The World From Up Here

by Cecilia Galante

  I rummaged through the backpacks looking for something, anything, to use as a bandage. But the only things we had left were a few granola bars, some cheese sticks, the bug spray, and Mace.

  “The sheet,” Silver said, clutching her side. “We can use that.”

  I grabbed the sheet out of my backpack and hacked at it with my hatchet until I had a long, straight piece. I folded it in thirds and wrapped the whole thing carefully around Silver’s back like a bandage. She closed her eyes as I turned her to one side, and grunted when I tied a knot over the top of the wound. Already, I could see faint spots of blood staining the material underneath. “Is it too tight?”

  “No,” she panted. “That’s good.” She lifted her right arm, exposing the section of wrist where she had wrapped the vine. “Can you get this thing off? It feels like a razor cutting into my skin.”

  I clawed at the branch, but it didn’t give easily. It was thin but wiry, almost like dental floss. “I can’t get it,” I said after a moment. “It’s too tight.”

  “Get the hatchet,” Silver said.

  I sawed carefully at the vine with the blade until the tangle finally broke. The skin beneath it was ringed pink and tinged with blood in some spots. I rubbed it with my fingers to get the blood flowing again. By then, Silver was shuddering, trying not to cry. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Am I hurting you?”

  “It’s my side.” Tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes. “Oh, Wren, it feels like my guts are spilling out. Get my phone out of the backpack. We have to call my mom. I’m sorry. I know I ruined the whole trip. But I have to get to a hospital.”

  I was already dialing Aunt Marianne’s cell number. I pressed the phone to my ear and waited. Nothing. I looked at the phone, but there were no bars in the upper right-hand corner. I shook it a minute.

  “No service?” Silver asked weakly. “Are you sure?”

  “I don’t know.” I dialed again, waiting for the phone to start ringing, for Aunt Marianne’s voice to come singing through the other end of the line. But the only sound I heard was silence. My eyes began to water.

  “Go up on that little hill over there, where there aren’t so many trees,” Silver said. “Maybe it’ll help.”

  I took off running and scaled the small hill on the other side of the path, where I tried again.

  Silver was watching me intently, still holding her side. “Anything?” she gasped.

  I shook my head as I came back down toward her. “There aren’t any bars up there, either. We must be too far up the mountain.”

  “Oh, Wren.” Silver let her head fall against her shoulder.

  I scanned the area around me desperately. But all I could see was miles and miles of trees and vines and rocks. The only one who could help Silver right now was me.

  “I’ll have to build a stretcher or something,” I said, stuffing the phone back into the pack. “There’s no way I’m going to be able to carry you back down the mountain.”

  “Back down?” Silver repeated. “Wren, do you know how far up we are? It would take us another three hours to get back down. And by then it’ll be dark.”

  “Well, what are we going to do?” I asked. “I can’t just leave you here.”

  “We have to go to Witch Weatherly’s. If she can’t help us, we can at least use her phone.”

  I stared at her, a ladybug of fear crawling inside the pit of my stomach.

  “Wren,” Silver said, as if anticipating my argument. “We were going there anyway. Besides, there’s no other way. She’s right up there. Behind Shining Falls. We saw her house. We can get up there in ten minutes.”

  I swallowed hard. Why was I still balking? Twenty minutes ago, I’d been trudging up this very trail for this very purpose. Was there some part of me that really believed we weren’t actually going to go through with it, even though we’d gotten so close and come so far?

  “Wren.” Silver’s tone was all business now. “You know how you said you wanted some of my brave stuff to rub off on you?”

  I nodded, not wanting to hear what she was going to say next.

  “Well, the only thing I know about being brave is that it includes being scared. You’re scared and you do it anyway. That’s what I do. Now, come on. Help me up. We have to go.”

  It occurred to me then that Silver might still be scared of Witch Weatherly, too. And that, despite her fear, she had no intention of turning back. If she could do it, then so could I.

  I squatted down next to her and put my hand on her knee. “Are you sure you can walk if you lean on me?”

