“What has happened to you, old friend?”
A Strange Case
Friend? Aru almost dropped the backpack.
“You are much changed since you were the king of Subala.”
“Boo, what’s he talking about?” asked Mini.
The Sleeper smiled. “Boo?That’s what they call you? Has all that guilt made you soft?”
Something clicked in Aru’s head. Subala wasn’t Boo’s name, but the name of hiskingdom. She remembered Urvashi’s laugh….If they really are Pandavas, then the irony thatyouare the one who has been chosen to help them delights me.
“I get it,” said the Sleeper mockingly. “Boo is short for Subala.” He turned to the girls, his eyebrows knitted in thatoh-I’m-so-sorry-for-you-NOTway that only truly awful people can pull off. “His name isn’t Subala. It’sShakhuni. I suppose you could call him Shocky. In which case I imagine this might be ashocker.”
Hechuckledat his own joke. Which is another thing that only truly awful people do (grandparents, dads, and that one well-meaning but weird uncle are exceptions).
Shakhuni.Aru’s heart went cold. She knew that name from the stories. It was the name of the deceiver. The sorcerer who led the eldest Pandava brother astray in a cursed game of dice, where he was forced to gamble away his entire kingdom. Shakhuni started the great Kurekshetra war. His revenge consumed his own kingdom.
He was one of the Pandavas’ greatest enemies.
And she…She had let him sit on her shoulder. Mini had fed him an Oreo. They’dcaredfor him.
“Your quarrel is not with them,” Boo said to the Sleeper.
“My, you have become quite the addled one,” said the Sleeper. “You’re telling me you have actually been tasked to help the Pandavas? What is this, your penance for committing so horrible a sin?”
“No,” said Boo, and this time he looked at Aru and Mini. “It is not my penance. It is myhonor.”
Aru felt a flush of pride in the same instant that she felt a stab of misgiving. Nice words, but why should she believe them? Poppy and Arielle had been nice to her up until the moment when they weren’t.
“Youhavegone soft,” said the Sleeper, frowning.
“I’ve grown stronger. In a way that, perhaps, you can no longer understand. People change. You used to believe that most of all,” said Boo. “Or have you forgotten?”
“People don’t change. They just grow weaker,” said the Sleeper. His voice was as icy as the Cloak of Winter. “For the sake of old times, I will give you one chance. Join me. Help my cause. I will make us gods, and end this age.”
This is it.Aru waited for Boo to betray them. She braced herself to feel a rush of hurt, but Boo didn’t hesitate. His voice was loud and strong when he said, “No.”
Aru’s heart squeezed.
The Sleeper growled and threw Boo across the room. The pigeon hit a shelf with a loudsmackand slumped to the floor. Mini and Aru screamed, but the moment they tried to run toward him, a wall of air forced them back. Aru braced herself, her hand flying to the pendant that Monsoon had given her. She wanted to throw it at him, but all it could do wasaimright. Making sure a rock hit the Sleeper on his nose wouldn’t do much good if he could just shake his head and keep going. She needed something bigger or more powerful.
The Sleeper prowled toward them. As Aru was scanning the collection for a giant book to hit him with (the biggest one,Atlas, growled at her from the lowest shelf), Mini let out a scream. She tore off her headband and threw it like a Frisbee at the Sleeper. It caught on his ear.
For one moment, his eyes went all black. But then he recovered, and the headband vanished.
“That was your best effort?” he asked, laughing. “A headband? I’m trembling with fear. Now, let’s be honest. I could kill you easily. Two little girls. No training, no valor. Do you really think you can get the celestial weapons?”
Aru felt her face turning red. Indra had claimed her ashisdaughter. Maybe she’d been light-headed from standing up in the clouds when it happened, but she’d seen (at least shethoughtshe’d seen) the statue of Indra smile at her. As if he was…pleased.
Remembering that gave her the courage to say, “We were chosen by the gods.”
Then again, what was with the golden ball? Aru didn’t have any experience with dads, but she was pretty sure giving your kid a glowing Ping-Pong ball to fight demons was like getting pocket fuzz and spare change instead of an allowance.
The Sleeper scoffed, “The gods would never trust you to do anything. Just look at you.”
The more he talked, the angrier Aru became. She wasn’t going to back down.Theyhad something the Sleeper didn’t.
