Aru Shah and the End of Time

by Roshani Chokshi

  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

  When Aru opened her eyes, she was standing once more in the decrepit palace hall.

  Mini was a couple feet away from her, furiously arguing with…with herself? Two Minis? One of them was getting increasingly red in the face and hunching her shoulders. The other pushed her glasses up her nose and kept talking. Her! Aru would’ve bet money that version was the real Mini. Aru tried to run forward, but she was kept back by some kind of invisible barrier.

  “Hey!” called Aru, pounding her fists against the air. “Mini!”

  But the Minis kept right on arguing. The real one said, “And so it stands to reason that the fastest thing in the world is not a person or a creature, but a thought!”

  The other Mini let out a horrible groan, as if she’d just gotten attacked by a headache, and vanished.

  The remaining Mini braced her hands on her knees and took a deep breath. The invisible barrier must have disappeared, too, because Mini finally noticed Aru. A grin stretched wide across her face.

  “You’re alive!”

  “So are you!” shouted Aru, running toward her.

  But no sooner were they next to each other than the palace roared to life. Torches flamed on. Even the roof pulled itself up, like someone adjusting his suspenders.

  The two of them braced themselves. Aru wrapped her hand around the glowing ball in her pocket. Mini gripped her compact.

  The palace shuddered.

  “Only Yudhistira would’ve been able to out-reason himself through wisdom,” it said.

  Aru dropped her voice to a whisper. “Seriously? Your task was to annoy yourself?”

  Mini scowled.

  “And only Arjuna,” continued the palace, “would’ve had the vision and perception to escape the mind’s own fear. Which means it’s you! It really is you….”

  “Duh!” said Aru. “We told you that when we got—”

  But the moment Aru started speaking, the ceiling split above their heads. Rain gushed in from the cracks in the roof. The whole palace rolled.

  “I—”

  The beams creaked.

  “—thought—”

  The foundation whined.

  “—you—”

  The roof caved in.

  “—forgot—”

  The floor tiles beneath them split.

  “—about—”

  The walls peeled back.

  “—me.”

  The rain was a waterfall now. There was nothing for Aru and Mini to do except clutch each other as the palace broke apart around them. When the crying (and rain) finally stopped, the walls pulled themselves back together. The roof dried its shingles and stitched itself whole again. The foundation rolled one last time, as if heaving a sigh.

  The palace had a right to be upset. They had forgotten all about it. But was that really their fault?

  “I missed you,” said the palace. “For three hundred years after you left, I kept the floors polished and the ceilings free of dust. I kept the larders full, and I watered the plants. But you never returned. Did I do something wrong?”

  “No, of course not!” said Mini. She looked as though she wanted to drop to her knees and embrace the entire palace as if it were a sad giant dog.

  “We’re not really the people we once were,” tried Aru. “We don’t even remember anything about that life. Otherwise…otherwise we would have visited.”

  Moments later, the floors started to gleam. The fire in the torches turned from harsh to warm. Paintings that had been hidden behind layers of skeleton dust glowed with color.

  “And yet you must leave again?” asked the palace.

  There was a plaintive note to its voice. Like a pet who really didn’t want you to go and was convinced that if she were on her best behavior you might change your mind.

  “We don’t have a choice,” said Mini. “You know that.”

  Trickles of silver liquid ran down the walls. “I know,” said the palace. “This time, I won’t forget to polish the floors—”

  “Don’t go to the trouble,” started Mini.

  Aru jumped in. “Yes! Please do that, thank you,” she said. “And make sure you do a good job.”

  Aru knew better than anyone that the worst part about being left behind was the wait. Whenever her mom left on business trips, Aru always cleaned the apartment from top to bottom. Sometimes, she even went to the farmers market so that there would be bright apples on the table instead of thick gray
books like Representations of the Feminine in Ancient Hindu Sculpture. Every time her mom came home, Aru would stand off to the side, chest puffed out like a blue jay, waiting for her to notice. Sometimes she did, and sometimes she didn’t. Not knowing how her mom would react was what made Aru do it all over again the next time. And so she understood how the house must have felt.

  “Excellent!” shouted the palace.

  All at once, chandeliers dropped from the ceiling. Crystal bowls of light pink ice cream floated into Mini’s and Aru’s hands.

