Aru Shah and the End of Time Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Roshani Chokshi

  Introduction copyright © 2018 by Rick Riordan

  Cover art © 2017 by Abigail Dela Rey

  Cover design by Phil Caminiti

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  ISBN 978-1-368-01738-1

  Visit www.DisneyBooks.com

  Follow @ReadRiordan

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  1. In Which Aru Regrets Opening the Door

  2. Oops

  3. Wake Up

  4. In-ep-tee-tood

  5. The Other Sister

  6. Look, but Not Really

  7. The Council of Guardians

  8. Who’s Your Daddy?

  9. The Three Keys

  10. A Trip to the Beauty Salon

  11. Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

  12. Bring On the Next Demon! Wait, Maybe Not…

  13. The Hipster in the Anthill

  14. A Trip to the Grocery Store

  15. Why Are All Enchanted Things So Rude?

  16. That Was So Last Season

  17. The Library of A–Z

  18. A Strange Case

  19. I Really…REALLY…Wouldn’t Do That

  20. Welp, She Did It

  21. The Door and the Dogs

  22. Who’s a Good Boy?

  23. Soul Index

  24. Dare, Disturb, Deign

  25. What Meets the Eye (and What Doesn’t)

  26. My Home, Not Yours! No Touchie!

  27. …And Then Came the Horde of Godzilla-Size Fireflies

  28. The Palace’s Story

  29. The Bridge of Forgetting

  30. The Tale of Shukra

  31. This Place Smells Funky

  32. #1 on Mini’s Top Ten Ways I Don’t Want to Die List: Death by Halitosis

  33. I’ll Be a Cow in My Next Life

  34. The Pool of the Past

  35. Can You Give Me Better Hair on the Way Out?

  36. The TV Started It

  37. Attack!

  38. Aru Shah Is a Liar

  39. Who’s the Liar Now?

  40. Failure

  41. Got All That?

  42. Word Vomit

  43. Why, Why, Why? Stupid Words

  44. Woof

  Glossary

  About the Author

  To my sisters:

  Niv, Victoria, Bismah, Monica, and Shraya

  We really need a theme song.

  Aru Shah Is About to Explode Your Head

  Have you ever read a book and thought, Wow, I wish I’d written that!?

  For me, Aru Shah and the End of Time is one of those books. It has everything I like: humor, action, great characters, and, of course, awesome mythology! But this is not a book I could have written. I just don’t have the expertise or the insider’s knowledge to tackle the huge, incredible world of Hindu mythology, much less make it so fun and reader-friendly.

  Fortunately for all of us, Roshani Chokshi does.

  If you are not familiar with Hindu mythology—wow, are you in for a treat! You thought Zeus, Ares, and Apollo were wild? Wait until you meet Hanuman and Urvashi. You thought Riptide was a cool weapon? Check out this fine assortment of divine astras—maces, swords, bows, and nets woven from lightning. Take your pick. You’re going to need them. You thought Medusa was scary? She’s got nothing on the nagini and rakshas. Aru Shah, a salty and smart seventh-grade girl from Atlanta, is about to plunge into the midst of all this craziness, and her adventure will make your head explode in the best possible way.

  If you already know Hindu mythology, you’re about to have the most entertaining family reunion ever. You’re going to see lots of your favorites—gods, demons, monsters, villains, and heroes. You’re going to soar up to the heavens and down into the Underworld. And no matter how many of these myths you already know, I’ll bet you a pack of Twizzlers you’re going to learn something new.

  Can you tell I’m excited to share this book with you? Yeah, I’m pretty excited.

  So what are we waiting for? Aru Shah is hanging out in the Museum of Ancient Indian Art and Culture, where her mom works. Autumn break has started, and Aru is pretty sure it’s going to be a boring day.

  Yikes. She is SO wrong.

  In Which Aru Regrets Opening the Door

  The problem with growing up around highly dangerous things is that after a while you just get used to them.

