Page 10 of Aru Shah and the End of Time

One step forward and she’d be wandering far from Atlanta….She’d be in an entirely different world. Excitement rushed through her, followed by a painful pinch of guilt. If she couldn’t fix this, her mom would become like everything else in the museum: a dusty relic. Aru brushed her fingers against her mother’s stiff hand.

“I’ll fix this,” she said. “I promise.”

“You’d better!” snapped Boo from his place on the elephant’s trunk.

The Other Sister

Grabbing one of the elephant tusks as a handrail, Aru stepped into the statue’s mouth. Inside, it was cold and dry, and far larger than seemed possible. A hall appeared, carved out of stone and marble, and the ceiling soared overhead. Aru stared around her, stunned, as she remembered every time she’d leaned against the elephant, never knowing it’d been hiding a magical corridor within it.

Boo flew down the passageway, urging her forward. “Come along! Come along!”

Aru ran to keep up.

The hallway sealed itself behind her. Ahead was a closed door. Light slipped out from a gap on one side.

Boo perched on her shoulder and pecked her ear.

“What was that for?!” exclaimed Aru.

“Thatwas for renaming me,” said the pigeon too smugly. “Now, tell the Door of Many that you need to go to your sibling who has awakened.”

Sibling. Aru suddenly felt sick. Her mom traveled most weekends. Was she working, or was she visiting her other children? Children she’d prefer spending time with.

“How can I have asibling?”

“Blood isn’t the only thing that makes you related to someone,” said Boo. “You have a sibling because you share divinity. You’re a child of the gods because one of them helped forge your soul. That doesn’t make a difference to your genetics. Genetics might say that you’re never going to be taller than five feet. Your soul doesn’t care about that. Souls don’t have height, you know.”

Aru hadn’t heard anything afterYou’re a child of the gods.

Up until this point, her brain had only distantly understood that she could be a Pandava. But if shewasa Pandava, that meant that a god had helpedmakeher. And claimed her as his own. As hiskid.

Her hand flew to her heart. Aru had the strangest impulse to reach into herself as if she might pluck out her own soul. She wanted to look at the back of it, as if it had a tag, like on a T-shirt. What would it say?MADE IN THE HEAVENS. KINDA. If she couldn’t hold it, it didn’t seem real.

And then another thought took root, one that was even stranger than the fact that a god was her dad.

“So I’m, like, a goddess?” she asked.

That wouldn’t be so bad.

“No,” said Boo.

“But the Pandavas were like demigods. They could use divine weapons and stuff. So that makes me half a goddess, right?” asked Aru. She examined her hands, flexing them like Spider-Man did whenever he started shooting out webs. “Does that mean I get to do magical things, too? Do I get powers? Or a cape?”

“There shall be no capes.”

“A hat?”

“No.”

“Theme song?”

“Please stop.”

Aru looked down at her clothes. If she was going to be meeting some long-lost sibling, she really wished she were wearing something other than Spider-Man pajamas.

“What happens after…after I meet them?”

Boo did that pigeon thing where he regarded her at an angle. “Well, we must go to the Otherworld, of course. Not quite what it used to be. It dwindles with humanity’s imagination, so I suspect it is currently the size of a closet. Or perhaps a shoe box.”