Aru Shah and the Song of Death

by Roshani Chokshi

  “Yeah, check it out!” said Aru, brandishing Vajra.

  But at the sight of the powerful sage, her lightning bolt wilted into a meek noodle.

  “Vajra!” hissed Aru.

  The lightning bolt turned into a Ping-Pong ball and zoomed back into her pocket.

  “Coward,” whispered Aru.

  Vajra stung her spitefully.

  Durvasa smirked. “It seems your father has not forgotten my might. It was I, after all, who punished the gods. I took away their immortality for spiting me.”

  “What did Lord Indra do to make you mad?” asked Aru.

  “I gave him a beautiful garland. And what did he do? He put it on that cloud-spinning elephant’s head! The elephant decided the flowers tickled too much, and the creature threw it on the ground! So, just as my gift had been cast down, I decreed that the gods should be cast down, too.”

  Aiden frowned. “But it was the elephant, not Indra, that—”

  “Pah! Why have you followed me here? I told you to leave.”

  “We were just…admiring your rock?” tried Aiden. “It’s, um, a great rock.”

  Durvasa scoffed. “That’s not just a rock. It’s the rock.”

  “The Rock?” echoed Brynne, looking horrified. “How could you do that to Dwayne Johnson?”

  “No, not the wrestler-actor-man!”

  “Oh.”

  “That rock was once the famously beautiful apsara Rambha. Someone sent her to disturb the meditations of a rishi, to prevent him from becoming too powerful. Obviously she was not successful, for she was cursed to assume the form of a rock for ten thousand years.”

  Ten thousand years as a rock? Just because you followed orders?

  Aru scowled. “That’s not fair.”

  Durvasa shrugged. “Fairness is but an idea conceived by someone who has the power to make such pronouncements. As for curses themselves, well, they are finicky, spiteful things.”

  “But she was just doing her job,” said Aiden.

  “As am I,” said Durvasa. “According to the legal ordinances of the Otherworld, I am forbidden from assisting or blessing anyone who is suspected of committing a crime. And you two”—he nodded at Brynne, then Aru—“have been accused of thievery. And I might believe it, too. Don’t think I don’t know how you got to be first in line.” He raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s not like we had a choice!” protested Aru. “That girl told us we had to wait three centuries, and according to her office calendar, we barely have three days left before the Heartless stay that way forever.”

  “I hate Otherworld time,” grumbled Brynne.

  “If you are innocent, let someone else concern themselves with the matter,” said Durvasa. “Unless there is some other reason you care?”

  When a few seconds passed without anyone speaking, Durvasa did an about-face.

  “Wait!” Brynne called out. “Please! Okay, fine…. If we don’t manage to return Kamadeva’s bow and arrow to Uloopi, she will ban us from the Otherworld. We won’t be part of…part of anything anymore.”

  Aru felt like her heart was being squeezed. Like Brynne, she didn’t want to be cast out of the one place where she felt like she mattered. At the same time, she couldn’t stop wondering if she didn’t really deserve a place in the Otherworld, because her dad was the Sleeper.

  You were never meant to be a hero.

  Aru banished the thought.

  “And we won’t be able to fix something that went terribly wrong,” added Aiden, rubbing his thumb along the top of his camera, which had reemerged from the magical watch.

  Aru wondered what he meant by that. Was he talking about Mini’s abduction? She didn’t think so. But clearly Aiden wasn’t on this quest merely to earn one of Kamadeva’s arrows. She thought at first that Aiden had wanted a love arrow for some girl in middle school…but now she was beginning to suspect she’d gotten it all wrong.

  “People are going missing,” said Aru, thinking not only of the men who were becoming Heartless, but Mini, too. “And also…because it’s the right thing to do.” For Boo…and even Uloopi, she told herself. Uloopi deserved to get her heart jewel back after spending so much of her immortal life wasting away because of Takshaka’s deception.

  Durvasa stood before them, impassive as ever. “I cannot help you,” he said haughtily.

  Brynne wiped her eyes and sniffed loudly before glowering. Aru knew how she felt. There was nothing worse than being honest with someone and then having them throw it back in your face. It was like salt in a wound.

