The Lost Girl

by Anne Ursu

  “No!” Iris shouted, but it was too late. All the girls came running back through the curtain. Preeti had her poker, Amma the sword; Gabrielle was holding a giant lamp high above her head. Preeti poised herself in front of a girl-sized vase, Amma by the dinosaur skeleton. Morgan and Emily grabbed a painting off the wall and held it high.

  “Put her down or we’ll break more stuff,” yelled Amma.

  “You will not touch anything,” he said, his voice controlled again. “If you do, I will hurt your friend. Now, all of you, put down my things. Carefully. Any more damage to my property will be inflicted back upon you.”

  Silence, terrible silence. Iris could not move, would never move again. No one else moved either, but then Mr. Green squeezed Hannah hard and she yelped. Amma put down her sword. Everyone else followed suit.

  Iris did not notice the motion next to her until it was too late, but Lark had grabbed a statue and was creeping toward him. Lark, the girl who lived in her head so much she could never seem to keep track of her own body. She wanted to yell at Lark to stop, but she couldn’t speak.

  He swore, then threw Hannah across the room and kicked Lark in the stomach.

  She stumbled backward. Iris dove to her.

  “We can do this in a way where each of you suffers, or a way in which you never have to suffer again,” he growled. “That is entirely up to you. Now I am going to lock the front door, and then I have plans for—”

  A huge crashing sound—then a blink later the room was filled with shrieking crows, dozens and dozens of them, a great and glorious murder of crows swarming the front hall. The girls all yelled and ducked, but the crows were not there for them. One dove at Mr. Green and pecked at his head and flew away, then another. He yelled and picked up Amma’s sword and began swinging it wildly at the birds.

  This was it. Their chance to get away. But Lark was holding her stomach and whimpering and Hannah was clutching at her leg. Mr. Green let out a yell loud enough to break the sky and was swooping up Iris in his arms.

  “Get out! Get out, you filthy beasts,” he yelled at the crows, using Iris as a shield.

  He was so strong and he was squeezing her so hard and it hurt and she could barely breathe. She struggled to throw her hands over her face to protect it from the birds but Mr. Green had her too tightly.

  But the crows just circled the room, and did not attack.

  “Iris!” screamed Lark. She was sprawled on the floor holding her stomach, and her cry sounded like she was choking.

  “You monsters. You scavengers. You vermin.”

  The crows slowly alighted around the vast hall, settling on sculptures and displays and the organ and the dinosaur skeleton. They fluttered their wings and squawked back and forth at one another.

  Iris writhed but she could not get free. He just squeezed her harder.

  “Just let them all go,” Iris said. “Please. You can have me.”

  “Iris!” Lark shouted.

  “And why would I want you?”

  “I’ll be Alice’s sister. A real sister, not a doll. I’ll do whatever you want. Just let them go.”

  She felt something shift in his body.

  “I promise,” she continued. Keep talking, Iris. “Once they’re all safe! I’ll even help you find Alice!”

  She was lying about that last part. She would never do that. And if he did capture Alice, she would be her sister all right. And they would band together and destroy him. Because that is what sisters do.

  “Fine,” he said, voice icy. “The rest of you can go.”

  With Iris in his arms he stalked over to a cabinet and grabbed a jar of magic, and then he threw her down on a hard wooden chair next to the gallery. “Do not move or I’ll kill them all,” he growled at her. And then he duct-taped one arm to the chair. Then the other. Then he bound her ankles. And then her mouth.

  “Stop it!” Lark shouted.

  Let them go, Iris thought as hard as she could, while the tape itched at her face and her wrists. Let them go. All of them. Please.

  “Don’t try anything,” he snarled at Iris. She could not try anything; she could not move. He looked up at the crows, which murmured and fluttered their wings. “You too,” he said to them, looking meaningfully at Iris.

  “Now,” he proclaimed. “You can all go. Out the back door.” He motioned to the Employees Only door. “So no one sees you. Lark first. Then the rest of you.”

  The magic well.

  He was not going to let any of them go. He wanted to punish Iris by letting her watch her sister fall into the well, where the magic would consume her.

  “Get up!” he yelled at Lark. “Now or never. The fate of all these girls is up to you, Lark.”

  Slowly, Lark picked herself up off the floor, staring at Iris. The other girls gathered together behind her, watching carefully.

  Iris could not breathe, she could not call out. She could barely move in her chair. They did not have ESP and they needed to have ESP now so Iris could tell Lark what was behind that door.

  A flutter of movement next to her. A crow perched on the back of her chair. Then another on one of the arms. It cocked its head at Mr. Green, who had his attention on Lark, and pulled at the duct tape with its beak.

  But it would not be fast enough. Lark’s eyes locked with Iris’s. Iris knew she understood that this was a trap somehow—but there was no way she could understand that opening the door could so easily lead to her death.

  But they were a team. Iris and Lark, forever, no matter what.

  And then she knew what to do.

  She met Lark’s eyes and then glanced down at her fingers and tapped on the arm chair:

  G-R-E-T-E-L.

  “Go ahead,” said Mr. Green. “Open the door. Be on your way.”

