When Sasha slept that night, she dreamed that thousands of tropical birds circled the ship, nudging it in the direction Sasha wanted to go. In the morning Sasha rubbed sleep from her eyes and pressed her palms over her ears, glad to have all her hearing back. There were no birds around the ship, but there was something else.
When she climbed to the very front of the forecastle, Sasha let out a soft breath. It was dashed away on the wind. She squinted. “Land.” Down on deck Toddy scrubbed the brass knobs and sang pirate songs. “Toddy, land!”
The song ended abruptly as Toddy raced to join Sasha. They watched, frozen and silent, the small, dark lump of land come closer and closer. A shrill, cold wind blew over their arms. Ice floes bumped into the sides of the ship, gently rocking the boat from side to side.
The sky was turning a strange shade of orange-brown as the ship pushed against the sandy bottom with a shush. They were still too far from the land to swim, even if the sea had been balmy and blue instead of chilly and gray, so Sasha and Toddy carefully lowered into the water one of the rowboats hanging on the side of the ship and hopped in. Pirate leaped in behind them.
“Is this the Edge of the World?” Sasha said.
Pirate cocked his kitten head to the side.
It very well might have been the Edge of the World. The closer they rowed to land, the lonelier they felt. The winds picked up, brushing by them with hints of dark whispers. But on land they could see no movement. Only a long, gray beach and deep darkness beyond. Sasha pressed on her chest, trying to push away the heavy settling of fear that made her want to turn the rowboat around and go back to the Cirque.
Except that would mean never being with Mom and Dad again.
Pirate licked her hand with his warm sandpaper tongue, and that helped a little.
They rowed on until their arm muscles ached and their bellies shivered with cold.
When they reached the shore, they pulled the boat high onto the beach and faced the darkness spread out before them. There were rocks and trees, although the trees seemed spindly, with hundreds of fingers and arms pointing in all directions, and on those arms and fingers, tiny little spikes. They didn’t share the space. No canopy of leafy green, no understory of tall ferns or rambling blackberry canes. But the thing Sasha and Toddy noticed most of all was that there was silence. No wind, there on land. No animal sounds or laughter or bumps or anything. And yet there was a prickle of familiarity on the back of Sasha’s neck. Mr. Ticklefar had told tales of places this barren.
“I’m scared,” Toddy whispered. When he spoke, it sounded like fireworks. The land seemed to soak his words into the ground and shoot them up into the sky.
Pirate scampered behind Toddy’s pant leg, hissing quietly at the trees.
“Me too,” Sasha said. She took her brother’s hand. “But I think we’re on the right track. Come on.”
They moved inland slowly and carefully. Pirate picked at the land gingerly with his paws and kept his ears flat against his head. There was no trail, so they zigzagged here and there, hoping they were moving in the right direction. The right direction for what, they didn’t know. Sasha only felt sure that they had to keep moving, had to delve deeper into the Forest of Thorny Trees until they reached the true Edge of the World.
When a branch fell slowly across their path, Sasha stepped forward quickly to brush it aside, wincing at the little tears in her arms and the scratches that ran across her legs like angry, red frowns.
“I’m hungry,” Toddy said after they’d walked awhile.
“Me too. We should have brought food from the ship.” Sasha looked behind them, wondering if they should go back, but the forest drew itself around them so thickly that they couldn’t see the shore anymore. “But it’s too late now. I don’t know if we could even find our way back through the darkness.”
So they walked on. Mist began to curl around their ankles. Sasha’s chest ached again. She wanted to cry. The last time she had felt this awful was when she’d watched her parents flutter away. Suddenly she realized that the mist at her feet wasn’t mist; it was the Smoke.
Of course everything felt bad. The closer she got to the Magician, the worse she would feel. He was the source of her sorrow.
“We have to hurry,” Sasha told Toddy. They ran through the forest. Thorns whipped at Sasha’s face and tangled her hair, making the strands stick to her teary cheeks. The Smoke rolled in more and more thickly until finally Sasha and Toddy tripped on something and fell to the ground.
They lay, covered in Smoke, trying to catch their breaths. Sasha was sure this was the end of her adventures. They would fade, slowly, into the Smoke until they ceased to exist. She had failed.
“I’m sorry, Toddy.” Sasha reached a hand out to him, but he was gone. “Toddy?”
Sasha sat up, squinting through the Smoke; then she stood. A circle of Smoke cleared away, and in the center was a strange creature. Something like a weasel, but with a long, sharp beak on one end and a slinking tail on the other. A tail that at the moment was wrapped snugly around Toddy and Pirate, who was stuffed down Toddy’s shirt.
“Let them go!” Sasha said.
The Sharp-Beaked Weasel spoke, his syllables long and hushed. “Food is diiifficult to find in these parts. I can’t pooossibly let go of my newest catch.”
“You must let him go! I need my brother,” Sasha shouted. “I’ll fight you. . . . I’ll hurt you!”
The Sharp-Beaked Weasel picked a bit of old food from his gleaming teeth with a razor-sharp claw.
“Neeeed him? Oh, nooo. I watched the way you maaarched around here like you own this whole forest. You don’t need aaanyone.”
“That’s not true.”
“Suuuch a shame.” The Weasel sniffed through his long beak. “I’m afraid you’ve no hope of hurting meee, girl. Good day.”
