The Ever Breath (7 page)

Praddle hopped on a log, pointed downhill, and mewled in that partly human way she had back in Swelda’s yard.

Truman shook his head. “I’m not falling for that again!”

Praddle hopped down and tugged at the leg of his pajamas, then pointed and mewled louder.

“This better be good.”

Praddle pointed again, and Truman could see that there was a break in the trees. They were on a mountain. He walked to the log, climbed on top of it, and peered down into a valley. There he saw lights, lots of them, all clumped together. “A city!” he exclaimed. “Maybe I could get help there. Maybe
someone knows how to help me back.” But then he noticed how very far away the city was—through trees and across meadows, along a river. “It’s too far,” he said tiredly. “I’ll never make it tonight. I’ll freeze to death.”

Praddle hopped up and down on the log, mewling, and then climbed off the log and slipped into its rotted-out center.

Truman knelt down at the mouth of the log and stared inside.

“Warmmm, warmmm,” Praddle purred.

“Are you saying we could sleep in there?” Truman asked. “I’d get claustrophobic. Plus, we couldn’t both be in there at the same time. I’m allergic to pet dander, and—”

“Shhh!” Praddle whispered, her finger held to her lips.

Truman heard a ruffle of feathers overhead.
Grossbeak?
he thought for a second. But then he looked up and saw a flock of strange birds soaring through the sky. The flock passed in and out of the fog, through the snow. The birds had bloodred hoods, long gawky necks, and hooked ivory beaks. Large talons hung under their meaty feathered ribs, and in their talons they carried round metal cages. The cages had creatures in them—Truman couldn’t make out what they were. He saw hands gripping the bars, but also snouts and muzzles wedged between the bars, glimpses of fur and feathers and scales.

“What are those birds?” Truman whispered.

“Vulturesss,” Praddle hissed.

One vulture, which had a tufted white back, didn’t have a cage in its grip. It was skirting the edges of the flock. Suddenly it dipped closer to the ground, and Truman could see that what he’d thought was a tuft on its back wasn’t one at all. It was a small person wearing a long iridescent robe, and he—or she—was riding the bird like a horse, but
without a saddle or reins, handfuls of feathers in each fist. As the bird passed, Truman saw a long curved sword.

“Who is that?” Truman asked.

Praddle stared and shook her head. She didn’t know.

As if the rider had heard Truman, the bird reared and turned back, circling toward the valley and the fallen tree where Truman stood, his breath caught in his throat.

Praddle mewled, and then darted into the hollow log.

Truman quickly dropped to the ground, grabbed his snow globe, and shimmied into the log where Praddle was now curled up in a tight, shivering ball. The vulture dipped so low that Truman could hear the ruffling of its wings. It landed right in front of the log.

Truman saw the bird’s scaly talons and then the small leather boots of its rider and the hem of the rider’s robe, which twitched and wriggled. The robe was alive, made of shimmering white bugs with delicate wings. They looked like pale, glistening locusts. Each summer, Truman saw locusts on the ground in his neighborhood, tapping at the dirt and cement. They were loud at night, trilling in the trees. But it was winter now. And why would anyone want a robe made out of bugs?

Did the rider know that Truman was there? Truman and Praddle were silent, barely breathing. The rider pulled out a sword, paced in one direction and then the other, and then the pair of boots—very small black boots—stopped right at the mouth of the log. Truman was afraid that the rider would be able to hear his heart, which sounded to Truman like a drum.

The rider’s robe started to twitch and flutter as if the locusts were impatient to leave. Truman peered from the log and watched one of the bugs spread its wings in a quick flutter. And
when the wings lifted, Truman saw the dainty body of a tiny person—not the body of a bug at all. A fairy-sized person. She turned her head, and Truman saw the profile of her quizzical little face.

The robe itself let out a rising, chirruping cry.

“Hushhh!” the rider hissed.

The bugs fell silent.

Then the rider climbed back atop the bird, and the bird took its great loping steps, raised its great wings, and flew up into the sky.

Truman held the snow globe to his chest and gave a sigh.

“Bewarrre,” Praddle mewled.

“Who was it?” Truman asked.

Praddle shivered. “Sssomeone to fearrr.”

