The Door and the Dogs

The door to the Kingdom of Death was wrought of bone and leaf and light.

Mini raised her hand to touch it. Then she shook her head. “I thought I’d feel…differently,” she said.

“About what?” asked Aru.

“About the door and where it was going.”

“It’s going to the Kingdom of Death. That’s all.”

“Yes, but this is the door to my—” Mini stopped and stuttered. “I mean, I guess he really isn’t my…my…”

“Dad?”

Mini flinched. “Yeah. That. But I don’t know him. And he doesn’t know me. I mean, I guess it doesn’t matter. Boo and my parents said he’s my soul dad, not my home dad, but I guess I hoped he’d do something other than give me a mirror, you know?”

No. She didn’t know. Aru knew it was a little mean, but she didn’t feel that bad for Mini. Aru was in the same boat, and she didn’t have a home dad to comfort her. Yeah, Indra might have made her soul, but where was her real father? He could still be out there…somewhere. And whoever he was, he hadn’t wanted her.

She pushed down that surge of envy. It wasn’t Mini’s fault.

“What’re you going to do if you meet the Dharma Raja?”

“I’ll just thank him for letting me exist, I guess? I dunno. It’s weird.” Mini took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m ready now.”

Aru reached for the doorknob, but it shocked her hand. She pulled back, stung. “I think you should do it.”

“Me? Why?”

“Because you’re the Daughter of Death. It’s like going into your house.”

“What if it shocks me, too?”

Aru shrugged. “Maybe say your name first?”

Mini looked doubtful, but she squared her shoulders. “My name is Yamini Kapoor-Mercado-Lopez, and this is…” She turned to Aru and hissed, “I don’t know your last name!”

Aru was tempted to say that her name was Bond. James Bond.

“Aru Shah.”

“No middle name?”

She shrugged again. “If I have one, no one ever told me what it was.”

Mini nodded, apparently satisfied, then continued talking to the door. “Aru Shah. We are entering the Kingdom of Death because we have been sent on a quest to awaken the celestial weapons so that, uh, so that Time doesn’t end and also to find out how to stop this really awful demon by looking for answers in the Pool of the…Last?”

“Pool of the Past,” whispered Aru.

“Pool of the Past!” finished Mini. “Please and thank you.”

The door didn’t budge. Then again, Mini hadn’t pushed it.

“Why aren’t you even trying to open it?” demanded Aru.

“It’s not polite to force things.”

With that, the door gave way with a sigh and a groan.

From the side, the door to the Kingdom of Death was as slim as a closed laptop. And yet, the moment Mini stepped inside, she disappeared. It was as if she had stepped into a slice in the air.

After a few seconds, Mini poked her head out. “Are you coming or not?”

Aru’s stomach turned. She couldn’t remember any stories about the Halls of the Dead. But just the idea of them was enough to scare her. She kept imagining faceless ghosts behind the door. Fires that never went out. A sky devoid of stars.

And then she imagined her mom’s face frozen in horror, her hair falling around her. She remembered Boo lying limp in the Sleeper’s hand. Those images made her move.

“It’s an adventure?” she said, trying to rally herself.

Aru’s hand drifted to the pants pocket where she kept the Ping-Pong ball. It was warm and reassuring. “It’s fine. This is fine. Everything is fine,” she muttered to herself.

She placed her foot across the threshold.

A frigid wind picked up the hairs on the nape of her neck. On the breeze, she could hear the final words of people who had died: No, not yet! And Please make sure someone remembers to feed Snowball. And I hope someone clears my Internet browser.

But mostly, Aru heard love.

Tell my family I love them.

Tell my wife I love her.

Tell my children I love them.

Tell Snowball I love her.

Aru felt a sharp twist in her heart. Had she told her mother she loved her before she left the museum with Boo?

There was no going back now. The moment she stepped into the Kingdom of Death, the door disappeared. She was left in a tunnel so black she couldn’t tell what she was walking on. Was it darkness itself? There were no walls, no sky or sea, no beginning or end. Just blackness.

“My mom used to tell me that death is like a parking lot,” whispered Mini. She sounded close, and like she was trying to reassure herself. “You stay there for just a bit and then go somewhere else.”

“Again with the parking lots?” Aru joked shakily.

She breathed a little easier when she remembered that, in Hinduism, death wasn’t a place where you were stuck forever. It was where you waited to be reincarnated. Your soul could live hundreds—maybe even thousands—of lives before you got out of the loop of life and death by achieving enlightenment.

A dog woofed in the distance.

“Why so serious?” asked a deep voice.

“Serious, or Sirius?” said a different voice, this one high-pitched. “We know that dog, don’t we? Howls at the stars? Chases the sun?”

“You ruin everything! I practiced that opening for a whole year!” grumbled the first voice. Now it wasn’t so deep.

“Well, how was I supposed to know?” said the second.

“The Dark Knight is my favorite movie, remember? You should listen to me. I’m Ek, after all! You’re only Do.”

“Just because you were born first doesn’t make you more important,” said Do.

“Yes, it does,” said Ek.

“No, it doesn’t!”

Ek? Do? Aru knew those words. They were the names of numbers in Hindi, the most commonly spoken language in India. Ek and Do meant one and two. They sounded like ick and dough.

Aru’s mother had grown up speaking Gujarati, a language from the state of Gujarat. Aru didn’t speak either Gujarati or Hindi. All she knew were a few words, including some curses. (Which she hadn’t even known were bad words until the time she’d stubbed her toe in front of the priest at temple and just let loose. Her mother had not been amused.) When her hand tightened on the golden ball, it turned into a dim flashlight.

Four sets of eyes peered at Aru and Mini. In the glow of the ball, Aru could make out the shapes of two giant dogs.

Ek and Do each had two rows of eyes, and short brindled fur. When they walked forward to sniff the girls, their coats rippled and shimmered. Aru wondered whether they were soft.

Mini had pulled up the collar of her shirt and was pressing it over her nose. “Ermarregictodaws.”

“What?”

She surfaced from the cloth. “I’m allergic to dogs.”

“Of course you are,” said Aru.

“Are you dead?” asked Ek, the dog with the high-pitched voice.

“I don’t think so?” replied Mini.

At the same time, Aru said, “Of course not!”

“Well, you can’t come in if you’re not dead,” said Ek. “Those are the rules.”

“You don’t understand—” started Aru.

“Ah, but we do!” said Ek. “You have two choices. You can die on your own, or we can help by killing you!”

Do wagged his tail. “I love helping! Helping is fun.”