And in the flailing, he crashes into Elle. She was standing right at the edge of the ridge, and his weight sends her tipping backward, arms pinwheeling, reaching for something to grab—
She goes over.
"Well, shi—"
The world collapses in on itself.
The mountains, the sky, the crew on the ridge below, Kaelren's horrified face, Peeble's tiny form hovering where Elle used to be standing, all of it folds inward, crumpling like paper being wadded into a ball.
The light goes sideways. My ears pop. And then there's nothing.
Just me, and the dark, and the sickening lurch of another iteration dying around us.
One second Kaelren is there, hands pressed to the elm, light pouring from the locket, the gate blazing white-gold. The next second , he’s not.
Peeble hits him at full speed, a panicked, shrieking blur of wings and shell. The impact knocks Kaelren sideways, straight into the open gate. The light swallows them both.
A thunderclap. A flash that turns the entire garden white. Then the elm goes dark. The hum dies. The portal collapses.
Where there was a doorway between worlds, there’s only a tree.
For about three seconds, nobody moves.
"Did—" Leo's face is frozen in the expression of a man who just watched his only lifeline get body-checked through a dimensional rift by a beetle. "Did that just happen?"
"That just happened," Mora confirms, her voice flat.
I look at Kevin. He looks at me. His antennae droop, and his fuzzy little face is doing something I've never seen a bee do before, which is look genuinely devastated. Peeble, his unrequited love, just disappeared into the space between worlds.
"Buddy," I say.
Kevin buzzes once, low and mournful.
"I know."
"What do you mean, 'I know'?" Leo is on his feet now, dirt on his knees, fists clenched. He's big for a human, and right now he looks like he wants to punch something, but there's nothing to punch except a tree that just ate our friends. "Where did they go? Can we get them back? Open it again!"
"Leo," Sarah puts a hand on his arm. Her voice is steady, but her knuckles are white. "Take a breath."
"I don't want to take a breath, Sarah. I want someone to tell me what just happened to the only person who was going to bring Elle home."
"The gate collapsed," Raskel says. He's standing on the garden stool, stick in both hands, staring at the elm with an expression I'd describe as somewhere between furious and constipated. "That fool beetle knocked him into the gate mid-channel. Instead of pulling Elle through, the locket pulled him in. He could be anywhere now. Any iteration. Any timeline."
"That's not helpful!" Leo snaps.
"It wasn’t intended to be." Raskel hops down from the stool with surprising agility for something that old and small. "Helpful comes later. If we're lucky."
"So, what do we do?" Mora steps forward. She's got that look on her face, the one I’ve come to adore. Calm and focused, and terrifying in the best possible way.
"We can't just stand here," I add, because someone has to state the obvious. It’s usually me. "Kaelren's gone. Peeble's gone. The gate is dead. Elle is still scattered across time. We're standing in a human garden in—what's this place called again?"
"Arkansas," Leo says through his teeth.
"Arkansas. Which, I have to say, is very hot, very brown. I'm not a fan."
"Can you focus?" Leo turns on me. I hold up both hands.
"I am focused. My focus just looks different from yours. Yours involves clenching your jaw until your teeth crack. Mine involves talking, because if I stop talking, I start thinking. If I start thinking, I'm going to realize my best friend and a beetle I'm very fond of just got swallowed by a tree. I also have no way to help them."
