Tobias grips the rope and climbs, hand over hand, into the crack. The stone squeezes close, then opens without warning. He pulls himself through onto solid wood — the inside of a vast hollow tree, the walls curving around him in dark grain. A gap high above admits a thin column of morning light, turning the air faintly green. And there, perched on a root-knot as if she has been waiting a long while, sits a figure no bigger than his fist. Bark-coloured skin. Violet eyes that glow like candleflame behind glass. A coat stitched from dried leaves and spider silk. She tilts her head and laughs — soundlessly, her shoulders shaking — and points one tiny finger at Tobias as though he is exactly the thing she expected and also the funniest thing she has ever seen.