The Story Web

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  Then they were at the hospital, all bright lights and beeping machines. Alice had been pulled away from him, ushered into some other room.

  “You can take him home,” he heard a voice say. Alice’s mom. She was the nurse in charge of the floor.

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  “Alice is fine,” her mom answered. “Better than you, actually. You’ve got frostbite, my friend, on two of your toes.”

  “Are they going to have to come off?” he asked.

  She laughed. “No, Lewis. It’s not that bad.”

  Would he be able to skate? But that was a foolish question. Whether he could skate or not wouldn’t matter as the earth splintered apart.

  “Can I see her?” he asked.

  “I’ve got her set up in a room upstairs. There’s another bed. You can spend the night if you want.”

  His mom said, “Maybe we should go home. Your dad’s down in Portland tonight, Lew. The girls are home alone.”

  “The roads are truly terrible,” Alice’s mom told her. “Even Donny said so, and you know how stubborn he is. We can have a bed for you, too, Shiloh. We’ve got room in the nurses’ lounge.”

  “I want to be with Alice,” Lewis said.

  His mom smiled, but it was a sad sort of a smile like he had never seen before. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, we’ll stay.”

  Alice’s mom leaned over and kissed him on top of his head. “I’m glad you’re safe, bud. Buzz would be, too.”

  He looked at her, but she had turned away, gathering up his chart and his things. He saw his muddy pants and the blanket Alice had brought for him.

  Alice’s mom wheeled him down a long corridor and into an elevator. The pediatric ward was quiet with the lights dimmed. Lewis realized he had no idea what time of night it was. She stopped the wheelchair in front of a room marked Dingwell. His mom helped him from the chair.

  Alice slept in the bed closer to the window. Clutched in her arms was the book. The stupid book that hadn’t done them any good, but still she hung on to it.

  His mom fluffed a pillow on the bed and pulled back the sheet for Lewis to climb in. She kissed him on the cheek. “I love you,” she whispered.

  Then he and Alice were alone in the room. Ice pelted against the glass. This storm, he knew, wasn’t just weather. Worse than that, he knew he and Alice and Melanie had failed.

  4

  “None of this would have happened if she’d just taken some responsibility!” The voice jolted Lewis awake. He didn’t recognize it, and for a moment in that groggy state between asleep and awake, he thought it was a dream. Then he heard, “Someone needs to go up there and talk to her.”

  “Patricia, please—”

  Lewis blinked. The yelling was coming from out in the hall. He folded back the thin blanket Alice’s mom had spread over him and let his bare feet drop onto the cool tile floor. In the bed next to his, Alice slept soundly, her chest going up and down. Lewis tiptoed to the door.

  As he reached for the door handle, a booming voice echoed through the hall: “This is unacceptable!”

  “He’s right. Those kids went to her house first. Any other reasonable adult wouldn’t have let them outside. Not in this weather. Not with those animals out there.” It was Donny’s voice this time, not yelling but edged with anger. “But she wasn’t home. She didn’t even know they were missing until we’d already been searching for more than an hour.”

  Lewis opened the door a crack so he could look out. Donny was there, with Alice’s mom, his mom, a nurse, and Officer Tibble. Brady’s dad was there, too, along with some of the other hockey dads. Lewis figured it was Mr. Sykes who’d been doing the most yelling, a theory confirmed when he started up again: “Half this town out there looking for them! A thousand things could’ve gone wrong. What if someone else got lost? What if someone got seriously hurt? We’re lucky only Jimmy put his truck in a ditch.”

  Lewis realized then that Mr. Sykes’s arm was in a sling. Had he been hurt out looking for them?

  “What do you suggest?” Officer Tibble asked. He wore a sturdy-looking raincoat and held his hat in his hands.

  “Charge her!” Mr. Sykes roared.

  “With what?”

  “There ought to be something,” Donny said. “She’s that girl’s guardian, right? Isn’t that negligence?”

  Lewis slipped out of the room and made himself a shadow against the wall.

  “I’m not sure I can,” Officer Tibble said. “There’s no law in the state saying how old a kid has to be to be left alone.”

