Aru Shah and the Tree of Wishes, page 22
The others turned to look at her, and she flushed red.
“What?” she said quietly. “He’s not exactly an eyesore.”
From the hallway on the left came a sudden clip-clop of hooves. The Potatoes tensed, drawing closer to each other, their weapons raised.
A moonlit antelope with a silver hide, large dark eyes, and slender horns stepped into the room. Aru recognized it from a painting in the elevator. It had to be Chandra’s vahana. The mount was every inch as beautiful as its master.
Aru had never seen a real antelope. Not even at the Atlanta Zoo. For the longest time, she’d thought an antelope was a horned melon, the ugly cousin of a cantaloupe. Which had made the song “Home on the Range” particularly confusing, because every time she heard where the deer and the antelope play, she thought a giant melon had gained sentience and escaped from the fruit aisle of the grocery store.
“He’s been expecting you,” said the antelope haughtily. It sniffed at the air and their weapons, then turned up its nose. “Those are useless in this place. Please follow me, and do not touch anything. Everything here is an invaluable artifact, and my lord takes especially good care of his treasures.”
Aru, having been raised in a museum all her life, scowled and crossed her arms. She hated being treated as if she didn’t know what to do around priceless objects. She was well versed in the protocol! Keep hands in pockets, wait till no one’s watching, then furtively poke at something with both hands before fleeing.
“Dumb melon,” she mumbled as she followed the rest of her friends down the hallway.
The antelope led them into a huge light-filled chamber. The floor was mirrored here, too, and the walls shone with gigantic chunks of incandescent moonstone and milky jade, filigreed with silver. In the center of the room, on a throne made of quartz, sat Chandra himself with his chin on one hand and his other hand lazily twirling an ivory-colored rope. It appeared he had been awaiting their arrival for quite some time.
Flanking the throne were the twenty-seven goddesses of the constellations. Each of them wore a long shimmering silver gown. Their ink-black hair, studded with stars, sheeted down to their waists. Behind each goddess loomed a tall, thin door.
Aru shook her head, squinting. For a moment it seemed as if…
In her head, Aru heard Brynne say, Is it just me, or do all Chandra’s wives look exactly the same?
Chandra rose from his throne, opening his arms like he was greeting long-lost friends.
“Pandavas!” he said brightly. “I’ve been expecting your visit. On behalf of myself and my lovely wives, welcome to the House of the Moon.”
He looked to the twenty-seven goddesses, who clapped haphazardly. Their facial features were identical, but a couple of them seemed angry, most of them were bored, and a handful looked a little nervous.
“I’m assuming you didn’t come all this way for an autograph,” he said, strolling toward them. Then he paused, lifting an eyebrow. “Or did you?”
His vahana trotted beside him. “They would surely be remiss not to ask for such a gift, my lord.”
“Sorry,” said Aru loudly. “I’m all out of pen and paper.”
“Mmph,” said Chandra. “Pity.”
“How did you know we were coming?” asked Mini.
Chandra chuckled. “Please, child. I see everything. Not that everyone likes that, of course. I remember a particular incident when I saw Ganesh after a party in Lanka—a city which, if you’re curious, throws the best events. Anyway, on his way home, his silly rat vahana got spooked by a snake, and Ganesh fell off!”
Chandra guffawed himself silly, clutching his sides.
“Ah.” He sighed when he had gathered himself. “Anyway, I couldn’t help laughing. Apparently, he heard me—which makes sense. I mean, he’s literally got the head of an elephant. What else are you going to do with ears that big?”
“I know that story,” said Aiden quietly. “Didn’t he throw his tusk at you?”
Chandra scowled, then rubbed his cheek. “That’s not really relevant,” he said irritably. “The point is, I knew you’d come. Like I said, I see everything. Granted, I’ve got a great view.”
He gestured at the walls, which shifted to reveal images of the world at nighttime. In one of them, Aru recognized her group standing in the chakora forest. A cold feeling twisted up her spine. If he wanted to, Chandra could tattle on them to the rest of the Council, and they’d never have a chance to find the wishing tree.
