“Great.” He lets out a sound that is halfway between a laugh and a sob. “Why? Why does it want only us? I mean—I understand why it wants you here, but why me?”

Askal inspects us both carefully with his nose and lets out a satisfied bark of approval when he finds no injuries or bruises.

“Because Hemslock has your father,” I reply. “And while it might not seem that way, the Diwata is on our side.”

I’m not the most confident in my reassurance, but Chase nods, straightens his back. He takes my hand and squeezes it. “Once we get Dad out,” he says, “you’ll leave the island with us? And I can call you and stuff?”

I smile at him and squeeze back. “If we can get through this, yes.”

He nods. “Let’s get his over with, then. Wouldn’t be polite to turn down the Diwata’s offer of hospitality, huh?”

Twenty-Two

The Plane

We stay on guard, listening for any telltale signs that the corpse tree is behind us. I don’t know if separating us from the others was its only intention, but we force ourselves to walk faster, just in case it’s following.

We see little else along the way, at first. The passageway is not one created by nature; it looks to have been dug out, though I am not sure if the work was done by human hands. There is very little debris as we walk, the ground swept clear. I am more than aware of the roots that climb across the ceiling. They appear just as we’d seen in the videos the production crew’s robot had provided before it had been destroyed. It’s dark enough here, but makahiya continue to bloom, multiplying the deeper we go.

“They’re connected to the balete outside, aren’t they?” Chase asks. “They must be.”

“I think all the balete on this island come from one main source.” My attention focuses on something glinting on the ground. At first glance it looks like a shiny pebble, but a closer inspection reveals that it’s a piece of glass, its sheen not yet obscured by dust.

In the darkness beyond lies the little robot tank that Hemslock sent into the sinkhole. It’s on its side, broken and shattered. A generous heaping of its electronics has been ripped out of its body, then scattered across the ground.

Chase crouches down to look at the robot’s remains more closely. His hands find something else.

He stares—and begins to tremble.

It’s a small diamond earring.

“Mom’s,” he chokes. “I’ve seen her wearing this. But why—how—”

As he holds it, the earring decays before our eyes, turning into a small, gnarled root. Chase drops it.

“I don’t—what—”

“An illusion,” I remind him quietly. I touch his shoulder, and he leans into me.

“Okay,” he says, calmer. “Do people who die here leave bits of themselves behind on the island independent of the Diwata?”

“I think they do.”

He nods, and I can see that this helps him. “Let’s keep going.”