  “Yes,” Silver said grimly.

  I helped her up, positioning her arm over my shoulders. She kept her free hand pressed tightly against her injury, as if something inside might fall out if she didn’t. “We’re going to have to go slow,” she said. “I’m serious. It hurts like a you-know-what.”

  “What’s a you-know-what?”

  “The worst word you can think of,” Silver said. “Like in the entire universe.”

  “Oh.” I helped her take a step forward. “You mean like a blankety-blank?”

  Silver giggled. But it came out weird, the pain still audible in her voice. “Exactly,” she said. “A blankety-blank. Times one hundred.”

  The sun looked like an electric tennis ball hovering midway in the sky. Shadows were beginning to lengthen, and the light was as pale as sand. Silver and I had been walking for over twenty minutes, but we’d only made it halfway to the falls. It was difficult to move, trying to manage the weight of her and both backpacks, without losing my balance. Still, it was obvious that Silver was having a harder time. Every ten steps or so, she would bend over, clutching my shoulder with her fingers and gasp. The muscles in her neck stood out like ropes, and sweat leaked down the bridge of her nose.

  “Silver,” I said as we stopped yet again so that she could catch her breath. “This is too hard for you. Sit here. I’ll go by myself.”

  “No.” Silver clutched at me. “Don’t leave me here alone. I’m going with you. I can do it. Besides, we’re almost there.”

  “Okay.” I looked at her out of the corner of my eye as we continued on. Since when did Silver not want to be left alone anywhere?

  Inch by inch, we plowed ahead, Shining Falls roaring in the distance with each step. Another quarter mile, and we would be in front of Witch Weatherly’s house.

  “Tell me something about you that I don’t know,” Silver said.

  “What?”

  “Just to take my mind off things for a minute.” She stopped again, closed her eyes, and inhaled. Her whole body trembled.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Anything,” Silver said. “Like how about your friends?”

  “My friends?”

  “Yeah, you know. Those two girls you always sit with at lunch. Isn’t one of them named Dora or something?”

  “Nora,” I corrected her.

  “Yeah, Nora. And who’s the other one?”

  “Cassie.”

  Silver wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist. “Tell me about them.”

  “There’s not really much to tell.”

  “Have you known them a long time?”

  “No. Just since last year.”

  “Oh.” Silver’s forehead furrowed. “Well, are they your best friends?”

  “They’re not even my good friends,” I said. “They never were.”

  Now Silver stopped, still breathing hard. “So why do you sit with them at lunch every day?”

  “Because it’s better than sitting alone.” I shrugged, embarrassed. “Stupid, right?”

  Silver was still looking at me, but with an expression I could not read. “No,” she said. “It’s not stupid at all. Why do you think I sit with all those idiotic boys all the time?”

  “What do you mean, idiotic? They’re the most popular boys in the whole school. And they’re crazy about you!”

  Silver rolled her eyes. “Well, I’m not crazy about them. If you want to know the truth,
they drive me nuts. Especially Jeremy. He has, like, no boundaries. I can’t stand people who think they can just do and say whatever they want because they’re popular. It’s so dumb.”

  “So then why don’t you sit somewhere else?”

  Silver seemed to think about this for a moment, her teeth working her bottom lip. “I guess ’cause no one else has ever asked me. And, like you said, sitting with someone—even if you don’t like them very much—is better than sitting alone.”

  I wasn’t sure if anything else Silver said just then would have surprised me more.

  Except for what she said next.

  “Oh, there it is!”

  I looked up. There, like a mirage, was Witch Weatherly’s house shimmering faintly between the trees again. I stopped walking and stared up at the chimney. The red shape we’d seen before was gone, vanished like smoke. I glanced around fearfully, peering to the right and then the left, but there was no sign of the terrible bird. I kept looking around. The trees around the house were dense, but not so dense that I would not be able to make out a sudden flash of red when it came out from wherever it was hiding.

