The World From Up Here

by Cecilia Galante

  I shook my head and tried to twist myself from her grasp again. But she was stronger. “Let go of me!” I yelled. “I want to get out of here!”

  “Okay.” Silver was still panting, and the edges of her nostrils were white. “Okay. But just tell me why.”

  I looked at her like she was crazy. “Why?” I repeated. “Didn’t you see the house?”

  “Yes, but then what?”

  “What do you mean, then what?”

  “I mean, then what?” Silver repeated. “Nothing happened!” She squeezed my shoulders as if to emphasize her point. “You ran out of there like someone came charging out of the front door with a chainsaw, but nothing even happened!”

  I stared at her, feeling my lungs unclench a fraction of an inch. She was right. Nothing had happened. But the house was enough. So was the musty front window Witch Weatherly most definitely lurked behind, and the horrifying red thing on the chimney. What if something happened once we got closer? What if …? At the thought of it, I fell against her, exhausted and overwhelmed. And then I began to cry great gulping sobs that overtook me like waves and shook my whole body.

  Silver let me cry. And cry. My nose began to run and my head hurt.

  “All right,” she said finally. “C’mere and sit down for a minute.” She led me over to a rotting stump where I sat down on shaky legs. “Just take a breather.” She unzipped her backpack and took out a bottle of water. I tried to take a sip, but it wasn’t easy. My lips felt like rubber. Water dribbled down my chin and onto the front of my shirt.

  “Wren, listen to me for—” Silver started.

  “No.” I wiped my chin with the back of my sleeve, not caring if I sounded rude. “Don’t try to talk me into going back up there. You’re not from here, Silver. You don’t know all the things I know about Witch Weatherly. You don’t know what she could do to us.”

  Silver studied me for a moment. “So you really just want to go, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about what you said last night?” she asked. “About not wanting me to go by myself?”

  “I know.” I shook my head, as if to dislodge the memory. “I’m sorry, Silver, but I wasn’t thinking right. There’s no way either of us should be going anywhere near that lady. She’s crazy. I mean, she’s been living all alone on top of this mountain for, like, eighty years! And I know you don’t think so, but she totally haunted Shining Falls. You just saw it with your own eyes. And the raven’s there, too! Right on top of her chimney! Did you see it?”

  “I saw something red,” Silver said.

  “It was the raven!” I shuddered, pressing my palms against either side of my face. “I can’t believe we were just standing there in front of Witch Weatherly’s actual house! Did you see the window? The real big one, right in front? There was a huge blob on one side of it. I know it was her. She’s gotta be behind it, just watching us!”

  “Wren …” Silver started.

  “Did you or did you not just see Witch Weatherly’s house?” I demanded. “And her raven on top of it?”

  “I saw a house,” Silver said. “And I saw something red on the chimney.” She took my hand. “But Wren, listen to me. Don’t you think you got scared up there because of the things everyone else has said about this lady? And not because of what you think you saw?”

  “I know what I saw, Silver. And all those other things are true! Look at the falls! The lights are totally there!”

  “Okay.” Silver still sounded calm. “I won’t argue with you about the lights. I saw them, too. But how do you know what else is really true about Witch Weatherly and what isn’t?”

  “Because I just do,” I answered stubbornly. “When people tell you certain things, you just have to believe them. That’s how it works. That’s how things go.”

  “Like why horses are scary?” Silver put a hand on her hip. “Or why planes are dangerous?”

  I squinted at her, trying to tell if she was serious or not.

  “Or why your mom had to go away to a hospital for a while?” she said softly.

  “Hey!” I pointed at her, my lower lip trembling. “That’s not fair! My dad was just trying to protect us!”

  “And your mom has been trying to protect you,” Silver said. “But it hasn’t worked, Wren, has it? It’s just made things worse.”

  I stared at her, too dumbfounded to answer. This girl was either really, really crazy, or really, really smart.

