“I’m getting tired of cliffs,” said Avery, and turned, and looked up at what seemed to be the tallest, sheerest stretch of rock he had ever seen. Trees grew all along the top; one dropped a branch as he watched, and Niamh was quick to dart over and retrieve it. “What’s at the top?”
“The protectorate of the Queen of Swords,” said Niamh. “She and the King of Cups are unhappy neighbors, both quite sure the other is planning something. Although, I suppose it should be said, neither of them is wrong. They are both terrible people.”
“That seems like an unkind way to speak of your king,” said Avery, who had never had a king of his own, but assumed they were something like teachers, or fathers, in the amount of respect they were expected to receive.
“He is an unkind king, at best, and besides, he isn’t mine,” said Niamh. “The city beneath the lake is its own protectorate, and we answer to no king, having decided that ours was more useful as an eel many centuries ago.”
“An eel?” asked Zib.
“He’s very happy this way, and as he makes fewer proclamations, so are we.” Niamh held her hands above the pile of wood, which burst into vigorous flame. Zib made a small sound of wordless joy and ran to warm herself. Avery followed, more slowly.
“How did you do that?” he asked. “I thought you said you came from the ice.”
“Yes,” said Niamh. “I took the cold away from the wood, so all it had left was heat, and heat wants to be fire more than anything else in the world, so when it had the opportunity, it was very happy to burn. When you take something away, there’s room for everything that’s left to be bigger, if it wants to.”
Avery wanted to argue with this, but he couldn’t find the words. He joined Zib next to the fire. The warmth was good, as long as he didn’t stand close enough for it to burn him.
Zib was not so careful. Her clothes steamed with escaping lake water; her hair crisped and danced back from the flame, barely escaping being singed. It was offensive, almost, how careless she was being, when he needed her to get home.
Anger bubbled up in his chest, hot and poisonous. Sometimes anger is a good, true thing, because the world is so often unfair, and unfairness deserves to be acknowledged. But all too often, anger is another feeling in its Sunday clothes, sadness or envy or—most dangerous of all—fear. Avery was afraid of losing Zib. He was afraid of being alone in this strange place, and most of all, he was afraid of never going home. All that fear swirled together, until it hung around his heart like a shroud, weighing it down, turning furious and foul.
She reached out, like she was going to touch the flame with her naked hand. Something inside him snapped.
“Stop that!” he shouted, and pushed her, away from the fire, toward the edge of the drop-off. “You keep doing that! You keep acting like it doesn’t matter if something happens to you, but it does matter, it does, because if something happens to you, I don’t get to go home, ever! Stupid! Selfish!”
Niamh, who was older than she looked, watched with solemn, grieving eyes, for she knew that the words Avery hurled at Zib like knives were the words that he was secretly hurling at himself, the words that stabbed deep into his heart and opened wounds that nothing but time would ever start to heal. She did not yet know these children well enough to feel as if she were allowed to intervene, but could only wait, and watch, and hope that they would find their way to peace without outside assistance.
Zib stumbled back, horror and confusion on her face. Her hair drooped, weighted down with dismay. “What are you … what are you talking about?” she stammered. “I only wanted to be warm! I didn’t do anything wrong!”
Avery could have answered her. Could have said that he was afraid, that he didn’t want her to risk herself because he didn’t know what he would do without her. Could have told her all manner of things, true things, things that she needed to hear, things that would, by coming out into the open, have made them both better.
He pushed her again.
Zib stared at him, eyes gone huge and mouth gone small. Then she shuddered, like she was shaking away the clinging film of a particularly unpleasant dream, and stood up as straight as she could. She would have been taller than him even without her hair. With it, she towered, and he felt small, and ashamed, and backed away.
“Fine,” she said. “I don’t know why I thought you’d be my friend, anyway. You’re mean and you’re selfish and you’re … you’re narrow. You look at things and you think you’re the only one who knows what they’re supposed to be and that anyone who thinks different from you is wrong, wrong, wrong. But maybe you’re wrong. Did you ever think of that? Maybe all the people telling you it’s a forest are the ones who’re right, and you’re the only one insisting that it’s nothing but a tree! I don’t want to be your friend. I don’t want to do anything with you. I wish I weren’t anywhere near you!”
Someone laughed. It was a bright, merry sound, like the pealing of bells from a carousel calliope as it started to move, or the gossiping of birds on the first day of spring. It should have been a sweet sound—but there was something poisonous to it, something rotten. It was the twitter of a bird about to ram its beak through a toad’s skull, or the ringing of a bell attached to
