Aru Shah and the Song of Death

by Roshani Chokshi

  They couldn’t linger here. Ahead of them, the bridge was beginning to fade. The cold silver moonlight of the dusk end was dissipating as the sun came closer. If they didn’t leave now, they’d be stuck between dawn and dusk.

  “Brynne can find him,” said Aru, thinking fast. “She’s got hawk vision.”

  But Brynne had flown ahead—she didn’t even know that Aiden was in trouble. They had to let her know right away.

  Aru forced all her concentration into propelling Vajra forward. The hoverboard careened into the Grove of Ratri and skidded to a stop in the dense thicket of night trees. Aru and Mini tumbled headfirst into the grass.

  “Ha!” said a voice above them. “It’s official. I’m faster than a lightning bolt.”

  Brynne, still in hawk form, stared down at them from her branch.

  “Bam!” she said. “Add that to my trophies.”

  Electricity twitched across Vajra, as if the hoverboard were highly affronted by such a statement. And then it stung Aru for good measure, because it was clearly her fault for making it look bad.

  There was no time to argue.

  “Aiden fell into the cows back there!” Aru said, gesturing over her shoulder.

  “He was trying to save me,” added Mini. “You have to go after him! But we don’t know where he is….”

  Brynne just pointed her wing. “You mean that Aiden?”

  Aru whipped around. As it turned out, Aiden was not dead. He was fine. In fact, he was more than fine. He was seated on a giant red cow and wearing a pair of sunglasses. Behind him was Ushas, her smile so dazzling that Aru couldn’t even look at her. Aiden waved at them, then held up a bright gold phone that could only belong to the goddess of dawn.

  “Is he…?” started Mini.

  “He is,” confirmed Brynne.

  Aiden I’m-an-Artiste Acharya was taking a selfie.

  A couple of seconds later, Aiden leaped off the red cow and rolled into the grove. Ushas paused long enough to scream:

  “I am such a fan of your mom! I used to try to practice her dances when I was working, but then I almost incinerated the world. Whatever.” The goddess tossed her hair back. “Can’t wait to post our photo!”

  And with that, she waved good-bye and let out a loud “Yee-haw!” The red cows zoomed over them, dragging the flaming sun in their wake.

  Aiden swaggered over, grinning.

  Aru frowned. “What happened to ‘I don’t take selfies because I’m an artist’ or whatever?” she asked.

  “I made an exception, considering I pretty much delivered daylight to the world today,” he said and took a bow.

  Aru raised an eyebrow. “You fell on a cow.”

  “I rode a cow—”

  “But first you fell. I saw it happen and was just about to retrieve you when Ushas snatched you up,” said Brynne. “Remember? You were curled into a ball—”

  Aiden stuck his fingers in his ears. “Can’t hear you! The sun’s rays have burned away your negativity!”

  “Let him have this one,” Mini whispered to Aru and Brynne.

  Aru might have grumbled out loud, but on the inside, she wasn’t grumbling at all. Because even though her hair was singed from being too close to the red cows of Ushas, and even though her brain was being tugged in a hundred different directions, this was all she wanted. This bunch, together again. Mini forcing sunblock on everyone. Brynne wondering when they were going to eat. Aiden herding them to the exit and helping Mini—who was still weak—walk to the door. Sure, they were an odd assortment, but whoever thought cookies would go so well with milk? Or macaroni with cheese? Some things just fit together. This group was one of them.

  The moment they left the Grove of Ratri behind, reality dropped on their heads again. They had the thief’s song, and they had Mini back, but there was still so much to do and barely three days left…. Already, the sun was beginning its trek across the world.

  Sage Durvasa was waiting for them in the cosmic gallery, levitating above the ground as he scribbled in the air.

  “We did it!” said Aru triumphantly, propping up Mini as proof.

  Mini weakly pressed her palms together in greeting.

  Durvasa didn’t even look their way. “What do you want? Congratulations?”

  Aru’s shoulders dropped. “No. But we could use more of your help?”

  “I didn’t help. That would be against the rules.”

  “Fine, how about more of your not-help?” asked Brynne. “And some food.”

