It was like bursting through a sheet of frozen fire.

Falling and screaming, followed by a shriek from the surface. Sami caught a glimpse of ruby eyes, a flickering split tongue, and a taloned, scaly hand shooting out, trying to snatch her back, grazing her hair. She plunged, along with a shower of falling debris, stones, tile, gems, forks, seashells, and what might’ve been silver backgammon pieces.

Plummeting.

Gasping.

Eyes slit against wind, onrushing emptiness, a distant light above, already fading.

Twisting and spinning, losing all sense of up and down.

She tried to catch another breath, her mind spiraling, dimly aware that she was falling, falling, falling.

It was like all the falls of her life combined and spun in circles—from trees and stairs and the crumbling building in Lebanon. She wailed continuously as the force of the plummet sucked the sound right out of her throat. Seconds burnt into minutes until time itself burnt away, meaningless in the unending dark.

And yet.

Something inside Sami, something larger than she was, started to grow warm. It was a sensation that pressed through her skin and charged her heart and mind, as if she had been waiting for this all along. This thing in her seemed to have no fear of falling—or any other fear. It was a feeling, sensing quality that sharpened her thoughts and gave her presence of mind, even in the free-falling plunge.

Somewhere inside that endless well of falling, Sami perceived a weirdly familiar sensation. Impossibly enough, it seemed she was able to pick up on a vibration that felt like the air in her grandmother’s bedroom. “Teta!” she yelped. Teta warbled away in the falling force as if she were shouting underwater. She closed her eyes again, concentrated, and sent her thoughts out in a beam: Teta, Teta, Teta.

After a long pause, a thought bounced back: Here.