He clapped. “I know what the devas are hiding and what they aren’t,” he said with a sly twist of his mouth. “They thought the littlest Pandavas would be safer here, far in the heavens, and so I agreed to take them. Too bad one was lost along the way.”
He didn’t seem sorry at all, Aru thought.
“I know you want the other one back,” said Chandra. “And I have no need to keep her….”
“Great,” said Aru, looking around. “Now, where is—?”
“Still,” said Chandra, “there’s no reason we can’t make the exchange interesting. My wives and I are in need of a bit of entertainment from time to time.”
Brynne took a step forward, no doubt getting ready to protest, and Aiden held her back.
“If you win my challenge,” said Chanda, “I will grant all of you—including your little sister—passage out of the House of the Moon. Plus, I shall not reveal your whereabouts to the devas. I’ll even disable the tracking device in the girl’s neck.”
“But if we fail?” asked Aru.
“You must cede your weapons to me.”
Instinctively, Aru clutched Vajra to her. “You can’t take them!” she said. “They’re not yours. They belong to—”
“Indra?” drawled Chandra, rolling his eyes. “As if he’d notice anything among his vast collection gone missing. Trust me, child, he gave you a throwaway.”
Vajra bristled with indignation, and sparks of electricity shot up and down Aru’s arm.
“And that mace is definitely scuffed,” said Chandra, pointing at Brynne’s weapon.
He moved on to Mini and laughed. “A stick? Cute.”
Chandra’s gaze roved to Rudy and zeroed in on the orange messenger bag. The moon god snapped his fingers, and the satchel zoomed into his grip. Chandra pawed through it, but the eagerness melted from his face.
“Broken jewels?” he asked. He picked one up, shook it, and a low, mournful tune filled the air. “And you’ve charmed them with useless sounds? Ugh.” He threw the bag back at Rudy, who clutched it tightly.
When he got to Aiden, though, Chandra’s interest reignited.
“Well, well, well,” he said softly. “If it’s not the human spawn of Malini herself. How is your mother these days? Single, I hear. Is she seeing anyone?”
Aiden glowered, and his scimitars shot out from beneath his sleeves.
Chandra merely laughed. “You can’t protect her, my boy. I mean, look at you. What could you possibly do to me?”
Brynne interrupted him. “You said we could win back Nikita. How?”
Chandra smiled, then gestured at his twenty-seven wives. “These are my queens, though you may know them best as the nakshatras, the glorious constellations who hold the fate of humans in their every movement,” he said proudly. “Now—”
“What are their names?” asked Aiden loudly, his expression fierce.
Chandra blinked. “Names? Well, there’s uh…um…Rohini, of course. Then…Hasta, Sravana, Revati, Pushya…Ashwini…um, anyway! They’re goddesses, and they’re my wives. Done. And they’ve”—he paused, frowning a little—“agreed”—he nodded—“to wear my beloved Rohini’s face for this little game. Behind one of their doors hides the treasure you seek. But which door is it?”
The moon god laughed to himself, then held up a finger.
“You have one chance,” he said. “Succeed, and you shall have what you want and be on your way. Fail, and your weapons will join the rest of my dearest treasures.”
Pick a Wife! Any Wife!
Aru paused, her mind running through the different options before them. She weighed Vajra in her hands, wondering if there was some way around the conditions Chandra had set. Could her lightning bolt somehow zap all the doors open at once?
Beside her, Aiden stared at the nakshatras.
“I can’t believe he made all of them look like Rohini,” he said, disgusted.
Rudy winked at the goddesses. “That one just smiled at me.”
Aru followed his line of sight to a goddess whose lips were curled over her teeth, her smile wolflike. “Uh…sure.”
“Which door do we pick?” asked Mini.
“If we open a bunch of them at once, it won’t matter,” said Brynne, rolling up her sleeves.
“Whoa, Bee, what are you doing—” started Aiden.
“CHARGE!” she yelled.
In a flash of blue light, Brynne changed into a ram with huge curling horns and hurtled toward one of the doors.
