Unbidden, I saw an image of our bodies smashed down at the bottom of the crevasse, limbs all mixed together, reddening the sharp rocks. I shuddered. I wondered vaguely if the wind was a warning, if the mountain was trying to stop us the only way it knew how.

“Don’t look down,” Serena said, reading my mind again.

Om tare tuttare ture soha, I thought, but it brought me no release from the fear that had begun to clutch at my throat.

“What if,” Laurel started, but Serena only pulled her closer.

“Death comes without warning,” Serena said. “This body will be a corpse.” She spat into the abyss. “But not today.” She laughed. “We didn’t need Luke after all.”

Om tare tuttare ture soha. Om tare tuttare ture soha. Om tare tuttare ture soha.

I couldn’t get the image of our broken bodies out of my head. I thought of my father, who had said something so similar once, before wrapping me in his arms. Death comes without warning. But this isn’t what he had meant. Om tare tuttare ture soha. Where was Tara, to pull me back from the edge? To save me from fear of fear? Still trapped in the wall in my mother’s house, I realized with a jolt. I’d forgotten about her after all.

“On the count of three,” Serena said. “One. Two.”

Serena paused, and I felt in that brief moment that Tara had come despite my negligence—my fear was gone. I was ready to jump. I might have even done it. But our imminent deaths were interrupted by a loud crack that echoed across the valley. Even in the dark, I knew it was the willow, its gnarled trunk forced prostrate, bending to the wind past the point its body would allow, forced over the edge, falling to the cold rocks below, as Harriet had predicted it would.

Something else had broken too. Janet scrambled backward, away from us, onto the grass. “This is ridiculous,” she said, but the look on her face was one of longing, as if someone she loved had just left her forever.

“It’s only the wind,” Serena said. “You can’t be afraid, Janet. Not you.”

Janet ignored her. “Laurel,” she said. “Do you want to die right now?”

Laurel kept looking out into the air. She seemed like she didn’t quite know the answer to that question.

“I’m surprised at you, Janet,” Serena said, pulling Laurel closer, rethreading her fingers through mine.