Baxterr and the two girls journeyed through patches of forest and around the edges of small, deep-green lakes. For a time, they climbed along the side of a series of steep valleys, following what appeared to be sheep trails. Or maybe they were goat trails. In the fields they passed, Tuesday saw both sheep and goats grazing peacefully, the bells of the goats making a tinny sound as they moved about. Baxterr showed remarkable restraint in not chasing them, although he did chase quite a few rabbits.
When Vivienne glanced up at the sun and announced it was lunchtime, the three travelers sat down on a pair of rotting, mossy logs in a boggy stretch of open forest. No sooner had they sat down, drunk from their flasks (Baxterr from a nearby stream), and bolted some food than Vivienne Small was back on her feet and ready to continue.
“Can’t we have a bit more of a rest?” Tuesday begged.
“You don’t want to rest here,” Vivienne said.
“Why not?”
“Leeches,” said Vivienne.
“I don’t care about the leeches,” said Tuesday, lying back on one of the soft, mossy logs and feeling the midday sunshine warming her face.
“You will care in a moment,” said Vivienne. “See?”
Tuesday followed Vivienne’s pointing finger to a horribly oversized, bulbous black leech—about the same width as her own forearm—inching toward her. Tuesday wasn’t at all the kind of girl to squeal at a spider, or a scorpion, or even a normal leech, but this was something quite different. So she squealed, and Vivienne chuckled, and Baxterr barked as Tuesday hefted up her pack and they set off once again, Tuesday looking behind her to make sure the leeches weren’t following.
Sometime after lunch, Tuesday’s feet went beyond being hot and sore and entered a state of numbness. Her legs ached. The path took them through a broad plain of short, wheat-colored grass that rippled in the breeze. Tuesday made Baxterr walk very close to her, convinced that she had heard slithery sounds nearby.
By late afternoon, Vivienne was slightly ahead, tramping along with even, measured steps. The terrain rose to a crest ahead of them, and Tuesday watched as Vivienne lifted her wings and fluttered up to the top, then stood still with her hand shading her eyes.
“Yes!” she said. “Come on! Come on up.”
Tuesday and Baxterr scrambled wearily up the rise, and there in the distance was a broad, tranquil river carving its serpentine way through green hills and tawny valleys. Along the river’s edge were small villages with low buildings of timber and stone.
“The Mabanquo River,” Vivienne announced.
“Why is it called that?” Tuesday asked as she set off after Vivienne once more, this time with a fresh spring in her step.
“It was named after a famous explorer,” Vivienne said. “Letitia Mabanquo. There’s a statue of her in the City of Clocks.”
Vivienne struck a pose of a person pointing upward. “That’s what the statue does,” she explained. “You’ll see it when we get there.”
They reached the riverside at twilight. On the grassy bank, the two girls pooled their supplies and made a meal for Baxterr. Although they had intended to ration their food for tomorrow, they were so hungry after their long walk that they ate most of it. Tuesday, with a full stomach and no farther to walk, felt the delicious feeling you get after being outdoors for an entire day.
“Shall we get going, then?” said Vivienne.
“We’ll sail at night?” asked Tuesday, a little surprised.
“I’m game if you are.”
“Hurrrrrr,” said Baxterr, who was not especially pleased to see Vivienne unwrap the miniature red boat in the glass vial. Tuesday could understand why.
“It’s all right, doggo,” she said. “There won’t be any falling in this time … I hope.”
* * *
Some of you may be wondering how one small girl and one regular girl, along with a small-to-medium dog, were going to sail a swift, deep river in a tiny boat in a glass bottle. Well, it was entirely possible, but it involved a little bit of magic.
Vivienne placed the bottle on the grass, as close as she could to the river’s edge. From her pocket she took a silver-and-gold marble, which she unscrewed into two parts. The silver half fitted neatly into the neck of the bottle; the gold half fitted into a groove in the bottle’s base. Then they waited and watched as the bottle wriggled itself into two glassy halves, and the little red dinghy began to grow.
