“I dunno,” said Mini, shrugging. “That’s what my mom always says: ‘Go to school, study hard, then go to medical school, study even harder, and marry a nice doctor.’”
A minute of silence went by. For the first time in her life, Aru had nothing to say. What could she say after seeing those visions in the pool? It felt like her life had been completely readjusted.
Was this why she never saw her mom smile? Because she’d had to rebuild her whole life as if she were just some room in the Palace of Illusions? She’d done it not just for the Sleeper…but also for her?
Mini touched her shoulder. “You okay?”
“Not even a little bit.”
Mini gasped. “You didn’t even try to lie. Do you have a fever?” She smacked her hand against Aru’s forehead.
“Ow!”
“Sorry,” said Mini sheepishly. “My patient bedside manner needs some improvement….”
“I’m not your patient!” snapped Aru, batting at Mini’s hand. Then she sighed. “Sorry. I know this isn’t your fault.”
“It’s okay, Aru. But what do we do now?” asked Mini. “Urvashi said that we’d get the answer about how to defeat the Sleeper from the Pool of the Past….”
“And we did,” said Aru. “But it’s not exactly helpful. You heard my mom. She said that she’d used his secrets to bind him, not kill him.”
“Right, and she said he can’t be killed by anything made of metal, wood, or stone. Or anything dry or wet. Your mom bound him with her heart, but I feel like she meant that more metaphorically than literally. I have no idea how she did that, do you?”
Aru’s head was spinning. “Nope. And if we did know, what’re we going to do with a bunch of hearts? Throw them at his head?”
“So what does that leave?”
“We could pelt him with slightly undercooked pasta?”
Mini rolled her eyes. “What about animals?” she asked.
“It has to be us,” said Aru. “That’s what Urvashi said. Besides, he’s a demon. Even if we found a hungry man-eating tiger, it would probably turn on us—the humans—before it turned on him.”
“Maybe slightly undercooked pasta is the right call.”
“I could use a pasta sword.”
“Pasta mace.”
“Pasta club.”
“Pasta…pasta bow?”
“Weak.”
“Pasta lightning bolt?” joked Mini.
“Wait,” said Aru. “The lightning bolt. It’s not dry or wet—”
“Or metal or stone or wood!”
Aru’s grip around the ball form of Vajra became clawlike. When she blinked, she saw the Sleeper in the hospital room, wearing the I’M A DAD! T-shirt.
Her eyes burned. Her home dad hadn’t left them at all…he’d just been locked away. In a lamp. By her mom. This is so messed up, thought Aru.
He’d wanted to be her home dad.
Aru’s throat tightened, and tears pressed at her eyes. Then she forced herself to sit up straight. It didn’t matter what he used to be like. The truth was that the Sleeper from the Night Bazaar was no longer the man from her mother’s vision. Now he was cruel and cold. He was evil. He’d hurt Boo and threatened to kill their families and them if they didn’t bring him all three keys. He wasn’t her dad.
Aru tossed the ball form of Vajra in the air and caught it with one hand. “Let’s do this.”
But even as she said the words, a thread of misgiving wrapped around her rib cage and squeezed tight.
They stood up and began silently walking between the ponds, ducking the low-hanging incense burners. Aru knew, deep in her bones, that this was where the Kingdom of Death ended: on the brink of new life. The atmosphere felt like that of a crowd holding its breath with anticipation. The light on the pearly walls was ever-shifting, ever-changing; the colors never settled on one shade, always glimmering with new potential. Like life starting anew.
Aru took a deep breath. They had made it through the kingdom.
Now the question was: Could they get out?
Can You Give Me Better Hair on the Way Out?
It’s challenging to shoulder all the stuff you get from the Kingdom of Death.
Dee Dee (Mini’s Death Danda) kept popping out of its compact form and turning into a gigantic stick. Twice it almost put out Aru’s eye. She was beginning to think the weapons had a sense of humor. At random times Aru’s weapon, Vajra, liked to shift into lightning-bolt form and zip across the sky before turning into a ball and bouncing in front of her. Aru imagined it saying, Throw me at a demon! Do it, do it, do it! I wanna play. Squirrel!
“I’m not really even sure of all the stuff this thing can do,” said Mini, shaking the danda.
Aru raised her eyebrow. That danda stick belonged to the god of death and justice. It had probably beat up its fair share of demons and also punished a bunch of souls. And now Mini was shaking it like a remote control that had stopped working.
“Maybe it’s like a video game, and you get to access more powers and levels once you complete something?” Mini guessed.
“Well, we got one demon, shopped at a magic Costco, and made it through the Kingdom of Death….What else does our video game magic want?”
“Maybe to defeat the real demon?”
“Oh, yeah, true.”
Mini awkwardly cradled Dee Dee. “Aru, do you think these weapons are a sign that they like us?”
Aru didn’t have to ask who they were. She meant their godly fathers.
“The danda is his most precious possession,” reasoned Mini. “He wouldn’t just give it to someone he didn’t care about, right?”
“I’m sure he cares,” said Aru. “Just, you know, in his own way? In the stories, the Dharma Raja took the form of a dog and kept Yudhistira company at the end of his life. Yudhistira refused to enter heaven without him. I think it was some kind of test? If your soul dad is willing to become a dog just to keep you company, that means they like you at least a little bit.”
Mini grinned. “I like the way you think, Shah.”
Aru dramatically flipped her hair over her shoulder, which was a bad idea, because it was still damp from whale spit and ended up smacking her in the eye. Smooth.
“Do you think it’s the same for Lord Indra?” asked Mini.
Aru eyed Vajra, who was happily bouncing beside her in a way that reminded Aru of someone excitedly nodding. If her mom could care from a distance, why not her dad?
“I hope so,” said Aru after a moment’s pause. “My mom told me it was Indra who taught Arjuna how to use all the celestial weapons. He even tried to sabotage Arjuna’s nemesis.”
That reminded Aru of the mom at school who’d gotten banned from the library after tearing out certain pages in books just so her kid’s rival classmate couldn’t do his research. (The librarian had screamed, Book murder! And now all the parents were scared of her.) Indra probably would have approved of that kind of sabotage.
“And he gave you his famous lightning bolt,” added Mini. “He must care.”
The thought made Aru smile.
Once they were away from the Chamber of Pools, they turned the corner toward the violent sounds of machinery. A large archway was emblazoned with the sign:
REMAKE, REBUILD, RELIVE!
REINCARNATION MANUFACTURING SERVICES
This, Aru guessed, must be where souls were fitted for new bodies and new lives.
A spiderlike creature made of clockwork and gears scuttled by. It took one look at them and started screaming.
“BODIES!” it shouted. “Out-of-commission bodies running rampant!”
Another creature, this one shaped a bit like a small dragon with fuzzy wings that trailed on the ground, bustled past. It wasn’t made out of clock parts; it was furred…brindled like those dogs that stood watch outside of the Kingdom of Death, and its eyes were a warm shade of gold and slitted at the pupil like a cat’s.
“How’d you get in?” asked the furred thing. “Rogue souls are—”
“Rogue souls?” repeated Aru, delighted in spite of the weirdness surrounding them. “That’s a great name for a band.”