  “You know,” Silver went on. “The truth is that I was scared about coming up here, too. Until I realized that what I was scared of was all the things people were telling me about her. And not what I really knew.”

  “All you know is that she went to college.” My voice sounded a little hollow in my ears.

  “True.” Silver nodded. “And that your mother knew her. And that her house burned down.”

  “What about the book your mom said she was reading? The Secret Power of Plants?”

  Silver frowned. “What about it?”

  “Don’t you think that’s weird? Plants don’t have powers! It was probably a book of spells, or something about how to create some kind of power out of plants. Silver, I’m telling you …”

  “Wren.” She crouched down in front of me, and put both hands on my knees. “You’re spending too much time in your head.” She smiled. “It’s like a bad neighborhood in there. You’ve got to get out of it.” She squeezed my knees. “Come on. We’ve come all this way. And we’ve got one shot at this. After today, who knows when we’ll get a whole day to ourselves again? Let’s go back up there and knock on her door. Ask her for ourselves why she’s been living on this mountain for so long.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out.

  “Wren?”

  I pointed behind Silver as the rustling noise sounded again.

  Slowly, she turned around.

  There, not two feet away from her, was a hornet-head snake, poised and ready to strike.

  I might not have noticed the snake at all if it hadn’t lifted its head from inside the small pile of leaves it was hiding under to glare at us. It was small; much smaller than any of the stories had ever claimed it to be. From head to tail, it couldn’t have been longer than eight inches. Its skin was a pale yellow, darker on top than on its underbelly, and black eyes glowered from its triangular head. Black dots, like freckles, were sprinkled up and down its back and two little horns jutted out atop its head.

  “Don’t. Move.” Silver’s voice was no more than a whisper. Her eyes were fixed on the snake, almost as if she was staring it down. The reptile began to sway its head from side to side, slowly at first, and then picking up speed, as if something had agitated it. “Don’t do anything,” Silver whispered again. “Just stay still.”

  My heart hammered in my ears as the snake rocked back and forth in front of us. Its black eyes glittered, and every few seconds, a forked tongue shot out silently from between a pair of long, curved fangs. Bands of heat pulsed along the sides of my neck, but my mouth was ice-cold. Slowly, carefully, I squeezed my hands together to stop them from shaking.

  Abruptly, the snake stopped swaying. It moved its head back a few inches, and then, as if rethinking things altogether, dropped to its belly and slid away.

  Silver turned around. Her face was flushed pink, her eyes as bright as stars. “Wasn’t that amazing?” she whispered.

  “Amazing?” I brought my hands up along either side of my face and pressed down hard. “Are you crazy? It was just about to bite us!”

  “No, it wasn’t.” Silver paused. “Well, maybe it was thinking about biting us. But that’s the thing about animals, Wren. They won’t hurt you unless they think you’re about to hurt them first. That snake totally scoped us out. He was watching us. Waiting. And when he figured out that we weren’t going to do anything, he went on his way.”

  I thought about the wasp in Mr. Tunlaw’s room again, how quiet Silver had been, despite the fact that everyone else in the room was running around scream
ing, and how softly she talked to Manchester when he seemed agitated. I didn’t know how she did it.

  “So, what do you think?” Silver asked. “You want to go up there again? See what happens?”

  No, I did not. But maybe it would not be quite so scary with Silver around. “If you promise to stay really close,” I said.

  “Deal.” Silver lifted her backpack along her shoulders again. “Let’s go. We don’t have much time left.”

  I kept my eyes fastened to the ground as we plodded back up the mountain, and held a can of Mace in one hand. No hornet-head snake was going to dart out and bite me. At least, not while I could help it. Silver, however, strode forward with big steps, her head raised, her gaze fixed ahead as if nothing had happened.

  “Don’t you get scared?” I asked. “I mean, with animals. Especially wild ones. You can’t know for sure what they’re going to do.”

