“I didn’t ask to begin,” protested Avery. “All I wanted to do was go to school and take my spelling test and spell all the words right. I don’t like mud and I don’t like falling and I don’t like clouds steered by crows and I don’t like birds turning into girls!” He clapped his hands over his mouth, eyes going wide as he realized that he had said more than he intended to.
The Crow Girl turned her head back and forth, looking at him first out of one eye, and then out of the other. “Do you like drowning?” she asked. “Because you were awfully close to drowning. You fell out of the lands of the King of Coins and into the lands of the Queen of Swords. Earth and air together make for unquiet bedfellows. If I hadn’t decided to be a girl instead of a murder of crows, you would have gone down, down, down, and you wouldn’t even have joined the Drowned Boys, not here, not so very far from the sea.”
“I’m sorry,” said Avery. “I didn’t mean…” And he stopped, because he didn’t know what else to say.
Zib stepped forward, holding out her open hand. In it was her lucky seashell. All the mud had been rinsed away, leaving it gleaming. “Here,” she said. “A present. To thank you for helping us. Do you like presents?”
“Everyone likes presents,” said the Crow Girl. She inched closer. “For me? Really? No tricks or treachery?”
“No,” said Zib. “Just a present.”
“A present!” The Crow Girl snatched the seashell out of Zib’s hand, turning it greedily over in her hands before tucking it away in the feathers of her dress, where it vanished without a trace. She looked at Zib. “I’ll give you a present, too. I’ll walk with you, because the ending you’ll find with me is better than the ending you’ll find without me. Won’t that be nice?”
“Yes,” said Zib.
Avery, who didn’t know the answer, said nothing at all.
FIVE
THE BUMBLE BEAR AND THE TANGLE
The rolling green hills and the bright glassine ribbon of the improbable road were high above them, on the other side of the mudslide, which had tapered off to nothing more than the occasional colorful plop. Avery and Zib stood side by side and looked glumly up at the cliff.
“I don’t think I can climb that,” said Zib. “My shoes are up there.”
“I know I can’t climb that,” said Avery. “Quartz is up there. Do you think he’ll come looking for us? Do you think he’ll bring a rope?”
“Quartz?” asked the Crow Girl.
“A man who is also a boulder who told us we had to go to the Impossible City,” said Zib.
“Oh,” said the Crow Girl. “You met a royal gnome. He can’t follow you here. Royal gnomes belong to the King of Coins, and the Queen doesn’t like them much.”
“But he was going with us to the Impossible City,” protested Avery. “He wanted to see the Queen of Wands.”
“Of course he did. The Queen of Wands favors fire, you see, and gnomes aren’t born from fire, but they like the way it tingles. They’re not afraid of her. Many of them love her very much, and some of them belong to her court. As long as she holds the City, the road is open to gnomes and salamanders, and not so much to sylphs and undines. The Queen of Swords and the King of Cups have to find ways around her barriers when they want to get anything done.” The Crow Girl sobered. “Be careful of them.”
“Of who?” asked Zib.
“The ways around,” said the Crow Girl. “None of them are what they were, and it’s hard to remember how to play fair when you don’t remember where you left your heart.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” said Avery. His stomach grumbled. He sighed. “I don’t understand any of this and I’m hungry.”
“I have an apple,” said Zib.
“I know where we can find more than a napple,” said the Crow Girl. “What’s a napple? Is it some kind of cake? I would like to try the cake from wherever it is you came from.”
“It’s a kind of fruit,” said Zib.
“Oh,” said the Crow Girl. “Well, then, I shouldn’t like to eat that at all, and you shouldn’t want to eat it either. Come on, come on, both of you, come on.” She jumped back, turned, and ran to the edge of the stone circle, where she paused and looked over her shoulder. “Are you coming?”
Avery and Zib hesitated.
“This seems very unsafe,” said Avery.
“Yes,” said Zib. “But that’s what makes it improbable. Come on!” She scampered after the Crow Girl. After a moment, Avery followed her. There was nothing else for him to do.