It was not the first time Tuesday had seen this happen, and she had read about it happening a hundred times or more. That didn’t make it any less strange or magical. Tuesday remembered the last time she had seen Vivacious grow. She was glad that this time Vivienne was here and she wouldn’t have to manage alone.
In a matter of seconds, Vivacious was the size of a normal sailing dinghy. She had a varnished interior with a centerboard, a single mast, and two sails fully rigged—a smaller one at the front and a larger one in the middle. Ropes were beautifully coiled on her decks. Vivienne unlaced her long boots and threw them into the dinghy, and Tuesday tossed her sneakers in after them. She could hardly wait to feel the cool of the river water on her tired feet.
“Come on, then, in you get,” Vivienne said to Baxterr.
Baxterr gave a reluctant whine.
“Oh, doggo,” Vivienne scolded. “It’s a lovely evening for a sail. Go on, you can jump in now, and you won’t even get your feet wet.”
Baxterr hesitated only a little, then seemed to decide that Vivienne was offering a good deal. Once he was safely aboard, the two girls slid the boat into the river, pushed off from the shore, and jumped in too. A gentle breeze filled Vivacious’s white sail, and Vivienne expertly steered the small craft into the middle of the broad river. Soon the twilight became darkness, and Tuesday could only wonder at the billions of stars above.
“It’s hard to imagine there’s anything wrong in the world when the stars are so perfect,” she said, pulling her blanket out of her pack and wrapping it around her. “Maybe things will settle down tomorrow. Maybe everything will go back to normal.”
Vivienne gave her a puzzled look. “You do know that’s not the way things usually happen in an adventure, don’t you?”
“Yes. I know,” Tuesday said, and giggled.
And so Tuesday, Vivienne, and Baxterr were carried downstream toward the City of Clocks, Vivacious a silhouette on the thoroughfare of the Mabanquo River. Although neither of the girls said anything about it to each other, both of them had the strange sensation that something was about to happen. It reminded Tuesday of the sound in a concert hall right before an orchestra begins to play. The whole audience has settled, and it’s very quiet, and everyone is waiting for the first note, and no one knows quite how it’s going to sound.
After a time, Tuesday fell into the kind of dreamless sleep that often comes at the end of an exhausting day.
“Sleep is a wonderful thing,” Denis had said to her on many occasions. “Enjoy it while you’re young, because you get precious little of it when you get older.”
Denis and Serendipity never minded if Tuesday wanted to spend the day in bed reading, as long as, at some point, she took Baxterr for his walk and got the regulation amount of fresh air, which Denis insisted was at least eighty-seven minutes for someone Tuesday’s age.
“Rain, hail, or shine,” Denis said. He did not order; he compelled.
So, in the hallway at Brown Street there were always numerous raincoats on pegs and umbrellas in the hallstand.
But there was not an umbrella in the world that would have withstood the sudden downpour into which Vivacious sailed sometime in the early hours of the morning. Tuesday woke from the depths of her sleep with a gasp, thinking that someone had thrown a bucket of freezing water over her. As she scrambled to sit up, she realized the cold, cold water was coming from the sky in a deluge that threatened to swamp Vivacious entirely. Baxterr barked ferociously; Vivienne struggled to control the helm.
“What is happening?” Tuesday yelled over the thunderous sound of the water hitting the deck. “Is this rain, or have we sailed under a waterfall?”
“Not a waterfall! We’re in the middle of the river. I wish I had a boat with a cabin!” Vivienne called back.
Baxterr continued barking at the rain as if he thought this might make it stop. Tuesday put her arms around him to soothe him. She would have put her blanket around him to shelter him, but it was completely drenched and useless.
“Ruff, ruff, ruff,” Baxterr told the rain crossly.
“Hush, doggo. That’s not helping,” Tuesday said.
Tuesday wondered how so much rain could fall so quickly and make so much noise.
