“So why didn’t he use it to get out?”

“I have no doubt he planned to,” Ashwini said with a grin, “but I’m afraid you scuppered his plans. You drew us instead.” She tapped the sketchbook. “The Asura and I were the only things you put down on this page, the exact page you created on the day of Dussehra, so we were the only things that could get out when the crack opened up. As long as the crack between worlds is this small, nothing from any other page can get out.”

“Can it get any bigger?”

Ashwini shrugged. “Yes, but it’ll need more magic. More than Mahishasura has right now. Remember, it took him hundreds of years of festivals, memories, and stories to gather enough power to escape the Nowhere Place.”

Relieved, I said, “So if I put the sketchbook away and never draw in it again, then he can’t use me to accidentally help him anymore.”

My heart hurt a little as I said it because I wasn’t sure I could bear to give up this world that had kept me in one piece over these past few months, but I couldn’t exactly help a monster escape, either. A picture flashed across my mind of a burning world, ashes, and a few people staggering despairingly through the wreckage. It was like something out of a postapocalyptic movie, but it also felt a little too possible right now. And, okay, even if it didn’t get that bad, it wasn’t like Mahishasura would break out and be like, “Aha, I’m free now, I’ll just go get an ice cream!” Would he? He’d probably kill Mum and me, because we’d be the first ones he’d find, and then who knew what he’d do after that? And—

“Even if you’re not helping him, he can still make the tear bigger,” Ashwini pointed out, thankfully cutting into my spiraling thoughts before they could get really out of hand. “And eventually, he’ll be able to use it to get free.”

“But it’ll take him years to gather that kind of power. You said so yourself. Hundreds of years, maybe.”

Ashwini stared at me. “Yes, but that’s hundreds of years that that world will have to spend with him.”

I went quiet as I remembered everything Mahishasura did in the old stories. Children stolen from their beds, crops destroyed, starvation, and fear. Monsters stalking the streets and darkening the sky. I had put all of that into my world. And now it was all real.

“What can I do?” I asked. “I can’t use an eraser on the ink, but I could rip out pages or get rid of the sketchbook? I could burn it, destroy it, something!”

“You saw already that fire can’t destroy it,” Ashwini said. “And even if you could rip pages out, I don’t think that would erase Mahishasura from that world. But that’s okay because there’s something else you can do. You made that world, Kiki, which means you can come and go as you please. You have more power over that world than even Mahishasura does. And you can put an end to this.”