Aru, Aiden, Mini, and Rudy looked at each other for a moment and then ran forward, too. Aru knew in her bones it wasn’t the right move, but she didn’t want to just stand there when everyone else was doing something. She flung Vajra toward a door, but the god of the moon was faster. He flicked his wrist, and a silvery rope lashed out like a snake, knocking her lightning bolt to the floor. Aru skidded to a halt, gathering up the weapon in her arms. It was limp and gave a weak shudder.
“Vajra?” croaked Aru.
The bolt buzzed faintly, and Aru pressed it close to her chest.
“BAAAAA-TRAYAL!” hollered Ram-Brynne as she was lassoed by the whip and pulled backward. She changed back into her usual form, stepped out of the loop, and started to swing her mace, only for it to be snapped out of her hands. It skittered across the floor.
When Mini tried to cast a spell with Dee Dee, Chandra’s whip struck again. There was a sad violet spark as the danda shrank into compact form in Mini’s grasp.
Rudy was holding one of Aiden’s scimitars, but it didn’t seem like he knew how to wield it. He lowered his arm and the weapon scraped the ground.
Aiden darted out of the way just as the moon god’s whip thrashed. Aiden spun, ready to slice it with his scimitar, but the rope swept his feet out from under him and knocked him onto his back.
Chandra’s throne broke away from its podium to float far above them.
“Playing dirty, are we?” he called down, making a tsk sound. “That seems unwise.”
Chandra snapped his fingers. The ground beneath them began to quake and tremble, and the mirror floor shattered, the pieces drifting apart like giant ice floes. A giant fissure opened beneath Aru’s feet and she made an awkward hop to the right. Her arms pinwheeled as she fought for balance, and she glimpsed what lay between the cracks in the floor….
Nothing.
Just the night sky and the promise of hard ground thousands of feet below. Her stomach swooped uncomfortably.
“Since you insist on playing unfairly, I shall raise the stakes!” called Chandra.
His twenty-seven wives now stood on a crust of unbroken floor that was so narrow the tips of their toes peeked over the edge and their long flowing gowns hung over the dark abyss below. They weren’t bored or annoyed anymore, but scared. A couple of them tried to inch back against the wall, but there wasn’t space for them to move.
Aru looked around, panic swelling in her chest. Beside her, Aiden and Rudy were huddled precariously on a mirror floe no bigger than a chair seat. On her right, Mini sat clutching the edges of a piece the size of a bedroom pillow, and Brynne balanced one-legged on a shard no larger than a serving platter. Fortunately, she’d been able to retrieve Gogo before it fell.
“This is hopeless!” said Mini.
“Hey! Don’t forget about us!” called Rudy frantically from the other side of the room.
Brynne wheeled her mace high above her head. A mini cyclone burst from the tip and traveled downward. She expertly guided the wind around the space, pushing the floor shards closer to one another until some of them came back together like a grand jigsaw puzzle. The kids leaped from one piece to the next until they all met up on the largest one.
“Clever!” said Chandra, clapping. “I’ll have to remember that trick when I possess the wind mace.”
“We can’t plan anything with him listening,” said Aru.
Mini nodded. She changed Dee Dee into a danda and raised it. A burst of violet light formed a bubble over them. Chandra scowled and seemed to call out something….
But they couldn’t hear a thing.
“Our weapons aren’t going to work against him,” said Aiden. “Fighting isn’t how we’re going to win back Nikita.”
“So, what do you suggest?” snapped Brynne.
Aru tightened her grip on her lightning bolt and felt its strength course through her. Vajra was still weak, but it was slowly regaining power. In the back of her mind, Aru heard Boo’s voice, the words he’d drummed through their skulls in every practice fight:
“We are more than the things we fight with,” Aru said firmly.
The other four fell silent, and Aru felt that—for once—she’d come up with the 100 percent right thing to say.
“I want to believe that,” said Mini. “But say we don’t fight and somehow reach the other side—how are we going to know which door to open?”
“Remember what Sheela said?” asked Aru. “You can find her behind the favorite star of the moon. That’s gotta mean Rohini is guarding Nikita’s door!”
“But they all look like Rohini!” said Rudy.
“And yet he only loves one of them,” said Aiden.
That, Aru realized, was the answer.
