then she looked up at his eyes. They were strange. One was blue, and the other was brown.

  She felt like she knew him from somewhere. How was that possible?

  “Hello, daughter of Indra and daughter of Dharma Raja,” he said. “Remember me? It’s been a while….A couple millennia. And then some.”

  His voice took her back to the moment she lit the lamp.

  Aru, Aru, Aru, what have you done?

  “I apologize for not stopping to chat after you let me out of that drafty diya, Aru,” said the Sleeper, “but I had business to attend to. Things to gather.” He grinned, revealing unnervingly sharp teeth. “But it seems I went to all that trouble for nothing. This won’t be much of a fight.”

  “We don’t even want to—” Aru started.

  He slammed his foot against the ground, and the earth rattled. Books fell off the shelves and scattered around them. One of them, entitled Afloat, flapped its endpapers, drifted to the ceiling, and refused to move despite Artful Guile trying to tempt it back down with a bookmark.

  “Don’t even think about interrupting me,” he said. “I’ve waited for ages. Eons.” He glared at Aru. “Ever since your mother locked me into that miserable lamp.”

  “My…my mother?”

  “Who else would smile as she slid the knife into my chest?” the Sleeper chided. “And you’re just like her, aren’t you? A liar. I saw you when you lit the lamp. Anything to impress your friends, right? What a coward you are, Aru Shah.”

  “My mother is not a liar!” shouted Aru.

  “You don’t even know her,” sneered the Sleeper.

  Aru didn’t want to listen. But she felt a twist in her gut. All those times she had waited for her mother, the dinner she’d made going cold on the table. All those doors that had been closed in her face. All the questions that had been shushed. It was a different kind of pain when the hurt came not from a lie, but the truth. Her mother had hidden an entire world from her.

  She really didn’t know her mom at all.

  The Sleeper gestured to Mini with a fake frown on his face, but he kept his gaze on Aru. “And what’s this? Your little sister here didn’t know that you summoned me? That you are the reason her whole family is in danger? That you are the cause of all this, and not poor old me?”

  Aru risked a glance at Mini. Her eyebrows were drawn together. Aru may have freed the Sleeper, but she hadn’t done it on purpose. Would Mini ever believe her now? Aru couldn’t get the words out—they were clogged by guilt.

  “I—I can explain, Mini,” she said. “Later.”

  Mini’s face hardened, but she nodded. There was no point hashing it out now, right before certain death.

  The Sleeper’s eyes narrowed. He dropped the birdcage beside him. It wasn’t empty after all. Small clay figurines in the shape of horses and tigers rattled together as they hit the floor.

  “Give me the sprig of youth,” he said.

  Aru and Mini started
inching backward. Aru was aware of Boo flying in frantic circles above them, as if trying to signal something. She risked a glance up. Boo dipped, landing on a book with a silver spine. It was too far away for Aru to read, but she knew what it said: Adulthood.

  The second key was right over their heads. If they could just distract the Sleeper, they could get it. Mini caught Aru’s eye and nodded once. Apparently they’d had the same thought. Which would’ve been really cool if Mini didn’t also look as though she’d like to strangle Aru at the first chance.

  They wedged themselves between the stacks of A-shelves.

  “How’d you find us?” asked Aru.

  “Rakshas are very talkative,” he said, smiling. “Two little girls entering the Night Bazaar with enchanted objects bearing the marks of Lord Indra and the Dharma Raja? How curious.”

  “What kinda name is Sleeper?” asked Aru. “Are you just really good at napping?”

  He frowned. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mini touch her diamond bracelet.

  “Or is it like a metaphor?” pushed Aru, proud that she’d remembered the word from last week’s English class. “Maybe a bad nickname from middle school, when you fell asleep on a test and all the ink got on your face?”

  “Enough!” he thundered. “Where’s the second key? You know what it is, don’t you?”

  Mini slid her backpack to the floor, nudging it closer to Aru. When Mini turned around, Aru saw that she had managed to tuck the sprig of youth into the back of her jeans.

  Aru felt as if she’d tapped into a wavelength that belonged only to her and Mini. They moved in sync, their thoughts aligned.

  “If you want the key, catch it!” shouted Aru.

  She picked up the backpack and threw it into the air. The Sleeper lunged after it, while Mini tore off her bracelet. With a flick of her wrist, it expanded, flashing and shimmering. Cold flooded the air. Frost seeped out, lacing the floor.

  Mini tossed the Cloak of Winter over the Sleeper.

  “I’ve got him! You go grab the you-know-what,” Mini called to Aru.

  Mini wrestled with the cloak, her feet skidding across the floor. Underneath, the Sleeper froze. But he wouldn’t stay frozen solid for long. Already, cracks were forming in the ice and his eyes were rolling furiously. Mini pushed him and he fell over on his side, knocking into the birdcage on the floor. It rolled down one of the library aisles.