“No! Help!” Veronica cried, thrashing her arms and legs. “Mom! Dad!! Elyse!!!”

She awoke, expecting to find herself forty feet high near one of the most dangerous volcanoes on earth, but her pillow was too fluffy and her blanket too warm. She could hear her sister Elyse snoring somewhere nearby.

“Oh, thank goodness,” she sighed. “It was only a dream.” She pulled the soft blanket over her head, but something sharp poked her in the back. Her heavy eyes opened to a haze of white moongleam. 

“Veronica, wake up! It’s time to go,” the voice was familiar but faraway. Her eyes widened, and she saw herself as she was, dangling in the trees of a cool summer night, the pearl fields of Mount Mystery a day’s walk away. “Which is real?” she croaked.

“Sleepyhead, we have to GO!” Maddy repeated, poking her again with a marshmallow stick. 

“I think … I think … I had a bad dream,” Veronica said.

“Yeah, you think?” Maddy said plainly. “I’ve been trying to wake you. What happened?”

“I—thought—it—was—real,” Veronica said haltingly. “I was standing in the dark over a fiery pit. I tried to yell, but no words came out. All I could here were voices, voices I knew, chanting in the night: ‘SACRIFICE, SACRIFICE, SACRIFICE!’ Everything went white. A hand pressed my back. It was the Diamond King. He pushed me, and I fell.”