“We don’t have to figure out which one Rohini is—we just have to make Chandra reveal it by accident,” said Aru. “Then we’ll know which door to open.”
“How’re we going to do that?” asked Aiden.
At first no one responded, and then Brynne cleared her throat. “Chandra reminds me of Anila,” she said, staring up at the moon god.
Aiden’s face darkened. “I can see that.”
“Am I supposed to know who that is?” asked Rudy.
“No,” said Aiden and Brynne at the same time.
“Someone like that only shows you what they care about when it’s in danger,” said Brynne.
She rubbed at a spot on her arm neatly covered by the stacks of bracelets she was wearing. Aru saw the shiny patch of scar tissue left there from a nasty kitchen accident. When a boiling pot of water fell off the stove, Anila had been standing right beside Brynne, but instead of pushing her daughter out of the way…Anila had saved her purse instead. The patch on Brynne’s skin wasn’t the first scar Anila had left, but it was the most visible one.
“So does that mean we have to go after the star goddesses?” asked Rudy, shocked. “That’s horrible! Plus, what if they get mad? They could curse me!” He paused. “I mean us!”
“It’d be horrible if we actually went after the goddesses.” Mini smiled and twirled Dee Dee. “But we’ve got illusion on our side. Good thinking, Brynne.”
Brynne beamed.
Boo was right—they were more than just the items they fought with. Sometimes a weakness felt like a blade turned inward, but that meant it was sharp enough that when turned around, it could be a weapon. You just had to be willing to face it and adjust your grip. And that made it a magic far more powerful than any celestial weapon.
“So what do we do?” asked Rudy.
“What you do best,” said Mini, pointing at his orange messenger bag. “Cause a distraction.”
A cautious smile slipped onto his face. “All right. I’m on it.”
“We’ll play defense,” said Aiden, looking at Aru.
She nodded and transformed Vajra into a flashing spear.
Mini said, “Lowering the shield in three…”
Rudy reached inside his messenger bag, his face tight with concentration.
“Two…”
Brynne took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Aru reached for her hand, and Brynne squeezed back so hard that Aru temporarily lost feeling in her fingers.
“One,” said Mini.
The force field dropped, and Chandra’s voice rushed into the void:
“Given up already?” he asked, sinking into his pale throne. “How utterly boring…”
Aru’s hair lifted off her shoulders in the sudden wind. Beside her, there was a burst of violet light. Twenty-seven silver arrows with cruel tips hovered in the air above Mini’s hands. Rudy crushed a jewel under his heel, and all the noise in the room got sucked into silence. A beat later, a hypnotic rhythm took over, as lulling as rain on a roof. Even Aru felt the magical music tugging at her senses. On his throne, Chandra reached for his whip, but his gaze became unfocused and he stilled.
“Now, Brynne!” yelled Rudy.
She raised her wind mace high above her head. In a rush of air, she picked up all twenty-seven of Mini’s arrows and sent them hurtling toward the constellations. “Run!” Brynne yelled.
The five Potatoes raced across the room, leaping from one piece of the floor to the other as a bottomless abyss yawned beneath them. The arrows sped toward the constellation-wives. Aru looked up and saw their eyes widening, flicking between the weapons and their dazed husband. They tried to get away from their assigned doors, but their feet were stuck fast to the floor. Fury swept over their faces, and a chorus of different voices yelled out “Chandra!” and “This has gone too far!”
The moon god finally snapped to attention. He whirled around in his seat, appraising his wives and then the arrows as they zoomed closer. Twenty feet away, then fifteen…now ten.
Chandra fused the floor and dove to the fifth door, wrapping himself around the woman in an effort to protect her. Rohini, thought Aru.
Mini snapped her fingers, and the arrows vanished.
Chandra looked up, stunned.
Aru and Aiden kept barreling toward him. In Aru’s hands, Vajra’s weight became more solid. More powerful.
“Open up,” she commanded, taking aim with her spear and letting go.
Vajra smashed into the fifth door and it swung back, creaking loudly. Mist poured out from the room. Aru’s heart beat frantically. Had they made a mistake? Had they somehow gotten everything all wrong?
