Talia glances between the evaporating message and the stranger in disbelief. “Your mother?”

The man folds his arms over his chest. “Polo. I assume you know her.”

Talia’s head is spinning. This must all be some sort of strange dream—like the nightmares she used to have when she was younger. Any second now she’s going to wake up in a hospital bed somewhere in the city, Polo in the next bed over.

Either that, or she’s dead, and every major religion on Earth was really wrong about the afterlife.

“Who are you?” she asks again. The glow of the message is now totally gone, plunging the forest back into darkness.

Squinting, she can’t make out the man’s features well anymore, but she sees a silhouette shift his weight from one foot to the other. “June,” he says, clipped. “And you must be our long-lost Keeper.”

Keeper? Lost?

“Where am I?” Talia asks, figuring she might as well cover the basics until this dream ends.

June’s head tilts to the side in what could be confusion or assessment. “The Kingdom of Tiera,” he says. “Your return has been something of a shock. Everyone assumed you’d died quite a long time ago.”

You’re baaack, the trees whisper ominously overhead.

“How did I get here?” Talia curls her hands into trembling fists as the questions continue to spill out of her mouth. “Where’s Polo?”

“Those were questions I was hoping you’d answer,” June says. He sighs and murmurs something under his breath, in a language Talia doesn’t understand, holding his hand out with his palm up.

Suddenly, flame materializes: a little glowing ball of blue dances just above his skin. Talia presses her back against the trunk of the tree with a faint gasp. “What the hell is that?”

Now in the blue light, she can see June arch an eyebrow at her. It morphs his face into a condescending expression that she immediately wants to punch away. “Magic?” He pauses, regarding her with the same deep, searching gaze Polo so often employed. “You really don’t know anything, do you?”

He twitches his fingers and the ball expands above his palm, then shifts form: a star, a mountain, back to a sphere again.

Talia barks a disbelieving laugh, deciding that she’s just going to have to accept the weird magic(?) powers for the time being. “Would I be asking all these questions if I did?”

“A fair point,” June concedes. “According to eyewitnesses in the village, there was a brilliant flash of green light and suddenly you appeared, standing in the middle of their field.”

Talia shakes her head. The amulet feels suddenly heavy around her neck. “I was in the street. In my neighborhood. With Polo. And there was this car that was about to hit us….”

She can still hear the blare of the horn, see the blinding headlights, feel her body turning to push Polo.

“Car?” June asks, frowning. “What’s a car?”

Talia sinks trembling hands into her short hair. “This can’t be real,” she murmurs. “I have to find Polo and wake up.”

June scoffs. “You’re not dreaming, Keeper. I’m as real as you are.”

“Dreams feel real,” Talia insists, “when you’re in them.” She remembered all those lunchtime conversations with Clara, where they discussed these same swaying branches with their whispered words.

“Well, you’re not waking up from reality. So you might as well give us answers about where you’ve been hiding all these years.”

“No,” Talia snaps. Dream or no dream, she’s not about to trust a stranger who claims to be Polo’s son and can conjure fire out of mid air. “Not until you give me some. Why the hell do you keep calling me ‘Keeper?’”

June stares at her again, eyes a little wide. He looks washed out and strange in the light of his magic flame. Like a ghost.

“This is … beyond my scope,” June murmurs after a long moment. “You should come back to the tent and let the healers finish their work. A Scrys delegation will be here soon to assist.”

Talia backs up a step, digging her nails into the tree and planting her feet. “Like hell. I’m not going anywhere with you. Who are the Scrys? Why do you keep calling me Keeper? Why does everyone know me?”

“You, in particular, are very famous,” June says dryly. “No one thought you’d ever return, yet here you are.”

Famous? How can she be famous? She’s no one. Just an invisible girl in a sprawling city—as insignificant as everyone else keeping their heads down and going about their small lives. Yet June looks serious, almost grave. Yet the trees whisper. Yet an ancient power inside of her hums between her ribs, waking up, waking up, waking up.

“The Scrys can answer everything else,” June says, in a tone like he’s trying to coax a stray cat in from the rain. “It’s in your best interest to play along for now, isn’t it? If this is a dream, you’ll wake up eventually. If it isn’t, you’ll want people who can help you.” He nods in the direction of the village. “So come back.”

Unfortunately, he has a point. Trust aside, going back is probably better than risking whatever might lurk in these woods after dark.

“Fine,” she relents and ignores the pleased quirk of June’s lips. “Lead the way.”

Instead of taking her back the way she came, June leads her on a different path through the forest, until they reach a dirt road cutting through the hills back up to the village.

As they approach the hut Talia fled from—now lit with the glow of lanterns and torches—Talia spots a huddle of shadowy figures, talking amongst themselves. They’re dressed similarly to June, and he picks up his pace at the sight of them, forcing Talia into a near run to keep up with his long strides.

“Good,” he says, “the delegation is already here.”

Talia swallows. An unnamed, inexplicable weight settles like lead in her stomach.