“I don’t want to be,” whispered Zib.
“Oh,” said the crow girl, face falling. “That doesn’t mean you won’t be.”
“Please.” Zib grabbed the bars of the cage, ignoring the way they bit into her palms. “Can you let me out of here? Is there a key you can bring me?”
“There’s no key,” said the crow girl. “The door opens when the Page wants it to open, and it closes when the Page wants it to close. It’s like us, you see. It belongs to her. The King makes everything possible, and most of the time all he wants is for us to sit at his feet and smile and tell him how very clever he is, but the Page holds our jesses, and we don’t fly without her permission. There’s no key that can be stolen, no lock that can be picked. You’ll be where you’ll be until she says otherwise. But it’s all right! It’s all right. Once your heart shatters, you won’t even feel the cold.”
Zib wasn’t sure what a heart was for, exactly: knew that grownups put a great deal of weight on whether or not she was listening to her heart over her head, knew that they were quite fond of telling her not to give it carelessly away. Even so, she couldn’t imagine a heart was meant to shatter, or that it was an event which should be treated quite so lightly.
“Why will my heart shatter?” asked Zib.
“So that you can be a murder,” said the crow girl, matter-of-factly. “I have so many hearts now, or I did, before the King of Cups decided that I didn’t need them anymore. He must have been right, because I fly so much better now, and everything is fine, and I never feel the cold, not even as much as I did before he split me open and took away what wasn’t wanted.”
Zib swallowed. “I don’t think I want that,” she said. “Please, isn’t there anything you can do to help me? I like being a girl. I like having only one heart, that hasn’t been shattered or stolen. I want to stay the way I am, and not change into something else.”
“I’m sorry,” said the crow girl.
“Please.”
The crow girl stood in silent thought for a long moment before turning and walking away, past the throne where the King of Cups slept and the other members of the flock sat silent attendance, until she was almost out of view. Then she knelt, picking something up from the frozen ground, and walked back.
It was a feather. A long red feather, banded with darker streaks, like a strip of paint peeled from the side of a barn. Zib recognized it at once, and when the crow girl slid it between the bars of the cage, she snatched it greedily, bringing it to her nose and breathing deeply in. It smelled, ever so faintly, of the great owl who had carried her here, who had tried to protect her, who had failed and fled.
“Oak,” she breathed.
“Owls are good,” said the crow girl. “Owls remember things. Crow girls don’t. We’re a poem in the process of being unwritten, a thought about to be unformed. We forget because remembering is bad for us. If you can hold on to the feather, maybe you can remember. Maybe what’s bad for us can be good for you, since you’d rather be a girl than a murder.”
“Thank you,” whispered Zib. She reached up and pulled one lock of hair free from the mass, separating it with quick, clever fingers before winding it around the shaft of the feather. When she let go, the feather hung so it almost brushed her cheek, held securely in place by her plaiting.
“It’s all I can do,” said the crow girl. Then she smiled. “You’ll be happier when you’re one of us. The King of Cups will make all manner of promises, because that’s what he does, and then he’ll break them all, because that’s also what he does: a king may be a liar and not suffer for it one bit. But he’ll tell you you’ll be happier, and he’ll mean it, because a shattered heart can never be broken, and a murder who looks like a girl who has no heart to break is the happiest thing in the world. You’ll see. I promise, given time, you’ll see.”
The crow girl turned and walked back to the throne, settling into position alongside the rest of her flock. Zib fingered the acorns in her pocket and thought about trying again. It didn’t seem like the best idea. If one crow girl couldn’t help her, neither could the next, and she only had so many acorns; when they were gone, they were gone. What they could do against a king, she didn’t know.
Settling to the floor of the cage, she pressed her back as close to the bars as she could, and closed her eyes. She felt small, and cold, and afraid. If she slept for a time, maybe those things would be better. Or maybe she would have a dream that would tell her what to do, and when she woke, she would find her freedom like an apple, ready to be plucked.
Instead, when she opened her eyes, it was because she itched all over, as if she had rolled in a field of stinging nettles. She scratched at her arm, carefully at first, then with more and more vigor, trying to chase the itching away. It didn’t work. The itching got worse, and worse, until she thought she might scratch her own skin off, trying to have done with it.
Her fingers found a tuft of what felt like stiffened, mud-matted hair at the bend of her elbow. She grabbed it and ripped it free, and the itching stopped, as suddenly as the air escaping from a popped soap bubble. She started to throw the offending bit of hair aside and froze, staring at it, unable to breathe.
It was a feather. A small black feather, like the kind of feather she might have expected to find on a baby crow, not yet long enough or stiff enough for flight, but more than long enough, more than stiff enough, to have no business at all growing out of her body. She looked at her arm. A small bead of blood stood up where the feather had been, bright red against her skin.
Silently, Zib began to cry.
She didn’t know how long she’d been crying when the Page of Frozen Waters reappeared, popping up beside the cage with a bright smile on her face. “Hello again, new girl. How do you like your feathers? They don’t fit so well beneath the skin, do they?”
“I hate you,” said Zib, voice gone dull. “You are a terrible person.”
“Maybe, but I’m not the one in the cage.” The Page twinkled at her, as bright and cold and deadly as a star. “I’m not the one who’ll be dressed in feathers and forgotten. You should be nicer to me while you have the choice. You won’t, soon, and I’ll remember what you said while you still thought you could be free.”
Zib got up onto her knees, clutching the bars to bring herself as close as possible to the Page as she glared. “You are bad,” she said. “You are rotten and twisted and awful inside, and you can dress me in feathers and make me a murder, but I know something you don’t know.”
The Page lost her smile, expression turning wary. “What’s that?”
“The ground beneath your feet doesn’t glitter,” said Zib. “The improbable road has never chosen you, not even once, because if it had, you wouldn’t be here; you’d be off on an adventure, not sitting by a man who lets you hurt people and doesn’t tell you that it’s wrong. You’d go to the Impossible City. You haven’t because you can’t. I could, if you opened this cage, and you can never take that away from me. I’ll always be the girl who could do what you couldn’t.”
The Page of Frozen Waters hissed fury and reached into the air like she was reaching into a pocket, pulling out a trident that looked like it was made of nothing but ice. She pointed it at Zib. “I don’t want your stupid city, and I don’t want your useless road, and you’re going to be mine to command, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”