Page 106 of Aru Shah and the End of Time

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. LikeToday 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 comehere?” 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 thatheis 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.