Page 72 of Aru Shah and the Tree of Wishes

“Next, the sea shall try your might,”said Brynne. “We’ve got plenty of might, team. Let me hear you say it! We are mighty!”

“No thanks, Coach,” said Aiden.

Brynne scowled and looked ready to say something when Mini gasped.

“The eye!” she said. “It’s gone!”

Only a few seconds earlier, Kubera’s eye had glimmered like a bright beacon less than ten feet away. Now, it was nowhere to be seen. Kara snapped her fingers, and her trident filled the station with sunlight as the Potatoes entered the archway where it had last been lurking. The entrance led to a wide platform made of seashells. A glass ceiling towered hundreds of feet above them, and beyond it was the ocean. In the shadowy waters, moon jellyfish stood by as silent sentinels.

“Where’d the eye go?” asked Mini, whirling around.

“Can we call to it?” asked Aru, panicking. “HEEEERE, DETACHED GOD-EYEBALL…THING…C’MERE!”

“Yeah, that’ll definitely work,” said Aiden.

“At least I’m trying!” said Aru. “I can’t believe you didn’t catch where it went on your camera!”

“Why would I do that?” asked Aiden.

“Because you’realwaystaking pictures!”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“D2! Ugh, Shah—”

BOOM!

They were thrown backward as an inky-black cloud of smoke bloomed around them and a deep voice announced, “AT LAST, AN AUDIENCE TO WITNESS THE DEEDS OF THE MAGICIAN TANUTKA!”

“What the—?” started Aru, choking on the smoke.

“YOU HAVE SUMMONED ME!”

“Can weun-summonyou?” asked Aru, waving her hand in front of her face.

“A magician?” asked Brynne. She twirled her wind mace, and a gust of air blew all the smoke away to reveal a short, pale-skinned man with a tuft of dandelion-white hair. His entire body was cloaked in a giant purple cape.

“TA-DA!” he said. “Tanutka can perform any trick you desire! And at a mostly reasonable price!”

Aru Shahreallydisliked magicians. She blamed this mostly on Corey Holmes’s fourth-grade birthday party, where she somehow ended up trapped in a closet and the hired magician refused to let her out until he was done pulling a giant rabbit from a tiny hat. Which would have been okay, except the rabbit was extremely chubby and got stuck in the hat, so Aru was trapped in the spider-filled closet for twenty minutes.

But Tanutka didn’t look like a party magician. He just looked like a short, sad man in an oversize cloak. And he also happened to refer to himself in third person, which was deeply unfortunate.

“Tanutka is one of the greatestartistsof the crossroads, known far and wide for uncanny”—he paused to waggle his fingers—“illusions.”

Just then, Aru noticed that there was an upside-down top hat on the ground, with a little cardboard sign leaning against it that readTIPS ARE WELCOME! She was beginning to understand who Tanutka really was. In Atlanta, there were lots of street musicians and artists. Aru found most of them pretty cool. Some of them, though, would follow her down the street insisting that she purchase their latest CD.

“You’re in luck, fair travelers! Normally, Tanutka is surrounded by an admiring crowd, but the slow approach of a demon army has thinned our gathering to a rare intimate performance ofmagique.” He grinned and blew smoke into the air.

Aiden carefully stepped around Tanutka. “Thanks, but we really have to be on our way.”

“Very well. Tanutka can serve as your traveling court magician, then.” He picked up his top hat. “But there shall be a per diem.”

“What? No!” said Aiden. “We’ll go alone!”

“Then, perhaps a fee to un-hinder you from Tanutka’s highly sought-after company.”