The water was cool. She was cooling.

She let go of her neck. She let go.

Then the sensation of falling without falling. She hit something hard. Colors zoomed around her. Mostly green. But she was vaguely aware of the library; she was in the library. Her chest felt heavy, full. She coughed sharply and grabbed for the bookcase. There was a red spider right beside her hand, but she didn’t care. “No,” the djinn said in her ear. “There is no escape. Come. Come completely.” She could feel the bookcase melting in her hands, dissolving, as something yanked at her shoulders, pulling her back. She felt it in her chest, a warm sharp tearing sensation. Then she felt her spirit face rush forward.

“Oh,” she heard the djinn say. Then it chuckled and drawled, “Who are you, Sunny Nwazue?”

She still felt the pain, but all over now, and she felt . . . dim, somehow muted. She’d held on to the case, trying to will herself out of the wilderness. But then she was holding on to nothing. Then the bookcase became a mass of bushes. But the spider on it didn’t disappear; it sat there on the bush. She gasped. It was one of those creatures that existed in both worlds. It was still red but now the size of a basketball with fluorescent blue rings on its legs. The creature waved a leg at her and scurried away.

Sunny held on to the bush, realizing she wasn’t breathing. She wore her spirit face. She was Anyanwu.

Her body. She was no body. She was yellow. The color of the sun. Light. In a sea of mostly green.

Green blobs undulated past. Pink and green insects with green lines for wings. The wilderness looked like a jungle. There was sound, and it was thick and moist and fertile. Alive. She was afraid to speak.

“I see you,” the djinn said. Its dusty voice was strong here. It was strong here.

All she could think of was death. How many seconds had passed? Would they find her body? Then the djinn was on her like a vampire. They went tumbling into some bushes as she fought to keep it from tearing off her mask. Was it a mask in the wilderness? Could it come off? She vaguely remembered what her father had said about masquerades: “Never unmask a masquerade. That is an abomination!” What happened if one’s spirit face was torn off? Could the djinn then eat her soul like the meat of a cracked clam?

The djinn pinned her down in those bushes. It was stronger. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t dying. It knew this place. She was done for.

There was a large spider on its shoulder. It was red. With blue rings on it. Blue rings. Blue rings. Blue rings. The glimmer of sudden recognition was like a burning focal point of light in her brain, it was brilliant and it seared. She knew blue rings. She . . . remembered.