The Story Web

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  Donny blew on his hands and clapped them together. He never wore gloves. His hands were red and chapped. “You keep hitting them like that, and no one’s gonna stop you.”

  Lewis couldn’t help but smile.

  Donny blew on his hands again. “Figure skaters will be on the ice any minute.”

  “One more bucket’s worth?”

  “Make it quick. And keep your hand down.”

  “Sure thing, Coach.”

  He repositioned his hands. Slap! Slap!

  The call began in the center of the forest where the larger animals lived. Moose and Bear and even Bobcat pounded at the earth and raised their voices.

  The birds picked it up and took it to the sky. The crows proclaimed it loudly. The chickadees not quite so loud, but twice as beautiful. Finches, nuthatches, gulls. The pigeons took the task very seriously.

  As the word spread, the animals came together in the center of the forest. Eager squirrels and chipmunks arrived first, chittering away. Then the deer, who lingered at the edge of the group, keeping their distance from Fox and Bobcat. The snakes sent representatives rather than slither there themselves, while the newts were all too happy to attend.

  The nocturnal animals came last. Skunk, possums, the weasels. Raccoon paced back and forth. She’d been sleeping and woke to find her kits missing, all but one, who admitted the other five had gone exploring. She paced and paced even as Moose called the meeting to order.

  It took several minutes for all the animals to settle, and the quiet lasted only for a moment before their cacophony of calls filled the air once more. Each of them had an idea. The mammals proposed the animals work together to solve the problem themselves, leaving the people out of it. The rodents favored including the humans, and the birds took the side of the rodents, a strange coalition to be sure. Gull claimed to represent the sea creatures, though no one was sure if he was telling the truth or not. The insects, who were most abused by the humans, sided with the mammals.

  None of the animals trusted the humans, it was true, but many felt that the point of the web was connection. The two worlds touched in so many places, relied on each other so heavily. Wise Owl pointed out that there weren’t two worlds at all. Just one, and it was in danger.

  They decided there was one child who they could trust, a child born to a father who knew the power of story and the danger that awaited. If they could reach her, they decided, then she could reach the other humans, starting with the children. Children, animals knew, were more capable of understanding problems such as these, despite their sometimes sudden and random acts of cruelty.

  Once that decision was made, another followed. A strange one, to be sure. They chose their messenger, and the bird they chose was one no one had expected.

  Melanie Finch watches from her attic as the storm clouds form, stacking up one on top of another like someone gathering bubbles in a bath. Around her neck she wears a pendant, and she clutches it in her hand, warming the glass ball. It is her most treasured possession. Inside is preserved a beautiful peacock jumping spider. Maratus volans. The red, blue, and black of its abdomen shine vibrantly. She keeps it hidden beneath her clothes during the day, knowing other children will find it strange that she wears a spider around her neck. But in the attic, she unveils it.

  Warm, dry, dusty. It is where she goes when she needs to think thoughts too big for the downstairs rooms that are crowded with oversize furniture, glittering chandeliers, and portraits of people no one remembers.

  It is her aunt’s house, but the attic is hers.

  The attic has a circular window, like a bubble made of glass. That is where Melanie sits thinking her big thoughts and watching the cumulonimbus clouds loom bigger and darker.

  Behind those clouds, what?

  If she wills it hard enough, would they part and let the sun stream through?

  If she wills it hard enough, would she be pulled into them, into a wormhole back to once upon a time?

  She squeezes her eyes shut. Nothing happens except the rain starts to fall hard against her bubble.

  Thunk. Thunk. Thunkthunkthunk.

  She wishes she had brought her lantern. Not a real lantern. Her aunt thinks she will burn the whole place down. No. A battery-powered lantern that she hangs from a hook, since there are no lights in the attic.

  The sky turns purple gray.

