“To the Story Web, of course.”
There are many misconceptions about porcupines. They cannot shoot their quills, for example. On the other hand, they are excellent tree climbers. Yes, the porcupine is a very misunderstood animal. For that reason, Porcupine was quite pleased with the information she had gathered, even if it wasn’t good news. She waddled deep into the forest and up the hill to where the animals were gathered and speaking in heated voices.
“There are children going to the web,” Porcupine announced.
The animals argued on.
Porcupine tried again. She cleared her throat. “Children! Going to the web!”
Moose alone heard, raising his head to look at her. The others, though, continued their cacophony. Loud Crow and shrill Weasel, barking Coyote and howling Bobcat.
Porcupine climbed onto the stump of a tree that had broken during the last storm. Its jagged top stood nearly three feet tall, and when Porcupine reached the top she could see out over most of the animals. “The girl!” she yelled. She was nearly out of breath. “She is not in the woods. Not at the web.”
Finally, the crowd of animals looked at her.
“But there are others?” Moose asked.
“There are. Two of them.” She worked to catch her breath.
“Well then,” Crow said. “The problem was we had the wrong child.”
“We didn’t have the wrong child.”
Crow cawed back, “She is not at the web, and these other children are.” Crow was still smarting from the inglorious way he had been captured in the garbage can. The idea that the council had been mistaken, that they had the wrong girl, did much to soothe his wounded soul. “They’ll save the web,” Crow said with great assurance. Crow said all things with great assurance.
“When are they going?” Moose asked.
“Now. They are on their way now. At this very moment.” She huffed out each word. It was the most important information she had ever possessed.
“If they are going to the web, then they are the right children,” Crow said. “It’s simple logic.”
“She is not the wrong girl,” Moose reiterated. “She is frightened. Confused. We need another messenger.”
The council then fell into heated discussion about who that messenger should be. Moose, though, knew it was only a matter of time before he would have to visit the town himself.
As the rain poured down outside, Alice was warm and dry in the Museum. She’d wanted to go home and check on Dare after school, but Henrietta had seen her walking by and dragged her into the Museum. Wednesday was polishing day, so after their snack of cinnamon toast, Alice set to work cleaning the old glass bottles with a vinegar-soaked rag. The scent of vinegar filled her nose and covered her hands. The glass was different colors: blue, green, purple, clear. People liked to put them on their windowsills and let the light stream in or use them as vases. The bottles were a top seller in the Museum. “Why would someone want an old bottle they didn’t even find themselves?” Alice asked Henrietta. “It’s just a bottle.”
“No story, you mean,” Henrietta replied. She glanced at the television. Mary Lawrence was doing a cooking segment with Izzy’s mom, Becky Clancy, who ran a food blog and always sent Izzy to school with a perfectly packed bento box for lunch.
“I guess.” Alice carefully picked up a long, thin bottle.
“You’ve got more of your father in you than you think.”
Alice knew she had plenty of her father in her. She just didn’t know what that meant anymore.
“He ever tell you how we met?” Henrietta asked.
Alice shook her head. “All he told me was that you were a spy,” Alice replied with a laugh.
“Why are you laughing?” Henrietta asked. Her scarf that day was bright red. Alice should’ve known better than to trifle with her.
“Nothing. I just—I didn’t think it was true.”
“Your father is prone to exaggeration,” Henrietta said. “But that is not the same as lying.” She clicked off the television, silencing Mary Lawrence midsentence.
“He says my mom appeared in a fountain. He made a wish, and there she was.”
“Maybe she did,” Henrietta replied.
“He said you were air-dropped behind enemy lines in Nazi Germany.”
“I was a translator and interpreter,” Henrietta told her. “I went to Japan—not Germany—and it was after the war.” She picked up a bottle and a rag and started polishing alongside Alice. “I was in the camps and—”
“What camps?” Alice asked.
Henrietta smirked. “Still not teaching that? Okay, then.” She put her bottle down. “During the war, there were some who thought that Japanese Americans wouldn’t be loyal to the United States. That we’d be helping the enemy. So, they rounded us up and put us in camps. My family was living in San Francisco at the time. They came and got us. We had to leave our homes behind, our pets—all of it.”
“How could they do that?”
“People do any number of awful things when they’re frightened.” She twisted her pearls around her fingers.
“But—”
“You want to know about what I did or not?”
“I do!”
“A recruiter came. He offered us a chance to join up.”
“Why would you join the military of a country that was holding you prisoner?” Alice asked.
Henrietta was silent for a while. Rain hit against the window. “This is my country,” she said. “It makes mistakes. People make mistakes. Grave errors. But it’s still my country.” She sighed. “I signed up. Went to basic.”
“Basic training?” Alice asked. She had a hard time picturing Henrietta Watanabe scaling walls or climbing under barbed wire.
“Yes, indeed. In Iowa. Iowa was a foreign land to a California girl. They gave us uniforms made for the women of Themyscira—”
“You read Wonder Woman?” Alice interrupted.
“Of course I do. Why do you ask?”
Alice shrugged. “I just didn’t figure you for a comics person.”