  “Please…” coaxed the house. “Just a bite. You can eat and walk at the same time. I’ll make sure you don’t trip. Or would you rather skate? You liked to do that once upon a time.”

  The ground beneath them turned to ice, and their sandals were replaced with pretty metal shoes with blades on the bottom.

  Aru took a bite of the ice cream. It melted on her tongue and left behind the delicate flavor of rose.

  “I’m not very good at skating,” said Aru. “Can we travel any way we want?”

  “It is limited only by your imagination,” said the palace.

  One step later, they were zooming through the halls.

  Aru grinned. Imagine having a home like this….A home that knew what you wanted and leaped to answer. A home that grew carousels made of bits of stars and petals, and let her gallop on a horse made of dandelion fluff while she balanced a bowl of ice cream in one hand. A home with a floating bed, and books that knew when to flip the pages, so you didn’t have to get up from your pillow or move your hand….

  But this wasn’t home.

  Her home was small and littered with books she didn’t understand. The apartment had cracks in the walls and old plumbing. There was always straw on the floor from the wooden crates the statues were shipped in.

  Her home had her mother.

  The palace, as always, could read her thoughts. It sighed again. “You must be on your way, and what kind of home would I be if I pampered you and kept you back?”

  Mini blushed. She had been bicycling through the air, ice cream in her hand and a book floating in front of her face. “You’re right,” she said. She wiped her mouth and set aside the rest of the ice cream.

  Aru finished hers so quickly, she got brain freeze. The palace enchanted a hand towel to wrap around her head. “Mfanks,” she mumbled, hoping that the palace understood she was trying to say Thanks.

  Unexplored rooms hovered around them, promising rich histories and secrets. Aru caught a glimpse of a chamber full of glass birds. A serpent slithered out of a hole in a wall, its scales fashioned of rivers and seas. Down a long hallway, Aru saw the skyline of a distant city. Part of her longed to explore, but she knew she couldn’t. Even without looking at her hand, Aru could feel the number on her palm as if it were searing her skin. They had two days left. They couldn’t waste time.

  The dandelion horse, recognizing her unspoken wish, set her down gently.

  Within moments they were at the rear exit of the palace.

  “Here we are,” said the palace mournfully. “I’m sorry about the, you know, death threats, trials, and such….I do hope you can forgive me. I didn’t realize that it was…you….”

  “We forgive you,” said Mini.

  “I would have done the same if I were a palace,” added Aru graciously.

  The palace beamed. Silver lights burst from the ceiling and drifted down like glittering confetti.

  “I have a present for you as you continue on your journey,” said the palace shyly.

  “What is it?”

  “Just a trifle,” it said. “Something you might keep in your pocket and remember me by, should you not be able to visit me again.”

  Aru and Mini held out their hands. In the center of their palms appeared a little blue tile shaped like a five-pointed star.

  “This is a piece of home,” said the palace. “It will provide you with rest and shelter when you are in need. Granted, it cannot create an arena or training grounds like I can…but it can give you the part of me that matters most: protection.”

  Aru curled her fingers around the tile, grinning. “Thank you, palace. It’s perfect!”

  “I hope we won’t need to use it, but I’m glad we have it all the same,” said Mini.

  More silver confetti rained in a happy shower from the ceiling. “Glad to be of service,” said the palace. “That is all I ever wanted.”

  “Palace, what lies beyond this kingdom?” asked Mini. “We need to get to the hall where they keep the celestial weapons.”

  “Ah! You need…a map!” said the palace excitedly.

  “But maybe not one of those big road maps, though,” said Aru. “More like a pamphlet? Something small?” She had trouble reading maps. And she had even more trouble folding them up when she was done. Follow the lines! her mom used to scold. (But there were so many lines.)

  “Ah, yes, of course! How efficient you are, my princess, how noble and precise are your manners!” creaked the palace. “Alas, I have failed you once more.” The walls cried silver rivulets again. “I have no pamphlet and cannot procure you such a thing, because I do not know what that is. However, I can tell you that what lies beyond is a place of sadness. For, you see, it is the Bridge of Forgetting. Only there might you find what you are seeking with the weapons. There is a reason why I have not disappeared: I am not yet forgotten. But I reside in the Kingdom of Death because I am not considered ‘true.’ I am myth. One day, perhaps, I too will cross the Bridge of Forgetting like so many other stories before me.”

