The three of them stopped at the wide aisle of frozen foods and started taking inventory: black bean soup, lunch rolls, pizzas, bagels, pizza bagels, tripe, codfish, catfish, I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-fish fish. Gross. Aru waited for her perception to change, for magic to prickle on the outside of her vision like television static. But she didn’t feel any different, and her hopes of seeing any magical toilet paper were quickly fading.
“So this is where every Otherworldly person does their shopping?” asked Mini.
“And weapons perusing, apparently,” said Aru.
Not to mention key-to-the-Kingdom-of-Death browsing.
In all of Aru’s previous grocery shopping, she’d never once picked up a gallon of milk and then wandered over to an aisle labeled SHARP DEADLY THINGS. (Unfortunately.)
“The Night Bazaar has had to adapt, change form, and account for things like families moving to new countries and imaginations evolving,” explained Boo.
“So what did it used to look—” Aru started.
“Just read the items,” said Boo, irritated.
Mini yawned. “Fine…more pizza rolls…why do there need to be so many different brands of pizza rolls? Peanut butter sandwiches. Frozen salmon.” She stopped. “Did you know you can get E. coli from salmon? It can kill you.”
Aru, who was shivering from all the refrigeration, scowled. “Anything and everything can kill you, Mini! You don’t need to point it out all the time.”
Mini straightened her shoulders. “My mother always says that knowledge is power. I’m just trying to make us more powerful.”
“And my mother says that ignorance is bliss,” said Aru under her breath.
Muttering the words made her pause, though. Ignorance hadn’t been bliss. Not even close. Bliss meant happiness, but here Aru was, not knowing who she was, where she was, or what she was supposed to do next. Had her mother said that because she had chosen to keep Aru in the dark?
Maybe her mom had done it to protect her. She did that a lot, even though Aru never understood until days (or even months) later. Like the time her mom had tearfully apologized when no one showed up at Aru’s birthday party during third grade. She confessed that she’d accidentally thrown away all the invitations. They spent the day at the movies and had breakfast for dinner instead (which was awesome), but Aru had been furious. It wasn’t until a year later that Aru learned the truth from a classmate. None of the invited kids had wanted to come, so her mom had lied to protect Aru’s feelings.
Aru thought back to Mini’s story about showing up to a birthday party on the wrong date. Mini had no idea how much they had in common….
Mini started to drone on again about the aisle’s offerings. “Frozen waffles, frozen pancakes, frozen stars, frozen wings, frozen—”
“Wait a sec…” started Aru.
Mini’s eyes became unfocused. “Frozen prophecies, frozen orreries, frozen gold, frozen lead—”
Aru looked around, trying to see signs of magic. Slowly, her vision changed. The supermarket faded. The cement floor transformed to packed earth. The fluorescent ceiling lights stopped flickering.
Her bones felt heavy. She grew sleepy.
And then…then it was like dozing off in class. One moment of perfect, heavy-lidded happiness.
That was ruined by the sound of a bell.
Except it wasn’t a bell; it was a loud squawking sound that came from overhead. The warehouse ceiling was gone, and a bird soared in the sky above them. Its wide wings were the color of evening turning into nighttime. Half of the sky was sunlit; half of it was moonlit.
“Whoa,” breathed Mini.
It looked as if someone had taken an ancient marketplace and squashed it together with a modern grocery store. Beyond a pane of glass, aisles stretched far ahead in every direction. From what Aru could see, they held a combination of shelves, displays, small shops, and tents. One shop sold strange bolts of silk whose patterns looked like spun moonbeams and ribbons of rushing water. Next to it was an Apple Store.
There were still metal grocery carts, but they were…alive. The metal grilles curved up and down like mouths, and an extra set of handles slanted like eyebrows. When someone came near them, tiny spikes of metal rolled up and down the grocery cart like bristling fur. They seemed a bit feral. A couple of them growled. One woman with a snake tail cursed loudly as she wrestled with her cart. Finally, when she took hold of its bright red bar with both hands, it gave in and allowed itself to be steered by the triumphant naga woman.
Three glowing signs hovered in the distance, but Aru couldn’t read what they said. When she started walking toward them, she felt a sharp nip on her ear.
“Stay in line!” said Boo.
Only then did Aru realize they were in a long line in front of the entrance to the Night Bazaar, which glimmered on the other side of a pane of glass.
“This is absurd,” said the naga in front of her. The snake woman turned to her husband, her cobra hood flaring. “I’m going to miss my haircut appointment. It took me months to book.”
Her husband sighed. As he did, a forked tongue flicked out of his mouth. He rubbed the back of his head and sank lower into the bronze coils of his tail.
“It’s a different world, jaani,” he said. “Less safe. Less secure. Plus, there’s rumors that none of the gods can find their vehicles—”
Mini pulled on Aru’s sleeve. “Did you hear that?”
“Obviously, Mini. I’m standing right here.”
Mini blushed. “Do you think they know about the Sl—”
Before she could finish, Boo pecked her hand. The warning on his face was clear: Don’t say his name.
“The You-Know-Who?” she whispered.
“He’s not Voldemort!”
“Well, I don’t know what else to call him!”
Aru knew better than to mention the Sleeper in the Night Bazaar. It would probably be the equivalent of shouting Fire! in a theater. Everyone here was clearly on guard. A frantic kind of energy was coming off the crowd, as if they were all waiting for something to go terribly wrong. Aru even caught a couple of muffled conversations:
“—the world is simply stopping. Whole groups of people and neighborhoods just utterly frozen! But the pattern makes no sense! Some place in the southeastern United States, another in a strip mall in the Midwest?”
“I’m sure there’s a good reason—”
“The mortals are befuddled….”
Aru tried to shrink. If anyone looked at her, would they see her guilt? All she’d done was light a lamp that everyone thought was going to get lit anyway (just maybe not so soon…). It felt almost cartoonish, like someone throwing a tiny snowball at a mountain and causing an avalanche.
The line moved quickly. Within minutes, the three of them were standing before a muscular man with the head of a bull. Aru recognized this type of Otherworld person from the paintings in the museum. He was a raksha. Aru almost panicked. But not all demons were bad. It was one of the things she liked best when her mother told her the stories: villains could be heroic, and heroes could do evil. Makes you wonder who the villains really are, her mother used to say. Everyone has a bit of good and bad in them.
The raksha regarded them with bored black eyes. “Empty your pockets, please. Take off anything remotely enchanted and place it in the bins at your left.”
A couple of crystal baskets floated to the left of them. On the right was a conveyer belt that looked like it was made from molten gold. Straight ahead curved a sparkling archway that reminded Aru of the body scanners at airports.
“If you happen to be carrying a miniature universe, please place it in one of the baskets on the right. If it is unregistered, a Devourer of Worlds will eliminate it. If you would like to make a complaint, don’t bother. And if you are a cursed being or under an enchanted form, please notify me prior to stepping through security.”
Mini was the first to go through. She placed the compact in one of the glass baskets. She was about to walk through when the raksha raised a hand.