At the edge of the stone circle was another cliff, this one high and sheer and terrifying. Set into the side of the cliff was a stone stairway, winding down toward the ground far, far below. The Crow Girl all but danced onto the steps, and kept dancing downward, toward the layer of mist that hung above the distant countryside. Zib followed more cautiously, and Avery followed more cautiously still, until they were like beads on a string, separated by great streaks of open distance.
The Crow Girl looked back several times, calling encouragement, but the wind took her words and whisked them away like prizes, keeping them from ever reaching the children. Zib watched the mist as it got closer, and the countryside as it began to form houses and farms and great flower gardens, hedge mazes and fields and other lovely, enticing things. Avery watched the back of Zib’s head. Her hair, wild and tangled and ridiculous as it was, had somehow become an anchor. It didn’t change. It was always improbable, always doing as it liked, with no regard for anyone around it. If he focused on her hair, he could pretend they were still on the road, where there had been no reason to fall, where—if he somehow had fallen—he wouldn’t have tumbled to his doom.
The mist, when they passed through it, was cold and cloying and smelled like lavender, like the sachets Avery’s mother liked to put in with the fresh linens. Breathing it made him feel faintly homesick. He wanted his mother to tuck him into bed and tell him he’d been a good boy. He wanted his father to clap him on the shoulder and call him “sport” and “champ” and “scout.” He wanted to be anywhere but here.
But Zib … ah, Zib. She would have told anyone who asked that she was happy at home, and she wouldn’t have been lying, because she had always been happy at home, in the same way a bird who has grown up in a cage can be quietly, unwittingly happy there. She had based happiness on the way she felt when she looked at the sensible, probable walls and went through the sensible, probable patterns of her days. Now, though, now she felt like she might finally be learning to understand what happy really was. Happy was descending a cliff with a new friend in front of her and a new friend behind her, and so many wonderful things to see, and do, and discover. Happiness was the Up-and-Under.
Bit by bit, the distance fell behind them, until they could see the bottom of the stairs. It ended at a wide tunnel made of briars and brambles. The Crow Girl made a sound of wordless delight and dashed forward, skipping down the last of the stairs and diving for the tunnel. She was almost inside when a vast paw darted out of the darkness, claws as long as dinner knives swiping for the Crow Girl’s chest.
This time, her wordless exclamation was less delight and more dismay. She danced backward. The paw swiped again, and the Crow Girl broke into a hundred black-winged pieces, exploding into the murder of crows she had originally been. They scattered into the briars and branches, cawing angrily.
Zib froze, and stayed frozen as Avery slammed into her, sending them both teetering. They stayed there, staring, as the great beast came stalking out of the shadows, and roared.
The sound was as wide as the sky and as deep as the sea. It echoed; it challenged; it set the hairs on the back of Avery’s neck standing on edge. The hairs on the back of Zib’s neck were already standing on edge, as was all the rest of the hair on her head, but her skin made up the difference, pulling itself into painful lumps of gooseflesh. The beast roared again, and it was like the world was shaking, no longer content to be a stationary thing.
As for the beast itself, it was a thi
ng that befit its roar, which is to say, huge and terrible and strange. If Avery had been asked to guess at what it was, on penalty of being thrown to the creature, he would have called it some sort of bear, for it was hulking and shaggy and possessed of terrible claws and even more terrible jaws, which bristled with truly terrible teeth. Had Zib been asked the same question, she would have called it some sort of nightmare bee, for it was striped yellow and black, and its backside tapered into a wicked point, a stinger the size of a fisherman’s harpoon. They would both have been right, in their own ways, and they would both have been wrong.
The beast roared a third time. Then it coughed into one paw, fixed the children with a cold, calculating eye, and said, “You are trespassing on my path. What will you give me not to kill you?”
