Aru Shah and the Song of Death

by Roshani Chokshi

  At one point, Brynne let out a particularly epic burp. Aiden was so impressed, he high-fived her.

  Mini shook her head. “That can’t be good for your esophagus.”

  Then Sparky followed suit. Only when he burped, he let out a belch of…fire. Flames scorched the middle of the picnic table.

  They all froze for a few seconds, costing Brynne some valuable time.

  “Is that normal asura behavior?” asked Mini nervously.

  “Now, on to the desserts!” announced Sparky. The table magically filled with all-new dishes, and he surveyed them with delight, his eyes gleaming as hungrily as ever.

  Aru wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard Brynne groan softly.

  “Ready to give up?” Sparky asked her. He dug his spoon into a bowl of creamy rasmalai. It was one of Aru’s favorite desserts, nice and cold and with the perfect texture of a sponge cake. Nommmm.

  “No?” said Brynne, but she was starting to sway.

  “Are you sure about that?” asked Sparky, laughing. He drained the entire bowl of rasmalai, then popped the metal dish itself into his mouth and crunched down. “Once, I had such a bad stomachache that no one in the world could cure it. Not even sages. I had to go straight to the gods.”

  Brynne forced down a mouthful of carrot halwa.

  “Once, I—” she began to brag. Then she stopped, too full to speak. She shook her head, then made a go-ahead gesture to Sparky.

  Sparky looked very smug as he inhaled the rest of the desserts, talking all the while. “I had to eat ghee for years, all because some king wanted to conduct a great ritual…. Twelve years of clarified butter! Even Paula Deen would have run in the opposite direction.”

  Aru eyed Sparky. Over the course of the contest, he had grown even taller. His skin, which had always been a bit ruddy, now reminded her of embers. Even his hair, once a rust color, like a bad dye job, had changed. Now it looked multicolored—blue at the roots, orange in the middle, and yellow at the tips. Like a flame.

  “One time I ate a forest. Nothing can sate my hunger,” moaned Sparky. “Nothing at all!”

  By now, he had snarfed down all the desserts. Instead of getting up from the table, he set upon it. The red-checked cloth disappeared into his mouth and when he burped, cinders fell on the tabletop.

  Brynne groaned and rolled over onto her side on the bench. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…I’m full.”

  Sparky didn’t answer—he just stared into space, as if all concern about the competition had disappeared and he was thinking deeply about something else.

  Behind him stood the archway, now clear of any obstacle. All they had to do was make a run for it…but Brynne couldn’t move. And they didn’t have their weapons, either. They couldn’t go in to the Ocean of Milk without their armaments.

  “The world became bleak when I started losing my luster,” said Sparky. His voice got louder as his body grew bigger. No longer able to fit on the picnic bench, he stood up, as tall as the archway. “After all, I am the spark inside all living beings. I make things bright. I make things burn. It is my nature.”

  The sunglasses fell from Sparky’s eyes, which didn’t look human or even demonic. They glowed like twin fiery rubies.

  “He’s…definitely not…an asura…” said Aiden slowly.

  “YA THINK?” demanded Aru.

  “But the problem is,” continued Sparky, “once I start, it’s very hard to stop….”

  His LIT shirt ripped in half down the middle, revealing a bright red suit edged in flames. Sparky wasn’t done eating. He was devouring everything within reach by setting it alight. Soon, the whole picnic table would be reduced to ash. The reeds around them burst into flame.

  “We’re going to be trapped!” cried Mini.

  From behind Aru came a weak chuckle. Brynne, who still had not recovered from the competition, clutched her stomach and said, “I don’t feel so bad about losing now.” She pointed at Sparky. “At least I lost to a god.”

  A god?

  It clicked then. The fire. The insatiable appetite that could devour a forest whole…

  Sparky wasn’t some kid with ugly sunglasses and an appetite that could destroy a city. He was Agni, the god of fire. And he was on the verge of consuming them.

  Aru Shah Is on Fire. No, but Seriously. Like, Fire Fire. This Is Not a Drill

  Agni had grown to the size of an elephant.

