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

Aru had lost count of how many times she’d thought We’re going to die.

Granted, they’d always managed to wriggle their way out of dying before. But that didn’t make the thought any less terrifying. Thankfully, by now the two of them had had so much practice that they didn’t scream and cry like the last couple of times. This time they only screamed.

Beneath them, the tongue (gross) began to shake and quiver. Several stalactites—nope, thought Aru, giant teeth—crashed and fell, swallowing up the entrance.

“There has to be another exit!” shouted Aru.

“Try using the ball?”

Aru drew it out of her pocket and threw it on the ground, but nothing happened. Then again, nothing ever happened with her stupid ball.

Mini opened and closed her compact. “My mirror isn’t working either! It’s just showing my face—” She frowned. “Is that another zit? Aru, do you see anything—?”

“Focus, Mini! Maybe we can prop its jaws open or something?”

“With what? We don’t have anything big enough. Besides, look.” Mini pulled back her sleeve and bent her arm.

“What the heck are you doing?”

“Flexing my muscles!”

“I don’t see anything?”

“Exactly!” said Mini, tugging her hair. She started pacing. “Okay, we’re in a body. Most likely—given the fish breath—it’s some kind of giant demonic whale. So. Let’s think about anatomy and stuff.”

“Cool, I’ll just pull out my pocket anatomy book! Oh, wait! I don’t have one!”

“Do whales have uvulas?”

“How am I supposed to know if it’s a girl whale?”

“It’s the dangly punching-bag–looking thing in the back of your throat,” said Mini. “It makes you gag. If we could throw something at the whale’s, then it would have to throw us up!”

That was not a bad idea. Except it had a giant flaw. “You want to ride out on whale vomit?”

“I just want to ride out.”

“Good point.”

The girls raced toward the back of the throat. Here, the stench was even worse. Aru’s chin-length hair stuck to her face. Her shirt was soaked through with wet whale breath.

The neon sign flashed in the dark, suspended by back teeth that seemed to be growing longer by the second. Maybe that was where the uvula thing was. But when they got there, Aru couldn’t see anything that looked like a punching bag. Instead, the tongue sloped down into the whale’s throat. Aru could hear water sloshing angrily below. Worse, it was rising.

“There’s no uvula!” said Aru.

Mini groaned. “Finding Nemo was a lie!”

“Wait. You made a life-and-death choice based on Finding Nemo?”

“Well, uh…”

“MINI!”

“I was just trying to help!”

“And I’m just trying not to push you down this throat right now!”

The teeth pressed a little closer. At first, Aru had only seen rows upon rows of pale, crowded teeth. Now she saw something else. Something that glinted.

The heck are those? Behind-the-teeth braces?

Wait. Weapons!

This was where the devas had hidden them. Aru could now make out long swords, axes, maces, and arrows with strung bows, all jutting from the tangle of teeth.

“The weapons,” breathed Aru. “We have to find the right ones for us! That’s how we get out.”

“I don’t want to kill the whale….”

“We’re not going to kill the whale,” said Aru. “We’re just going to poke it a bit, so that it keeps its mouth open long enough for us to escape.”

Mini didn’t look convinced. “How do we know which ones are the right weapons for us?”

Aru started sprinting back toward the front of the whale’s mouth. “Whichever ones we can grab fastest!”

If Mini rolled her eyes or said something snarky, Aru didn’t notice. She measured the distance to the giant weapons above them. Maybe if she jumped, she could reach one of them. A sword with an emerald hilt glittered temptingly.

The whale’s jaws continued to close. Aru had no idea whether the sword was the right choice. She’d thought she’d find something based on her divine parent, but she didn’t see anything like Lord Indra’s thunderbolt in this collection. So a sword it was….

“Mini, give me a lift?”

“We’re never gonna get out of here,” moaned Mini.

Aru struggled for balance as she climbed up, but she refused to believe they weren’t getting out of here. They hadn’t gotten this far just to be killed by whale halitosis. That would be so embarrassing on a Wikipedia page.

Mini layered her palms, boosting Aru higher.

Aru reached for the hilt of the sword hanging above her. “Just…a little farther—”

A gust of hot air knocked her to the ground. Or tongue. Whatever it was.

Aru scrambled to her feet, but she kept getting thrown off-balance. The rotting wind turned fiercer.

“Aru!” called Mini behind her.