Avery did not consider himself a terribly brave person. Still, he knew a wrong thing when he heard it. “This isn’t your path,” he said, stepping forward, so that he and Zib were clustered together on the same stone step. “At the top, we saw the sigil of the Queen of Swords. She wouldn’t give the road that leads to her sign to someone else. I think you’re pretending to own something that doesn’t belong to you. I think the Queen of Swords would be very interested in hearing about that.”
The crows cackled with laughter as the beast took a thudding step backward, safely away from the children.
“Maybe that’s so and maybe that’s not so,” it grumbled. “Maybe this is her path, but I’m still a beast of the brambles, and I’m allowed to eat. So what will you give me not to kill you?”
“Nothing,” said Avery. “You’re too big to climb these steps, and we can just go back the way we came, away from you. You won’t be able to hurt us.”
“No, but you won’t be able to reach whatever it is you were trying to reach,” said the beast. “What will you give me to let you pass?”
“I don’t see why we should have to give you anything,” said Avery. “The road isn’t yours.”
“Perhaps not, but these are mine.” The beast held up one vast paw, flexing it so that its claws slid out, sharp and gleaming. “And these are mine.” The beast bared its teeth, showing them in all their terrible glory. “The Queen is often cold and often cruel, and she appreciates those qualities in her monsters. She will not blame me for following my nature.”
The crows in the brambles shrieked and cawed but showed no sign of transforming back into the Crow Girl, or of somehow harrying the monster away. Bravery has its limits, no matter what the world.
Zib tugged on her hair, which sprang right back into place when she let it go. “I don’t think you’re a monster,” she said. “You’re talking. You’re threatening, but you’re still talking, not just attacking. I don’t think you’re a monster at all.”
“Some monsters speak, child,” said the beast. “The very best monsters speak like kings and queens, eloquent and alluring, and the trick is learning not to listen. If you listen to those monsters, they’ll have your heart out before you realize how much danger you’re in.”
“Do you have a name?”
“They call me the Bumble Bear, because I am big as a bear, and hatched in a hive among all the other bees. It was golden honey and golden afternoons, when I was young; it was all sweetness and nectar. But the Queen of Swords had need of a monster, and so she plucked me from the honeycomb and breathed vastness onto me, took my wings and traded them for teeth and claws and hunger. I am what I am because she wanted me so, and I love her for seeing the potential in me, and I despise her for taking me away from my family. She’ll change you if she catches you, little human children. She’ll make you over into her dearest desires, and not understand why you might want anything else, even for a moment. Queens are cruel monsters. They eat and eat and are never full, and they leave lesser beasts in their wake. So I ask again, for my stomach aches and my temper shortens: what will you give me to let you pass?”
“We don’t have anything,” said Avery. “We’re children.” Because Avery, of course, had been allowed the luxury of thinking that childhood was somehow sacred: that it somehow compelled the world to be kind. There had always been people who criticized his parents for the way they raised him, who said that he was an adult in miniature, with his starched shirts and his sensible shoes, but he had never once worried about where dinner was going to come from, or what would happen if he trusted an adult’s word.
Zib, however … her parents had done their best, and they had never been bad parents, not intentionally, not exactly. But they had been little more than children themselves when she was born, and her father was always tired from driving buses and being a parent to other people’s children, while her mother made her living with dreams, and sometimes forgot that children needed things like lunches and snacks and shoes without holes in the bottoms. They did their best. Their house was filled with love. That didn’t mean Zib had ever, for an hour, for an instant, had the casual faith in the difference between childhood and adulthood that Avery clung to so fiercely.
“What do you want?” she asked, cautiously.
“Something good,” said the Bumble Bear. “Something you’ll remember. Something you’ll regret. I could take the freckles from your cheeks, or the frizzes from your hair. They would look very fine in my fur.”
