Chester Cheshire grinwild's Arc

Chapter 6 of 15

Chester ran back up to his study. The raven was still in the cage, back turned. Chester yanked the door open. "I need the quill. I need to hook them down." The raven hopped past his paw, grabbed the quill in its beak, and squawked hard, three sharp notes that rattled the inkwell. Chester froze. He understood. Not the sounds, but the shape behind them. "Oh," he said. He sat down on the floor. "Oh. So you write the books. You pulled the characters. I'm just the imagination." The raven squawked again, slower. A girl in a blue dress. A cat with too many teeth. A page tearing open. Chester saw it land in his head like a stone dropped in water. The raven had written him. He had only ever pictured things. "So if I want them down," he said, "I have to picture it." He went back down through the leaves to the cobblestone square. Harrietta was on her knees, sorting saucer halves into a pile. Her ears stayed flat. Chester did not say sorry. He walked past her to the long table and started stacking teacups, three high, four high, five high, the way she had done it before the flock came. He stacked twelve towers down the length of the table. He stepped back. Above him the brown and purple wings wheeled lower. The books liked the mess. He could feel it. Maybe he liked them a little too. Harrietta stood up. "They will smash these too." "That's the point," Chester said. "I need them close." He shut his eyes and pictured stone, curving stone, stairs that climbed and climbed and went nowhere. The cobbles by his foot cracked. A spiral staircase pushed up through the square, looping toward the purple clouds. He climbed it. From the top he pulled a brass telescope out of the air because he wanted one, and it was there. Through it he counted the flock. Forty-three winged books, circling, dropping, drunk on the cup towers below. He pictured the next thing harder. A balloon the size of a cottage. His own face on it, grin and all, blue stripes, pink ears. A net slung under it for catching. Ribbons trailing. The air over the staircase thickened and the balloon bloomed into being above him, eyes shut, teeth out. It bumped his shoulder. He grabbed a ribbon and stepped off the stairs. The balloon drifted up into the flock. Books battered against the net. Chester pulled the drawstring. Eleven wings caught, then twenty, then thirty. The rest scattered into the purple sky and were gone over the leaves. Chester floated down with his haul thrashing under him. Harrietta watched the balloon land. She looked at the broken cups, then at the netted books, then at Chester. "You caught some," she said. "Not all." Chester nodded. Twelve were still out there. And so was the princess.