“Kofi! Luce!” No matter how I shook them, they did not wake. They slept the heavy sleep of the enchanted.

I dressed in skirt and sandals and grabbed the two flasks Uncle Joe had given me, as well as trousers, sandals, and a singlet from Vai’s chest. Then I raced back out. I could still hear them climbing. The scent of the spirit world breathed down over me. I tasted its dry chaff and a kick of dust, as if I had walked into a mown hayfield baking under a late summer sun. The massive trunk was covered with big blunt thorns. Even had I been able to reach the lowest branch, I would have torn my skin to ribbons and bled all over the tree.

Yet wasn’t blood the gate? I surveyed the courtyard: stone sculpture, cistern, tree. In the spirit world, stone, well, and tree set the three points of a triangle to create warded ground. Warded ground had the property of reaching into the mortal world, as if the touch of the mortal world anchored the wards in the ever-changing spirit world. I had crossed into and out of the spirit world through stone. I had crossed into and out of the spirit world through water. Why not through the tree?

The chortles of the thieves faded. I pressed my right arm onto the stinging tip of a thorn. It pierced my flesh with an almost audible groan. My blood trickled down the bark. Beneath my hand the tree smeared to shadow as the trunk became a ladderlike stair leading up into darkness. I tucked up my skirts to keep them out of the way, and I climbed.

8

I climbed up the central pillar of the tree toward a smoky abyss studded with lights. Desperation gave me strength and speed. Perhaps the little creatures were at a disadvantage, them being so many and so small and having to coordinate a large limp weight, for I sensed I was gaining on them.

The canopy of leaves faded into smoke, just as it had in my dream. A sleeting wind cut my face, numbing my lips and then my fingers. With my next step, I kicked out over a gulf of air. Nothingness yawned around me as the tree dissolved. Falling, I flailed desperately.

My sandals caught the rim of a ledge. A bucketing motion beneath and around me made me sway as though I had landed on a moving object. Just before I tumbled off, my hand fastened over a metal door latch. I tried to open it, but it was locked.

“Hsst!” a thin voice whispered. “Quiet! Look through my eyes into those of my sibling inside.”

The latch bit me, two pinprick points of pain. Blood slicked the metal. Like a scraping file, its tongue rasped away the moisture.