“Thank you,” I said. I gestured to Indigo and we headed for the pile of ash, which was still seething in a way that was vaguely reminiscent of a heartbeat.
The closer we got, the warmer the air became. Surely, the others must have felt it, right? But Neal pulled his jacket closer around him against the chilly mid-morning weather, and nobody seemed to be hearing that noise…
When we fell through to Ginger’s world, I heard Indigo laugh with the pure shock of falling, of that sudden disruption in reality.
All I could do was stare.
IV
There was ash in my shoe. I was standing on a platform in the middle of a forest and there was ash in my shoe. Somehow, I knew it had formerly been a person. I felt it wriggle, but I kept my gaze blankly ahead on the blue world around me. I didn’t want to look down, but Indigo made a strangled noise next to me and toppled backward. I spun to catch him, grabbing his forearms as he fell. He pulled me down with him, and suddenly my face was over the edge of the platform, my eyes on the ground a hundred feet below.
“Where the hell are we?” I muttered. “And—hey, stop laughing. How do we get home?”
He didn’t stop laughing. I rolled off his chest and onto my back, my eyes on the pale blue of the canopy above us.
Everything was blue, from the sky, to the leaves, to the shadows. Even the trunks of the trees. I didn’t see any birds, but I knew that they would be blue, too.
I felt the ash move again in my shoe and sat up so suddenly, spots prickled around the edges of my vision.
“Indigo,” I hissed. “Hey.”
He sat up, too, somewhat more slowly, and his gaze finally fixed on the pile of ash in front of us.
I heard Indigo’s breathing quicken, then slow. It must have taken an immense amount of effort to keep himself calm. I, too, felt a little like I needed to throw up over the side of the platform, but I couldn’t look away from the ash long enough to vomit.
That had been a person. And it was still moving.
“It’s the same,” he said. “Do you think it’s...Marie, was it?”
I took off my sneaker and shook it out over the pile. Indigo reached out to tie my laces and I let him, my eyes still on the unsettling pile of ash.
I found my voice at last, although every syllable sent the nausea swirling in my stomach. “I don’t think it’s Marie.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a little different. Marie was a pale lilac. This is like...a weird blue, right? Or am I just seeing things?”
“I guess,” he said, and reached out to the ash. He scooped a handful of it up, gagged, and dropped it. “I’m not looking closer,” he said. “That was a person.”
“The keyword in that sentence: was,” I told him, and shifted to get a better look at the ash, even though every cell in my body was telling me to run.
I met his gaze and then glanced back at the pile. There was too much this could mean. First and most obvious: whatever magic had killed Vivi had struck again, and had struck in multiple realms.
Second and more sobering: whoever was wielding that magic was close enough to kill us, too.
Finally and most terrifying: we had no idea who was killing, and no idea how to stop them.
The world was too bright, too vivid, all of a sudden.
In recounting this, I wish I could say something like, All I wanted was a normal school year, but that would be lying to you. Really, the only thing in my mind at that moment was, What next?
And that’s the eternal question, isn’t it?
What next?
I stood and helped Indigo up, pulling him away from the platform’s edge.
I tried stepping with purpose toward the dust, which had worked to transport us the last time, but all I got was the faint crunching of a small bone under the sole of my boot.
Again, nausea swept through my stomach.
A head of pale blonde hair poked up from the side of the platform that was bolted to the trunk of the huge, blue tree we had found ourselves on. She continued her climb up. First came a huge swath of loose golden curls. Then, a pale forehead, thick brows, a splash of freckles across cheekbones, a confused set of dark brown eyes, a scowl. A body. She hauled herself up from what must have been a ladder with the most attitude I’ve ever seen in someone climbing a tree.
“And who the hell are you?” the girl—the young woman?—demanded. Her age was impossible to discern; she was tiny, several inches shorter than me and and wiry, sharp around the edges. She wore a formerly stylish jumpsuit that had been scuffed with mud and grass, as well as rain boots that left quickly-drying prints on the boards of the platform. She stood with her arms crossed, her eyes on me. Indigo had faded into the background a little, half behind me even though he was at least a couple inches taller.
I glanced from her to the dust and back.
“Clementine,” I said, extending a hand across the mound of seething bluish silver. “And this is Indigo.”
The stranger considered us for a long moment. Between us, the dust made the noise sand does when the wind sifts through it.
“Ginger,” she said at last, her voice low and cautious. “Did you do this?” She gestured at the dust, half-accusatory, half-curious.
“No!” I exclaimed. “We just got here.”
“Doesn’t seem like it. Lilac and I have been on the forest floor near this tree for the last hour. I only came up because I heard a thump.”
“We didn’t take the ladder,” I told her, although I knew it would get me in trouble.
“Are you saying you climbed a hundred feet up a tree with no lower branches?”
“Not at all, no. We sort