  The birds hide themselves on the wind-free sides of the trees. It’s easy to feel bad for them, looking so frail in the wind and knowing the rain is coming, but birds do better in storms than people. They are small enough to take shelter by pressing against a tree trunk. Before the storm, they can trap warm air with their feathers and use it like a heated blanket so long as the storm doesn’t last too long.

  People, Melanie thinks, should evolve more. They should find better ways of protecting themselves. Before she can think on that too long, something happens that Melanie has never seen. The sky swirls into a tube and shoots straight down. Like something—or someone—is being delivered from the sky.

  Melanie has a wish for who.

  The wind rips leaves from the trees and flings them against her bubble.

  Oak. Maple. Elm. Beech. Locust. One after another layering up. The rain washes them away almost as quickly.

  Then, like someone snaps their fingers, it’s over.

  From up in the attic, way up high, Melanie sees the animals come out. They creep from the forest and the fields, from underground and above, looking around, all heading in the same direction. There are foxes alongside snakes, and neither seems afraid. Nocturnal skunks and raccoons step into the day.

  This is the moment that Melanie knows. The wrongness she feels, it isn’t just her. It’s something bigger. More than that, it’s time for Melanie to act.

  Across from the Museum was the dry-cleaning shop. Mr. Cleary stood inside sweeping. He was a tremendous sweeper. According to her father, he was also a boxer. He’d once pointed to the shop and said to her, “Someday, when it’s not too busy, we’ll ask to see his belts. He was the featherweight champion of the world, Alice,” he told her. “Folks said he was as fast and smooth as Muhammad Ali.”

  Alice had a hard time believing this story. Mr. Cleary had to send the mechanical belt around at least three times before he could find the dress or suit her parents had dropped off. Luckily their family didn’t have much cause to get clothes dry-cleaned.

  Alice figured her dad had a story for everyone in town. Maybe because they all had stories about him. Or maybe because her father was as good of a listener as he was a teller. He’d sit with people, hear their stories, and hold on to them the way Alice’s mother collected rocks from the beach.

  One day, Alice had tugged at his sleeve. “I’ve got one for you,” she said. They were passing the crooked mailbox of the Bird House. “Up there lives a horrible witch. She has three moles on her nose, each with a horribly long whisker. Her birds snatch people’s pets and bring them to her, and she cooks them into her stew. And—”

  But her father stopped her. “No, Alice. That’s not the type of story we tell.”

  “What do you mean?” Her cheeks grew hot. Her father’s voice wasn’t angry, but she knew she had disappointed him. Everyone told the story of the witch in the woods. Kids sang about her while they skipped rope at school:

  There’s a witch in the woods, woods, woods,

  She’ll get you good, good, good.

  Her birds fly high, high, high.

  They’ll get your eye, eye, eye.

  He stopped walking and looked her square in the face with those warm gray eyes of his. “Alice, listen to me,” he said. She leaned in closer. “You can tell a lot about a person by the stories they tell,” he said. He took her hand in his. “What type of stories are they? Are they full of wonder? Are they hopeful?”

  Alice watched her feet as they clomped along the sidewalk. Her father had told so many stories. Now that she was older, she was certain that most of them were untrue—like that Mr. Cleary was a boxer
or that Henrietta had been a spy. The ones about Alice herself seemed the most embellished: You were born on a night full of darkness, but when you arrived, you brought the moonlight with you. You came into the world bathed in silver, and I knew you were meant for something special. They were tales to make the world seem more beautiful, less awful. Even a simple story, like how he met her mom, he dressed up in magic. He claimed she had appeared in the mist of a city fountain like a goddess revealing her true form. Alice knew her mom was pretty and all, but she’d grown up in Maine and hadn’t sprung fully grown from a fountain in the middle of a Boston park.

  He always made Alice the hero. Or her mom. Or him. Heroes were important to her dad, probably because he was the biggest hero the town had ever seen. He always told her, “Most of all, you need to watch and see who the heroes are and who are the villains.”