  For as long as she could remember, Aru had lived in the Museum of Ancient Indian Art and Culture. And she knew full well that the lamp at the end of the Hall of the Gods was not to be touched.

  She could mention “the lamp of destruction” the way a pirate who had tamed a sea monster could casually say, Oh, you mean ole Ralph here? But even though she was used to the lamp, she had never once lit it. That would be against the rules. The rules she went over every Saturday, when she led the afternoon visitors’ tour.

  Some folks may not like the idea of working on a weekend, but it never felt like work to Aru.

  It felt like a ceremony.

  Like a secret.

  She would don her crisp scarlet vest with its three honeybee buttons. She would imitate her mother’s museum-curator voice, and people—this was the best part of all—would listen. Their eyes never left her face. Especially when she talked about the cursed lamp.

  Sometimes she thought it was the most fascinating thing she ever discussed. A cursed lamp is a much more interesting topic than, say, a visit to the dentist. Although one could argue that both are cursed.

  Aru had lived at the museum for so long, it kept no secrets from her. She had grown up reading and doing her homework beneath the giant stone elephant at the entrance. Often she’d fall asleep in the theater and wake up just before the crackling self-guided tour recording announced that India became independent from the British in 1947. She even regularly hid a stash of candy in the mouth of a four-hundred-year-old sea dragon statue (she’d named it Steve) in the west wing. Aru knew everything about everything in the museum. Except one thing…

  The lamp. For the most part, it remained a mystery.

  “It’s not quite a lamp,” her mother, renowned curator and archaeologist Dr. K. P. Shah, had told her the first time she showed it to Aru. “We call it a diya.”

  Aru remembered pressing her nose against the glass case, staring at the lump of clay. As far as cursed objects went, this was by far the most boring. It was shaped like a pinched hockey puck. Small markings, like bite marks, crimped the edges. And yet, for all its normal-ness, even the statues filling the Hall of the Gods seemed to lean away from the lamp, giving it a wide berth.

  “Why can’t we light it?” she had asked her mother.

  Her mother hadn’t met her gaze. “Sometimes light illuminates things that are better left in the dark. Besides, you never know who is watching.”

  Well, Aru had watched. She’d been watching her entire life.

  Every day after school she would come home, hang her backpack from the stone elephant’s trunk, and creep toward the Hall of the Gods.

  It was the museum’s most popular exhibit, filled with a hundred statues of various Hindu gods. Her mother had lined the walls with tall mirrors so visitors could see the artifacts from all angles. The mirrors were “vintage” (a word Aru had used when s
he traded Burton Prater a greenish penny for a whopping two dollars and half a Twix bar). Because of the tall crape myrtles and elms standing outside the windows, the light that filtered into the Hall of the Gods always looked a little muted. Feathered, almost. As if the statues were wearing crowns of light.

  Aru would stand at the entrance, her gaze resting on her favorite statues—Lord Indra, the king of the heavens, wielding a thunderbolt; Lord Krishna, playing his flutes; the Buddha, sitting with his spine straight and legs folded in meditation—before her eyes would inevitably be drawn to the diya in its glass case.

  She would stand there for minutes, waiting for something…anything that would make the next day at school more interesting, or make people notice that she, Aru Shah, wasn’t just another seventh grader slouching through middle school, but someone extraordinary….

  Aru was waiting for magic.

  And every day she was disappointed.

  “Do something,” she whispered to the god statues. It was a Monday morning, and she was still in her pajamas. “You’ve got plenty of time to do something awesome, because I’m on autumn break.”

  The statues did nothing.

  Aru shrugged and looked out the window. The trees of Atlanta, Georgia, hadn’t yet realized it was October. Only their top halves had taken on a scarlet-and-golden hue, as if someone had dunked them halfway in a bucket of fire and then plopped them back on the lawn.

  As Aru had expected, the day was on its way to being uneventful. That should have been her first warning. The world has a tendency to trick people. It likes to make a day feel as bright and lazy as sun-warmed honey dripping down a jar as it waits until your guard is down….