  “I think you broke my wrists,” Lark said, voice sounding pained. “When I landed after you kicked me. I can’t open the door.” She clutched her arms to her chest.

  Mr. Green cocked an eyebrow at her.

  “I can’t,” Lark said, voice breaking. “I can’t use my hands! You do it.”

  “Do I have to do everything around here?” he yelled. Pushing her forward, he stormed over to the door.

  It wasn’t going to work, Iris realized. He could still push her in.

  Then several things happened at once. Mr. Green pushed the door open. As he did, Lark jumped backward. A crow let out a cry and dove toward him. He whirled around, and out of nowhere Duchess came barreling forward, right toward his ankles.

  He bobbled.

  Lark thrust out her hands and pushed.

  And he slipped backward.

  And he fell.

  Into the hungry, waiting magic.

  Lark slammed the door behind him. She stared at all the girls, jaw set, cheeks aflame, eyes on fire. They gazed back at her. The crows smacked their beaks.

  Iris could not catch her breath. Everything rushed at her at once from all directions.

  “Iris!” Lark yelled. A few moments later Amma had scissors and was cutting Iris free from her chair. Everything was still rushing and tumbling: even as Iris was being freed, inside she was raveling and unraveling. She burst up and kicked over the chair, but it was not enough.

  So she snarled, and then grabbed the sword from the floor and started smashing everything around her, all of it: she wanted to destroy every single last thing Mr. Green had ever cared about or touched. She would turn his world into smithereens, and then the smithereens into smithereens.

  She smashed, and smashed, and smashed, and then Lark’s hand rested on her shoulder, and Lark tapped three times. Iris and Lark. And Iris stopped.

  They had defeated the monster.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The Crow Girl, Take Two

  It was Amma who first stepped forward and hugged Iris and Lark, and then Gabrielle who joined in, and then Hannah, and then Morgan, and then one by one all the girls joined in, and slowly they all put the pieces of themselves together, and slowly they put Iris back together a
gain, as much as they could.

  Eventually Lark swept up Duchess in her arms and together they all headed back to the library, where they would try to pretend they were the same people they’d been two hours before.

  As for me, I watched them as they moved out of the store and across the street, and they reminded me of a flock in the way they moved together—there was some consciousness in not just the individuals, but also the group, creating something startling and beautiful.

  There’d been a moment, as they fought together in the shop, that it happened, that nine girls suddenly became a flock. I saw it. And I saw George fall down the shaft, arms flailing, and I saw the magic swallow him whole.

  It was a poetic death.

  When it was over, I flew back to my sign. I like my sign.

  Alice, where are you?

  I am in no danger anymore, and so I can say this:

  Brother, I am here. And I can see everything. I am flying above you; I am perched on your sign; I am looking into your mind, into your history, into your twisted heart. I am swarming with the other crows; I am a piece of the murder; I am leaving shiny trinkets for the girls who will destroy you.

  And now I am telling their story.

  Brother, if you can hear me, I tell you this: The girls have destroyed everything you built, including the story you fancied yourself starring in. They have rewritten it, and turned you into the pathetic villain that they triumph over. That is how you will be remembered.

  Iris was right—I did run from you. You locked me in a room, you said it was for my own good, and I pulled all the magic I could from the room and turned myself into a crow. I made a tool to open the latch and flew out the window. Crows are very good with tools.

  Magic has a cost. You gave your humanity willingly to it.

  I gave mine, too, but in a different way. I like my way better.

  It helps to be able to think creatively.

  I like being a crow. I collect shiny things. I soar in the air. I move in a flock with my fellows and create something greater than myself. I pronounce my displeasure to passersby, and there’s nothing they can do to stop me.

  Still, I miss being a girl. He took that from me.

  But he won’t ever take that from anyone again.

  I wish I had been the one to defeat him; I wish I had understood that that, too, was possible. Perhaps I would have done more if I had had a sister, if I had had friends—a camp, a pod. Perhaps I could have understood that you can remake a story and change the world.

  I did not know what would happen when I first saw Iris and Lark, but maybe I sensed it. Maybe I saw, in the magic between them, their ability to rewrite the story. Maybe I saw my brother’s end.

  And yes, they do have magic, of a kind. Not a kind my brother would ever see or understand. Iris thought that magic was something that had to be protected. And that had a cost.

  Now she understands that it can be made, shared, grown.

  And there is no cost to that.

  I understand, too, that I must give them their precious things. The bracelet. The ogre. The house key. The pen. The baby. Esmeralda. I should not have taken them, but I wanted to keep some of the girls’ story with me, lay the pieces out and tell it and retell it. I wanted to share in their magic. I could not help myself. I am a crow, after all. But that was the wrong way.

  I know now that I can do that without their things.

  (I did not take their mother’s electric bill, however. It was not interesting to me.)

  I have their story, and I will tell it again and again to all the birds who will listen. But I am just the teller. Or at least I began that way. Once, I thought the best any story could hold for a girl was escape. But you learn things, watching sisters. You learn that you have the power to warn a girl in danger, to steal a key, to gather your flock.