  She’d thought about those words for years and years. She should have asked him what he meant. Heroes were heroes, and villains were villains. You didn’t get to choose. She would ask him now, if he were there. But he was not. He was far from her and far from home, and Alice was certain it was all her fault. Maybe that made her one of the villains.

  Just like that, her little town of Independence, Maine, turned gray again.

  She walked past the boarded-up library, turned onto Park Street, her usual route. As she did so, a whole aviary worth of birds took to the sky. Between their calls and the beats of their wings, the noises of birds drowned out all others. Then the birds, together as one, fanned out and headed for the forests on the edge of town. Alice covered her head as a pigeon flew in low, cooing all the time.

  She watched them for a moment, scarcely believing what she had seen. She wondered what had spooked them.

  She set back on her way. She’d cut through the new park they were building. It was going to be named in honor of her dad, a decision made before he’d gone away, and walking through it always made her feel closer to him, like they were inspecting it together, making sure everything was up to snuff. But there was a police car blocking the entrance. Its red and blue lights alternated lazily, and no siren rang out.

  Alice stopped.

  For a second, she thought, Maybe he’s back. Though her father’s reappearance coinciding with police lights should have made her frightened, her heart soared. Until it crashed. Stevie Tibble, the town’s only police officer, raised his hand in a wave. “Hey there, Alice. How’s things?”

  She walked toward the police car and Officer Tibble. “What’s going on?”

  “Microburst is our best guess.”

  Microburst. It sounded like something out of one of her dad’s comic books: a superhero, maybe. Or a super villain.

  “Weather event,” Officer Tibble clarified, as if he could sense her confusion. He ran his fingers over his mustache. “It hit here and bounced along thataway.”

  “Like a tornado?”

  “Not that severe.” He looked over his shoulder, then back at her. “Listen, Alice, I—”

  “Can I walk through?” she interrupted him, shifting the box from one arm to the other.

  He pushed his hat back on his head, revealing bushy eyebrows. “Sure. Damage is pretty well contained. Just be careful of the sea serpent.”

  Alice couldn’t help but roll her eyes. The sea serpent was a bench. That had been her dad’s only request for the design of the park. He’d once told her that sea serpents were the most misunderstood animal on the planet, even more so than snakes.

  “Are sea serpents even real?” she had asked.

  “Of course they’re real.”

  They were down at the beach early in the morning before anyone else was there. They poked in the tide pools looking for crabs. Some kids like Brady Sykes picked up the crabs and snails and threw them, but Alice and her dad just looked.

  “I saw one once. Right out there.” He’d pointed out beyond where the waves formed. “I’ve never told anyone before because people don’t treat misunderstood creatures like sea serpents very well. It’s better that folks think they’re imaginary or the next thing you know there will be hunting parties and harpoons.”

  “Dad,” Alice had said. “Be serious.”

  “I am,” he’d replied. “It’s the same thing with dragons, but at least dragons have some respect in this world.”

  Alice thanked Officer Tibble and stepped into the park. As she made her way over the soccer field and into the playground, she stopped short. A tree limb had smashed through the front windshield of one of the construction vehicles. Glass shards littered the ground around it. Farther along was the trailer that was construction central. It, too, had been the victim of a fallen tree branch: the whole roof was bent like a V.

  Then she saw what Officer Tibble meant. She ran across the field toward the bench. It had been tipped over, and the serpent itself was cracked in half. She ran her hand over its bumpy head and tried to fight back the hot tears in her eyes.

  She stood, gripping the box from Henrietta close to her chest. She wanted to run the rest of the way to the rink, to forget she had ever seen her father’s serpent broken to bits.

  4

  Slap!

  Alice’s body stiffened, and her left hand shot out. Instinct. She was like those dogs in experiments, the ones who started drooling when they heard a bell.

  Clang!

  She squeezed her eyes shut. She had to talk to Donny before the figure skaters got there. She took the bleacher stairs two at a time to the edge of the rink. Her body leaned against the wall. It wasn’t often that she was on the bench during games, but when she was, she was never actually sitting. She leaned against the boards and cheered on her team. Now, she leaned out and called, “Uncle Donny?”

