The Queen of Swords halfway rose from her throne, no longer smiling, no longer quite so perfect, for no one seems quite perfect when they are in a temper. “You must stop, or you won’t be welcome here any longer!” she cried. “I’ll refuse to keep you! I’ll banish you from my lands!”
This was a baffling enough series of statements that Zib stopped screaming and simply blinked at the Queen of Swords. Even her hair seemed to echo the question in her eyes, curling around her face in a vast cloud of confusion. Finally, she asked, “Is that meant to be a threat?”
“Yes! All the best things are here! This is the protectorate of winds and transformation, of spades and changes! My gales are the best gales, my storms the best storms, and you’ll have none of them, none, if you can’t stop making that horrific noise!”
Zib stood, slowly. “I’m looking for a lock to fit a skeleton key. I’m walking the improbable road to the Impossible City with my friends, and we want to be gone. Tell me how to find the lock and how to get back on the road, and I’ll leave, and you’ll never have to see me again.”
The Queen of Swords scowled at her. She was still beautiful. It is a myth that goodness is always lovely and wickedness is always dreadful to behold; the people who say such things have reason for their claims and would rather those reasons not be overly explored. But she was far less compelling without a sweet smile curving her lips and a delicate angle canting her chin. A hurricane can be beautiful. That doesn’t mean it would be a good idea to go dancing with one simply because it asked you.
Zib smiled, sweet as sugar candy, and opened her mouth, and screamed again.
The Queen of Swords clapped her hands over her ears. “Enough, enough!” she cried. “Stop that noise and you can have your lock, and take it with you out of my protectorate as fast as feet can carry you! I need beasts and better, not filthy, screaming children!”
Avery would have been hurt by her words. Avery didn’t think of himself as “filthy,” would have been shocked and horrified to realize that the label was closer to true than not. He was not a child built for mud puddles and brambles, and there was nothing wrong with that, for every child is built differently, and meant for different things. For example, to Zib, the word “filthy” was a simple statement of fact, neither cruel nor a reason to be ashamed.
“I took a bath just yesterday,” she said brightly, and held out her hands.
The Queen of Swords, nose wrinkled in disgust, reached into the shimmering folds of her gown and pulled out a padlock carved from a single solid piece of stone. Zib pulled the bit of bramble from her foot and walked closer. The Queen’s lip curled, but she placed the lock in Zib’s hands.
It was heavy, and cold, and exactly what they needed. Zib closed her eyes.
“It’s improbable that I found the Queen of Swords by accident,” she said, even though it was nothing of the sort, for the Queen had surely been seeking them since their arrival. “It’s improbable that she had the lock we needed, and it’s improbable that me screaming would be enough to get it.”
She cracked an eye open. There, glimmering dimly through the muddy ground, was a brick, and where there was one brick, there was another, until she could see the improbable road stretching out before her like a promise of something better yet to come.
Opening both eyes, Zib turned and curtseyed to the Queen of Swords. Yes, the woman might be wicked, and yes, Zib had been well warned that Queens were fabulous monsters, but that was no cause to be rude.
“Thank you for the lock,” she said. “I’ll find my friends and we’ll go, quick as anything. You won’t have to worry about us anymore.” Then she turned and walked quickly away, her wounded foot leaving smears of blood on the glittering bricks as she went. The Queen watched her with resentment and respect, for it had been a long time since she’d been denied something she truly wanted to have—but that, it should be said, is another story.
Zib clutched the lock to her chest as she walked, moving faster and faster through the shadows beneath the brambles, until finally she was running, running as fast as she could, leaves and tangled branches flashing all around her. She was still running when the brambles came to an abrupt end, and she found herself racing down the stretch of the improbable road that ran between the berry bushes, where they had first arrived. She knew that if she looked back, she would see the Tangle, and so she didn’t bother looking.
An adult might have bitten and worried at the question of how the land had twisted itself beneath her feet, chewing at the contradictions like a dog chews at a flea. Zib was still a child, and she accepted the change with simple gratitude. If anything, this way of doing things simply made more sense than going the long way every time you needed to get somewhere. Why, if the roads could bend to suit every person’s needs, there wouldn’t be any reason not to spend every weekend with her grandparents by the sea, and wouldn’t that be a marvelous thing?
So Zib ran, and ran, as a white owl circled approvingly overhead, as the Queen of Swords sat and brooded in her bower of briars, until two figures appeared on the road ahead of her. She found the strength to run even
