here are we going?” asked Aru. “Wasn’t that Aranyani’s Grove back there?”

Nikita pulled Aru along and summoned walls of vines to hide them. As they ran, the battle sounds behind them faded.

After a few minutes, Nikita stopped in front of a tall boulder. She breathed heavily as she conjured one last vine screen behind them.

“It’s here,” said Nikita.

Uh, Aru wanted to say, this is just a big rock.

The sound of whispering made her jump. With an invisible enemy, every noise was treacherous. But when she looked around, she saw no sign of the Sleeper—no trampled grass or shadow out of place. She sensed no hum of dark magic.

Another whisper skittered past. Vajra sprang off her wrist and sparked to life as a short spear.

“Listen,” said Nikita, pressing her ear to the boulder. As soon as she touched it, silver rivulets ran down the rock.

Aru took a closer look and saw that it wasn’t water, but an endless skein of silvery threads. They looked like hammered pieces of ice that had been enchanted to flow smoothly.

A chorus of voices lifted into the air:

“I should have told her that I loved her….”

“I should have returned home when Mother fell ill….”

“I should have spent my life appreciating what I had, rather than always seeking more….”

“I should have—”

“I should have—”

“I should have—”

The rock was weeping people’s regrets. The moment Aru heard them, her necklace glowed softly, as if answering a call.

Nikita placed her hands on the boulder, and a crack split it down the middle. The sides swung in like doors. They stepped through, and the rock seamed shut behind them.

The Pandava sisters found themselves standing at the base of an enormous tree. It was so huge that Aru couldn’t get a sense of how wide the trunk was. It seemed to disappear into the shimmery mist crawling in from every side. Huge silver roots bulged out of the ground, towering over them. A thick carpet of autumn leaves edged in frost crunched underfoot. The tree’s bark looked like the surface of a mirror, and etched into it was script in a language Aru didn’t recognize. But even though she couldn’t read what it said, she somehow understood that the tree protected something important, as if the pulse of the universe flowed beneath its roots.

Aru looked up and up, and still she could not see where the branches started. The more she strained her eyes, the less she could detect beyond a feeling of incomprehensible vastness, as if the tree held not just leaves but forgotten civilizations and the names of dead kings, lengthy histories that had passed on to the realm of myth, and stories so numerous that they outnumbered the stars.

“Is this Kalpavriksha?” she asked in awe.

Nikita shook her head. “That’s a world tree. Meant to nourish the universe and hold it up. But the wish-granting tree is close…. I can feel it. Maybe it’s around the trunk—”

Crash!

The rock door burst open, and shadows poured through, rolling into a black shape that towered to nearly eight feet. Within the cloudy form, Aru caught the flash of two eyes: one blue, one brown.

The Sleeper.

He stretched out a hand cloaked in darkness. His fingers ended in sharp red-tinged claws and he curled them in a terrible summons:

“Show me the wish-granting tree,” he growled. “It was always supposed to be mine.”

Aru flung Vajra at him, but he batted it away as if it were a gnat. Vajra emitted an electrical yelp before bounding back to Aru.

“Run, Aru!” screamed Nikita. “Go!”

“I won’t leave you!” said Aru.

Nikita slammed her palms together. Roses of every size and color cascaded down her body like a ball gown unfurling. Their branches reached for the shadows and grew around the Sleeper, trapping him in a net of thorns. He roared and thrashed inside, drawing the darkness around him like a protective cape.

“Go,” choked out Nikita as she reinforced the cage. “I’ll keep him busy here.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” said Aru, her voice breaking.

Nikita looked at her, her blue eyes wide, her smile shaky and fragile. “But sometimes you have to…. I can fight. Fierce and fashionable, remember?”

Her chin wobbled, and Aru hated that she’d dragged Nikita into this. Every part of Aru wanted to stay with her sister, but if she didn’t find the tree, none of them would make it out and the Otherworld would be destroyed. Tears pricked at her eyes, but Aru needed to be strong. For both of them.

“I’ll be quick,” said Aru. “I’ll fix this. I swear it.”

As she turned on her heel and sprinted off, she heard Nikita’s voice carrying over the air.

“I believe you.”

Aru raced around the vast trunk of the world tree, feeling foolish. There were no other trees in plain sight. Where would you even hide a miracle as magnificent as Kalpavriksha?

The silvery fog rolled to her right. Part of her was tempted to run into it and see if the tree was hiding there, but something stayed her impulse. Whenever she looked too long at the silver mist, her necklace burned.

As if telling her, No, not there.

Aru slowed to a stop. She risked a glance over her shoulder. She couldn’t hear the Sleeper anymore. Or, she thought with a pang, Nikita. It was as if Aru had stepped into another realm entirely.

Around her was nothing but fog, and the massive mirrored trunk and…

Aru paused.

A golden tree no taller than a book nestled against a bulging root. She’d almost missed it as her eyes swept over her surroundings, but now she thought she could detect a faint glow around it. Aru stepped closer. Waves of magic poured from it, thickening the air.

Aru took a deep breath and touched her mother’s necklace for luck.

Then she closed her eyes and wrapped her hand around the trunk of the tiny tree.