She was still thinking about what she was going to do next when a pair of talons clamped down on her shoulders and she was lifted off the ground. Her whole body shivered, her skin aching to open like a wound and let her fly in a dozen directions at the same time, away from whatever had seized hold of her. She swallowed the feeling down and tilted her head back, looking up at the pale pink belly of the great red owl.
Oak returned her gaze, implacable as ever. “I am sorry for this interruption,” said the owl. “Your friends are waiting.”
The owl’s voice was steady and cold, and it made the Crow Girl’s heart hurt inside her chest, unable to decide how it should feel. She managed to smile, if only a little, and said, “Good. I was trying to decide which way to start looking, and now you can carry me there.”
“Crows are lazy creatures,” said Oak. There was something sad in the great owl’s voice. “You would have been better suited as an owl.”
The Crow Girl frowned, slow as sunset in the summer. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“No,” said Oak. “You wouldn’t.”
The great red owl flew on and on, until the fog began to lift, until the Crow Girl could see the towering tops of broad-branched trees. They were tall, twisting trees, made up of dozens of gently curving branches as thick around as a grown man’s leg, weaving in and out of their vast canopy as they formed a lattice of leaves and boughs and bowers, each one sweetly inviting. Oak flew on, and the Crow Girl saw the land appear around the trees, fertile and flowering, ripe with fields yearning for the harvest. Everything looked good, and warm, and welcoming, and for no reason she could name, the Crow Girl began to cry.
She was still crying when Oak came gliding into the canopy itself, dropping her into a nest woven from grasses and willow boughs before taking a place on one of the twisted branches, right between Meadowsweet and Broom.
“You’re here!” cried Zib in delight, slinging her arms around the Crow Girl’s neck.
Avery was more subdued. He waved shyly with his free hand; the other was occupied by holding tight to a piece of flavor fruit, a hole already gnawed in the rind.
And there, sitting a few feet away, in a small puddle of water that had rolled off her skin and clothing, was Niamh. She smiled at the sight of the Crow Girl.
“I knew they would find you,” she said.
“I thought we were looking for you,” said the Crow Girl.
“Everything is more than one thing, if you look at it the right way,” said Niamh.
The Crow Girl laughed, bright and merry. “Then here we are, and there you are, and we’re all together again! What a beautiful, beautiful day!”
“Together, and in the protectorate of the Queen of Wands,” said Meadowsweet. The great blue owl fluffed her feathers out, almost doubling in size. “We can’t stay here for long. We’re each of us banned from this place, for one reason or another.”
“None of them important now,” said Broom. “You made it almost to the border before we intervened.”
“So why intervene at all?” asked Avery. “We could have followed the road. We could have—”
“Your companions have not deceived you intentionally,” said Broom. “They have told you the truth as they know it, and if that truth failed to serve you top to bottom, side to side, that was less fault and more failure. No one can reveal what they don’t know. Please don’t blame them.”
“But deception is still deception,” said Oak, picking up the thread smoothly. “And the lie would not have turned to truth at the border. Did you not wonder why, when the Queen of Swords had promised you passage, that same passage placed you precisely where you didn’t want to be? Where you couldn’t safely be?”
“There are always obstacles in the Up-and-Under,” said Meadowsweet. “What is a journey without obstacles? A meal must have variety; a year must change its weather. But those obstacles are rarely so close to deadly. You have been tried, and tried, and tried, and every trial has been set with the sole purpose of slowing your steps long enough for your journey to be ended. Why do you think that might have been?”
Zib and Avery exchanged a look. Turning back to the owls, Zib ventured, “Because there are a lot of monsters in the Up-and-Under, and children are delicious?”
“She has a point there,” said the Crow Girl. “My old friend the Bumble Bear says that children are definitely delicious.”
“I don’t think people are supposed to be food,” said Avery. “Please don’t eat us.”
“They were trying to keep you from reaching the border,” said Oak. “The improbable road has one job: to go from wherever it is to the borders of the Impossible City. It doesn’t care about dynasties, or successions, or anything so trivial as who sits upon a throne.”
“It would have led you right into the guards,” said Broom. “It would have carried on without you, leaving you to face the consequences.”
“So the Up-and-Under has been … trying to protect us?” asked Zib.
“The Up-and-Under doesn’t care that much about you,” said Meadowsweet regretfully. “The Up-and-Under protects itself first, and its people second, and visitors like yourselves last of all. The Up-and-Under has been trying to keep you from knowing what you shouldn’t know.”
“If we’re not supposed to know this, why are you telling us?” asked Avery.
“Countries are curious things, and kingdoms are simply countries in their dancing shoes,” said Oak. “They think wide and long and slow. Sometimes, we need things to be narrow and short and swift, if they’re to come to anything worth having.”
“The Queen of Wands is missing,” said Broom. “She’s been missing for some time.”
“She vanished from her receiving hall, when she should have
