“To remember me by,” said Jambavan.
“Why me?” asked Aru, trying to mask her disappointment.
The bear king glanced at her sisters and friends slowly making their way up the stairs. “Because I think you see more than you let on,” he said in his rumbling voice. “Perhaps this token will help you when the time comes for you to make your decision.”
“Decision about what?” asked Aru as she turned to place the claw gently inside her backpack.
When Jambavan didn’t respond, she looked up…but the old bear king was gone.
No one spoke as they walked up the stairs. No one complained about how their feet ached and their back hurt, how it seemed like they’d been climbing for ages. Aru knew the rules.
Stay focused.
Don’t catch the attention of the doors.
Eventually, Aru could sense the clouds parting around them. The surface of the steps became smooth, flattening out into a platform that had the feeling of a wide space. Like a school gymnasium. On the white stone, she could see the stark shadows of dozens of doors spinning around them. It looked like the Potatoes were standing in the middle of roving teeth.
The lantern seems to be shining brighter at one of the doors, said Brynne through the mind link. Let’s take this slowly. Four steps ahead on my count. Three…two…
On one, Aru took a step forward. Mini followed Rudy, and Aiden moved in sync with Brynne. Aru exhaled, her shoulders relaxing by a fraction. They were doing it….They were almost there….
On the third step, Aru closed her eyes. It was only supposed to be for a second. The light from the Sun Jewel was giving her a headache.
But the moment Aru closed her eyes, she did something she never meant to do…
She hoped.
And with that hope, she saw the entrance to the labyrinth at Lullwater Park, where her mom had taken them. Aru imagined her mom smiling with pride, while Vajra’s glow rivaled that of the Sun Jewel itself….
WHAT’S HAPPENING? came Brynne’s panicked thought.
Aru’s eyes flew open. The shadows of the doors had moved closer, like a circular trap drawing shut. Now they were near enough that Aru caught the shape of something instantly familiar. It was the smooth mahogany entrance to Krithika Shah’s office. In one corner of the wood was the tiny cat Aru had drawn with a black Sharpie when she was eight years old. Aru quickly turned her head.
Too late. She had looked at the door…and the door had noticed.
It’s spinning away! said Brynne through the mind link. Now it’s on our left! Everyone take six steps! Do NOT look….
Focus, Aru told herself as her breaths began to come a little more quickly. She tried to keep her head empty, but it was as if the doors knew they’d found an opening in her. With each step, Aru caught sight of a different entrance drawing closer. Here was the swinging glass door that led to her principal’s office. There—
I’m being followed, said Mini through the mind link. I can smell it. Are we almost there?
Don’t think about it, Mini! said Brynne.
It’s just like my—
Alarm bells went off in Aru’s head. NO, MINI, DON’T THINK IT!
Basement, said Mini.
Once Mini said basement, it was as if she had summoned it into being. Aru felt the shadow of the opening falling over her. She tried not to look at it, but it caught her eye anyway. The door was wooden and painted a cheery shade of pink. A tarnished metal latch dangled at eye level like a lolling tongue. It creaked open.
One day last summer, the power had gone out in the Kapoor-Mercado-Lopez house, and all the food in the basement fridge had gone bad. No one had discovered it until weeks later. Aru still remembered the stench of rotten meat, the sight of puckered fruits thick with maggots. The stone floor of the platform vanished beneath her feet to be replaced by the rough red carpet that Mini’s parents had brought back from a trip.
“NO!” yelled Aiden.
Aru looked up to see that Mini’s expression was glazed over, her eyes blank and staring. At least fifteen doors crowded around them. Aru recognized the sunlit door of her favorite library, swinging open so she could lose herself in its warmth. Then the menacing door of her eighth-grade geometry teacher’s room. Next, a door strung with lights, which Aru recognized as the entrance to an Italian restaurant her mom had taken her to—
“Look at me, Shah,” said Aiden, grabbing her hand.
Aru jerked her gaze away from the doors and stared into his eyes. She sensed the doors circling her, getting closer and closer. Aru could feel the rough brush of wood and the whine of distant music, as if a door was desperate to suck her in.
But Aiden’s gaze steadied her and for the first time, she could see what was happening around them.
Up ahead, Rudy held up one of his enchanted gemstones. The doors recoiled from the sound it loudly emitted—a woodchipper? A lawnmower? Next to him, Mini swayed on the spot. Her basement door noiselessly slid forward until it was barely three feet away from her. Aru was on the verge of grabbing Mini’s hand to pull her away from it when Brynne shouted.
“FOUND IT!” she yelled. “The lantern says this is it!”
Sure enough, the door in front of Brynne was a rectangle of molten gold. Beside it, a glass door that looked like violet-tinged smoke angled for their attention. And next to that one stood a door covered in sheet music.
“I just have to get it open!” yelled Brynne. Then her eyes widened. “MINI, NO!”
Brynne raised a hand. Her wind mace flew into her grip, its head aimed at the basement door that had swung open at Mini’s touch.
I want to go home, thought Mini. I want everything to be okay. I want my friends to be safe. I want us all to wake up from this awful dream….
Brynne aimed her wind mace, and a jet of air hit the solid wood. Aru thought it would slam shut instantly, but it only quivered a little on its hinges. It was as if Mini’s thoughts were keeping it open. Mini edged toward it.
Brynne growled. This time she chucked her whole wind mace at the door. The force of the impact snapped it shut with an angry screech of its hinges.
Mini stumbled backward. She shook herself, looking around wildly. “What just happened?”
“Nothing,” Aru said. “Well, almost something, but it’s okay—”
Before Aru could finish her sentence, the platform tilted to one side to avoid a sudden storm cloud brewing in the void. Brynne—who had her hand outstretched to catch her boomeranging wind mace—slipped. She missed Gogo by mere inches.
Aru watched the arc of the wind mace as time slowed around them.
“Uh-oh,” said Rudy.
Aiden leaped into the air to catch the rogue mace. His fingers skimmed the metal—only to lose it. With a thud, the mace hit the crusty gray hide of a World Elephant. A moment later, it bounded back to Brynne, who caught it one-handed. Beneath their feet, the platform righted itself.
All five Potatoes froze. Even the doors around them went still. Aru looked at her sisters. “Maybe the elephant didn’t notice?”
Far, far above them, a trumpeting sound echoed through the air. It was an angry sound, and it sent a tremor through the floor, cracking the stone.
“Okay, we gotta move fast,” said Brynne, holding out the lantern.
But if the World Elephant they’d hit was mad, that was nothing compared to the doors. Now they all clanged together, spinning in a whirlwind about the platform. Aru couldn’t keep track of which door was the entrance to the labyrinth. The light of the Sun Jewel bounced around like a deranged flashlight, skittering over the different surfaces.