The Story Web

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  How many other people had done things like that to Anastasia, she wondered. All she had ever wanted was to be alone, not bothered day after day. No wonder she never came to town.

  No wonder the web was falling apart with all these twisted stories twirling around. Stories that she had let swirl and steam and fester.

  Alice looked around the store. All the items that had become so common to her, she didn’t even see them anymore. All of them, every single one, had a story. Ms. Engle had said that books were only one way to hold a story. These things were story holders, too. What else, she wondered. People held stories inside them. Towns did, too, passed down from person to person, a thread tying generations together, a line from neighbor to neighbor.

  Like a web.

  Could it be that simple? Was that what the web needed? For her to let her story go?

  She turned to Melanie and Lewis. “Do you think it’s too late?” she asked. “Really and truly too late?”

  Lewis looked toward the window. Outside the icy rain continued to fall and coat the earth. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  Alice wasn’t entirely sure. The thought was still forming in her mind. “We did what the book said. We read the stories. But that was wrong.”

  “Okay,” Lewis prompted.

  “The web is still broken.”

  “It’s unweaving,” Melanie said.

  Henrietta watched them, holding an old letter opener in her hand. The handle was dotted with tiny emeralds that glinted in the scant light.

  There were the dark, untrue stories that people told again and again, not caring who they hurt. Then there were the stories that people didn’t tell but maybe should. Could it be that easy? Was that what the web needed? For her to tell her story?

  Of course, there was nothing easy about Alice’s story. It was the thing no one talked about, least of all Alice—where her father was and why. But why was it so hard to tell? Why did it get stuck in her throat?

  “Alice?” Lewis prompted.

  “What if we’ve been telling the wrong kinds of stories to the wrong people?” Alice asked.

  Melanie and Lewis exchanged a look, and Melanie was just about to respond when they heard the roar.

  Bobcat slinked around the outer circle of the animal council while Moose recounted the steps they had taken and where that had gotten them. The answer, anyone could see, was that they had not been successful. The web hung limp from the tree. Strands drooped into the icy mud. Time was nearly up.

  Crow cawed that it was already too late. He urged his fellow birds to take to the sky, to see if they might save themselves.

  Moose told him to be calm, that he was frightening the skittering mice and chipmunks.

  Bobcat admired Moose’s thoughtfulness. She herself was a very patient, thoughtful creature, skills necessary to be a hunter. Indeed, Bobcat had been carefully observing the proceedings from the start. She had studied, most of all, the children. Children, she believed, were ruled by passions. The girl had broken from her stupor when Moose was in danger, not before.

  Perhaps, Bobcat thought, more danger was needed. Perhaps, she thought, the children needed a greater sense of urgency.

  She opened her mouth and roared. The single word silenced the other animals: “Come.”

  The animals followed her from the forest into town.

  Pacing back and forth on the sidewalk was a bobcat. It stopped when Alice emerged. All the hairs on its ears seemed to stand up. Dare dug her claws into Alice’s shoulder. The bobcat let out a sound somewhere between a moan and a growl. Alice rocked back. The bobcat started walking. When Alice and the others didn’t follow, it cried again. Alice wailed back.

  “Are you okay?” Lewis asked.

  Alice nodded. This time, she understood the animal. “Come on,” she whispered. Dare gripped her shoulder more tightly.

  A heron emerged from the road leading to the marshes and ocean. Then a beaver, a skunk, and a red-tailed fox had joined the progression. Even the emu came along.

  They took up all of Minnow Lane. Cars stopped, and the army, for that’s what it felt like, marched around the vehicles.

  Alice knew what story she had to tell. The most important story she had. The truth. That’s what the web needed. That’s what would help her father. But she also thought about what her uncle had told her about true stories and honest stories, and as she walked, she thought about what she was going to say.

  They turned onto Main Street, which was lined with cars.

  A row of cars and trucks was parked outside Town Hall, Alan Sykes’s big white truck among them. Bobcat hissed at it.