  The picnic table was nothing more than a smoldering pile of embers. Now the trees around them began to crackle. Smoke churned through the air. Aru, Mini, and Aiden dragged Brynne’s picnic-bench sickbed away from Agni and drew into a tight group, but what else could they do? They had no weapons—nothing but their wits and their backpacks. And their best fighter was down for the count.

  “Oh, the pain!” moaned Agni. “I’m still so hungry!”

  “Maybe you have indigestion?” suggested Mini. “I…I have something for that? For when food is too spicy? Maybe that’s why you’re burping flames….”

  “I love spice,” cut in Brynne. She was curled up in the fetal position and breaking out into a cold sweat. “I could eat, like, a whole bottle of cayenne pepper. Watch me.”

  And then she promptly threw up.

  Aiden went over to offer her a sip of water from his canteen and wipe off her face.

  Mini tossed a bottle of antacid pills at the god of fire. Agni caught it in one hand, where it immediately melted.

  “Noooooooooo!” he cried.

  More trees began to catch fire. Mini covered her nose and mouth with a wet napkin to avoid breathing in the smoke.

  “Help me, Pandavas!” shouted Agni, clutching his belly.

  “How ’bout we fill some of these empty bowls with swamp water?” suggested Aiden. “Then we can throw it on him.”

  “It won’t be enough. The water will just turn to steam,” said Mini, “and then we’ll choke and die.”

  “What about wet rocks?” asked Aru, looking around. “If we piled them up, would they put out the fire?”

  “Not river rocks!” said Mini. “The water molecules inside will expand as they heat up, and they’ll explode, and then we’ll die!”

  “What’s an option where we don’t die?” asked Aiden.

  Agni groaned. “I’m starving….”

  He was a raging inferno now. His scarlet suit gleamed. His arms ended in fireballs.

  Aru never thought she’d say this, but: “I miss Sparky.”

  “You helped cure my appetite once before,” pleaded Agni, “in the Khandava Forest. Do it again!”

  Before…in the Khandava Forest? That was where Takshaka’s wife had perished in the flames. The place where Arjuna had shot down any living creature that had tried to escape the fire. Every time Aru thought about it, she felt more grossed-out and guilty, even though she wasn’t the one who had fired the arrows. But she hadn’t known before now that the fire was caused by Agni….

  “Aru!” screamed Mini. “Watch out!”

  A huge burning branch overhead was about to fall on Aru’s head.

  Aiden yanked her back.

  The flames had grown into a towering wall that blocked the entrance to the Ocean of Milk completely. Agni was back there somewhere, but Aru couldn’t see him behind the fire.

  “We have to move away from here,” said Mini, as the flames danced toward them. “C’mon!”

  Together, the three of them lifted Brynne’s bench and hauled it farther down the walkway.

  “We still need to get through there somehow,” said Aiden, looking back at the archway. “If only we could bulldoze swamp mud onto the fire…”

  “But we don’t have the equipment,” said Mini.

  And then, from the bench, Brynne croaked, “We can ask?”

  Aru and Mini looked at each other. Even without the Pandava mind link, they knew what Brynne was talking about. Asking their soul fathers for help.

  “Do what you have to do,” said Aiden. “I’m going to try to lead Agni away from the entra
nce.”

  He ran back toward the flames.

  Aru took a deep breath. “Okay, time to make a few calls.”

  Mini closed her eyes, clasping her hands together. Brynne whispered to the air. Aru looked to the sky.

  “Hi, Dad…” she said. “So…hope you’re well. Um, if you can see me, you’ll notice the flames that are about to consume…us? I know you don’t like to interfere, but we’re really desperate. Could we get some help? Please?”

  She closed her eyes tight, trying to ignore the heat coming from the trees burning nearby. Then Aru felt the slightest tug on her backpack. She turned around, expecting to see Mini. But Mini was still standing next to her, silently praying. Brynne was still on the bench. Aru closed her eyes again and once more felt a tug on her backpack.

  She dropped it on the ground, then rifled through it.

  “Did you get a sign?” asked Mini excitedly.

  “Is your backpack enchanted?” asked Brynne, sitting up.

  “I just felt a tug, but there’s got to be some mistake. There’s nothing here.”