“The robe,” he said. “It looked like it was made out of locusts, but one of the locusts had a face.”

“They all have facesss,” Praddle hissed. “Locussst fairiesss.”

Truman felt Praddle’s warm fur on his feet. It was dark in the log, but snug and safe. Each time Truman closed his eyes, the rider’s sword flashed in his mind. He wished his father were here. He wanted to hear the song his father sang to them every night, and so he sang it, ever so softly, under his breath:

He sang it again and again until, with crunchy leaves for a pillow, he finally fell asleep.

When Truman tried to roll over and couldn’t, he remembered that he’d spent the night inside a log. He opened his eyes and blinked at the bright day. The world was miraculously clear and crisp and in focus. Truman had always woken up to a blurry world. He’d always had to reach for his glasses on his bedside table and slip them on before he could make anything out. But right now, he was looking out of the mouth of the hollow log at the shiny black fur of Praddle’s coat, at the snow outside, at the ghostly outlines of trees against a cloudy sky. He didn’t understand it, but he was ecstatic.

Truman crawled out into the bright sun and stood up. “I can see!” he told Praddle. The ground was layered in white. It was cold, but the snow had stopped. He hopped up on the log and looked down into the valley again. The fog had climbed higher up the mountain, and Truman gazed down at the miniature-looking houses and buildings, the crisscrossing streets. There was a river that wound through the outskirts, and it was dotted with boats and barges. And farther
out of town, there were farms—white-blanketed pastures and fields, staked with fence posts.

For a moment it seemed that he could be looking at a valley in the Fixed World. His parents had once taken them to the Blue Ridge Mountains, and this wasn’t all that different. He knew, of course, that he’d climbed through a tunnel into a strange world. But had he
imagined
vultures carrying creatures in cages, the old woman with the black pearl eye? And the mewlers—maybe they hadn’t had human hands at all.

Truman felt a tug on the leg of his pajamas, and there was Praddle. She was holding a jacket and a pair of slippers, both woven from long, thick pointy leaves—holding them with her human hands.

“Mewl-mewl,” she said.

And then it hit Truman that he was really here in the Breath World, lost and cold and now hungry too, and Praddle was his only friend. “Are these for me?”

She nodded.

He took the jacket and tried it on. It felt a little stiff and the leaves tickled his arms through his pajama top at first. But the jacket was woven so tightly that it blocked the wind. “Thank you, Praddle!”

She smiled and shrugged.

He slid his feet into the slippers. They fit perfectly and were warm and dry.

“How did you make all of this?”

Praddle fiddled with her hands as if to say
Like this!

She scurried to some nearby bushes and started plucking berries.

“Breakfast?” Truman asked.

Praddle nodded.

The berries looked like little fuzzy moons. “Browsenberries,” he said. “I’m usually allergic to berries, but…” Truman wanted to test a theory. What if this really was the Breath World and the Breath World really was Swelda’s home-land, and she really did import all of her foods from this world, and, for whatever reasons, Truman wasn’t allergic to things here? Only one way to know. He popped a browsenberry into his mouth, and as soon as he bit into it and the berry burst and his mouth filled with its tart juice, he remembered, vividly, a tiny bit of the tasting tale:
All those magical creatures—the ones you see now only in dreams and stories—used to walk among us
. He knew in an instant that this was exactly the thing he’d been tasting when Swelda said those words.

“Praddle,” Truman said, “have you ever been told a tasting tale?”

She smiled and nodded quickly.

“Okay, then later, after you hear a tasting tale, if you eat something that was served to you when you were being told that tale, do you remember it exactly?”

Praddle nibbled her berries and gave a nod.

Truman ate another handful of berries and Swelda’s words echoed again in his mind:
All those magical creatures—the ones you see now only in dreams and stories—used to walk among us
. …

“Praddle,” Truman began, “do … do you have dragons around here?”

“Dragonsss?”

“You know, lizardlike creatures with small wings and sometimes horns and long tails who breathe fire?”

“Oh, fire-breathersss. Yesss.”

Truman felt a prickle of fear. “What about unicorns? Like deer but they only have one horn?”

“One-horned boundersss,” she said. “Of courssse.”