“A story is a story is a story. Anyway, we had to hem those skirts practically in half to fit us. And I’ll never forget this—the underwear they gave us was brown. Anyway, I got through basic, and then I was sent to the Military Intelligence Language School. The recruiters assumed we all spoke and read Japanese already. I spoke a little with my parents at home but certainly wasn’t fluent. They got us up to speed real quick. I spent most of the war translating documents. Most were nothing much. Some were important. After the war I was part of a team that went to Japan with General MacArthur. That was . . . something.”
Alice could tell by the sound of Henrietta’s voice that she didn’t want to say anything else about it. Her dad’s voice would get that way whenever the subject of his war came up—anything that wasn’t about his friends and him playing tricks or swapping stories. “No one in Independence knows about this,” Alice told her. “They think you’re just the lady with the antique shop.”
“Your dad knows.”
“How?”
“Same as you. He asked.” She shrugged. “He liked to collect stories, and there are loads of them in this town. Buckets full of untold stories. Hidden stories.”
“Some stories are meant to be hidden,” Alice said.
Henrietta folded her hands. “You don’t believe that.”
Alice looked at the bottle in her hand, a green one. She’d been polishing it over and over while Henrietta spoke.
“I can see it in your eyes. You have stories you want to tell. You want them out of the dark. Stories fester there. They grow mean. People fill in details with lies. Like with Anastasia up in the Bird House.”
Alice snapped her head up.
“Could’ve been me up there in the woods. All alone not wanting to talk to folks. Or maybe not ready. Not easy. I came here after my war because I wanted some place quiet where people wouldn’t bother me. It’s a real fine line between wanting some peace and q
uiet and being all alone. If I didn’t live in town where I could walk for the newspaper and a cup of coffee. If I didn’t have this shop with people coming in and out all day. Who knows?”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying folks don’t know her story, and they made one up. And it wasn’t a kind one, was it?”
Alice shook her head.
“Pay attention to the stories people tell, Alice—”
“They tell you a lot about a person.”
“So your father did listen,” Mrs. Watanabe said with a smile. “I figured he learned that lesson the hard way at the Bird House that day.”
Before Alice could ask what Henrietta was talking about, the chimes above the front door rang, and Alice’s mom rushed in, pushing her damp hair out of her face. “What’s with this crazy weather?” she asked. “Raining like the Flood’s coming. I’m going to need to build an ark.” She smiled, but her eyes were tired.
While Alice got her things, Henrietta and her mom chatted about work and the hospital. Alice’s mom told a story of a man who broke his thumb hammering in election signs. Then she said, “But the best was we had a guy come in swearing he had rabies,” Alice’s mom said. “Said he got it from a raccoon, but we couldn’t find a bite on him. Turns out the raccoon didn’t bite him, just walked right in the front door of his house.”
“That old business again,” Henrietta said, shaking her head. “Animals like Independence. Twenty, twenty-five years ago, back when Buzz was a boy, we were practically overrun.”
Alice wanted to hear more, but her mom said, “You ready?”
Alice nodded.
“Thanks, Henrietta,” Alice’s mom said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“It takes a village,” Henrietta replied.
Alice’s mom paused. “I guess you’re right. I don’t have the biggest village, but it’s a good one. Good night, Henrietta.”
“One last thing, JoEllen. Can you tell me again about how you and Buzz met?” Henrietta glanced over at Alice and gave her a wink.
Alice’s mom’s body tensed. Little pinched creases appeared at the corners of her eyes.
“Come on, Mom,” Alice said. “I’ve only ever heard Dad’s version.”
“Okay.” She unwound her scarf from around her neck. “It was down in Boston, my first year of college. Here I was, this girl from the country, down in the big city. I wanted to fit in, so I got these ridiculous shoes. They were strappy sandals with a wedge heel. I could barely walk in them. My friends and I went out dancing at this club. That was an eye-opener! The music was great, but there were just so many people, and they were all so fancy. Anyway, we were walking back to the T, through Copley Square. My feet were just killing me. I could barely keep up with my friends.”
That was hard for Alice to picture. Her mom was a fast walker, and Alice had to jog to keep up with her when they walked down the street.
“My friends kept yelling at me to hurry up. But then we passed by this enormous fountain. The pool was so big, and the moon was reflecting off it. It almost looked like the rivers back home. I thought about how we’d go swimming in the river, how good that felt, and I just chucked off my shoes and walked right in. My friends thought I was crazy. I can’t even tell you how good that felt. It was like all the pressure, all the pain came right off my feet.”
As she spoke, her face relaxed and her cheeks turned a warm pink. Alice hadn’t seen her like that in ages.
“No way I was coming out of there. I just walked right on the edge of that fountain, splashing the water up around me, kicking it at my friends, but none of them would come in with me. I got to the edge, and then, there was your dad. Just standing there with that goofy smile.”
Alice’s mom had her own goofy smile.
“He said, ‘I made a wish, but I never thought a mermaid would really appear.’ And that was that. I probably fell in love with him that very night.”
“What about your shoes?” Alice asked.
Her mom laughed. “That’s what you want to know? After the most romantic story of my life?”