  “Or a nap,” said Mini tiredly, but then she brightened. “Wait! I think I’ve got one in my backpack! From the warehouse!”

  Aru, who had been carrying Mini’s backpack, dropped it and opened the zipper. Sure enough, a small bar labeled POWER NAP shone at the bottom of her bag. It looked like a Hershey bar. Aru unwrapped it and handed it to Mini, who chomped it down in two bites. Instantly, the pallor of her skin improved and her eyes were more alert.

  “Much better,” she said, patting her stomach.

  Brynne’s stomach grumbled noticeably and she stared longingly at Mini’s bag.

  “So…” started Aiden, “about that not-help?”

  But the sage didn’t answer. Instead, he continued to write out petty curses, pondering aloud. “This fiendish girl cut up someone’s dress…. How to repay her, I wonder?”

  Aru cleared her throat, trying to get the sage’s attention, but he was deep in thought. The only way to make Durvasa pay heed was, it seemed, to talk about what he wanted to talk about.

  “What if you cursed her to have really itchy tags that she can’t take off without ruining her clothes?”

  Durvasa paused for a second, then nodded. “Amateurish…but serviceable. And how about a person who put worms in someone else’s spaghetti as a prank?”

  Brynne looked appalled. “How would they like it if all their food was always too hot or too cold? I hate that.”

  Durvasa grinned. “I suspect they would not like it at all…. And what curse would be appropriate for a person who tied someone else’s shoes together and laughed when they tripped?”

  Aru had nothing to suggest, but Mini did. Her cheeks turned red, and Aru suspected that the exact same scenario had happened to her once.

  “Maybe one shoe should always feel more tied than the other? They can never fix it.”

  “Ah, how delightfully inconvenient!” said Durvasa, clapping merrily.

  Only then did Aru notice that Aiden was looking at all three girls as if they’d sprouted horns.

  “You guys are…”

  “Clever?” suggested Aru.

  “Just?” asked Mini.

  “Powerful?” tried Brynne.

  Aiden crossed his arms. “I was going to say diabolical.”

  “Meh,” said Aru. “Close enough.”

  “You were of no help to me,” said Durvasa, putting down his curse pen. “And so now I will be of no help to you. Though it seems that you are in need of plenty of not-help. You claim to have the song of the thief—”

  “I do!” Brynne blurted out, pointing at the necklace, but Durvasa held up his hand.

  “Not now,” he said.

  “And I know the thief’s name! The naginis told me in exchange for my energy. That’s why I was so tired!” Mini said rapidly.

  Aru eyed the remains of the power-nap chocolate bar. Must have been pretty potent.

  “It’s—” started Mini.

  “Not here,” Durvasa said tightly.

  It seemed to Aru as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. Durvasa—the all-powerful sage who had caused the gods to lose their immortality—was scared of someone overhearing. Who? A spy working for the Sleeper? Aru cursed herself—yet again—for letting her dad get away.

  “What are we waiting for?” Brynne demanded.

  “Be patient,” Aiden told her through a clenched-teeth smile. “I’m sure the wise sage knows what he’s doing.”

  Durvasa led them past the display case of cursed-people statues and down
a hallway lined with what looked like offices. Durvasa opened one of the doors and gestured them inside.

  Usually, whenever Aru entered an office, it looked a certain way. Always the same faded carpet the color of dead dreams. A brown desk with a framed picture of a family on it. A poster of a sunset with a slogan like Live. Laugh. Love. And, of course, a plant that she could never be sure was real or fake (Aru could never resist tearing a leaf to find out; she always felt a bit guilty or strangely victorious).

  This was not that kind of office.

  It was a chamber in space, which was disorienting at first. There were no ugly carpets or posters. Instead, there was a fathomless black atmosphere, studded with stars, above, below, and all around them, sculpting the illusion of a room. But they didn’t fall through it—their feet walked on an invisible floor. A strange luminescence surrounded them. The room felt at once impossibly huge and cozy.

  “Welcome to the astral plane,” said Durvasa, his voice echoing.

  Aru, who had only been on a plane once, was convinced that this was not a plane, but she chose not to point that out to Durvasa.

  “You mean, where people go when they die?” asked Brynne, her eyes wide.

