It didn’t help that after a while, everything started to look the same. Every seller had the same beaming smile and the people who milled about—examining fresh fish and exclaiming over warm bread fresh off a conveyor belt looping around a small bakery stall—all melted into one another.

They’d been walking for what felt like hours, but it didn’t seem like they’d even left the shopping district yet. How could that be? And where was this challenge?

He flopped down against a street corner in frustration and groped in his bag for his little packet of treats. “I need a snack break.”

Winnie barely heard him, tapping absently against the stone beneath her feet. “That map is useless,” she announced. “It has no compass rose, and just squiggly lines for the streets. It just looks like a rat maze.”

“The water is coming,” an eerie voice whispered.

Ahmad looked up from a packet of chenna murki, about to ask Winnie why she sounded like that, and froze.

“What is that?”

“Come on, Ahmad.” Even with her back turned, it was obvious Winnie was rolling her eyes. “Even if you don’t believe it, I know you better than our teachers do.”

“Winnie,” Ahmad hissed.

“So don’t try to put on that tough bad boy act and tell me you don’t know what a compass rose is. Don’t accept the label they put on you.”

“Winnie!”

Winnie whirled around. “Ahmad, I’m trying to give you a compliment. . . .”

She froze as well.

Because standing in front of a trembling Ahmad was a huge, six-foot-tall mouse, dressed as though it was preparing for a presentation of The Nutcracker.

Ahmad tried to inch backward, but the mouse only had eyes for the open packet of chenna murki he held in his hands. As Winnie finally snapped into action and hurtled forward, the mouse snatched the bag of sweets out of his fingers and bolted down an alleyway.

“Hey!” Ahmad hollered after it.

Winnie shuddered, rubbing her hands down her arms. “Ugh, ugh, ugh,” she said. “I didn’t sign up for Rodents of Unusual Size. And I thought the rats you see in Times Square were huge.”

Then she backed up with a gasp, grasping Ahmad’s arm, as the mouse reappeared, not a foot away from where they stood, moving lightly on its haunches and peering at them with bright brown eyes.

The kids held on to each other and stared.

“Um,” the mouse said.

Winnie squealed again and seized Ahmad’s arm.

“Did the giant rat just talk? To us?” Winnie asked. “Is this part of you being the chosen one of this world or whatever?”

“Who said I was the chosen one of anything?” Ahmad hissed back. “And believe me, if giant talking rodents were any part of my Paheli, I would have mentioned it by now.”