  The fire continued to move closer. Aiden raced back toward them. There were soot marks on his face and he was out of breath.

  “I”—he coughed—“couldn’t…make him move….”

  Mini ran over to Aiden. She searched her bag and found him a bottle of water.

  In a panic, Aru dumped out the contents of her backpack.

  Nothing but socks, a package of Oreos—which prompted Brynne to say, “HEY! When I asked if you had any snacks, you said no!”—and the little vial from the Warehouse of Quest Materials labeled BRIGHT IDEA. The glowing blue jar was no bigger than one of her mom’s perfume bottles.

  “Open it!” said Aiden.

  Aru tried to pull out the cork in the top, but it wouldn’t budge. Everyone else also gave it a go, with no success. If they couldn’t open it, how were they going to get to the idea inside?

  “We’re doomed,” said Mini, tugging at her hair.

  But Aru wasn’t ready to give up yet. What if the answer was the bottle itself? A person could use up material things, like trees and shrubs, food and cloth…but it was harder to exhaust an idea. And the moment an idea was used, it changed shape.

  An idea was impossible to burn.

  “I think…I think I’ve got an idea,” said Aru.

  Under any other circumstances, she would have laughed at the unintentional joke. But Aru was out of laughs. She gripped the bottle tightly, then turned to face her friends. This might be their last chance to reach the Ocean of Milk.

  “I’m going to try to distract Agni with this,” she said. “When he turns, I want you all to run into the portal without—”

  “No way, Shah,” said Aiden.

  “We’re not going anywhere without you,” added Mini.

  Aru would have argued with them, but then Brynne spoke up.

  “I’m not abandoning family.”

  That jolted Aru. Mini had been her soul sister for a while now, but Brynne and Aiden had only recently been shoved into her life without her consent. Since then, they’d made fun of one another and fought with one another and shared candy and battles and even awful road trips (with red cows). So, yeah, it was safe to say they were family.

  She wasn’t going to leave them, either.

  A burning hand reached out through the wall of flames.

  “I AM HANGRY!” Agni thundered.

  When his head emerged, Aru couldn’t make out the parts of his face anymore—except he had swirling red pits for eyes. It was as if being hungry for so long had made him pure element.

  “I’ve got something for you!” she shouted, holding up the vial.

  The head loomed forward.

  “I’m going to need some height,” Aru told the others.

  “You got it,” said Brynne, rolling onto her hands and knees. “Pile on!”

  Although she was apparently too stuffed with food to change shape, Brynne was still superstrong. Aiden climbed onto her back, then Mini climbed onto his. Aru clambered up her friends. In theory, it should have been like going up stairs. But it did not go as smoothly as planned.

  At one point, Aiden grumbled, “Shah! Your foot is on my face!”

  And he did not take kindly to Aru’s suggestion: “Then get your face off my foot!”

  They teetered back and forth as Agni rolled their way. Waves of fire skirted around them, nearly blistering their skin and blackening the wooden planks beneath their feet. Agni opened his jaws, getting ready to swallow them whole. All Aru could see were searing flames, the air in front of her heat-warped and furious.

  “Now, Shah!” screamed Brynne.

  Aru pitched the “bright idea” forward. The blue light of the bottle looked like an iceberg in a sea of flame. Agni lurched forward to grab it between his molten teeth. The moment he bit down on it, a wave of energy coursed through the national park, blowing them off the boardwalk and sending them into the shallow, reed-filled swamp.

  The cold water stunned Aru. Quickly, they stood up and waded over to the pathway, shivering. In front of them, Agni was struggling, contorting himself and chewing furiously.

  “WHY…” he grumbled.

  “CAN’T…” He choked.

  “I…” He gasped.

  “EAT…” He chewed.

  “YOU?” he roared.

  Agni spun around, trying to find Aru and the others. The flames on his body flickered and hissed. Slowly, he shrank from the size of a raging forest fire to that of a big, glowing man. His clothes smoldered and burned, smoke unraveling in the air above him. The fires he had ignited rolled backward, instantly restoring everything that had once been consumed. No—not restoring. Changing. The trees, once reduced to cinders, grew tall again, but their trunks and branches were now made out of gold. The dirt, previously dull and covered in brambles, was now the rich brown of hot cocoa, and studded with small jewels instead of rocks. Bright red flowers carpeted the areas that had been full of reeds.

