Nina visits her dying great-great-grandmother Rosita and hears a historia her translation app cannot process.

Rosita dies without clarifying her story, and Nina discovers Rosita lived for over 150 years.

Fifteen-year-old Oli is cast out of his mother's home and wanders into the hostile Robin-kept Forest.

Oli stumbles onto the magical path to anywhere-you-please and follows it to a vast bottomless lake.

Oli meets Ami, a Dallas toad person, at the bottomless lake and the two become friends.

Oli, Risk, and Reign survive a violent attack by a catfish cultist while out on the bottomless lake.

Ami suddenly collapses unconscious, and a village healer reveals his Dallas toad species on Earth is going extinct.

Oli visits an unconscious Ami in the hospital and promises to do whatever it takes to save him.

Nina decodes Rosita's historia and learns her spirit ancestor and their son were killed by the King.

Oli and his friends fall from the pseudosun and land on Grandma's property on Earth.

Nina meets the animal people at her family's bookstore and the two groups agree to help each other.

Risk and Brightest spend their remaining time on Earth fighting a tornado threatening Grandma's home, then vanish.

Paul shoots Oli through the heart from a hidden position; Nina's grandmother heals Oli before he dies.

Oli takes Nina's family to the Reflecting World to escape Paul, who opens the tornado doll and vanishes.

Ami wakes up as Dallas toads arrive on Grandma's land; Oli's group sails away on a commandeered steamboat.

Nina's life is changed when her great-great-grandmother Rosita dies, leaving behind a mysterious historia in a language Nina cannot decode. Meanwhile, Oli is cast out of his childhood home and wanders until a magical path leads him to a bottomless lake and a found family that includes Ami, a Dallas toad person. When Ami collapses as his Earth species edges toward extinction, Oli and his friends make the dangerous journey to Earth to seek help. There, Nina and the animal people strike a deal: she will help raise money for the Dallas toads while they help protect her grandmother from an approaching hurricane. The climax brings a deadly confrontation with Paul, a Nightmare Knight, whose attack on Oli is reversed by Nina's grandmother's healing power before Oli rescues the family by taking them to the Reflecting World. The story ends with Ami waking up surrounded by newly arrived Dallas toads and the friends sailing off toward new adventures.

The headline events driving the story from Rosita's death to Ami's rescue.

Oli bites an alligator person named Bruhn on the foot while sleeping and flees, losing his mother's handmade blanket.

Oli is stalked at night by a vibration-detecting monster and escapes by hiding in a tree until dawn.

Thirteen-year-old Nina visits Grandma during a storm and hears about the Odd Jobs Man who sent animal people to the family bookstore.

Nina drops 80 feet of marked rope into Grandma's well and finds it cannot reach the bottom.

Nina rescues a dying kitten that Grandma unknowingly heals; Nina names the recovered cat Tightrope.

A grizzly bear bounty hunter arrives at Oli's camp to collect payment for Bruhn's injured foot.

The grizzly bear returns with a blanket belonging to Oli's sibling Wist, deeply worrying Oli about his family.

Oli's group visits underground wolf scribes and meets Zale, who promises to reveal a secret route to Earth.

Oli endures severe motion sickness during the truck ride to the fourth peak, dreading every minute Ami remains unconscious.

A bear charges from inside the abandoned tunnel while Nina's group is filming, creating footage better than originally planned.

Nina's group drives to test how far Grandma can travel from her land before she becomes too ill to continue.

Nina learns she earned only $58.31 from a video with 80 million views due to a contract's fine print.

Reign uses a nesting doll to successfully trap the tornado, saving Grandma's house as the storm rages around them.

Mockingbird, disguised as the wealthy content creator Dave, livestreams a public donation to the Dallas toad sanctuary.

Oli's friends build him a permanent home by the lake, and the group commandeers a catfish steamboat for future adventures.

Oli's journey from his mother's home is marked by early mishaps — biting an alligator person's foot and losing a cherished blanket — before he finds stability at the bottomless lake. Nina, meanwhile, quietly investigates the magical underpinnings of her family's land, measuring the well and nursing a kitten her grandmother mysteriously heals. The discovery of Oli's sibling Wist's lost blanket signals danger for his biological family, while underground wolf scribes and their contact Zale provide the group's only viable path to Earth. On Earth, Nina's plan to fund the Dallas toad sanctuary through a viral video falters badly when contract fine print reduces her earnings to almost nothing. The animal people and Nina work together to weather both the hurricane and Paul's attack, with Reign's tornado-trapping playing a decisive role in saving Grandma's home. Mockingbird's clever disguise ultimately secures the funds needed to save the Dallas toads, and Oli's friends build him a permanent home as the group looks toward the future.

The supporting moments and quieter turning points behind the main story.

Thirteen-year-old Nina works on a family tree assignment and wonders aloud whether her family descends from animal people.

Oli recalls his great-grandmother's story of bison people nearly wiped out after colonial hunters decimated their Earth kin.

Fourteen-year-old Nina meets new neighbor Paul, who is tense and using a compass erratically on Grandma's property.

Brightest reveals to Oli that Mockingbird impersonated them during the group's walk to the great oak tree.

Fifteen-year-old Nina secretly films animal people visiting the bookstore at night and finds non-human sunglasses left behind.

Nina accidentally knocks open the box holding the alien sunglasses, causing them to vanish back to the Reflecting World.

Nina realizes Paul's compass trouble proves Grandma's land is a world-crossing zone, confirming he is hunting spirits.

Nina records the story of Fearless and her mother's locket in her private video diary, crying as she finishes.

The animal people discuss how a war among human spirits likely caused the permanent splitting of the two worlds.

The ancient bighorn sheep originator carries Oli's group on its back to the summit of the fourth peak.

Nina uploads the bear attack video despite moral concerns about inspiring panic over wild animal attacks.

Oli confronts Mockingbird after the tunnel incident, and she admits the grizzly bear detectives were never going to help.

Oli discovers that Grandma's land is the exact location where the animal people first fell to Earth.

Paul reveals himself as a Nightmare Knight and forces Nina's family to kneel at gunpoint after shooting Oli.

Nina creates a public account called Child of Refuge to document hurricane devastation and recovery across Texas.

Nina's growing curiosity about her family's past — sparked by a school project — deepens into a suspicion that animal people still secretly cross into the human world. Encounters with the trickster Mockingbird, a suspicious neighbor with a malfunctioning compass, and a pair of vanishing alien sunglasses sharpen her understanding of the hidden crossing zone on Grandma's land. The stories Nina tells and hears, from Fearless's locket to the origin of the Nightmare, illuminate both her personal grief and the novel's larger history of the split between worlds. On Oli's side, the ascent of the fourth peak via the ancient bighorn sheep originator is the point of no return, committing the group fully to their dangerous plan. Back on Earth, moral dilemmas over the viral video and a confrontation with Mockingbird test the group's trust before Paul's unmasking as a Nightmare Knight brings the hidden conflict violently into the open. Nina's final act of creating a public storytelling account marks her transformation from a private girl into someone sharing her world's stories with everyone.

The discoveries and decisions that reshape the characters and the world they inhabit.

Darcie Little Badger

Novel

Fiction

Guide