The World From Up Here

by Cecilia Galante

  I hoped that was all she was going to give us.

  The weather, at least, was on our side. It was a warm, sunny day. An azure expanse of sky hung over us like an upside-down bowl, and a light breeze brushed the tops of our arms. Silver didn’t seem to mind that I was lagging behind. She chatted easily, glancing at me over her shoulder every so often, as if we were just heading out to pick flowers.

  “I can’t wait to see what Russell brings back from the art studio,” she said, laughing. “A full-size Captain Commando for his room? I mean, that’s something I gotta see!”

  “Yeah, it should be cool,” I answered softly, hoping she didn’t detect the breathlessness in my voice. I felt guilty about leaving Russell, even if he was going to do something fun. What if we were late getting back, and he panicked? Or what if something terrible happened and this morning was the last time I would ever see him? I tried to remind myself for the millionth time that I was going up there to help Momma, but it wasn’t working quite as well as it had before. Now I was just struggling not to hyperventilate.

  “I didn’t really sleep last night,” Silver went on. “I was too excited. But I don’t even feel tired.” She glanced at me. “How about you?”

  “I slept a little.”

  I was being generous. In fact, I had lain awake for most of the night, fingering Momma’s tiny bird necklace, as if it might impart some kind of luck through my skin, and trying not to throw up again.

  “It’ll catch up to us later, probably,” Silver said. “Like when we get to the top. But right now, I feel like I could climb this mountain two or three times!”

  “Do you have all your interview questions?” I asked.

  “Yup.” Silver tapped her backpack. “Right here in the front pocket. When we take a break, I’ll go over them with you. You can tell me if you think they sound all right.”

  “Okay.” I still hadn’t told Silver about my plan to confront Witch Weatherly with the spell she’d cast on Momma. I wasn’t too sure what she’d have to say about something like that. As far as she knew, I was just going with her to keep her company. Which was fine with me.

  “Hoo-boy!” For once, Silver looked daunted. We had reached the thickly weeded entrance to the path up the mountain. “We’re going to have to start somewhere,” she said. “Let’s just hope we can find our way to Witch Weatherly’s place. You got your hatchet?”

  I dislodged it from the belt loop of my jeans and held it up. My hand was shaking.

  “Perfect. Let’s go.” Silver took a swing with her hatchet, slicing through a clotted mess of brambles. Then she did it again. And again. I was surprised at how strong her blows were, how cleanly the blade cut through the tangles. A few more swipes, and most of the vines had been hacked away. She stepped through the newly formed opening. “Oooo, wow!” Her voice drifted out from inside. “Come look!”

  I squeezed through the bramble hole, holding my breath. There in front of us was something that looked like it had once been a path. Much of it was obscured by dense foliage, and rotting tree branches littered the edges. But there was no getting around the fact that in the middle of everything was a very narrow, very deliberate walking trail.

  “You ready to do this?” Silver’s pretty face was already shiny with perspiration.

  Not in a million years. I nodded and took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

  We climbed for over an hour, making our ascent slowly, inch by inch, foot by foot. The air was thick with the scent of sun and wet dirt. Every so often, a sudden scurrying sound to the right or the left of us made my heart fall into my stomach. It could be anything, I told myself—maybe even a cute little mouse running for cover. It didn’t have to be a squirrel. And it wasn’t necessarily a hornet-head snake, either.

  Silver moved at a relentless pace, her arms swinging from side to side like some kind of machine. I struggled to keep up, but it was hard work pushing through the thick underbrush with a five or six-pound backpack strapped between my shoulders. A blister popped out on the bottom of my thumb, and sweat began to trickle down the front of my shirt. Over and over, we stopped to swing our hatchets at low-lying branches, or to clear blocked passages in the middle of the trail with our hands and feet. Five or six times, we paused to draw big red circles on the trees we passed, so that we could find them again on our way back down. By the time the sun had shifted position, Silver’s cell phone said it was 10:30, and I was so tired I thought my arms might literally fall from their sockets. I sat down on a rotted tree stump and wiped my face with the back of my sleeve.

