She broke up with her girlfriend and spent the next week wandering around the woods in a haze of disappointment — until one day Imogen led her to a spot with a riot of birds and squirrels high overhead. “There’s a whole other reality up there,” Imogen said, pointing at the thick weave of branches that closed above them, creating a sort of blanket, only letting through a mist of light. “In the tops of those trees. A canopy world.”

“I want to see it,” June said.

“Of course you do,” Imogen said, like that had been the whole point.

June used a flowery headband to strap her athame to her thigh. It was too big to fit into a pocket, too dangerous to keep in hand.

Imogen understood why June was bringing the athame. She was the one who always said June had a strong, clear third eye. She encouraged June when she talked about the possibilities of that knife, when she carted it everywhere, waving it in a slow, careful dance. Imogen believed in June, in the deep parts of her that no one else saw.

The tree they had picked was the definition of impossible. It stretched so wide at the base that it made June’s mouth fall open. It tapered and tapered almost to a vanishing point above their heads.

“Look,” Imogen said, pointing to a sapling next to it with a crown that reached the lowest branches of the massive tree. The one June had started thinking of as hers.

June knew that if she waited too long, she would never let herself climb. She took a running start at the small tree, free-climbing hand over hand, her feet scrabbling at the bark, chips flying. The little tree swayed with her weight, bending as if she were leading a dance. And, just like when she was dancing with a pretty girl, the rest of the world blurred around June, leaving only what was directly in front of her in sweet, sharp focus.

She leaped, and for a single second, she was flying. But she met the massive tree too hard. Her right hand didn’t find the hold she’d expected. Her fingers ripped bark, and it splintered into the white spaces under her nails. She got a single second of lift by pushing with her toes. Her legs glimmered with pain. She reached up for a branch, but she must have misread the distance. Nothing waited above.

While June was falling, her knife sliced the air, and her pinned-open eyes caught a glimpse of another place, a murk-and-mistlight place filled with dark towers made of fog where the trees should have been.

June met the ground. The only thing that existed was pain. It was loud and simple. Not like what she’d seen the moment before, a whisper of a place that she was already convincing herself didn’t exist.