The Radiant Road by Katherine Catmull Page A

and curling roots.
    Wait: she looked more closely at the roots. Nestled in the crook of the roots was something—she leaned in closer—was . . . the world? She laughed out loud. It couldn’t be. But more than the world—the universe, a tiny doll universe, starry and fiery, green and stone, curled inside a root’s curling arm. A forest rose up and died in one slow breath, out and in. A mountain range heaved up like a jagged wave, then softened, lost its shape, and melted away beneath the wind and rain. At her feet, a distant star blossomed from a burning bud, shone full and yellow-white, swelled up red, withered into darkness.
    â€œGood girl yourself,” said a voice in her ear. “You came.”
    Finn was beside her. How is there room for him in this tree? But this was Clare’s home now, fitted to her, she fitted to it. This was always her home, only she’d forgotten. And Finn and Clare had always fit here together.
    â€œYou can see the whole world and sky in here,” Clare said. “You see them so slow, though. Or maybe I mean so fast.”
    â€œBecause this tree stands between our worlds, yours and mine, and has roots deep, deep into both,” he said.
    â€œYour world,” Clare repeated. This was the question that had haunted her all day. “Are you . . . ?” No. Not that word. “Do you come from . . . the Strange?”
    He laughed, a startling sound in the firefly-lit silence. “I call your world the Strange one. We call our world Timeless. Timeless, for it is great with beauty, my world. And the beauty is perfect, and never changes. Nothing changes there.” Something odd in his voice there, but Clare pushed on.
    â€œBut so, all my life, those fairy-makings—wait, do you know what I mean by fairy-makings?”
    â€œI do indeed.” A fish threaded with light passed between their faces, so that his gray-blue eyes were bright for a moment, then shadowed again.
    â€œWas that you? Was it you making them?”
    He smiled, and turned his face away as if to hide it. “Some I did,” he said.
    A sudden, troubling thought. “But did you make—did you make the one from a couple nights ago, with the fireflies and stars, that made the terrible sort of . . . face?”
    â€œI did not,” said Finn. “But not only I make them. We all make those makings, in your world. We make more than that, much more. We made your home, my girl.”
    Clare forgot the firefly face, turning this thought in her mind. My house was built by fairies?
    Clare didn’t believe in fairies. But it is hard not to believe in someone sitting beside you, arm in rough wool coat pressed against your own, while fireflies and glowing fish swim in the air between you. It is hard not to believe the memories that come tumbling back every hour you’re here.
    â€œI don’t really believe in fairies,” she said aloud, doubtfully, as if testing the sound.
    He laughed, a sharp and husky sound. His breath was like the breath of wild herbs after a rain. “Do not call us fairies, then,” he said, “if it’s only the word in the way.”
    They were quiet a long time, arm touching arm, as the lights of the universe breathed and pulsed, arose and died away around them.
    Clare, who had had no real friends, had of course no boy friends, either. A featherless fledgling who hides herself doesn’t talk much with anyone, let alone boys. She knew, or she thought she knew, that boys came in three kinds: the ones raucous as a pack of dogs, all vulgar jokes and savagery; the mute ones, their faces shuttered up, as stubbornly unproddable as a pile of wet towels; and then the third kind, the boys with intelligent eyes and bitter jokes, and a sadness at the edges that she thought might match her own.
    There was one boy like that, a year older, who worked in her favorite coffee shop in Midland. She liked his