Zib stumbled back, horror and confusion on her face. Her hair drooped, weighted down with dismay. “What are you … what are you talking about?” she stammered. “I only wanted to be warm! I didn’t do anything wrong!”
Avery could have answered her. Could have said that he was afraid, that he didn’t want her to risk herself because he didn’t know what he would do without her. Could have told her all manner of things, true things, things that she needed to hear, things that would, by coming out into the open, have made them both better.
He pushed her again.
Zib stared at him, eyes gone huge and mouth gone small. Then she shuddered, like she was shaking away the clinging film of a particularly unpleasant dream, and stood up as straight as she could. She would have been taller than him even without her hair. With it, she towered, and he felt small, and ashamed, and backed away.
“Fine,” she said. “I don’t know why I thought you’d be my friend, anyway. You’re mean and you’re selfish and you’re … you’re narrow. You look at things and you think you’re the only one who knows what they’re supposed to be and that anyone who thinks different from you is wrong, wrong, wrong. But maybe you’re wrong. Did you ever think of that? Maybe all the people telling you it’s a forest are the ones who’re right, and you’re the only one insisting that it’s nothing but a tree! I don’t want to be your friend. I don’t want to do anything with you. I wish I weren’t anywhere near you!”
Someone laughed. It was a bright, merry sound, like the pealing of bells from a carousel calliope as it started to move, or the gossiping of birds on the first day of spring. It should have been a sweet sound—but there was something poisonous to it, something rotten. It was the twitter of a bird about to ram its beak through a toad’s skull, or the ringing of a bell attached to a carousel damaged by fire. It was wrong, and it was wicked, and it was oh so very close.
The woman who stepped out of the fog—stepped out of the empty air, where nothing but clouds should have been light enough to stay suspended—looked to be of an age with the high school girls Avery sometimes saw walking home in the first light of evening, their shirts pressed and their skirts prim and their books carried exactly so. She was tall, slim, straight as an arrow, with a long, graceful neck and the carriage of a bird of prey, smooth and assured in every motion. Her hair was the color of charcoal, bound back in an elaborate braid studded with chunks of polished glass. Her eyes were the color of the fog around her, and she was dressed like a dancer, in smooth gray hose and a belted tunic that seemed archaic and accurate at the same time. Someone like her could never have dressed any other way.
Niamh took a step backward, her eyes going wide. She raised her hands in front of her in a warding gesture. “Quickly, both of you, come here,” she said, and her voice was tight with fear. “It will be all right, but you must come now.”
“Who is she?” asked Avery, and took two stumbling steps back, toward the drowned girl.
Perhaps that was what saved him. Or perhaps Zib had already been lost, had been lost the moment her careless words summoned this specter out of the fog. It can be so difficult to tell, even with the graces of hindsight, which shows all but forgives nothing.
The woman settled her feet on the cliff, blew Avery a kiss, and said, “Why, I am the Page of Frozen Waters, of course, and everything here belongs to my lord and master, which means everything here belongs to me, which means you should be grateful that the toll is tiny as it is. A mere token, really. Nothing of concern.”
Zib, seeming to suddenly realize that the Page was standing between her and her friends, tried to run forward. The Page spun on one booted heel and planted her hands on Zib’s shoulders, pushing her easily back, so that her bare feet lost traction on the stone, so that she was standing on nothing at all. Zib was no Page of Frozen Waters, to dance on fog and clouds. She was as simple and solid as any child who has ever climbed trees, or hunted frogs through mud puddles, or refused to brush her hair. She fell without a sound, eyes wide and solemn, hands reaching for the help they could not grasp.
The Page of Frozen Waters turned back to Avery and Niamh. She bowed mockingly, a sweet smile on her face as she straightened. “I thank you, and my lord thanks you, and her bones may dream a thousand years in the rocks at the bottom, or they may not, and it’s none of your concern either way.”
“It is my concern!” Avery ran toward her, past the fire, hands outstretched, and for one terrible moment, it seemed as if he might push the Page of Frozen Waters after Zib, might have his revenge in one terrible, irrevocable gesture. Instead, he grabbed the front of her tunic and yanked her toward him, shouting, “You go bring her back! You bring her back right now!”
“Oh, you want the little thing now? That’s not what I heard before. It seemed to me that I was doing you a favor.” The Page of Frozen Waters crouched down until their eyes were level. She was smiling again, but there was nothing of sweetness in her now. “Are you saying I was wrong?”
“Don’t touch him,” said Niamh, and came no closer.
“He touched me first, child; that means your protection is over.” The Page of Frozen Waters kept her eyes on Avery. “Are you saying I was wrong?” she repeated.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Then I suppose a reunion is in order.” She leaned closer, closer still, and whispered, next to his ear, “You’ll find her at the bottom, if you’re fortunate enough to find her at all.” Then she straightened, grabbing him by the arm and spinning him around as she did, so that he teetered on the edge of the abyss.
“Goodbye,” she said, and pushed him over. He screamed as he fell. She glanced back to Niamh, winked, and stepped into the empty air, plummeting quickly out of sight.
Niamh stood on the other side of the fire, clutching her gown above her heart, tears springing to her eyes and freezing there, so that they fell like silent diamonds to the ground at her feet. She was still standing there, weeping, when a murder of crows dropped from the sky and pieced itself together in front of her, a puzzle happening in the blink of an eye, and became the familiar shape of the Crow Girl.
The Crow Girl looked around, and frowned. “Where are they?” she asked, looking to Niamh. “Where are the children?”
But Niamh could only cry.
NINE
THE PAGE OF FROZEN WATERS
There are many different kinds of falling, as many different kinds of falling as there are opportunities to fall. There is falling through earth, surrounded by mud, with something to hold you up and keep you from harm. There is falling through water, through mist and ice, with something soft at the end to render the landing gentle, if not quite safe. There is falling through fire, which is painful but mercifully short. And then there is falling through nothing at all. Air is a necessary part of life on land. Air fills our lungs and steers our steps, gentle winds pushing us where we are meant to go. But air cannot stop a fall without something to fill, and Zib dropped through the layers of cloud like a stone, unable to slow herself, unable to see where she was going.
Perhaps I will land in another lake, with another drowned girl to pull me to safety, she thought, and knew it for a lie, but held it tightly all the same, for there was nothing else to do. The wind whipped her tears away as fast as they could fall, and there was no one coming to save her. No one at all.