“The Bumble Bear belonged to her,” said Zib slowly.
“So many things do,” said the Crow Girl. “I didn’t know it would be there, I promise that. There was never a beast of any kind at that bramble break before. The Queen must have heard us coming and placed a guard.”
“Why would she do that if she loves you?” asked Zib.
“Because she wants to love you, too. She wants to love all the children who walk the improbable road, to gather them close and keep them warm and safe and free from the temptations of the Impossible City, the allure of the alchemical aurora. She wants us to be wild and bestial and home forever, nevermore to roam.” The Crow Girl glanced around, suddenly anxious, suddenly seeming more like a wild creature than she ever had before, like the part of her that was human was less important than the part of her that was bird. She stepped closer to Avery and Zib, bobbing her head low, so that her words would be spilled only between the three of them and not into the wider world.
Avery and Zib found themselves leaning in to catch every syllable, not allowing any of them to fall to the muddy earth, to the returning road. These were crumbs for their ears, and theirs alone.
“I can’t fight what belongs to the Queen, for they are my brothers and my sisters and my siblings all, and she doesn’t allow fighting in her family; she judges it most harshly, and when she punishes us, it aches for years on end. So no, I couldn’t help you against her beast, and I won’t help you against any other beasts we happen to encounter, not when they belong to her. She would love you too, if you allowed her to, and her love would be everything you had ever wanted, and nothing that you needed. If you trust her, you’ll never make it home. You’ll never have your ending, good or bad or in-between, for all endings here belong to the Queen of Swords, and she doesn’t share. Be careful. Be cowards. Courage belongs to the brave and the foolish, and they are always, always the first to fall before her glory.”
The Crow Girl straightened abruptly, dancing back onto the glimmering bricks of the improbable road, a bright smile on her thin, hard-lipped mouth. “I promised you food! Better than a napple! Come, children, come, cowards, come, come, come!”
Zib, hesitant but hungry, began to follow, and stopped as Avery reached out and grabbed her wrist. She looked at his hand, tight and trembling, holding her fast; then she looked at his face, and nearly shied away from the wildness there.
“We should run,” he said. “While she’s distracted.”
“Where?” she asked. “There’s only one tunnel through the briars, and the Bumble Bear is at one end of it, and the other end is ahead of us, with the Crow Girl in our way. Even if we went back—even if we could go back—there’s nothing but stairs and a mountain to fall from, and a stone circle to shiver and starve in. The Queen of Swords doesn’t know we’re here. She doesn’t want us yet, she can’t. I need food, and a good place to sit, and something to cover my feet. Let me go, Avery, and walk. We have to walk if we’re to reach the Impossible City.”
Reluctantly, Avery released her wrist. “This is the wrong thing to do,” he said.
“Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t,” said Zib. “It’s what we have right now.”
She turned back to the road, the scattered, glimmering bricks all the brighter now that the Crow Girl had stepped on them and reminded them that they had a job to do. She began to follow it, making the bricks grow brighter still. Avery watched, trembling. He wanted to be brave. He wanted to stand alone in the brambles, to let the darkness come down around him, and to know that he was not afraid.
He was afraid. He was so very afraid. Something rustled in the brambles and he was running, racing after Zib and the Crow Girl, running through the Tangle until the tunnel of briars ended around him and he was standing in sunlight once again. He stopped, chest heaving, heart pounding, and looked around himself with wide, bewildered eyes.
The improbable road was no longer made of scattered bricks. It was shining and complete, stretching ahead of him in a pearlescent ribbon that wove between berry bushes and high trees whose branches were alive with birds he had never seen before and couldn’t name. The ground to either side of the road was windswept and dusted with sparse, sere-looking grass, like the fields at the end of the growing season. Zib was up ahead, plucking bright pink berries from a bush twice as tall as she was. The Crow Girl was nowhere to be seen.
Avery stopped in the middle of the road, scowling. Zib looked content, almost, like this was normal, ordinary—like this was the way the world was supposed to be, and not proof that something had gone terribly, horribly, awfully wrong. Roads weren’t supposed to glow, or to follow people. Flocks of crows weren’t supposed to turn into girls, and girls weren’t supposed to turn into flocks of crows. Berries weren’t supposed to be as pink as sugar candy, and somehow that was the worst offense of all, because it was such a small one. Everything else had been a huge offense, mudslides and monsters and boulders that talked and owls that gave advice. It had been like walking in a terrible, complicated,
