Over the Woodward Wall Read online

  We will return to her in a moment. Let us look, briefly, to Avery, who stood looking at the wall with wide, offended eyes, waiting for it to go away. It did not go away. He reached out and touched it, snatching his fingers away as if they had been burned by the brief contact, and still it did not go away, and still it was between him and the school.

  If a wall where a wall was not meant to be was an offense, that same wall keeping him from making it to class on time was unthinkable. Avery looked in one direction and then the other, trying to find a way around the wall. There was none. It extended the width of the street, and across the yards of the houses to either side, stopping only when it reached their windows and could go no further. The only way forward was over.

  Slower than Zib, more hesitantly, Avery began to climb.

  When he reached the top, he looked back, not realizing that a girl he had never met before was doing the same thing in the very same instant. Together, they gazed down what should have been a street they both knew well, toward the place where their homes should have been.

  There was nothing there but forest.

  The houses were gone. The telephone posts and streetlights and lawns were gone. Even the street, where they had been standing only moments before, was gone, replaced by tree roots and broken ground and trailing ferns. Zib made a strangled squawking noise and fell, landing on the far side of the wall. Avery continued to stare, his shoulders shaking as he tried to deny the change. Then, with the calm precision of a boy who didn’t know what else to do, he swung his legs over the wall’s edge. Once he was on the other side, everything would return to normal. It would have to.

  The wind blew down an empty street, where there were no children with hair to be ruffled or jackets to be flapped, and where there was no wall to stop or slow it, and everything was ordinary, and nothing was ordinary at all.

  TWO

  OVER THE WOODWARD WALL

  Zib stared up at the sky, her head still spinning with the impossibility of what she had just seen. Her house, gone. Her mother, gone. All her toys and clothes and books and games, gone. She knew, in a distant way, that not all those things were equal—that some of them should have been more upsetting than others—but they were all so big and so impossible that she couldn’t start untangling them from one another.

  She would have to figure things out as she went along. She sat up, and discovered that her fall had been broken by a cluster of ferns the likes of which she had never seen before. Their fronds were proper fern-fronds, long and curling and almost mathematical in their perfection, but each one of them was a different shade of blue, from the color of the sky at midnight to the color of a robin’s egg in the morning. She had never seen blue ferns before, and she unsnarled herself from them carefully, afraid of hurting them.

  Avery, who had climbed down more cautiously, turned in a slow circle as he tried to decide what was happening. There was no street on this side of the wall. There were no houses. There was only forest, vast and wild and tangled in a way that the woods behind his house had never been. The woods weren’t his playground the way they were Zib’s, but they weren’t like this. This was … old, somehow, old and strange and not unwelcoming, exactly, but not happy to see him, either.

  Zib, shaking the last bit of fern off her shoe, cleared her throat. “Um,” she said. “Hello.”

  It was not the most remarkable introduction as such things go. It would, however, have to do. Avery turned, and the two of them saw each other for the first time. Avery looked at Zib, and Zib looked at Avery, and neither of them knew quite what to do with what they saw.

  Avery saw a girl his age, in a sweater that was too big for her and a skirt with mended tears all the way around the hem. Some of them were sewn better than others. Some of them were on the verge of ripping open again. Her socks were mismatched and her sweater was patched, and her hair was so wild that if she had reached into it and produced a full set of silverware, a cheese sandwich, and a live frog, he would not have been surprised. She had mud under her nails and scabs on her knees, and was not at all the sort of person his parents liked him to associate with.

  Zib saw a boy her age, in a shirt that was too white and pants that were too pressed. Her reflection stared back at her from the surface of his polished shoes, wide-eyed and goggling. His cuffs were buttoned and his jacket was pristine, making him look like a very small mortician who had somehow wandered into the wrong sort of neighborhood, one where there were too many living people and not nearly enough dead ones. He had carefully clipped nails and looked like he had never ridden a bike in his life, and was not at all the sort of person her parents liked her to associate with.