  You learn you, too, can rewrite the story and save the girls.

  Or help, anyway.

  But this story does not belong to me.

  This story belongs to the girls who had the courage to do what I did not.

  Now they are back in their library community room, surrounded by posters of superheroes, weaving lies to tell their unsuspecting parents—playground injuries, an accident in gym, a fall down the stairs when trying to walk on quickly growing legs, the sort of thing that happens to kids. No big deal. Don’t worry.

  Iris and Lark’s mom picks them up at the appointed time, and the girls are so glad, because Iris could not bike home today, or perhaps ever again. Besides, Lark has the cat, and while Duchess is an extraordinary cat, she would not take to biking.

  The cat requires some explanation, and Lark spins a tragic story, and while the facts of the story are lies, the truth is the same. This cat was in a bad situation and needs a home and we’re going to give her that home. And, she adds, just holding the cat makes her feel better about going back to school. Better about everything, really.

  In the car, Lark holds Duchess and chats away to cover for Iris, who can’t talk, who is still full of cracks.

  Iris stares out of the window, still feeling those terrible arms squeezing her, still feeling the terror of watching Lark head toward the magic well, of watching Mr. Green kick her, of the hand against her own mouth, of being locked in that room, of staring at the doll parts and imagining becoming them. Still feeling the specter of the loss of Lark, of her life, of Lark’s life, of all her friends’ lives, all because one creepy man thought they were something to be collected.

  Eventually their mom notices how quiet Iris is, and Iris says she is tired. Lark glances at her and offers her Duchess, and Iris takes the cat and holds her tight. Duchess dutifully purrs, because she has been planning George’s murder for years, because now that it is done, she has a good home.

  Iris can never tell her mom what happened, can never tell her the truth of the world. Her parents love her so so much and they do not want to know about the monsters in the closet and under the bed. Adults hold on to facts, desperately, as if they were truth. They tell you that stomping around is enough.

  Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes the monsters come harder when you dare stomp. Sometimes you need to bring the whole house down.

  That is true.

  Also true is that sometimes when you think you are most alone, a group of girls risk their lives to rescue you.

  This truth is the hardest for Iris to hold: the Awesome girls all wanted to save her.

  She does not quite know how to hold it yet, so she simply stares at it, trying to figure out what to do with it. Eventually, though, she will learn to hold it and she will grab on to it fiercely.

  It is something, to have a flock.

  Their mother is talking now, telling them the good news that their dad will be home two months early, that he will be very surprised about the cat but he will learn to love it, that she is looking forward to having the whole family back. And she takes a deep breath and says:

  “Your father and I have been talking, and we owe you an apology. We were not forthright with you girls. We kept putting off telling you we were splitting you up and then suddenly the letters were there and in the moment I just—I don’t know. But it was wrong, and I am sorry.”

  Lark still does not know what her mother is talking about; Iris never told her. Iris never told her a lot of things, but she will tell her everything now, because she understands that they are a team. But Iris can barely talk right now and Lark just nods at her mother like she accepts her apology, because it seems like the thing to do.

  And her mother tells Lark that they’re having a meeting at school on Monday and they will find a way to keep school safe for her.

  “Mom, I want to go,” Lark says. “To the meeting.”

  Her mother blinks, like something has changed. “Oh. Well, yes. You should. Mr. Hunt will be there. Is that okay? I know you’re frightened of him.”

  Both Iris and Lark make the same noise at that, something between a laugh and the sound you make when you’ve been punched in the s
tomach.

  “What’s so funny?” their mom says.

  “It’s just—I’m not scared of Mr. Hunt anymore.”

  No. He is not an ogre. The real monsters don’t try to help you when you’re scared and sad—the real monsters take that fear and sorrow and use it to try to tear you apart, to take your heart.

  What will happen now? Iris doesn’t know; she can’t know.

  The only thing she knows is she loves her sister, and she loves their new friends, and she will stay with them and not ever let anyone separate them. They all have better outcomes when they are together.

  THE END

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to Megan Atwood, Kari Pearson, Kelly Barnhill, and Jessica Corra for reading a nascent draft of this, and to Linda Urban, Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, Laurel Snyder, Kate Messner, and Martha Brockenbrough for helping me get this last draft to the end zone. To Debbie Kovacs, the Good Witch of the Midwest. To my own Camp Awesomes—the fabulous women of Hamline University’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults; the Harpies; and the Ladies Sewing Guild. To Mom and Dad, whom I can never write about because they’re too wonderful to be dramatically interesting. To Laura Ruby, my chosen twin sister. To Dash, my favorite storyteller. And to Jordan Brown, who keeps me from getting lost.

  About the Author

  ANNE URSU is the author of Breadcrumbs, named one of the best books of 2011 by School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com, and the Chicago Public Library, and The Real Boy, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and chosen as one of the New York Public Library’s “One Hundred Titles for Reading and Sharing.” The recipient of the 2013 McKnight Fellowship Award in Children’s Literature, Anne is also a member of the faculty at Hamline University’s MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. She lives in Minneapolis with her family and an ever-growing number of cats. You can visit her online at www.anneursu.com.