  “No, that’s the Kingdom of Death,” said Mini. “We went there last time.”

  Aru could tell that Durvasa was struggling to control his temper. After a deep, cleansing breath, he continued. “At the DMV,” he said, “the astral plane is a sanctuary. What you discover here is considered sacred. It will not be revealed to anyone else.” Then he stepped back.

  Mini gestured for Brynne to give her the soul song. Gingerly, Brynne took the red orb off her neck and placed it on the floor. Before she stood, she dragged her finger across the stars speckling the floor, like they were sugar crystals on a plate.

  “The name, child,” said Durvasa.

  In the astral plane, the song orb had taken on a strange pulsing glow, reminding Aru that this was actually a part of someone’s soul. Someone had wanted the god of love’s arrow so dearly that they’d been willing to part with their very essence. When Aru leaned close, she thought she heard the orb make a sound…like a soft sigh.

  Mini knelt on the floor and in a clear, loud voice said, “The name of the thief is Surpanakha.”

  Sage Durvasa Curses

  The moment Mini uttered the thief’s name, the soul song flared. Saying the name was supposed to unlock the thief’s location, but the image forming within the orb was still too hazy to make out.

  “It will take a while,” said Durvasa.

  Aru sat on the floor and sighed, resting her chin on her hand. Magic was supposed to be fast! Actually, it was a lot like the Internet—sometimes speedy, other times taking forever just to buffer one measly cat video.

  “Sur-pa-na-kha,” said Aiden, drawing out every syllable.

  Soor-pah-nah-kuh.

  It was really hard for Aru to say the name aloud without bursting into the “Supercalifragilistic­expialidocious!” song, but she restrained herself. Where had she heard that name before?

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Mini, looking at Aru. “You’re wondering where you’ve heard that name before.”

  “Can you read minds, too?!”

  “No, you were humming that Mary Poppins song, so I just guessed.”

  “Oh.”

  “Surpanakha is the sister of the demon king Ravana, remember?” asked Mini. “Boo taught us.”

  At the mention of Boo, Aru felt a wave of sadness. Poor Boo…. Wherever he was, she really hoped someone had managed to smuggle him some Oreos.

  “Yeah, I remember,” said Aru. “She’s the one who got her nose cut off, right?”

  “Yup,” said Mini.

  “Why?” asked Brynne, reflexively protecting her own nose with her hand.

  “In the stories from the Ramayana,” said Mini, “Surpanakha attacked Sita, Lord Rama’s wife. Rama and his brother Laxmana fought her off. In the process, Laxmana hacked off Surpanakha’s nose.”

  “Yeah, but why the nose?” wondered Aiden.

  “Was hers superspecial?” asked Aru. “Like an elephant trunk that could pick up a sword and stab people?”

  The others laughed softly, but Durvasa’s deep voice cut through their smiles. “It was an act of humiliation.”

  The great sage had chosen not to sit anywhere near Surpanakha’s soul song. Instead, he stood off to the side, as if the object intimidated him.

  “According to the stories,” he went on, “Surpanakha was so dazzled by the beauty of Lord Rama and Lord Laxmana that she offered herself to them in marriage. They refused her. One might say they were not as kind as they could have been.”

  “Yeah…but wasn’t she hideous and demonic-looking…gray skin, red eyes, fangs the size of your arm?” asked Aru.

  “Not everyone with rakshasa or asura blood looks demonic,” said Brynne grumpily. “That’s a stereotype.”

  Aiden nodded. “Plus, I just don’t think people should be mean to someone because they don’t like the way they look.”

  Aru felt a little chastened. “You’re right. I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

  “S’okay,” said Brynne, thumping her back. Except, because Brynne was ridiculously strong, Aru almost went sprawling.

  “So what happened to her after that?” Mini asked.

  “She ran back to her brother, the ten-headed demon king,” said Aiden.

  Dimly, Aru recalled the images she had seen on Kamadeva’s floor. The rakshasi fleeing through the forest, then complaining to her brother about the injustice that she had suffered…and describing Rama’s beautiful wife. In the tales, her brother became obsessed with Sita and kidnapped her from Rama.

  Surpanakha’s humiliation…her pain…had started a great war.

