“It would have led you right into the guards,” said Broom. “It would have carried on without you, leaving you to face the consequences.”
“So the Up-and-Under has been … trying to protect us?” asked Zib.
“The Up-and-Under doesn’t care that much about you,” said Meadowsweet regretfully. “The Up-and-Under protects itself first, and its people second, and visitors like yourselves last of all. The Up-and-Under has been trying to keep you from knowing what you shouldn’t know.”
“If we’re not supposed to know this, why are you telling us?” asked Avery.
“Countries are curious things, and kingdoms are simply countries in their dancing shoes,” said Oak. “They think wide and long and slow. Sometimes, we need things to be narrow and short and swift, if they’re to come to anything worth having.”
“The Queen of Wands is missing,” said Broom. “She’s been missing for some time.”
“She vanished from her receiving hall, when she should have been attending on her people,” said Meadowsweet. “If the Kings know, if the other Queen knows, they’ve not told anyone, which makes us think they don’t know, because they would never keep such a powerful secret. All of them want to take the Impossible City for their very own. All of them want to wear the crystal crown and hold the diamond scales and rule all that can be seen. Only the one who took her knows, and that one holds their cards closely, for it’s possible to rule in secret only when uncontested.”
“I don’t understand,” said Zib.
“You can’t go home,” said Niamh. “You’re exiles now. Like me.”
Avery and Zib turned to look at her, eyes wide and bewildered. Niamh smiled wanly.
“The improbable road will lead you to the Impossible City, but only the Queen of Wands can show you how to go back where you were before you came here,” she said. “The other monarchs could help you, and the King of Coins might, if you could pay his price, but the others never would, because keeping you would be so much more profitable for them. So you’ll stay, and stay, and stay, until we find her, until we bring her home.”
Avery dropped his fruit and stared at her. Zib hugged her knees to her chest with one arm, touching the sword by her side with her other hand. Neither of them spoke.
The Crow Girl was not so restrained. “That can’t be right!” she cried. “The Queen is in her parlor, the light is in the tower, and all is right with the world! All is right, because otherwise, all would be wrong, and I … I … I don’t know what to do in a world where the Queen of Wands is missing!”
“None of us do,” said Oak. “But we know you can find the way. We know you can find her, if you look. Please.” The great owl swiveled to face the children. “Please find our Queen. If you bring her back to the Impossible City, then anything you ask for will be yours.”
“Even the way home,” said Broom.
“Forever,” said Meadowsweet.
“But…” Zib looked at Avery, then at the Crow Girl, and finally back to the owls. “We’re just kids! We can’t find your Queen! We can’t even find our shoes!”
“I told you bare feet were better,” said the Crow Girl smugly, and Avery, startled, laughed.
“You did,” he said. “You really did.” He turned to Oak. “Why does it have to be us?”
“You’re new here,” said the owl. “You don’t know what’s possible and what isn’t. You’ll take chances and take risks and make guesses that no one who understands the Up-and-Under would think of, because the rules aren’t a part of you.”
“You’re clever,” said Broom. “Both of you, in different ways, and you trust each other, even when you think you don’t. You’ll hold fast to one another, and where one of you goes, the other will follow, again and again, until the question’s answered.”
“You’re all we have,” said Meadowsweet. She shook her feathers, looking at them with large, sad eyes. “If there were anything else to be done, we might do it, for I do not care for leaving children to do our duties. But there is nothing else, and there is no one else, and the Impossible City will fall if it is not kept, and the Impossible City must not fall. Do you understand? Please, do you understand?”
“I do,” said Zib.
“I do,” said Avery.
“I don’t,” said the Crow Girl, and cawed harsh laughter. “But I guess I’ll stay anyway. Children need to be watched over, and I can watch a dozen things at the same time.”
“Then go,” said Oak. “Find her. We’ll be waiting.”
The owls rose up in unison, silent wings spread wide as they soared away from the tree, leaving the children, and the Crow Girl, behind.
Avery wrinkled his nose. “I hate heights,” he said.
“Oh, heights are easy,” said the Crow Girl. “It’s falling that’s hard.” She beamed, briefly, before bursting into birds and flying away.
Zib was the next to move. She grabbed her sword and stood, looking at the jungle gym of branches around them for a moment before she laughed and began swinging herself down.
There was nothing after that but for Avery and Niamh to follow or be left behind. They descended with the careful slowness of children who have always preferred there be something beneath their feet, whether it be water or earth. When they reached the bottom, Zib was already tangled in a large berry-bush, her fingers and lips sticky with juice, while the crows swirled around her, stripping fruit from the highest branches. She turned, waving, and the crows came together into the body of the Crow Girl, feathers smoothing into place.
“Are we ready to go?” asked Zib.
“We are,” said Avery, and so they did.
THIRTEEN
THE IMPOSSIBLE CITY
The first thing was to find the improbable road, which was at once easier and harder than it sounded. Most roads, being stationary, well-behaved things, are simply impossible to find in a place where they do not customarily go. The road that leads from the woods to Grandmother’s house, for instance, cannot be found in a city or town, or on a seashore, or spanning a mountain. It begins in one place, always, and ends in another place, always. Had that been the road they were seeking, they would certainly never have been able to find it, and would have spent the rest of their days walking confused circles in a place that could never help them to fulfill their quests.
There are, however, other roads, moving roads, roads made of cause and concept rather than cobblestone and convenience. The improbable road knew its travelers, and wanted, in its slow, architectural way, to help them.
One by one, the children set their bare feet on the grassy ground. Avery slipped his hand into Zib’s, not flinching from the berry stains on her fingers, while Niamh walked a little bit apart, her feet leaving puddles behind her as she walked. The Crow Girl circled them all, walking great loops around them, so that they were always in her line of sight. She kept one eye on the sky, and no one asked her why. None of them wanted to know.
If this were a story about an ordinary sort of place, crisscrossed with ordinary sorts of road, we could follow them forever, three children and a gangling teenage girl walking under a sapphire sky, heading for the horizon. But this is not that kind of story. Zib glanced down, and saw a glimmer between her toes, like fireflies caught under the grass. She gasped. Avery looked down and did the same.