Over the Woodward Wall

by A. Deborah Baker

  “I don’t know,” said Zib. “I like them, though.” She didn’t have a hand free to touch the feather in her hair, and so she tossed her head a little, so that it brushed her cheek like a caress. “They’ve all been nice.”

  “They must want something,” said Avery staunchly. He felt confident of that, at least: his parents had always told him that people were only nice when they wanted something, and that the appropriate thing to do was smile, and nod, and walk away as soon as he possibly could. “I don’t know what owls want.”

  “The same thing everyone wants,” said the Crow Girl, without turning. “A warm place to sleep, a soft place to land, and something to fill their bellies when the wind blows cold. No one’s as different from anyone else as they want to think they are. No one’s as the same, either. It’s the paradox of living.”

  “What’s a paradox?” asked Zib.

  “Two places to tie your boat,” said the Crow Girl, and cawed harsh, impolite laughter to the sky.

  Avery frowned, and was on the verge of saying something when strong talons gripped his shoulders and yanked him off the improbable road, up into the cloudy air. It was so abrupt that his hand left Zib’s, so that she was holding nothing but the memory of where he had been, and that his shineless shoes came quite off of his feet, remaining behind on the improbable road as he vanished into the fog.

  Zib whirled around, sword raised, but there was nothing for her to cut. The Crow Girl squawked and spun, her feathers fluffed out in all directions, but there was nothing for her to startle.

  “Where … where did he go?” asked Zib.

  “I don’t know,” said the Crow Girl.

  “Get him back! You have to get him back!”

  “I don’t know how.”

  Zib stared at Avery’s shoes and then up into the fog. It was difficult to remember exactly where Avery had been before he went away. He had taken his shadow with him, which seemed suddenly, unspeakably rude, even though Zib had never thought of it that way before. Shadows should stay behind when someone was planning on coming back, to mark the place they were going to be.

  A hand touched her shoulder. She looked up to find the Crow Girl smiling at her encouragingly, the shadow of a strain in her avian eyes.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “He’ll be back, safe and sound, you’ll see.”

  “How do you know?” asked Zib.

  “Why, because we’re on the improbable road to the Impossible City, and right now, what could be more improbable, or impossible, than your friend coming back to you?” The Crow Girl smiled a bright and earnest smile. “There’s no possible way it could happen, and that means it’s virtually guaranteed.”

  Zib stared at her for a moment before bursting, noisily, into tears. She was still crying when the great blue owl swept down from the sky and grabbed her by the shoulders, yanking her off her feet and carrying her away.

  The Crow Girl stood where she was, gaping at the absence of both her traveling companions. She tilted her head back and looked at the sky, which was absent of both children and great owls. She began to frown.

  “That wasn’t very kind,” she said. “They were mine to look after, and you took them.” She knew, somewhere in the jumbled back of her mind—which was something like a rummage sale, all broken pottery and old shoes with holes in the bottoms and treasures whose owners have forgotten why they were so precious in the first place—that she needed those children. They were taking her somewhere, somewhere she needed to be, somewhere she couldn’t go on her own. They mattered, and now she had lost them.

  She needed to get them back. That much was terribly clear. She could break into birds and take to the sky, but thinking when she was more than one thing was hard. It made her heads hurt and her wings forget which way they were supposed to be flapping. Once, she’d tried to fly up and read over someone’s shoulder, and she’d found herself flying backward for the better part of a day. It hadn’t been pleasant, that was for sure and certain, and she didn’t want to do it again. She could save someone who was falling, but she couldn’t braid their hair.

  More, and more dangerously, the King of Cups was so awfully near, and crows were so much simpler. They didn’t think about things like freedom and cruelty. They thought about food and safety and knowing that there were no predators to take their neighbors or their suppers away. She’d had all those things with the King. It was only the ability to choose her own direction that she’d been missing.

