“Reena.”

Cold fingers clutched at her wrist.

“Reena? Reena, please wake up. Please be okay.”

The air smelled like grass. Grass and muddy water. Warm winds stirred the stray hairs of her braids across her forehead.

Her eyelids felt like they weighed as much as the bags of dog food Hermes consumed every month.

“Mica?” she whispered.

Mica exhaled heavily and clung tighter to her wrist. “You’re awake. Are you okay? Oh, Reena, that was insane.”

“What happened?”

“Don’t move!” Mica pressed her hands against her shoulders. “I mean, I don’t think you should move. I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”

“I need to sit up.”

“You passed out, Reena.” Mica sighed. “You went all rigid and stuff. And you’re still all pale and clammy.”

Reena arched an eyebrow at her. “Am I as pale as you?”

Mica scowled at her. “If you ever go as pale as me, I’ll just assume you died.”

“If I’m ever as pale as you, that’s a valid assumption.” Reena held out her hand. “Help me up.” 

Mica pulled her to a seated position, and Reena waited until her eyes stopped spinning in their sockets to look around.

They sat in the freshly mowed grass of a hill in Riverside Park. It was a place Reena often visited when she went for lunch with her father downtown.

“How did we get here?”

Mica raised her red eyebrows. “You don’t remember?”

Reena blinked at her and glanced just over her shoulder to where the fluffy red panda from her father’s safe stared at them with pale white eyebrows drawn together over its snout.

“Oh.” Reena sagged her face into her hands. “Well, I remember something, but I thought I was tripping.”

“You’re telling me.” Mica sat next to her.

“I remember—” Reena stopped.

“A dragon.” Mica nodded. “It was a big, pink, sparkling dragon. And it knocked me off the roof and then it caught us both and we crashed here.”

Reena looked around. “Where did the dragon go?”

Mica huffed and pointed at the red panda. “There’s the culprit.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. It turned into the dragon, Reena.”

“How?”

“Hey, you’re the genius interdimensional hopping alien friend person.” Mica snorted. “You tell me.”

Reena gazed at the red panda, who sat calmly before them, twitching its tail.

“When I touched it, on the Epic Center roof, I saw something,” she said.

“What?” Mica scooted closer.

“I don’t really know what it was,” Reena said. “I was in a different place. A dark place. And I was with Eedo Hani.”

“Your dad’s sister?”

Reena nodded. “She was alive and young and strong.” She shook her head. “Not like I ever saw her. Like she was in the photos from when she came to America from Somalia.”

The red panda tilted its furry face and spoke. “Your father’s sister did not come from any place called Somalia.”

Reena scowled.

Mica was scowling too.

They both stared at the pink-and-maroon striped, red panda, which had so obviously opened its snout full of needle-sharp teeth and spoken with a deep male voice.

“Reena?” Mica gawked. “Did it just—?”

“Talk?” Reena’s mouth hung open.

The red panda looked at Mica and then at Reena and spoke again. “Your father’s sister did not come from Somalia or any nation on this world.”

Reena kept staring at the talking red panda and scrambled to reach her backpack, which was laying a little ways from her. She had a can of mace inside.

Mica leaned forward, continuing to gape at the creature. “You talk?”

The red panda settled back on its haunches and folded its arms, striped tail twitching more violently. “Yes, I talk.”

Mica gripped her head. “This is crazy. We’re talking to a red panda.”

“No, you’re talking to a red panda.” Reena pulled out her can of mace. “Either we’re crazy, or it’s possessed.” She aimed at the creature.

The red panda rolled its round eyes and sighed hugely. “Ugh, this is going to take a lot of work.”

“You stay over there, or I’ll blast you!” Reena brandished the mace threateningly.

“Reena, he hasn’t hurt anybody.” Mica settled next to her again.

“He knocked you off Epic Center!”

“That was an accident.” Mica shrugged.

“If it could talk, it should have talked sooner!”