“Mermaids? Half woman, half fish?”

“Bogpeople,” she said. “Very muddy.”

“Elves? You know, little people?”

“Yesss, urfsss.”

“What about centaurs? Half horse, half human?”

Looking a little tired of all the questions, she just sighed and spread her arms out wide in one big swooping gesture that Truman took to mean,
We have them all!

Truman shook his head. “It’s hard to believe,” he said. He felt scared and hopeful, both at once.
You come from the long line
—that was what his grandmother had said. Did that long line go all the way back to this place? Was his father here, somewhere? Could he find him?

Praddle tapped the snow globe. “Thisss wasss Ickbee’sss.”

“Oh, right,” Truman said, remembering that Swelda had written that in her note. “It’s kind of a strange gift. It has a man in it who’s just been stabbed. It’s a little morbid. Not your regular Christmas tree and snowman. See?” He pointed to the scene and ate some more berries.
All those magical creatures—the ones you see now only in dreams and stories—used to walk among us
.

Praddle leaned in and then looked up at him, confused. She shook her head.

“What is it?” Truman asked.

Praddle tapped the snow globe again.

He lifted it up and looked more closely. The snow was settling in a small, dark, cluttered room with lots of velvety drapes—what seemed to be a museum. There were taxidermied creatures wall-mounted or standing midgrowl and mid-claw or, in the case of winged creatures, strung from the ceiling midflight. There were lots of variations—horns, beaks, thorny tails, ridged backs, tightly curled tusks, human-looking gazes. There was even a full-sized fire-breather, its wings unfurled, its fangs bared.

There was also a wall-mounted display of weaponry—from crude spears to slick blades so shiny they reflected like mirrors.

There was something about the creatures—their terrified eyes, their yowling mouths. These weren’t fake stuffed creatures, like Swelda’s vulture. These animals had once lived, had been hunted down, and now were dead.

In one corner he saw a finger—a solitary index finger with a spiral ring sitting just below the knuckle—preserved in a jar.
What happened to the rest of him?
Truman wondered, with a shudder.

“This can’t be right,” Truman said, peering at the globe. “Yesterday, there was a man who’d been stabbed and a woman wearing a cloak with a big hood. It was as clear as anything, but now …”

Just then a tiny door opened. A small billowy cloud of locust fairies appeared—like a swirl of snow themselves—and a boy was shoved into the room, his ankles bound, his hands tied behind his back, his mouth gagged. The bindings weren’t regular cloth, though. They seemed to be made of
thousands of fine silken threads. The boy fell forward and lay on the floor. The locust fairies disappeared. The door slammed shut. The boy was now all alone.

Truman turned the globe this way and that, staring at the boy inside. The boy looked to be about Truman’s age, and he had brown hair and green eyes, like Truman. In fact, he looked a lot like Truman in many ways. But he wasn’t Truman.

The strangest thing was that no matter how Truman turned the globe in his hands, it seemed as if the boy was staring at him. And his expression surprised Truman. The boy wasn’t terrified, as Truman would have been, bound up and locked in a miserable museum. No. This boy seemed resigned to it. He hadn’t given up, exactly, but it was as if he’d been expecting it. He stared at Truman with tenderness, and now and then a little flash of warning.
Be careful
, the boy seemed to be saying.
It’s going to be okay. Don’t be scared. But be careful
.

Truman shut his eyes, but he felt that the boy in the globe could still see him. And Truman knew, somehow, that he had to find the boy and help him.

“What does this mean?” Truman asked Praddle “Ickbee’sss,” Praddle said. “Sssafe at Ickbee’sss. Go back?” “Safe? With a woman who wants to beat me with a rolling pin?”

“Missstake,” Praddle hissed. “Her hut iss sssafe!”

“I don’t want to be safe,” Truman said, and this surprised him. Truman Cragmeal had spent his life wanting to be safe. He was still scared—terrified, in fact, at the prospect of heading into a strange city in this strange world—but there was
some new part of himself that was emerging. Or was it that a sleeping part of himself was waking up, like an arm that falls asleep and feels dead but then slowly tingles back to life? “I’m going to the city to see what I can figure out. Where there are people, there have to be some answers.” He stood up. “Are you coming?”