  “Wren?” Silver whispered. “What are you doing?”

  “Just looking.” My voice was a squeak.

  Silver gestured toward the front door with a nod of her head. “She’s probably inside. Don’t you think?”

  “Yeah.” I turned my attention back to the house. It somehow looked smaller than it had before; the pointed roof wasn’t quite so high, the front window not as wide as I’d first thought. A drooping chimney sat atop the roof, but no smoke curled its way from the inside. The siding was a mess of peeling paint, and a bedraggled line of purple flowers edged the ground next to the front steps.

  I could feel Silver looking at me. “You ready?” she whispered.

  There was no magic moment then. No rush of courage filled the inside of my chest, and my heart did not slow down from its rapid-fire beating, not even a little bit. This bravery thing was crazy, and still—despite everything I was learning about it—probably the scariest thing in the world.

  “Yes,” I heard myself say. “Let’s go.”

  The back of Shining Falls was less than two hundred feet from the front of Witch Weatherly’s house, which meant that her “front yard,” which consisted of an enormous circular patch of overgrown grass, a few large boulders, and an old, rotting tree stump, stood in between the two. A walking path wound its way through the grass to the front door, and on either side of the house, hundreds of different plants, all in various states of bloom, had been planted. Tall yellow stalks edged the perimeter, while shorter, purple thistle clumped inside. There were blue, bell-shaped flowers hanging off thick green stems, and gigantic white orbs, big as snowballs, hovering atop slender stalks. A scent unlike anything I’d ever smelled before lingered in the air: something like lemon and wood smoke, and maybe a little bit of gasoline, too.

  The slats on Witch Weatherly’s bottom step made a squeaking sound as Silver collapsed down on it. Her hand was still pressed against her side, and the blue tinge around her lips had gotten darker. I wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, but I knew it couldn’t be good. I angled my way around her, stepping carefully around a few loose pieces of timber scattered next to the railing. A stool with two broken legs lay on its side, and some of the floorboards on the porch were rotting at one end. I took a step closer to the door and held my breath. The inside of my mouth was so dry that when I swallowed, nothing happened.

  “Okay,” I whispered. “Here goes.” I held my breath.

  I knocked twice and took a step back.

  “Maybe you should knock a little louder,” Silver said. “She probably can’t hear very well.”

  I knew Silver was in terrible pain, but the nonchalance in her voice was irritating me. She wasn’t the one up here knocking. She wasn’t the one Witch Weatherly would see first when she flung open the door, the one whose throat she would lunge at, maybe with the red raven on her shoulder.

  “Wren,” Silver said.

  I knocked again, a little louder this time, and brought the front of my T-shirt up over my mouth in case a scream decided to emerge without my permission. The doorknob was a dull black thing that looked as if it might fall off, but it did not move. Not even an inch. The only sound was the fleeting chirp of crickets somewhere, and the thunderous roar of the falls in the distance.

  Finally, I turned around. “Now what?”

  “Look in the window,” Silver said. “See if you can see anything inside.”

  I crept over to the windowpane, my heart thrumming in my chest. The odd shape I’d seen before was gone, but the glass was dirty, the edges smudged with years of grime and soot. I cupped my hands over my eyes and peered inside. A large room, neatly kept, was spread out before me. There was a small fireplace with a wrought-iron stove inside, a wooden, rectangular table pushed up against the wall next to it, and in the corner, a narrow twin bed. Nothing else. No person. No bird. Nothing.

  “It’s empty,” I breathed, stepping back away from the window. “At least as far as I can see.”

  Silver dropped her head into her hands and leaned to the side until she was propped up against the porch railing. “How about a phone?” she moaned. “Can you see a phone?”

  “Silver, I’m telling you …”

  “Wren, please! Just look one more time!”

  I stepped back over to the window and peered back inside. This time, I looked more slowly. There were a few random objects on top of a mantelpiece, but none of them looked like a phone. On the table next to the fireplace was a plate, empty except for a few crumbs, and something that looked like a pair of glasses.

