“That’s it?” I said in disbelief. “You’re a god. Why won’t you stay and help?”

He looked sternly down at me. “Do you think there is no other crisis in the universe that needs my attention? There are a thousand problems I cannot solve if I stay here to hold the hand of an anxious little girl.” I flinched, and he went on, “In any case, the best way I can help, as you put it, is by protecting the other side of the tear so that nothing else is able to escape into our world.”

Somehow, I found the nerve to say, “And who cares what happens to this world as long as ours is safe, right?”

“That is up to you, is it not?” said Vishnu. “If you stop Mahishasura, both worlds will be safe from him. If you fail, both worlds will suffer.”

And so would the people in those worlds. Like my mother. If the tear got any bigger and monsters started to break out of my sketchbook, she would be the first one they’d find.

“I get it,” I said quickly. I couldn’t bear to think about them getting to Mum. All those times I’d worried about something terrible happening to her? All those times I thought I’d forgotten to lock a door or close a window and had been convinced she’d been murdered? That’s what had done this. All that time I’d spent worrying about losing her had jinxed her, I was sure of it, and now she really was in peril.

“Good,” said Vishnu. “Then you know what you must do.”

“It is a great burden to place upon one child,” Chamundeshwari interjected, with what may have been pity. “And it will put her life at grave risk.”

Vishnu was unmoved. “She is the architect of this world. There is nothing I can do about that.”

Unexpectedly, the lion raised his beautiful, terrifying maned head from where he had been lapping at his tea. “I will stay with her.”

I squeaked in shock. “You can speak?!”

His great jaws opened and a deep voice rumbled out of his mouth. “Obviously.”

“His name is Simha,” Chamundeshwari offered.

I frowned. “That’s just lion in Kannada.”

“Yes,” said the lion, “it is. And it is my name because someone didn’t give me a better one.”

Oh.

Awkward.

“I will stay and offer her some measure of protection,” Simha said to Vishnu.

“As will I,” Chamundeshwari added. “I have much to do in the city, but I will check in on her.”

Vishnu shrugged his armored shoulders. “Very well. Then with that, I will bid you all farewell. Good luck to you, Kritika Kallira. I suspect you will need it.”

11

“Did you tell him about the gandaberunda?”

It was the first thing Ashwini wanted to know. She and I were alone in the kitchen, under the pretext of fetching snacks for everyone.

I shook my head. “No, he didn’t want to listen to anything I had to say.”