The Crow Girl grabbed Avery by one arm, and Zib by the other, and ran, as fast as she could, for the edge of the cliff. The children let her haul them in her wake, until she ran past the end of the stone, out into empty nothingness.
The fall was sharp, and short, and brutal. Zib screamed. Avery wailed. The Crow Girl burst into birds, all the pieces of the murder swirling around them in a skirl of dark feathers, wings beating frantically, until the children realized they were no longer falling but were rolling down a bridge of birds, their descent slowed to something stately, something almost kind.
When they reached the ground, the Crow Girl re-formed, dropping to her knees on the rocky shore and panting. Finally, she looked up through her feathered bangs and smiled wanly.
“See?” she said. “Got you out. I’m clever.”
“Yes,” said Avery. “You are.” He looked to Zib, then. “But what happened?”
Zib took a deep breath, and said, “I met an owl…”
ELEVEN
WHERE ZIB WENT, AND HOW IT HAPPENED
Oak soared on vast red wings, and Zib snuggled into the owl’s feathers, warm and safe and lost. It was strange, to think that she could be safe and lost at the same time; the two conditions felt as if they ought to contradict one another, leaving her either safe at home or lost and in danger, but with the owl all around her, the world seemed like a kinder place.
The fog was more shades of gray than she had ever thought possible, pale as a pearl and dark as a stone after the rain. She watched it swirl around them until her eyelids felt heavy and her whole body felt thick, the way it sometimes did when she stayed up too far past her bedtime. She couldn’t think of how long it had been since she’d slept.
Surely the school day was over by now. Surely her father was home from dropping off other people’s children, stepping into the living room, hanging his coat on the peg, and calling, “Where’s my little piece of pumpkin pie?” with the expectant air of a man whose questions were answered more often than not.
Her mother, wrapped in her painting as she so often was, probably wouldn’t have noticed that she had never come home, had never grabbed an apple from the counter or called hello before rushing back off to the woods, back to her private adventures. She’d say that Zib had been there, surely Zib had been there, and so neither of them would worry. Not until the sun was going down and she was still nowhere to be seen.
How long would it be before they moved from confusion to anger, and then finally to fear? Would they call their friends—surely they must have friends, friends couldn’t be a thing that ended with childhood, no one would ever choose to grow up if they couldn’t be adults and have friends at the same time—and go into the woods looking for her?
Would they find the wall?
Zib didn’t think they would.
She was so sunk in the owl’s warmth and in her own uneasy thoughts that she didn’t notice the air getting colder around them, or the fog getting darker, until it was less pearl and more stone, until she could barely see through her almost-closed eyes.
Then Oak cried out, a high, pained sound, and fell out of the sky, twisting around and around like a leaf caught in a sudden gale. The great owl slammed into the ground, Zib cushioned by the feathers of its breast, and she gasped, the wind knocked out of her by the impact.
“You shouldn’t be here, bird.” The voice was old, and cold, and almost disdainful. Zib opened her eyes and beheld the man who stood above her.
He was tall, and thin, and looked even older than he sounded, as old as wishes, as old as winter. His hair was white and his eyes were blue, and ice formed and cracked on his eyelashes, falling away every time he blinked. His robes were heavy velvet patterned with cascades of water flowing from weighty chalices, and she knew him for the King of Cups, and she knew she was in danger, for all that his attention was wholly focused on the owl.
“I was helping the girl,” said Oak, one wing curling protectively around her.
The King of Cups tilted his head before turning his attention on Zib. “Were you, now?” he asked. “Hello, child. You must be precious indeed, if old Oak would risk capture for your sake. What is your name?”
“Hepzibah Jones,” she replied, before she could stop herself. She didn’t want to give the King of Cups her proper name—had not, in fact, intended it—but something about the way he spoke left no room for argument, no room for hesitation.
“You are not of my protectorate, are you?”
“No.” She hesitated. “Sir.”
The King of Cups laughed. “A polite child is a rare treasure! Tell me, child, do you wish to be of my protectorate? To be kept, and comforted, and safe, for all the days of your life? You could be happy here.”
Zib thought he must be lying. Adults didn’t smile that fixed, glossy smile, or speak with so much sharpness, when they were telling her the truth. Oak was shivering behind her, with fear as much as cold, and she felt a stab of pity. The owl had only been trying to help her. This fight—if it was a fight—was hers, and hers alone.
“No, thank you,” she said, and moved so that she was no longer in the sheltering coil of Oak’s wing but was standing between the great owl and the king. “I am on the improbable road to the Impossible City, you see, and I haven’t the time to stop and be a part of someone else’s protectorate. I need to find my friends.”
“They must not be terribly good friends, to be lost so easily.”
Zib bristled. “They weren’t lost. I was taken away from them. A dreadful girl who calls herself the Page of Frozen Waters pushed me off the side of a cliff, and I fell for quite a long way, and Oak came to stop me from being harmed. Now I’m on my way back to where I should have been, so I can finish going where I’m supposed to be. Please, do you know the way?”
The King of Cups smiled like a winter storm rolling in. He looked younger when he smiled. He looked no less terrible. “The Page of Frozen Waters is a part of my protectorate,” he said. “She gathers the lost things and brings them to me, and it seems she has gathered you, because here you are, and aren’t you lovely? Aren’t you rare and fine? I’ll make you better, child. I’ll make you more than you ever thought you’d be. You’ll be happy in my company, for you’ll know that you’re precisely where you belong.”
“Run,” whispered Oak. There was no flurry of wings, for owls are silent in flight, but there was a sudden feeling of absence, and Zib knew that the great owl was gone.
Zib couldn’t blame her brief companion for fleeing. She would have fled, had she known how, although she thought she wouldn’t have been quite so quick to leave someone else behind—she thought she would have stayed until she knew Oak could be free, if she had been the one with wings. Still, she took the owl’s parting advice seriously, stepping nervously backward as she prepared to run.
Something sharp pressed against the skin between her shoulders, stopping her. She could no more keep moving, knowing it would impale her, than she could have flown away.
“I see you found your way,” said the Page of Frozen Waters, sweet and bright and overjoyed, and Zib knew that she was lost.
“She’s lovely,” said the King of Cups. “Wherever did you find her?”