The Ever Breath by Julianna Baggott Page B

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. Andwhen 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:
    “Sleep, slumber, sweet slumber ba-ru
.
Sleepy-seed, sleepy-seed, dew
.
Snug cover and pillow, hear the hush of the willow

And I will stand dream watch over you.”
    He sang it again and again until, with crunchy leaves for a pillow, he finally fell asleep.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Wild Browsenberries
    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 fartherout 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