The Constellation of Sylvie

Chapter One Silence. The commas hung down, as if exhausted, below the lines of type. Even the exclamation points sagged. The king's oak trees stood deathly still, their leaves like leather gloves. In the entire forest of words, the only moving things were the tiny hands of a fly preening itself. Life was quiet these days inside the old book, now that the story had fallen out of fashion -- in fact, out of print -- but there had always been little scurrying sounds, the distant halloo of a shepherd, or the lapping of water on the shore of the Mere of Remind. This was different. Just then the bushes swished loudly, and the head of a young girl popped up through the leaves. She was quite a sight. Her long brown hair was a tangle of coming-down braids, her travel cape covered with stickery twigs and smears of dirt. Her green eyes were all attention. "What's happening? Can you tell?" She was speaking to a boulder not far from where she stood. Well, it looked like a boulder. In fact, it was a tortoise, its huge head swiveling toward her. Princess Sylvie often spoke to the animals in her story, using little endearments, and she seemed not to mind that they never answered. The tortoise was a particular favorite, and she sometimes sat on its back taking exceedingly slow rides around her father's kingdom. She'd never had time for such lolling about when the book was in bookstores -- even on the Internet. She had begun thinking of that time as the good old days, forgetting how stressful it had been. Living inside a book can be more work than you'd think. Not lately, though. What was the good of having an amazing story if no one read it? Yes, there was that one Reader, a lively girl named Angie, who for a while had carried the book around with her everywhere, sneaking glances at it at the dinner table or during important grown-up parties her parents gave at a place they kept calling the white house. (Did they have another house of a different color?) But now even Angie was gone. Sylvie pulled several eucalyptus leaves from under her cape and fed them to the tortoise. "There you go. You like that?" The creature regarded her without expression, making a mess of the leaves in its beaklike mouth. "That's all I've got!" Sylvie said brightly, then turned and ran over to an ancient oak tree that dominated this part of the forest. She scampered halfway up, quick as a squirrel, to her favorite perch. From there, the world looked the same as always, but it was as motionless as an illustration. Something had definitely changed. Tucking her tongue against the back of her teeth, she let out a high whistle. The sound faded away immediately, as if the air were dead. She whistled again, louder than before. At last the sound of beating wings could be heard, and then a great snowy owl appeared over the rim of Humped Mountain and swerved toward her. This was another magical creature, like the tortoise and the invisible fish that lived in the Mere of Remind; and like them, it was far larger than its counterpart in the outside world -- large enough to pick up a gangly twelve-year-old and carry her wherever she wished. This always amazed Sylvie, because the owl was blind, its eyes milky and useless; yet it found its way. In the weary weeks between Readers she had tried to train the owl, although she was never able to tame it completely. "Come, little one," she called, watching it sail closer. She often called her animals "little," no matter how enormous they were. "Take me to Laurel." The bird's shadow blocked the sun, and Sylvie squinted up at the wings fanning above her. Sylvie had long ago sewn special eyelets into the shoulders of a harness she wore under her cape, so that the owl could lift her without hurting her or tearing her clothes. Now the creature slipped its talons through the loops and heaved itself upward, yanking the princess over the treetops. The kingdom l