The Weasel was a slow mover, turning delicately into the forest as though he, too, hated those thorny branches. Sasha moved quickly, snapping a low branch from the nearest tree and waving it like a sword.
“You’d better stop!” She swung the branch at the flanks of the Weasel. The animal yowled, and almost immediately a patch of yellow boils grew on his skin where Sasha had hit him.
“Don’t dooo that, girl!” the Weasel said.
“I will. I will do it a hundred billion times until you give me my brother back.”
The Weasel bared his teeth and hissed, and he looked like he could snap her in half with one chomp, but Sasha stood her ground.
The Weasel tried to scurry away, but he was much too slow, twisting and turning to avoid touching the spiny trees. She saw the boils on the Weasel’s side, and it dawned on her: the trees were some kind of poison to him. She swept the branch at the Weasel again, this time catching one of the creature’s rear paws.
The Weasel whimpered. Sweat glistened on his brow.
“Stooop that!”
Sasha hesitated. She had a weapon and could hurt the Weasel, but the animal’s sharp claws could tear into Toddy, too. He didn’t want to ruin his dinner, and Sasha didn’t want to lose her brother. They were at an impasse.
Mr. Ticklefar’s stories flashed through her mind. She had to challenge the Weasel to a riddle. He couldn’t refuse. But riddles were hard. She’s stupid and doesn’t even know it. It’s what the island kids always said. Sometimes Sasha worried they were right. Still . . . Sasha would figure out the Weasel’s riddle even if it took her a hundred years. She was not stupid.
Sasha stood tall. “I challenge you to a riddle.”
The Weasel narrowed his eyes. “Who told you to do that?” the Weasel growled. “All right, girl. I will giiive you a riddle. If you get it right, I let him go. If you get it wrong, he is my diiinner. The furry, squirmy thing will be dessert.”
“Agreed. What is your riddle?”
The Weasel sat back on his haunches, Toddy still wrapped neatly in his tail.
“There once was a sister and a brother. We shall call them Giiirl and Diiinner. They each had a rowboat that they claimed was the fastest rowboat eeever created. Girl’s was blue and Dinner’s was yellow. They fought and argued, as brothers and sisters always do, for who hates each other more than faaamily?” The Weasel’s gaze fell on Sasha, as if he knew all her secrets. Sasha shrank back with shame. She wished the Weasel had her instead of Toddy.
“Ooone day,” the Weasel continued, “they came upon a Magician. ‘I will solve the dilemma of the fastest rowboat,’ the Magician said. ‘Do you seeee that island? Row to it, then row back to me. If Girl’s boat gets here first, Girl wins. If Dinner’s boat reaches me first, then Dinner wins. The loooser drowns, never to be seen again. Reeeady, go!’ So they rowed to the island. When they got there, they were tired. They got out and rested. When they were done resting, Girl tossed one set of oars into the water, grabbed the other, and rowed as faaast as she could to the Magician. Then she drowned and was never seen again. Hooow did she lose?”
How strange, Sasha thought, that the faster rower would be the loser, instead of the winner. It didn’t make sense. The Magician said the one who didn’t make it back first would drown. But some sense had to be made of it. If she couldn’t figure the riddle out, she would lose Toddy and Pirate. And she’d do anything not to lose all she had left of her family.
Sasha would have liked to sit on the ground to think. There was something about sitting that made her brain work better. But the Smoke still wrapped thin tendrils around the lowest parts of the forest. Instead Sasha walked.
She went in a slow circle, never letting the Sharp-Beaked Weasel or Toddy out of her sight. Her hand went to one of the thorny trees, and Sasha was surprised to find that the trunks weren’t as prickly as the gnarled branches. They were as smooth as silk, coated with a shiny, dried sap that gave them that dark gray color that made the whole forest look like it had just seen a wildfire. There was something about them that almost glistened, as though if only the sun shone on the forest, the trees would shine and glitter like Cirque Magnifique under the big tent. Sasha rubbed those trunks. She felt like the trees, inside. Gnarled and pokey in some places, and smooth and lustrous in others. Being a little girl was a complicated thing.
“They go to the island. . . . Girl races her boat back. . . . She wins, but she loses, too. How does she win and lose? Did her brother do something? No, he was resting on the island. Safe.”
Sasha bit her lip, the riddle going round and round in her head as she went round and round in the forest. Her heart thumped so loudly that she could hardly think. A sheen of sweat built on her forehead. If she didn’t get this right, she would lose Toddy.
She could never lose Toddy. She would never let him get eaten by the Sharp-Beaked Weasel. She would never let her brother die.
Just like the girl in the riddle.
And that’s when she knew.
Sasha stood in front of the Weasel, her fists on her hips, her eyes narrowed fiercely, her heart bursting, now with love. As though he knew what was coming, Pirate meowed triumphantly.
“Girl stole her brother’s boat. They were on the island resting, and she took his yellow boat and rowed back to the Magician because she could never let her brother die. She loved him and wanted to take care of him. And that’s the answer to the riddle!”
The Weasel made a terrible sound, like the screeching of a hundred seabirds, and fell over onto his back. He writhed and wiggled and threw the biggest tantrum Sasha had ever seen. But she didn’t care, because his tail also loosened and Toddy came tumbling out.
Sasha ran to him and gathered him in her arms. The little group of three ran farther into the forest without a backward glance at the Weasel.