  Together they marched up the stairs of Town Hall. Melanie and Lewis held the doors open, and Alice and the animals streamed in. Alice led them right down the hall to the big auditorium where they held square dances and elections. Alan Sykes stood at the podium, gripping it with the fingers of his good arm. “What we have in this town is a failure of leadership. Everyone’s been counting on Buzz Dingwell for so long, we don’t know how to do anything for ourselves. We’ve got animals running wild through town. We’ve got grown-ups sending kids into the woods. We’re building a playground when we should be creating jobs.”

  He pounded the podium with his fist. A group of men behind him chorused their agreement.

  “What we have here—”

  Roar! The bobcat interrupted. It strode toward the podium with its ears back, tail twitching.

  Mr. Sykes stumbled backward. He pawed at his waist, beneath his sling, his fingers fumbling over something.

  “People! People! Stay calm,” Officer Tibble yelled.

  The animals kept their steady pace forward with the bobcat in the front and the moose right beside it.

  “Piper!” Donny yelled from the doorway. He had arrived behind the children and the animals. He grabbed on to Piper Hammersmith’s arm. “Piper! The animals!”

  “I know!” she yelled back.

  It would have been funny, maybe, under other circumstances, watching the adults scramble about, unsure what to do.

  “Alice!” Donny yelled again. “Stay away from the animals!”

  But the animals were everywhere. Bobcat paced back and forth in front of the podium. Moose moved toward the rear door where he could survey the scene. Crow and Owl made lazy circles in the air while the starlings huddled together in the rafters. Baby Bear was fascinated by a bundle of cords near the door. The porcupine waddled, sniffing the ground for good eats. A snake wrapped itself around the legs of Becky Clancy’s chair.

  Alice knew she was safe with the animals. It was the grown-ups who worried her.

  “This is unacceptable!” Alan Sykes yelled from the front of the room. He lurched toward the podium, like if he could get back on the microphone, he would regain control. Bobcat, though, disagreed. It picked up its paw and swiped at the podium, toppling it and sending it sliding across the floor toward Moose, who bent over and prodded it with his nose.

  This was too much for Alan Sykes, who once again started grasping at his waist. It was so curious. Alice could not figure out what he was doing. Bobcat, though, seemed to understand.

  The animals are too large, too frenetic, too true for this space. Moose, especially, looks uncomfortable.

  All the yelling doesn’t help. Yelling like raising voices makes them more right. Yelling like you can make someone hear who doesn’t want to listen.

  Melanie scans the room for stillness. She finds it in her aunt. Anastasia is perched on a chair beneath a cracked window. Her face is drawn. She looks tired. She is tired.

  The stillness is shattered by the man—Brady’s father. He is thrashing and yelling loudest of all.

  Then the clattering.

  Then the bang!

  Then silence.

  The gunshot reverberated around the old room. It rattled the metal folding chairs. It echoed off the huge lights that hung like bells above them. The starlings lifted up slightly, then landed again in the rafters. That was the only movem
ent.

  Mr. Sykes stared at the gun, mystified. It was his gun that discharged. He hadn’t fired it. He’d dropped it, and it went off. The bullet flew the length of the room just above the floor and left a small hole in the cinder-block wall. A pile of dust settled on the floor.

  And then, chaos. Yells from the people and squawks from the birds. People kicked over their chairs as they started to make for the door.

  “Wait!” Alice yelled.

  The people still hurried toward the door. The animals moved to block them.

  “Wait!” Alice yelled again.

  No one seemed to hear her. At the front of the room, near the stage, was the old clock tower bell. It had been saved when the tower was torn down. She marched toward it and gave it a big shove. The bell swung slowly away from her and then, on its pendulum, swung back, letting out a low, heavy dong! Everyone, people and animals, froze.

  Alice stepped into the silence. “We have stories to tell,” she announced.

