Rush is there at my side. I didn’t even know she’d moved from her spot by the opening of the tree. “The fog can get a person lost,” she says, “but sometimes lost is where you need to be for a while.”

“Wandering off into nowhere is one of the few things I’m good at,” I admit to her.

“You’re not going nowhere,” Hawthorn corrects. “You’re heading toward a truth that you can’t see when the normal world is clouding things. It can get in the way of you seeing your magic.”

“I’m walking into a literal cloud to get unclouded?” I ask.

“One more thing,” Hawthorn says, her words dripping with I know you’re going to hate this. “It’s a skyclad spell.”

I look around at the rest of the group, inviting them to help me out. The Grays look at each other instead of me. Not a good sign. I pull out my phone. I’m getting a solitary bar of service, but it’s just enough for me to look up this word. Skyclad means, literally enough, clad in nothing but sky.

As in naked.

“You’re kidding,” I say. “I thought this wasn’t an elaborate hazing of the new girl, and you pull this?”

“It’s important,” Rush says.

“Necessary,” Hawthorn amends. “Clothes are part of the everyday world. They’re getting in your way.”

“Don’t worry.” June points behind me at the open entrance of the tree. “There’s a dressing room.”

“An undressing room,” Lelia says with a snort.

Hawthorn cuts her off with a single slashing hand gesture.

The night pries at my worries, and I slip my shoes off, shake my short stubby ponytail out. The wind gives my hair a quick finger comb. If I was feeling a little bit stoned from Lelia’s joint, the dull sweetness leaves as I step back into the maw of the enormous tree.

The world outside shrinks to a whisper.

The world inside grows and grows, until I hear every scratch of air against bark, and I feel the tree lurch.

I shrug out of my T-shirt and work my skirt down. I’m naked in the dark sway of this place, shaking hard. I can only remember shaking like this once. It’s definitely how a first time feels.

I run out of the tree, into an empty forest under a star-pinned sky. The Grays are gone, but the parts of me that are usually hidden are still grateful for darkness. I don’t feel that twitchy need to cover myself with my hands. I slow to a walk, the trees shifting my body taller, quietly reshaping me. Soon I’m stretching my arms high. Running again to test the bite of wind on my skin.

And then I see the fog seeping between the trees, breathing toward me, a low constant sigh.

It’s around my ankles, pulling me in.