At first, the fireflies had simply floated through the darkness, heating the air. But then they’d begun to land on the boulders and the branches of the giant forest. Now it looked like a golden net had been stretched over the forest, but it was eerily still.
The smell of something charred hit her. A burnt circle appeared right next to her toe.
“Oh no,” said Aru softly.
Whatever the fireflies touched, they kindled.
At her back, she heard crackling, the sound of brush catching fire. Smoke plumed into the air. The fireflies reflected off the shiny forest leaves, looking like possessed Christmas lights.
Aru swiped the bow and arrow from the ground and took off running.
The fireflies followed close behind. A flame nearly scorched her ear.
Aru dove behind a rock and peeked out. The forest was on fire. Literally. Metaphorically. All the–allys.
She fumbled with the bow and arrow. They were abnormally heavy and awkward. The arrow alone must have weighed as much as her backpack on a Monday before Christmas break.
“There—” she grunted, “is—no—way—this—is—going—to—work—”
Finally, she slid the arrow into place. This shouldn’t be difficult. Katniss and Legolas made it look easy enough. She plucked at the heavy string. It cut her fingers.
“Owowow!” she wailed, dropping the bow and arrow.
What did the palace mean? If you aim true, you’ll escape. Aim at what? She looked around, scanning the tops of the forest trees and the branches underneath. But there was no target.
How could she possibly be like Arjuna? She couldn’t even pull a bowstring, let alone do one of his famous feats, like shoot an arrow through the eye of a fish just by looking at its reflection. Even the Ping-Pong ball in her pocket was of no help in this situation.
“Exit…If I were an exit, where would I hide?”
She was beginning to feel uncomfortably warm. Was that a swarm of insects coming her way? Or was it just her imagination? Aru snuck a second glance from her hiding spot behind the rock.
Nope. It was definitely not her imagination.
The fireflies had converged into what looked like one great big glowing bug. It pulsed with fire. With one flap of its wings, three trees turned to smoking ash.
Aru uttered a word that, at school, would have gotten her thrown into detention for a week.
The firefly-nightmare-monstrosity flew closer. Aru bolted from the rock and sped into the deep thicket of trees. The shadows of a thousand fires loomed in front of her. Heat glowed on her back, and still Aru ran.
She flew past a valley of boulders and stumpy trees and found a stream flowing from the mouth of a cave. Aru jumped into the water and winced. This was the problem with creeks. They looked so inviting, but beneath the water, the ground was always sharp and slick. Jagged rocks punctured the bottoms of her feet as she waded toward the cave.
Once she got there, Aru plopped down on the cold, wet floor of the cave to catch her breath. She could still hear the bzzz bzzz of insect wings nearby.
“How awful is my life that I’m hoping for a giant fiery toad to come and eat the giant fiery fly?” she muttered.
She examined the soles of her feet. For an illusion, this was sickeningly realistic. Her physical condition—cut-up skin and a heart trying to break free of her ribs—didn’t feel fake. And even if all of this was fake, not even her fake self wanted to be the victim of a giant fake bug.
If Mini were here, she could make an enchantment of a giant shoe and squash the nightmare creature. Once again Aru found herself missing Boo big-time. He’d know what to do. At the very least, his constant stream of insults would help distract her.
FOCUS, Shah!
Aru tugged her hair. Think, think, think. But brains are uncooperative. At that moment, the only thing running through her head was the tagline of a commercial for acne cream: Don’t pop and poke! Try Dr. Polk’s!
“Pop and poke,” she sang in an off-key, slightly panicked voice.
She reached beside her for the arrow.
Her hand hit cold stone.
Arrow…
She turned, scanning the cave floor. But there was nothing around her but wet rocks.
The memory flashed painfully in her head: she had left the arrow behind when she fled the burning forest.
Around her, the cave began to warm up. Steam wafted off the creek. A cloud of fireflies appeared at the mouth of the cave. The heat became harsher, the light brighter. Aru clawed at her throat. It was getting harder to breathe.
Aru had no arrow. No athletic prowess.
No hope.
She started nervously scratching at her neck and felt something cold there. The monsoon pendant! Monsoon had said it would hit any target. But what exactly was she supposed to aim at?
If you aim true, you’ll escape this illusion.
But how could she escape an illusion when it didn’t exist?
“It’s not like I can escape my head!” she said, tugging her hair.
Wait. That wasn’t entirely true, was it? She had escaped her own head. Lots of times.
Aru thought back to every time she’d woken up from a bad dream. She would bolt upright, shot straight out of a nightmare just by remembering what it was: a nightmare.
All of her nightmares were the same. She dreamed about coming home and finding the apartment empty, cleaned out. Her mother hadn’t even bothered to leave a note saying good-bye. Aru had that nightmare whenever her mom left for business trips. But even when her nightmares seemed so real—down to the scratchy carpet of their apartment that would always be caked with dust—they were nothing more than flimsy images shot through with fear. That was the real thing: the feeling. Everything else was…
A lie.
The flames licked closer. Light and heat splashed across her face.
She closed her eyes and let go of Monsoon’s pendant. She could feel in her bones that pretending like this whole thing was real wasn’t the right thing to do. This time, no acne commercial flickered through her thoughts. Instead, she recalled the story of Arjuna and the fish’s eye.
In the tale, the archery teacher of the Pandavas had tied a wooden fish to a tree branch. He instructed the brothers to shoot an arrow at the fish’s eye. But they could only aim by looking at the reflection of the wooden fish in the water below them.
The teacher asked Yudhistira, the oldest brother, what he saw in the reflection. He said, The sky, the tree, the fish. The teacher told him not to shoot. He asked Bhima, the second oldest brother, what he saw. He said, The branch of the tree, the fish. The teacher asked him not to shoot.
And then the teacher asked Arjuna what he saw. He said, The eye of the fish.
Only he was allowed to shoot.
It was a tale about focusing, about peeling away distractions one by one until all that was left was the target. The eye of the fish.
The flames touched Aru’s feet. She grimaced, but didn’t move. She closed her eyes.
The bow and arrow were only distractions.
The real way out…had always been in her mind.
She pictured Mini and the museum, her mother and the memories. She pictured Boo’s feathery chest puffed out in pride. She pictured the red, blinking light of Burton Prater’s phone. She pictured freedom.
It wasn’t an all-of-a-sudden thing. She wasn’t yanked from one place to the next. She didn’t open her eyes and see a new world where there had been an old one. Instead, she felt something like a latch unclasping inside her.
People are a lot like magical pockets. They’re far bigger on the inside than they appear to be on the outside. And it was that way with Aru. She found a place deep within her that had been hidden until now. It was a place of silence that seemed deafening. It was a feeling of narrowness turned vast, as if she could hide small worlds within her. This was what escape was: discovering a part of herself that no one else could find.
Aru reached. She imagined a door to the Otherworld with a tether of light wrapped around its handle. She grabbed on to that tether…
And pulled.
In that moment, she could no longer feel the flames. She could no longer hear the buzzing of cruel insect wings. She heard only her heartbeat pounding against the silence. She saw only her dreams of freedom turning bright and wild, like a rainbow glimpsed through a prism.
And in that moment, she escaped.
The Palace’s Story