The Story Web

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  She had broken him; she was sure of it.

  “Alice, none of this is your fault,” he said. “It’s not your fault and it’s not my fault. It’s the world and the war and the things I saw—not you. Never you.”

  Alice launched herself into his lap. They cried together, with him holding her tight to his chest. He smelled just the way she remembered him, and if he didn’t feel quite as safe as he used to, that was okay. He was still here. He was still her father. Maybe she had learned some things about him that changed how she saw him. He wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t larger than life. But she still loved him. And he still loved her.

  Eventually their bodies calmed, and he stroked her hair.

  “I miss you so much, Dad.”

  “I know, kiddo. I miss you, too. Every millisecond of every day.”

  “Are you getting better?” she asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Will you come home?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “As soon as I can. Now,” he said. “Tell me about this bird you’ve brought.”

  She pulled the sheet off the cage, and Dare and Buzz stared at each other, each with a broken wing, each with silver-gray eyes.

  “She’s for you,” she said. “She’s yours.”

  Then she picked up her bag and took out her other gift for her dad. She’d asked Ms. Engle, and she said it was all right so long as it came back by the end of the year. She handed the blue book to her dad.

  “The Story Web,” he said with a smile. He hugged the book to his chest. “I love this book.”

  “You stole it from the library,” she said.

  “Well—” His cheeks turned pink.

  “It’s okay. Ms. Engle checked it out to me for the rest of the year.”

  Her dad opened the book, and they looked at the picture in the prologue together: the earth frozen and shattering. Alice shivered. “It’s real,” she whispered. “It’s not just a story, and it almost happened.”

  He put his palm on the book, over the picture. “It’s always happening, Alice. That’s why we have to keep telling stories. The kind of stories that connect us, not the kind that divide us. No more witch stories.”

  Alice tucked herself into the crook of his shoulder. She used to fit better, but it still felt just right. “So let’s do it,” she said. “Right now. Tell me a story.”

  “Once upon a time,” he began, “a girl was born under the light of a silver moon. No one knew it at the time, but one day this girl, and her friends, would save the whole wide world.”

  Alice, Lewis, and Melanie walked down the stairs of the library, each with a book under their arm. Most of the books came from Anastasia’s library, carried over in a parade of townspeople after she made the donation. Anastasia had watched the books go from an upstairs window of the house and was grateful to shut the door behind them. The town had also raised money for new books and hired a friend of Ms. Engle’s from library school to be the new town librarian. The three friends volunteered as pages mostly so they could get their hands on the new books first.

  They walked together through the park. The town had decided not to call it Buzz Dingwell Park after all. When Alice told him in a letter, he replied that it was a relief, and he liked the name they gave it a whole lot better. The town had had a naming contest, and Melanie’s choice won: Historia Park. It told the story of the town. At one gate, there was a statue of kids playing hockey—Donny insisted the boy was modeled after him. At the other gate was a statue of Eudora Van Eckles tending a flower garden planted by Henrietta and her canasta friends, who had formed a new gardening club. In the playground, one of the climbing structures was shaped like an old mill and another like the moose. The sea serpent bench was there with a perfect view of the whole park. The path was lined with bricks, each with a name. The children had all been able to press their hands into the cement that surrounded the basketball courts. There was a war memorial, too, and Alice noticed Henrietta Watanabe’s name freshly carved into the stone base.

  Ms. Zee had changed the hero project to focus on local heroes. Everyone had gotten to interview someone in town and present their story. The interviews were being archived in the library. Alice had chosen Henrietta, and once people knew her history, they’d decided to add her to the monument.

  After their heroes project, they had researched animals in the area and had created new signs for the park that taught about them. Officer Hammersmith had helped, and Brady and Izzy liked it so much that they had become junior animal control officers. Maybe it was spending all that time with animals, but both of them had softened a little. Not enough that Alice wanted to be friends with them again but enough that life was bearable.

  Lewis ran along the path ahead of Alice and Melanie. “It’s Lewis Marble on the breakaway. He’s skating down the ice; he’s got the puck!” He mimed a slap shot. “He shoots! He—”

  “Is blocked by Alice Dingwell!” Alice yelled.

  “Aren’t we on the same team?” Lewis asked her.

