“HEY! Why are you kids holding up the line?” demanded someone a few steps away. It was a very tiny pale-skinned woman with flames for hair wearing what looked like chain mail made out of Q-tips. “Keep it moving! You’re not the only ones hoping for a last chance at stardom!”
Stardom?
Brynne, still dizzy and frowning, pushed Aru forward with a vague grunt. Aru glanced at the front of the line. It was movingveryfast. Before, it had seemed like they were smushed against strangers. But now the lizard-faced creature with the headdress was a hundred feet away.
The Potatoes jogged to catch up, rounding the bend in the wall until a structure came into view. Aru blinked. On the other side of the wall loomed a glass pavilion. Animals made of smoke—leaping fish, soaring eagles, and prancing horses—circled its cupola, and from within came a dull thrum of music. But the glass was frosted, so there was no way to see inside.
“Definitely enchanted,” said Rudy, holding up a hand. “It’s like some kind of…music venue, I think.”
“Amusic venue?” repeated Aru. “In the middle of nowhere? Why would they even have that?”
“Where’s the labyrinth?” asked Mini, biting her lip. “I really messed up, didn’t I?”
Aru wanted to say a comforting word to her sister, but someone started yelling at them from the back.
“KEEP MOVING OR I WILL ROAST YOU!”
Aru spun around, a retort ready to fly off her tongue, only to see that the being talking to her was, in fact, a living column of flame. Who happened to be ten feet tall. Aru changed her mind.
“Yeah, okay, let’s go,” said Aru, hustling forward.
The line moved so fast there was no time for the Potatoes to chat. Every now and then they would hear an ear-piercing screech or a deep, bellowing sob from the front of the line, but things quieted down as they got closer. The mirrored wall faded away. A new part of the structure became visible: a big red door that floated a foot off the ground.
Beside it stood a very bored-looking yaksha. He was short and skinny, with mint-green skin and mossy patches above his pointed ears. He wore a white T-shirt with holes in it, a pair of distressed leather pants, and an elaborate brocadesherwaniatop it all. A pair of glowing sunglasses was perched on his bulbous nose above an unsmiling mouth. On the other side of the green yaksha was the curtained entrance to the massive tent. From where Aru stood it was still hard to see much inside, but through a crack she could just make out a field. Dark shapes moved on the other side of the glass wall.
“Yeah, listen, you’re, like, theseventhperson to tell us that you’rereallygood at the ukulele,” the green yaksha was saying. He was speaking to a small band ofvanarasat the front of the line. They were wearing palm fronds and banana leaves and carrying a variety of musical instruments.
Their leader, who was clutching a bagpipe to his chest, started to weep. “But we’ve been practicing foryears!” he said. “We just wantonechance to perform on the Final Stage!”
The yaksha yawned. “No.”
“Please! Think of my family!” said the leader, thrusting a photo at the yaksha’s face.“What will I tell my son?”
“Sir, this is a cat.”
“WELL, IT’S THE CLOSEST I HAVE TO OFFSPRING….”
“Next,”said the yaksha in a bored voice.
“We can do a great rendition of Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene.’ Just give us one more chance—”
The red door lurched forward. It swung open and the band disappeared into it with a yelp. All that was left of them was a single photograph drifting onto the sand. In it, a very fat orange cat in a Santa hat was sitting on a chair. It did not look happy.
Now the lizard-faced creature with the green headdress swanned forward, allowing Aru to get a better look past the entrance. Inside was a wide mowed field of grass at least twice the size of a football stadium. Bleachers lined the sides of the pavilion, and in the center was a rectangular stage made of glimmering crystal. Floating directly above it was another door, this one purple and faded around the edges. Curls of smoke seeped from it and combined to form fantastical winged horses and narwhals that twisted in the air.
Brynne peered over Aru’s shoulder, scowling. “I recognize that door from the World Elephant platform,” she said. “But it’s not the one the Sun Jewel picked.”
“I think it wasright next tothe labyrinth door,” whispered Mini. Her gaze darted to the yaksha, who was less than ten feet away from them and locked in some kind of argument with the reptile-faced person. “So we can’t be too far away from where we’re supposed to be, right? It’s like Sheela said—”
“Near the labyrinth and backward?” said Aru, repeating what their sister had mentioned in the astral plane.
“What if we can’t find the door to the labyrinth in time?” asked Mini, her pitch going up a notch. “Should we just takethatone? How? What are we going to—”
“NEXT!” bellowed the mint-green yaksha.
The lizard-faced creature had vanished. Beside the yaksha, the red exit door swelled, then flattened. As if it had burped after devouring something.
A single pink feather twirled in the air.