  She was still thinking about what she was going to do next when a pair of talons clamped down on her shoulders and she was lifted off the ground. Her whole body shivered, her skin aching to open like a wound and let her fly in a dozen directions at the same time, away from whatever had seized hold of her. She swallowed the feeling down and tilted her head back, looking up at the pale pink belly of the great red owl.

  Oak returned her gaze, implacable as ever. “I am sorry for this interruption,” said the owl. “Your friends are waiting.”

  The owl’s voice was steady and cold, and it made the Crow Girl’s heart hurt inside her chest, unable to decide how it should feel. She managed to smile, if only a little, and said, “Good. I was trying to decide which way to start looking, and now you can carry me there.”

  “Crows are lazy creatures,” said Oak. There was something sad in the great owl’s voice. “You would have been better suited as an owl.”

  The Crow Girl frowned, slow as sunset in the summer. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “No,” said Oak. “You wouldn’t.”

  The great red owl flew on and on, until the fog began to lift, until the Crow Girl could see the towering tops of broad-branched trees. They were tall, twisting trees, made up of dozens of gently curving branches as thick around as a grown man’s leg, weaving in and out of their vast canopy as they formed a lattice of leaves and boughs and bowers, each one sweetly inviting. Oak flew on, and the Crow Girl saw the land appear around the trees, fertile and flowering, ripe with fields yearning for the harvest. Everything looked good, and warm, and welcoming, and for no reason she could name, the Crow Girl began to cry.

  She was still crying when Oak came gliding into the canopy itself, dropping her into a nest woven from grasses and willow boughs before taking a place on one of the twisted branches, right between Meadowsweet and Broom.

  “You’re here!” cried Zib in delight, slinging her arms around the Crow Girl’s neck.

  Avery was more subdued. He waved shyly with his free hand; the other was occupied by holding tight to a piece of flavor fruit, a hole already gnawed in the rind.

  And there, sitting a few feet away, in a small puddle of water that had rolled off her skin and clothing, was Niamh. She smiled at the sight of the Crow Girl.

  “I knew they would find you,” she said.

  “I thought we were looking for you,” said the Crow Girl.

  “Everything is more than one thing, if you look at it the right way,” said Niamh.

  The Crow Girl laughed, bright and merry. “Then here we are, and there you are, and we’re all together again! What a beautiful, beautiful day!”

  “Together, and in the protectorate of the Queen of Wands,” said Meadowsweet. The great blue owl fluffed her feathers out, almost doubling in size. “We can’t stay here for long. We’re each of us banned from this place, for one reason or another.”

  “None of them important now,” said Broom. “You made it almost to the border before we intervened.”

  “So why intervene at all?” asked Avery. “We could have followed the road. We could have—”

  “Your companions have not deceived you intentionally,” said Broom. “They have told you the truth as they know it, and if that truth failed to serve you top to bottom, side to side, that was less fault and more failure. No one can reveal what they don’t know. Please don’t blame them.”

  “But deception is still deception,” said Oak, picking up the thread smoothly. “And the lie would not have turned to truth at the bo
rder. Did you not wonder why, when the Queen of Swords had promised you passage, that same passage placed you precisely where you didn’t want to be? Where you couldn’t safely be?”

  “There are always obstacles in the Up-and-Under,” said Meadowsweet. “What is a journey without obstacles? A meal must have variety; a year must change its weather. But those obstacles are rarely so close to deadly. You have been tried, and tried, and tried, and every trial has been set with the sole purpose of slowing your steps long enough for your journey to be ended. Why do you think that might have been?”

  Zib and Avery exchanged a look. Turning back to the owls, Zib ventured, “Because there are a lot of monsters in the Up-and-Under, and children are delicious?”

  “She has a point there,” said the Crow Girl. “My old friend the Bumble Bear says that children are definitely delicious.”

  “I don’t think people are supposed to be food,” said Avery. “Please don’t eat us.”

