Sami marched up the stairs indignantly. Then she waited behind her closed door, and as soon as she thought her mother wasn’t watching, she crept down the hall to the room on the left.
Tapping softly on Teta’s closed door, Sami opened it a crack. It was dim in the room, as usual; the daylight filtered through the half-cracked shutters. Her grandmother was lying in bed, but her eyes opened as Sami entered. Over her shoulder, her reading lamp illuminated the silhouette of a row of tiny camels. Teta’s room had a lovely smell of sunlight on sand—a memento, Teta claimed, of years of crossing the desert floor as a Bedouin tribeswoman. Coming closer, Sami was startled by how small her grandmother appeared to be. Her silver necklace looked bigger on her chest and her ring was loose on her finger. Sami crouched by the older woman’s side and took her hand. “Teta? Are you okay? How do you feel?”
Teta pressed her lips together, moving one hand to wave off Sami’s concerns.
Sami frowned, but she knew there was no use asking questions when her grandmother was like this. “I have to tell you—ugh—I’ve got so much to tell you!” Unsure of where to begin, she hesitated. Teta had always told tales of other worlds and magical beings, but what Sami had to say felt different: bigger, realer. “The thing is, I found your book of spells….The one you’d hidden under my bed?” she began. Her grandmother nodded slowly. “I was looking for, like, a treatment. For you—I mean, the trouble you have—with talking?”
Her grandmother shook her head.
“Well, yeah, then I opened it up.” She stood, stepping back from the bed. Teta placed one hand on the base of her throat. “I know—I know! I’m not supposed to open it till I’m twelve. But I had to. There’s stuff going on with Mom and Ivory. Just, trust me—I had to. The book led me to the right page and I read it and—”
Sami broke off—was that her mother coming up the steps? Not yet. She swiveled back and whispered, “The mirror opened, Teta! It opened right up and pulled me in, and—and—Wait…wait.” She studied her grandmother’s face for a moment. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”
Teta lowered her eyes and studied her fingernails. Finally, she looked up at Sami and said, “Ennnh laa basha?”
Sami shook her head. “No, Teta, it’s me, remember? You talk normally to me.”
Teta opened out her hands in a kind of hopeless gesture. “Boookh aadoo!”
Sami’s entire body felt cold and there was a dizzy pressure between her eyes. This was bad. This was very, very bad. Sami was the only one left who could understand Teta—without their link, there would be no hope of saving her from Ivory’s horrible plan. Instead of panicking, though, she nodded and took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay. This is all gonna be fine. I think. But I need to ask you a question. The thing is—when I was there? In that other world? I saw something, like in a dream. I saw a castle, and a—a big blue eye.”
Teta’s own eyes widened.
“It sounds weird, I know. But I guess it wasn’t so much a dream, it was more like a—vision, I guess.” She dropped her voice nervously as she said this, though she knew that her grandmother believed more in visions than she did in the evening news. “I’ve got to get straight back to Silverworld, but first I need you to tell me what those things are. The castle and the eye? Are they real? Are they places?”
Teta shook her head, but Sami couldn’t tell if she was saying no or just saying that she didn’t know. Or that there was no way for her to explain it.
“Teta, please—this is super important. Isn’t there anything you can tell me?” she begged.
“SAMARA SERAFINA WASHINGTON.” Her mother was standing in the doorway, hands on her hips, her face like a thundercloud. “I thought I told you to go to your room.”
Sami dropped her head, deflated. “Sorry, Teta. I gotta go.” As Sami bent to embrace Teta, her grandmother secretly pressed something into Sami’s palm. It felt hard and cool in her hand, and Sami thought she felt a silvery current race up her arm. Something like tiny bells softly tinkled in her ears. Teta turned and gave Sami a single grave nod.