I tumbled down a hole, like an animal’s burrow. My elbows and knees banged into soft earth, shooting dirt into my face and up my nose.

Then my back slammed into something hard. I groaned in pain. For a few seconds, I couldn’t move. I just lay there, blinking away the sting in my eyes. Then, slowly, I rolled onto my side. I ached all over. Coughing, I brushed the hair from my face and tried to see where I was, but everything was pitch-black.

The shaft I’d fallen through rumbled, showering me with more dirt. With a gasp, I covered my head, hoping I wouldn’t be buried alive before Zhong and Miv could rescue me. That is, if they could get through the wall that had just closed above, leaving me stranded.

What do I do? What do I do?

I stood even though my body wanted me to curl into a ball. My hands groped at the walls, but I couldn’t feel anything except solid earth. Was there enough air in here? Panic made my stomach twist.

Pretend, Pahua. Just pretend you’re someone else. I tried. I tried to imagine I was a world-famous adventurer about to pull off a daring escape…but the fantasy kept slipping away. I was too afraid. All I had on me was my shaman sword, and what good was that? I didn’t think attacking the walls would do much, but I was open to creative solutions.

The pit trembled, and I freaked, thinking the ceiling was caving in. But then light pierced my eyes. A doorway opened. I blinked against the brightness, waiting for my vision to adjust. When it did, I was surprised to see that the door led out to a forest.

The sudden appearance of trees and blue sky should’ve been comforting—and it was definitely better than that dark enclosed space—but I just found it confusing. Had the Tree of Souls spat me out? It was possible I had emerged from lower down the mountain. It was also possible that I was still underground and having a panic-induced hallucination.

I shook the dirt from my clothes and patted down my hair. When I drew a deep breath, the air smelled sweet, like sugarcane and coconut milk. It made me think of nab vam, one of my favorite Hmong desserts: chewy, delicious tapioca pearls and green jelly mixed with ice, caramelized sugar, and coconut milk.

Whenever we made the drive to the Asian-foods store, which was almost an hour away, we always bought two cups of nab vam, one each for me and Matt. I would make a game of how long I could make mine last, but Matt always finished his within ten minutes of getting in the car. He wasn’t very good at waiting….

A lump formed in my throat, and I swallowed it back down. I had to focus and get out of there so I could find the lightning ax and rescue him.

The grass beneath my feet was thick enough to be carpet. It made me want to take off my boots and dig my toes into the softness. Clusters of wild violets weaved purple trails through the trees. The sun felt warm against my face.

It all looked too perfect. As I walked, not sure where I was headed, a weight continued to drag at my stomach. I needed to find Miv and Zhong, but that wasn’t all that was bothering me. When my fingers passed over a tree and the rough-looking bark felt unnervingly smooth, I realized what was wrong.

It was quiet. Much too quiet. In a forest this alive, the trees, flowers, and air should have been swarming with nature spirits. But I was alone. Goose bumps rose on my arms. I looked over my shoulder. The door where I exited was gone.

I swallowed nervously. I was still underneath the mountain. I felt certain of it. This had to be another impossible magical room, like the library.

Not even my footsteps could break the silence, because the grass cushioned my boots. I kept one hand on the hilt of my sword. Everything looked peaceful, but just because I wasn’t in danger of being pelted with heavy books again didn’t mean I should let my guard down.

The farther I walked, the more a certain feeling grew inside me. It began as a dread of never being able to find my way out of here and evolved into a fear that I’d been left behind. I rubbed down the goose bumps on my arms. It was all just in my head. The magic of this place was getting to me. But I couldn’t shake the sudden thought that I’d been forgotten.

My hand found the chain around my neck. With a tug, I pulled the locket from beneath my collar. The leaf was still inside, green and strangely perfect. Yeng had said it would help get me where I needed to go.

I held up the leaf and rocked on the balls of my feet, anxious. Biting my lip, I waited. But nothing happened. There was no magical awakening, no sense of awareness, no sudden knowledge. It just felt like a leaf.

My shoulders fell, and I put the leaf back into the locket. What was I going to do?

A voice made me jump. “Hello there.”

