Out of the corner of her eye, Aru spied something that looked like a heavy, multicolored tail whipping on the ground next to them. Only the tail wasn’t made of scales, but dozens of angrybooks, their spines quivering as if they were alive. Aru spun around as more tomes dropped from the shelves.
The papers scuttled across the floor and fused together. A couple dictionaries formed a claw. A collection of old maps rolled into a tongue. Cookbooks jointed one atop the other, like vertebrae in a spine. The tail, cobbled out of fairy tales, wiggled forward to attach itself to the rest of the pieces. For a moment, the books rustled and flapped into a giant tentacled ball. Then they unfurled all at once, forming a massive creature that looked like a cross between a dinosaur and a dragon.
“Um, hi?” tried Aru, backing up slowly until she was against a shelf. “What are you, a Thesaurus rex? Ha! Get it? You know, I always thought a Thesaurus rex would be a reallyfriendlydinosaur…. You seem friendly?”
The creature roared, ink and book-binding glue spewing from its mouth. Aru swiveled out of its aim.
“All right, never mind,” she said, snapping her fingers.
Vajra shifted into a glittering spear.
“Look, monster! Go catch the shiny!” yelled Aru, hurling her weapon.
Vajra soared straight up in the air, raining sparks of electricity. They dropped onto the tomes and erupted into tiny fires. The creature roared again, writhing and clawing at its body.
“Stop!” said Kara. “You’ll hurt the books!”
“Better them than us!” said Aru.
She glanced over her shoulder. By now, the exit had widened to three feet.
“Let’s go!” shouted Aru.
“I…” Kara hesitated, her eyes darting to a hardcover that lay nearby.
Slim and blue, it was one of the few books that hadn’t joined to form the beast. Aru lifted her hand, and Vajra, who was still bouncing off the walls to distract the creature, zoomed back into Aru’s grasp.
“Do you want to come with me or not?” demanded Aru, stepping foot inside the passage.
Kara steeled herself, then snatched the book off the ground.
“I do!” she said.
Aru and Kara ran headlong into the dark. Mirrors lined the passageway, so that it seemed as if they were running in infinite directions. A hundred feet away stood a door framed in light.
“That’s it!” said Kara. “Just say where you want to go once you open it, and—”
CRASH!
Aru turned to see the book monster stick its snout and an arm through the corridor’s entrance. It huffed at them. A cloud of ink seeped from its nostrils and spiderwebbed up the mirrors. The monster slammed a fist into the wall, and one by one the mirrors shattered, like a row of falling dominoes. At the end of the hall, the light around the door began to dim.
“It’s trying to cut off our escape!” said Kara.
There was only one way to stop the portal from going dead. Aru prepared to hurl Vajra at the monster….
But Kara grabbed her arm. “No! We can’t damage the books!”
“We’ve got to do something,” Aru said with a sigh.
Kara took a deep breath, then tapped her ring. In a flash of white light, it shifted into a long trident that looked as if it had been wrought out of an actual sunbeam. It brightened the hall and turned Kara’s eyes gold.
“My light doesn’t electrocute things like yours does,” said Kara.
Aru stared. “What the—?”
Kara aimed the trident at the book creature. The trident left a glowing trail before its three sharp-pointed ends sank into the monster’s outstretched arm. The beast howled as ink burst through the air. Aru stood there frozen for a moment before Kara took her hand and yanked her forward.
“C’mon!” Kara yelled. “Sunny will catch up with me later!”
