THREE
THE IMPROBABLE ROAD
Meadowsweet’s directions had not been very precise, not when compared to a lifetime of hearing things like “turn left on Main” or “three doors down, you can’t miss it.” Following a small stone through a tangled forest was difficult, and strange, and sometimes unpredictable. The slingshot was strong enough to throw the stones quite far, and Zib’s aim was good, but she wasn’t aiming at anything, only trying to send the stones away from the two of them with all the force she could. Finding the stones after they landed was hard.
But after they found the first one, the trees got a little less foreboding. After they found the second one, the shadows got a little shallower, like the sun had remembered it had a job to do. And when Zib reached under a fern the color of strawberry taffy to retrieve the third stone, she heard Avery gasp.
“I can see a road!” he shouted.
She looked up to see him running through the trees, stumbling over roots and slapping branches aside in his haste to get out of the forest. Fear washed through her, sharp and biting. He was going to leave her behind. He was going to leave her all alone in this unfamiliar place, and she was going to be eaten by wolves. She didn’t know him very well—didn’t really know him at all, except that his cuffs were too tight and he didn’t like adventures—but she didn’t like the idea of being all alone. No, she didn’t like that one bit.
“Wait for me!” She shoved slingshot and stone both into the pocket of her skirt and took off after him.
The edge of a forest is something entirely different from the heart of a forest, which only makes sense, really: an edge is a beginning, or an ending, and not a comfortable middle. Perhaps that was why Avery froze as soon as he was out of the shadow of the trees, shaking slightly, like an arrow on the verge of being released from a bow. Zib stopped next to him, raking twigs out of the wild tangle of her hair, and followed his gaze. She blinked, slowly.
There was a road. There was nothing else it could have been: she knew no other name for a ribbon of brick winding its way through a valley, surrounded by grassy, flower-covered hills, bridging narrow streams. But where most of the bricks she had seen were red, or gray, or a dull, disappointing brown, this road gleamed with iridescent rainbows, like every brick had been coated in a thin layer of mother-of-pearl. It was beautiful. It looked fragile, and impractical, and—
“Impossible,” said Avery, and his voice was brown-brick dull. It was the voice of a boy on the very verge of giving up. “This can’t be happening. It can’t be real. I’m asleep, I have to be.” He turned to Zib, suddenly frantic as he grabbed at her hands. “Slap me. I need you to slap me as hard as you can, so I’ll wake up.”
“What happens to me if you wake up?” demanded Zib, and took a big step back, away from his snatching fingers. “I don’t think I’m dreaming. But if you’re dreaming, and you wake up, do I pop like a soap bubble? I don’t want to pop. I’m finally having an adventure.”
“This isn’t an adventure!” shouted Avery.
A new voice rang out. “Ah, but are you sure that you’re the one who gets to decide that?”
The two children turned, Zib moving a little closer to Avery.
At first, it seemed they were alone on the shallow, grassy hill that descended from forest to road. The trees were there, and whatever lived among the trees—Meadowsweet, certainly, and wolves, perhaps, and all manner of other things—but trees weren’t good company, and the things that lived in them weren’t showing themselves.
There was a boulder off to one side, large and rough and glittering in the sun, veined in pink and black and creamy white, like a scoop of harlequin ice cream. It shivered, which was not a thing boulders were much known to do. It shuddered, which was also not a thing boulders were much known to do. Finally, it unfolded itself, like a piece of paper being smoothed out on a table to show the hidden picture inside, and became a man.
He was not a very tall man, being scarcely taller than Avery himself, and he was not a very fat man, as Zib could easily have linked a single arm around his waist, but he was a very handsome man, with sculpted features under a fringe of black-pink-white hair, and a smart suit that seemed to have been tailored from the stone that comprised his body. He looked at the children with interest.
“You’re not from around here, and if you’re not from around here, you must have come from somewhere else, and if you’ve come from somewhere else, you’re almost certainly having an adventure,” said the man. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you that, if you didn’t want an adventure, but sometimes adventures happen whether or not they’re requested. They’re like Tuesday afternoons, or headaches, or birthdays. They do as they like.”
“You were a boulder,” accused Zib. “Boulders can’t talk.”
“This can’t be happening, boulders can’t talk—tell me, does anything happen where you come from?” The man looked at them with unalloyed concern. “It sounds very dull.”
“Who are you?” asked Avery.
“My name is Quartz,” said the man. “As to who I am, that is an existential question. ‘Existential’ means ‘pertaining to existence,’ which I suppose means that asking for a cookie is existential, which means it’s a word with no useful applications, and you should forget you know it.”
“We know the word ‘existential,’” said Avery. “We’re not babies.”
“Ah, but here, at least, you are babes in the woods, or babes out of the woods, as it happens, and you don’t think boulders can talk and you don’t think adventures can do as they like, and I think that means you need a guide.” Quartz removed his hat and bowed, deeply. “At your service, for as long as the improbable road will keep us together.”
“The what?” asked Zib.
“The improbable road. I don’t mean to insult you, but do you know what ‘improbable’ means?”
“Unlikely,” said Avery.
“Is it unlikely that you know, or does the word mean ‘unlikely’? As it happens, both are true, so we’ll carry merrily on, or we could be here playing dictionary all night, and that doesn’t get us anywhere. Literally. We won’t move.” Quartz replaced his hat atop his head before indicating the road with a sweep of one hand. “Bricks made from sunlight on sand and moonlight on mist and starlight on water? Improbable! A single road that runs the length of an entire kingdom? Improbable! A city of untold marvels and incredible wonders waiting at its end? Improbable! So this, then, must be the improbable road, and if you walk it long enough, all your questions will be answered, for what could be more improbable than a happy ending? Of course, for you to make it without a guide would be…” He paused portentously.
Zib, feeling quite sure of herself, chirped, “Improbable!”
“Oh, no, child, no,” said Quartz. “For you to make it without a guide would be impossible, which is something entirely different, and far less pleasant.”
“There’s a city?” asked Avery. “Can we go there?” Cities meant adults, and policemen, and other people who could make things start making sense again.