  And that’s when it strikes.

  Moments before the visitor alarm rang, Aru’s mom had been gliding through the cramped two-bedroom apartment connected to the museum. She seemed to be reading three books at a time while also conversing on the phone in a language that sounded like a chorus of tiny bells. Aru, on the other hand, was lying upside down on the couch and pelting pieces of popcorn at her, trying to get her attention.

  “Mom. Don’t say anything if you can take me to the movies.”

  Her mom laughed gracefully into the phone. Aru scowled. Why couldn’t she laugh like that? When Aru laughed, she sounded like she was choking on air.

  “Mom. Don’t say anything if we can get a dog. A Great Pyrenees. We can name him Beowoof!”

  Now her mother was nodding with her eyes closed, which meant that she was sincerely paying attention. Just not to Aru.

  “Mom. Don’t say anything if I—”

  Breeeeep!

  Breeeeep!

  Breeeeep!

  Her mother lifted a delicate eyebrow and stared at Aru. You know what to do. Aru did know what to do. She just didn’t want to do it.

  She rolled off the couch and Spider-Man–crawled across the floor in one last bid to get her mother’s attention. This was a difficult feat considering that the floor was littered with books and half-empty chai mugs. She looked back to see her mom jotting something on a notepad. Slouching, Aru opened the door and headed to the stairs.

  Monday afternoons at the museum were quiet. Even Sherrilyn, the head of museum security and Aru’s long-suffering babysitter on the weekends, didn’t come in on Mondays. Any other day—except Sunday, when the museum was closed—Aru would help hand out visitor stickers. She would direct people to the various exhibits and point out where the bathrooms were. Once she’d even had the opportunity to yell at someone when they’d patted the stone elephant, which had a very distinct DO NOT TOUCH sign (in Aru’s mind, this applied to everyone who wasn’t her).

  On Mondays she had come to expect occasional visitors seeking temporary shelter from bad weather. Or people who wanted to express their concern (in the gentlest way possible) that the Museum of Ancient Indian Art and Culture honored the devil. Or sometimes just the FedEx man needing a signature for a package.

  What she did not expect when she opened the door to greet the new visitors was that they would be three students from Augustus Day School. Aru experienced one of those elevator-stopping-too-fast sensations. A low whoosh of panic hit her stomach as the three students stared down at her and her Spider-Man pajamas.

  The first, Poppy Lopez, crossed her tan, freckled arms. Her brown hair was pulled back in a ballerina bun. The second, Burton Prater, held out his hand, where an ugly penny sat in his palm. Burton was short and pale, and his striped black-and-yellow shirt made him look like an unfortunate bumblebee. The third, Arielle Reddy—the prettiest girl in their class, with her dark brown skin and shiny black hair—simply glared.

  “I knew it,” said Poppy triumphantly. “You told everyone in math class that your mom was taking you to France for break.”

  That’s what Mom had promised, Aru thought.

  Last summer, Aru’s mother had curled up on the couch, exhausted from another trip overseas. Right before she fell asleep, she had squeezed Aru’s shoulder and said, Perhaps I’ll take you to Paris in the fall, Aru. There’s a café along the Seine River where you can hear the stars come out before they dance in the night sky. We’ll go to boulangeries and museums, sip coffee from tiny cups, and spend hours in the gardens.

  That night Aru had stayed awake dreaming of narrow winding streets and gardens so fancy that even their flowers looked haughty. With that promise in mind, Aru had cleaned her room and washed the dishes without complaint. And at school, the promise had become her armor. All the other students at Augustus Day School had vacation homes in places like the Maldives or Provence, and they complained when their yachts were under repair. The promise of Paris had brought Aru one tiny step closer to belonging.

  Now, Aru tried not to shrink under Poppy’s blue-eyed gaze. “My mom had a top secret mission with the museum. She couldn’t take me.”

  That was partly true. Her mom never took her on work trips.

  Burton threw down the green penny. “You cheated me. I gave you two bucks!”