“Maybe he forgot how.” Mica patted Reena’s knee. “Let’s give him a chance to explain, since he can. Can’t say that about ever red panda I’ve ever met.”

“You’ve never met a red panda.”

Mica grinned. “Exactly.”

“Did you hit your head on the way down?”

Mica felt her scalp. “I don’t think so.”

Reena huffed and lowered the mace. “Fine.” She gestured broadly to the red panda that was staring at them skeptically. “Talk. But if I don’t like what I hear, I’m blasting you.”

The red panda glanced between them again. “Your strange little pale friend is right, amiirad. I did not remember who I was, and I did not know who you were until we touched.”

The red panda pitched forward and approached on four legs. Once he sat in front of Reena, he curled into a ball, muttering something under his breath. When he unfolded, he held a shimmering pink jewel in his paws.

“The Heart of Arawelo.” He held it out to her. “It rightfully belongs to you.”

“Whoa,” Mica whispered.

Rena kept scowling, but she reached out her hand to take the glowing pink jewel. It was the size of a quarter, and the instant her fingertips brushed it, the jewel ignited with brilliant rose-colored light. It glittered and sparkled in her palm, sending warmth radiating up her arm and all through her body.

“Wow,” she breathed. “What—what is this?”

“The Heart of Arawelo. Aren’t you listening?” The red panda curled its lip at her.

“That means nothing to me.” Reena raised her eyebrows at it. “And you still haven’t told me why I shouldn’t mace you. I don’t even know your name.”

The red panda smirked.

Could red pandas smirk? Apparently they could, because the little creature’s expression mimicked a human’s so closely it could have been human itself.

“I am Bast. And you will soon understand.”

The pink jewel in Reena’s hand sparkled more brightly, as though fireworks were erupting beneath its facets. Shivering electricity jolted up Reena’s arm, arcing through her shoulders, her breath caught in her throat.

“Reena!” Mica shrieked.

Reena grunted as Mica flung her arms around her, and a blast of blinding light surrounded them. Reena squeezed her eyes shut against the brightness, but her eyelids couldn’t block out the light. Her whole body tingled, like she had become the inside of the pink jewel. And somewhere in the back of her mind, she sensed the red panda’s amusement.

When the light faded, it left cold air. The grass beneath her had vanished, replaced with chilly metal floors. And either the heat from the light had truly blinded her, or there was no light around them.

“Reena?” Mica whispered.

“Mica?” Reena blinked her eyes. “I can’t see you.”

“I can’t see you either.”

Okay. So no lights here. Either that or Mica’s blind too. Isn’t that a cheerful thought?

Reena held on to Mica’s arm as the girl unfolded herself from around her, but in the darkness, she couldn’t identify any details.

“Where are we?” Mica’s voice echoed in the room. “Where did the critter go?”

“Bast, right?” Reena mumbled. “Bast?”

The red panda didn’t answer. The cold air around them seemed to grow colder.

“I don’t like this, Mica,” Reena said. “I don’t like this.”

“I don’t like it either.” Mica tightened her grip on Reena’s elbow. “How did you do—whatever you did?”

“I have no idea.” Reena lifted her arm and uncurled her fingers from around the shimmering jewel in her hand. Pink light washed over them both, bathing Mica’s pale face in a rose-tinted glow.

“Can you do it again?” Mica grimaced.

“I don’t know how I did it to begin with, so I don’t know how to do it again, Mica.”

Little toenails skittered across the metal floor, and Bast scurried back up to them, his eyebrows raised and his eyes wide.

“This is wrong,” his voice sounded panicked. “This is all wrong.” He jumped into Reea’s lap and put his nose nearly against hers. “What year is it? What year?”

“It’s 2010,” Reena said. “Why?”

“No, on the Inyangan calendar!” Bast said fiercely. “What year of the Inyangan calendar?”

“What’s an Inyangan calendar?” Mica whispered.

“No clue.”