Through a break in the trees, a creek glimmered. As I got closer, I noticed that a wooden bridge stretched over the water. A shiver ran down my spine. It looked a lot like the bridge near school, where I’d first encountered the angry spirit. Except this one was in way better condition, with all the boards still in place. On the other side of the creek, a door stood against the backdrop of the trees, looking strange and out of place.

The person who’d spoken was a man sitting in a stuffed leather chair. He looked out of place, too. He and his chair were parked beside the bridge along with a metal bucket overflowing with fat purple plums.

“Come closer,” he called out.

I really didn’t want to. Unfortunately, he was the only other person here, and I needed help. Reluctantly, I approached the bridge.

“Who are you?” I asked.

The man was dressed in neatly pressed gray slacks, the kind important businessmen in movies wear when they say things like Let me make you a deal, or Bring me my solid-gold toothbrush. His black shoes were so shiny that I could have checked my hair in their reflection (except I already knew that I looked like I’d lost a dodgeball game with a mountain). The sleeves of his white button-down shirt were rolled up to his elbows. He had short black hair, perfectly styled to look like he hadn’t tried very hard.

“I’m Cag,” he said simply. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

I frowned. “Roots? How did you know I was coming?”

“Because you selected my door. Which meant you would arrive here eventually.”

“I don’t understand.”

He gestured to the forest and the jewel-bright colors too intense to be real. “When people think about their past, what do they remember? What do you remember?”

“Um—”

“Tell me the first thing that comes to mind.”

“I got a fever and hives once after eating at Burger King.” I had itched all over, even after taking Benadryl. But I hadn’t even minded much, because my mom had stayed home with me for two whole days. She had fed me rice porridge and boiled chicken in herbs and cuddled with me on the sofa while we watched space documentaries about the end of the universe.

The man laughed, a low, delighted sound. “You’re too young to be filled with so much sadness.”

I shrugged, uncomfortable.

“When people think about their past, they usually like to…brighten it up. They tend to gloss over the shadows and the hollow spaces, smooth out the dull patches. They talk about the ‘good old days.’ Most souls here don’t want to face the pitted and stained reality of what their lives had been. But they must take stock of everything before they can move on. So I help them.”

“You force them to remember bad stuff?”

The man laughed again. “Let’s say I give all their memories a fresh coat of paint and a rose-tinted finish. Sometimes it helps ease them into moving on, and sometimes it makes them clutch even tighter to their own falsehoods. Either way, I stay busy.”

“What do you want with me, then?”

He perked up, sitting straighter in his leather seat. “I want to unburden you. You seek the lightning ax.” He pointed to the bridge and the door waiting on the other side. “This will take you there. There’s a toll to cross it, but don’t worry—it’s one you won’t mind paying. All I require is a bad memory.”

I thought about it. “That’s not so terrible.”

Maybe he could take the memory of that time my aunt made me hold a live chicken for her while she completed some shaman blessing. I couldn’t tell her that the chicken scared me, so I just stood there until I began sobbing uncontrollably. The chicken hadn’t seemed to mind. Or maybe that time I went to school sick and threw up my breakfast on the kid in front of me. For the rest of year, the other kids called me Pahurl.

“Not just any memory,” the man said. His nose wrinkled as if he’d read my thoughts or glimpsed the memories I was thinking about. “Your worst memory. That’s the one I need. You’re very young. It will be quick and painless.”

My shoulders bunched. I knew immediately which memory he wanted—the day my dad left.

A chill swept through me. I wished I hadn’t left my cloak with Spike.

For a moment, I let myself think about what it would be like to let go of that memory. It would no longer play in my head whenever I saw how tired my mom was after a long week of work. I would finally be able to stop wondering if it had been my fault. I’d stop being so angry with him.

Would that be so bad?

But it didn’t feel right. Not at this point in my life, anyway. If our roots are who we are, everything we’ve been and done, then wouldn’t cutting out such an important piece, even if it was a bad one, hurt the whole tree?

“Why do you need it?” I asked. I had to understand.

He spread out his hands, like the answer should be obvious. I was really tired of everybody expecting me just to know things. “Roots must be watered. The most nourishing memories for me are the ones that burrow deep inside others and lodge in the heart like a splinter that can’t be extracted.”

