Using the medicine gift that rose up from the vortex to reinforce her courage, she sent another thought to him, a strong cord, easy for him to follow back to her mind. She couldn’t help but shiver again as he began the journey along her thoughts, but this time she held the contact. Still fueled by the vortex’s medicine, she showed him the strange world that both held Jilly and was inside her.

It was all the same as before. They could view the world—or rather the space that the world occupied—but entry was impossible.

If anything, Joe said, his voice a quiet murmur in her mind, this is even stranger than I imagined. I can sense the space, but at the same time it’s like it’s not there.

But it is there, isn’t it?

It was such an odd phenomenon that Honey wasn’t entirely convinced of what her senses were telling her. How could something both exist and not exist at the same time?

Well, something’s there, Joe told her. I just can’t figure out what—

He broke off as they both became aware of a sudden change. They were no longer alone in the strange interior landscape in which they drifted. There was another presence, here with them on the outside of that world of Jilly’s. While Honey couldn’t tell who or what it was, through her connection to Joe, she knew he could almost recognize it.

But there was no time for discussion. Whatever the presence was, it had found an entry into Jilly’s world. Honey darted after it, moving so quickly that she lost her connection to Joe. She reached back for him, but she was moving too quickly. A moment later, she was inside the hidden world and Joe was left behind.

The presence she’d been following was gone, and she went sprawling to the ground. She smelled dirt and a forest around her, but the forest was as still as a mere photograph. She scrabbled to her feet, reaching about herself with her senses.

The new world surrounded her with no possibility of escape back to the mesa from which she’d so recently come. There was no escape to anywhere else. There was only this world of Jilly’s, and at its heart, a dark malevolent presence that made her bare her teeth.

And in the heart of that heart of darkness, she found Jilly.

She lifted her head and searched the woods in which she’d found herself.

There, she thought, facing the direction where the feeling was strongest. That was where the darkness and Jilly were.

And that was where she had to go.

Joseph Crazy Dog

Joe tried to keep up with Honey. He moved as fast as thought and should have been able to enter along with her, but he banged up hard against an invisible wall.