Harper's Journey

Every Saturday, Harper and her father walked into the woods behind their cabin, and each time her father called it an adventure, even though they only ever went looking for berries. The trail was the same trail they always took, worn smooth by years of boots, winding past the old pine with the broken branch and down to the creek where the blackberries grew thick along the bank.

"Adventure number forty-one," her father announced, tipping his hat back on his head. "Today we search for the elusive and dangerous blackberry."

"Dangerous because of the thorns," Harper said, holding up her scratched hand as proof.

"Dangerous because of the thorns," he agreed solemnly.

They had been walking for almost an hour, their bucket only half full, when Harper noticed something new. A path split off from the main trail, one she had never seen before, half swallowed by ferns and low branches.

"Dad, look." She pointed. "That wasn't there last time."

Her father crouched down and studied the overgrown trail, the way he studied everything, slowly and carefully, like it might tell him a secret if he waited long enough.

"Huh," he said. "Guess the forest grew a new arm."

"Can we follow it?"

He glanced at the sky, then at the bucket of berries, then at his daughter's face, which already had the answer written all over it.

"One adventure deserves another," he said, and together they stepped off the familiar trail and onto the new one.

The ferns brushed against Harper's overalls as they walked, and the light came down in thin green strips through the leaves overhead. She laughed when a branch sprang back and smacked her father square in the hat, and he laughed too, pretending to stagger backward like he'd been struck by a wizard's spell.

"Oh no," he moaned, clutching his chest. "I've been cursed. Tell my daughter I loved her blackberry-stealing ways."

"Dad, stop." Harper giggled, pulling him along by the sleeve. "You're being ridiculous."

That was when the wind came. It was not the gentle kind of wind that moved through leaves and made the forest whisper. It came all at once, cold and sharp, rushing down the new path as if something enormous had taken a breath and let it out in a single gust. Harper's ribbon tugged loose from her hair. Her father's hat flew off and rolled away into the ferns.

"Whoa," he said, no longer laughing. "That's not normal."

A woman stood in the middle of the path where no one had been standing a moment before. She was tall and thin, wrapped in a cloak the color of wet stone, and her hair hung in gray tangles around a face that might once have been beautiful but now looked pinched and sour, like a lemon left too long in the sun.

"Do you know what hour it is?" the witch snapped, her voice crackling like dry leaves underfoot. "Do you have any idea what it is to be woken by children stomping and hooting through the one quiet corner of this forest I have left?"

Harper froze. Her father stepped in front of her without seeming to think about it at all.

"We're sorry," he said carefully. "We didn't know anyone lived out here. We'll turn around."

"You're trespassing," the witch said. "This path is mine. This forest remembers who it belongs to, even if little girls with ribbons in their hair do not."

"We're leaving right now," he said, reaching back for Harper's hand.

"I need my beauty rest," the witch hissed, as though he hadn't spoken at all, "and I will not get it with you two laughing and crashing about like a pair of wild boars."

She raised one hand, her fingers curled like claws, and green and gray smoke began to curl up from the ground around her feet.

"Wait," Harper's father said, "please, we're sorry, we didn't mean any harm."

But the witch was not listening anymore. She flicked her wrist, and a bolt of sickly green light shot from her fingertips and struck him square in the chest. He had just enough time to look down at himself in surprise before his whole body folded inward, clothes crumpling to the ground in a heap.

"Dad!" Harper screamed.

Where her father had stood a moment before, there was only a small white mouse, blinking up at her from the pile of his own clothes, whiskers trembling.

The witch tilted her head, studying her work with something like satisfaction. "That ought to keep you both quiet," she said, and then she began to spin, slowly at first, then faster, until she was nothing but a blur of gray cloak and green smoke. A moment later, she was gone, and the smoke dissolved into the trees as if it had never been there at all.

Harper dropped to her knees beside the little heap of clothes. The mouse scrambled out from under her father's shirt and looked up at her with small black eyes that somehow still looked like his.

"Dad?" she whispered. "Dad, is that you?"

The mouse made a small squeaking sound and pressed its nose against her finger.

Harper's chest hurt in a way she didn't have words for. She looked around at the trees, trying to find the way back to the main trail, but every direction seemed identical now, all ferns and shadow and unfamiliar bark. She was alone, really and truly alone, except for the tiny white mouse trembling in her palm.

"Okay," she said, mostly to steady herself. "Okay. I've got you. I'm not going to lose you too."

She unbuttoned the front pocket of her overalls and gently set the mouse inside, feeling him curl into the corner of it as though he understood exactly what she meant to do.

"I'll fix this," she told him. "I promise."

She started walking, choosing a direction because any direction was better than standing still, and after what felt like a very long time, she came upon a shack leaning sideways at the edge of a clearing, its roof caved in on one side and its windows thick with grime.

