“I didn’t ask to begin,” protested Avery. “All I wanted to do was go to school and take my spelling test and spell all the words right. I don’t like mud and I don’t like falling and I don’t like clouds steered by crows and I don’t like birds turning into girls!” He clapped his hands over his mouth, eyes going wide as he realized that he had said more than he intended to.
The Crow Girl turned her head back and forth, looking at him first out of one eye, and then out of the other. “Do you like drowning?” she asked. “Because you were awfully close to drowning. You fell out of the lands of the King of Coins and into the lands of the Queen of Swords. Earth and air together make for unquiet bedfellows. If I hadn’t decided to be a girl instead of a murder of crows, you would have gone down, down, down, and you wouldn’t even have joined the Drowned Boys, not here, not so very far from the sea.”
“I’m sorry,” said Avery. “I didn’t mean…” And he stopped, because he didn’t know what else to say.
Zib stepped forward, holding out her open hand. In it was her lucky seashell. All the mud had been rinsed away, leaving it gleaming. “Here,” she said. “A present. To thank you for helping us. Do you like presents?”
“Everyone likes presents,” said the Crow Girl. She inched closer. “For me? Really? No tricks or treachery?”
“No,” said Zib. “Just a present.”
“A present!” The Crow Girl snatched the seashell out of Zib’s hand, turning it greedily over in her hands before tucking it away in the feathers of her dress, where it vanished without a trace. She looked at Zib. “I’ll give you a present, too. I’ll walk with you, because the ending you’ll find with me is better than the ending you’ll find without me. Won’t that be nice?”
“Yes,” said Zib.
Avery, who didn’t know the answer, said nothing at all.
FIVETHE BUMBLE BEAR AND THE TANGLE
The rolling green hills and the bright glassine ribbon of the improbable road were high above them, on the other side of the mudslide, which had tapered off to nothing more than the occasional colorful plop. Avery and Zib stood side by side and looked glumly up at the cliff.
“I don’t think I can climb that,” said Zib. “My shoes are up there.”
“I know I can’t climb that,” said Avery. “Quartz is up there. Do you think he’ll come looking for us? Do you think he’ll bring a rope?”
“Quartz?” asked the Crow Girl.
“A man who is also a boulder who told us we had to go to the Impossible City,” said Zib.
“Oh,” said the Crow Girl. “You met a royal gnome. He can’t follow you here. Royal gnomes belong to the King of Coins, and the Queen doesn’t like them much.”
“But he was going with us to the Impossible City,” protested Avery. “He wanted to see the Queen of Wands.”
“Of course he did. The Queen of Wands favors fire, you see, and gnomes aren’t born from fire, but they like the way it tingles. They’re not afraid of her. Many of them love her very much, and some of them belong to her court. As long as she holds the City, the road is open to gnomes and salamanders, and not so much to sylphs and undines. The Queen of Swords and the King of Cups have to find ways around her barriers when they want to get anything done.” The Crow Girl sobered. “Be careful of them.”
“Of who?” asked Zib.
“The ways around,” said the Crow Girl. “None of them are what they were, and it’s hard to remember how to play fair when you don’t remember where you left your heart.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” said Avery. His stomach grumbled. He sighed. “I don’t understand any of this and I’m hungry.”
“I have an apple,” said Zib.
“I know where we can find more than a napple,” said the Crow Girl. “What’s a napple? Is it some kind of cake? I would like to try the cake from wherever it is you came from.”
“It’s a kind of fruit,” said Zib.
“Oh,” said the Crow Girl. “Well, then, I shouldn’t like to eat that at all, and you shouldn’t want to eat it either. Come on, come on, both of you, come on.” She jumped back, turned, and ran to the edge of the stone circle, where she paused and looked over her shoulder. “Are you coming?”
Avery and Zib hesitated.
“This seems very unsafe,” said Avery.
“Yes,” said Zib. “But that’s what makes it improbable. Come on!” She scampered after the Crow Girl. After a moment, Avery followed her. There was nothing else for him to do.
At the edge of the stone circle was another cliff, this one high and sheer and terrifying. Set into the side of the cliff was a stone stairway, winding down toward the ground far, far below. The Crow Girl all but danced onto the steps, and kept dancing downward, toward the layer of mist that hung above the distant countryside. Zib followed more cautiously, and Avery followed more cautiously still, until they were like beads on a string, separated by great streaks of open distance.
The Crow Girl looked back several times, calling encouragement, but the wind took her words and whisked them away like prizes, keeping them from ever reaching the children. Zib watched the mist as it got closer, and the countryside as it began to form houses and farms and great flower gardens, hedge mazes and fields and other lovely, enticing things. Avery watched the back of Zib’s head. Her hair, wild and tangled and ridiculous as it was, had somehow
