Aru Shah and the End of Time (Pandava Quartet, #1)

by Roshani Chokshi

we can get a dog. A Great Pyrenees. We can name him Beowoof!”

And it is the way of magic and nightmares to choose those almost-but-not-quite moments and wait.

Between a demon that could end the world and a seventh-grade girl, Aru (and probably most people) would choose the demon any day.

Whatever had been speaking flew out of the elephant’s mouth. It was… A pigeon. “Ew!” Aru exclaimed.

She hadn’t read anything about what kind of consequences might follow from staring at a pigeon.

Otherwise why would I be here? And on that note, why am I here? What does it mean to wear this wretched body?” It stared at the ceiling. “Who am I?”

Souls don’t have height, you know.”

“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.”

Boo did that pigeon thing where he regarded her at an angle.

“You should have seen it in its glory days. There was a Night Bazaar where you could purchase dreams on a string. If you had a good singing voice, you could use it to buy rice pudding dusted with moonlight. Finest thing I’ve ever eaten—well, second only to a spicy demon. Mmm.”

And it stood to reason that if you were even a little bit divine, you should not have a unibrow.

Instead, she was faced with an odd stranger and a pigeon whose sanity was slowly unraveling.

Boo lifted off Aru’s hands and hovered in front of the girls’ faces. “You’re Mini, she’s Aru. I’m exasperated. Salutations done? Okay. Off to the Otherworld now.” “Exasperated, how do we get there?” asked Mini. Boo blinked. “Let’s hope you inherited some talents, since irony evidently eluded you.” “I have an iron deficiency. Does that count?” offered Mini.

Now it resembled a crocodile that had rolled around in Christmas-tree lights.

Or, as the woman who ran the local Hindu temple’s summer day camp liked to remind Aru: Don’t go outside without sunscreen or you’ll get darker and won’t find a husband!

But there wasn’t any protective lotion when it came to demons.

Because nothing says Come at me, demon like a pigeon sidekick,”

Imagine walking into a party and announcing, I AM THE DAUGHTER OF DEATH. You would almost certainly be guaranteed the first slice of cake.

Maybe that’s why superheroes wore capes. Maybe they weren’t actually capes at all, but safety blankets, like the one Aru kept at the bottom of her bed and pulled up under her chin before she went to sleep. Maybe superheroes just tied their blankies around their necks so they’d have a little bit of comfort wherever they went. Because honestly? Saving the world was scary. No harm admitting that. (And she could have done with her blankie right about then.)

“How about an elbow bump instead? It’s hygienic and fun!”

But, be warned, he’s still awful….” “Why?” asked Aru, shocked. “Because he was a murderer?” “Worse,” said Boo. “He’s a…” His voice dropped. “A writer.” He shook his head in disgust.

This was probably the one time a pigeon sidekick was useful.

Oh no,” said Boo. “What is it?” asked Aru. “I hate poems that rhyme.” The ants rearranged themselves into a new message from Valmiki: IF THAT IS TRUE THEN I HATE YOU

His shirt said: I’M NOT A HIPSTER. He reached for a mason jar that appeared out of thin air. The orangish drink caught the light. “I would offer you some turmeric tea,

It seemed strange to announce Look at me, I’m writing! but then again, writers were quite strange.

We have all the legends and poems of yore, but it’s time we offered readers some more.

(then again, all first drafts are miserable):

he did the thing with his mouth where it went up and his teeth showed.” “You mean when he smiled?”

That should be enough to make your mind detach itself from reality and drift off. Or you could do algebra. Or read James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. That’s my go-to.”

Many things can coexist. Several gods can live in one universe. It’s like fingers on a hand. They’re all different, but still part of a hand.”

The world has many faces, children. It’s only showing you one at a time.

One shop sold strange bolts of silk whose patterns looked like spun moonbeams and ribbons of rushing water. Next to it was an Apple Store.

When someone came near them, tiny spikes of metal rolled up and down the grocery cart like bristling fur. They seemed a bit feral. A couple of them growled.

“Here, have an Oreo.” “I don’t want an—” But Mini broke the cookie into small pieces and shoved a bite into his beak. Boo looked outraged for about five seconds before he finally swallowed it. “What ambrosia is this?” He smacked his beak. “Gimme more.”

Mini handed her a hat and sunglasses before jamming on her own pair. Even Boo got a pair of bird shades.

A particularly good book had a way of opening new spaces in one’s mind. It even invited you to come back later and rummage through what you’d learned.

“What kinda name is Sleeper?” asked Aru. “Are you just really good at napping?”

“You are testing my patience—” he hissed. “You slept in a lamp for a hundred years and that’s the best you could come up with?” shouted back Aru. “What a cliché. All you’re missing is the villain mustache.”

You could show up like an actor in every Bollywood movie, with an invisible wind blowing through your hair and everyone suddenly dancing around you.

Every so often, she saw a vending machine. But they didn’t offer candy or chips. Instead they had things like “seven hours of sleep,” “a good daydream,” “a very good daydream” (with, Aru noticed, a strange winking face beside it), “a shot of eloquence,” and a miniature antibacterial hand sanitizer.

Mini reached for a small pebble on the ground. “Um, Mini…?” And then she hurled it straight at the gigantic cauldron full of poison, hollering, “For science!!!”

“Maybe he’s speaking Russian? Sounds like Russian…” Aru looked up at the man. “Comrade?”

So far, the Kingdom of Death was just standing in an absurdly long line.

“And how refreshing!” he said. His shirt changed to say: THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE. “Upend the patriarchy! R-E-S-P-E-C-T! Et cetera, et cetera.

“I find that organizing scary information actually makes me less scared.”

She should have paid more attention when she was watching Lord of the Rings last week. Maybe if she’d looked at how Legolas used a bow instead of, you know, just looking at Legolas, she would’ve been a little bit more prepared.

“Good-bye, good-bye, Pandavas! Do great things! Make good choices!” said the palace.

“Yeah, but they’re supposed to be all peaceful and nice. Why would a unicorn need a horn? What’s it do with it?” Mini turned red. “I dunno. For shooting off magic and stuff.” “Or they use it to maul things.” “That’s horrible, Aru! They’re unicorns. They’re perfect.” “Maybe that’s just what they want you to think.”

“Imagine having to live in a place like this,” she said through chattering teeth. “You’d have to pick your nose all the time just so that your boogers wouldn’t freeze into icicles and stab the inside of your nose.”

And then Aru had hissed, “Kachori! Bajri no rotlo! Methi nu shaak! Undhiyu!” In actuality, those words weren’t a curse at all. They were just the names of various Gujarati dishes. But Carol Yang did not know that.