It looked like the kind of place that might harbor someone who could help her. She pushed open the door, which groaned on its hinges, and stepped into a single dim room.

A narrow bed sat against one wall beneath a gray, patched blanket. Shelves lined the other walls, crowded with glass jars where small creatures stirred. Crickets hopped against the glass. Beetles clicked their legs. Moths beat soft wings against their lids. And in a jar near the window, a butterfly with wings the color of a sunset fluttered in frantic circles the moment Harper walked in.

"Psst! Hey! You there!" the butterfly called, her voice tiny and urgent. "Get over here, quick, before she comes back!"

Harper stepped closer, startled but too curious to be afraid. "You can talk?"

"Of course I can talk," the butterfly said. "Listen to me carefully. This is the witch's house. If she finds you here, she will do to you what she did to all of us, so you need to leave, and you need to leave now."

"She already did something," Harper said, her voice cracking. "She turned my dad into a mouse. He's in my pocket right now."

The butterfly stopped fluttering and settled on a leaf at the bottom of her jar, folding her wings slowly. "Oh," she said, softer now. "Oh, I'm sorry. That's what she did to all of us too, once upon a time. We weren't always bugs."

"Then how do I fix it?" Harper asked. "How do I turn him back?"

"There is only one way," the butterfly said. "A magic Lima Bean, grown in a world far from here. One bean is enough to turn a creature back into what it was meant to be. But you must only take two, do you understand? Two, and no more, or you will bring down trouble you cannot imagine."

"Two beans," Harper repeated. "Okay. Where do I find this world?"

The butterfly leaned close to the glass. "Behind this house there is a door, hidden low in the ground, like a cellar door covered in moss. Through it is a pond, and the pond is no ordinary pond. On the shelf above the fireplace there is a ruby, red as blood, and it belongs to the witch. You must take it and go to the pond and throw the ruby in."

"Steal it?" Harper said, her stomach twisting.

"Borrow it," the butterfly said. "The water will turn the color of whatever is thrown into it. When it turns red, you jump in, and it will carry you where you need to go."

Harper found the ruby exactly where the butterfly said it would be, gleaming on the mantel like a drop of fire. She tucked it carefully against her father in her pocket and whispered a thank you to the butterfly before slipping out the back, finding the mossy door just as described, low and half hidden in the dirt.

Beyond it lay a still, dark pond. Harper took a breath, pulled the ruby free, and threw it into the water. The surface rippled once, twice, and then bloomed a deep, glowing red from edge to edge.

She jumped.

The water swallowed her whole, and for one dizzy moment there was nothing but red light and rushing cold, and then she was falling, tumbling out of nowhere into a forest that looked almost like the one she'd left, except some of the trees had leaves of soft purple and bark as white as snow, standing among others with green leaves and brown bark like ordinary trees back home.

Harper landed hard, stumbling forward, and her foot caught on a root sticking up from the ground. She pitched forward onto her hands and knees.

"Oh, pardon me, miss," said a low, creaking voice above her.

Harper looked up. The purple-leaved tree she had tripped over was looking down at her, its bark folding into something like a face, slow and kind.

"You talk too," Harper said, because it seemed like the only thing to say.

"Most of us do, in Shanahra," the tree said. "Though we are slow to start, as roots are slow to grow. I am sorry for your fall."

Harper got to her feet and brushed the dirt from her overalls, feeling the small weight of her father shift in her pocket. "I'm looking for magic Lima Beans," she said. "Do you know where I can find them?"

The tree swayed thoughtfully, its purple leaves whispering against each other. "There is a garden far from here, at the edge of the world we know, where such beans grow on vines as tall as towers. It is a long walk, and the way is not always kind. You may take only two beans, child. The garden does not forgive greed."

"I know," Harper said. "I was told."

The tree gave her directions as best it could, pointing one long branch toward a gap in the trees. "Follow the deer paths east until you reach the river," it said. "Be careful, little one. Shanahra is beautiful, but it does not always mean to be kind."

Harper thanked the tree and walked on, following the gap between the trunks. As she went, she began to notice what she hadn't before, that some of the trees were not simply standing in place but were walking, slow and stately, lifting their roots like feet and setting them down again, living out quiet lives among the ferns.

One tree in particular, white barked and crowned in purple leaves, stepped into her path and bent low, as if in greeting.

"You are the girl from the pond," he said. "I am Arbol. I have been waiting."

Harper blinked up at him, too tired and too amazed to be afraid.

Behind him, through the last thinning line of trees, she could see the glint of water, and when she stepped out of the forest at last, she found herself staring at a river so wide it seemed to stretch to the very edge of the sky.