“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.
Avery plodded, not speaking, not looking to the left or right. Zib stole looks in his direction, feeling dimly as if he, too, had become a sort of sharp thorn, something she could easily prick herself upon.
When the first of the glowing bricks appeared in the dirt, Zib gasped and exclaimed, “The improbable road! Why, Avery, it’s found us even here! I didn’t know roads could do that!”
The crows, which had been flying merrily all around them, began to flock together, becoming a twister of black wings and black feathers and wind, until they finally solidified into the body of the Crow Girl, who laughed and danced backward, causing more bricks to light up in the muddy ground.
“The road can follow you anywhere, as long as you’re following the rules,” she said. “It can find a feather in a hurricane or a bubble at the bottom of the sea. Two children and a Crow Girl, that’s no trouble at all!”
“Why,” said Avery, in a dull, soft voice. The word was not a question on his lips: it was a condemnation, a quiet statement of fact.
The Crow Girl cocked her head to the side. “Why what? Why is the road like this? The road goes everywhere in the Up-and-Under, into the clouds and down to the depths, because the road is for everyone, and something for everyone needs to be everywhere, or it isn’t really for everyone at all. A garden behind a gate isn’t everybody’s garden, no matter what the gardeners may try to say. No, it isn’t for everyone at all.”
“Why didn’t you help us?” Avery lifted his head and looked at her, as bleak as a midwinter morning. The sparkle, tame and tranquil as it was, had gone out of his eyes; he was a shadow of himself. “You were there, you were right there, and you could have helped us with the Bumble Bear, but you didn’t help us at all. You stayed crows in the brambles, and you let it threaten us, and scare us, and t-take things from us. You’re no friend at all. You’re a coward.”
“Everything with wings is a coward,” said the Crow Girl. “Even the things that want to be brave, the hawks and eagles and vultures and pelicans, they’re all cowards. To have wings is to know how to fly away.” She paused before adding, thoughtfully, “Maybe emus aren’t cowards. They have wings, but they’ve forgotten how to fly. Maybe they can learn to be brave.”
“Is that why you didn’t help us?” asked Avery. “Because you were afraid?” Angry as he was, hurt as he was, he could understand some of what it meant to be afraid. Avery was a clean, polite, patient child in a world where children were encouraged to be those things at home, but something entirely other in the company of their peers. He had never mastered pretending to be something or someone that he wasn’t.
“Oh, no,” said the Crow Girl. “Even a coward can harry and strike. Sometimes it’s better to be a coward. The brave rush in, the brave think they know what’s what and who’s who, and the brave get buried in soft green moss, with stones to rest their heads upon. I’m not a creature of stone or moss, though, and a coward can be careful. Cowards take their time. Cowards find the way that’s right, instead of the way that’s easy.”
“Then why…”
“The Queen of Swords made me,” said the Crow Girl. Her voice was soft, and simple, and sad. She looked at the children in front of her, wrapping her bare arms around her feathered body as if she thought she could hold herself in place. “She didn’t steal me from a hive or anything like that. I went willing, we all go willing, because she offered me transformation, transfiguration, transmutation from something I didn’t want to be into something I did. I was someone else before I came to her, and I wasn’t happy then, but I’m happy now, yes, I’m happy now. I serve the Queen and I’m happy. She loves me so, she’ll keep me forever.”
“The Bumble Bear belonged to her,” said Zib slowly.
“So many things do,” said the Crow Girl. “I didn’t know it would be there, I promise that. There was never a beast of any kind at that bramble break before. The Queen must have heard us coming and placed a guard.”
“Why would she do that if she loves you?” asked Zib.
“Because she wants to love you, too. She wants to love all the children who walk the improbable road, to gather them close and keep them warm and safe and free from the temptations of the Impossible City, the allure of the alchemical aurora. She wants us to be wild and bestial and home forever, nevermore to roam.” The Crow Girl glanced around, suddenly anxious, suddenly seeming more like a wild creature than she ever had before, like the part of her that was human was less important than the part of her that was bird. She stepped closer to Avery and Zib, bobbing her head low, so that her words would be spilled only between the three of them and not into the wider world.
Avery and Zib found themselves leaning in to catch every syllable, not allowing any of them to fall to the muddy earth, to the returning road. These were crumbs for their ears, and theirs alone.
“I can’t fight what belongs to the Queen, for they are my brothers and my sisters and my siblings all, and she doesn’t allow fighting in her family; she judges it most harshly, and when she punishes us, it aches for years on end. So no, I couldn’t help you against her beast, and I won’t help you against any other beasts we happen to encounter, not when they belong to her. She would love you too, if you allowed her to, and her love would be everything you had ever wanted, and nothing that you needed. If you trust her, you’ll never make it home. You’ll never have your ending, good or bad or in-between, for all endings here belong to the Queen of Swords, and she doesn’t share. Be careful. Be cowards. Courage belongs to the brave and the foolish, and they are always, always the first to fall before her glory.”
The Crow Girl straightened abruptly, dancing back onto the glimmering bricks of the improbable road, a bright smile on her thin, hard-lipped mouth. “I promised you food! Better than a napple! Come, children, come, cowards, come, come, come!”
Zib, hesitant but hungry, began to follow, and stopped as Avery reached out and grabbed her wrist. She looked at his hand, tight and trembling, holding her fast; then she looked at his face, and nearly shied away from the wildness there.
“We should run,” he said. “While she’s distracted.”
“Where?” she asked. “There’s only one tunnel through the briars, and the Bumble Bear is at one end of it, and the other end is ahead of us, with the Crow Girl in our way. Even if we went back—even if we could go back—there’s nothing but stairs and a mountain to fall from, and a stone circle to shiver and starve in. The Queen of Swords doesn’t know we’re here. She doesn’t want us yet, she can’t. I need food, and a good place to sit, and something to cover my feet. Let me go, Avery, and walk. We have to walk if we’re to reach the Impossible City.”