  He skated over in the easy, casual way of his. “What’s up, Allie?”

  “Did you hear about the park?” she asked him. Lewis skated behind Donny, slowly, but she tried to ignore him.

  Donny shook his head. His eyebrows knit together. He had brown eyes, like Alice herself, with flecks of gold that seemed to flash when he was angry or excited. They flashed now.

  “There was a microburst,” she said. The word felt funny and wrong in her mouth. “Something happened. The bench was broken and the backhoe and, I mean, I think it was the backhoe, and—”

  “Your dad’s bench?” Donny asked. Flashes of red appeared on his cheeks, and she shrank back. Donny tugged his fingers through his hair. “Hey, okay—sorry. It’s just—”

  The cold air off the ice was familiar, like coming home, but it also pushed her away.

  Lewis skated up and asked if everything was okay. His pale white cheeks were slashed with red, and his breath came in quick puffs. He’d been working hard. Without her. She hadn’t expected it would be so easy for him.

  Alice looked at the box for his mom still clutched in her mittens.

  “There’s been some damage. In the park,” Uncle Donny said. He looked at Alice. “I’ve gotta get out of my skates.”

  He skated off, leaving Alice and Lewis alone. Lewis scuffed his blades on the ice. Alice thought for sure he was going to say something. Her body tensed. He hadn’t asked her why she’d quit the hockey team.

  Maybe he just knew.

  Maybe he knew that the ice belonged to her father. He was the ice king. She, much to her chagrin, had always been the ice princess. But what does a princess do when the king leaves the kingdom?

  Lewis didn’t ask her. He didn’t say anything, only followed Donny toward the locker room, and Alice was left alone.

  There was not an inch of that rink she did not know. She knew where the Plexiglas above the board had a wrinkle. She knew which planks of wooden siding had knots that looked like faces. She knew where her dad always had to go over twice with the Zamboni because something about that spot made the ice form with bubbles that cracked during games.

  The cold rose off the ice, filling her nose and eyes, making her weep.

  “Come on, kiddo!”

  Alice turned, and there was
Donny by the door. With Lewis. They all walked out together, back the way Alice had come.

  Officer Tibble had moved into the playground and was standing above a person who was crouched by the broken backhoe. Uncle Donny and Officer Tibble nodded at each other in that way grown men did. Alice found it so strange. Sometimes she saw the boys at school try to mimic it: just a little lift of the chin.

  “Figured you’d be back,” Officer Tibble said to her. Then, to Lewis, “Hey there, Lew. How’s the stick work going?”

  “All right.”

  “Has to keep his hand down,” Alice murmured.

  The crouching person stood, and a smile spread across Uncle Donny’s face. “Piper!” he said.

  Piper Hammersmith, the animal control officer, smiled back. “I’m awful sorry about all this,” she said.

  That was something else Alice didn’t understand: when people said they were sorry about things they had no control over. There were so many things to truly be sorry about that no one ever apologized for, but then they went and said “sorry” about the weather.

  Uncle Donny, though, ran his hand over his head and said, “Yeah. I’m glad Buzz isn’t here to see it.”

  Alice and Lewis both tensed.

  “I could certainly use his help with this. Although maybe you’d do. You’ve got raccoon experience, too.”

  She pointed below the broken branch. The group bent over; three small faces peered back at them, each with eyes surrounded by black.

  “Baby raccoons!” Lewis exclaimed.

  “Did the microburst drop them there?” Uncle Donny asked.

  “I’m not sure, but they are giving me the darndest time getting them out.” She looked at Alice and Lewis. “Apologies for the language.”

  Alice squatted in front of the opening, still holding Henrietta’s box under one arm. She saw the raccoons’ shining eyes and little else.

  “Hey there,” she whispered. She reached out one hand.

  The raccoons stirred, and one reached its paw out to her. She smiled wider.