  “True.” Silver drew a hand across her sweaty forehead. “But I guess I’d rather think the best about them, instead of automatically thinking the worst. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. But it seems to work most of the time.”

  I wondered if she was talking about animals just then, or people. Maybe she was talking about both. “Are you afraid of anything?” I asked.

  Silver looked at me funny, as if I had just asked her if she was a girl. “Of course I am.”

  “Like what?”

  She shrugged, her eyes skittering over the forest floor, as if the answer might be hidden somewhere beneath the leaves. “I’m scared of calling my dad again,” she said without lifting her eyes. “But you already know that.”

  I stayed quiet.

  Silver pressed her lips together. “Do you remember when I said I didn’t know why he wasn’t calling me?” I nodded. “Well, that wasn’t really true.” She began to walk a little faster. “The truth is that I know exactly why he isn’t calling me. And it’s sort of all my fault.”

  “How?”

  “We got into a big fight right before we left Florida. And I said some really, really mean things to him.”

  I pulled on my bottom lip.

  “The real reason we left Florida was because he cheated on my mom,” Silver blurted out. “Actually, it was worse than that. She found out he was living some of the time with this lady. Can you even believe that? They had a house and everything, all the way on the other side of town. Anyway, he and Mom had this huge blow-up, and he filed for divorce, and then she said she had to get out of Florida, that she didn’t even want to live in the same state as him anymore.” Silver kept her eyes fastened on a solitary spot on the ground as she spoke. “I didn’t see him again until the day we left. He came to the house to say good-bye and …” She stopped suddenly, as if the memory had jerked her backward. “It was like nothing had even happened. He acted like we were just going on a trip, and that we’d be back later. He even helped my mom finish packing the U-Haul. It was so weird. And so confusing. I kept waiting for him to pull me aside, you know? To tell me that he was sorry. Or that he’d see me at Christmas. Or even tell me one of his goofy knock-knock jokes. I don’t know. Something. But he didn’t say anything. He just gave me a hug, and then I got in the passenger seat of the U-Haul, and my mom started driving away. I watched him in the rearview mirror as he waved good-bye, and I realized that that was really going to be it. We were driving halfway across the country to live somewhere else because of something he did, and that was just the way it was going to be.”

  She started walking again—long, angry strides. Her mouth was pinched tight, and I struggled to keep up.

  “I told my mom to stop the truck. And then I got out and walked over to him. I told him I hated his guts, and that I was glad we were going so far away, because he was the biggest jerk in the entire world, and I hoped that stupid lady made him happy, because I never, ever wanted to see him again.” She exhaled a long, shuddering sound, and leaned against a tree, covering her face with her hands. “I didn’t mean it. At least, I don’t think I did. I was just so … angry. I mean, he cheated on my mom! And it broke up our family.”

  I didn’t move. I didn’t blink. I wasn’t even sure I was breathing. It was very hard to imagine Silver saying something like that to another person, especially her father. But it was even harder to see how much saying those words had hurt her. How much they still hurt her.

  “I said something really mean to my mom once.” My voice was soft, shaky around the edges.

  Silver lowered her hands. “That mean?”

  “Yeah. Kind of.” I told Silver the story about the surprise party, and how frightened Momma had been when we all jumped out at her and she saw the flaming cake. I told her about watching Dad for the rest of the night, how hard he’d tried to appear happy when, deep down, I knew he was crushed that she’d been so scared. And I told her how I turned on Momma later that night, accusing her of ruining the surprise, blaming her crazy nerves on everything.

  “Did you ever talk about it again?” Silver asked. “I mean, afterward?”

  “No.” I ran a thumb over the front of my jeans. “I don’t think either of us really knew what to say.”

  “You didn’t want to tell her you were sorry?”

  “Part of me did. But another part of me didn’t.”

  Silver nodded. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  Neither of us said anything for a moment. I wasn’t sure if the warm feeling in the middle of my belly meant that I was happy—or that somehow, in some strange way, I felt safe.