“What is this?” Tuesday yelled.
“I have no idea,” Vivienne yelled back. “One minute there were stars, and the next they were gone. All the lights from the houses along the shore went dark. I can’t see a thing!”
The deluge went on and on and on. Tuesday found the bucket that Vivienne kept for bailing and began scooping water out of the hull of the little dinghy. As fast as Tuesday bailed, or perhaps even faster, the water plummeted down.
Tuesday called to Vivienne, “We’re wetter out of the water than in it!”
Vivienne nodded. “I’m hoping we don’t run into a cliff or a jetty or a rock. We’re picking up speed, which means it’s flooding. Watch out for debris in the water.”
They rushed faster and faster down the river.
“At the rate we’re going,” called Vivienne, “we’ll miss the City of Clocks and get dragged out to sea!”
“Isn’t there anything we can do?”
“Keep bailing!”
So Tuesday kept bailing, Vivienne kept helming, and from time to time Baxterr barked at something that only he could see out in the darkness. Quite where they were, or where they would be by daylight, was a mystery. Tuesday thought that she had never been so wet in her life, not even in the bath or a swimming pool.
And then, as suddenly as it had started, the deluge stopped. Bright stars reappeared in the sky, and the sparkling lights of the eastern and western shores of the river were once again visible. Still, Tuesday and Vivienne could hear the water behind them pouring down in a torrent from the sky into the river.
“What was that?” Tuesday asked.
“I have no idea,” Vivienne said. “But I’m glad we’re on the other side of it.”
At length, some light began to leak into the sky, but it was a strange light that came from high above. It was clearly not dawn, because the light did not emerge from behind hills or gradually appear on the horizon. This pale light appeared as if someone far away was shining a torch through the top of the sky. Tuesday and Vivienne stared. Baxterr whined. All three of them gaped.
A sun was coming up in a completely different world: a world that appeared to have run into theirs. Their own sky was like the bottom of a fishbowl, curved inward as if it had been dented by the weight of the other world above it. As the sun rose in that world above, the girls could see the other world’s ocean tilted strangely toward them. Water from the ocean above was pouring like a waterfall through the sky and down into the Mabanquo River.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Tuesday whispered loudly to Vivienne.
“I am,” said Vivienne. “If what you’re seeing is completely crazy and unbelievable.”
Tuesday nodded. Neither of the girls, nor Baxterr, could take their eyes off this extraordinary sight. It was both beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Tuesday thought of the Gardener’s message to the Librarian. I cannot hold the worlds apart much longer. Have you found our answer?
Who was this Gardener? Tuesday wondered. And what amazing powers must he have? Help him, the Librarian had said. But how? Tuesday wondered. If he was in charge of something as monumentally important as keeping the worlds apart, he must be a genius, or perhaps a creature of supernatural power. So what could she, Tuesday, possibly do to help him? Vivienne remained perched on her seat at the helm, marveling at the scene in the sky, but Tuesday, with her feet deep in the water sloshing in the dinghy, felt overwhelmed. Baxterr, sensing her mood, licked her gently on the face.
“Look,” said Vivienne, pointing to the horizon. “Dawn!”
And indeed, morning was breaking in Vivienne’s world too. The Mabanquo River was suffused in pale pink light that gradually shaded to orange and gold, and the world became incredibly beautiful in a watercolor sort of way.
The day’s light revealed how much the river had flooded. In every direction were boats: sailing boats of every size and color and rigging, but also a great many houseboats, brightly painted in blue, green, yellow, and red. And rushing past Vivacious in the current were all manner of things. Three goats and four chickens passed them on the roof of a barn. Along came a bicycle, a bed, and a chair, and a damp cat on an upside-down wheelbarrow.
“Oh!” said Tuesday as she saw a tall, conical hillside rising high above the floodwaters. It was glimmering with soaring, elegant golden spires.
