Her skin flushed with fear, and she broke into a sweat. Her bracelet. She’d nearly blown everything.

So Asha didn’t know what she’d done, after all, but Venkat had almost caught her. She was slipping.

She was going to lose the only thing she cared about.

So many thoughts. Too many thoughts. Tanvi wanted to squeeze her head until every one of them shut up. All she should be thinking about was her bracelet with its delicate gold charms and how great they would feel on her wrist.

There was one good thing, she told herself, trying to cut through the panic. At least Asha had given up on that half-baked day trip to Prithvi.

Legs trembling, Tanvi sank to the floor in the middle of the closet and stared up at the velvet case waiting to be filled. It screamed for the bracelet.

Her skin hurt. Her head hurt. She needed the bracelet, needed to count off the charms on their slender links. She itched to disappear into its metallic shine, to get hypnotized by the play of the light on the polished gold.

Not having her bracelet made Tanvi’s fingers prickle. It left her empty. Craving.

She needed it.

Normally she could spend hours like this, entranced, everything else obliterated. But the fatigue tackled her again, and Tanvi couldn’t sit up straight anymore. Her knees ached, her eyes burned from staring, and pins and needles pierced her thighs.

Normally she would have gotten plenty of sleep, leaving her fresh for her afternoon routine: calisthenics for maintaining agility and speed, bathing, eating for energy, sorting her latest wares, and settling on her destination for the next harvest.

She blinked rapidly, her eyelids too heavy to fight off, and trudged to bed, where she buried herself under the covers. The oblivion she’d missed earlier rushed in, shutting down her mind.

Dream runners didn’t dream. They went away until it was time to wake up, refreshed and ready to harvest. If Tanvi ever had dreamed before she came to Nagalok, she couldn’t remember it.

Just like she always did, she let go into the nothing. Just like it always did, it enfolded her, taking her room, her bed, the darkness with it. Taking her.

And it was all there was. Sweet, restful silence.

Except then the void vanished.

An elderly woman with deep frown lines brandished a bouquet of withered blue and yellow pansies at Tanvi. Their stench slashed through time and space like an olfactory sword. “Are you happy now, with all your awards and TV shows?”

Tanvi glanced down at herself and realized she was in the body of an old man.

Terror stabbed through her. No!

She slapped at the air. She scratched at her crepey skin. She screamed to be let out.

But as hard as she pushed, she couldn’t break free, and the words she shouted only emerged as static.