  “What are you doing here?” they asked in unison, and stopped, and stared at each other, and said nothing further. They were standing in the middle of a mystery. Mysteries needed to be explored.

  Zib turned to look at the wall. It was still there, which was almost surprising, given how many other things had disappeared. She reached out and tapped it. It felt solid, like stone was supposed to feel. The moss felt cool and fuzzy, like velvet. Every sense she had told her that the wall was real, real, real. But when she started to reach for a handhold, she stopped, suddenly overcome with the absolute conviction that climbing back was not the answer.

  Avery was not so calm. He gaped at the blue ferns, and then at the trees, which had leaves as clear as glass, as thin as the pages of a book. “Trees can’t photosynthesize without chlorophyll,” he said. “They’d starve and die if they tried. These trees aren’t real. These trees can’t be real.”

  “The wall’s real,” said Zib.

  “I said the trees weren’t real.”

  “The trees look pretty real to me.” Zib tapped the wall again before turning abruptly to Avery. “I have a dime and three acorns and a seashell my uncle gave me for luck, and you can have them all if you’ll climb back over the wall.”

  Avery paused. “What?”

  “They’re all in my pocket. See?” She stuck her hand into the rough pocket sewn to the front of her skirt and pulled out her treasures, holding them out toward him. “You can have them. But you have to climb the wall.”

  “Why … wait.” Avery’s eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. “Why don’t you climb the wall?”

  Zib hesitated before putting her hand back in her pocket, tucking her treasures away. “I don’t think it’s real. I think the trees are real and the wall isn’t.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense at all! We just came from the other side of the wall. If it wasn’t real, we couldn’t have climbed over it.”

  “So climb it,” said Zib stubbornly. “Climb it and prove me wrong, why don’t you?”

  “Maybe I will!” Avery turned to face the wall. His anger collapsed in his chest, replaced by a hollow place that felt a little bit like fear and a little bit like wariness and a lot like wishing his alarm clock hadn’t rung at all but had left him to sleep in and need his father to give him a ride to school. He usually hated those days. Right now, he would have welcomed it.

  The wall didn’t look exactly like it had looked before he had climbed over it: no two sides of the same thing ever look exactly alike. But the stones looked like they could be the same stones, viewed from behind, and the moss and lichen looked like they could be the same kind of moss and lichen, and who was this girl, anyway, to tell him what to do, to bribe him with trash and pretend that it was treasure? All he had to do was climb and she would know that he was brave, and clever, and right.

  All he had to do was climb and they would both know that walls didn’t disappear just because someone crossed them. Maybe the forest would feel ashamed of being here when it wasn’t supposed to, and fade away, letting the streets and houses and ordinary things come back. He tried to hold that thought in the front of his mind. If he went back over the wall, everything would be normal again.

  He reached out. He touched the stone. For a moment—just a moment—it was cool and solid and faintly rough, the way real b
ricks always were.

  Then, without warning, it was gone. Avery stumbled forward, into the cloud shaped like a wall, and watched in horror as it broke apart and drifted away, popping like a soap bubble in the morning air. There wasn’t even a line of empty earth to show where it had been, no, there were ferns and flowers and rocks and bushes and if someone had told him that there had never been a wall at all, he would have had trouble arguing, because the evidence of his eyes was so very, very clear.

  Avery put his hands against the sides of his face and stared at the place where the wall belonged. The wall did not return.

  “Guess you don’t get my seashell,” said Zib thoughtfully. She wiped her hand against her skirt and stuck it out toward him. “I’m Zib.”

  “That’s not a name,” Avery mumbled.

  “It is so,” she protested. “It’s my name, and it’s what my parents call me, and that means it’s as good and real as any other name. It’s short for ‘Hepzibah.’”

  Avery turned to look at her, hands still pressed against his face. “So your name is Hepzibah.”