“Except you can extract them,” I said.

Maybe I would be happier if I didn’t have that memory anymore.

But then again, maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe I’d just be confused. Maybe I’d end up wondering why I was sad for no reason.

“I can’t,” I said heavily. “I can’t give that to you.”

Cag’s dark eyes narrowed. He regarded me with such intensity that I squirmed and wanted to wash my face.

But then he plucked a plum from his bucket and handed it to me. “Then, Pahua Moua, the only way forward is back.”

“But I can’t go back. The door closed behind me.”

He didn’t speak, only continued to hold out the fruit.

I hesitated. “I’m going to need clearer instructions.”

“Eat the plum.”

“Why?”

“Because if you don’t, you’ll be trapped here forever.”

Well, that was a pretty compelling reason. I took the plum. It was so big that it filled both my palms. But it looked ripe and juicy, and I was starving.

“What’s going to happen?”

He gave me a blank look.

“Right. Eat the plum,” I said. “Okay, here goes nothing.” I took a bite.

Sweet liquid flooded my mouth and dripped down my chin. The fruit was delicious and just the right texture—soft but not mushy. I took a second messy bite, savoring the taste. Then the forest and the man swirled into a blur.

The plum fell from my sticky fingers. I turned in a slow circle, the vortex of color making me dizzy. After a few seconds, the world re-formed around me.

I stood in a living room. Not just any living room, but the one in the house we’d lived in before my dad left. I swallowed thickly. What was left of the fruit suddenly soured in my mouth.

The room was smaller than I remembered. A brown leather sofa sat against the wall, faded and scuffed with age. It faced a flat-screen TV with a game console under it. A stack of games had fallen over, and a handful lay scattered on the carpet. Through the windows, the street looked just as I remembered—a cul-de-sac where the neighborhood kids rode their bikes back and forth.

My parents stepped into the room. At the sight of my dad, something tore inside me. Tears filled my eyes. I backed away, skirting a potted banana tree until I was pressed into a corner. I slid to the ground and hugged my knees.

My mom’s eyes were red and puffy, her lips pressed into a hard line. She was wearing a pretty blouse with big lilacs on it. My dad had given it to her the previous Christmas. Attached to the shirt, right above her heart, was a shiny metal pin. It was a shaman’s cymbal with a pair of elephant-foot spirals inside and a single stripe on top.

I knew the pin was important for some reason, but at the moment, my mind couldn’t put the pieces together. I was too caught up in the awfulness of what was happening.

This was the last day my dad would be with us. My parents had just had a fight. Usually when that happened, Dad would leave for a few hours. In the morning, he’d be home again to drop me off at school and kiss me good-bye. But after this particular fight, he hadn’t returned. A week later, my mom had sat Matt and me down to tell us he never would. She’d given no explanation.

In this memory, Mom didn’t speak as my dad put on his coat. It was fall. A month before Halloween, and I’d been bugging him about our costumes. I wanted to be a dinosaur trainer and for him to be the dinosaur so I could walk him around the neighborhood on a leash.

Somewhere in the house, three-year-old Matt started crying.

Watching the scene replay, I sucked in great lungfuls of air, but it didn’t seem like enough. My eyes felt hot, so I squeezed them shut. I pressed my hands over my ears. I wasn’t here. This wasn’t real. I was a ballerina in a recital. I was a detective hiding from criminals. I was a—a—

I couldn’t think of anything, so I curled tighter around my knees. It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not—

A teacher said you went into the woods with some girls, came Matt’s voice.

I stiffened. The voice hadn’t come from the room. It had come from inside my head.

I snuck out to find you.

The words were from the day I’d freed the bridge spirit. Matt had only been out there because of me.

He’d looked so small in that big hospital bed. Mom would still be at his side, her eyes dark with shadows while her fingers worked on the charm. I thought of how Matt slurped up my dinners of ramen noodles and eggs and rice, the only things I knew how to cook, as if they were his favorite foods in the whole world. I thought of the way he reached for my hand when we crossed the street without me having to remind him, and how he always got excited about which TV or movie series we were going to marathon the next weekend, even if we’d seen them a million times before.

