All the Birds in the Sky - Charlie Jane Anders Page 0,60

transported by the cavelike scent of damp earth. Clouds of insects in her eyes, and up her nose. She laughed so hard she snorted dead bugs, for joy at being out of the city at last. And then she wandered into a clot of thornbushes, which tore at her skin and clutched so hard she couldn’t go forward or backward without shredding, and her giddiness turned to anxiety, because what if people needed her help? Or the other witches? What if she was going AWOL right when someone was in trouble?

The more she tried to force her way out of the bracken, the harder it tore at her, until she realized that this was her dream, and she could always fly in dreams. She lifted up out of the thicket and flew up, along a steep incline that was studded with roots. And then it came into view: huge and dark, like a raven formed of branches and leaves. A huge ancient Tree, filled with patience and enough memories for a billion rings, twin branches undulating as in greeting.

* * *

“SO WHAT WAS the thing you couldn’t tell me about over the phone?” Laurence asked as he brought their espressos from the counter.

In response, Patricia just pulled the tiny wooden figurine out of her bag and told Laurence who it was. Mr. Rose stared up at them, wide-eyed frog face looking prayerful one moment, whimsical the next.

“This is him? This is the actual person?” Laurence kept holding it up to the light, like he was trying to see some resemblance. “He’s so … tiny.”

“Yeah,” Patricia said. “I have no idea what to do with him.”

Laurence and Patricia were in the Circle of Trust, which had been the trendy coffee shop in the Valencia Street corridor about eighteen months earlier. It still had all of the nice wooden fixtures and the super-expensive espresso machines, but it was half-empty because all the best people had already moved on to the new place, a block away. The Circle of Trust was having an art show featuring finger paintings done by a twenty-eight-year-old woman, with subversively naive word balloons. The coffee was super-pricey, with all the shortages, but they still went Dutch.

“Seeing him so helpless, and watching him get transformed into this tiny object.… it doesn’t change my memories of how huge and terrible he was,” Patricia said. “It’s like two different people. And it sounds like he’s spent a lot of the last several years being a thorn in the side of the other witches. Because he went crazy and had some kind of apocalyptic vision. That’s why he was at our school in the first place, because he thought I would grow up to become a monster.”

“Huh.” Laurence stared at the figurine. Patricia felt self-conscious about how borderline obscene the raised skirts were, how weird this was in general. “But you didn’t. Grow up to become a monster, I mean. And come on. Did he ever tell anyone the truth? About anything?”

“No,” Patricia said. She took the figurine and slipped it back into her purse. She was going to beg Kawashima to take Mr. Rose off her hands. “No, he didn’t.”

“He was a compulsive liar. Is. Was. Not sure what tense to use.”

There could be a better conversation killer than plunking down your most hated childhood authority figure, shrunk to the size of a man’s thumb. But Patricia couldn’t think of one. The two of them sipped coffee and shook their heads, trapped in recursively horrible memories. Patricia had to fetch water and guzzle it. The café’s stale air had stayed almost as hot as noon, even as the sun drifted below the skyline.

Laurence was staring at Patricia’s purse, where she’d put the figurine away. “I think all the time about how close he came to ruining my life. It’s one of the reasons I’m so desperate to succeed, because I almost didn’t get this chance.” Abruptly he stood up. “Come on. I want to show you something.” Patricia was struck anew by just how tall he’d gotten. Patricia was tall too, but she came up to his collarbone. And he had enough nervous energy for nine ferrets.

Patricia followed Laurence down to Mission Street and then around a couple of side streets until they were near Shotwell, on one of those streets that goes for just a block or two. It was another itchy parched day. Patricia remembered hearing there was a creek here originally, before it was drained or paved over.