  They were, actually. The night before, Alice had decided to rejoin the team. Today she and Lewis were going to get back on the ice together, before her first official practice. Outside, the sun shone on them, but as soon as they stepped into the rink, coolness fell over them.

  Alice tied her skates on while Melanie watched.

  “You coming or what?” Lewis called from the ice.

  Alice strapped on her goalie pads and dropped her helmet on over her head. Then, for the first time in months, she skated out onto the ice and to the goal.

  Lewis liked the sharp noise of the hockey stop. He liked the way flakes of ice drifted up like snow in a snow globe. More than that, he liked the sound of Alice’s skates roughing up the space in front of the goal.

  “You think you still got it?” he called across the ice to her.

  Alice grinned behind her hockey mask. Nothing had felt normal since her father left. Not one single thing. Except for this. It had taken her so long to discover it, but it had been here all along: the ice, Lewis, her uncle Donny watching from the office above. This was her father’s world, true, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have her own place in it. It didn’t mean she couldn’t be here without him.

  “Yeah, I’ve got it,” she called back to him.

  “Go, Alice!” Melanie called from the far side of the rink where she stuttered across the ice gripping the side wall for support.

  “Hey, what about me?” Lewis yelled to her.

  Melanie shrugged.

  Lewis dropped the bucket of pucks and picked one out. He rocked it back and forth on the ice a few times before he started down the ice. He built up speed with each kick of his leg, racing toward Alice faster and faster and faster. But to her, he was in slow motion. She saw each stride, each tap of the puck from side to side. She saw his stick go back, saw it bend as it slapped into the puck, saw the puck lift into the air. Her glove was up. She was ready.

  She was brave.

  She was bold.

  She was fierce.

  All of them were.

  Acknowledgments

  When you are writing a book about stories, you think about the people who told stories to you. So, my very first acknowledgments must go to my mother, Eileen Frazer, with whom I read nearly every night, and to my father, Joseph Frazer, who made up stories to tell my brother and me, mostly about abominable snowmen. Thank you also to Jack and Matilda who listen to my stories and let me experience tales, both old and new, through their eyes.

  Every book needs an editor, this book perhaps more than any other I’ve written. Thank you to Mary Kate Castellani for asking all the right questions and steering me and the book to the place it needed to be. Thank you, also, to the whole team at Bloomsbury: Beth Eller, Lizzy Mason, Alli Brydon, Claire Stetzer, Erica Loberg, Erica Barmash, Danielle Ceccolini, Susan Hom, and Cindy Loh.

  Kids often ask me if I design and create the covers of my books. I don’t! I’m so grateful to illustrators like Erwin Madrid who captured the
story for the cover.

  Thank you to Sara Crowe, agent and friend, who nurtures and finds homes for my stories and for so many wonderful tales.

  Thank you to Lee Kantar, State Moose Biologist, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, who answered all my moose questions, including how to get a moose out of a trench. Equally valuable was Carly Hippert explaining how nurses balance their schedules with parenthood. Thank you to all the other experts who answered my questions.

  Thank you to all my families: the Blakemores, the Pikcilingises, the Frazers, the Tananbaums, and my Dyer family. Thank you for understanding when I need to lock myself in my office and not do fun things with you.

  Thanks, finally, to Nathan, with whom I’ve written my favorite story.

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  This electronic edition published in 2019 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY CHILDREN’S BOOKS, and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  First published in the United States of America in June 2019 by Bloomsbury Children’s Books

  Text copyright © 2019 by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  All rights reserved

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Blakemore, Megan Frazer, author.

  Title: The story web / by Megan Frazer Blakemore.

  Description: New York : Bloomsbury, 2019.

  Summary: When animals in Alice’s small Maine town tell her the Story Web is in danger, threatening the fabric of our world, she knows she can mend it by being honest about why her father is gone.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018045330 (print) • LCCN 2018051375 (e-book)

  ISBN: 978-1-6811-9525-4 (HB)

  ISBN: 978-1-6811-9526-1 (eBook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Missing persons—Fiction. | Storytelling—Fiction. | Animals—Fiction. Classification: LCC PZ7.B574 Sto 2019 (print) | LCC PZ7.B574 (e-book) | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045330

  Book design by Danielle Ceccolini

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