When they were finished, the plates licked clean and the hamper empty and their bellies aching pleasantly, as they always did after a good meal, they sat back in comfortable quiet. Zib leaned until her head rested on Avery’s shoulder, that insouciant hair brushing his cheek, and it seemed so right for her to be there that he didn’t object.
“That was wonderful,” he said, for his parents had always stressed the importance of remembering his manners. “Thank you. Did you cook it all yourself?”
“Oh, no,” said the Crow Girl. “I stole it!”
Avery gasped. Zib sat bolt upright, and it seemed like her hair sat up even straighter, so that she looked like she’d been struck by lightning.
“Stole it?” asked Avery. “From whom?”
“Why, the Queen of Swords, of course. Everything here belongs to her. Every beast and briar, every hill and hearth. All the crows have to steal if we want to eat. The Queen doesn’t mind. She’s the one who made us this way, and she knows that we don’t mean any harm by it.” The Crow Girl cocked her head thoughtfully to the side. “Although I suppose if you still want to get to the Impossible City, we should start walking again. The Queen doesn’t like things she doesn’t own, so she’ll come to try and own you soon. It’s the only way to keep everything exactly as she wants it and not a bit as she doesn’t.”
“So you stole our lunch from the woman who doesn’t want us here, and you don’t think that’s bad,” said Zib. She scrambled to her feet, one sock snagging on the uneven brick and pulling away from her foot, leaving her toes bare. “That’s all you stole, though, right? You didn’t take anything else?”
“Only one other thing. Catch!” The Crow Girl reached into her dress and pulled out a key, tossing it to Avery, who caught it without thinking. Then he gasped, nearly dropping it again.
It was a key, yes, but a key a foot long, carved from what looked like a single piece of bone. The surface was covered in scrimshaw swirls, showing two children walking the long length of a ribbon road. To make the point even clearer, the lines of the road had been picked out in mother-of-pearl, so that it glittered and gleamed against the white. It was stark and terrible and beautiful, all at the same time, for all things can be many things, under the right conditions.
“It’s a skeleton key,” said the Crow Girl smugly. “They’re supposed to be guarded, oh yes, locked away from the likes of me and us and we all together, but I got one. I snatched it and cached it and now all we need to do is find the lock that fits it and you can move on to the protectorate of the Queen of Wands. She isn’t there now, no, she isn’t there at all, what with the Impossible City needing all her time, but if we can’t find it—” Her face fell. She finished, almost in a whisper, “If we can’t find it, we have to go the long way round, through the protectorate of the King of Cups. You don’t want that, not at all. You want to stay safe and dry and well away from him.”
“Why do you have so many kings and queens around here, and why do we have to be afraid of half of them?” demanded Zib.
“Well, because if you belonged to one of them, you wouldn’t have to be afraid of them, and maybe you’d be afraid of the other half, which can be a nice change.” The Crow Girl stood and stretched, yawning at the same time. “Up, up, up. We need to be moving before we decide that sleeping would be better. Nothing can force you off the improbable road, not even queens and kings, but that doesn’t mean they can’t try, and sometimes the road goes on adventures of its own, and then you’re stuck. So get up, up, up. It’s time to walk.”
Zib was already standing. She turned to offer her hands to Avery, who took them and let himself be pulled from the ground. He was still holding the skeleton key. She shied away from it, dimly aware that she was glad he had been chosen as its guardian, and not her at all.
“If you could fly, this would be easier, but if you could fly, we wouldn’t be here, so I suppose we’ll work with what we have,” said the Crow Girl. “On you go!”
Avery and Zib moved closer together, Zib’s hand still holding tight to one of his. Without a word or a glance between them, they began walking.
The protectorate of the Queen of Swords was beautiful: of that there could be no question. Birds circled overhead, and other shapes that were almost birds but not quite. Avery squinted and thought they might be dragons, or winged people, soaring on currents he was too far down to feel. The Crow Girl’s comments about flight seemed more reasonable than they had before he saw that, and he shivered.
All around them were rolling hills and trees with high, straight branches, perfect for climbing or for roosting in. As he thought that, two things happened at essentially the same time, so that no matter which we mention first, we are getting something out of order. So:
What he had first taken to be a particularly low cloud, snuggled tight against the trunk of one of the tall roosting trees, stirred itself, opened eyes as startlingly blue as a summer afternoon, and spread its wings, revealing itself to be a snowy owl the same impossible size as Meadowsweet. It launched itself into the air, gliding silently over the improbable road, circling the trio twice before setting down in front of them, and:
The improbable road, which had never been a straight line—had always been a curving, twisting thing, like a length of ribbon thrown carelessly down across the landscape, making its own way, setting its own standard, as suited a thing that was almost entirely an idea—abruptly forked. To the left, it twisted its way into another deep tangle of briars, each one equipped with thorns as long and viciously sharp as hatpins. To the right, it wound its way through an orchard of low, orange-leafed trees, their branches heavy with unfamiliar fruits, their roots growing with such wild abandon that they broke through the brick and turned the already-treacherous road even more so.
Avery found that he was no longer impressed by owls larger than owls had any reason to be. At least this one was a color he was accustomed to seeing on owls, and not pink, or purple, or a vivid green. The fork in the road was much more of a concern.
“Hello,” said Zib, to the owl.
The Crow Girl rolled her eyes. “Ugh. Broom. What are you doing here?”
“The same as I ever am,” said the owl, and it was no longer strange to hear an owl speak: clearly, that was what owls did in the Up-and-Under. “Warning travelers to be careful with their choices, and keeping watch over children who are out past their bedtimes. Children.” The owl turned its head, regarding Avery and Zib with enormous amber eyes. If Meadowsweet’s gaze had been like entering a staring contest with Halloween, this was like looking into a treasured jack-o-lantern, seeing all the wonders of a wild, wonderful night reflected in the candle’s glare.
Broom’s voice was soft and kind. Zib thought immediately of her father, who had never once raised his voice in anger, not even when the children on his bus were naughty beyond all reasonable measure. Avery thought of his math tutor, who always tried his best, despite Avery’s hopelessness with more advanced concepts. Both of them found that they trusted the owl, which was a nice change, given how many other things they had found and failed to trust since arriving in the Up-and-Under.
“You are out past your bedtime and before your bedtime and until bedtime ceases to have any meaning whatsoever,” said Broom. “Why have you done this? Why have you come here?”