Zib clutched the sides of her head, horrified. Her freckles were her own, and she didn’t want them to be gone, but more, her hair was the one part of her that had never listened to anyone else, not ever, not since she was born. She had been told to be good, be quiet, sit still, behave, and she had done her best to listen, over and over again, even when the people speaking didn’t have her best interests at heart. Like most of us, Zib had only ever wanted to be loved, and had always been willing to compromise to make it more possible. Her hair, however—her hair knew no compromise, gave no quarter. It was wild and dizzy and ecstatic, like lightning striking the same patch of sand over and over again for nothing more than the joy of kissing the world. Without it, she would be someone else. Maybe someone who people would like better, listen to more; maybe someone who had more friends, whose parents were better about making breakfasts and buying clean socks. If her hair finally calmed down, maybe she could be Hepzibah after all.
She didn’t want to be Hepzibah. She wanted to be Zib, Zib, Zib, for as long as she could, and she certainly didn’t want to give Zib to a beast of the brambles, however cruelly that beast had been treated by a queen.
“Not those,” she said.
“What, then? The contents of your pockets? The shine from your eyes? You have to give me something, or I’ll never let you pass, and wherever it is you thought you were going will have to wait forever to have you.” The Bumble Bear considered its own claws. “The choice is yours. I can stand here as long as anything.”
Shine … “The shine from Avery’s shoes,” Zib blurted, not seeing the horrified, betrayed look Avery gave her. “Could you take that?”
“I can take anything,” said the Bumble Bear. It looked at Avery for a moment. Then it nodded, apparently satisfied. “Yes. That will do. Come here, children, and do not be afraid. We’re bound by a bargain now, you and I, and that makes us the next best thing to brothers, at least until that bargain is fulfilled. I could no more do you harm than I could pluck the eyes from my own head and still see the sky.”
“I don’t want—” began Avery, and stopped as the Bumble Bear looked at him.
“Do you wish to challenge the bargain?” it asked. “You can say the girl has no right to deal for you, of course you can say that, and then I will have to treat her as a thief.” It smiled, showing all of its teeth, as the crows in the brambles cawed fury and fear. “It would be my pleasure.”
“N-no,” said Avery. “She has the right to deal for us both.”
Zib looked at him with gratitude and joy. Avery didn’t look at her at all.
“Then come, children, and continue,” said the Bumble Bear.
They descended the last of the stone steps side by shaking side, and when
they reached the beast, with its teeth and its claws and its stinger, they stopped, waiting for the hammer to fall. The Bumble Bear bent, breathing on Avery’s shoes. It breathed and breathed, exhaling like a gale, and when it finally stopped, it looked pleased with itself. It stepped back and to the side, leaving them room to pass.
Avery did not move. Zib grabbed him by the arm and dragged him with her past the Bumble Bear, into the sheltering darkness of the briars. They were well out of reach, and almost out of sight, when a voice spoke behind them.
“Wait.”
Zib turned. Avery did not.
The Bumble Bear, while still a beast, was not a monster; it was only a tired animal, looking at them with eyes that had seen too many terrible things to ever close peacefully. “You walk in the Tangle now, and the Tangle belongs to the Queen of Swords. I have threatened you, yes. I would have eaten you, had you refused to pay me, and I would devour you now, swallow you down in an instant, if you came too close. But I am an honest beast. I eat because my belly is empty, and I guard because I have no hive, no cave, only this narrow territory to call my own. The Queen of Swords will not devour you, but she will eat you all the same. Be careful, children. If you can’t be careful, come back to me, and I will swallow you, and we will be together always, and you will remember who you are.”
“Thank you,” said Zib gravely. Avery said nothing at all. The two children walked on, and the murder of crows poured after them, deeper into the twisted briars, until the Bumble Bear, great beast of bargains and barriers, was left alone once more.
SIX
THE ROAD RETURNS
The path through the Tangle was hard-packed earth, almost clay. It smelled of mud and rain and all the other good things Zib remembered from the creek, and it was soft under her stockinged feet, making it easier to keep walking even though her shoes were long since lost. She glanced nervously around, all too aware that she was surrounded by the sort of sharp thorns that were entirely unpleasant to step on, and kept walking.
Over the Woodward Wall Page 5