  Silver turned around. “You okay?”

  I nodded, too tired to justify my actions. “Just want to sit for a minute.”

  “Thank goodness.” She plopped down next to me. “I was afraid you were never going to stop.”

  “Me? You’re the one gunning through this place! I can hardly keep up with you!”

  “No way.” She leaned her elbows back against the top of the stump and raised her face to the sky. Trickles of sweat gleamed against her throat. “I’ve just been waiting for you to take a breather. This trip was my idea. I don’t want you to think I’m flaking out or anything by complaining.”

  I looked at her for a moment. Was this girl ever going to stop surprising me?

  “Hey,” I said. “Can I tell you something?”

  Silver lifted her bangs out from her forehead, and blew a stream of air up through her lips. “Sure.”

  “It’s kind of weird.”

  “I like weird.”

  “Okay.” I hesitated, wondering if I was really going to say this out loud. It wasn’t like me to get so personal. Especially with people I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure of. Then I remembered what I had already told her about Momma. And how nice she’d been about it. “You know I have English with Miss Crumb, right?”

  “She’s the one with the squeaky voice and all the cool rings?”

  I nodded.

  “You’re lucky,” Silver said. “I have Miss Randall. She’s so old. And cranky. She makes all of us use the hand sanitizer outside of her room before we go in, and then when we leave again!” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, sorry. Go ahead.”

  “Well, every day at the beginning of class, Miss Crumb has us write in our notebooks. We have to answer a question she puts on the board. And a couple of weeks ago, one of the questions was if you could have any two wishes granted, what would they be?”

  Silver was quiet, watching me in that thoughtful way of hers.

  “So my first wish was that I could be a little braver.” I picked at the end of my shoelace, feeling self-conscious again. “You know, in general. I’m kind of afraid of a lot of things. If you haven’t already noticed.”

  “That was a good wish then,” Silver said.

  I looked up quickly, but there was no trace of sarcasm in her voice, no hidden sneer behind the soft look on her face.

  “I couldn’t think of another one,” I went on. “At least, not right then. But then I went to our history class with Mr. Tunlaw. It was the day that everything happened, with him getting stung by the wasps and running out of the room.” My face was getting hot, a light heat spreading from the bottom of my neck up along the sides of my throat. I pressed the backs of my hands against my cheeks, as if I could stop it. Silver was looking at me curiously, waiting. I cleared my throat. “I know this is going to sound weird, but when I saw you do that thing with the wasp, I kind of thought of my second wish.”

  “Which was what?” Silver asked.

  “Get to know you,” I said. “I thought maybe if I did, some of the brave stuff you had might rub off on me.”

  “I’m not really that brave.” Silver smiled.

  “I think you are.” I shrugged. “Braver than me, anyway.”

  “Maybe about some things.”

  I thought about this for a minute and decided Silver was just being nice. There was absolutely nothing I could think of that frightened her. She was brave all the way through, from beginning to end
.

  “Well,” I said. “Anyway. It’s kind of weird how things have ended up. You know, with Russell and me having to stay with you and Aunt Marianne. I actually think some of your bravery has rubbed off on me a little bit.”

  “Like how?” Silver pursed her lips.

  “Well, riding the horses,” I said. “I’m not in love with them or anything now, but I’m not nearly as freaked out by them anymore, either. And then the plane ride. Silver, I’ve been terrified of planes since I could walk. I never thought I’d be inside one, much less go up in one! And now this.” I looked up, staring through the latticework of leaves overhead. Bits of white and blue sky peeked through, like pieces of a checkerboard. It was actually pretty up here. Maybe even beautiful. “This whole trip. I’m still scared to death, but I’m here. I’m doing it. And I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have even thought about doing it if it hadn’t been for you wanting to go first.”