  The people of Independence took their seats. The animals guarded the perimeter. Alice looked at the crowd. Mr. Sykes had managed to gather most people from town for this impromptu meeting, even with the terrible weather. There were some kids from her school. Izzy sat in the front row, with her mom beside her. Becky Clancy clutched a stack of papers, probably all about how dangerous animals were. Brady sat near them, his arms crossed over his chest and his chin down. Ms. Zee was there in a seat near the back with Ms. Engle beside her. Mr. Cleary, Bobby Bixby, Sadie and her parents, Jimmy Roberge, Ashley from the Spaghetti Shed—she knew them all, and they all knew her. Uncle Donny stood by the door. He almost eclipsed Alice’s mom, who stood slightly behind him. She must have come straight from work. Piper Hammersmith had her hands on her hips, ready to act. Lewis’s mom walked in with Henrietta, who took off her hat. Sitting by herself in a chair below a cracked window was Anastasia Seersie, who didn’t seem at all surprised by the animals.

  Mr. Sykes, knocked out of his stupor, said, “Now listen here, Alice Dingwell—”

  The crow cawed at him, and Lewis said, “No, you listen, Mr. Sykes.”

  Alice looked over at Melanie. “You go first?” she asked.

  Melanie stepped forward. She wore the strange cloak and a hat shaped like a bell. Alice thought she saw Izzy snickering, but Melanie only smiled at her aunt and pulled her pendant out from beneath her shirt. The spider inside, long dead and preserved, shimmered in the bright lights. Melanie wondered why she had kept it tucked away for so long.

  “Once, a long time ago,” Melanie said, “but not so long ago that it can’t be remembered, a woman moved into the woods. She had all the things she needed in her house. She had books for reading. She had food for eating. She had the woods to explore. She had the birds for company. People wondered about the woman in the woods. Some of them said she was a recluse. Maybe she was a poet who needed solitude. Or maybe she was a wealthy old heiress who wanted peace after years of society life. As the years went on, the stories grew and twisted. Sometimes children chanted that there was a witch in the woods. But the woman didn’t mind, because she wasn’t around to hear them.”

  Some people in the audience shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

  Melanie continued her story. “She lived in the woods on her own. She kept herself hidden away. Then, one day, another tragedy struck. Amid this loss, a young girl arrived on her doorstep. Her niece. This girl was far from the kingdom where she had been born and where she had been loved. She was far from all she knew. The woman never wanted to be a mother and had grown quite accustomed to being alone. Still, she took in this child.”

  Lewis grasped Melanie’s hand in his. He did it without thinking, just as he had done the day of the lockdown, before they’d known it was only a bear. “The girl heard the stories,” he said, “because none of us bothered to keep them quiet.”

  Melanie watched Lewis as he spoke. When he finished, she said, “Each day she went home to her aunt, to the woman in the woods. The woman did not come down the hill to the town. But each day she made the girl cookies or scones with jam. Each day there were books to read and the woods to explore. Each day the girl was loved.”

  Anastasia clutched her hands to her chest as Melanie spoke. People stared at her, but it was not the way they used to: sideways and with a glare. They looked at her as Melanie saw her.

  Lewis looked at the hockey boys. They were all there—Mr. Sykes must have spent all morning calling around town. All of them were sitting together in a row with three empty chairs. One for him. One for Alice. One for Coach Donny. All Lewis had ever wanted was to be a hero, but he was realizing he knew less and less what that meant. Maybe being a hero didn’t mean you were always the all-star. Sometimes, maybe being a hero meant stepping back.

  The room stayed silent, and all eyes turned to Alice. Or maybe to the bobcat at her feet. Either way, Alice knew what she had to do. She had to tell the most honest story she could, but that didn’t mean she had to tell the whole set of facts exactly as they had happened. She needed to tell a story so that the people of Independence could understand the truth.

  She cleared her throat. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “There once was a mighty warrior—a giant actually. This giant was known throughout the land as Buzz. He had a younger brother—a very handsome and daring younger brother—who served ready at his side, and together they kept the land happy and wealthy in victory.”

