Beside her, Mini paled. “Aru, that’s it! I think I know where we are!”
Mini closed her eyes and put her hand on the waterfall. She groped around, and then her hand abruptly stopped moving. She must have found what she was looking for, because her eyes opened suddenly. Behind the waterfall, Aru heard the faintest unclasping sound. Like a key sliding into a lock.
The next instant, the waterfall swung open.
It hadn’t been a waterfall at all, but a secret door.
“Just like in the stories about the Palace of Illusions,” breathed Mini.
“Is this your wisdom cookie speaking, or you?”
“Me,” said Mini, frowning. “I only remember the story because of the carnival my mom took me and my brother to. She brought it up when we went to the place with all the weird mirrors—”
“You mean the fun house?”
“Right, that. She told me the Pandavas had lived in a place like that. A famous demon king, who was also a really great architect, made it for them.”
Aru remembered hearing that story. In exchange for their sparing his life, the demon king Mayasura agreed to build the Pandava brothers the most beautiful palace the world had ever seen. It came with illusions that befuddled the mind and heightened the senses. They were so convincing that when an enemy prince (who was also the Pandavas’ cousin) came to visit, he fell through a floor tile that was actually water, and he nearly broke his foot jumping into a pool that turned out to be cleverly polished sapphires.
“What if this is the original palace?” asked Mini. “Maybe that’s how I knew how to open the door?”
“So what if it is? It’s not like we’ll remember anything about it from our former lives. It’s just a house, no big deal. And I doubt it’s the real Palace of Illusions. What would it be doing here, anyway? We didn’t reside in the Kingdom of Death….”
Mini frowned. “Uncle Chitrigupta said we’d find all kinds of things here, including forgotten things. Maybe when people forgot about the palace, it moved to the forest?”
“It’s a house! Not a person,” said Aru.
But Mini didn’t look so convinced. The path led to the waterfall door, and there were no other routes around it. “We have to go through the palace, don’t we?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “I really don’t want to. I couldn’t even get through the Haunted Mansion in Disney World. My dad had to take me out.”
“Well, if we have to go through it, it’s going to be fine. It’s a palace. It might be a bit weird inside, but we’ve seen a lot of weird stuff on this trip! Like a magical-door crocodile, and Door of Death dogs, and I don’t even want to think about what else. You can get past a couple of stones, some statues, and some optical illusions. Trust me.”
Mini took a deep breath. “Fine, if you say so.”
“Plus, think about it this way: if there are any enchantments inside, you have the magical compact. Just swing it around and look at things out of the corner of your eye.”
Mini nodded, threw back her shoulders, and pushed open the door.
Aru walked in after her. The stone door closed behind them, cutting off the sound of the waterfall and leaving a deep silence. Was this how everyone had once entered the palace of the Pandavas? For a moment, Aru wondered about the life she had apparently lived thousands of years ago. How many times had her former self run into the hard waterfall? Or maybe Arjuna had never hit his head on anything. It didn’t make any sense how they could share the same soul and be completely different.
Beneath her feet, dust caked the palace floor. She caught the sheen of lapis lazuli tiles that must have been brilliant in their day. Now they were cracked. The air had that unstirred quality of an abandoned house.
Or a mausoleum.
“I bet it was really pretty once,” said Mini.
Aru grimaced as she looked around her. Some dust—at least she hoped it was dust and not pulverized skeletons or something equally gross—fell onto her shoulder from the crumbling ceilings. “Yeah…once.”
“Huh. What’s this?” asked Mini.
She touched a cobwebbed torch on the wall. Aru wondered if this was going to be one of those Indiana Jones moments and now the floor was going to open up beneath them.
Instead, the torch glowed.
“Mini, ‘what’s this’ is never a good question in a movie—”
But she didn’t get a chance to finish. Around them, the air began to crackle. The shadowy palace halls brightened as torches flickered to life along all the walls.
And then the sound of cantering hooves thundered through the palace. For one sparkling moment, Aru wondered whether Indra’s seven-headed horse was coming to save them and get them out of here. Instead, a herd of horses charged toward them. If a herd of horses were charging at her in any other situation, Aru would have turned and run. But these horses weren’t like any she’d ever seen.
For one thing, they were made of rose petals. Their eyes were bloodred blossoms, and their floral manes were the luminous pink of dawn. When they opened their mouths to neigh, Aru saw that their teeth were tightly furled white buds.
But when they got about a foot away from Aru, they burst. Petals rained down. In their wake, she could smell wildflowers and fresh rain. It would have been pleasant if it hadn’t been for the walls shaking soon after, and the deep, dark sound echoing around them:
“WHO DARES DISTURB THE PEACE OF THIS HOME?”
My Home, Not Yours! No Touchie!
“Technically, it’s our home,” said Aru.
“Maybe we shouldn’t—” started Mini.
Suddenly both of them were slammed, hard, against a wall by an unseen wind.
“Your home?” repeated the voice.
It took a moment for Aru to realize that it wasn’t some dude skulking in the shadows who was talking, but the palace itself. It shook with laughter. More dust (or pulverized skeletons, Aru was beginning to think was more likely) fell down on them. Hundreds of lights flashed on the walls. It looked a little like a movie theater coming to life. Except here, the broken tiles began to arrange themselves. They rolled across the floor until they formed a smile. Two bright braziers sparked alive, slanting into eyes.
“I do not think so,” said the palace. “This was once the seat of the Pandava brothers and their wife, Draupadi. You mere pinches of mortality are nothing compared to them. You cannot possess me!”
All the torches in the palace guttered at once. It was hard to remember that this was the Palace of Illusions and not of, say, nightmares.
Aru took Mini’s hand and tried to reassure her. “Whatever happens, it’s not real.”
“I think you should leave, little pinches,” said the palace.
The ceiling quaked. Wind blew in their faces. The ground beneath them glowed strangely, as if they were standing over an aquarium. An illusion flickered to life on the ground, showing a rocky cliff that dropped off into the sea.
“It’s not real, it’s not real,” whispered Aru under her breath.
A gigantic shark swam up right under her feet. It grinned and looked like it was saying, Come on in, the water’s great! Aru squeezed her eyes shut and gripped Mini’s hand even harder.
“We’re—we’re not going anywhere!” called out Mini. She had to draw in great big gulps of air to get the words out.
“Don’t you recognize us?” shouted Aru. It was easier to be brave (or fake bravery) with her eyes closed. At least that way she didn’t have to see the shark. She was pretty sure it was tying a napkin around its neck, clapping its fins, and saying, Dinner, dinner, dinner!
“We are the Pandavas!” said Mini. “We’ve got the souls of Yudhistira and Arjuna!”
“What?! Don’t say that! It sounds like we’ve kidnapped them!”
“I mean…” shouted Mini. “We’re the daughters of the Dharma Raja and Lord Indra!”
The wind stopped roaring. The fires sputtered to smoldering embers. When Aru opened her eyes, the floor was just that: a floor.
“You lie,” hissed the palace.