  “That story is thousands of years old,” said Mini. “Why would she be stirring up trouble now?”

  Aiden turned his camera over in his hands. It was a habit of his, Aru had noticed. He always reached for Shadowfax when he was thinking through something or trying to remember a fact. When he caught her looking, Aru quickly found the spot of black nothingness beside him intensely interesting.

  “Yeah,” echoed Aiden. “Why steal Kamadeva’s bow and arrow?”

  In the background, Durvasa said nothing, but his posture seemed rigid.

  “Maybe she wants vengeance?” suggested Aru. “Aiden, you were the one who noticed that the thief was only choosing men as her victims.”

  “It’s ancient history!” said Brynne. “Even I don’t stay mad that long.”

  “Takshaka has stayed mad at Arjuna all these years, though,” said Aru, shivering as she remembered the intense hatred in his milky cobra eyes.

  “What’d you—” Aiden started, before catching himself. “I mean, what did Arjuna do?”

  Aru fiddled with her sleeve. She didn’t like the answer, because it was cruel. It flew in the face of everything she’d been taught about the great hero.

  “He burned down Takshaka’s forest,” she finally admitted. “Lots of creatures died, including Takshaka’s wife.”

  “That’s awful…” said Mini. “Why’d he do it?”

  Aru looked to Durvasa, but the sage had closed his eyes. Perhaps he was meditating.

  “I don’t know,” said Aru. She wished she weren’t telling the truth.

  Aru glanced down at the song between them. The smoke inside the orb had changed to what now resembled liquid silver, but it was still swirling around.

  “Maybe Surpanakha is just waiting for the right time to strike,” said Brynne. “It definitely fits her name.”

  “What’s her name mean?”

  “Oh! I know!” said Mini, raising her hand.

  Aru laughed. “This isn’t school. You don’t need to raise your hand.”

  “Right,” said Mini, flushing. “Um, it’s Sanskrit. It translates to she whose fingernails are like slicing blades.”

  “Yikes.” Aru shuddered. “Who gives a kid a name like that?”

&nbs
p; A couple of years ago, there was a French girl in her class named Hermengarde, but everyone just called her Ehrmagawd! But at least Hermengarde had been funny and nice. By all accounts, Surpanakha was not.

  By now, the soul song had finished its activation sequence. The orb shivered a little before it melted into a silver pool. A scene rippled across it, and the four of them leaned forward to watch.

  Surpanakha was moving past what looked like a row of men. Aru saw a variety of crisp suits and rumpled sweatshirts, boots and bare feet. The view was low, making Aru think Surpanakha must be short—until she realized they were seeing things not through the demoness’s eyes, but from the perspective of where her soul had lived in her body: heart level. Aru kind of wished Surpanakha would lean way back. Looking out at chest level basically meant just seeing a bunch of buttons.

  The image in the mirror went still, as if Surpanakha had stopped walking. She reached up toward one of the men—perhaps to stroke his cheek, it was hard to tell. Aru thought Surpanakha’s skin would be gray and mottled, her nails long and ragged. But her hand was a warm brown, with trimmed nails painted a shade of red.

  “Soon,” said Surpanakha. “You are nearly enough in number….”

  Aru didn’t know what surprised her more—the fact that the vision had audio, or that this was the voice of the hideous fanged demoness. Aru had assumed that someone named after terrible nails would have a screeching voice, but Surpanakha’s tone was sweet and melodious.

  She must have been talking to some Heartless, Aru realized. But where were they? The soul song was supposed to reveal the thief’s location, but she didn’t see anything recognizable. Peering between the row of men for any clues, Aru glimpsed a shimmering white landscape. Snow? It almost looked like mother-of-pearl. Was it…moving?

  “Princess!” called a voice behind Surpanakha.

  She whirled around, and the view showed a naga man slithering toward her. Aru recognized him immediately—Takshaka! He was in his half-snake/half-man form.

  “What is it?” asked Surpanakha sharply. She didn’t sound so sweet and melodious now.

  “I merely came to celebrate with you,” said Takshaka smoothly. “We’ve almost gained access to the labyrinth. Once we have that, the amrita will be ours, and we can leave this miserable place.”