  “And you got a vintage penny—” started Aru.

  Arielle cut her off. “We know you’re lying, Aru Shah. That’s what you are: a liar. And when we go back to school, we’re going to tell everyone—”

  Aru’s insides squished. When she’d started at Augustus Day School last month, she’d been hopeful. But that had been short-lived.

  Unlike the other students, she didn’t get driven to school in a sleek black car. She didn’t have a home “offshore.” She didn’t have a study room or a sunroom, just a room, and even she knew that her room was really more like a closet with delusions of grandeur.

  But what she did have was imagination. Aru had been daydreaming her whole life. Every weekend, while she waited for her mom to come home, she would concoct a story: her mother was a spy, an ousted princess, a sorceress.

  Her mom claimed she never wanted to go on business trips, but they were a necessity to keep the museum running. And when she came home and forgot about things—like Aru’s chess games or choir practice—it wasn’t because she didn’t care, but because she was too busy juggling the state of war and peace and art.

  So at Augustus Day School, whenever the other kids asked, Aru told tales. Like the ones she told herself. She talked about cities she’d never visited and meals she’d never eaten. If she arrived with scuffed-up shoes, it was because her old pair had been sent to Italy for repair. She’d mastered that delicate condescending eyebrow everyone else had, and she deliberately mispronounced the names of stores where she bought her clothes, like the French Tar-Jay, and the German Vahl-Mahrt. If that failed, she’d just sniff and say, “Trust me, you wouldn’t recognize the brand.”

  And in this way, she had fit in.

  For a while, the lies had worked. She’d even been invited to spend a weekend at the lake with Poppy and Arielle. But Aru had ruined everything the day she was caught sneaking from the car-pool line. Arielle had asked which car was hers. Aru pointed at one, and Arielle’s smile turned thin. “That’s funny. Because
that’s my driver’s car.”

  Arielle was giving Aru that same sneer now.

  “You told us you have an elephant,” said Poppy.

  Aru pointed at the stone elephant behind her. “I do!”

  “You said that you rescued it from India!”

  “Well, Mom said it was salvaged from a temple, which is fancy talk for rescue—”

  “And you said you have a cursed lamp,” said Arielle.

  Aru saw the red light on Burton’s phone: steady and unblinking. He was recording her! She panicked. What if the video went online? She had two possible choices: 1) She could hope the universe might take pity on her and allow her to burst into flames before homeroom, or 2) She could change her name, grow a beard, and move away.

  Or, to avoid the situation entirely…

  She could show them something impossible.

  “The cursed lamp is real,” she said. “I can prove it.”

  Oops

  It was four p.m. when Aru and her three classmates walked together into the Hall of the Gods.

  Four p.m. is like a basement. Wholly innocent in theory. But if you really think about a basement, it is cement poured over restless earth. It has smelly, unfinished spaces, and wooden beams that cast too-sharp shadows. It is something that says almost, but not quite. Four p.m. feels that way, too. Almost, but not quite afternoon anymore. Almost, but not quite evening yet. And it is the way of magic and nightmares to choose those almost-but-not-quite moments and wait.

  “Where’s your mom, anyway?” asked Poppy.

  “In France,” said Aru, trying to hold her chin up. “I couldn’t go with her because I had to take care of the museum.”

  “She’s probably lying again,” said Burton.

  “She’s definitely lying. That’s the only thing she’s good at,” said Arielle.

  Aru wrapped her arms around herself. She was good at lots of things, if only people would notice. She was good at memorizing facts she had heard just once. She was good at chess, too, to the point where she might have gone to the state championship if Poppy and Arielle hadn’t told her Nobody joins chess, Aru. You can’t do that. And so Aru had quit the chess team. She used to be good at tests, too. But now, every time she sat down to take a test, all she could think of was how expensive the school was (it was costing her mom a fortune), and how everyone was judging her shoes, which were popular last year but not this year. Aru wanted to be noticed. But she kept getting noticed for all the wrong reasons.