  “You know, I’ve never told anyone that before,” Silver said. “Not even any of my friends in Florida.”

  “Me either.” I gave her a little smile.

  She stuck out her hand. “Thanks.”

  I took her hand and squeezed it tight.

  “So before we get started again, you want to go over some of the interview questions?” Silver unzipped her backpack and took out a piece of paper. “I’ll tell you what I have, and you can tell me what you think. Then you can add whatever else you want.”

  “Deal.”

  We went over the series of questions, ten in all, which ranged from the basic: “What year were you born?” to the not so basic: “What kinds of things did you learn getting your botany degree from the University of New Hampshire?”

  “Those are really good,” I said as we came to the end of the sheet. “I like them all.”

  “Anything you want to ask?” Silver said.

  I had plenty of things I wanted to ask, but I wasn’t going to tell Silver any of them. I thought about mentioning the plant book, but decided against it. Silver would probably say something else about the inside of my head being a bad neighborhood. “ ‘Please don’t eat me?’ ” I asked instead.

  Silver laughed and stood back up. “Something might come to you later, when we’re actually there.”

  She took a few steps forward and, without warning, plummeted through the ground, disappearing from sight.

  “Silver!” I stared down into a hole the size of two big trash cans. It was a roughly hewn pit of some sort—wide and very deep, disguised on top with heaps of vines and pine needles and leaves. It was one of Witch Weatherly’s secret pits, just like everyone had said! I got down on my belly and leaned over the side of it until I could see just the top of Silver’s head. It was slumped awkwardly to one side, resting against the dirt.

  “Silver!” I screamed again. “Are you all right?”

  She angled her head back in the tight space until she was looking up at me. Her face was white; her mouth contorted in pain. “I think I’m …” She brought her hand out from under her shirt, and cried out as she caught sight of her own blood. It dripped down the sides of her wrist and coated the tips of her fingers like red paint. “… bleeding,” she finished. “Wren, help me!”

  My heart caught in my throat. I was not good with blood. Just the sight of it made me nauseated, sometimes even to the point where I actually threw up. But Silver needed me. I leaned in farther against the lip of the pi
t and stretched out my arm. “Can you grab my hand?” I yelled. “I’ll pull you up!” I strained and stretched, even feeling a muscle pull in my armpit, but it was no use. She was too far away.

  “Can you find some kind of rope?” Silver asked hoarsely. I sprang to my feet and looked around. There were long, green vines everywhere that might work. I grabbed one, knotting it together with another, and lowered them into the hole. It broke on the way up, sending Silver plummeting back down, where she crashed against the sides of the pit. She cried out again as she fell, and I cried with her, desperate now to get her out. This time, I went back and doubled the vines, twisting them around one another until I had fashioned a thick cord. I lowered it back down.

  “Hold on,” Silver cried. “I’m going to wrap it around my wrist this time!”

  I dug my heels into the ground and inched backward when she was ready, pulling with all my might. I held my breath, but the vines were strong—much stronger than I thought they would be—and they did not break this time as I dragged her out.

  Silver whimpered as she came to the surface. The skin around her lips had turned blue, and a little bit of drool leaked out of the side of her mouth. I knelt down next to her, and tried not to scream as I saw the dark red blood on the front of her shirt. There was a lot of it. “What happened?” I asked frantically. “Was it a sharp stick?”

  “I don’t know,” Silver gasped. “Something was sticking right out of one side of the pit. It was too dark down there to see what it was, but I must’ve fallen right on it.”

  I lifted the hem of her shirt as gently as I could, not wanting to see what was beneath. The wound itself was only as wide as my thumb, but it was so deep that I could see bits of fat and muscle sticking out from inside. A thin rivulet of blood dribbled from it steadily, as if a bottle inside of her had been uncorked and turned on its side. I drew back in horror, and pressed my fist against my mouth. “Oh, Silver. This is really bad.”

  She nodded. “We have to get something to tie around it, to stop the blood.”