Bast groaned dramatically and sagged as though he had sand for filling. “How is this possible? How can we be here? This isn’t the palace!”

Reena patted the top of his head. “What palace?”

He swatted her hand away grumpily. “Don’t you know anything? The palace! TheKiti Almasi! The seat of authority for the entirety of Inyanga Bukhosi!”

Reena and Mica exchanged a look, and Reena shivered in the cold air. They needed to figure out where they were, and Bast wasn’t helping.

Bast turned in Reena’s lap and crawled back up to her face again, staring at her. “You are the daughter of the Great Lady Hanihaweeyo, the Dragon of Arawelo. How can you know nothing of Inyanga Bukhosi or the Queen Under the Moon?” His voice shook.

Reena lifted her hand. “My mom is named Ellie. FYI.”

“Do you understand anything he’s saying?” Mica whispered.

“I have no idea what he’s talking about,” Reena said.

“I’m sitting right here.” Bast folded his little arms again. “I can hear you.”

“Yeah, and I still have my mace.” Reena waggled the aerosol can again.

The red panda sighed. “Your ancestors will change the wind for this. What has your mother taught you?” The animal crawled onto Reena’s leg and into her lap. “Take me to her.”

Reena, frozen with surprise at the furry red panda in her lap, stuttered. “My mom? My what? Why?”

“The Great Lady Hanihaweeyo has failed in her duty somehow.” The red panda nodded. “She has not prepared you. I will speak with her and rectify this unfortunate situation.”

Mica giggled. “He’s so cute.”

“That’s not helping, Mica.” Reena rolled her eyes.

“But he is.”

Reena looked down at the creature in her lap. “Look, can we talk about my mom later? It’s freezing in here, and I don’t know where we are.”

The fur along Bast’s spine stood up as he reared back on his hind legs and lifted his little snout. “This is the Ikroza, where the wandering stars gather. You should know it.” He snorted. “But it is wrong. It is dark and cold, and it should be alive.”

He climbed off Reena’s lap and stood in the pink-hued light from the jewel. His bushy tail twitched.

“I fear something is terribly wrong,” he murmured. “Something horrible has happened.”

Furious red light flared to life all around them, and a deafening alarm warbled loud enough to vibrate the floors. Reena cried out and covered her ears as the noise rattled her eardrums.

“What is it?” Mica screamed.

Bast spun in a circle, furry face horrified. “Lock down. Why is it locking down?” 

In the flashing red lights, Reena could finally make out the details of the room. She and Mica sat on the floor at the center of a giant metal chamber. Every burst of red light revealed a huge computer system built into the far wall, a massive viewing screen with multiple panels and keyboards attached to it.

“A computer.” Reena pitched forward and ran toward it. “Finally, something that makes sense.”

“What are you doing?” Mica followed her, shouting over the alarm.

“We can keep sitting there asking questions that Bast isn’t answering, or we can figure it out for ourselves.” Reena started tapping buttons on the computer panels.

Bast scurried across the floor and climbed onto the main panel. “My lady, you don’t understand.” He grabbed her wrist. “The Ikroza will eject us. The security systems are following their protocols. If we do not stop the countdown, all atmosphere in the station will be emptied. We will suffocate.”

Reena stared at the red panda.

“Well, let’s not do that,” Mica said.

“Right,” Reana nodded. “Let’s not do that. How do we shut it off?”

Bast’s grim expression didn’t change, and Reena’s stomach fell.

He didn’t know. Bast didn’t know how to stop it. They were going to suffocate, and there was nothing they could do about it.

Reena squared her jaw. “Everybody, start pushing buttons. We have to wake this computer up. Bast, find me a panel I can get into.” She fished the utility tool out of her shorts pocket. “If we can’t wake it up, I can hotwire it.”

Bast flared his nostrils. “This is the most advanced computer system in the galaxy. You think you can do to infiltrate it with a tiny little knife?”

Reena smirked. “Watch me.”