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“Maybe we should call 999,” Nora said.

“No.” Both of them looked at me. “I am not calling 999 at midnight to tell them the stars are moving.”

“You could leave that bit out,” Ivy said.

Another throb shot through my skull, and the white line at the edge of the road rippled, curving towards me as if I was looking at water. The distortion travelled along the road until it reached the patch of tarmac beside my foot and vanished. “What is that?”

Nora tightened her arm through mine. “What?”

“The road.” They followed my gaze.

“El,” Ivy said carefully, “I can’t see anything.”

“It just moved,” I whispered.

“Okay.” She caught my free hand. “We’re calling 999.”

“Ivy…”

The hedge opposite us stretched before I could finish. Its branches reached towards the road, the trunks behind them narrowing and climbing into tall black lines, and I clamped my fingers around Ivy’s arm. “Look.”

She spun towards the hedge, but everything snapped back to normal, leaving her staring at it. “What am I looking at?”

“I don’t know.” The pain pushed deeper into my skull, hot and sharp now. “I think I need to sit down.”

“Right.” Ivy looked towards the verge. “Sit on the grass.”

Nora slipped her arm from mine and moved in front of me. “Are you going to be sick?”

“No. My head feels weird.”

I bent my knees, but the ground tilted under me. My stomach lurched and my legs folded, but Ivy caught me under the elbow before I went down. My heels fell into the grass as I grabbed her forearm with both hands and planted my feet wider.

“Elowen?”

I struggled to catch my breath as a high ringing filled my ears. Nora said something, but I couldn’t hear her. She stepped closer and gripped my upper arm, her mouth moving and her eyes suddenly wide.

“Nora?” I said.

White light tore across the road, and I flung one hand over my eyes, but it came from everywhere at once. The verge shifted under my feet as the country road vanished. In its place, pale ground stretched away beneath a sky I didn’t recognise, rising and falling into unfamiliar shapes. Warm, dry air caught in my throat as scattered lights shimmered in the distance. My stomach dropped as though the ground had disappeared beneath me.

Then cold night air struck my skin again, and the road slammed back into place so violently that I staggered sideways into Ivy. She caught me around the waist.

Nora screamed. “What was that?”

I stared at her, then at Ivy, whose arm was still locked around me. She was staring at the stretch of road where the other landscape had been.

“Elowen…”

Pain surged through my skull before any of us could move. White light flashed, and the grass beneath our feet became tarmac. The road widened, dragging the opposite verge away until it was impossibly broad, and I clung to Ivy with one hand and caught Nora with the other before it snapped back to normal. “Stay with me,” I said.

“Elowen, what’s happening?” Fear filled Nora’s voice.

“I don’t know.”

Ivy’s hand closed hard around mine. “We’re getting off the road.”

She pulled me towards the verge, but I managed only one step before the ringing grew so loud that it swallowed their voices. An unseen weight pressed against my chest just as the pain behind my eyes gathered into one unbearable point. The ground beneath my feet rippled, and the grass around my flip-flops blurred into that same pale ground. Warmth brushed over my bare toes, though cold, damp grass still pressed against the side of my foot.