My pretending might have started because of the feeling that I didn’t fit in, but after our dad left, it had also become a shield, allowing me to hide from the truth that I hadn’t been enough to make him stay.

None of that mattered now, though. My brother needed me. I was his big sister, and it was my job to protect him. I had to get out of there and find that lightning ax. I had to get his soul back.

Slowly, I got to my feet.

Dad was still by the door, like he hadn’t yet made up his mind about whether he was going to stay. Mom was gone, probably to wherever Matt was in the house. I stepped out into the middle of the room, my chin held high.

“I don’t forgive you,” I said loudly. My voice shook, but my eyes were dry.

Dad turned to me, the lines around his mouth deep. He didn’t look the way I remembered. He seemed older, more tired.

“I know I’m only eleven, but I also know what it’s like when things aren’t what you want them to be. I pretend to be other people all the time. But…I don’t run away. That’s what cowards do. And while you’re not there for them, I will be.”

Dad took a step toward me, and everything went black.

I wavered on my feet. I was suddenly standing on the other side of the bridge, in front of the door. I whirled around to see Cag at the other end. He pointed to his open hand.

I looked down. Cupped in my palm was a plum pit. When I closed my fingers around it, the pain from only moments ago echoed through my skull, as if I were holding a living record of my worst memory. I flinched, almost dropping it.

“A memento!” Cag called.

Frowning, I tucked the pit into the same pocket that held my gloves. Part of me wanted to throw the stone away. The memory was still in my head—Cag hadn’t erased it—so what was the point of carrying the pit around as well? But it seemed that he wanted me to keep it.

Was I supposed to feel different now that I’d faced my worst memory? I didn’t feel any lighter. All the anger was still there. Except…I guess the memory felt smaller now. Small enough to fit into my palm. Small enough that I could let it go if I wanted to.

With one last glance at Cag, who waved good-bye, I pulled open the door and walked through.

Right into Zhong.

“Ow!” she yelled as we both stumbled.

“Pahua!” Miv leaped onto my shoulder. He smacked my face with both paws. “What happened? You fell through a crack in the wall and disappeared.”

“Yeah, I know. I was there.” Despite my sarcasm, I was relieved to be with them again. I ran my fingers through his fur and felt instantly reassured.

“Where’d you go?” Zhong asked, peering over my shoulder. But both the forest and Cag were gone.

“Nowhere I’d want to go back to,” I said, avoiding her eyes. “What about you guys?”

Zhong immediately turned away. “Like you said: nowhere I’d want to go back to.”

I frowned. We were inside a lantern-lit corridor again, but as we walked, I snuck glances at her. She looked the way I felt—a little uneasy, like she’d faced something she’d hoped never to see again. I realized then the Tree of Souls hadn’t targeted only me. It was testing all of us. Even Miv seemed quieter than usual.

Like Cag had said, every spirit bound to the Tree of Souls had to confront things they didn’t want to before they could move on. I guess I was lucky I was only eleven.

I wondered what Shee Yee had been forced to deal with when he was here. What regrets and secret sorrows did a hero have?

I was dying to know what the tree had shown Zhong, though I would never dare to ask her. Had she seen something about her family and how she felt like she would never measure up? Or maybe about how she might fail this quest and get kicked out of her school? I could imagine how ashamed she would be if that happened, especially with her family’s history of powerful shaman warriors. I’d already told her that she was amazing, but I wanted to remind her again…even though it probably wouldn’t help.

And what about Miv? I knew next to nothing about his life before he’d found me when I was four.

The tunnel grew wider as we walked. The lamps became larger, filling the corridor with light. The walls smoothed out. The ceiling became stone instead of earth. A scent thickened the air, but it wasn’t the dank musk of being underground. It smelled like jasmine.

The tunnel opened into an airy, bright room with a garden in the middle. The walls and ceiling were made of white marble tiles. At each corner, stone fountains ran with clear water.

Even though this room looked as out of place as the others had, it felt different. Safer somehow. I didn’t know how I knew, but there would be no trick floors or tests to pass here.

A path was cut through thick swathes of jasmine blooms to the center of the garden, where a life-size stone statue of Shee Yee stood on a pedestal. In his hand, he held a formidable weapon.

A gleaming silver ax.