  “Come on, guys,” said Brynne, turning to leave.

  Aru clenched her jaw. “Haven’t you ever wanted a different ending? Or thought about what would happen if you didn’t follow the rules? All the things that could change?”

  Durvasa hesitated for just a second. His shoulders fell a fraction of an inch.

  “I still cannot help you,” he said stonily.

  Aru turned to leave, but Durvasa kept talking. “I cannot tell you, for instance, that your friend lies fast asleep at the Bridge of Dawn and Dusk.”

  The three of them froze.

  “I certainly cannot inform you that you will have to do battle with your very nightmares.” Durvasa examined his fingernails. “There is absolutely no way I will tell you that all you must do to reach her is walk through there, or that the mere fact I’m speaking to you has granted you adequate protection in the celestial realms,” he went on, pointing across the room to a wooden door marked THE BRIDGE OF DAWN AND DUSK. “Or that you must be back before sunrise or my protection will vanish.”

  Aru smiled. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Durvasa said, scowling. He waved his hand, and a plushy armchair sprouted up in the middle of the room. “I will be watching exactly one Planet Earth documentary on Netflix. After that, I will not be here.”

  Brynne was already racing to the door.

  “Do you hear me?” Durvasa shouted after her. “I am only watching one documentary and then I’m gone! Gone!”

  Aiden grinned, patting Shadowfax. “No one has ever documented the inside of the celestial realms. It’s going to be awesome!” When Aru scowled at him, he added, “And we’re getting Mini!”

  “What about the part where we battle our nightmares?” pointed out Aru.

  “It’s the celestial realms, Aru, not nightmare land. I’m sure he’s exaggerating.”

  Aiden followed after Brynne, but Aru lingered.

  “What made you decide to, um, not help us?” she asked Durvasa.

  The sage studied her, and in that second he looked very tired and very old.

  “Let us just say that there are some endings that I, too, wish could be avoided. Now go. See well.”

  See well. That was what Varuni and Varuna had told her in their palace. But Aru didn’t have long to think about it. Brynne and Aiden had already gone through the door.

  Aru opened it to discover that the other side was an empty white expanse. The idea of stepping into nothingness was intimidating, to say the least. Do it for Mini, she told herself.

  She took a deep breath and jumped in with her eyes closed, assuming she’d fall through the air. Instead, Aru floated upright, as if on an invisible hoverboard. She opened her eyes and found herself next to Brynne and Aiden in a beautiful moonlit stand of trees. A small sign had been staked into the ground in front of it:

  THE DREAMING GROVE OF RATRI

  Ratri was the goddess of night. Aru didn’t know much about her except that her sister was Ushas, the goddess of dawn, who brought forth a new day in a chariot pulled by red cows.

  A path of pure darkness cut through the grove, winding toward a bridge in the distance. It was the same silver bridge Aru had seen from below, when they were in the cosmic gallery. A tingle of nervousness shot through her. They weren’t technically in the clouds, so she didn’t need cloud slippers, but they were standing on a narrow strip of solid black—like one of those glass sky bridges—and it felt as if it would give way at any
second.

  Now that they were getting closer to Mini, Aru cast out her Pandava senses, trying to reach her telepathically…but it was like a call that kept going straight to voice mail. She just wasn’t getting through.

  “Wow,” breathed Aiden, snapping a couple pictures of the beautiful scene.

  Aru really wanted to walk over and examine the trees up close, but she didn’t dare move from the path. There was no sign that said DON’T DEFILE THE NIGHT GODDESS’S GARDEN, but for Aru, there didn’t need to be. Growing up in a museum, she had learned not to disturb rare and unusual objects. In fact, she considered herself the museum’s designated NO TOUCHIE! hollerer, a job she took very seriously.

  Brynne, however, went straight for the strange night trees. Their trunks looked like spirals of dark smoke, and their branches were like black lace against the starry sky. Hanging from their branches were oval fruits with glittering silver rinds.

  “I bet I could make a really yummy pachadi with this…” mused Brynne. She reached out to touch one of them.

  “Brynne, don’t!” called Aru.

