Page 105 of Aru Shah and the End of Time

In one blink, Time shrank until it stood eye level with Aru. “You may go, then, daughters of the gods.”

There was no way Aru was going to hang around another moment for a second invitation.

“Great!” said Mini with fake cheer. She pressed a bit closer to Aru.

“Yes! This was…such a treat.” Aru edged past them. Wish and Time simply watched the two of them inch toward the exit. “See ya later!”

Time bowed its head.

“Inevitably.”

People joked about the afterlife. They said things likeDon’t follow the light!But there was no heavenly glow here. Yet, somehow, it was still bright. It burned with something else, whiting out the setting around them.

All Aru remembered when she crossed the threshold was a curious sense of bemusement. As if she had done this before, and never quite wanted to, but submitted to it all the same. It was kind of like getting a shot: a necessary evil. And it was also a bit like a dream, because she couldn’t recall much about the place they’d left behind. One moment it was there, and the next moment it was not.

With every step she took into that tunnel between life and death, sensation washed over her. Sensation that belonged to memories. She remembered impossible things, like being cradled and held close and told over and over by her mother that she was loved. She felt the pinch of her first loose tooth from so many years ago. She remembered how she had once broken her arm after swinging from the museum elephant’s trunk and felt more surprise than pain. It hadn’t occurred to her until that day that she could ever get hurt.

Aru blinked.

That single blink felt like hundreds of years and no time at all.

When Aru opened her eyes, she and Mini were standing in the middle of a road. A couple of cars had been left running, doors still open, as if their drivers and passengers had fled in a hurry. A few feet away, Aru heard the cracklings of a television coming from inside a tollbooth.

Mini turned to her.

“At least it’s not a parking lot?”

The TV Started It

Aru flexed her hand and Vajra changed from a ball to a glowing circlet around her wrist. It lookedreallycool. 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.