“Durvasa couldn’t have gotten far,” said Aru quietly.
The three of them snuck through the gate and then, with some trepidation, the divinity-only door. But maybe they counted, because they werepartdivine and Aiden had a special Pandava dispensation for this quest.
Unlike the building’s dull exterior, the interior of the DMV was huge, like a cosmic gallery. Beneath them, the floor glittered, as if someone had paved it with crushed stars. The ceiling looked like that of the Night Bazaar, an open sky that was half in daylight and half in darkness. The longer Aru stared at the ceiling, the more details she noticed. Like how there seemed to be a slender silverbridge that connected day and night, and how, if she waited for the clouds to move, she could make outtwogrand palaces, one in each realm. The palace in the daytime half of the sky looked like it was studded with carved rubies and garnets. The palace in the nighttime half looked like it was chiseled out of sapphire and moonstone.
But as uncanny as everything seemed, that was nothing comparedto the sight on the wall opposite them. Inside a row of glass display cases, there were statues … that appeared to be alive. They twisted and morphed in place, sometimes looking human, other times resembling asuras and apsaras.
“Whatisthis place?” asked Brynne. “It gives me the creeps.”
Aru walked up to a statue of a beautiful woman sitting on the ground and weeping. A metal plaque at thebottom of the case readSHAKUNTULA.
“I know that story,” said Aiden, walking up beside her. “Shakuntula was so distracted by thoughts of her husband that she ignored the sage who came to visit her. He put a curse on her that whoever she was thinking about would forget her.”
“That’s … hostile,” said Aru.
“At least her husband remembered her again. I forgot how. Something to do with a fish …”
Yeah, right,thought Aru.Because nothing says true love like a fish.
The statue in the case beside Shakuntula was just a rock. Curious, Aru moved toward it, but Brynne grabbed her by the wrist.
“Stop looking at statues!” she said. “We’ve got to find Durvasa! He could be anywhere.”
“Heis right behind you.”
All three of them jumped, spinning around to face the sage. He loomed over them, hisarms crossed.
“Getout, Pandavas! The sign said ‘divinity only’!”
“We’re divine!” countered Brynne. “Sorta?”
“Yeah, check it out!” said Aru, brandishing Vajra.
But at the sight of the powerful sage, her lightning bolt wilted into a meek noodle.
“Vajra!” hissed Aru.
The lightning bolt turned into a Ping-Pong ball and zoomed back into her pocket.
“Coward,” whispered Aru.
Vajra stung herspitefully.
Durvasa smirked. “It seems your father has not forgotten my might. It was I, after all, who punished the gods. I took away their immortality for spiting me.”
“What did Lord Indra do to make you mad?” asked Aru.
“I gave him a beautiful garland. And what did he do? He put it on that cloud-spinning elephant’s head! The elephant decided the flowers tickled too much, and the creaturethrew it on the ground! So, just as my gift had been cast down, I decreed that the gods should be cast down, too.”
Aiden frowned. “But it was the elephant, not Indra, that—”
“Pah!Why have you followed me here? I told you to leave.”
“We were just … admiring your rock?” tried Aiden. “It’s, um, a great rock.”
Durvasa scoffed. “That’s not justarock. It’stherock.”
“The Rock?”echoed Brynne,looking horrified. “How could youdothat to Dwayne Johnson?”