  “Can’t even question her?” the nurse asked. Her cheeks were pink. “That witch isn’t fit to—”

  “Patricia,” Lewis’s mom interrupted.

  Witch. They were talking about Melanie’s aunt.

  “What?” Mr. Sykes demanded. “That’s what she is. Living up there all by herself, not letting anyone in those woods. No hunting. No trespassing.”

  “None of that is illegal,” Officer Tibble said.

  “This town is a shadow of what it was. We’ve got animals in the street, and that Hammersmith woman won’t do anything about it. We’ve got people like Anastasia Seersie endangering kids, and you won’t do anything about it. I’m calling a meeting.”

  “A meeting for what?” Alice’s mom asked. It sounded like she was trying to hide the disdain in her voice, but she didn’t do a very good job.

  “A meeting to get this town back on track. A meeting to get that woman—”

  “I’m as angry as anyone,” his mom said. Her voice was quiet and sad. “She should have been there. She never should have let them go out into the woods. They could have—” Her voice cracked.

  “Exactly!” Donny said.

  “Who are you mad at, Donny?” Alice’s mom asked.

  “What do you mean? This is Anastasia Seersie’s fault.”

  “You were watching Alice,” Alice’s mom said. She wouldn’t even look at him.

  “So you blame me?” Donny’s cheeks had turned pink, his eyebrows knit together.

  Alice’s mom shook her head. Her face, her shoulders—her whole body slumped. “I can’t blame you. I can’t blame her. I can’t blame Buzz—”

  “Jo—” Donny interrupted, but Alice’s mom shook her head.

  “So you go up there with your pitchforks and you bring her in. What good will it do?” she asked.

  “What good will it do?” Mr. Sykes demanded. “It will let people know you can’t live that way, can’t avoid responsibility—”

  “She hasn’t done anything illegal, Alan,” Officer Tibble said.

  All the voices were so shrill, so angry, so uncertain. Lewis wanted to yell at them to just stop and listen to how foolish and scared they sounded, but then he’d be yelling, too.

  “If you won’t take care of it, then I will,” Mr. Sykes said.

  He had said the same thing about the moose. What was he planning to do?

  “She’s got a child up there with her. What happens to Melanie?” Alice’s mom asked.

  “Probably best for her to get out of that rickety old Bird House anyway,” Mr. Sykes said. “My kid says she’s as crazy as her aunt.”

  “Stop!”

  The voice came from behind Lewis. Alice. She still held on to the book.

  Alice’s mom moved toward her.

  “All of this is my fault,” Alice said. “All of it. It’s not Melanie or her aunt or Lewis or Dad or Donny. It’s me.”

  “That’s not true,” her mom said. Her arms were out and open, as if she wanted to wrap Alice up in a hug.

  Alice clutched the book more tightly to her chest. “I just want to sleep,” she said.

  “Me too,” Lewis agreed.

  His mom came over and gave him a kiss on the head. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, come on.” Alice’s mom, glaring at the men, put her arm around Alice and led her back into the room. Lewis came right behind.

  Their moms stood there for a minute or two as Alice and Lewis each got into their beds. It wa
s like no one knew what to do or what to say. Maybe that was part of the web falling apart, too, when people who loved each other couldn’t find the way to speak to each other. Like him and Alice.

  Their moms left, and the room grew still. Lewis thought Alice had fallen asleep again, but instead she got out of bed and went to the window. He stood beside her. There was nothing to see outside, not with the clouds covering the moon and the stars. “What do you mean it was your fault?” he asked.

  “I burned the cookies,” she replied.

  He thought back to the night of the social. There was a bake sale: brownies, cookies, that sort of thing. Alice hadn’t brought anything.

  “The smoke alarm went off. He—” She breathed in. “He didn’t mean to hurt me, Lewis.”

  Lewis gripped the windowsill in front of him. He couldn’t quite believe what Alice was telling him, but he didn’t say anything. He knew his job right now was just to listen.

  “He sent himself away,” she told him. “I wanted to tell you, but—” She sniffled in hard.

