“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! Just 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?”