  Glasses? Witch Weatherly wore glasses?

  The bed in the corner was neatly made, but empty, too. No TV or bedside table. No phone.

  “Anything?” Silver asked.

  I started to answer when a faint scratching noise on the side of the house made my skin prickle. The flash of red emerged so quickly from around the corner that I didn’t have time to scream. Instead, I lunged backward, nearly tripping over Silver, and then scrambled to the other side of the porch on my hands and feet as the form materialized in front of me.

  “The raven!” I screamed, finding my voice. The red thing bobbed out farther from the side of the house, hovering now, its wings spread wide. “It’s the bird! The raven!” I grabbed on to the railing, and clung to it, burying my face inside my arms. If it was going to come after me, I would not let it near my eyes. No matter what.

  A strange sound emerged from behind me, softly at first, and then getting louder. It was Silver. She was struggling to breathe, fighting for her life against an animal that would maim her already-injured self in the worst way possible. I had to help her. I lifted my head and then screamed again as a sound like a whoosh of air burst out behind me. It was followed by the sudden flapping of wings, and then a slapping noise. “Wren!” Silver gasped. “Look!”

  “Cover your eyes, Silver!” I shrieked. “Duck your head!”

  “No!” Silver made the odd sound again. It almost sounded as if she was laughing. But it was a weird sort of laugh, mixed in with pain and breathlessness, and a little bit of amazement, too. “Look, Wren! You have to see this!”

  I lifted my head a quarter of an inch and peeked out from under one arm. Silver was holding something in her hand, tugging on it, and staring up at the sky. What was this crazy girl doing now? First wasps, then hornet-head snakes. She wasn’t going to be foolish enough to try to pacify a killer raven now, was she?

  I followed her gaze with fearful eyes, my breath coming in raspy spurts, and then sat all the way up.

  It couldn’t be.

  There was just no way.

  Silver glanced over her shoulder at me and made the weird laugh sound again. “Look, Wren! It’s a kite! Help me! I can’t hold on to it!” She tugged again at the string in her hands, and the bright red shape danced overhead, a tattered flag swooping and fluttering in between the br
ush of trees.

  “What are you doing?” I cried.

  “It’s her kite!” Silver yelled. “I don’t want it to fly off! Help me!”

  I rushed over and grabbed the string above Silver’s hands, pulling with all my might, until the enormous red kite gave up suddenly and collapsed to the ground in front of us. It skittered once, flapping against the ground, and then lay still. I stood there for a minute, just staring at it, not quite sure whether or not to believe my eyes.

  It was obviously old, taped and retaped again in some parts, the once vibrant hue now a faded rose color. The edges were worn and tattered, the long tail of it split and whippet-thin from use. But the most peculiar part of all was the outline of hundreds of feathers that had been painted on the sides. In the front, where the ends came together in a little triangle, were two eyes and a beak, painted roughly on the thin canvas.

  One by one, my fingers relaxed their hold on the string. This was Witch Weatherly’s deadly red raven? The one that circled the mountain at all hours, keeping guard over her place? The one that poked out people’s eyeballs with its beak, and then ate them?

  “I can’t believe it,” I whispered.

  “It’s just a kite!” Silver looked at me with enormous, glassy eyes. “It must’ve been stuck on the chimney when we saw it before and blew off!”

  “I can’t believe it,” I said again. “It’s … it’s not even real.”

  “It looks real from far away,” Silver said forgivingly. “I bet some people saw it and just started thinking the worst.”

  “Why would she paint feathers on it though?” My head was spinning. “And the beak? And the eyes? It’s like she wanted people to think she had a crazy red bird up here.”

  “Maybe she did.” Silver pulled the kite gently along the ground, and then drew it up the steps.

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know.” Silver set the kite on the porch behind her. “Maybe it’s her way of keeping people away.” Her hand was still pressed against her side, and she was breathing hoarsely. “Wren, it really hurts. Did you see a phone anywhere inside?”