  “No. That’s my name for when I’m older.” Zib had a vague sense that Hepzibah would always wear socks that matched, would never tear her skirts or dirty her blouses or climb trees just to see whether the squirrels had anything interesting tucked away in their nests. Hepzibah would probably like all her classes, not just math, and her parents would love her more than they had ever loved silly, grubby Zib.

  Zib didn’t like Hepzibah very much. They might share a skeleton, but they would never share a skin.

  “Names don’t work like that,” protested Avery. “My name is Avery. It’s Avery now, and it’s Avery tomorrow, and it was Avery yesterday. Once you have a name, it’s yours. You can’t just slice it up and use the parts you like.”

  “Can so!”

  “Can not!”

  “Can so!”

  A shadow passed over them, huge and dark and silent. The children froze, looking slowly skyward. There was nothing there. A nearby tree creaked ominously. They looked down.

  The owl that had landed on a branch almost even with their eyes looked back at them. A birdwatcher would have gasped at the sight, fumbling for their binoculars and bird book, intent on recording this remarkable moment. Avery and Zib simply stared. Avery, who had watched a great many nature shows despite not liking the outdoors, thought that it might be the biggest owl in the entire world. It was easily as tall as he was, with tufted feathers forming “ears” on the sides of its head that made it look even taller. Zib, who knew all the owls living in the woods behind her house, thought she had never seen a blue owl before. It was as blue as the ferns, banded in midnight and morning, with a belly the color of the ceaseless sea.

  The owl looked at Avery and Zib. Avery and Zib looked at the owl. It was difficult not to notice how long the owl’s talons were, or how sharp its beak was, or how wide and orange its eyes were. Looking directly at them was like trying to have a staring contest with the whole of Halloween.

  Privately, Avery guessed that the owl did not give away licorice or candy apples on Halloween night. Dead stoats and stitches were much more likely.

  “You are very loud,” said the owl finally. “If you must spend the whole day fighting, could you do it under someone else’s tree?” The owl had a soft and pleasant voice, like a nanny, and while there was a slight lisp to its words, both Avery and Zib could understand it perfectly. They blinked in unison, bemused.

  “I didn’t know owls could talk,” said Zib.

  “Of course owls can talk,” said the owl. “Everything can talk. It’s simply a matter of learning how best to listen.”

  “No,” said Avery.

  Zib and the owl turned to look at him. He shook his head.

  “No,” he repeated, and “No,” he said a third time, for emphasis. “I’m supposed to be going to school. I should be at school by now, not standing here arguing with an owl next to a wall that isn’t there.”

  “You’re right about one thing,” said the owl. “There isn’t a wall there at all. I don’t know all the names you humans use for the things you build, but I know what a wall is, and I know what a wall isn’t, and unless humans have started building invisible walls, that isn’t one.” The owl blinked. As its eyes were very large, this took quite some time. “Humans haven’t started building invisible walls, have they? Because that would be very unneighborly of you. Glass is bad enough. Invisible walls would be a step too far.”

  “Can you be next to something that isn’t there?” asked Zib.

  Avery glared at them both. “Don’t make fun of me,” he said.

  “I’m not,” protested Zib. “I asked because I really want to know!”

  The owl heaved a heavy sigh. “You’re children, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Zib. “Can’t you tell?”

  “Humans always look the same to me once they’re old enough to leave the nest. Hatchling humans are one thing, but the rest of you? Pssh.” The owl waved a wing. “All gangly and flightless and odd. It’s no wonder you cover yourselves with artificial feathers. I wouldn’t want to go around looking plucked all the time either, if I were you. But the two of you, you squawk and flail your flightless little wings, and those things usually mean ‘child’ when it’s humans involved. What are you doing here?”

  “We climbed over the wall that isn’t there,” said Avery. “Where are we?”

