The water is slipping through the gap under Mum’s bedroom door.

What if it drowns her? The realization lands hard in my chest.

I look down the stairs again. The photos on the walls still hang there, and the furniture below hasn’t moved an inch.

The leaves of the silver branches beckon me, like they’re asking me to go back down.

Where is all this water coming from? It can’t be the tap, can it? It must be . . . but why?

I think back to the bird of smoke, and how it guided me up the stairs to Mum’s room. The game was telling me to come here, wasn’t it? Yes. But then it tried to guide me back down and I . . . ignored it.

Dread surges through me. I made this happen. It’s like this really is a game, and I’ve broken the rules. In Fairy Hunters if you try to cheat, instead of getting kicked out of the game your character is stripped of all but their most basic powers, making it virtually impossible to win.

I was cheating because I was meant to turn the tap off, not come back upstairs. That’s why the memory faded last time – I wasn’t doing the right thing. And now it’s trying to warn me again. But what is it trying to tell me?

Think, Safiya, think!

I hit myself on the head, hoping it might knock some sense into me. It does, because I almost poke myself in the eye with the bracelet.

The bracelet! Of course!

When I found the bracelet from the first memory it unlocked the second one.

And when I found the cats from the second memory it unlocked the third.

The aim of the game is to find objects and unlock memories.

And mum’s room isn’t the next level; it’s the boss level. The final one. That’s what the bird was trying to show me.

I don’t have time to think about it any more, though, as the water is now up to my ankles. I just dive.

The water is cold, but it’s a relief from the heat of the day. I try to swim down, but it’s harder than it looks, and I float up to the top, splashing around like a duckling.

I try again, this time holding on to the banister. I pull myself down with force, while trying to hold my breath, and use the stairs to guide me down.

I’ve always been all right at swimming, but I’ve never had to save someone from drowning. Something takes over my mind, my body, and I push with all my might. I swim down, down, down. Eventually I make it to the bottom of the stairs. Everything looks exactly as it had before the water filled the house. Except it’s hazy, like I’m peering through frosted glass.