  “There were no words,” he said.

  “Not that I could find. All I wanted to do was disappear. So I did.”

  Lewis leaned forward. That’s what it had been like in the end. Alice had just faded. If he had reached out to her, would it have helped?

  He couldn’t go back in time, he knew that, but he could reach out now. He held out his hand to her. It’s funny, in all the years they had been friends, they had never held hands. Never run through the forest or down the beach with their palms pressed together or fingers intertwined. The closest they’d ever come was when they’d helped each other up, like if one slipped on the ice or if they were climbing up a big rock in the woods. They grasped hands like that—like a handshake only firmer. Like teammates. He reached out to her, and they held on to each other, tight as chains.

  The clouds parted and, for a moment, the moon shone onto a field behind the hospital, and there, sitting, waiting, watching, was a crowd of animals. Moose was in the center.

  Ice falls all night long.

  It falls in sheets that cover the earth.

  It falls like glass shattering, like marbles cracking, like her tears falling.

  It covers Melanie’s castle, the house everyone calls the Bird House but she calls home.

  It is happening, she thinks. The Freezing.

  In the morning, she cannot open the front door.

  Her aunt tells her to stay. To sit by the fire. To stay warm, to stay close. Just stay.

  But Melanie needs to go to find her friends. She knows just where to look for them. She goes where the stories live.

  When Alice awoke, Henrietta sat in a pink armchair at the foot of her bed. She was wrapped in a turquoise scarf and wore a purple fez-styled cap tilted to the left side of her head. Lewis was still there, sitting up in his bed and eating a bowl of cereal.

  “Look who decided to wake up,” Henrietta said.

  Alice didn’t answer. The ice still fell outside. She could hear it crackling and saw the ice crystals on the windows. She couldn’t see if the animals were still there.

  “I am taking you two home,” Henrietta announced.

  “I guess when my mom was sure I’d be okay, she went home to check on my sisters. She’s usually not a worrier, but there was a bad accident on the highway, and my dad couldn’t get up here. She didn’t want to leave them alone.” Lewis shrugged.

  “So she sent me,” Henrietta said. “And your mom has a couple of more hours in her shift, so, lucky you, you’re coming with me, too.”

  Alice felt her stomach drop. She had almost died, and the world was ending, but still her mom needed to work.

  So it was that Henrietta ended up bringing both Alice and Lewis to the Museum. Neither of them was very surprised to see Melanie waiting in the shelter of the locked doorway with Dare cupped in her palms.

  Once inside, Henrietta made them all cinnamon sugar toast. She wrapped her scarf more tightly around her neck.

  “That’s a beautiful scarf, Mrs. Watanabe,” Melanie said.

  Alice thought it was so strange, Melanie making this small talk while the earth was being covered with ice. This was not how Alice had expected to spend the end of the world. She had planned, in giggling games with Izzy and Sadie, more laughter, more dancing, more antics. Maybe she would kiss a boy. The world would be ending, after all. Instead they sat in Henrietta’s shop, Alice on an old chair from a beauty parlor, the hair-drying dome flipped up above her. Dare sat on her lap, eyes closed.

  “Do you know why I like scarves so much?” Henrietta asked. She held out the end of her turquoise scarf and rubbed it between her fingers. “The way they are woven. I like ones like this where you can see the strands.” She let it fall, and it fluttered down like a leaf in autumn. “Do you know what a text is?”

  “Like on a phone?” Lewis asked.

  Henrietta shook her head.

  “Like a book?” Melanie replied.

  “Yes. A book. Words on paper. Do you know what the word means? Where it came from?”

  All three kids shook their heads.

  “It has to do with weaving. In Latin it means ‘thing woven.’” She coughed. “In college, I studied classics. That’s the greats, you know, the ancients. There was a Roman scholar named Quintilian. He wrote about writing speeches, and he said, after you have chosen your words, they must be woven together into a fine and delicate fabric.” Henrietta smiled and rubbed her fingers along her scarf.

  Alice was used to Henrietta having her own way of saying things, but this was making no sense at all. “This is really interesting, but I’m not sure where you’re going.”

