Carol Yang had shouted, “Gross! Aru Shah just used her sleeve to wipe her nose!”
Everyone had started laughing. For the rest of the day, Carol had thrown balled-up toilet paper at the back of her head.
After school, Aru had gone home and cut out a picture of old-looking text from one of the museum’s pamphlets. She’d burned the edges of the photo with the stove flame to make it look even more antique.
The next day, right before homeroom, Aru had gone up to Carol and held the paper in her face. “Icurseyou, Carol Yang! From this day forth, you’ll always have a runny nose. Every time you look in the mirror and think you don’t have a booger, one is going to appear, and everyone will see it except you.” 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.
Neither did their homeroom teacher, who had walked in to find Carol holding a tissue to her nose and crying. Aru had been sent home with a note from the principal:Please tell your daughter to refrain from cursing her classmates.
Ever since, Aru hadn’t had a high opinion of curses. She’d thought they would function like gifts (It’s thethoughtthat counts!), but both of those things were lies. Thoughts weren’t powerful enough by themselves, and the curse hadn’t worked.
But this time…This time was all wrong.
Behind them, the Bridge of Forgetting looked like a crescent of ivory. Every memory that had forged it had been stolen from Shukra.
She thought she heard the Sleeper’s voice.Oh, Aru, Aru, Aru. What have you done?
But it wasn’t the Sleeper. It was Mini. She touched Aru’s wrist lightly. “What’d you do, Aru?”
“I saved us.” Her voice wobbled. “I got us across the bridge so that we could get the weapons and save the world.”
This was true.
And true things were supposed to feel…clean. Unquestionably good. But she didn’t feel good. Shukra had given up his life-form, and a curse had followed Aru over the bridge.
She was allegedly a hero. Was this how heroes felt, knotted up with doubt?
Mini’s face softened. “It’s okay. When this is over, we’ll get the curse removed. I bet they’ve got places for that in the Night Bazaar. Or we can ask Boo?”
At least Mini was optimistic. Aru forced herself to smile. She tried to push the curse from her thoughts. “Yeah! That’s it! Good idea, Mini. People do that with tattoos all the time. There’s a girl at my school whose sister got a butterfly put on her lower back during spring break, and her parents took her out of school for a week to get it zapped off.”
Mini wrinkled her nose. “Why would anyone want a butterflypermanentlyon their skin? Butterflies are creepy. Their tongues are weird. And did you know that if tattoo needles are contaminated and not properly sterilized you can get hepatitis?”
“And let me guess….You die?”
“Well, you can get treated,” said Mini. “But youcoulddie.”
Aru rolled her eyes. “C’mon. We must be getting close.”
Chitrigupta had said that the celestial weapons were past the bridge, but there was nothing in sight except a giant cave.
The cave was so tall, it seemed less like a cave and more like a ravine through a mountain range. Pale stalactites dripped down from the ceiling, jagged and sharp, and crowded so tightly that they reminded her of teeth.
And then there was thesmell.
Aru almost gagged.
It was worse than that time she had forgotten the groceries in the backseat of her mom’s Honda. The whole car had smelled so bad, her mom had been forced to leave the windows open all weekend. This place smelled like…rotting.
She stepped on something that crunched. Aru looked down to see a slender fish spine stuck to her shoe. She peeled it off and flung it into the cave. It landed with an echoingsplat.
“This floor is weird,” said Mini.
It was firm, but springy. Like a mattress. And it wasn’t gray or brown, like the floor of most caves, but a cherry red so deep it glinted black.
“It smells awful in here,” said Aru.