  “Well, you’re in the Forest of Borders,” said the owl. “The forest is very large, so that may not help you as much as you would like it to, but it’s where you are, and it’s where you’ll be until you decide to let your feet take you someplace else. You’re under my tree, which is more specific but even less helpful, since it doesn’t tell you where anything else is. Where are your nests?”

  “On the other side of the wall,” said Avery miserably.

  Unlike Zib, he had never gone wishing for adventures, and had always thought that he wouldn’t know what to do with one if it happened to come along. Now that he was being proven right, he found that he didn’t enjoy it in the least. This wasn’t the sort of right answer that was rewarded with hot chocolate and fresh cookies and pats on the head; this was the sort of right answer that came after a question like “Do you think it will hurt?” or “Do you know whose turn it is to do the dishes?”

  For perhaps the first time in his life, Avery found himself wishing he’d been wrong.

  “Ah,” said the owl, understanding. “Poor children. You didn’t know you were on a border, did you? And when you’re on a border, if you step wrong, you can find yourself in the forest.”

  “Can we step back?” asked Zib.

  “No, I’m afraid not. You’re not on a border anymore, you see; you’re someplace. The only way to get back to where you were is to find another border, one that crosses in the opposite direction.”

  “You said this was the Forest of Borders,” said Avery. “Shouldn’t we be able to find a border here?”

  “Good gracious, no,” said the owl. “This isn’t the Forest of Border Crossings, or the Forest of Getting Where You Need to Go.”

  “Do those places exist?” asked Avery.

  “If they do, I’ve never been there,” said the owl. “This is the Forest of Borders. When you step over a border without a destination in mind, you wind up here, at least until you go somewhere else. Where were you trying to go?”

  Avery and Zib exchanged a look.

  “To school,” said Avery.

  “On an adventure,” said Zib.

  “One of you might get your way, but I can’t say which one,” said the owl. “Maybe both of you will, and won’t that be an interesting thing to watch? My name is Meadowsweet. Do you have names?”

  “Avery,” said Avery.

  “Zib,” said Zib.

  “You shouldn’t lie to talking owls,” said Avery. “That’s not your name.”

  Zib glared at him. “It is so.”

  “No, it’s not,” said Avery.
“Your name is Hepzibah.”

  “A piece can represent the whole,” said Meadowsweet. “If the human child wants to hold up a branch and say it means the entire tree, I don’t see where it’s another human child’s place to stop it. Representative symbols are an essential piece of making so many things. Without them, we wouldn’t have maps, or books, or paintings. Peace, human child. Let your fellow be.”

  Avery crossed his arms, chin dropping in a sulk, while Zib beamed.

  “Now, then, we have more important matters to discuss, like getting you out of the forest and away from my tree.”

  “Why?” asked Zib. “Are we not allowed to be here?”

  “You’re allowed to be wherever you are, and I’m quite sure I don’t set the rules for either one of you, but there are consequences to being in places, and one of the consequences of being in the forest is you making noise under my tree and keeping me awake.” Meadowsweet puffed up, feathers standing on end, until the outline became less “owl” and more “dandelion going to seed.” “I would prefer to sleep, so you must go.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair,” said Avery.

  “Also, there is the small matter of you being eaten by wolves if you stay here, flightless creatures that you are.”

  “Oh,” said Avery, more subdued. “How do we get out of the forest?”

  The owl, who was kinder than she sounded—who had raised three nests of eggs to adulthood, and most of them owls in their own right, with the occasional gryphon and harpy thrown in to keep her on her talons—took pity. She launched herself from her branch, wings spread wide, and glided down to land in front of the children. “Do you have anything of use with you?”

  “I have a slingshot and some rocks,” said Zib. “And I have my math homework and a sandwich and an apple.”

  “I have my books, and I have the metal ruler I won last year in the spelling bee,” said Avery. He had never been able to quite understand why the reward for being the best at spelling was a ruler, which didn’t know how to spell anything, but it had been so nice to win a prize that he had never wanted to argue.