  “Wow,” Silver said softly. “That might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  Silver stared at me for so long that I started to get nervous.

  “What?” I said. “Why’re you looking at me like that?”

  “Don’t get mad when I say this,” she said slowly, “but sometimes I wonder if you’re really afraid of all the things you think you are.”

  I sat up a little straighter. “What do you mean?”

  “It seems to me you’re afraid of things because someone else was afraid of it first. Like the horses. Were you really afraid of horses? Or did you start to think you were because your brother said they had big teeth?”

  I opened my mouth, and then closed it. In fact, it was Momma who had been the one to mention that horses had big teeth. She’d argued with Dad the day he took me to Mr. Rawlins’s horse farm, the day I’d cried when I sat on top of Traveler. “No horses,” she said. “They could turn around and bite her with those gigantic teeth of theirs. Don’t let her get near them.”

  “And the day we went flying,” Silver went on. “You told me you’d never gone flying. Not ever. How can you be afraid of something you’ve never even done? Did someone tell you planes were scary?”

  Momma again. She’d decided to take an eighteen-hour train ride out to Grandpa William’s funeral rather than get inside one of those tin cans people call planes.

  Now, I shrugged. “Maybe. I never really thought about it before.”

  “It doesn’t really matter,” Silver said. “I just think you’re a lot braver than you think you are.”

  I bit my lip, considering this. If such a thing were possible, it would mean both of my wishes had just come true. Which, sitting on a mountain with a witch nearby, might have been a very good thing after all.

  Overhead, the wind stirred and leaves rustled. A shadow skittered across the path, and I glanced around quickly, scanning the ground for snakes, then tipped my head back, looking for the raven. So far, there had been no sign of either. But we still had a long way to go.

  “Are you hungry?” Silver asked.

  “Starving.” I smiled.

  We each devoured a peanut butter sandwich, two granola bars, and three cheese sticks, and drank a bottle of water. Then we got up and started along the trail once more. The air was much warmer than it had been, and I was getting another blister—this one on my left heel. I took a deep breath, trying to detect the wayward scent of smoke in the air. Maybe we were on the wrong trail. Or maybe the way to Witch Weatherly’s house didn’t involve a trail at all.

  After another hour, I stopped again, leaning against the trunk of a strange tree planted directly in the middle of the path. Unlike most of the other trees up here, this one did not have red or gold leaves. Its branches, thick with silvery blue needles, draped over us like an umbrella, and the trunk was gnarled and twisted. It leaned heavily to one side, as if trying to press an ear to the ground. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand, then checked my watch. It was almost 12:30. “How much longer do you think we have to go?”

  “Not sure.” Silver slid down along the base of the tree and squinted up through the branches. “I hope not too much farther, though. I’m really …” She stopped, her eyes roving over the expanse of forest in the distance. “Wait, did you hear that?”

  I strained my ears, but the only thing I could hear was the wind moving through the leaves. It rustled lightly, like sheets snapping in the breeze.

  “A whooshing sound?” Silver rose slowly to her feet. “Like sssshhhhh?”

  My heart clenched inside my chest. I turned my head to the left, and then to the right, praying Silver was wrong. And then I heard it. A noise ahead—something that sounded like a muted roar. The inside of my head felt light. Maybe Witch Weatherly had another animal besides the red raven that guarded her place. Something with big teeth and sharp claws. Something that roared when it knew people were approaching.

  “It’s coming from over there.” Silver turned sharply to the right and took off. “Come on!”

  My head spun as I struggled to keep up. Why did she have to race after everything? Why couldn’t she just stop and think first, for once? What if we were running right into one of Witch Weatherly’s traps? What if …

  “Holy cow!” Silver shouted, pointing at something ahead. “Look, Wren!”

  “Shining Falls,” I whispered, as the great waterfall slowly materialized in front of us. “It’s Shining Falls!” We stared down at the vast wall of rushing water spilling over the lip to a churning pool below us. Frothy gobs of foam tumbled across the surface of the pool. Farther out, the water settled into a tranquil circle, blue and cold, with a nearly opaque surface.

