The mist, when they passed through it, was cold and cloying and smelled like lavender, like the sachets Avery’s mother liked to put in with the fresh linens. Breathing it made him feel faintly homesick. He wanted his mother to tuck him into bed and tell him he’d been a good boy. He wanted his father to clap him on the shoulder and call him “sport” and “champ” and “scout.” He wanted to be anywhere but here.
But Zib … ah, Zib. She would have told anyone who asked that she was happy at home, and she wouldn’t have been lying, because she had always been happy at home, in the same way a bird who has grown up in a cage can be quietly, unwittingly happy there. She had based happiness on the way she felt when she looked at the sensible, probable walls and went through the sensible, probable patterns of her days. Now, though, now she felt like she might finally be learning to understand what happy really was. Happy was descending a cliff with a new friend in front of her and a new friend behind her, and so many wonderful things to see, and do, and discover. Happiness was the Up-and-Under.
Bit by bit, the distance fell behind them, until they could see the bottom of the stairs. It ended at a wide tunnel made of briars and brambles. The Crow Girl made a sound of wordless delight and dashed forward, skipping down the last of the stairs and diving for the tunnel. She was almost inside when a vast paw darted out of the darkness, claws as long as dinner knives swiping for the Crow Girl’s chest.
This time, her wordless exclamation was less delight and more dismay. She danced backward. The paw swiped again, and the Crow Girl broke into a hundred black-winged pieces, exploding into the murder of crows she had originally been. They scattered into the briars and branches, cawing angrily.
Zib froze, and stayed frozen as Avery slammed into her, sending them both teetering. They stayed there, staring, as the great beast came stalking out of the shadows, and roared.
The sound was as wide as the sky and as deep as the sea. It echoed; it challenged; it set the hairs on the back of Avery’s neck standing on edge. The hairs on the back of Zib’s neck were already standing on edge, as was all the rest of the hair on her head, but her skin made up the difference, pulling itself into painful lumps of gooseflesh. The beast roared again, and it was like the world was shaking, no longer content to be a stationary thing.
As for the beast itself, it was a thing that befit its roar, which is to say, huge and terrible and strange. If Avery had been asked to guess at what it was, on penalty of being thrown to the creature, he would have called it some sort of bear, for it was hulking and shaggy and possessed of terrible claws and even more terrible jaws, which bristled with truly terrible teeth. Had Zib been asked the same question, she would have called it some sort of nightmare bee, for it was striped yellow and black, and its backside tapered into a wicked point, a stinger the size of a fisherman’s harpoon. They would both have been right, in their own ways, and they would both have been wrong.
The beast roared a third time. Then it coughed into one paw, fixed the children with a cold, calculating eye, and said, “You are trespassing on my path. What will you give me not to kill you?”
Avery did not consider himself a terribly brave person. Still, he knew a wrong thing when he heard it. “This isn’t your path,” he said, stepping forward, so that he and Zib were clustered together on the same stone step. “At the top, we saw the sigil of the Queen of Swords. She wouldn’t give the road that leads to her sign to someone else. I think you’re pretending to own something that doesn’t belong to you. I think the Queen of Swords would be very interested in hearing about that.”
The crows cackled with laughter as the beast took a thudding step backward, safely away from the children.
“Maybe that’s so and maybe that’s not so,” it grumbled. “Maybe this is her path, but I’m still a beast of the brambles, and I’m allowed to eat. So what will you give me not to kill you?”
“Nothing,” said Avery. “You’re too big to climb these steps, and we can just go back the way we came, away from you. You won’t be able to hurt us.”
“No, but you won’t be able to reach whatever it is you were trying to reach,” said the beast. “What will you give me to let you pass?”
“I don’t see why we should have to give you anything,” said Avery. “The road isn’t yours.”
“Perhaps not, but these are mine.” The beast held up one vast paw, flexing it so that its claws slid out, sharp and gleaming. “And these are mine.” The beast bared its teeth, showing them in all their terrible glory. “The Queen is often cold and often cruel, and she appreciates those qualities in her monsters. She will not blame me for following my nature.”
The crows in the brambles shrieked and cawed but showed no sign of transforming back into the Crow Girl, or of somehow harrying the monster away. Bravery has its limits, no matter what the world.
Zib tugged on her hair, which sprang right back into place when she let it go. “I don’t think you’re a monster,” she said. “You’re