  The moment Brynne’s fingers met the fruit, it fell from the branch, hitting the ground and chiming like a struck bell. Aru ran forward and snatched up the silvery fruit before it could make any more noise.

  All three of them held very still.

  Then Aiden let out his breath. “That was close. For a second there, I thought—”

  The rest of his words were cut off by a low growl.

  Slowly, Aru turned to see three huge night-black hounds prowling toward them. Saliva dripped from their jaws. Their eyes looked like round mirrors, but instead of reflections, they revealed moving images. Aru’s blood ran cold as she saw the Sleeper taunting her…then a scene of four Pandava sisters turning against her. She saw Boo still imprisoned, his feathers falling out, because she had failed him. As the hounds stalked closer, she saw her mom shutting the apartment door behind her and never coming back. Aru squeezed her eyes shut, trying to keep the nightmares out.

  “Don’t look at their eyes!” she warned the others.

  She bent down and fumbled for something on the ground. She found a stick and threw it far away from her. Then she cracked open one eye. “Go fetch?”

  Instead, the nightmare hounds started barking and snarling at her.

  “Never mind!” she shouted to the others. “RUN!”

  Mistakes Have Been Made….

  Aru, Brynne, and Aiden fled down the night path toward the silver bridge.

  Behind them they heard growls and the thumping of galloping paws. Brynne aimed her wind mace at the hellhounds, but the powerful gust didn’t even slow them down.

  “Keep running!” yelled Brynne. “I’ve got this!”

  A second later, she transformed into a blue jaguar as big as one of the hellhounds. Aru looked back to see Jaguar-Brynne hissing and clawing at the hounds, but they leaped straight through her. Brynne changed into an eagle and flew straight for Aru and Aiden.

  “Never mind!” cawed Bird-Brynne. “I do not got this!”

  Aru cast out Vajra like a net, but the net slipped off them, bouncing back into her palms.

  “They’re nightmares!” said Aiden, out of breath. “They’re not real!”

  Aru shuddered at the thought of the hounds’ long teeth and the terrible visions in their eyes. “Yeah, I’m not testing out that theory.”

  Time slowed, and Aru felt that they really were stuck in a nightmare. No matter how hard they tried to reach the silvery Bridge of Dawn and Dusk, it kept getting farther away from them. The only part of the landscape that changed was the grove of night trees. They grew thicker, crowding the path before them, until it was a forest ripe with shadows.

  Brynne jumped behind one of the biggest trunks, pulling Aru and Aiden with her. The hounds slowed down…and started sniffing the ground.

  “We can’t even get to the bridge!” Brynne whispered. “And what are they going to do when they find us?”

  Aiden shushed her. The three of them huddled together. The sound of snuffling got louder and louder…and then it stopped. Brynne changed into a blue snake, slithering up the tree to get a better look.

  “They’re gone!” she reported when she changed back into her human self.

  “Have you ever tried doing that in a zoo?” Aru asked her. “Like, just pop up behind the glass and scare the kids?”

  Brynne crossed her arms. “No, because I’m not a troll.”

  “I’m not a troll, either. It’s called genius.”

  Aiden stuck his head around the trunk. “So where did those dogs go?”

  Brynne shrugged. “Who knows? But I never want to see them—or those eyes—again.”

  “Me neither,” said Aru. “It was like they knew everything.”

  Now that they’d stopped running, Aru realized she was still holding the silver fruit. It was cold in her hands. Curious, she raised it to her face and inhaled deeply. Aru had never smelled a fruit like this…. It didn’t give off a scent as much as a feeling. It felt like a moment on the verge of passing. Hot cocoa on the brink of turning cold. The end of a good book. The prickling sense of waking up that always cuts a good nap short. It made her happy and sad all at once. She lost herself in it.

  “Guys, did you—?” Aru broke off.

  When did it get so quiet?

  “Guys…?”

  Aru turned around, and staggered backward. Brynne and Aiden were both curled up on the ground. A nightmare hound loomed over each of them, staring at them with eyes now as big as television screens.

  The fruit dropped from Aru’s hand as she ran over to Brynne and pulled on her arm. “Brynne! Get up!” she screamed.