  “This is the one that people say Witch Weatherly poisoned, right?” Silver asked.

  “That’s the story,” I said. “Ray Bradstreet said there’s some kind of weird light that shoots up from the bottom. If you try to swim here, it paralyzes your arms and legs.”

  “So you’d drown if you didn’t get out quick enough,” Silver said softly. She stared down into the pool. I crept up next to her and looked down, too. The water itself was a liquid sapphire color, and so dark that it was impossible to see anything deeper than a few feet. Still, it seemed lighter to me at its deepest point, almost as if something was glowing faintly down there.

  “Over there!” Silver said, pointing. “Look!”

  I turned to the right just in time to see a flash shoot up from the bottom of the pool. It looked like a watery lightning bolt, but thicker around the middle.

  “And there!” I shrieked, pointing to where another bolt had surfaced. I clung to Silver’s arm. “Ray was right. It is haunted.”

  “Maybe.” Silver looked puzzled. “But it doesn’t really make sense. I mean, think about it. Light can’t paralyze a person. So how could …” She stopped talking, letting the rest of her sentence trail off in front of her. “Oh wow,” she whispered after a moment. “Oh man.”

  I froze. “What?”

  She stepped to one side and pointed. “Over there. Right between those two trees. Can you see it?”

  I looked in the direction Silver was pointing.

  It was a house, right across from Shining Falls. A real one, with a pointed roof, and a chimney, and a black front door. Something unmistakably red loomed atop the chimney, and a bulky form peered out from behind the front window. Maybe the stories about the lights at the bottom of Shining Falls were puzzling, but this was not. This was one hundred percent real. Someone was in there, and she was looking right at me. Through me.

  My heart flip-flopped like a fish on a line.

  Okay, Wren.

  I took a step back.

  You can do this.

  Another step.

  Think of Momma. Do it for Momma.

  And then a third.

  “Wren?” Silver was holding out her hand. “You okay?”

  It was here. The moment we had been waiting for. My whole body flushed hot and then cold. And before I knew what had happened, I turne
d around and ran as fast as I could in the opposite direction.

  “Wren, wait!”

  But I didn’t stop. I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, harder than I had ever run in my life.

  “I can’t do it,” I whispered, over and over again. “I just can’t. I’m sorry, I can’t.” I leapt over fallen branches, stumbling and sliding down the path. I even tripped once and lurched toward a branch hanging overhead, just barely managing to avoid landing on my face. But I kept going.

  “Wren, come on! Don’t leave! Wait!”

  Silver’s voice behind me only made me run faster, panic building in the middle of my chest like a growing storm. I forgot about her bravery rubbing off on me, and her interview for the history project. I pushed the whole reason I’d thought coming up here was a good idea far back into a little corner inside my head. I must have been out of my mind. I must’ve been insane.

  “Wren, please! Stop!”

  I felt like someone was squeezing my lungs, siphoning off my breath an inch at a time. Bare branches, thin and sharp as whips, slapped at my face and arms, and thorns jabbed under my pant legs. No matter. I kept going. I had to get off this mountain, away from Shining Falls and that house, away from whatever was sitting inside and on top of that house.

  The path veered sharply. Too sharply. Before my brain could register what was happening, I flew forward and landed in a heap of scrub pine. Tiny needles pricked my body all over, pushing into my soft skin like safety pins.

  Silver rushed up as I struggled to extricate myself. She was panting heavily as she grabbed my wrist. “Wren!”

  I tried to wrench my hand out of her grip, but she held on fast. “Let me go!” I screamed. “Please! Let go!”

  “Wait a minute!” Silver released my wrist, but only to readjust her grasp farther up my arm. “At least let me help you out of there!” She pulled me up out of the pile of scrub pine and clutched both my shoulders with her hands. “Are you okay?” she panted. “Are you hurt?”