“The City of Clocks,” Vivienne said, her voice hushed in awe. “Didn’t I tell you it was beautiful?”
Tuesday had traveled a great deal with Denis and Serendipity. She had seen wonderful places. But this was, without a doubt, the most mesmerizing city Tuesday had ever seen in her life.
“Oh no,” said Vivienne, pointing. “Trouble.”
From beyond the city’s spires there came a flock of birds. At first, to Tuesday’s eyes, they were only specks, but as the birds made their way toward the river, it became clear that they were larger than any bird Tuesday could think of. Even an ostrich on the wing would have been a quarter the size of these creatures.
“What are they?” Tuesday said.
“Vercaka!” Vivienne said, readying her bow and arrows. She was absolutely certain that these were the birds from the world of Tarquin and Harlequin. With their pear-shaped bodies, they flew like long-necked sheep.
The birds began to dive, spearing downward toward sailing boats and houseboats. Suddenly the air was full of screaming and panic. One of the hideous birds came to rest on the roof of a nearby houseboat and deposited a deluge of oily, smelly bird-poo slime down its windows. Its beak was cruel-looking—metallic in color and serrated like a bread knife along its edges—but the bird’s dull eyes gave it a dimwitted look. Its feathers were dirty white and shabby, and its wingspan was enormous.
A shadow crossed over Vivacious. Vivienne swiftly loosed an arrow that glanced off the bird’s scaly belly and fell back into the water. The bird swooped down and lunged at the boat.
“I think you made it angry!” said Tuesday.
“Get down,” yelled Vivienne.
Tuesday flung herself into the bottom of Vivacious with Baxterr underneath her body. She was terrified. But it wasn’t the speed of the bird’s flight, nor the breadth of its wings that most frightened her. It was what she heard the bird say as it swooped over the top of them.
“Your father is dead,” it shrieked in a ghastly, wheezy voice that Tuesday heard both through her ears and inside of herself.
Was Denis dead? How could the bird know?
“Dead, dead. Completely dead,” the bird repeated, its voice echoing through the chambers of Tuesday’s skull and inside her ribs. “All your fault too.”
“Vivienne,” Tuesday gasped, “did you hear that?”
“Ignore them!” she called back to Tuesday. “It’s how they hurt you. You have to ignore them.”
The bird turned its attention to Vivienne. “You’ve got spiders on your back. They’re crawling toward your neck.”
“Won’t work on me,” Vivienne cried, firing off another arrow. Tuesday was certain this bolt would strike the bird in the face, but the vercaka swiftly jerked its ugly head back into its woolly-feathered shoulders and was unharmed.
“And you,” the bird said, stretching its naked neck out long again and aiming its words at Tuesday. “You’ve gone blind.”
The words penetrated deep into her head. Tuesday’s eyes felt gluey, and the world buckled and blurred.
“Vivienne!” gulped Tuesday. “Am I okay?”
“You are fine. Nothing they are saying is true. You have to ignore them. They’re just stupid, ugly, hateful birds.”
“She doesn’t want you,” the vercaka shrieked, zooming in close. “Never did.”
Beneath Tuesday, Baxterr whimpered and shook.
“No, doggo, it’s not true,” Tuesday cried.
Hearing her words, Baxterr found some courage and dived out from beneath Tuesday to snap at the vercaka passing overhead.
Vivienne’s next arrow skewered the vercaka right through the grayish skin of its wrinkled neck. The bird, choking, flapped helplessly and plunged into the river, its wings beating the water into a froth.
“Yeah!” cheered Tuesday, leaping to the deck and throwing her arms in the air.
Then the shadow of a second bird fell across them. Tuesday didn’t even have time to look up before she felt its claws dig into her shoulders. It had hold of her, and she was being lifted up and away. Baxterr barked and tried to lunge at the bird, but Vivienne grabbed him and pulled him back. Tuesday screamed as she was torn up into the sky.
“Vivienne!” she cried. “Vivienne!”