The ground beneath them began to quake and tremble, and the mirror floor shattered, the pieces drifting apart like giant ice floes. A giant fissure opened beneath Aru’s feet and she made an awkward hop to the right. Her arms pinwheeled as she fought for balance, and she glimpsed what lay between the cracks in the floor….
Nothing.
Just the night sky and the promise of hard ground thousands of feet below. Her stomach swooped uncomfortably.
“Since you insist on playing unfairly, I shall raise the stakes!” called Chandra.
His twenty-seven wives now stood on a crust of unbroken floor that was so narrow the tips of their toes peeked over the edge and their long flowing gowns hung over the dark abyss below. They weren’t bored or annoyed anymore, but scared. A couple of them tried to inch back against the wall, but there wasn’t space for them to move.
Aru looked around, panic swelling in her chest. Beside her, Aiden and Rudy were huddled precariously on a mirror floe no bigger than a chair seat. On her right, Mini sat clutching the edges of a piece the size of a bedroom pillow, and Brynne balanced one-legged on a shard no larger than a serving platter. Fortunately, she’d been able to retrieve Gogo before it fell.
“This is hopeless!” said Mini.
“Hey! Don’t forget about us!” called Rudy frantically from the other side of the room.
Brynne wheeled her mace high above her head. A mini cyclone burst from the tip and traveled downward. She expertly guided the wind around the space, pushing the floor shards closer to one another until some of them came back together like a grand jigsaw puzzle. The kids leaped from one piece to the next until they all met up on the largest one.
“Clever!” said Chandra, clapping. “I’ll have to remember that trick when I possess the wind mace.”
“We can’t plan anything with him listening,” said Aru.
Mini nodded. She changed Dee Dee into a danda and raised it. A burst of violet light formed a bubble over them. Chandra scowled and seemed to call out something….
But they couldn’t hear a thing.
“Our weapons aren’t going to work against him,” said Aiden. “Fighting isn’t how we’re going to win back Nikita.”
“So, what do you suggest?” snapped Brynne.
Aru tightened her grip on her lightning bolt and felt its strength course through her. Vajra was still weak, but it was slowly regaining power. In the back of her mind, Aru heard Boo’s voice, the words he’d drummed through their skulls in every practice fight:
“We are more than the things we fight with,” Aru said firmly.
The other four fell silent, and Aru felt that—for once—she’d come up with the 100 percent right thing to say.
“I want to believe that,” said Mini. “But say we don’t fight and somehow reach the other side—how are we going to know which door to open?”
“Remember what Sheela said?” asked Aru. “You can find her behind the favorite star of the moon. That’s gotta mean Rohini is guarding Nikita’s door!”
“But they all look like Rohini!” said Rudy.
“And yet he only loves one of them,” said Aiden.
That, Aru realized, was the answer.
“We don’t have to figure out which one Rohini is—we just have to make Chandra reveal it by accident,” said Aru. “Then we’ll know which door to open.”
“How’re we going to do that?” asked Aiden.
At first no one responded, and then Brynne cleared her throat. “Chandra reminds me of Anila,” she said, staring up at the moon god.
Aiden’s face darkened. “I can see that.”
“Am I supposed to know who that is?” asked Rudy.
“No,” said Aiden and Brynne at the same time.
“Someone like that only shows you what they care about when it’s in danger,” said Brynne.
She rubbed at a spot on her arm neatly covered by the stacks of bracelets she was wearing. Aru saw the shiny patch of scar tissue left there from a nasty kitchen accident. When a boiling pot of water fell off the stove, Anila had been standing right beside Brynne, but instead of pushing her daughter out of the way…Anila had saved her purse instead. The patch on Brynne’s skin wasn’t the first scar Anila had left, but it was the most visible one.
“So does that mean we have to go after the star goddesses?” asked Rudy, shocked. “That’s horrible! Plus, what if they get mad? They could curse me!” He paused. “I mean us!”
“It’d be horrible if we actually went after the goddesses.” Mini smiled and twirled Dee Dee. “But we’ve got illusion on our