The TV Started It
Aru flexed her hand and Vajra changed from a ball to a glowing circlet around her wrist. It looked really cool. Too bad she didn’t know the first thing about what to do with it. Other than throw it at people, obviously.
Mini tried to turn the Death Danda into a staff, but it apparently didn’t feel like it. “Come on!” she whined, banging it a couple times on the ground.
Aru wondered whether this was what great warriors of yore did: hit their weapons and hope they started working right.
They walked to the tollbooth. The television was on, but no one was inside. The whole road looked as if a bunch of people had gotten out of this place as quickly as they could without looking back. She glanced at the TV, which was blaring the news:
“Reports are coming in about an airborne virus sweeping through the Northeast. Experts have been able to follow the trajectory from its point of origin somewhere in the Southeast, likely Georgia or Florida. Is there anything else you can tell us about the virus, Dr. Obafemi?”
A lovely woman with a tower of twisted braids smiled into the camera. “Well, Sean, at the moment we don’t know how the disease is being spread. It seems to be jumping from place to place. There was an outbreak in Atlanta. Then it hit a strip mall area north of Houston. In Iowa, we think the epicenter was a supermarket. It’s not acting like any virus we’ve seen before. Really, all we know is that the victims are unresponsive, as if sleeping while wide-awake. They are always found in a position as if the virus attacked quickly and caught them off guard—”
“Hence the name: the Frozen Syndrome!” The anchor laughed. “Too bad we can’t just let it go, let it go. Am I right, Doctor?”
The doctor’s tight smile could have cut glass. “Ha,” she mustered weakly.
“Well, that’s it for updates. Next, we’ll go to weather with Melissa, and then Terry for ‘Is Your Cat Obese?’ Stay tuned—”
Aru muted the television. Taking a deep breath, she glanced at her palm. The Sanskrit number had changed. Now it looked squigglier but still, thought Aru, like the number two. At least, she hoped it was. She held up her hand to show Mini:
“Does this mean that we’ve got one and a half days left?”
Mini studied her own palm, then bit her lip.
Don’t say it.
“One.” Mini looked up. “This is our last day.”
One last day.
Aru felt like someone had wrapped sharp wires around her heart. Her mom was depending on them. Boo was depending on them. All these people, she thought. She shuddered, remembering the word the doctor on TV had used: victims.
Mini seemed to know what she was thinking, because she placed her hand on Aru’s shoulder.
“Remember what Lord Hanuman said? At least all these frozen people aren’t in any pain.”
Yet.
Aru hadn’t forgotten what the Sleeper had threatened. She and Mini only had until the new moon (one day more…) before he would stop them from ever seeing their families again. And Boo would remain caged forever—if he was even alive.
But a few things the Sleeper hadn’t expected had come true:
They’d found their way into the Kingdom of Death.
They’d awakened their weapons.
And most important:
They now knew how to defeat him.
Mini seemed to be thinking the same thing, because she sighed. “We’re going to fight him, aren’t we?”
She didn’t say this as she might have before, with cowering and shrinking. She said it as if it were an unpleasant chore she was still going to honor. Like Today I will take out the trash. Another necessary evil.
Aru nodded.
“We know how to find him. He said that all we have to do is summon him with his name, but what about fighting?” Mini asked. “All we have are Vajra and Dee Dee, which I don’t even know how to use….”
Aru glanced at the desk where the television stood. The toll collector had a couple of knickknacks littered across the surface: a unicorn with its wings outstretched and a tiny clay bear. They gave Aru an idea.
“We’re going to have help, Mini.”
“You know, every time you say something like that, I keep expecting light to burst around your head,” said Mini. “Or really dramatic music to start playing.”
At that moment, the television decided it no longer wished to be mute. Mini flinched, and Dee Dee morphed from a compact into a staff just as a man dressed up as an Elvis impersonator sang, “You ain’t nothing but a bad mop, breaking all the time!”
A woman jumped in front of the camera. “Looking for alternative cleaning supplies?”
Aru touched the TV with her bracelet. The screen sizzled and popped. And then the whole thing went up in flames.
“That wasn’t the kind of music I had in mind,” said Mini, clutching Dee Dee tightly.
Aru stepped out of the booth. The air was so cold that it hurt to breathe. She didn’t know where they were, but she knew exactly where they were going.
“We’re going to summon him,” said Aru.
“To come here?” squeaked Mini. She coughed, then said in a deeper voice, “Here?”
“No,” said Aru. She thought about what the Pandava warrior Arjuna would have done when facing a demon. He would have formed a plan…a military strategy. That’s what he was best known for, after all: the way he chose to see the world around him. He would have tried to turn the war in his favor. And part of that meant picking the battleground. “We’ve got to go somewhere he’s not going to like. A place that will throw him off guard or distract him long enough to give us a fighting chance.” And then the right idea came to her: “The museum.”
Mini nodded. “His old prison. He won’t like it there. But how are we going to get there in time? I don’t think we should use the Otherworld networks. Something really weird happened when I used it to get to that island in the middle of the Ocean of Milk.”
“Valmiki’s mantra didn’t work?” asked Aru, frowning.
“It worked, but just barely. I don’t think it was strong enough. We need as much help as we can get. And we know that he is getting his own army ready.”
Aru remembered the Sleeper’s last words: Know that I am gathering my own friends. And trust me, you won’t like meeting them.
She shuddered. They needed more than just protection. They needed soldiers of their own. And those desk figurines of the unicorn and bear had given her the answer.
Aru raised her arms to the sky. She wasn’t actually sure that was what one was supposed to do when calling down celestial animals, but at least it looked good?
“Vehicles of the gods and goddesses!” Aru called loudly. Then she lost her train of thought, because she’d been too focused on making her voice sound really deep. “Uh…it’s me, Aru? Remember that whole freeing-you thing? Could I get some help?”
“What if they don’t come?” asked Mini. She started biting her nails. “What if they only send one of the super-tiny ones, like the mouse?”
“If the mouse can support an elephant-headed god, I think we’re gonna be fine.”
“Yeah, but—”
The sound of a stampede drowned out the rest of Mini’s words. The sky split open. Translucent staircases staggered down from the clouds, ending right in front of Aru and Mini. Aru waited. Is that it? But then it was like an entire zoo had shaken itself loose from the heavens. A crocodile lumbered down the steps, followed by a peacock. A tiger roared as it bounded to the bottom of the stairs. Next came a ram and a three-headed elephant, a giant swan, and a graceful antelope.
Last but not least, the seven-headed horse galloped down the steps until it appeared before Aru. Its sable eyes did not immediately rest on her, but on the bracelet, Vajra. It gave a huff of approval. “A true daughter of Indra, indeed,” it said.
A water buffalo trotted up to Mini. It took one look at the danda in her hand before lowering its head. Aru recognized the water buffalo as the mount of the Dharma Raja.
“This Pandava is mine,” said the water buffalo.