  “What-t-t d-d-did you d-d-do to that v-v-vial?” Aiden asked Aru, his teeth chattering in the cold.

  She shrugged. “N-n-nothing. I just had an idea and p-p-passed it on to him.”

  “What idea?” Brynne didn’t even seem cold, maybe because she’d just eaten more than her own weight in spicy Indian dishes.

  “I wondered what would happen if n-n-nothing around here was edible,” said Aru.

  “Look at the t-t-treasure!” Mini said, pointing.

  The picnic table was back, but now, instead of being piled with food, it was piled with jewels of all kinds.

  “Man,” grumbled Brynne. “He couldn’t even leave us some naan?”

  But the biggest change was in Agni himself. Now that his fire had receded, he’d turned into Sparky 2.0. He was tall, but no longer monstrously so. His ugly shirt had been upgraded to a scarlet sherwani jacket edged in flame designs, and his cheap plastic sunglasses were now a pair of Ray-Bans. A scarf of molten lava hung around his neck, and his hair looked like banked embers—which was definitely an improvement over the weird dye job. At his side trotted a bright red ram, which Aru recognized as his vahana, or celestial mount.

  Agni stretched his arms above his head, yawned, and patted his stomach. “Oof…That was a lot of calories I just ate. I feel a food coma coming on.”

  He belched, scorching a patch of grass next to the path. The god was still chewing on the bright idea, Aru noticed, like it was a piece of gum.

  “Smart thinking,” he said, pointing at his idea-filled cheek.

  “Can’t take all the credit,” said Aru, glancing up at the sky.

  She didn’t see any sign of Indra there. No thunderclaps or flashes of lightning. But she and her friends were no longer dripping wet, and the air seemed warmer, as if the world were pleased.

  The four of them still huddled close. Agni might have pulled back on his terrible splendor, but it was hard to trust someone who had tried to consume you in flames.

  Agni noticed and waved
them closer. “Technically, we’re family!” he said happily.

  The four of them were too horrified to move.

  “Oh, I can see you’re still not over the whole set-you-on-fire thing,” said Agni.

  DUH! Aru wanted to say, but she knew better.

  “I’m not evil. Destructive, sure. But destruction isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” said Agni, gesturing at the golden trees and jeweled picnic table. “At my most elemental stage, I’m a force of change, even purification.”

  “But we’re not the bad guys here,” said Aru. “Why would you want to stop us?”

  “I was doing my duty, as we all must,” Agni said. “My duty is to burn, and long ago, the gods tasked me to fulfill it against anyone who tried entering the Ocean of Milk.”

  “That’s just great,” said Brynne. “So we’re still trapped here?”

  “Not at all,” said Agni, moving aside to clear a path to the archway. He nodded to Aru. “You found a way to extinguish the fire, so you may pass with my blessings.”

  Presents from Uncle Agni

  “Well?” Agni asked. “Go on, then! Go forth and kill and what have you.”

  Agni snapped his fingers and their weapons appeared out of thin air and zoomed back into their hands.

  “Vajra!” said Aru joyously.

  She never thought she’d want to hug a lightning bolt, but today was one of those days. Her lightning bolt thrummed in her hands, then dove into her pocket as if relieved to be home. Mini was fussing over Dee Dee, inspecting it for any kind of fire damage, while Brynne’s mace blew her hair around her face like a happy blow-dryer. Aiden slid on his scimitar cuffs without saying anything, but Aru saw him double-check that Shadowfax hadn’t gotten singed by Agni’s flames.

  “Let’s go!” said Brynne, pointing in the direction of the archway. “How many days do we have left, anyway?”

  Aiden checked his watch, his face paling. “One.”

  One day left? Aru thought she’d hurl. Through the archway lay the entrance to the Ocean of Milk. They were so close; they had their weapons back…they even had the blessing of the god of fire…and they were running out of time…but Aru couldn’t make herself take a step forward.