Alice nodded. What she really wanted to say was, So it was true? More or less true?
“I honestly can’t remember. Your dad had this kind of scooter bike back then. Not really a motorcycle, but more like a souped-up BMX. He gave me a ride home, right up to my door. I guess I ran in barefoot.”
“You left the shoes in the park?”
“Hopefully, someone found them who could wear them without agony.”
Alice tried to take this all in: her mom abandoning her shoes, her dad having a scooter. But of course the detail she kept coming back to was that her father had told the truth. He made a wish, she appeared in the fountain, and they fell in love. Alice wondered why she had never heard her mom’s side of the story before. She supposed because her father was the storyteller of the family. But her mother was good at it, too. Maybe that’s why her dad had been so certain she could see the Story Web, too—Alice stopped herself. The Story Web wasn’t real.
Henrietta raised her eyebrows at Alice, as if to say, See?
So maybe some of her dad’s stories had a bit of truth in them. That didn’t mean they were all true. Alice was certain that the Story Web was pure fiction.
Outside, the rain had stopped. She stared up into the murky gray. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she saw nothing.
It was only when she lowered her eyes that she saw something: a tiny web tucked into the corner of Henrietta’s stairs. Raindrops clung to the strands, and one thread stretched out over Henrietta’s storefront walk, waving in the gentle wind.
Snap, snap, snap.
Each step they take breaks a twig, a leaf, an acorn. Birds flutter their wings and chitter their noises down. Humans are apex predators, so the animals are right to be afraid, but Melanie wishes it weren’t that way.
The rain drips, falling with gentle splats between her and Lewis.
She is used to silence between people. She is not used to it being uncomfortable.
“Um,” Lewis says. “So, what is it that we’re going to see?”
“The Story Web.”
Birds chirrup to one another in the trees. A chickadee, a robin, a grackle.
“What? Like a spiderweb?” he asks. There is so much he does not know, but Melanie feels certain he can help.
“Yes. It’s my responsibility.”
Lewis rubs the top of his head. His hair is somewhere between brown and blond, like a fennec fox. Lewis has big ears like a fennec, too. Melanie wonders what else the two have in common.
“It’s always there? This web? In the same place?”
“Yes.” She isn’t used to so many questions.
They are careful as they skid down the slope into the gully.
The sun begins to sink below the horizon line. The sky softens. The air grows colder. Finally, she says, “I’m sorry. The thread—”
But Lewis points to the old willow tree. “There,” he says.
Melanie drops to her knees on the still-warm earth and crawls under the branches of the tree, with Lewis right behind. When they stand, the giant web is in front of them. It is nothing like it had once been. Instead of shimmering silver and luminescent pearls, the web is a dull gray. Stray threads brush against the ground. The top right corner droops, untethered.
“It’s worse than I thought!” Melanie says.
“What is this?” Lewis asks.
“This is it,” she cries. “The Story Web. What’s left of it.”
Lewis is quiet. Quieter than still water. Quieter than white clouds. Then he says, “But how do you know? How do you know it’s not just some big spider’s web?”
She sees the web through his eyes: like a cobweb in the dark corner of a basement. He can’t see the magic there. Not yet.
She thinks of her parents, of the book they read. She can still feel her mother’s sweater against her cheek.
“I have a book about it,” she replies. Sh
e takes a deep breath. How can she explain it to him? He must believe if he is going to help her. “The web has always been here,” she says. “It’s not always the same shape or the same number of threads. It changes a little. But it’s always here because it’s us. Or, it’s part of us. I mean, it’s how we’re all connected. It’s all our lives—” Her words are all jumbled, like broken shards of glass. She takes a deep breath. “It’s a Story Web. Each strand is a tale.”
He steps closer to the web. She’s afraid he might touch it, so she puts her hand on his sleeve.
“Each strand is its own story?”
“More or less,” she says. “Sometimes stories overlap, I think.”
“But that’s a real web,” he says. “And a story is . . . a story.”
She isn’t sure how to explain it to him. A Story Web isn’t so much a thing you understand. It’s something you believe.
“The spiders gather the stories and weave them into the web. The strands lace together, crisscrossing one another to make the fabric that ties the whole world together. It keeps the world together.”
Lewis takes another step. “It doesn’t look so good.”
“If we don’t fix it—” Melanie begins. “It’s why the animals are coming. This web, all the webs—they hold our world together. If they break, then we break. It’s called the Freezing. The whole world will splinter.”
“Literally?”
She can see it happening: the world freezing and shattering into a million pieces.
A story pricks at her mind. She needs to tell him so maybe he will start to see. Maybe he will help.
“My mom left me this book of stories. It’s called The Story Web—it’s all these classic stories, like fables and myths and fairy tales from all over the world. It’s funny because it was every story you could imagine, but I liked the prologue best. That’s the part of the book that comes first, like an introduction—”
“I know what a prologue is,” Lewis tells her.
“Okay. A lot of people skip them, but I like them. I even have it memorized.” Melanie clears her throat. She feels strange sharing this thing that belonged to her and her parents with a stranger. But it is necessary, so she begins retelling the story.
The Story Web Page 6