  Melanie gave Alice’s hand a good squeeze, and Alice kept going. “Like all good heroes, he went to seek his fortune in foreign lands. There, a maiden stepped out of a roaring fountain. She, too, was strong and powerful, and they fell deeply in love. They had a child. The daughter wasn’t a giant. She was just a regular-size girl. He could pick her up in his hand, and he carried her from place to place in his front pocket.”

  Alice wasn’t sure if she was telling this story the right way. Her father had always felt bigger than life, more magnificent. She wanted people to know that he was all that but also a fragile, imperfect person. Just like everyone else.

  Alice’s voice cracked, but she kept going. As she spoke, she could feel the guilt lifting off her like balloons drifting into the sky. “He traveled to far-off lands where sand blew into his eyes rather than the wind off the ice. There he faced greater terrors than he could ever describe. The people there had never seen a giant before, and they set upon him with weapons and flames. They threw him to the ground. They plucked the whiskers from his beard.” The words spilled out of her, bubbling up from some place deep within her. It was like all the stories her father had told her were seeds now blooming into flowers. But it was also something else—something just her. Maybe she was a Story Weaver after all. “They tied him up with thick ropes and ninety-seven knots. They rolled him into the ocean. In the ocean he almost despaired. He thought his days were done. But then an image of his daughter came into his mind. He saw her waiting at home for him, alongside his fierce wife. He untied all ninety-seven knots, and the ropes floated away. He swam to the bottom of the ocean. He dug deep, deep down. He dug until he popped out of the earth on the other side of the world. He strode across the land, stepping from mountaintop to mountaintop, until he made his way home just in time to tuck his daughter in for the night.”

  Tears were starting to stream down Alice’s face, and it was getting hard for her to talk. Lewis took over for a moment, giving Alice a chance to catch her breath. “The townspeople rejoiced at the return of their giant. They held a parade in his honor. All this they did for the giant but not for the woman in the woods.”

  “What people didn’t realize,” Alice said, “was that Buzz had indeed met an evil sorcerer, not here in Independence but far away. The sorcerer put a spell on him. He was still brave, loyal, kind, and fierce. None of this had changed. The curse was that he could not tell true threats from false. Chiming bells and ringing alarms sounded to him like the calls of war. And so it was on one fateful day when his daughter was getting ready for a ball that smoke
filled his kitchen and an alarm rang out. He could smell the burning buildings and feel the heat of the desert. He rushed to save his daughter, realizing only too late that there was no real danger. So he put himself into exile. He sailed to Calypso’s island, where he now rests. But he will return. One day, he will return.”

  Donny squeezed the brim of his hat in his hand. Alice knew she had gotten something close to the truth. Alice saw Ms. Zee sitting with her hands folded in her lap, a thoughtful expression on her face.

  Lewis thought about stories, about who got to tell them, and what kinds of stories people told. He cleared his throat. “The giant and the woman, they lived side by side in the same town. Everyone made Buzz into a hero. That’s who I wanted to be. But I don’t know if I could live up to that, not the way everyone here sees him. I don’t think I could carry what he carried. I’d be so afraid of making a mistake—” He glanced over at Alice. “I don’t know if any of us ever really saw him as he was. I don’t think we see either of them.”

  “My dad always told me to look up at the stars. That’s how I’d know I was home,” Alice said. “Maybe home isn’t just where we are; maybe it’s who we are.” Alice thought of all those nights with her father, him pointing up at the stars. That was home. That was what mattered. She could almost feel her father behind her, urging her on. Be bold, he would tell her. She continued talking. “We tell this one version of our town, with giants and heroes who vanquish evil witches. But it’s not the truth. We have to be more honest,” Alice said. “We can’t hide things away, because that makes them seem scary or bad when they aren’t. We can’t pretend things didn’t happen. And making stuff up—we have to be careful with that, too.”

  Melanie nodded. “We have to think about the kinds of stories we tell.”

  “We have to,” Alice said. “Or else we shatter.” Melanie took Alice’s hand. The three of them stood without moving. The story was done. The crowd was silent.