  “They were trying to keep you from reaching the border,” said Oak. “The improbable road has one job: to go from wherever it is to the borders of the Impossible City. It doesn’t care about dynasties, or successions, or anything so trivial as who sits upon a throne.”

  “It would have led you right into the guards,” said Broom. “It would have carried on without you, leaving you to face the consequences.”

  “So the Up-and-Under has been … trying to protect us?” asked Zib.

  “The Up-and-Under doesn’t care that much about you,” said Meadowsweet regretfully. “The Up-and-Under protects itself first, and its people second, and visitors like yourselves last of all. The Up-and-Under has been trying to keep you from knowing what you shouldn’t know.”

  “If we’re not supposed to know this, why are you telling us?” asked Avery.

  “Countries are curious things, and kingdoms are simply countries in their dancing shoes,” said Oak. “They think wide and long and slow. Sometimes, we need things to be narrow and short and swift, if they’re to come to anything worth having.”

  “The Queen of Wands is missing,” said Broom. “She’s been missing for some time.”

  “She vanished from her receiving hall, when she should have been attending on her people,” said Meadowsweet. “If the Kings know, if the other Queen knows, they’ve not told anyone, which makes us think they don’t know, because they would never keep such a powerful secret. All of them want to take the Impossible City for their very own. All of them want to wear the crystal crown and hold the diamond scales and rule all that can be seen. Only the one who took her knows, and that one holds their cards closely, for it’s possible to rule in secret only when uncontested.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Zib.

  “You can’t go home,” said Niamh. “You’re exiles now. Like me.”

  Avery and Zib turned to look at her, eyes wide and bewildered. Niamh smiled wanly.

  “The improbable road will lead you to the Impossible City, but only the Queen of Wands can show you how to go back where you were before you came here,” she said. “The other monarchs could help you, and the King of Coins might, if you could pay his price, but the others never would, because keeping you would be so much more profitable for them. So you’ll stay, and stay, and stay, until we find her, until we bring her home.”

  Avery dropped his fruit and stared at her. Zib hugged her knees to her chest with one arm, touching the sword by her side with her other hand. Neither of them spoke.

  The Crow Girl was not so restrained. “That can’t be right!” she cried. “The Queen is in her parlor, the light is in the tower, and all is right with the world! All is right, because otherwise, all would be wrong, and I … I … I don’t know what to do in a world where the Queen of Wands is missing!”

  “None of us do,” said Oak. “But we know you can find the way. We know you can find her, if you look. Please.” The great owl swiveled to face the children. “Please find our Queen. If you bring her back to the Impossible City, then anything you ask for will be yours.”

  “Even the way home,” said Broom.

  “Forever,” said Meadowsweet.

  “But…” Zib looked at Avery, then at the Crow Girl, and finally back to the owls. “We’re just kids! We can’t find your Queen! We can’t even find our shoes!”

  “I told you bare feet were better,” said the Crow Girl smugly, and Avery, startled, laughed.

  “You did,” he said. “You really did.” He turned to Oak. “Why does it have to be us?”

  “You’re new here,” said the owl. “You don’t know what’s possible and what isn’t. You’ll take chances and take risks and make guesses that no one who understands the Up-and-Under would think of, because the rules aren’t a part of you.”

  “You’re clever,” said Broom. “Both of you, in different ways, and you trust each other, even when you think you don’t. You’ll hold fast to one another, and where one of you goes, the other will follow, again and again, until the question’s answered.”

  “You’re all we have,” said Meadowsweet. She shook her feathers, looking at them with large, sad eyes. “If there were anything else to be done, we might do it, for I do not care for leaving children to do our duties. But there is nothing else, and there is no one else, and the Impossible City will fall if it is not kept, and the Impossible City must not fall. Do you understand? Please, do you understand?”

  “I do,” said Zib.

  “I do,” said Avery.