  “You weave a story; you spin a yarn. Athena was the goddess of literature, but she was also the goddess of handicrafts, especially weaving,” Henrietta said.

  Alice thought of the story of Arachne.

  “And war,” Lewis said. “Athena was also the goddess of war.”

  “Well, there you go,” Henrietta said. “That’s it exactly.”

  Alice, Lewis, and Melanie looked at her totally confused.

  Henrietta rearranged her hat on her head. Unsure what else to do, Alice nibbled on her cinnamon toast. She thought of her father. He was a storyteller. He was a soldier. And she supposed he was good with his hands. He fixed stuff around the house, and he was the one who always sewed buttons back on things and patched the knees in all their pants. He had gray eyes, too, just like the goddess. Was Henrietta saying that her father was like Athena?

  Henrietta stood up and began walking around the store. She picked up objects as she went. “See this chalice?” she asked, holding up a bronze goblet. “It came from a church up near Rumford. Imagine how many lips have touched it, how many fingers.” Next, she held out an antique iron. “People used to put these in a fire to get them warm and then they’d set to work. Imagine that? Imagine spending your time heating this up and pressing the clothes. Imagine the girl who did.” Next, she pointed at her strange purple hat. “This hat belonged to Eudora Van Eckles, original occupant of the Bird House. She was the wife of the mill’s first owner. That’s how things worked back then. The mill workers lived in town. The owners lived on the hill, away from it all. It was a marvelous house, perfect for parties. Oh, Eudora threw the most wonderful parties. Here, look, I have an invitation to one right here somewhere.”

  Henrietta dug through an old shoebox and pulled out a weathered piece of heavy black paper. You are cordially invited to a masquerade ball was written in looping golden script.

  “She spent most of her time traveling or throwing parties, but she could be very generous, too. She funded the first library in Independence and made sure that every child had a library card. She paid for dance lessons at the community center for any child who wanted them. She had beautiful flowers planted all around town. Then, Eudora went on a trip to England. She visited all the sites and spent days and days in the museums. She had a head filled with ideas for new artwork for her house—and a li
ttle museum for Independence. She wrote it all down in a letter that she sent to her husband, including directions to start purchasing the art and plans for the building. For her trip home, she was excited to be on the maiden voyage of a brand-new, state-of-the-art ship. I’m assuming you’ve heard of it. The Titanic.”

  “Oh no!” Lewis exclaimed.

  “ ‘Oh no’ is a mighty understatement,” Henrietta told him. “When the ship sank, it is said, she gave up her seat in a lifeboat. I don’t know if that is true or just a tale that’s told to make those left behind feel better. But the long and short of it is, she perished at sea. Her husband was heartbroken. He closed the house and moved to Portland and ran the mill from there for the rest of his days. The house was abandoned for years and years and years. That’s when the spiders moved in.”

  Alice shivered. “Creepy.”

  “Spiders aren’t creepy,” Melanie said. “They’re lovely.” She grasped at something at her neck, but Alice couldn’t see what it was.

  “Then, maybe thirty years ago, someone came along and bought the mansion from the Van Eckles’s family trust. She fixed it up and moved in. She wanted a place where she could see the ocean and where she could do her work in peace. She came to town from time to time to go to the library or the hardware store or put in her grocery order. But as the days went on, she came less and less. That’s when the stories started. People said she was frail or that she was sick. Those were simple stories, though none of them true. She was in perfect health. Then the stories about the birds started. People seemed to forget she was a scientist. What’s she doing with all those birds? The story changed: she was an enchantress, and the birds were under her spell.”

  Alice looked at her lap. She had believed that about Anastasia, too.

  “From there all it took was a little twist from an enchantress to a witch. People would go up and peek in her windows. Teenagers would go into the woods behind her house to scare each other with séances and spells. People left things on her doorstep.”

  Alice and Lewis exchanged a quick glance. They hadn’t meant to do any harm. The truth was, they hadn’t even thought about her as a real person living inside that house. She was a story. A fiction, not a person.