Avery did not move. Zib grabbed him by the arm and dragged him with her past the Bumble Bear, into the sheltering darkness of the briars. They were well out of reach, and almost out of sight, when a voice spoke behind them.
“Wait.”
Zib turned. Avery did not.
The Bumble Bear, while still a beast, was not a monster; it was only a tired animal, looking at them with eyes that had seen too many terrible things to ever close peacefully. “You walk in the Tangle now, and the Tangle belongs to the Queen of Swords. I have threatened you, yes. I would have eaten you, had you refused to pay me, and I would devour you now, swallow you down in an instant, if you came too close. But I am an honest beast. I eat because my belly is empty, and I guard because I have no hive, no cave, only this narrow territory to call my own. The Queen of Swords will not devour you, but she will eat you all the same. Be careful, children. If you can’t be careful, come back to me, and I will swallow you, and we will be together always, and you will remember who you are.”
“Thank you,” said Zib gravely. Avery said nothing at all. The two children walked on, and the murder of crows poured after them, deeper into the twisted briars, until the Bumble Bear, great beast of bargains and barriers, was left alone once more.
SIXTHE ROAD RETURNS
The path through the Tangle was hard-packed earth, almost clay. It smelled of mud and rain and all the other good things Zib remembered from the creek, and it was soft under her stockinged feet, making it easier to keep walking even though her shoes were long since lost. She glanced nervously around, all too aware that she was surrounded by the sort of sharp thorns that were entirely unpleasant to step on, and kept walking.
Avery plodded, not speaking, not looking to the left or right. Zib stole looks in his direction, feeling dimly as if he, too, had become a sort of sharp thorn, something she could easily prick herself upon.
When the first of the glowing bricks appeared in the dirt, Zib gasped and exclaimed, “The improbable road! Why, Avery, it’s found us even here! I didn’t know roads could do that!”
The crows, which had been flying merrily all around them, began to flock together, becoming a twister of black wings and black feathers and wind, until they finally solidified into the body of the Crow Girl, who laughed and danced backward, causing more bricks to light up in the muddy ground.
“The road can follow you anywhere, as long as you’re following the rules,” she said. “It can find a feather in a hurricane or a bubble at the bottom of the sea. Two children and a Crow Girl, that’s no trouble at all!”
“Why,” said Avery, in a dull, soft voice. The word was not a question on his lips: it was a condemnation, a quiet statement of fact.
The Crow Girl cocked her head to the side. “Why what? Why is the road like this? The road goes everywhere in the Up-and-Under, into the clouds and down to the depths, because the road is for everyone, and something for everyone needs to be everywhere, or it isn’t really for everyone at all. A garden behind a gate isn’t everybody’s garden, no matter what the gardeners may try to say. No, it isn’t for everyone at all.”
“Why didn’t you help us?” Avery lifted his head and looked at her, as bleak as a midwinter morning. The sparkle, tame and tranquil as it was, had gone out of his eyes; he was a shadow of himself. “You were there, you were right there, and you could have helped us with the Bumble Bear, but you didn’t help us at all. You stayed crows in the brambles, and you let it threaten us, and scare us, and t-take things from us. You’re no friend at all. You’re a coward.”
“Everything with wings is a coward,” said the Crow Girl. “Even the things that want to be brave, the hawks and eagles and vultures and pelicans, they’re all cowards. To have wings is to know how to fly away.” She paused before adding, thoughtfully, “Maybe emus aren’t cowards. They have wings, but they’ve forgotten how to fly. Maybe they can learn to be brave.”
“Is that why you didn’t help us?” asked Avery. “Because you were afraid?” Angry as he was, hurt as he was, he could understand some of what it meant to be afraid. Avery was a clean, polite, patient child in a world where children were encouraged to be those things at home, but something entirely other in the company of their peers. He had never mastered pretending to be something or someone that he wasn’t.
“Oh, no,” said the Crow Girl. “Even a coward can harry and strike. Sometimes it’s better to be a coward. The brave rush in, the brave think they know what’s what and who’s who, and the brave get buried in soft green moss, with stones to rest their heads upon. I’m not a creature of stone or moss, though, and a coward can be careful. Cowards take their time. Cowards find the way that’s right, instead of the way that’s easy.”
“Then why…”
“The Queen of Swords made me,” said the Crow Girl. Her voice was soft, and simple, and sad. She looked at the children in front of her, wrapping her bare arms around her feathered body as if she thought she could hold herself in place. “She didn’t steal me from a hive or anything like that.