Aru spun around to see Mini trying to hold on to the floor. But the whale’s lungs were too strong. Her legs kicked out behind her, lifting into the air.

“It’s trying to inhale us!”

“Hold on!” called Aru. She crawled toward Mini, but it was like crawling over ice. Her palms slipped, causing her elbows to jam into the tongue-floor. The whale’s breath sucked at her. “I’m coming,” she croaked.

There was no way they were going to get those weapons. She knew it now. Behind her, the light shrank.

“I don’t think I can hold on any longer!”

“Don’t think, then!” shouted Aru. “Just do. I believe in you, Mini.”

“There were so many things I wanted to do!” moaned Mini. “I never even got to shave my legs.”

“That’s your life’s biggest regret?”

Aru braved a glance at the sign. The neon riddle flashed and flickered. ANSWERS HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT. Well, Aru was looking around (as plainly as she could) and there was nothing to help them. Nothing at all.

Mini was straining in the wind. Her backpack was now flying behind her. Her knuckles had turned white. One of her hands lost its grip. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Their eyes met.

Aru watched as her sister was flung back against the dark throat. Sister. Not just Mini. Now that she had thought it, she couldn’t unthink it. It had gone from idea to truth.

She had a sister. A sister she had to protect.

Aru didn’t waste any more time thinking. She just reacted. She reached for the ball in the pocket of her pants. In her palm, it glowed a little brighter, like a creature waking from a long nap. She let the ball loose.

Above her, the teeth descended. She could feel the hilt of the sword sinking into her shoulder blade. Aru could just see the outline of Mini, suspended in a moment of falling.

Aru imagined a fishing line. Something that could fly out, and reel back in—

Light haloed in front of her. It unfurled from the ball, unspooling in the air like loopy cursive letters. The tethers of light stretched around Mini, gathering her up and yanking her out of the creature’s throat.

Aru whooped happily. The golden ball zoomed back into her hand. Only this time it wasn’t a golden ball at all. It was a lightning bolt.

The sheer size of it was enough to prop open the creature’s jaws, which she immediately started to do.

Before she could finish, Mini came running toward her, screaming. And not in a happy YOU-SAVED-MY-LIFE-WE’RE-FRIENDS-4EVA way. It was more like a GET-OUT-WHILE-YOU-STILL-CAN kind of scream. Which didn’t make any sense. Aru had just saved her life….

That’s when Aru felt it:

The barest scrape of teeth along her scalp. But she couldn’t move! Aru tried to jump out of the way, when a violet light burst around her, hardening into an enormous sphere. The whale’s teeth glanced off the sphere.

Before her, triumphant in a sphere of her own, stood Mini. In her hand was the danda of the Dharma Raja, a staff that was as tall as she was and braided with purple light. The whale’s teeth pressed down on the sphere, causing faint lines to spider across it, but the protective device held, and finally the jaws relaxed. Light filled the cavernous space, and the two spheres dissolved.

In the back, the neon riddle flashed. ANSWERS IN PLAIN SIGHT. That had been true after all. The glowing ball had been Vajra, the lightning bolt of Indra, the whole time. And Mini’s compact hadn’t been a compact at all, but the danda stick of the Dharma Raja. It had just been waiting for a reason to show up. Which made Aru think of the words Urvashi had said so long ago when they had visited the Court of the Sky: You must awaken the weapons…go to the Kingdom of Death. Their trying to save one another had activated the weapons. Maybe what they’d done had proven to the weapons that they were worthy of wielding them in the first place.

“You’re welcome,” said Mini breathlessly.

It took Aru—who was still staring at the lightning bolt in her hand—a full minute to realize what Mini had said.

“Um, excuse you,” she said, crossing her arms. “You’re welcome. I saved you first.”

“Yeah, but I saved you right after that. It was basically at the same time. How about we’ll both be welcome?”

“Fine, we’ll both be welcome. But who’s going to say thank you first? I think that—”

“NOSE GOES!” shouted Mini, promptly thwacking her face.

She had her there. Aru grinned, feeling strangely proud of Mini. She offered her elbow. Mini bumped it.

“Thanks.”

“Not Thanks, sis?” asked Mini.

“Mini, no one says sis. Like, ever.”

“We could bring it back! Make it retro-cool.”

“There’s nothing retro-cool about sis.”

“Fine. What about sister from another mister?” asked Mini.

“No.”

“What about…?”

This continued for far too long.