  Aru tried to push the hounds away, but her arms went right through them. Brynne had her eyes squeezed shut, but in the closest creature’s eyes, Aru saw an image of a beautiful college-aged girl and an angry middle-aged woman.

  The girl—Aru now recognized her as an older version of Brynne—held up her photo album.

  “What is this?” asked the woman.

  “Mom…” started Brynne.

  Her mother groaned, rubbing her temples. “Don’t call me that!”

  “Sorry, Anila,” said Brynne, her eyes shining. “I just thought you’d want to see—”

  “If I wanted to see how you’re doing, I would have stayed.”

  In the vision, Brynne’s chin lowered. Her shoulders caved in.

  Aru shook the real Brynne. “It’s a nightmare, Brynne!”

  But it was as if Brynne were sound asleep and couldn’t hear her. Aru let go of her arm and ran to Aiden. He pressed his hands tightly to his face, and he rolled back and forth.

  “Hey! Snap out of it!” she said, waving her hand in front of him.

  But he too remained in a trance.

  Aiden’s nightmare blasted like a horror film in his hound’s eyes.

  Mrs. Acharya was weeping. “Maybe if I’d never had you, he would still love me. You ruined everything.”

  “Don’t cry, Mom. Please don’t cry. I can fix it,” said Aiden, reaching out for her. “I’ll get an arrow from Kamadeva. Then everything will go back to normal, I promise. Mom?”

  She started to fade.

  “Aiden?” asked Aru.

  But he didn’t answer. He just closed his eyes tighter as the next nightmare began to play.

  A cold shadow fell across Aru. She froze. Behind her, the growl of the third hound made her shiver, but she held still, refusing to look at it. Vajra glowed bright in her pocket, but there was nothing her lightning bolt could do. She couldn’t strike down a nightmare. It would be like telling someone to go punch fear. It was impossible.

  The hound moved closer. With every step, Aru sensed her nightmares scratching at the base of her skull, like a monster reaching out from under the bed.

  The Sleeper’s voice taunted her: You were never meant to be a hero.

  When she blinked, she saw the image that always haunted her nightmares—her Pandava sisters all li
ned up to fight her, hate twisting their features. It felt like a prophecy in that moment, that no matter how hard she tried to be a hero, something inside would always cause her to fail. That was why she hadn’t been able to defeat the Sleeper. That was why Boo was locked up, his hope for her slowly dwindling.

  The Sleeper’s voice kept whispering, dark and terrible….

  You are a deceiver, Aru Shah.

  Just like your father.

  Aru wanted to disappear. Her heart felt like an open wound. She knew better than to look at the hellhound, but it was so hard to resist. Something about that nightmarish voice promised that if she only turned around, she’d see whether or not its visions were true.

  But Aru didn’t want to end up like Brynne and Aiden. She stared at the ground instead, where a bright glint caught her eye. The silver fruit had rolled close to her feet. Unfortunately, it had a reflective surface, and in it she saw…

  Not the nightmare hound.

  No, only a big, fluffy white dog, like the Great Pyrenees she had always wanted. It panted heavily before lying down next to her with a grunt.

  The Sleeper’s voice at the back of her head faded to an echo, something she was used to ignoring….

  “Dog?” she asked.

  In the reflection, the dog lumbered to its feet and wagged its tail. When she risked a peek behind her, she still saw a hulking, snarling form. How come it looked different in the reflection? She looked back at the fruit, and an idea came to her….

  She couldn’t punch a nightmare. But she could end it by waking up. Right before he’d fallen into his bizarre nightmare coma, Aiden had said they weren’t real. He was right.

  Aru couldn’t fight fear by ignoring it. She had to look it straight in the eye.

  Slowly, she turned around. The hound’s snarling grew louder. Aru dragged her gaze up from the fruit on the ground, where four dark paws impatiently scratched at the dirt. In the back of her head, the din of her nightmares grew louder and louder. They screamed that she wasn’t enough, would never be enough….

  But she pushed hard against the painful thoughts clamoring around her.

  Sage Durvasa’s words rang out in her mind: See well….