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Well, except for the fact that it had spoken to us.

“Please, help me,” the tree said again.

I pressed my ear to its rough, rippled trunk, listening. Almost at once, I jumped away. “It has a heartbeat! It’s alive!”

“Most trees are,” Nero pointed out.

“You’re adorable when you’re being a smart-ass, Windstriker.” I blew him a kiss.

Angel slid past me, rubbing the side of her face against the bark. She looked at me and meowed.

“I think she’s trying to tell me something.”

“Yes,” Nero agreed.

I crouched down in front of my cat. “Ok, I’m listening,” I told her.

Angel meowed again, which, honestly, wasn’t all that helpful.

“Maybe you could act it out?” I suggested.

Angel turned her back on me, tail high in the air, which gave me a spectacular view of her rear end. Then she rose onto her hind legs, pressed her front paws to the tree, and sniffed it.

“I believe she wants us to smell the tree,” Nero said.

“Sure, why not?” I laughed. “That wouldn’t even be the craziest thing that we’ve done today.”

But after getting a whiff of the tree, I had to reassess that statement.

“It smells human.” I looked at Nero. “There’s someone inside the tree.”

“Actually, I don’t think there’s someone inside the tree.” He pressed his hand to the trunk and took another whiff. “I think this someoneisthe tree.”

My gaze slid down the tree trunk. My eyeballs might have popped out of my sockets when I saw a ripple of bark that looked just like a braid of human hair. And one of the tree’s branches was reaching upward, like an arm, complete with five fingers.

“A tree-human hybrid?” I asked.

Yep, that was weird. And saying it out loud made it feel even weirder.

“Tree people.” I chuckled. “Suddenly, interdimensional sparkly smoke animals seem totally normal by comparison.”

“I’m not a tree person,” the tree told me. The voice was distinctly feminine. “My name is Aspen.”

“That’s a pretty tree-y name,” I told her.

“Yes, well, I was not always a tree,” she replied. “I was once a person, just like you.”

“And when was that?” I asked.

“A few days ago? A week? I don’t know actually. I’ve lost track of time. It passes strangely here.”

“Where is here?” Nero asked her.

“A waypoint between dimensions,” she replied. “Everyone passes through this space when using the magic mirrors orteleporting. It just happens so quickly that normally you don’t even see it.”

“So how did you get here?” I wondered. “And, for that matter, how didweget here?”

“I got stuck while using the magic mirrors. A freak accident that should not have happened. Somehow, I materialized here, right inside of this tree, and the flowers and branches grew around me.” Aspen’s leaves rustled, like she was shaking out her skirts. “As for you…” Another leafy rustle. “Well, I asked my animal friends to bring you here.”