  Aru braced herself for more tears and rain, but the palace seemed oddly at peace with this statement.

  “It is better, perhaps, to be thought of as a fiction than to be discarded from memory completely. If it is not too much to ask, would you think of me fondly every now and again?” The torches sputtered. “It makes a difference to me to know that every now and again I am remembered.”

  Aru and Mini promised. Aru didn’t know how to embrace a palace, so she did the next best thing. She planted a kiss on her palm and pressed it to the wall. The palace shuddered happily. Mini did the same.

  “Good-bye, good-bye, Pandavas! Do great things! Make good choices!” said the palace. The door swung shut. “And if you must forget me, at least do it with a smile.”

  The Bridge of Forgetting

  Once they had closed the door to the Palace of Illusions, a winding road stretched out before them. The sky was black, but it wasn’t nighttime. It was the flat darkness of a room with the lights off. Here, in the middle of myth and the Bridge of Forgetting, the landscape was different. Statues were half sunken into the earth. Tall white trees blocked their view of what lay ahead.

  “I’m starving,” Aru moaned. “I shouldn’t have eaten that ice cream so fast. Do you have any more Oreos?”

  “Nope. I gave the last one to Boo.” At the mention of their pigeon friend, Mini sighed and wiped at her eyes. “Do you think he’s okay?”

  Aru wasn’t sure. The last time they’d seen him, he’d been knocked unconscious. That automatically said not okay.

  “Even if he isn’t okay right now,” she told Mini, “we’re going to rescue him, and then he’ll definitely be okay.”

  “I hope so.”

  Two minutes later, Aru’s stomach grumbling had gone from a smattering of sound to giant, growling there’s-a-monster-in-my-belly-and-it-wants-to-eat-you noises. She pulled out the glowing ball and poked it. Was it edible?

  “Borborygmi,” said Mini.

  “Bor-bor what? Who’s a pygmy?”

  “Your stomach sounds…they’re called borborygmi.”

  “Did you get that from the wisdom cookie?”

  “Nope. Medical textbook.”

  “Mini, why were you reading a medical textbook…?”

  “I like to.” She shrugged. “Bodies are so cool! Did you know that more than half of us is made of water?”

  “Yippee,” said Aru. “Are we there yet?”

  “How am I supp
osed to know?”

  “Well, you’re the one who ate the wisdom cookie.”

  “Like I said,” said Mini, clearly annoyed, “it only makes you wise until the thing you’re asking wisdom for is done.”

  “Technically, we’re not done. We’re still questing, or whatever, through this place. Honestly, what’s the point of making us go through all this? Don’t the gods want the world to be saved quickly? This journey is more useless than a unicorn’s horn.”

  Mini looked highly affronted. “What do you mean, useless? It wouldn’t be a unicorn without a horn. That’s what the word means! Uni, for one. And then corn for, you know, horn. One-horned.”

  “Yeah, but they’re supposed to be all peaceful and nice. Why would a unicorn need a horn? What’s it do with it?”

  Mini turned red. “I dunno. For shooting off magic and stuff.”

  “Or they use it to maul things.”

  “That’s horrible, Aru! They’re unicorns. They’re perfect.”

  “Maybe that’s just what they want you to think.”

  She, personally, did not trust anything that had a built-in weapon and claimed not to use it. Yeah, right.

  “It’s so cold all of a sudden,” said Mini.

  She was right. The temperature had dropped. Well, not dropped so much as fallen off a cliff and tumbled straight down.

  Aru’s long-suffering Spider-Man pajamas did little to protect her. The wind blew through the cloth, chilling her skin. “Imagine having to live in a place like this,” she said through chattering teeth. “You’d have to pick your nose all the time just so that your boogers wouldn’t freeze into icicles and stab the inside of your nose.”

  “Gross!”

  The air felt tight. Not that stifled, staleness of the palace. It reminded Aru of how sometimes in winter it hurt to breathe because the air had become overly sharp and thin.

  “Aru, look, it’s snowing!”

  Aru craned her neck and saw blue-bellied clouds drifting above them. In slow spirals, white flurries fell to the ground.

  A single white flake landed on her palm. It looked like a snowflake, down to the delicate lacework of ice. But it didn’t feel like snow. Even though it was cold.