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 bricks 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?”