  “I don’t,” said the Crow Girl, and cawed harsh laughter. “But I guess I’ll stay anyway. Children need to be watched over, and I can watch a dozen things at the same time.”

  “Then go,” said Oak. “Find her. We’ll be waiting.”

  The owls rose up in unison, silent wings spread wide as they soared away from the tree, leaving the children, and the Crow Girl, behind.

  Avery wrinkled his nose. “I hate heights,” he said.

  “Oh, heights are easy,” said the Crow Girl. “It’s falling that’s hard.” She beamed, briefly, before bursting into birds and flying away.

  Zib was the next to move. She grabbed her sword and stood, looking at the jungle gym of branches around them for a moment before she laughed and began swinging herself down.

  There was nothing after that but for Avery and Niamh to follow or be left behind. They descended with the careful slowness of children who have always preferred there be something beneath their feet, whether it be water or earth. When they reached the bottom, Zib was already tangled in a large berry-bush, her fingers and lips sticky with juice, while the crows swirled around her, stripping fruit from the highest branches. She turned, waving, and the crows came together into the body of the Crow Girl, feathers smoothing into place.

  “Are we ready to go?” asked Zib.

  “We are,” said Avery, and so they did.

  THIRTEEN

  THE IMPOSSIBLE CITY

  The first thing was to find the improbable road, which was at once easier and harder than it sounded. Most roads, being stationary, well-behaved things, are simply impossible to find in a place where they do not customarily go. The road that leads from the woods to Grandmother’s house, for instance, cannot be found in a city or town, or on a seashore, or spanning a mountain. It begins in one place, always, and ends in another place, always. Had that been the road they were seeking, they would certainly never have been able to find it, and would have spent the rest of their days walking confused circles in a place that could never help them to fulfill their quests.

  There are, however, other roads, moving roads, roads made of cause and concept rather than cobblestone and convenience. The improbable road knew its travelers, and wanted, in its slow, architectural way, to help them.

  One by one, the children set their bare feet on the grassy ground. Avery slipped his hand into Zib’s, not flinching from the berry stains on her fingers, while Niamh walked a little bit apart, her feet leaving puddles behind her as she walked. The Crow Girl circled them all, walking
great loops around them, so that they were always in her line of sight. She kept one eye on the sky, and no one asked her why. None of them wanted to know.

  If this were a story about an ordinary sort of place, crisscrossed with ordinary sorts of road, we could follow them forever, three children and a gangling teenage girl walking under a sapphire sky, heading for the horizon. But this is not that kind of story. Zib glanced down, and saw a glimmer between her toes, like fireflies caught under the grass. She gasped. Avery looked down and did the same.

  “The improbable road!” Zib said.

  “Keep walking,” urged the Crow Girl. “It’s figuring out where we were!”

  They kept walking, and the grass grew thinner under their feet, the glitter of the improbable road showing through more and more clearly, until the grass was gone and they were walking on glittering stones, walking toward the top of a gentle rise, its slopes peppered with brightly colored flowers. The Crow Girl stopped her circling and fell back to walk by Avery’s side, so that they formed a line: first Niamh, then Zib, then Avery, and finally the Crow Girl, all of them walking in easy harmony.

  They crested the rise, and there, before them, was the Impossible City.

  The first impossibility was this: it was impossible that they had not been able to see it from a distance, for it was made of towers and spires and twisting, delicate peaks, all of them straining toward the sky like they thought to pierce the sun, to harness the moon. Clouds skittered among their peaks, tangling on balconies and obscuring windows.

  The second impossibility was this: it was impossible for a city of such vast size and complexity to exist without changing the land around it, yet the Impossible City—surrounded by a wall of glittering, glistening stone, like a loop of the improbable road had somehow been coaxed into standing on its side—rose whole and shining out of field and farmland. There were no scattered settlements, no clear-cut forests, no quarries. It could have been conjured out of the earth already constructed, complete and unchangeable, pristine and perfect.