“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.”