Well, This Is Awkward
Boo sat on a stack of books piled on top of Aru’s head.
“Balaaaaance!” he shrieked. “A Pandava always has immaculate form. A Pandava should be so precise that he—”
“Orshe,” added Aru.
“Orthey!” chimed in Brynne from a distance.
“Whatever pronoun you so choose!” snapped Boo. Even though she couldn’t see him, Aru could imagine him ruffling his feathers.
Aru and hersoul sisters were standing on a floor of gold, surrounded by different weapons, various illusion dummies, and posters of demons taped awkwardly to the transparent walls of Boo’s floating-bubble classroom.
A warm and fuzzy learning environment it was not.
“A Pandava must be so precise and so skilled that they can separate a shadow from its host! They can grab the wind! They are as swift as—”
“A river!” shouted Aru.
Minihollered,“With all the force of a great typhoon!”
“With all the strength of a raging fiiiiiire—”sang Brynne.
“STOP SINGINGMULAN!” shouted Boo.
Aru laughed so hard that the books fell from her head and toppled to the ground.
Boo squawked and pecked her ear. “Concentrate!”
“Iam,” said Aru.
But that was a bit of a lie. Two weeks had passed since they’d beencleared of stealing the bow and arrow of Kamadeva, and yet they hadn’t been able to return the weapon to the god of love until today. It was going to happen in exactly one hour. Which meant that everything still felt strangely up in the air, even as life calmed down.
When Boo had been released from his holding cell, he’d been so shocked and skittish that the three of them had all chipped in partof their weekly allowance to get him a family-size box of Oreos from Costco. But after that, he’d only gotten more vigilant about training the three of them. Aiden joined in sometimes, but he and Hira took most of their magical classes with the kids who had Otherworldly ancestry. Mini’s family had asked to foster Hira, and now she lived in their spare bedroom. Even though it’d only been a fewdays, Aru thought she noticed a huge difference in Hira already. She smiled a lot more … and she finally had clothes that fit.
“What happened under the Ocean of Milk was only the beginning,” said Boo. He started marching back and forth. He did that a lot when he got nervous. “There’s going to be an uprising! Awar! You have to be ready to face the Sleeper again. Don’t forget that misguided intentionsare often the most dangerous.”
Hequieted down when he said that. A week ago, after the girls had told him about Surpanakha, he’d confided that he, too, had once gone down a dark path.
“Way back when, everything I did was to avenge what I thought was an insult to my sister,” he’d said. “I was wrong.”
Mini had comforted him. “It’s okay, Boo.”
Boo sniffed. “I thought that by only teaching youthe good stories about the Pandavas, you’d feel more inspired.”
Aru shook her head. “We deserve to know the bad stuff too, Boo.”
“It’s not balanced otherwise,” pointed out Brynne.
Boo had agreed. From then on, when he told them his daily stories, he didn’t shy away from the ugly parts … but that also made him that much more anxious when it came to talks about the great war ahead.
“If you’renot ready, you’ll die!” he said, squawking at them. “And I will kill you if you die! How dare you!”
“Cheer up, Boo,” said Aru. “We’re working on our own moves!”
Brynne frowned. “We are?”
“Yeah! We can improvise. Check it out.” Aru pointed at Mini and yelled, “Shield!”
